By Brandon Ambrosino
BBC.com
Originally posted 20 October 2016
Here is an excerpt:
No doubt Westworld will continue exploring questions most of us haven’t yet thought of. But we shouldn’t pretend these questions only belong to the domains of technologists and futurists. As social psychologist Sherry Turkle, who investigates our relationship with technology, has pointed out, our conversations about the future shouldn’t obsess over what robots will be like. Instead, she says, we should think what kind of people we will be, what kind of people we are becoming, every day, whether we’re watching porn, making love to our partners, trying to outsmart Siri or killing an avatar for no other reason than that’s what happens in a video game.
The article is here.
Showing posts with label Sex. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Sex. Show all posts
Wednesday, November 9, 2016
Friday, August 19, 2016
Why Are So Many Millennials Having Zero Sex?
By Jesse Singal
The Science of Us
Originally posted August 2, 2016
When it comes to millennials and sex, there are two narratives going on at the moment, and they clash pretty severely. One, expressed in the form of panicky think pieces about Kids These Days, argues that because of the rise of dating apps, a reduced emphasis on commitment, and various other factors, young people are having casual sex at a higher rate than ever before, and this may be causing psychological problems, particularly for young women, who — so the story usually goes — don’t get as much out of casual sex as the guys they are hooking up with.
The other narrative is that, well, the kids are all right. Even assuming there is something wrong with safe, consensual casual sex (and the proper answer to that question is it’s complicated), some researchers who track generational differences in behavior have found something that might surprise the panickers: if anything, today’s young people are hooking up less than members of past recent generations did when they were the same age. In an article published last year in the Archives of Sexual Behavior, for example, Jean Twenge of San Diego State University and Ryne Sherman of Florida Atlantic University wrote that, among adults, the “[n]umber of sexual partners increased steadily between the G.I.s and 1960s-born Gen X’ers [with Boomers in the middle] and then dipped among Millennials to return to Boomer levels.” That is, millennials, on average, appear to be having sex with fewer people than Gen-Xers did when they were at the same age, and about the same amount of sex as the boomers did when they were in their younger years.
The article is here.
The Science of Us
Originally posted August 2, 2016
When it comes to millennials and sex, there are two narratives going on at the moment, and they clash pretty severely. One, expressed in the form of panicky think pieces about Kids These Days, argues that because of the rise of dating apps, a reduced emphasis on commitment, and various other factors, young people are having casual sex at a higher rate than ever before, and this may be causing psychological problems, particularly for young women, who — so the story usually goes — don’t get as much out of casual sex as the guys they are hooking up with.
The other narrative is that, well, the kids are all right. Even assuming there is something wrong with safe, consensual casual sex (and the proper answer to that question is it’s complicated), some researchers who track generational differences in behavior have found something that might surprise the panickers: if anything, today’s young people are hooking up less than members of past recent generations did when they were the same age. In an article published last year in the Archives of Sexual Behavior, for example, Jean Twenge of San Diego State University and Ryne Sherman of Florida Atlantic University wrote that, among adults, the “[n]umber of sexual partners increased steadily between the G.I.s and 1960s-born Gen X’ers [with Boomers in the middle] and then dipped among Millennials to return to Boomer levels.” That is, millennials, on average, appear to be having sex with fewer people than Gen-Xers did when they were at the same age, and about the same amount of sex as the boomers did when they were in their younger years.
The article is here.
Saturday, November 14, 2015
The Strange Case of Anna Stubblefield
By Daniel Engber
The New York Times Magazine
Originally published October 20, 2015
Here are two excerpts:
Then there was a lull in the conversation after Wesley came back in, and Anna took hold of D.J.’s hand. ‘‘We have something to tell you,’’ they announced at last. ‘‘We’re in love.’’
‘‘What do you mean, in love?’’ P. asked, the color draining from her face.
To Wesley, she looked pale and weak, like ‘‘Caesar when he found out that Brutus betrayed him.’’ He felt sick to his stomach. What made them so uncomfortable was not that Anna was 41 and D.J. was 30, or that Anna is white and D.J. is black, or even that Anna was married with two children while D.J. had never dated anyone. What made them so upset — what led to all the arguing that followed, and the criminal trial and million-dollar civil suit — was the fact that Anna can speak and D.J. can’t; that she was a tenured professor of ethics at Rutgers University in Newark and D.J. has been declared by the state to have the mental capacity of a toddler.
(cut)
Sitting at the keyboard, D.J. also seemed to have a lot to say. His messages were simple and misspelled at first, but his skill and fluency improved. Eventually he could hit a letter every second, and if Anna guessed the word before he finished typing, he would hit the ‘‘Y’’ key to confirm. Anna brought books for him to read, Maya Angelou and others, and discovered that he read like a savant — 10 pages every minute. (She turned the pages for him.) They discussed the possibility of his enrolling in a G.E.D. program.
As D.J. came into his own, Anna kept her mother posted on his progress. In the spring of 2010, Sandra asked if D.J. might like to give a paper for a panel she was organizing at a conference of the Society for Disability Studies in Philadelphia. The panel was on Article 21 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons With Disabilities, which lays out the right to freedom of expression and opinion. D.J. wasn’t sure he could do it, Anna said, but she convinced him he should try.
The entire article is here.
Note to readers: The article is long, detailed and (from my perspective) creepy. This case appears to demonstrate where compassion and personal values override good judgment, research, and professional responsibilities.
The New York Times Magazine
Originally published October 20, 2015
Here are two excerpts:
Then there was a lull in the conversation after Wesley came back in, and Anna took hold of D.J.’s hand. ‘‘We have something to tell you,’’ they announced at last. ‘‘We’re in love.’’
‘‘What do you mean, in love?’’ P. asked, the color draining from her face.
To Wesley, she looked pale and weak, like ‘‘Caesar when he found out that Brutus betrayed him.’’ He felt sick to his stomach. What made them so uncomfortable was not that Anna was 41 and D.J. was 30, or that Anna is white and D.J. is black, or even that Anna was married with two children while D.J. had never dated anyone. What made them so upset — what led to all the arguing that followed, and the criminal trial and million-dollar civil suit — was the fact that Anna can speak and D.J. can’t; that she was a tenured professor of ethics at Rutgers University in Newark and D.J. has been declared by the state to have the mental capacity of a toddler.
(cut)
Sitting at the keyboard, D.J. also seemed to have a lot to say. His messages were simple and misspelled at first, but his skill and fluency improved. Eventually he could hit a letter every second, and if Anna guessed the word before he finished typing, he would hit the ‘‘Y’’ key to confirm. Anna brought books for him to read, Maya Angelou and others, and discovered that he read like a savant — 10 pages every minute. (She turned the pages for him.) They discussed the possibility of his enrolling in a G.E.D. program.
As D.J. came into his own, Anna kept her mother posted on his progress. In the spring of 2010, Sandra asked if D.J. might like to give a paper for a panel she was organizing at a conference of the Society for Disability Studies in Philadelphia. The panel was on Article 21 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons With Disabilities, which lays out the right to freedom of expression and opinion. D.J. wasn’t sure he could do it, Anna said, but she convinced him he should try.
The entire article is here.
Note to readers: The article is long, detailed and (from my perspective) creepy. This case appears to demonstrate where compassion and personal values override good judgment, research, and professional responsibilities.
Wednesday, November 4, 2015
Only two sexes?
By Sarah Graham
The Independent
Originally posted October 17, 2015
Here is an excerpt:
It’s not surprising so many people are ignorant about us intersex people: Our very existence has been erased since the Roman Empire. It continued in the 20th century, as doctors got their scalpels out to “normalise” our bodies. In the last fifteen years, since some of us started finding our dissident voices and protesting, doctors have tried to rebrand us and said we have “Disorders of Sexual Development (DSDs)” - to legitimize their paternalism and on-going annihilation of our beings.
This is all to keep you - the public - in the dark. And to rigidly enforce the pink and blue boxes: the boring binary, straight-laced order. But let me bring you up-to-speed. There are not only the two sexes of male and female. This is an absolute barefaced lie. Nature produces bodies on a spectrum; a continuum of possibilities.
You have met one of us somewhere, for sure. As many as 1 in 1,500 babies is born visibly intersex, while many more are born not so obviously unique and interesting to the eye.
The entire article is here.
The Independent
Originally posted October 17, 2015
Here is an excerpt:
It’s not surprising so many people are ignorant about us intersex people: Our very existence has been erased since the Roman Empire. It continued in the 20th century, as doctors got their scalpels out to “normalise” our bodies. In the last fifteen years, since some of us started finding our dissident voices and protesting, doctors have tried to rebrand us and said we have “Disorders of Sexual Development (DSDs)” - to legitimize their paternalism and on-going annihilation of our beings.
This is all to keep you - the public - in the dark. And to rigidly enforce the pink and blue boxes: the boring binary, straight-laced order. But let me bring you up-to-speed. There are not only the two sexes of male and female. This is an absolute barefaced lie. Nature produces bodies on a spectrum; a continuum of possibilities.
You have met one of us somewhere, for sure. As many as 1 in 1,500 babies is born visibly intersex, while many more are born not so obviously unique and interesting to the eye.
The entire article is here.
Saturday, October 24, 2015
Would you have sex with a Robot?
HuffPost Live
Will humans soon enjoy the option of having sex with robots? We discuss the technology behind this progressive idea, along with legal, moral and ethical implications. How will this human like sexbot alter reality? Will relationships suffer as a result?
Originally aired on October 5, 2015
Will humans soon enjoy the option of having sex with robots? We discuss the technology behind this progressive idea, along with legal, moral and ethical implications. How will this human like sexbot alter reality? Will relationships suffer as a result?
Originally aired on October 5, 2015
Monday, October 19, 2015
Who's Sweating the Sexbots?
By Julie Beck
The Atlantic
Originally published September 30, 2015
Here is an excerpt:
Katherine Koster, the communications director of the Sex Workers Outreach Project, says that the comparison shows a misunderstanding of the sex trade. “That power relationship that they're assuming exists within the sex trade may or may not exist,” she says. “Sex workers are repeatedly saying that's not always what it looks like.”
Levy writes that the rise of sexbots will mean the decline of the sex industry, but Richardson is less convinced. She believes the introduction of sex robots will somehow further the exploitation of sex workers.
“It became more and more apparent that women in prostitution were already dehumanized, and this was the same model that they then wanted to put into these machines they’re developing,” Richardson says. “When we encourage a kind of scenario in the real world that encourages that mode of operation,we’re basically saying it’s okay for humans to not recognize other people as human subjects.” She says she plans to reach out to sex-work abolition groups around the world as part of the Campaign Against Sex Robots.
The entire article is here.
The Atlantic
Originally published September 30, 2015
Here is an excerpt:
Katherine Koster, the communications director of the Sex Workers Outreach Project, says that the comparison shows a misunderstanding of the sex trade. “That power relationship that they're assuming exists within the sex trade may or may not exist,” she says. “Sex workers are repeatedly saying that's not always what it looks like.”
Levy writes that the rise of sexbots will mean the decline of the sex industry, but Richardson is less convinced. She believes the introduction of sex robots will somehow further the exploitation of sex workers.
“It became more and more apparent that women in prostitution were already dehumanized, and this was the same model that they then wanted to put into these machines they’re developing,” Richardson says. “When we encourage a kind of scenario in the real world that encourages that mode of operation,we’re basically saying it’s okay for humans to not recognize other people as human subjects.” She says she plans to reach out to sex-work abolition groups around the world as part of the Campaign Against Sex Robots.
The entire article is here.
Wednesday, September 2, 2015
Antidepressants Make it Harder to Empathize, Harder to Climax, and Harder to Cry
Big Think
Published on Apr 7, 2015
Dr. Julie Holland argues that women are designed by nature to be dynamic and sensitive – women are moody and that is a good thing. Yet millions of women are medicating away their emotions because we are out of sync with our own bodies and we are told that moodiness is a problem to be fixed. One in four women takes a psychiatric drug. If you add sleeping pills to the mix the statistics become higher. Overprescribed medications can have far-reaching consequences for women in many areas of our lives: sex, relationships, sleep, eating, focus, balance, and aging. Dr. Holland's newest book is titled Moody Bitches: The Truth About the Drugs You’re Taking, the Sleep You’re Missing, the Sex You’re Not Having and What’s Really Making You Crazy.
Published on Apr 7, 2015
Dr. Julie Holland argues that women are designed by nature to be dynamic and sensitive – women are moody and that is a good thing. Yet millions of women are medicating away their emotions because we are out of sync with our own bodies and we are told that moodiness is a problem to be fixed. One in four women takes a psychiatric drug. If you add sleeping pills to the mix the statistics become higher. Overprescribed medications can have far-reaching consequences for women in many areas of our lives: sex, relationships, sleep, eating, focus, balance, and aging. Dr. Holland's newest book is titled Moody Bitches: The Truth About the Drugs You’re Taking, the Sleep You’re Missing, the Sex You’re Not Having and What’s Really Making You Crazy.
Monday, June 1, 2015
Video about Tea and Consent, as it applies to sex
Do you like tea? Do you want tea forced on you? Do you want tea when you're unconscious?
A new video campaign uses stick figures and tea -- yes, tea -- to make the simple but essential point that consent is not a complicated concept.
The video is a collaboration between Blue Seat Studios and blogger Rockstar Dinosaur Pirate Princess, who wrote about the topic in a March post called "Consent: Not actually that complicated."
Thursday, April 2, 2015
Unraveling the Church Ban on Gay Sex
By Gary Gutting
The New York Times
Originally published March 12, 2015
Here is an excerpt:
The primary arguments derive from what is known as the “natural-law tradition” of ethical thought, which begins with Plato and Aristotle, continues through Thomas Aquinas and other medieval and modern philosophers, and still flourishes today in the work of thinkers like John Finnis and Robert George. This tradition sees morality as a matter of the moral laws that follow from what fundamentally makes us human: our human nature. This is what the archbishop was referring to when he said that homosexual acts are contrary to natural law. This has long been a major basis for the church’s claim that homosexual acts are immoral — indeed “gravely sinful.”
The problem is that, rightly developed, natural-law thinking seems to support rather than reject the morality of homosexual behavior.
The entire article is here.
The New York Times
Originally published March 12, 2015
Here is an excerpt:
The primary arguments derive from what is known as the “natural-law tradition” of ethical thought, which begins with Plato and Aristotle, continues through Thomas Aquinas and other medieval and modern philosophers, and still flourishes today in the work of thinkers like John Finnis and Robert George. This tradition sees morality as a matter of the moral laws that follow from what fundamentally makes us human: our human nature. This is what the archbishop was referring to when he said that homosexual acts are contrary to natural law. This has long been a major basis for the church’s claim that homosexual acts are immoral — indeed “gravely sinful.”
The problem is that, rightly developed, natural-law thinking seems to support rather than reject the morality of homosexual behavior.
The entire article is here.
Friday, February 6, 2015
Harvard Tells Profs Not to Sleep With Undergrads
By John Lauerman
Bloomberg Business
Originally posted February 5, 2015
Harvard University banned professors from having “sexual or romantic relationships” with undergraduates, joining a list of campuses that have taken similar steps.
Many colleges discourage but don’t ban sex between professors and students. While a national professors’ group doesn’t favor such a prohibition, recent moves by Harvard, Yale University and the University of Connecticut suggest the tide may be turning.
Friday, August 1, 2014
Moral Hazards & Legal Conundrums of Our Robot-Filled Future
By Greg Miller
Wired
Originally posted July 17, 2014
The robots are coming, and they’re getting smarter. They’re evolving from single-task devices like Roomba and its floor-mopping, pool-cleaning cousins into machines that can make their own decisions and autonomously navigate public spaces. Thanks to artificial intelligence, machines are getting better at understanding our speech and detecting and reflecting our emotions. In many ways, they’re becoming more like us.
Whether you find it exhilarating or terrifying (or both), progress in robotics and related fields like AI is raising new ethical quandaries and challenging legal codes that were created for a world in which a sharp line separates man from machine.
The entire article is here.
Wired
Originally posted July 17, 2014
The robots are coming, and they’re getting smarter. They’re evolving from single-task devices like Roomba and its floor-mopping, pool-cleaning cousins into machines that can make their own decisions and autonomously navigate public spaces. Thanks to artificial intelligence, machines are getting better at understanding our speech and detecting and reflecting our emotions. In many ways, they’re becoming more like us.
Whether you find it exhilarating or terrifying (or both), progress in robotics and related fields like AI is raising new ethical quandaries and challenging legal codes that were created for a world in which a sharp line separates man from machine.
The entire article is here.
Thursday, July 24, 2014
‘She’s not a slag because she only had sex once’: Sexual ethics in a London secondary school
By Sarah Winkler Reid
Journal of Moral Education
Volume 43, Issue 2, 2014
Special Issue: ‘The good child’: Anthropological perspectives on morality and childhood
Abstract
The premature sexualisation of young people is a source of intense public anxiety, often framed as an unprecedented crisis. Concurrently, a critical scholarship highlights problematic assumptions underpinning this discourse, including a positioning of young people as morally compromised passive subjects, and a disconnect between the reductionist framework and the complexity of young peoples’ lived experiences. Drawing from ethnographic research in a London school, in this article I argue that by attending to the everyday lives of pupils, a more nuanced picture of moral and sexual change and continuity emerges. Using the framework of ‘ordinary ethics’, which identifies ethics as pervasive in speech and action, I demonstrate the multiple ways by which young people define and act according to what they consider sexually good and right. In this way the analytical focus is shifted from passivity to activity and we can appreciate how young people today are evincing a sexual ethics of force and efficacy.
The entire article is here.
Journal of Moral Education
Volume 43, Issue 2, 2014
Special Issue: ‘The good child’: Anthropological perspectives on morality and childhood
Abstract
The premature sexualisation of young people is a source of intense public anxiety, often framed as an unprecedented crisis. Concurrently, a critical scholarship highlights problematic assumptions underpinning this discourse, including a positioning of young people as morally compromised passive subjects, and a disconnect between the reductionist framework and the complexity of young peoples’ lived experiences. Drawing from ethnographic research in a London school, in this article I argue that by attending to the everyday lives of pupils, a more nuanced picture of moral and sexual change and continuity emerges. Using the framework of ‘ordinary ethics’, which identifies ethics as pervasive in speech and action, I demonstrate the multiple ways by which young people define and act according to what they consider sexually good and right. In this way the analytical focus is shifted from passivity to activity and we can appreciate how young people today are evincing a sexual ethics of force and efficacy.
The entire article is here.
Monday, November 11, 2013
Getting In Touch With Your Inner Sexual Deviant
An Interview and article by David DiSalvo
Jesse Bering, Perv: The Sexual Deviant in all of Us
Forbes
Originally posted on October 24, 2013
Here is an excerpt:
Q: One of the themes that comes through is that we feel so sure about the origins and motivations of various sexual behaviors, and for a good many of them there’s no scientific basis for feeling this way – indeed, in many cases science is far from reaching a conclusion. Why do you think we’re so prone to staunchly believing that how we feel about a sexual behavior is automatically true?
A: It’s certainly one of those areas where everyone has an opinion. But if there’s one thing I discovered while working on this book, it’s that the strength of one’s moral convictions about sex usually reflects the depths of one’s ignorance about the science of sex. The more one learns in this area, paradoxically, the more uncertain one becomes.
Human beings are “stomach philosophers”—we allow our gut feelings to make decisions about other people’s sex lives on the basis of whether or not we’re personally disgusted or uncomfortable with their erotic desires or behaviors. I draw the line at harm, but defining harm can be a slippery matter, too. Since we would be harmed, we presume that others must be harmed as well, even when that’s far from apparent. I joke in the book about how I’d be irreparably damaged if Kate Upton were to pin me to my chair and do a slow strip tease on my lap. Lovely as she is, I’m gay, and not only would I not enjoy that experience, I’d be made deeply uncomfortable by it. My straight brother or my lesbian cousin, by contrast, would process this identical Upton event very differently.
The entire interview/article is here.
Jesse Bering, Perv: The Sexual Deviant in all of Us
Forbes
Originally posted on October 24, 2013
Here is an excerpt:
Q: One of the themes that comes through is that we feel so sure about the origins and motivations of various sexual behaviors, and for a good many of them there’s no scientific basis for feeling this way – indeed, in many cases science is far from reaching a conclusion. Why do you think we’re so prone to staunchly believing that how we feel about a sexual behavior is automatically true?
A: It’s certainly one of those areas where everyone has an opinion. But if there’s one thing I discovered while working on this book, it’s that the strength of one’s moral convictions about sex usually reflects the depths of one’s ignorance about the science of sex. The more one learns in this area, paradoxically, the more uncertain one becomes.
Human beings are “stomach philosophers”—we allow our gut feelings to make decisions about other people’s sex lives on the basis of whether or not we’re personally disgusted or uncomfortable with their erotic desires or behaviors. I draw the line at harm, but defining harm can be a slippery matter, too. Since we would be harmed, we presume that others must be harmed as well, even when that’s far from apparent. I joke in the book about how I’d be irreparably damaged if Kate Upton were to pin me to my chair and do a slow strip tease on my lap. Lovely as she is, I’m gay, and not only would I not enjoy that experience, I’d be made deeply uncomfortable by it. My straight brother or my lesbian cousin, by contrast, would process this identical Upton event very differently.
The entire interview/article is here.
Monday, June 24, 2013
In Bed with our Clients: Should Psychotherapists Play Matchmaker or is this Plain Old Erotic Transference?
By Keely Kolmes, PsyD.
http://drkkolmes.com
Last January, there was an opinion piece in the New York Times, written by Richard Friedman on whether therapists should play Cupid for clients, basically performing as a matchmaker, setting them up on dates. The article focused primarily on the fantasies that some clinicians have about wanting to do this and the potential issues that could come up regarding transference. It did not speak directly to erotic transference, but I think this is a key component of such a question.
Following the article, HuffPost Live did a segment on which I was one of four guests interviewed about our points of view on the issue. As expected, the show included diverse opinions and even had the one clinician, Terah Harrison, who has expanded her practice to include matching services.
Another clinician, Dr. Lazarus, argued passionately that we are "uniquely well positioned" to make such matchmaking recommendations to our clients. Jeff Sumber agreed it was unethical but he admitted to having such strong fantasies about fixing up his clients that he'd deliberately scheduled people in hopes they might meet. (I imagine his clients are now wondering as they arrive for therapy if the person leaving is someone he has chosen for them?)
Guess which role I played on this segment? Yes, I was the conservative fuddy-duddy talking ethics, dual relationships, and risk management.
The entire story is here.
http://drkkolmes.com
Last January, there was an opinion piece in the New York Times, written by Richard Friedman on whether therapists should play Cupid for clients, basically performing as a matchmaker, setting them up on dates. The article focused primarily on the fantasies that some clinicians have about wanting to do this and the potential issues that could come up regarding transference. It did not speak directly to erotic transference, but I think this is a key component of such a question.
Following the article, HuffPost Live did a segment on which I was one of four guests interviewed about our points of view on the issue. As expected, the show included diverse opinions and even had the one clinician, Terah Harrison, who has expanded her practice to include matching services.
Another clinician, Dr. Lazarus, argued passionately that we are "uniquely well positioned" to make such matchmaking recommendations to our clients. Jeff Sumber agreed it was unethical but he admitted to having such strong fantasies about fixing up his clients that he'd deliberately scheduled people in hopes they might meet. (I imagine his clients are now wondering as they arrive for therapy if the person leaving is someone he has chosen for them?)
Guess which role I played on this segment? Yes, I was the conservative fuddy-duddy talking ethics, dual relationships, and risk management.
The entire story is here.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)