Category: Hot, Healthy and Horny

by Margie Nichols     “Our America with Lisa Ling” – Shades of Kink – airs on OWN (the Oprah Winfrey Network)  on Tuesday, January 22 at 10 p.m. ET/PT. Last Fall, I had the pleasure of being interviewed by Ms. Ling, whose critically acclaimed show begins its fourth season on the Oprah Winfrey Network .  She’s tackling the topic of BDSM and felt she needed an ‘expert’ – a sex therapist knowledgeable about the kink community- to help explain some things to the viewing public.    Ling is intelligent, sincere, and amazingly open minded.  It was a lot of fun being interviewed by her – she made it easy.  After the interview I thought of lots of things I wished I’d said, which I’m sure is normal.  But a few issues stuck in my mind, so I decided to write about them. And now that I’ve seen the ‘Sneak Peek’ for the show I have a suggestion for viewers.     The one question that threw me involved a scenario Lisa asked me to ‘explain’ to viewers who might be shocked or repulsed.  Apparently they will show footage of someone who likes to be burned by cigars. How, asked Ling, are we to understand this?  As I remember,… Read more »

by Margie Nichols, Ph.D. I’ve been watching media reports on kink ever since ‘Fifty Shades’ made the subject popular, and I ran across one of the more heinous recently, a blog by an educator named Judy Molland questioning whether the current trend of college campuses to develop BDSM support organizations, in the manner of LGBTQ orgs, is a good idea. You may not know about this.  Harvard made the news with its club this year, but apparently scores of colleges have been sprouting kinky groups for the last twenty years.  Never mind that Molland calls these organizations ‘kinky sex clubs,’ conjuring up visions of dungeons and chains, when they are designed primarily to help students affirm socially stigmatized alternative sexual identities.  Besides invoking images of unbridled hedonism, Molland takes statistics garnered from the National Coalition for Sexual Freedom, a respected organization that champions the civil rights of people who participate in kinky sex, and distorts their meaning shamefully. A little background: NCSF originated because people who are discovered to be BDSM aficionados can legally go to jail, lose their jobs, housing and children in many states.  There are many people for whom kinky sex is a take-it-or-leave –it proposition, but… Read more »

By Margie Nichols, Ph.D. I’m frustrated by hearing sex experts tell people to ‘communicate better’ about sex.  I’m impatient with advice to ‘tell your partner what you want.’  For one thing, many people don’t know what they want.  Even those who can be pretty specific tend to know only what they want OUT OF THE THINGS THEY HAVE ALREADY TRIED.   And the problem is, most people haven’t tried that much, and don’t have a good sexual imagination. Specific sex conversations –  intimate discussions of sexual acts – are particularly helpful for couples stuck in a rut.  You may have done just fine for a while doing the same four things -touch skin, touch genitals, a little oral sex, put it in.   But now you’re bored, you want to mix it up to bring back some of the excitement, but you don’t know how.  You’d like to be adventurous – but you don’t know where to start.   If any of this sounds familiar, this article has your name on it. A few caveats.  If your relationship in general is a train wreck, you probably want to sort that out before you worry about sexual enhancement.  If you can’t talk about sex without… Read more »

by Margie Nichols, Ph.D. “The bonds of wedlock are so heavy that sometimes it takes three to carry them” quipped Esther Perel, author of ‘Mating in Captivity,’ quoting Alexander Dumas. Acclaimed psychotherapist Perel did a workshop for the IPG staff in September. We love her because she always has a fresh and unique take on things.  One of the great things about Esther, who is one of the most mesmerizing speakers ever, is that because she was raised in Europe she brings a cross-cultural view to things.  In ‘Mating in Captivity’ she talked about the sad-but-true fact that passion tends to die in monogamous egalitarian relationships.  When she talked to our staff a couple of years ago about the book, she intrigued us by mentioning that Americans are ‘divorce tolerant and affair intolerant’ compared to Europeans, for whom the reverse is true. So when she came back last month, she spoke about her current book, working title ‘State of Affairs.’  These videos present some of her views, which amount to a revolutionary way for therapists – and everyone – to look at affairs, infidelity, intimacy,  monogamy, and transparency. Esther begins by reminding us that for most of recorded history, in the… Read more »

By Margie Nichols, Ph.D. Recently I was interviewed by Newsweek for an article anticipating the release of the film “The Sessions.”  I didn’t make the final cut, but I’m pleased that Lizzie Crocker wrote a pretty balanced article about the controversy over the use of sex surrogates, or surrogate partners as they are now called.  Vena Blanchard, the head of IPSA, the International Professional Surrogates Association, was sympathetically portrayed and cogently quoted. But I was disappointed that the only comments from a sex therapist in the article were from David Schnarch. Schnarch is well known and highly regarded, an acknowledged expert in sex therapy with couples.  But he represents the conservative wing of sex therapy, at least on this issue.  He made surrogacy sound a little smarmy, and implied incompetency on the part of any therapist who would have to ‘resort’ (his word) to using one. But there are sex therapists who find surrogates helpful, even though they are often reluctant to speak publicly about this, because Schnarch’s perspective dominates the field.  In fact, earlier this year the discussion of surrogacy on the listserv of a prominent sexology organization was disrupted by a participant who threatened to sue any therapist… Read more »

We thought last week’s post was important enough to make a video.  Here’s Margie Nichols, Executive Director, and Courtney Zehnder, Media Coordinator, giving you the basics of what’s true and what’s stereotype about that stuff that Christian and Anastasia do.

By Margie Nichols, Ph.D.    There’s good news and bad news, in my opinion, about the success of ‘Fifty Shades of Grey.’ The good news is that women’s erotic life is getting a boost…as in ‘validated’…as is women’s interest in kinky fantasy sex.  The bad news:  Christian Grey’s kinky predilections are attributed to childhood abuse, thereby reinforcing (incorrect) stereotypes about BDSM.. So this prompted me to start a series of blog posts about kink aka BDSM.  I’m going to start with some definitions and a little truth about what it is – and isn’t. BDSM is an internet-generated acronym that stands for: BONDAGE AND DISCIPLINE DOMINATION AND SUBMISSION SADISM AND MASOCHISM Cute, right?  It’s an attempt to put an umbrella over a diverse set of sexual behaviors that have some things in common, one being – fewer people practice them than, say, vaginal intercourse or oral sex.  Usually when we talk about BDSM, or ‘kinky sex,’ we also include: FETISHES Fetishes are attractions to ‘unusual’ body parts or objects.  What is considered a fetish is pretty arbitrary – if you like big breasts you aren’t a fetishist, if you like feet you are – but you get the general idea…. Read more »

By Margie Nichols, Ph.D. Recently, there’s been renewed buzz about the 2010 book “Sex at Dawn” but it’s unclear whether people appreciate the book’s true importance.  Authors Ryan and Jetha assert “Like bonobos and chimps, we are the randy descendants of hypersexual ancestors” and although much of the book makes the case for non-monogamy, their arguments about our sexual origins have far broader implications.  So broad, in fact, that before I tackle BDSM I want to explain why ‘Sex at Dawn’ is a game changer. When the book first appeared, Dan Savage called it the most important book about sex since Kinsey, and that’s only slightly hyperbolic. Subtitled “How We Mate, Why We Stray, and What It Means for Modern Relationships,” authors Ryan and Jetha’s purpose is to skewer the idea that monogamy is in any way ‘natural’ or ‘evolutionarily sound.’  But in fact they do much more:  perhaps without realizing it, they’ve provided the basis for a new paradigm for viewing human sexuality, one that validates the existence of all variant forms of sex and gender expression. Let me explain. From the birth of the field of sexology, marked by the publication of Kraft-Ebbing’s Psychopathia Sexualis in 1886,  sex… Read more »

By Margie Nichols, Ph.D. This blog is named after a workshop designed in the  1980’s by Luis Palacios and Michael Shernoff, two gay social workers and friends who worked with GMHC- Gay Men’s Health Crisis-  in the early days.  Their workshop was subtitled ‘Eroticizing Safer Sex’ and – it did exactly that.   Gay men in 1985 were terrified and bewildered, feeling doomed to celibacy or death.  Michael and Luis were responsible for helping hundreds of thousands of men learn they could enjoy sex without becoming infected with AIDS or infecting others.  R.I.P., my old buddies. The 1960’s and 70’s were times of expanding sexual freedom in America for everyone, not just gay men.  For a time it seemed we would throw off the restrictive sexual values of our past. But our Puritan roots run deep.  The inevitable backlash against sexual freedom that arouse in the 1980’s was fueled to a dangerous pitch by AIDS.  It is not surprising that many saw AIDS as a punishment, or that public response to AIDS was so hysterical and virulent.  Deep down, we mistrust pleasure in general, bodily pleasures even more, and sexual pleasure most of all.  We Americans have a peculiar two-pronged attitude towards… Read more »

By Margie Nichols, Ph.D. In an earlier blog post, we wrote about the distinct characteristics of male sexuality.  With the caveats that men and women are more alike than different, and that we don’t know if the differences are cultural or biological- here are some things we know about women’s sexuality: 1) Women are less sexual than men – with some important distinctions.  Women are less likely than men to orgasm regularly – 50% versus 75% – but they are MORE likely to be able to have multiple orgasms.  Moreover, many women have no ‘refractory period’ after an orgasm – that means, if the desire is there they can continue to have sex indefinitely. 2) Moreover, women may be more inherently arousable to a wider variety of sexual stimulation than men.  In a famous series of experiments Meredith Chivers and her colleagues found that men responded narrowly to pornography – heterosexual men only to heterosexual porn, gay men only to gay porn – while women responded to all kinds of erotic depictions, no matter what their sexual orientation. 3) Women definitely fuse sex and love more than men do.  Not only that, many women can’t seem to grasp how anyone COULD… Read more »