I recently ran across a fascinating article: Why rejection hurts: A common neural alarm system for physical and social pain. According to the authors, physical pain and social pain (which happens when social relationships are threatened, damaged or lost) are both processed in the same part of the brain. It seems that the anterior cingulate […]

This post also appeared on the Good Vibrations Magazine. I don’t watch a lot of TV these days, but back when I did, there was a subplot on Friends when Rachel & Ross “took a break” in their relationship, during which Ross had sex with someone else. When they got back together, it turned into […]

Margaret Brooks, the noted anti-sex work activist who thinks that arresting sex workers somehow protects them (because hundreds of years of evidence isn’t enough to show that it always makes things much worse for them), is at it again. Citizens Against Trafficking just released a statement from her that’s full of scare quotes, misinformation, and […]

According to some new research from the Guttmacher Institute,  the majority of women seeking abortions (82%) report that the men with whom they became pregnant were aware of the abortion. What’s more, nearly 80% of the women said that the men were supportive of their decision. The paper, Perceptions of Male Knowledge and Support Among […]

If you’re a regular reader here, you’ve probably seen some posts about Scarleteen.com. That’s because it’s an amazing organization and it’s one of a very few sexuality resources for young people that offers accurate and direct information without judging or shaming them. They’ve just launched a new database project and it’s going to be amazing. […]

This post also appeared on the Good Vibrations Magazine. Lots of websites, including, the Washington Times and CNN are reporting that there’s a new survey showing that 10% of teens who say that they’re sexually abstinent are testing positive for chlamydia, gonorrhea and trichomoniasis. And while I agree that some of the reasons for this […]

Clipped from: bishuk.com (share this clip) There are a lot of reasons that sexual health messages and services tend to focus on women. Since many of the people who develop sexuality education and health services are women, they often focus on issues and topics that are specific to girls and women. Health care traditionally ignored […]