Our suspicions were real: Many men truly don’t understand what constitutes as consent.

Sexual interest isn’t consent

A study from Binghamton University and Rush University found that a majority of men confuse sexual interest with consent. The faculty-led study surveyed 145 straight male students at a large, Southeastern university. The researchers had the male students examine various hypothetical sexual situations.

“In response, most of the men confused sexual interest from a female partner with consent,” reports Teen Vogue. “The researchers found [that,] basically, if their partner didn’t say no, the men in the study seemed to think that meant yes.”

“We found that the way in which the woman communicated her sexual intentions, that is verbal refusal versus passive responding, had the largest effect of men’s perceptions,” adds Richard Mattson, associate professor of psychology at Binghamton University.

Confusion and consent

The public tends to think sex is unidimensional—”that there is just one attitude that is either for or against a sex act,” explains Nicole Prause, Ph.D. and founder of Liberos LLC.

“Science is quite clear that sex is at least two-dimensional and continuous,” says Prause.

Think of the two dimensions as facilitating and inhibitory. If both dimensions are high, a person may think: “I want to have sex with this gorgeous person, but I’m scared they are a player”. Or inhibitory might be high and facilitating average.

The tricky reality of consent

So, how can we better educate people about consent? Increase empathy… and education.

“Many adults still do not realize that women are [typically] at a greater risk for getting sexual infections even when condoms are used,” says Prause.

Prause adds that women also are typically at a greater risks of assault, pregnancy, and social risk. These concerns typically “live” in the inhibitory dimension. She adds that “mostly” men are “likely only considering the facilitating dimension”, getting a woman aroused enough to say yes, says Prause.

So, learning about these dimensions and understanding each dimension’s complications can breed safer sexual relationships.

Kryss Shane, owner of This Is Kryss, adds that teaching consent begins with teaching boundaries and educating people about their bodies. “Next, conversations [should concern] how to let someone know you are interested and how to hear someone who [says] they are not interested.”

From there, discussions should concern helping people when they are in trouble. Also: education concerning group-think and what to do when that “think” becomes dangerous.

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Condoms have never been anyone’s favorite sexual accessory, but in recent years, it appears that more people are choosing to have protection-free sex. This new reality is disturbing.

A false sense of security

A recent study released by Online Doctor, a United Kingdom-based online physician consultation and prescription service, found that 55.1 percent of Europeans and 65.5 percent of Americans have unprotected sex. The most disturbing figure the study revealed was that 29.1 percent of Americans didn’t use protection every single time — the gender breakdown for this statistic is 36.8 percent women and 23.5 percent men. Europeans don’t use protection 18.2 percent of the time — the European gender breakdown is 20 percent women and 16.8 percent men.

Although this study is less than perfect — the people who created the study only surveyed 2,000 people (1,000 Americans and 1,000  Europeans), the study doesn’t describe who these people are, how old they are, etc. — it does highlight that many sexually active people don’t use protection during sex.

Why condoms have fallen even further out of favor

Although we live in the age of drug-resistant gonorrhea, teens, adults, and seniors often still choose to forgo protection.

The reasons people make this dangerous decision are simple and sadly, classic.

Lack of education

Lack of education about sexual health comes in many forms, but the most damaging seems to be that people are unaware how to obtain condoms, have a difficult time communicating the desire to use protection, and people tend to not be able to grasp the probability that something could go wrong — they don’t understand how susceptible they may be to unplanned pregnancy, or sexual infections.

“A poor understanding of probability is a real problem,” Nicole Prause, Ph.D. at Liberos LLC, says.

“If you tell people about the dangers of HIV or risk of pregnancy, but they fail to understand that this very rare risk occurs with every sex act, people are lulled into false security.”

According to the CDC, in 2014, there were an estimated 37,600 new HIV infections. In 2015, youth aged 13 to 24 accounted for 22 percent of all new HIV diagnoses in the United States. The CDC also reports that there was a significant increase in sexually transmitted infections over the last 5 years. And of teenagers who become pregnant in high school, there is a cycle of low education, poverty, single parenting, and teen parenting — 70 percent of teen mothers do not finish high school, Grubb adds.

And often, the choice to not wear a condom comes during the heat of the moment. Also: If a person doesn’t see an obvious sign of a STI, he or she may not think a condom is necessary. And, unfortunately, most people don’t ask their partners if they have a STI.

Other methods of birth control work

The pill, contraceptive shots, IUDs, and great period tracking apps have also helped condoms become less “important”.

The U.S. health system has effectively increased contraceptive usage among adolescents and young adults. These methods include long acting reversible contraceptive methods. But because of contraceptives’ effectiveness, adolescents often forgo condoms.

Part of this is because more people associate condoms with preventing pregnancy and not a barrier to STIs. So, women who are using various contraceptives — or their male partners — may think a condom is unnecessary.

Change sex education

So, how can we stop this dangerous trend? A combination of methods is key.

First, sex educators need to be able to rewrite sex education curriculum for the next generation of teens. Comprehensive curriculum is integral and should include scientifically accurate information. Topics that deserve attention are abstinence, condoms, contraceptive methods, pregnancy, STIs, and healthy relationships.

“We need to make sure our kids grow up respecting their bodies and their self. [We need to] talk to them about how to manage situations that they may find themselves in,” Cath Hakanson, founder of Sex Ed Rescue, says.

“It is about respecting yourself enough to do what is right for you. Not what the ‘condomless’ partner wants.”

Second, people of all ages — especially teens — need easy access to condoms. Location, price, privacy, etc. is important.

“If an adolescent must ask a pharmacist to unlock a cabinet for condoms, they are less likely to purchase them,” Grubb says.

Access to free or low cost condoms that are easily available in a non-stigmatizing manner will improve condom usage.

And lastly, educators should teach teens how to safely, kindly, and effectively communicate with his, her, of they’s partner.

“Strong communication skills and being in a relationship that has open dialogue improves condom usage,” Grubb adds.

“Adolescents and young adults must feel empowered to discuss and negotiate condom usage with their partners.”

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The post A Whole Bunch of Reckless People Think Condoms are Useless, Study Finds appeared first on EcoSalon.

Are you an ecosexual?

If you think the Earth is a sensual place worth saving, you could be…

The ecosexual

Artists and educators Annie Sprinkle and Beth Stephens coined the term “ecosexual” in 2009 as a person who considers the Earth a lover, rather than a mother.

To drive this relationship-status home, Sprinkle and Stephens have staged almost 15 large-scale weddings to the Earth, moon, sun, and sea.

This all could seem a bit… much. But the couple insists that their works and art are truly meant to give the environmental movement a fun and diverse twist.

“You might give your mother a hard time and she’ll put up with it, but with a lover it’s a question of give and take and, ecosexuals believe, that’s just what the planet needs right now,” The Guardian reports.

Sustainable love

Any person who wants to help the Earth knows that keeping one’s relationship with the planet sustainable is important.

This kind of sustainable, reciprocal relationship is what ecosexuality is all about. Instead of just taking from the Earth, human beings must give back, Stephens says.

“This movement is so important now because climate change is endangering the Earth and all of its inhabitants,” she adds.

“We cannot continue practicing business as usual because that system is destroying the very resources, such as water, that all living beings need to stay alive and flourish.”

Thinking outside the box

The Earth is free of gender. And Sprinkle and Stephens think this gender-free distinction could help people better respect the planet and its resources.

“Thinking of the Earth as male or female reifies binary thinking,” Stephens explains.

“This allows us to privilege one thing over another. It makes some things worth keeping and others… not so much.”

It’s not such a crazy idea. After all, throughout history, westerners have privileged culture over nature. And Stephens thinks the world’s current ecological crises is the result of that thinking.

These ecosexuals may be on to something…

In addition to discussing ecosexuality, Stephens and Sprinkle make art, create performance and theater pieces, give lectures, and produce and direct films. Find out more about their work here.

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The post Are You Ready to Come Out as an ‘Ecosexual’? appeared first on EcoSalon.

Similar to the many personal care products we all slather on our human bodies, personal lube isn’t great for Earth’s environment. Yes, we know. Sex will never be the same.

It’s not as slick as you think…

Most conventional personal lubricants are silicone-based. The specific type of silicon in lube is silica—water plus silicone. The problem with silica is that it’s bioaccumulative, meaning it builds up in the environment.

Silica builds up and doesn’t naturally dissipate. It’s all over the planet.

“Recent research even detected them hanging out in soil, plants, and krill all the way down in Antarctica,” Grist reports.

“All this raises troubling questions about exactly what effect the chemical is having on the ecosystem (as well as on those of us higher up on the food chain). The answer? We dunno. Some, including Canada’s environment agency, suspect silicones (like this and this) are environmental toxins, but nobody’s sure yet.”

In addition to the potential environmental impact—contaminated water, critters, etc.—personal lube also could contain parabens, a common, controversial preservative.

Parabens can irritate skin and could potentially act as endocrine disruptors.

“Data on exactly what health effects they have on us, and in what concentrations, are murky,” Grist adds.

“But some parabens are banned in consumer products in the European Union, and there’s evidence they affect aquatic life.”

So, what’s a sex lover to do?

There are a few options.

Use organic and water-based lubricants (with condoms)!

Sliquid carries various water-based formulas. All the brand’s products are incredibly simple—they contain five ingredients: purified water, plant cellulose from cotton, cyamopsis (guar conditioners), potassium sorbet, and citric acid. They are vegan, easy to clean up, and glycerin and paraben-free.

We’ve also covered other sustainable sex lubricants in the past. Sustain, Intimate Organics, and Good Clean Love are great options.

All are worthy of checking out—and won’t hurt the environment or Earth’s precious water supply.

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Female orgasms: why do they exist?

Many scientists have pondered this question through the years. Well, two hardworking researchers may have finally cracked the orgasmic code.

Why care?

Because we’re humans and we like to understand how our bodies work, duh. Also: because female orgasms are just as confusing to researchers as they are to some sexual partners.

The main reason this elusive sexual phenomenon has stumped scientists over the years is because female orgasms never appeared to play a role in conception like the male orgasm. Now, however, scientists are beginning to think that this action could actually help a woman conceive.

The research

All of this new news was recently published in a paper in the Journal of Experimental Zoology. Scientists Mihaela Pavlicev of the University of Cincinnati and Gunter Wagner of Yale University hypothesize that the female orgasm could actually trigger ovulation (or that it used to). Humans just may have “evolved” out of this response.

“If you think of an orgasm as consisting of three parts—a wave of hormones, intense pleasure, and muscle contractions—it’s possible to see similarities between a human orgasm and phenomena in other mammal species,” NPR reports.

Because of this, the authors are considering researching other mammals who ovulate in response to having sex.

Apparently, some of these mammals—this includes cats and rabbits—only release an egg when the clitoris is stimulated. The stimulation produces a wave of hormones released from the pituitary gland.

“If you walk those two phenomena forward in evolutionary time, you get a female orgasm that relies on clitoral stimulation and includes a hormone release, even though female humans have since evolved to ovulate every month, whether or not a male is around,” NPR reports.

“In fact, the authors suggest it is that change in ovulation frequency that allowed female anatomy to change over the millennia; as the clitoris was no longer strictly necessary to release an egg, it moved farther from the vagina.”

So, basically, the female orgasm is an evolutionary leftover, Science Magazine adds.

Not so fast!

While this new hypothesis is intriguing, there are plenty of other scientists who think this new conclusion is quite farfetched.

Michael Baum from Boston University and Kim Wallen from Emory University in Atlanta, two behavioral neuroendocrinologists, think Pavlićev and Wagner have misinterpreted some previously published results “and do not have the details about the hormonal changes during ovulation and orgasm correct,” Science reports.

Well, no matter where this new hypothesis leads scientists, we’ve got to admit that we’re quite interested in this research and appreciate that there are scientists who actually want to better understand the modern, human, female body.

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Image of woman in bed via Shutterstock

The post Finally, the Female Orgasm Explained appeared first on EcoSalon.

Sick of using kegels to tighten and strengthen your vaginal muscles? Give these 5 cheap and easy treatments and exercises a try instead.

Whether it’s to make sex a more enjoyable experience, to treat a medical condition, or to return to pre-child-bearing status, tightening the vagina is on the radar for many women. There are plenty of myths for why one would end up with a “loose” vagina, but having a lot of sex –with someone who is generously endowed, no less – is not one. So, don’t assume you must refrain from sex to tighten up down there. Instead, try any one or combination or the following safe, cheap, and non-surgical ways to tighten vaginal muscles (you can thank me later).

You don’t need to invest in expensive surgical procedures or laser treatments to rejuvenate, tighten, and strengthen your vagina. Before you go in that direction, first expend all of your natural resources. There is more to vaginal tightening than kegel exercises alone. Here are 5 exercises, herbs, and products to help you tighten you vaginal muscles.

5 Ways to Tighten Vaginal Muscles

1. Squats

Boost your derriere and constrict your vaginal muscles with squats! This free treatment does a great job in engaging your vaginal muscles, but it’s important to do them right in order to achieve results.

To perform squats safely and correctly, follow these instructions:

1. Extend your arms straight out in front of you so that they are at shoulder level.
2. Use hips to lower your butt down, bending your knees as if you are about to sit on a chair. Keep most of your weight on your heels. Your hips should be parallel to the floor and your knees extended as far as the tips of your toes.
3. Slowly bring yourself back up into standing position.
4. Repeat three sets of 20 a few times per week.

2. Pueraria Mirifica

Say what? Pueraria mirifica is plant found in Thailand and Myanmar that is known as an herbal estrogen replacement therapy. The herb has shown an ability to thicken vaginal walls and strengthen vaginal muscles. It has also been shown to reduce vaginal dryness. (Always consult with your primary care physician before beginning a round of herbal treatment.)

3. Curcuma Comosa

Also an herbal remedy, curcuma comosa is a flowering plant of the ginger family that is native to Asia. Curcuma comosa has anti-inflammatory properties and contains phytoestrogen that repairs vaginal prolapse and reduces dryness.

4. V-Tight Gel

One of the most popular vaginal tightening gels on the market is V-Tight Gel. It is a cream that claims to fix vaginal looseness by tightening the skin and the vaginal walls. It also claims to work within a few minutes. V-Tight Gel is made with natural ingredients, including Manjakani extract, arginine, witch hazel leaf extract, and citric acid, making it a better option among many of the artificial, toxic products out there.

5. Vaginal Props

After giving birth, the pelvic floor stretches and gets weaker. The muscles in the area simply don’t perform at their optimum. This can result in incontinence and reduced sensation during sex. When kegels and squats just aren’t cutting it alone, turn to vaginal props. What is a vaginal prop exactly? It’s a made-for-purpose prop that you put into the opening of your vagina so that the muscles tighten around it and thus grow stronger. Over time, you graduate to smaller, heavier props as your vaginal muscles become tighter and stronger. These Ben Wa Balls are vaginal props that you insert while performing kegels for quicker results.

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Squats Image from Shutterstock

The post 5 Natural Ways to Tighten Up Down There: No More Kegels! appeared first on EcoSalon.

How many of you are on your phone all the time when you’re with your partner? I’ll be honest, there are a lot of times I notice that my fella and I are totally absorbed by our phones when we are out and at home.

Well, Durex wanted to help bring a group of couples out of their tech obsession, so they sent them on a trip sans phones. See how it went by watching the video below.

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It’s not rocket science, but learning how to orgasm regularly, makes all the difference.

Some of my most vivid memories of sex, especially early in my erotic life, are not of the satisfying post-coitus elated release, but their opposite. Rather, it was the myriad times when I was still learning how my body worked, what kinds of touch triggered what response, how much time it took for arousal to take over, what positions reached deep enough inside–basically the whole ball of wax, which made orgasm work (or not). The times when I was so close but couldn’t quite get over the top before my partner was finished, sent me into a fury almost as intense as what I imagine the orgasm might have been like. So did the years after, when I thought I finally figured out how to achieve orgasm and I only wanted to do the exact same moves in the exact same order, believing it would work every time, except it  didn’t. And it quickly became a sexual rut that didn’t help my marriage much either.

For a significant period of my early marriage, orgasm misses were more frequent than the  orgasmic explosions I so longed for. My frustration turned easily to blame and it didn’t take long for my conflict-avoidant spouse to choose avoiding the whole scene, rather than risk the wrath of not getting it right with me. We spent at least a decade of our sex life among the ranks of millions who approach/avoid sex and keep score on who says no more often.  The truth is that whether they admit it or not, everyone wants to experience the seismic shift and profound emotional and energetic releases associated with orgasm.  And yet, this most intimate transformation remains elusive for many and for some, learning how to orgasm seems totally out of reach.    

In part, this is because of some fundamental misunderstandings of the workings of orgasm and the understandable yet completely unhelpful anxiety that so often accompanies our attempts to create the experience. The most important thing to get clear about orgasm is that you can’t make yourself, or more importantly, anyone else have an orgasm. And in fact, the efforts to cajole and force, only make our orgasmic potential more elusive. Prompting the all too common and vicious cycle where orgasm is set as the finish line and the entire sexual encounter gets tripped up in anticipated performance anxiety and our attention, which is what makes the present moment sexy, is completely preoccupied with whether or not you will find the end.   

The other unintended result is the creation of the sex rut, which happens when we become rigid in our sexual encounters and fixated on trying to replicate some memorable orgasm that happened before, is totally losing the fluidity of the moment you are in.

Orgasmic potential responds more readily to one’s capacity to surrender than it does to willfully trying to elicit it.  Surrender is an interesting state that emerges; it’s where curiosity and openness can lead. These emotional states, by definition, bring us fully present to what is happening in and around us. They allow the body freedom to experiment and feel while giving the mind freedom to roam. The human brain cannot simultaneously process anxiety and sexual arousal. So giving up the mind space of bad body images, worries over genital size, or the most common: being able to achieve orgasm, needs to go away for the body to surrender to finding its way.

The good news is that the more orgasms you have, the more orgasms you’re likely to have in the future. So learning how to orgasm comes with learning how to surrender to and trust your sexual response will not only help develop your orgasmic potential, but will also give you practice of letting go of anxiety. Not surprisingly,  many people have more success achieving orgasm alone than with their partner, but this is worthy practice, because the better you get at honing your own personal turn-on skills, the easier it gets sharing them with someone you love. Think of developing your capacity for orgasm as a  potent form of meditation- even when you don’t achieve bliss, the practice of harnessing our attention is where orgasmic potential starts.

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The post How to Orgasm Every Single Time appeared first on EcoSalon.

When it comes to sexual satisfaction, are you being honest about what you really want? 

Ask most any sex therapist what the first question is that comes out of the mouth of a new client and it is most always this- “Am I normal? Is my partner normal? Is this desire, behavior, longing….normal?” These normal questions weigh heavily on our sexuality, partly because we mistake the endless fictional depictions of sex in pornography as a true point of reference, but even more so because we often suffer with our sexual doubts and fears in isolation, even within couples. It’s a weird question to associate with our sexuality because the idea of normal, which generally refers to the average or middle of the bell curve, is antithetical to the extreme responses that passionate orgasmic sex generates.

Questioning our normalcy about what we desire or what we experience in the unique space of sexual satisfaction is less about the behaviors we engage with than it is the trouble we have reconciling our rational everyday mindset with the free-fall abandon that our sexual impulses demand if we are going to achieve the passionate release and connection they offer. The truth is, as the Kinsey study so clearly demonstrated, that there is no normal in our sexual preferences and behaviors. If the idea of normal applies anywhere, it is in the context of how we relate to ourselves as erotic sexual beings, whether we are open to exploring and understanding our desire or repressing and judging ourselves and others for their sexual impulses.

A powerful cure for moving beyond the normal issue starts by developing the curiosity and willingness to learn how to express our sexual desires out loud. It is empowering to claim our erotic self with our words.  I remember a man who shared with me despairingly that he couldn’t even say the word “masturbation” out loud to his wife. When we give up our own expression to appease anyone, not only does the relationship get frozen in the narrow window of the permissible, but we betray ourselves in a way that makes us doubt ourselves and our desire.  Not expressing creates the dynamic of continuously wondering if we are normal. It is tricky at first, emerging from our self-imposed silence.

I remember the initial awkwardness and discomfort I felt when I began to speak out loud during sex. For a very long time, I believed that my voice would somehow break a spell or interrupt some natural flow.  But in fact, as I started using words to say what I liked or wanted,  it wasn’t a distraction at all.  The more that I trusted myself  to really engage and communicate in intimate encounters, the more exciting it got.  It took a while, but this became particularly true about finding the freedom to share bits of the strange fantasy life that I had silenced for so long with my fears of being abnormal; it turned out to be rocket fuel for passionate intimacy.

If you are breaking a long term sexual silence, words might feel like too big a leap, so start small with allowing yourself  to make the sounds that are held in the erotic spaces. Moans, laughter, screams, and sighs are a hearty soundtrack that will expand the texture of lovemaking in surprising ways.  For one thing, it is through sound of any kind that we communicate our intimate intentions and experience. Even shared guttural noises diminishes our sense of isolation to our sexual selves and our partner. Getting over the inhibition of making noise and the imposed silence of our early days of making out in our parent’s den is a powerfully liberating step to get beyond the normal.

Wendy Strgar is the founder of GoodCleanLove – a website that sells organic and natural sexual intimacy products, and also a source of medical research for women and men’s sexual health. She is the author of “Love that Works: A Guide to Enduring Intimacy“.  Her blog  www.makinglovesustainable.com  was named as the best sex/relationship blog by Intent.com for 2011 and has been listed many times as one of the best 100 relationship blogs on the web.

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The post Getting the Sexual Satisfaction You Want: No More Shame appeared first on EcoSalon.

I love me a good sex ed lecture. Surprisingly, one of the best I’ve recently heard was delivered by John Oliver. Go figure.

Watch the video below to hear Oliver explain why sex ed is so bad.

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The post John Oliver: Sex Ed Teacher of the Year [Video] appeared first on EcoSalon.