In the past 10 years, there has been major culture shift on perceptions of sex-based relationships. Sex-based relationships among young adults has increased drastically, making it practically normal to participate in a sex-based relationship at least once, in a person’s lifetime. These types of relationships have become so mainstream, that you can find dialogues about sex based relationships in magazines like Cosmopolitan, Elle, the New York Times, and other well known and widely read medias. I’m very excited because in 2011 there are going to be two movies coming out about the experiences of a sex-based relationships, one called No Strings Attached, with Aston Kucher and Natalie Portman; and the other called Friends with Benefits, with Justin Timberlake and Mila Kunis. The funny thing is these two movies are very similar, and come out within months from each other, but the good thing, about these movies, is that they are not centered on the college scene (which is where most of the research focused, making it seem as though causal sex only happens in college), but instead the characters are professional young adults, living regular lives.

 I’m excited...

I was thinking about the “Friends, Don’t Let Friends Drive Drunk” campaign, which lead to the thought of creating a safe sex campaign with that same idea called “Friends Don’t Let Friends have Unprotected Sex” campaign. Now I know realistically most of the time, friends will not be in the room to prevent the unprotected sex from happening, but friends do have a large influence on some decisions, like drunk driving, unprotected sex, and other dos and don’ts in their social networks.

Now this is just an idea in my head.  I’m actually having a hard time writing this in a way that doesn’t make it seem as though I’m promoting the sex acts to teenagers, but also do want to take the pleasure, and trust out for some adult sexual relationships. And as I think about this, I do recognize that there may be some backlash to this idea. I do believe that this would be a great nation wide campaign that would put the idea in the back of people’s minds, to protect them selves when having sex, but I also know that this could be taken in different directions and looked at in different ways. I can hear certain groups saying “well they should not have any sex until their married, and then they would have to worry about protection” and I could hear other individual couples saying “well my partner and I are monogamous...

Reading the articles and books for this sexual education and policy class has gotten me thinking about my own sexual education experience. Like most people, most of my education did not come from the classroom. Yes we had those videos about they bodily functions in the 5th grade and that’s about as far as it went. I don’t remember any other in-school sexual education through out the rest of my middle school or high school years. So my main question to myself is, where did I get my information about sexuality and its pleasures and dangers?

Well the first experience that I can remember, was when I was in about the 4th grade and my cousin, who is one year older then me, asked me if I was a virgin. I had no idea what a virgin was, so of course I said NO. Boy did he laugh, and taunt me until I went and asked my mother what a virgin was.  May I say, she wasn’t pleased with my cousin or the question. I can’t quite remember if she answered it.  But my main point is, most of my sexual education came from family, peers, and the media; and it started at a young age.

By the time I was 14 I knew a good amount about sex and relationships, more then my parents could even fathom.  Although I didn’t lose my virginity until I was 23, I...

In other posts, I have argued for recognizing that efforts to create sexual and gender equality equality - equal rights and opportunities for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer people - must not be limited to a focus on changing laws.  Similar to changes in the law regarding race, ethnicity, and gender, words on paper do not necessarily translate into an improved cultural status of LGBT and queer people.  In some ways, we have achieved equality under the law, yet we still find ourselves having to defend our existence, particularly when we are perceived to radically differ from dominant (heterosexual, gender-conforming) values.  It seems, for some, they can "tolerate" LGBT and queer people so long as they do not have to see or interact with them.

For example, in covering the huge news story that our nation's capital, Washington, DC, began issuing marriage licences...

The sensationalizing, melodramatic, "scare-the-crap-out-of-you", hype machine that passes for mass media these days is once again doing its best to ensure that parents are ready to break out the chastity belts, pass out whistles for "stranger danger" encounters, install nanny software on their home computers to block adult content, and this time, take away their cell phones to ensure that they are safe from the big, bad, sexually predatory world out there. Yes, I'm talking about the attention the "recent phenomenon" labeled "sexting" has gotten in the mainstream media in the last few weeks.  According to the news reports I found via a simple Google search, sexting is a very dangerous activity that could damage your future and ruin your life - although there wasn't really much of an explanation of how this could happen.  Instead of getting caught up in yet another panic, let's take a rational look at this "new" behavior as well as some of the real concerns that a more responsible press might address. 

First, sexting is not new.  Cell phones are no longer new; texting is no longer new; and even sending photos via a cell phone is no longer a new technology.  And before there were cell phones, there was the internet and a similar panic about teens emailing nude photos or posting nude photos online. There was even a...