SexyPrime, a blog by Susan Crain Bakos

LOVE, ROMANCE AND THE ONE-NIGHT STAND--Sex Science News

Photo Credit:  "RedHighHeels" on Photobucket 

Two recent U.K. studies report that young women are more sexually active than their grandmothers were in the "Swinging Sixties"--have more partners, are more likely to have sex on the first date and have more one-night stands.  I'm sure this is true in the U. S. too.  European women are generally more forthcoming about sex.

On a related note, Dr. Helen Fisher pointed me in the direction of recent research in the Netherlands on lust and love—

In a study, men and women were asked first to think about taking a long walk with a beloved partner and in the second, imagine casual sex with someone they found attractive but didn’t love.

Before and after the experiment, the participants were given a battery of tests to examine their creative and analytical abilities.

The results?

Calling up romantic thoughts stimulated creativity while turning the mind toward lust heightened analytical thinking.

Does this explain the mating behavior of Wall Street (and white glove law firms) where hook-ups and one-night stands pass for a romantic life?  

 

copyright 2008-2011, www.sexyprime.typepad.com; PARTIAL reposts only permitted with link back to original article on SexyPrime 

WHY HAS SEX GONE TAME?--AND CAN MEN BE BAD BOYS IN BED--

Photo Credit:  "Red Heels" by ArieMercedes on Photobucket 

AND GOOD GUYS IN THE WORLD?

 

First, white men need love too—and everybody is dumping on them.  We all know what racial/gender group is blamed for the plague of tame sex.  Someone has to stand up for the white men who are damn good in bed; and I am rising up in my red stilettos to do just that.

Yes, I still love black men.  Many of my favorite email correspondents on SexyPrime and friends on Facebook are black men, African American, Caribbean, African.  But I love white (and Hispanic and Indian and Latino and Asian) men too.  Five –or six?—years ago I wrote an essay for The New York Press on how much I love black men.  (Read the interview with Zola on the conversation that keeps getting me into trouble.)  My very controversial (at the time) thesis:  Many white men lose their sexual mojo around the age of forty and black men don’t.  I received death threats for writing that.

Now everyone is on the White-Men-Can’t-Do-It bandwagon.  (Hey, a lot of them can.  I never said they were all bad in bed.)  A few recent examples:

Katie Rophe took on Gen X male writers (who are forty-ish now) in The New York Times, saying “…[they] are so self-conscious, so steeped in a certain kind of liberal education, that their characters can’t condone even their own sexual impulses.”

In "Ode To The Whipped White Male," Mark Morford, San Francisco Gate columnist asks, “Do you pity the sad and squishy white guys of America now?”—and goes on to call the average white guy “adrift, emasculated, slightly pissed off” and hiding out in his Man Cave where only advertisers pushing beer and fast cars are likely to reach him. 

Sometimes the critiquing of male sexuality is not so much white man specific as implied.

The Love and Intimacy Coach sites “a trend toward men becoming less and less aggressive in bed, and becoming more and more sensitive women and to what they desire.  This is good news and bad news.”

Mike Masters on Details.com laments the “very nasty trend in the world today, tame sex.”

I doubt that any of these writers have received death threats but, of course, they are not white women writing about sleeping with black men.   Today I am a white woman who has most recently been sleeping with a white man over forty, at the top of his game, both as a corporate litigator and a lover. Not only are we the same race, but—deep breath—he is an age-appropriate mate.  It is really not true that once you go black, you never go back.  Nor it is true that no white man will ever have you again.  Bust those myths. 

Let’s talk about truths—

The plague of tame sex has hit American bedrooms hard.  Men learned too well to ask permission before escalating every move and that “she comes first” always.  Women who wanted more sensitive men would now like them to be a little less sensitive and more manly.  

White men seem to suffer from the tame sex plague more than other racial groups.  Feminism was largely a white woman’s movement.  In our cultural zeal to raise liberated men who respect us as equals, we may have contributed to the creation of the monster, the un-sexed white American male. 

At the same time, more white men have found themselves in the beta role, earning less than their alpha wives, girlfriends and lovers.  (Read the alpha beta posts.)  Some betas have retreated into passive/aggressive behavior, exemplified by saying “no” to sex or masturbating to cyberporn or becoming “kink providers” like The Zola whose marathon spanking session symbolizes bad sex with the aging single white Gen X urban male.

How much has the internet/hook-up culture contributed to the problem?  Men think they have endless choices until they realize they don’t.  Women think their checklists will guarantee perfect matches until they realize they don’t.  What’s left after years of dating and hooking-up— people trapped in tame sex?

Let’s have a dialogue about the issues—

 

• Can tamed men learn how to be bad boys in bed while still being good guys in the world?
• How would you tell them to do that?
• Will women admit the roles we have played in creating tame lovers?
• Will people who have sexual relationships across the racial divides share what they have learned about the psycho-social-cultural components of sexuality?
• Who wants to have a conversation on the blog with me on the issues?

 (Thanks to Steve Otero for the research on this post.)

 

copyright 2008-2011, www.sexyprime.typepad.com; PARTIAL reposts only permitted with link back to original article on SexyPrime 

 

THE GRAND LOVE/HATE AFFAIR: The Results of SexyPrime's Dating/Mating/Hooking-Up Survey

Photo Credit:  "Red Heels" by UltraKiley on Photobucket 

 

The shocker:  Many men and women wrote at length to say they are not that happy with dating nor are they often satisfied in hooking-up.  Yes, even the men report next day buyer’s remorse, rooted in the knowledge that she didn’t come and he didn’t perform well.   People, listen:  Try doing it NOT drunk.  Drink a little to relax—and then cut yourself off. 

Some conclusions from the results—

 

• Black male professionals and white women over forty dominate the game (as do black women when they get out from under the crushing weight of cultural expectation and expand their pool of acceptable men.)

• Women in their thirties are fed up with hooking up and have retreated in cynical non-dating or internet match dating or just plain old desperate dating (I love Liz Weber’s comment on why she tried internet dating:  “I know how to fall in love and how to fuck, but I have never dated.”)

 

• My perception is that many young women in every racial group, but especially minorities, are not fully sexually empowered

And the respondents themselves were unafraid to draw conclusions, usually negative, about the other gender.

A 45 year old divorced white woman wrote, “Older white men (over forty) are evolved and likely unavailable or creepy or clueless.”

From a fifty year old divorced white man:  “I thought everything was great.  On a Sunday morning after spending the night—good sex!—she said, ‘This isn’t working for me’ and she left.  Who understands women?”

Yet men and women are driven to mate—even knowing they will have more disappointing first dates (or hook-ups) than not.

A married white man in his thirties said he never considered a relationship with a woman who had sex on the first date—but did call her after because “I didn’t want to ruin it for the other men.”  Someone married him?  Really?

And a 38 year-old white single woman wrote, “I just want to find a man of my own.  I’m lowering my standards.  I want a husband, home, baby.  And I am tired of dating and hooking up!”

That attitude is what got the above jerk married, isn’t it?

Europeans are more casual about relationships—and seem to enjoy them more too  French women don’t get fat eating bread, cheese and chocolate and drinking wine—and they don’t obsess over men either.

The happiest daters in SexyPrime’s Dating/Mating/Hooking-Up Survey were women over forty and men under thirty.  Hmmm……that would be cougars and their cubs, wouldn’t it?   There’s something to be said for the absence of biological pressure. 

From Emo Man, an ever hopeful dater whose heart breaks easily:  “I don’t like one-night stands.  They work into a two to four week fling at best.  What if you want more than that?”

What if most of us want more than that even if we won’t/can’t admit it?  We are stuck with dating and hooking-up, with the possibility of rejection and disappointment, with taking some risk or we aren’t very likely to get anything.  Remember that joke Woody Allen told at the end of “Annie Hall,” the classic relationship comedy and one of my all-time favorite films?

A man says to his therapist:  “My brother thinks he’s a chicken, but I can’t tell him he’s not because we need the eggs.”  Yes, we all need the eggs.

(See Who's Dating Now? for more survey comments.)

Here are the major stats: 

Age:  21-67, with 70% between 25 and 40.

Gender:  54% men, 46% women

Race:  58% White, 12% African American, 7% Latino,  5% Asian American, 16% White European,  3% African

Relationship status:  23% married, 21% in a relationship, 41% single and dating/hooking up, 15% single and not dating/hooking-up

32% date or hook-up outside a relationship, including marriage.

Sex on the first date?   

Yes, 64%, No, 36% with men and women split almost evenly.

Does he call after first date sex?

60% of men say they have.

Does she care if he calls?

89% of women say they do want the call—though more than half reported turning down the second date request. 

We want them to want us even when we don’t want them?  No wonder men lose their hair.

 

copyright 2008-2011, www.sexyprime.typepad.com; PARTIAL reposts only permitted with link back to original article on SexyPrime 

REVENGE OF THE BOY TOY--Or, No, I Won't Ghost That Book

 Photo Credit:  "Gaucholix" by Gauchogirl on Photobucket

 

“I have a project for you,” the agent said.  Her last two projects were another tell-all-of-never-before-told-gossip by someone distantly connected to a Kennedy and a wronged political wife memoir.  I don’t think so to both.  “A young Wall Street trader had three relationships with cougars in two years.  He wanted real relationships, with the possibility of a future.  They just wanted to use his body.”

No!  Really?

“You know I’ll probably side with the cougars,” I said and she laughed.

“Derek was with a trader, a cosmetic surgeon and a writer—high profile women who used him sexually…..”

Derek.  I had a little cougar fling with a Wall Street boy named Derek.  Or was it Eric?  I kept forgetting his name and had to ask my guy pals what it was.  But I think it was Derek.  Yes, now I am sure it was Derek.

“Do you have any details on the wanton writer?”  I asked

“Well, he only has notes, he needs a proposal, the writer has to come on board immediately….”  Click, click, tap, tap.  She found his notes.  “Okay, sex writer taught him about sex toys, gave the best head he’d ever experienced, looked sexy in his white shirts, wouldn’t let him into her life, had more commitment issues than the entire cast of characters on ‘Seinfeld’…..”  She broke off and cleared her throat.  “Omigod,” she said.

“Sex writer,” I said.  Long pause.  “I have a title for him:  Revenge of the Boy Toy—or My Sex Life With Oedipal Complex.”

Yes, in my other writing life, I am a ghostwriter because it gets me out of my world and into somebody else’s.  I’ve ghosted for lawyers, psychologists, doctors, CEOs, scientists, celebs, including a sports star—people who don’t have the time to write their own books.  I bond with them, get their story, internalize their voice so I can write as the author, not as myself.  It’s very rewarding—in ways beyond money.

I am wrapping my own latest book, The Daily Sex Bible, either my 19^th or 20^th book with a pub date fall 2010 or winter 2011.  Before that, Best Sex Ever comes out in June and then The Little Book of Big Os in ?  I may keep haphazard track of the publishing details, but I love my own books and take great pride in them, especially the set of beautifully photographed books I’ve done for Quiver Books beginning with The Sex Bible in 2006.  Sugar, nobody combines science-based sex technique with audacious commentary the way I do.

But I need to take a trip to a new world now.   

 Derek called.  He is disappointed that I don’t want to do his book.  I told him:  Get back to me when your cougar list includes a link to a Kennedy and a scorned political wife.  We’ll do lunch.

 

copyright 2008-2011, www.sexyprime.typepad.com; PARTIAL reposts only permitted with link back to original article on SexyPrime 

 

ARE YOU A SEX ADDICT? (I Don't Think So)

Photo Credit:  Photobucket 

"Now, I haven't commented on Tiger Woods much because, well, he's just a golfer and it took me this long to give a shit. But all this talk about sex addiction now - please - sex addiction is just something Dr. Drew made up because he had no other way to explain Andy Dick. And that's not just me saying that - it's also the American Psychiatric Association, which does not list sex addiction in its manual; it does not regard it as a real psychological syndrome, like delirium or bipolar disorder or any of the other things Glenn Beck suffers from....."

Bill Maher writing on The Huffington Post in "New Rule:  Stop Saying Sex Addict Like It's A Bad Thing" 

Steve Otero at Sexy Spirits sent me this link--and I had to share.  It's too good to keep to myself.

copyright 2008-2011, www.sexyprime.typepad.com; PARTIAL reposts only permitted with link back to original article on SexyPrime 

THE CUDDLE PARTY MAN GETS A PUBLIC HAND JOB

  Photo Credit:  "Rose" by leGambler on Photobucket

 

Or, what I learned at Reid Mihalko’s Hand Job workshop at Sexy Spirits this past week.

Where do I begin to report on a hand job workshop with live demonstrations?  No rubber penises or velvet vulvas were assaulted by cold hands during the proceedings.  Sex educator Amy Jo Goddard, Reid's partner instructor, performed a hand job on an enthusiastic female model.  The room was packed; and I sat at the rear—so I watched the screen.  Next up, Reid himself—and the “up” did take a few minutes, but how many of us could respond to tactile stimuli with a room full of people plus camera focused solely on our genitals?

I am a vanilla (with hints of dark chocolate and chili pepper) sexpert who is nevertheless jaded about public sex, having seen it all.   Personally, I like my sex private and one man at a time.  But I admire people who can stand up, take their pants down and show us how real sex moves work on real genitals.  Anton Diaz, my friend and director of Sexy Spirits, offers people the rare opportunity to see these demonstrations (and many other kinds of sexuality and spirituality workshops) in a warm, accepting and intellectually stimulating atmosphere.  There is no other place in New York City like this—and I doubt there is any place like it anywhere in the country, the world.  If you live in the city or visit, have a healthy interest in sex (or tango)—go the website and sign up for the free newsletter.

Reid established his reputation with Cuddle Parties, non-genital touching events.  The media picked up the story of New Yorkers paying to cuddle—and Reid was a name sex educator without even writing books.  (It’s easier to write books.)

“Sex is the one thing in this culture we can’t learn from watching other people,” he says.  You can watch your mom and dad cook—but not have sex.  “So many young people learn sex from watching porn.  That’s just a bad idea.  It’s like learning how to drive from watching ‘The Fast and the Furious.’”

He is so right about that. 

Another good point:  “We touch a new lover the way the last lover liked to be touched—and then we’re surprised it doesn’t work.  Pay attention!  Ask questions with Yes/No answers, like Harder?  Softer?  Faster?  Slower?”

You can find the strokes they used in The Sex Bible and The Sex Bible for Women.

Yes, Reid has a nice, sturdy penis.  And he’s funny.  It can’t be easy to be funny with your pants down in front of strangers.  He is a regular workshop presenter at Sexy Spirits.  Your money will be well spent there.

[Also check out the post, Two Hand Jobs.] 

copyright 2008-2011, www.sexyprime.typepad.com; PARTIAL reposts only permitted with link back to original article on SexyPrime 

BIGGER IN THE BIG EASY—and Other Penises (Not Tiger’s) In The News

New Orleans—where the big ones are.

According to a new “statistical analysis” conducted by Condomania, the condom retailer, the men of New Orleans have the biggest penises on average in the U.S. Washington D.C came in second, followed by San Diego, New York City and Phoenix. (Phoenix? Are you sure the recent arrival of Zola didn’t lower the average?)

But here is the interesting part: In state rankings, New Hampshire is the land of the Big One, followed by Oregon, New York, Indiana and Arizona. Huh?

The question I know is in the minds of my readers: How did they get these numbers?

Their rankings are based on the sales statistics of 27,000 men in 70 countries who purchased TheyFit condoms, available in 76 sizes, ranging from three to ten inches in length and “super slim” to “extra roomy” in girth. This is now the largest data base of penis sizes on record—eclipsing the 1948 Kinsey study of 2500 men who recorded their erect penis sizes on cards with marks for measure.

But Kinsey’s team was methodical and paid close attention to detail. How do we know Condomania’s clients don’t buy larger than they truly need? The measuring system requires users to measure the length and girth of their erect penis to the millimeter and match their results to one of 76 possible length-and-girth combinations. The results: 25% of buyers measure less than five inches in length, 50% are between five and six inches, and 25% claim six inches or more. (I still say: It’s not a perfect system. Interesting results, but imperfect system.)

And that brings me to my second favorite penis news story:

From AZCentral.com, I learned that some residents of Tempe, Arizona are claiming that a penis tree is offensive. The tree, located in the back yard, died and apparently the owner carved it into the shape of an eight-foot tall penis.

"They carved it, all by themselves it looks like," said a neighborhood resident who sees the humor but wants the tree removed. "I'm a little bit speechless.”

According to neighbors, the tree was dead and unattractive before it was carved into a giant erect penis. It stands to attention at 8 feet tall in a residential backyard, but is visible to people walking by.

The website suggests that the complainers “look into banning the penis-cactus and the Padunus Palm whose roots might give the Tempe phallus a run for its money.”

Citizens of Arizona, you have a city and your state in the top five on the Big Penis lists! Worship at the Penis Tree and give thanks.

copyright 2008-2011, www.sexyprime.typepad.com; PARTIAL reposts only permitted with link back to original article on SexyPrime 

Is It Her Kinky Sex Or His Repressed Anger?: The New Feminist Question

Photo Credit: Color Splash in Photobucket

The questions that feminists asked in the Seventies helped define domestic abuse. Before that time, a man couldn’t legally rape his wife or girlfriend because she did not have the right to refuse him. He was entitled to take the sex he wanted from her. If a man hit a woman with whom he was sexually intimate, he probably wouldn’t get arrested and wasn’t likely to pay any legal price for his behavior  We owe those pioneering feminists a big debt.  (Many of them were lesbians, fighting for the rights of their heterosexual sisters; and we should honor that by supporting gay marriage now.  If you are on Facebook, join the group "I Bet We Can Find 1,000,000 People Who Support Same Sex Marriage.")  Domestic violence still happens, but it’s not okay. 

What is okay? Consensual rough sex. Increasingly, women—especially successful alpha women—ask for kinky sex. They want to be spanked, fucked hard, slapped, choked and have their nipples pinched and twisted and their hair pulled hard.  There is no shortage of men, often beta men dating above themselves, eager to supply the force.

A recurring question in reader emails lately has been a variation of this: If she likes it “rough” and the man gives it to her—is he just giving her what she wants or expressing his hidden anger at women? The corollary: Does she want it “rough” to force a man to be a man by playing the role of a submissive woman? Candice Bushnell’s comments on the kinky sex in Lipstick Jungle implied that.

In the now infamous post “The Fine Line Between Lust and Hate,” The Zola admitted that he crossed over the line from lust to loathing in a two and a half hour spanking session—loathing himself and the woman he was whacking.

“She wouldn’t open her legs. She didn’t want to have sex with me. ‘Smack me,’ she said; and I did. I asked myself as I was whacking her, ‘Is this the best I can do—be with a woman who jerks me around?  Don’t I have anything more going for me than this?’ My own self-loathing kicked in and I kept whacking her.”

I quoted Julie Klausner in I Don’t Care About Your Band (Gotham Books):

“…what was, at the time, I thought, a rough, kinky, exciting, crazy SM relationship with a masterful pervert, was, in fact, just bad sex with a misogynist who had no idea what he was doing.”

So many women emailed and said:  Bad sex, Yes, that’s what it really was for me too, not kinky wild fun!

And yesterday in the Auntie Sue post, I referred to a pretentious pot-belled “master” (in his own mind) who pursued an SM relationship with a creative artist, temporarily homeless and very down on her luck, via a series of embarrassingly long emails. The woman had shared an SM fantasy —and he ran with it, asking her to spend the weekend with him while his wife was out of town, so he could beat her in his bed.  She said, “I thought I’d do a lot of things to sleep in a bed rather than on a friend’s sofa or subway train—but that I would not do.”

Reading his emails (which she forwarded) made me slightly queasy—the same response I always had to Zola’s oft-repeated spanking story—but for a different reason:  The master was so eager to take advantage of a woman in her worst possible moment.  His “heart was going pitty-pat” at the thought of it, he wrote. (A real master would not begin a relationship with a woman in such a precarious life position.)

The more rough sex stories I hear and read in emails to the blog, the more I wonder: How many “rough” sex acts committed by a man upon a woman, even with her consent, are really acts of violence?

I was turning that question around in my head when I read a piece by Peter Daou on The Huffington Post:  “Male Monsters:  Girl Buried Alive For Being A Girl—and The World Shrugs.” A political consultant who worked for Hillary Clinton, Daou  leads an article on the horrible crimes committed daily around the world against girls and women with this story of a sixteen year old Turkish girl, buried alive by her father, in consultation with her grandfather, for the crime of talking to boys. She was found, hands bound, with dirt in her stomach and lungs. Where was her mother? Her grandmother? They would have found my body in that hole with the child.

Is the aging freelance editor who brags about how well he cheats on his wife (whom, it is fair to assume, would be disgusted by his proposition to the artist) merely a point on the misogyny continuum, the civilized version of the men in the Congo raping girls and women with bayonets and pieces of wood—destroying their insides in acts so heinous that the doctors and nurses who treat them are breaking down?

All men, of course, are not misogynists. Many men have a loving spanking hand. They know when a woman wants her pussy pounded and when she craves it slow and easy. They can tweak a nipple or suck it sweetly. Those men are my guys, SexyPrime readers, men who love women, the best men.  I want to hear from you guys—and from my Babes too. Post a comment. Email. Tell me what you think.

copyright 2008-2011, www.sexyprime.typepad.com; PARTIAL reposts only permitted with link back to original article on SexyPrime 

CHOCOLATE, A LOVE STORY and CHOCOLATE & I

 

No, those are not suggested titles for my memoir--though well they could be.

My lover has been feeding me bits of Lindt's dark chocolate with chilli pepper--probably my favorite chocolate bar now--and reading to me from a cookbook, Chocolate:  A Love Story:  65 Chocolate Dessert Recipes From Max Brenner's Private Collection (Little, Brown and Company).  The descriptions of the fifty recipes are sensual delights.  Don't you want to put your finger in a "tacky double chocolate fondue made of dark chocolate with a touch of red chilli obsession and white chocolate perfumed with soft cherry liquer" or bite into a "dependable banana cupcake with dark chocolate chunks and a moody coconut sugar glaze?"

If you've ever been to one of Max Brenner's Chocolate By The Bald Man restaurants, you know he approaches chocolate with passion and adoration.  Gorgeously illustrated with artwork by Yonathan Factor, the book captures the man, the restaurants, the chocolate.  After my man heads out to Chicago on business, I am taking this book to bed with me.

Fortunately, I can keep the high going.  I have an invitation tomorrow night for the private opening of Chocolate & I, a week long series of events celebrating the magical qualities of cacao, exploring new combinations between food, art and culture--and introducing new brands.  Chocolate and art!  Does it get better than that?  I will attend several of the events and report back to you. And I hope to see some of my New York City readers there.  Check out the schedule and email me on the blog to let me know where you'll be and when.

I swear chocolate intensifies my orgasms.  How about you?

 

copyright 2008-2011, www.sexyprime.typepad.com; PARTIAL reposts only permitted with link back to original article on SexyPrime 

LISTEN TO ME WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 23, ON PLAYBOY RADIO!

Photo Credit:  "Purple Kiss" on Photobucket 

Wednesday, I will be a guest on Chip Rowe's interview show.  He's the Playboy Advisor--and one of the most sexually well-informed people on the planet.  Check out his blog on Playboy.com for more info. 

The interview is already taped--so I can tell you with confidence that it's a good one.