A dating site claims a significant portion of its straight users are actually messaging people of the same sex. That's more evidence that the way people identify themselves online doesn't necessarily describe what they do.

In a press release, UK dating site FlirtFinder reports that 8% of its male users who list themselves as straight have messaged gay men on the site. And 7.6% of straight-identified female users have messaged lesbians. To his credit, FlirtFinder managing director Justin Battell notes that even straight-identified people could have same-sex attractions from time to time: "it may be that sexuality cannot be clearly defined as gay or straight and is much more of a spectrum." No shit. He also speculates that online dating might help people who aren't ready to come out dip a toe in the same-sex dating world:

This type of dating platform allows users to get experimental without the risk of any potential embarrassment or rejection. If you're curious about your sexuality it's much easier to send someone a quick message online than pluck up the courage to meet with them face-to-face straight away. Mobile dating gives people a breed of confidence that isn't always present in day-to-day life.

Online dating offers more than confidence, though. It could also let folks who aren't out in their day-to-day lives message potential same-sex partners secretly. FlirtFinder didn't follow up with any of these folks (for understandable reasons) to find out if they were experimenting or actually on the downlow. Interestingly, their study isn't the only one to find discrepancies between online identification and behavior. Last year, OkCupid found that the majority of users who identified as bisexual actually messaged just one gender. Younger bi-identified men were more likely to message only men, while by the age of 55, 75% of bi-identified guys messaged only ladies. For bi-identified women, the results were more consistent across all ages — about 40% of them messaged only dudes, and the same percentage only women. A commenter named Rose had a lot of ideas for why this might be:

The straight people who make up the Okcupid staff may not know this, but the same-sex dating scene is small. I live in a large, very gay city, and it's small FOR ME. I can't imagine what it's like for people in less popular, less queer-friendly areas. It makes sense statistically, since only 10% of the population is interested in the same sex. So there are a lot of bi people, including myself, who signed up to use Okcupid specifically to find dateable people of the same sex. If you're a straight person and you have difficulty finding someone you like who also likes you, imagine how much harder that would be if your dating pool was 10 times smaller than it is.

On the opposite end, part of that may be because if you're looking for both sexes, since there are more straights than queers out there the vast majority of your matches will be people of the opposite sex. So bi people who mostly message opposite-sex matches may only be doing that because that's what the site is giving them. It's why I have myself looking just for "girls who like girls," even though I'm open to guys as well, because girls are why I signed up for the site and I don't get that many if I'm looking for both guys AND girls. And as others have mentioned, there's the problem with people in the gay community who are biphobic and refuse to date bisexuals, further reducing the already-small same-sex dating pool. I know this is a huge problem for bi girls looking to date lesbians, but from what I've heard many gay men won't date bi men either.

What all this illustrates is that people's online dating habits may not say that much about their preferences, and vice versa. Also, people come to online dating for a lot of reasons — to experiment, to meet people outside of their usual dating pool, to date secretly, to gain more control over who approaches them. And they may date online differently than they would in the real world. Dating sites could learn something from this: for one thing, they shouldn't overemphasize stated sexual orientation. Rose writes,

I'm not really sure how Okcupid can say they're not being judgmental of our orientation, but then they list "I'm bisexual" as one of the "lies people tell" on dating sites. Um, yeah, you're being judgmental.

An important step to making your customers comfortable is to recognize that they might be using your product in unexpected ways — and help them do so without being judged.

Eight per cent of straight men check out gay dating profiles online [FlirtFinder]

Image via Unni Bente Knag Langedal/Shutterstock.com

It's seventy degrees in New York right now, and recently much of the east coast has been bathed in balmy warmth. Which seems all fine and dandy until the high temperatures cause an insect explosion! One guy in Greenville County, South Carolina has fire ants all over his yard and kudzu bugs all over his house. And a guy who owns the awesomely named Hired Killers Pest Control says, "This is going to be a record year. We are already starting to see things early. We have termites, ants, scorpions, kudzu beetles, rats, mice." He adds, "Insects seem to be recession proof." So is TERROR!

Image via 312010/Shutterstock.com

Dear Cory McGruder,

You weren't the craziest person who ever emailed me during my three-plus years at Jezebel. You weren't the angriest. Despite your occasionally sunny disposition, you weren't the nicest either. But over the years, you've become one of my favorites. And that's why, on my last day here at Jez, I'm addressing my farewell letter to you.

It's true: I'm leaving. I will miss my wonderful coworkers, everyone at the Gawker offices, our smart and engaged readers — and yes Cory, I will miss you. I'll miss your unique interests, which seemed to run heavily toward sexual harassment, bullying, and boobs (of a lady whose breast implants saved her life in a car wreck, you wrote, "this is AWESOME!!!"). Oh, and whores — you called Katy Perry a "divorced whore," and used the w-word plenty of other times along the way.

I'll miss your editorializing, like when you wrote to us about a study involving slut-shaming:

According to this new study out of Indiana University of Pennsylvania (link below), "slut-bashing" is the lastest form of sexual harassment that needs to be addressed. So now, we have to provide environments for sluts so that they can be free and safe to be as slutty as they want to be. C'mon people, isn't this just a step too far? My question is: Who is the female who will come forward and say, "I'm being slut-bashed"? Because the obvious response to that is, "Well then stop being such a slut, you little hooker!" C'mon folks, this is just TOO MUCH!!!

I'll miss your helpful explanations, like "THESE are the types of women that men, and MANY WOMEN, refer to as 'SLUTS'!"

I'll miss the time you sent us a tip about our own website:

On the website Jezebel.com, some writer named Erin Gloria Ryan wrote a piece mocking this sexual purity ad (link below) that was made for the Annual Day of Purity that will be celebrated on Valentine's Day (February 14th). How can someone be against an ad that encourages kids to remain sexually pure until they get married? I think the only women who don't like the idea of sexual purity are the skanks who have already given up the goods and are now jealous of the people who have remained pure because the people who have remained pure are held in very high regard and skanks like them are looked at with disgust, contempt, and nausea...they are looked at like the used-up pieces of meat that they are

I'll miss your judicious use of caps-lock, as in, "THE FILTHY WHORE LIED!!!"

I'll miss your thoughtful side too, like when you asked us, "According to a Huffington Post column, today's men have grown up internet porn and now want their women to be pornstars. What do you think?" What do you think, Cory? In all these years, I've never really known. Except when it comes to sluts — I know what you think about them.

Most of all, though — and here I'm being serious — I'll miss your help. Even though you probably disagree with me on almost everything, and even though you seem enraged by many things I think of as important social reforms, I've actually picked up more than a few of your tips and written about them. You seem to know what kinds of things we're interested in at Jezebel, and you keep sending them in, day in and day out, even though we never pay you and frequently champion the slutty, birth-control-taking, sexual-harassment-alleging women who get you so worked up. In your own inimitable caps-locked way, you actually give me hope for dialogue.

I'll be taking that hope with me to BuzzFeed, where I'll be writing for a new women's section — so if you so choose, you can follow me over there. But I have a hunch you're staying put, Cory. You're a Jezebel now, whether you like it or not. So to you, and to everyone who has made this such a warm, fun, and rewarding place to work for the past three years — to staff, commenters, and readers past and present — goodbye, good luck, and keep doing what you do so well. Even you, Cory. Especially you.

Much love,
Anna

Narcissism has been a hot topic in the last few years, and it's been the subject of some overblown freakouts of the kids-today-are-such-assholes variety. That said, there's mounting evidence that actually being a narcissist is pretty bad for you — and the people around you. Let's take a look at some of the interesting ways self-centered people can fuck things up.

They're immoral, even if they're religious.

While the religious right would have you believe that simply being godly makes you a good person, that's not actually true. A recent study surveyed 385 undergrads who identified themselves as either skeptical, nominally religious (ie. not showing up at church all that often), or devout. The study authors asked them to evaluate the ethical status of situations like "an underpaid executive padded his expense account by about $3,000 a year." Nominally and devoutly religious folks turned out to be more ethically strict than their skeptical counterparts — unless they had high levels of narcissism. Says study author Chris Pullig, "Both the nominal and devout groups show degrees of poor ethical judgment equal to that of the skeptics when accompanied by higher degrees of narcissism, a finding that suggests a dramatic transformation for both nominals and the devouts when ethical judgment is clouded by narcissistic tendencies." So basically, being a narcissist brought religious folks right down to the level of the godless. Previous studies have found no difference in moral judgment between religious and non-religious people, so it's interesting that this study did find a discrepancy. Regardless of what you think about religion and morality, though, it's interesting that narcissism appears to cancel out love-thy-neighbor values.

They're stressed out.

Earlier this year, a study found that narcissistic men have a more active stress response, which could lead to heart problems over time. Study author Sara Konrath speculated, "Given societal definitions of masculinity that overlap with narcissism - for example, the belief that men should be arrogant and dominant - men who endorse stereotypically male sex roles and who are also high in narcissism may feel especially stressed."

Basically, being an asshole all the time really takes it out of you.

They hate women.

If they're straight guys, that is. A 2010 study found that straight male narcissists reserve the worst of their dickishness for straight women, who are "gatekeepers in men's quest for sexual pleasure, patriarchal power and status." The study authors wrote, "although narcissists may want to maintain feelings of superiority and power over all people, narcissistic heterosexual men are particularly invested in subordinating heterosexual women." Awesome.

They're fine with cheating.

This one isn't that surprising: narcissistic college students are more likely than others to say cheating on tests is acceptable. Also, the most cheat-happy narcissists are the most exhibitionist — that is, the show-offs who want everyone to know how great they are. Says lead study author Amy Brunell, "Narcissists really want to be admired by others, and you look good in college if you're getting good grades. They also tend to feel less guilt, so they don't mind cheating their way to the top."

They become leaders and then suck at it.

Last year, a study found that people assigned to work in groups rated the most narcissistic people the best leaders. But that was the opposite of the truth — actually, groups headed by narcissists made the worst decisions. Said study author Barbora Nevicka, "The narcissistic leaders had a very negative effect on their performance. They inhibited the communication because of self-centeredness and authoritarianism."

The only good news here: narcissism may not be as prevalent as some people claim. Even though narcissism-doomsayers, led by psychologist Jean Twenge, say our country is going to the self-absorbed, mirror-gazing, other-people-ignoring dogs, other research has found that young people may not be any more narcissistic than they've always been. A 2008 study looked at 25,000 undergrads from 1996-2007, and compared their data with similar surveys from the seventies and eighties. Here's what they found: "Today's youth seem to be no more narcissistic and self-aggrandizing than previous generations. We were unable to find evidence that either narcissism or the closely related construct of self-enhancement has increased over the past three decades." So narcissists may be awful in all sorts of ways, but at least they're probably not multiplying.

Narcissism Impairs Ethical Judgment Even Among the Highly Religious, Study Finds [ScienceDaily]

Image via keko64/Shutterstock.com

A bitchy white woman belittling her black maid. A Latino man being tied up and called racial slurs. A black woman being offered for sale at a slave auction. All of these are awful in reality, but for people who are into race-play — or racialized sexual situations — they can be extremely hot. I talked to two people familiar with such situations about how the worst parts of racial prejudice can be explored — and even exorcised — through sex.

Mollena Williams, who blogs at The Perverted Negress, has done race-play both for her own pleasure and as a demonstration at kink conventions. She's also currently in a relationship with a "sort of white" man (he's also part Native American), where she's the slave and he's the master. Williams told me her interest in slavery started early. She remembers seeing Roots on TV at age eight and thinking to herself, "wow, I have fantasies about really bad things." When she became involved in the kink community as an adult, many other kinky black people were critical of master/slave relationships — some threatened violence toward anyone they saw treating a person of color as a slave. She describes this time in her life as "really difficult," but she ultimately said to herself, "I will not, after so many years of struggling, have someone who doesn't know me dictate my sexuality." She adds, "if you go back and look at what feminism is about, it's about us taking charge of our bodies and our destinies." And she sees her ability to choose a master/slave relationship "with intent" as "a mark of how far feminism has come."

That relationship currently is a long-distance one with a man she calls The Dominant Guy on her blog. Since he's not particularly interested in what she calls "high-protocol" master/slave interactions — things like having her kneel while he gives commands — their relationship might look "very ordinary" to outsiders. She says, "you might not notice any difference except that there's no point where I will say, 'I don't feel like doing that.'" If TDG asks Williams to do something for him, she does it — unless it violates the Prime Directive, which she articulates thus: "it is the primary responsibility of the salve/submissive to protect the master's property up to and including from the master themselves." So if TDG asks her to do something that will harm her, it's not only her right but her responsibility to say no.

Practically speaking, the kinds of tasks Williams does for TDG are banal, sometimes amusingly so — one example she gave me was helping him comparison-shop for a new printer. When she's visiting him, she might also do his laundry, make breakfast, run his errands. "Those menial tasks," she explains, "give me time to be outside of my own headspace," helping her internal monologue shut down and calming her. Williams clearly enjoys being "in service" to TDG, but she's fully aware of the implications of their arrangement, in terms of both gender and race. The two have a sense of humor about their relationship: she'll say things like, "I appreciate that you're a traditionalist, going after black slaves. We're really in fashion this fall." Of the race issue, she says, "ignoring it is not something that is really feasible, because people are going to look at us and they're going to see a white man kicking around a black woman."

Williams couldn't be in a master/slave relationship with just anyone — she says "I have to really trust that person, and they have to have an intelligence that outstrips mine, whether they're smarter, have greater emotional intelligence, or are more stable and grounded than me. When she relates to her master, she wants to "know that I can't out-think you and that I don't have any desire to." She also has to be in love.

For S., things are a little bit different. He asked to remain anonymous because he got involved with racialized sex through prostitution. S. likes to say he got into sex work for the healthcare. He found out that a clinic in his city gave free basic healthcare to sex workers, and as a young artist without health insurance, he says, "it's ironic that in order to get the healthcare that I needed, the easiest way was to do sex work." From one early client, S., who is Latino, learned "that people would pay for me to get thugged out." "People don't know if I'm Latino, or black, or mixed," he explains, and the client "basically told me how to position myself, how to use the fluidity of my appearance to make money off of people's different racialized fantasies." Initially, S. struggled with race-play sex work, in part because his academic study often focused on race theory — he was quite aware of the history and implications of what he was doing. But over time, he started to enjoy the irony of playing with the very racial stereotypes he'd studied. He says, "I think what made it easier was it being commodified exchange, that it was drag in a way. It was something that I could put on and take off — it wasn't me."

S. also felt like he was doing "kind of a service" — and not just to his clients. In his early twenties, before he started doing sex work, a man he was having sex with took the encounter to "this extremely racialized place" and started hurling racial slurs at him, all without S.'s consent. S. saw his racialized sex work as a way to move past that experience, and to help keep it from happening to other people — he was giving men who wanted to racially degrade someone an opportunity to do it safely and consensually, without traumatizing someone like he'd once been traumatized.

"Lots of people have these racialized fantasies," says S. "They just don't know how to talk about it, how to find people who are into it, and how to engage with it in a way that at the end of the day is respectful." That's the service he provided, and while he no longer does sex work, he says he'd be happy to facilitate race-play scenes or parties for others. He describes a white man he once met who explained his interest in race-play with a rationale that evokes Avenue Q — "There is a level where everyone's a little bit racist." For him, racialized sex was a way to "exorcise" racist feelings, to "get these feelings out while getting off."

Williams's errands for TDG don't look much like the race-play scenes S. was a part of, but she has taken part in such scenes at dungeons or kink conventions. When she's choosing a top for such scenes, she'll avoid anyone who claims to be "colorblind" or not racist at all. Such a person may not be very self-aware. Instead, she'll ask her potential top, "when have you felt yourself behaving in ways that were racist, or that were bigoted," and listen to their stories. "We are tribal people," Williams says, and "racism is an extension of that clannish tribalism." It's "a part of who we are as people." A lot of us do our best to ignore our racist feelings, but for Williams, for S.'s clients, and for many others, race-play can be a way of bringing these feelings into the open.

Williams is all too aware that many outsiders might look askance at both her race-play scenes and her current relationship. But in a 2009 interview with Racialicious's Andrea Plaid, she said she thought her ancestors would be "delighted that I can FUCKING CHOOSE to do this for a few bloody hours." She explained, "I can go into the Big Ass Ice Cream Parlor of Racism and have a sample spoon, and leave. [...] I'm not trapped there being force fed the Rocky Road Ice Cream of Oppression until I am sick." This doesn't mean, of course, that oppression no longer exists. But at least Williams can now choose the kind of sex, and the kind of relationships, that she wants. And for her, that's an expression of freedom.

The governor of St. Petersburg, Russia has signed a law that bans "promoting homosexuality and pedophilia among minors," and the law is now officially in effect. LGBT rights activists say that even talking about LGBT people is now effectively illegal in the city. And according to ABC, "activists are quick to point out that Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, the famed composer and St. Petersburg native, was gay and suggest that even mentioning that fact is now illegal." It remains to be seen whether merely humming snatches of The Nutcracker is now a punishable offense.

In an unusual case, a man claimed that the errors on his tax return were caused by abuse he suffered at the hands of his ex-wife. Unfortunately for him, the court didn't buy it.

According to CPA Peter Reilly's blog Passive Activities and Other Oxymorons (via Forbes), David C. Ladehoff made an error on his joint 2008 tax return with his wife — he ended up owing the IRS $1,097. The two got divorced in 2009. This year, Ladehoff went to court to challenge the IRS's claim that he owed money. He cited a section of the tax code that states that a spouse is not responsible for tax errors if the mistakes were made by the other spouse and they said nothing because they were afraid of being abused. Documents in the Ladehoff case read,

Petitioner testified that he was physically and emotionally abused by his ex-wife throughout the marriage. Evidence of two police reports documenting allegations of domestic battery were entered into the record. The first incident occurred on July 4, 2008, and the second on May 14, 2009. The first report states that petitioner refused to file a domestic battery complaint. The second incident occurred after the return for the year in issue was filed. Petitioner was listed as the victim in both reports. Petitioner's ex-wife was listed as the "other person involved" in both reports — in the first report under the code for spouse and in the second report under the code for second victim.

The court ruled against him, but not because they didn't believe he was abused. Rather, they noted that he had prepared the return, and the mistakes were due to a math error he made, not to any information his wife might have provided. Even though Ladehoff's claim didn't fly, though, it's an interesting illustration of the attendant problems abuse can cause. If you're deeply afraid of your spouse, the most mundane acts can become opportunities for intimidation — and if it involves your tax return, that intimidation can lead to legal troubles. Ladehoff may not have been a victim of it, but it seems tax coercion is a real thing — one even the IRS recognizes.

Male innocent spouse case [Passive Activities and Other Oxymorons, via Forbes]

Image via Garsya/Shutterstock.com

Throughout the last fifty years or so, new moms have faced a deluge of advice, much of it contradictory. But over all that time, one thing has been constant: the message that if you do any little thing wrong, your baby will die or become a serial killer or both.

For her new book Modern Motherhood: Women and Family in England, historian Angela Davis (no relation) talked to moms about the advice of six parenting experts through the ages. Here's her amusing and depressing summary of her findings:

Despite all the differences in advice advocated by these childcare ‘bibles' over the years, it is interesting that they all have striking similarities in terms of how the experts presented their advice. Whatever the message, the advice was given in the form of an order and the authors highlighted extreme consequences if mothers did not follow the methods of childrearing that they advocated.

Sound familiar? Did you know that if you don't breastfeed your kid will be obese and have a bad immune system and also be unable to truly give or accept love? Thought so.

Making the long history of dire pronouncements even sadder is the fact that parents haven't necessarily been scared into better childrearing practices — if anyone's even sure what those practices are. Davis points out that parenting advice is "cyclical," moving from the commandment to give children "strict routines" to a looser approach and then back to strictness again. She talked to some women who had seen the pendulum swing back and forth over the course of their lives and "were still unsure of what had really been the best approach."

Well, yeah. Even within a single time period, there's enough alleged wisdom flying around to make a mom throw up her hands. Says Davis, "more than 50 years on and experts still cannot agree on the best way to approach motherhood, and all this conflicting advice just leaves women feeling confused and disillusioned." It seems unlikely that experts will ever agree on the "best" way to be a mom, so maybe if they'd back off on the "extreme consequences," we'd all be better off.

Research shows 50 years of motherhood manuals set standards too high for new mums [University of Warwick, via ScienceDaily]

On Monday, L'Oreal announced that it would donate $1.5 million to the EPA to help the agency develop computer models that would eliminate the need for animal testing. The company will also give the EPA results of its earlier animal tests to help calibrate the models and ensure that more tests aren't needed in the future. Is this a PR move by L'Oreal? Almost certainly. But it's good news for animals too.

Earlier" ‘Cruelty-Free' Cosmetics Companies Are Total Liars

Today in depressing housing-market news, YA author Francesca Lia Block could lose her home because the bank won't return her calls. The author of the Weetzie Bat books is underwater on her mortgage due to the recession. To make things more complicated, the mortgage is in her mom's name, and her mom is now dead. To refinance, she needs the loan in her name — and Bank of America told her that she can't switch the name on the loan while she's still underwater. But to fix that situation, she needs to refinance. And as is so often the case with these real estate horror stories, she says B of A refuses to call her back to discuss what she can do to fix things. On her blog about the struggle, she writes this list of complaints against the bank:

INEFFICIENCY IN PROCESSING LOAN MOD PACKAGE, HAD TO RESEND NUMEROUS DOCUMENTS NUMEROUS TIMES
NEVER TOLD ME I WAS NOT ELIGIBLE FOR PROGRAM WHEN I APPLIED (ESTATE OF)
HAVE STILL NOT CONTACTED ME TO SAY MOD REJECTED (SINCE JUNE, 2011)
HAVE CHANGED PHONE NUMBER OF MY CONTACT PERSON SO I CANNOT REACH HIM. HE DOES NOT RESPOND TO MY EMAILS EITHER. HE TOLD ME THERE WAS AN ALTERNATIVE FOR ME BUT I WAS TOLD BY OTHERS THAT THIS WAS NOT TRUE. THEN TOLD BY SOMEONE ELSE THAT IT WAS BUT NO ONE COULD DIRECT ME TO CORRECT DEPT.
EXTREMELY RUDE SUPERVISOR WHO TOLD ME THE HOUSE IS NOT MINE AND THAT "YOUR MOTHER IS DEAD"
NO WAY TO MOVE FW. WITH ANOTHER TYPE OF IN HOUSE OR TRADITIONAL LOAN MODIFICATION OR ANY OTHER OPTION. I HAVE BEEN TRYING FOR ONE YEAR.

I know, the caps are no fun. But if you were in this situation, you'd be yelling too.

Google+ has had a rocky start, and one of its problems has been its skewed gender ratio — the social networking platform remains overwhelmingly male. Now one user is arguing that the way to fix this is to make it easier for users to report sexual harassment on the service. Does Google+ need a special harassment button?

That's the argument Christa Laser makes in a recent Google+ post. She writes,

Women, are you tired of reading weird harassing comments on your posts? Think that the internet is a jerk factory, where if you block one another pops up? Do you wish that the community discouraged harassment? Then you need a harassment reporting tool (not available on all networks).

Men, are you sick of losing women to Pinterest and Facebook? Wish they had a safe place to post publicly? Then you need a harassment reporting tool (not available on Google Plus).

Currently, Google+ lets users report four types of abuse in posts: spam, nudity, hate speech or violence, and copyright violations (see left). For user profiles, Google+ has an additional two options: "impersonation" and "fake profile."

Laser would like to add an option to report harassment, meaning that the dialog box for reporting a profile would look like the one at left.

Not everyone agrees — says Søren Dalsgaard Brath,

I agree that there definitely should be some way to report this, but like others have mentioned, the list will get rather long eventually. I would prefer rewording one of those already in existence, for example call it Hate speech, violence, or harassment. It is where it fits best in the above choices.

But in an email to us, Laser said that "others have told me that we should use the 'hate speech or violence'
option, but I think that making that the only option decreases the likelihood of [users] feeling like what happened to them was 'bad enough' to report." She has a point — someone talking about "spraying their semen all over [you]" (an example given by another user in the thread) isn't hate speech per se, but unless you're in a consensual cyber-sex conversation, it's definitely harassment. And encouraging women to use a tool that doesn't really fit the situation could result in them not using it at all. Also, user Hakan Gül points out that women aren't the only victims of harassment:

I was looking for the harassment report button the other day. Wanted to report a guy.

I got a [private message] from a guy that I had put +1 on the wrong post. I had put a +1 on a post by a woman in my circles (who also had me in her circles). [He said] I should immediately undo my +1 and remove this woman from my circles or else ...

The next day I got another PM from the same guy telling me that this woman now had removed me from her circles and blocked me. I should now remove her from my circles ...

All this because I had put a single +1 on a post of a woman he probably is stalking. I never interacted with her any other time.

Just hope that the guy isn't crazy enough to harm that woman ... I want the harassment report button

Google hasn't yet responded to my request for comment, so I don't know if they have any plans to add more reporting options. But as Lester also points out, Google's own anti-bullying resources suggest that adding a specific tool to report bullying and harassment would be good social media practice. One of the company's anti-bullying tips for teens is the following:

Use reporting tools

If the bullying took place via a social network, use that service's reporting or "abuse" tools. The social network may also have "social abuse-reporting" tools, which allow you to forward hurtful content to a trusted friend or directly ask someone to take offensive content down. If the abuse threatens physical harm, you may have to call the police, but think about involving a parent if you do.

As of now, Google+ doesn't really have the kind of sophisticated reporting tools it describes here — unless someone's lobbing slurs or outright threatening you, you're kind of out of luck. As user Søren Dalsgaard Brath pointed out, Google wouldn't have to add another button — it could simply offer a combined category called "Hate speech, violence, or harassment." Or it could offer a single button for reporting content that's against its code of conduct, with a link to the specific activities that aren't okay. As it stands, though, Laser thinks the lack of any of these might be keeping women away — she says, "having a harassment and bullying button would really help to curb the widespread abuse (and maybe might make women, who are very poorly represented on Google Plus, feel comfortable)." If such a tool gave women a way to object to unsolicited semen-spraying comments, it would probably do a lot of good.

Share, +1, and comment if you vote yes to an ability to report harassment. [Google+]

Image via sarahdesign/Shutterstock.com

What's Cuba Gooding Jr. up to these days? Well, there's Red Tails — and, according to three women in New Mexico, a whole lot of groping. The women say he harassed all of them at Maloney's Tavern in Albuquerque — and they have pictures.

Sara (all the women I talked to asked that their last names not be used) told me:

At about midnight on March 1st, Cuba Gooding Jr. waltzed into the bar we were at and proceeded to sexually harass a number of the [women there] and assault (punch) a [man] for attempting to take a picture of Cuba receiving a lap dance. [...] The sexual harassment occurred when women would be taking pictures with him; he would grab butt cheeks during the picture taking and when women reacted negatively to that, he would proceed to either touch women's breasts or tell them that he "loved them." He told me that he loved me because his wife's name is also Sara. Classy.

She added, "I have pictures of him reaching to grope my breast..."

"... as well as pictures of my friend jumping on his back in anger after he twisted her nipples."

Her friend Meagan told me that Gooding grabbed her ass, and confirmed that he tried to grab Sara's chest. She also said that after leaving the area, they ran into him again on the dance floor, where he grabbed Meagan's breast and pinched her nipple. She said he was repeatedly bothering and harassing women even after they told him to stop.

A third woman, Molly, says,

Cuba Gooding Jr. came into Maloney's Pub in Albuquerque on March 1st, and the bar was fairly crowded at the time. No one seemed to notice or realize who he was when he first entered, and he inappropriately touched [Sara] and she immediately dismissed him. Someone then recognized him and swarms of people started crowding around him to take pictures. Sara and I took a picture with him, and he attempted to grab her breasts in the process. Later on the night, he came up to me, grabbed my face, and kissed my cheek. He asked where I was staying and told me I would be staying with him tonight, making lewd comments about his plans to sleep with me that night. He mentioned that he his happily married with three kids, but "not tonight." He also said I was "probably like 12" years old (I am actually 23 years old). I also witnessed him inappropriately touching a friend of mine, [Meagan], which caused her to be extremely upset. Another woman in the bar gave him a lap dance and when a man tried to take a picture, Gooding grabbed the phone, threatening to "break it in half," and followed him to the bathroom, where he apparently punched him.

The three weren't the only ones to put Gooding in Albuqueurque on the night of March 1. New Mexico entertainment site One Headlight Ink has a photo of the actor at the city's Library Bar & Grill, dated that day. Gooding's also apparently been making the rounds in other places — New York-based Maggie Montgomery recently tweeted, "Just got hit on by Cuba Gooding Jr...my goodness" (she hasn't responded to requests for elaboration). And he's no stranger to carousing at bars in Western cities — here he is giving a somewhat slurred speech at a bar in Spokane, WA in 2010. He opens with a rousing "show me the money," a catchphrase that by that point was fourteen years old.

Gooding's rep said she hadn't yet been able to reach him for comment, because he's filming. The manager of Maloney's Tavern (which is noted on Yelp for its "stench") did not return my calls, so I wasn't able to get his take on his celebrity patron's alleged behavior. Sara, for her part, said she'd like to "warn the general public about [Gooding's] disgusting creepiness." Consider yourself warned.

Sorry, Woody Allen. It's the future, and red meat is still bad for you. According to a new study, even a little bit will make you die sooner. And bacon is especially fatal.

The LA Times reports on a study published in the Archives of Internal Medicine, in which researchers followed over 110,000 people for over 20 years. They found that eating even 3 ounces of red meat per day upped subjects' risk of death during that 20-year period by 13%. And eating one serving per day of processed meat, like hot dogs or bacon, raised the risk by 20%. Lead study author An Pan says "any red meat you eat contributes to the risk" of early death. He adds, "If you want to eat red meat, eat the unprocessed products, and reduce it to two or three servings a week. That would have a huge impact on public health."

Bacon may be the biggest death-meat, but researchers were surprised that unprocessed meats had an effect too. Basically, all red meat comes out of this looking pretty bad. Meatheads take heart, though — one critic points out that studies that rely on food questionnaires, the way this one did, can be prone to error. That's because people kind of suck at remembering what they've eaten. It's also worth noting that of course no diet will stave off death forever. That said, you might be able to eke out a few more years if you periodically replace bacon with fish, poultry, nuts, low-fat dairy, or whole grains — one such substitution per day lowered folks' death risk by up to 19%.

Image via Kenneth Sponsler/Shutterstock.com

Today in research that is not that surprising but still kind of heartwarming: telling kids it's okay to make mistakes will help them do better in school.

In a study published in Journal of Experimental Psychology: General (via ScienceDaily), researchers told some sixth graders "that learning is difficult and failure is common, but practice will help, just like learning how to ride a bicycle." Control groups got no such pep talks. Then they put both groups through a variety of kid-tasks, like a memory test and a reading comprehension assignment. The kids who got the bicycle spiel did better on the tasks — and as a bonus, they felt more confident and less like fuckups. Says study author Frederique Autin,

We focused on a widespread cultural belief that equates academic success with a high level of competence and failure with intellectual inferiority. By being obsessed with success, students are afraid to fail, so they are reluctant to take difficult steps to master new material. Acknowledging that difficulty is a crucial part of learning could stop a vicious circle in which difficulty creates feelings of incompetence that in turn disrupts learning.

So basically, if you tell kids that not everything is easy, they won't freak out and quit the second that something seems hard. Which doesn't mean teachers have to hand out gold stars every second, but some acknowledgment that, say, redox equations are fucking difficult may go a long way.

Reducing Academic Pressure May Help Children Succeed [ScienceDaily]

Image via Christopher Sista/Shutterstock.com

Want an excuse not to varnish that chair? Here you go: it could raise your kids' risk of autism. This probably isn't a huge issue for the occasional home-improver — but for people who work with varnish and other solvents as part of their jobs, it could be a big problem.

That's the implication of a recent study published in the Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorder, which looked at the parents of 93 kids with autism-spectrum diagnoses and 81 kids without. Scientists had parents fill out questionnaires listing what chemicals they'd been exposed to from three months before conception til the end of breastfeeding. They also asked the parents about their jobs, and had experts evaluate their chemical exposure based on their employment history. They found that parents who were exposed to lacquers, varnishes, asphalt, or xylene (a solvent found in some ink, rubber, and paint thinner) were more likely to have kids on the autism spectrum than those who weren't exposed to these materials. This bolsters earlier research showing that prenatal chemical exposure could predispose kids to autism.

The study authors acknowledge that their study is far from the final word, largely because of its small sample size. They write,

Our study has both limitations and strengths. It was limited by the small sample size given the large number of exposures evaluated and the low prevalence of some of the exposures. Nevertheless, as one of the first studies in several decades to systematically evaluate parental job exposures and risk of ASD, this evaluation of several dozen potentially biologically relevant occupational agents provides a first pass screen from which results can be used to target future research directions.

Basically, what they're saying is that they don't have conclusive proof that smelling varnish will make your kids autistic. What they do have is a baseline for further research, and a reason to look deeper into the impact of asphalt and certain solvents on workers' future offspring. Oh, and a potential explanation for the rise in autism diagnoses that has nothing to do with vaccines.

Potential Role of Parents' Work Exposures in Autism Risk Examined: Possible Link Between Some Work Exposures and Risk for Offspring [ScienceDaily]

Image via Kamira/Shutterstock.com

What does a cat have in common with a bottlenose dolphin? Aside from being cute and having a plot to take over the world, the answer is: a total inability to taste sweets. Scientists have known for years that cats and their wild feline friends lions and tigers have lost the sweet receptors on their scratchy tongues, but new research reveals that bottlenose dolphins, sea lions, and spotted hyenas lack those receptors as well. Dolphins may also be unable to taste bitter and umami flavors. If you think your cat (or dolphin) is the exception to this rule, study author Gary Beauchamp says you're probably deluding yourself:

When we first published the data on cats, it got a tremendous amount of publicity and a lot of people saying, 'My cat likes sweets and you're wrong.' But invariably they liked ice cream or cake, and sweetness was confounded with fat and other things.

Or maybe, like Winston, your cat will just eat anything.

We have math prodigies, music prodigies, language prodigies — and now, meet a fourteen-year-old real estate prodigy. She owns a house, sort of.

ABC has the story of 14-year-old Willow Tufano, who bought half a foreclosed house in Florida with $6,000 she saved from buying and re-selling antiques. Her mom bought the other half, but Willow plans to buy her mom out and own the place outright by the time she turns 18. They're renting the house out to a couple right now — so basically, those people have a 14-year-old landlord.

NPR's take on the story is kind of sobering — noting that Willow's house used to be worth $100,000 and is now worth $12,000, Chana Joffe-Walt writes,

As I was working on this story, I kept thinking that when a 14-year-old kid can buy a house, the market must have hit bottom. I kept saying this to Willow, and she'd sort of vaguely nod.

But it's hard for Willow to see herself as symbolic of anything. To a 14-year-old kid in Florida, the housing collapse is basically the only world she's known. It's the landscape. It's a Craigslist hobby.

Of course, to other 14-year-old kids in Florida, the housing collapse probably feels less like a hobby and more like eviction and poverty. But that's not Willow's fault. Ultimately, her weirdly precocious real-estate venture isn't hurting anybody — except those of us who now feel hopelessly behind on life. Like me, for instance — Willow Tufano has one-half more house than I do, and is less than half my age.

Florida 14-Year-Old Buys Distressed Home [ABC]
This 14-Year-Old Girl Just Bought A House In Florida [NPR]

Image via Mishchenko Mikhail/Shutterstock.com

A new app will let you check all your Facebook friends against the National Sex Offender Registry. But who actually needs this service?

A press release issued by the company Verify Anybody warns, "Unfortunately, there are people who are convicted sex offenders utilizing social networks and dating sites on a daily basis for evil intentions. Verify Anybody knowing this has decided to develop Friend Verifier as a free app to not only give a tool to the masses but to also raise awareness about personal safety on the Internet." Adds Verify Anybody CEO Joe Penora, "Knowledge is power, and if we can help just one user make a better informed decision that could save their life, then this app is well worth it."

The app lets you scan either your current friends or your incoming friend requests, and it could be useful for finding out if that guy Roblax Sim has any rape convictions (though he's probably just a spambot). An equally effective tactic, though, is just to reject friend requests from people you don't know. And if you're worried that someone you do know is a sex offender, you don't really need an app — you can just search for them on the registry yourself. Also, as many have pointed out in the debate over whether dating sites should screen their users, not every dangerous person is on the sex offender registry. If you're worried about who sees your info, it's probably best to calibrate your privacy preferences carefully and not friend just anybody, rather than relying on an app to protect you.

Friend Verifier the First Facebook App That Scans Your Friends for Registered Sex Offenders [PR Web]

AIDS prevention has been on a sort of rollercoaster in the past year or so, with exciting progress followed quickly by disappointing results. The drug Truvada showed promise in blocking transmission of the virus, but then an African trial had to be stopped because the drug wasn't protecting the women who took it. Now, however, it looks like there may be an explanation — some of the women in the trial weren't actually taking the drug. Scientists aren't sure why, but they did note that AIDS is heavily stigmatized, and having a bottle of AIDS drugs in your house might make other people think you're infected — even if you're actually taking the drugs prophylactically. This is good news for Truvada, but somewhat bad news for the fight against AIDS. It's a reminder that even if scientists find effective drug treatments, they may need to clear social hurdles as well.

Alcoholism is notoriously tough to treat. But a new study reveals a surprisingly effective treatment option: LSD.

Yes, in research published in the Journal of Psychopharmacology (via ScienceDaily), scientists reviewed a number of old clinical trials and determined that LSD worked unusually well. Fifty-nine percent of subjects who dropped acid showed improvement of their alcohol addiction, compared with 38% of controls. What's more, alcoholics seemed to get a benefit from doing LSD just once, and this benefit persisted for 6 to 12 months. And since LSD isn't addictive or toxic, that's a pretty big deal. Says study author Pål-Ørjan Johansen, "Given the evidence for a beneficial effect of LSD on alcoholism, it is puzzling why this treatment approach has been largely overlooked."

Well, not that puzzling. LSD has a way of making you see gnomes coming out of people's faces, and it can make people freak out and jump out of windows. So LSD treatment would have to be carefully monitored — you couldn't just give alcoholics a few tabs and send them home. In rare cases, acid can also cause ongoing psychological problems. The biggest obstacle, though, is that it's illegal, and given the controversy that still surrounds marijuana legalization, medical LSD is unlikely to come to your town any time soon. Which, if the researchers are right, is kind of a shame. LSD may occasionally cause people problems, but alcoholism always does, and if a little acid really stops people craving a drink, it might be worth the gnomes.

Revisiting LSD as a Treatment for Alcoholism [ScienceDaily]

You know what's better than a penguin on a plane? Two penguins on a plane! Even better than that: five penguins on three different planes (two of whom may possibly be the same penguin). Watch and learn.

Thanks to the folks at Yahoo's The Sideshow, we know that the two adorable little suckers above are Pete and Penny, SeaWorld penguins who flew to New York for the premier of the documentary Frozen Planet. The Sideshow also reveals that penguin-plane videos are surprisingly common. For instance ...

Here's two adorable dudes waddling around the aisle on a flight from Orlando to New York. They seem so into it!

And here's a penguin flying from San Diego to San Francisco. This guy is Pete — I think he's the same one who accompanied Penny down the aisle (I know that makes them sound like they're married, which would be awesome) on the recent New York flight. It is probably good that I am not these penguins' trainer because I would just be trying to get them to carry little briefcases all the time. Briefcases full of fish.

Penguins, flying first class, delight passengers on Delta flight [The Sideshow]

Binoche, who turns 48 today, is probably most famous in the US for her role in Chocolat. I found that movie kind of treacly, but check out Binoche in this scene from Certified Copy, a trippy 2010 film where a man and a woman meet and pretend to be a crabby long-married couple, whereupon they start fighting for real. Rent it — Binoche comes off as sort of unhinged, and then you end up rooting for the couple like they were actually married. Also: she is so fucking pretty.

Oh and also: have a great weekend!

Reddit's gotten attention recently for the charitable projects it fosters. But it's still home to r/mensrights, recently named as a hate site by the Southern Poverty Law Center. How does Reddit reconcile its good works with its very vocal assholes?

The Daily Dot has a roundup of recent charitable campaigns that got their start on the site — Reddit users have helped a Kenyan orphanage build a new wall to protect itself, and a family treat their young child's rare blood disease. Daily Dot's Kevin Morris praises "Reddit's growing power as a platform for crowdsourced charity" and quotes founder Alexis Ohanian's personal maxim: "I've always tried to 'make the world suck less.'" But some parts of Reddit definitely make the world suck more. Here's what the SPLC has to say about r/mensrights in its Spring 2012 Intelligence Report:

A "subreddit" of the user-generated news site Reddit, this forum describes itself as a "place for people who feel that men are currently being disadvantaged by society." While it presents itself as a home for men seeking equality, it is notable for the anger it shows toward any program designed to help women. It also trafficks in various conspiracy theories. "Kloo2yoo," identified as a site moderator, writes that there is "undeniable proof" of an international feminist conspiracy involving the United Nations, the Obama Administration and others, aimed at demonizing men.

Mensrights posters, unsurprisingly, are not pleased. One johntheother writes,

Did you imagine that in a culture of escalating hatred and dis-enfrachisement for men, formerly humanitarian organizations would not loose the plot and paint you with a brush of lies and hatred?

For those of you who lack the stomach to actually oppose social hatred, get the fuck out of the way, and good riddance. The rest of us, who see our own opposition to misandry as something more than an edgy indulgence — we have work to do. Go hide your heads and hope that as anti-male legislation grows ever more aggressive — and anti male hiring practices and educational policies become increasingly toxic, just hope your female neighbours and relatives forbear to flick their fingers in summons of police because you wanted to watch the game, or didn't snap to attention fast enough on their summons.

Go prostate [sic] yourself at some feminist bigot's feet and claim those bad MRAs brainwashed you, and hope theres a scrap of food left for you at the slave's table.

When a formerly human rights organization like the SPLC turns cancerous and begins labelling human rights movements as if they're hate movements, if you have a spine and an ethical compass, you stand up, otherwise, get the fuck out of the way.

However, the SPLC report has also prompted some soul-searching among r/mensrights posters. A long thread about the report is far from an unbroken screed against feminazis — a number of comments are critical of the subreddit, or at least of some of its more hateful users. Says misseff, "it would be easy for an objective outsider to see information from the SPLC and come here on any given day and see evidence to substantiate that this just looks like a hate group sometimes." Mshenrick writes, "I've said before, the MRM's biggest obstacle is misogyny within it." And ilikesushi offers a diagnosis (bold is sic):

This subreddit and this movement have a credibility problem. I'd like to think that being called out like this will lead to some change in the way you all choose to present your grievances, but most likely, the trolls and the crazies will just dismiss this as more evidence of the gynocentric matriarchy or whatever the fuck.

ilikesushi appears sympathetic to some MRA causes, and has previously advocated that the movement change from within: "I too think that the message of a worthy cause is being drowned out by misogyny here. And then I became sad when all of the top comments were reeked of defensiveness or resorted to attacking feminists (for the millionth time) rather than addressing MensRights' own issues."

These reactions illustrate an important aspect of Reddit — even in its grossest corners, there's a lot of difference of opinion. Reddit's surprisingly heterogeneous, both on the large scale — r/mensrights versus raising money for sick kids — and on the small — hardliners versus more open-minded types within r/mensrights. According to Ohanian, that's because it's ultimately a way for people to talk to each other. He likened Reddit to Twitter in its ability to give a voice to both smart people and assholes. And he told me,

All of those aforementioned charitable programs on reddit are spontaneous creations from a bunch of random people who use our platform (reddit is a platform for building online communities) just like some (a very, very small minority) of users will use it for offensive content like on r/mensrights.

It's awful content, but every communication platform has been occasionally used for content we find offensive — we at reddit think very carefully about how to encourage and promote the positive content that makes up the vast majority of what people post.

Ultimately it doesn't make much sense to think of Reddit as good or evil, much as it doesn't make sense to think of the whole internet like that. Reddit's a tool for bringing people and their ideas together, one that's becoming increasingly powerful. And like any powerful tool, it can be really good or really, really bad.

How Reddit saved the world [Daily Dot]
Misogyny: The Sites [Southern Poverty Law Center]

Despite Rush Limbaugh's efforts, college students continue slutting it up! Their latest bit of scandalous whoremongering: a "Sex Fest" at Pennsylvania's Allegheny College. Luckily, the right-wing media is on the case, spreading misinformation about this alleged college bacchanal.

Sex Fest is scheduled for tonight at the Allegheny College Campus Center — myAllegheny describes it as "a night of food, fun, and games as well as important information about sexual health." Which, according to Ron Meyer of conservative site CNS News, is an outrage — he writes, "here at Allegheny College, feminist groups are treating sexual intercourse like a party." In addition to failing to portray sex as the grim but necessary duty it should be, Allegheny's Sex Fest organizers are apparently going to give everyone AIDS:

Like Slutwalk, SexFest is likely to persuade students to be promiscuous without having to consider the consequences by treating sex as a form of entertainment.

Even though this event that has been featured at a number of campuses across the country, such as Ithaca College, St. Mary's College of Maryland and University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth, Allegheny shouldn't want to add its name to the list. One message these events don't advertise is that sexual activity could lead to…STDs! Therefore, what is promoted as an event for sexual health awareness could actually encourage an overall unhealthy environment.

Given that the flyer for the event (left) explicitly mentions both condoms and "sexual health," it's a pretty good bet that the students in charge — Allegheny's Reproductive Health Coalition — will actually be mentioning the existence of STDs. They haven't yet responded to my request for comment, but their website (which appears to be under construction) includes a section on the importance of STD testing. The group has also been campaigning for Allegheny to bring a nurse practitioner to campus bi-weekly specifically to focus on testing, Pap smears, and birth control prescriptions. So the group seems quite aware of the risks of sex as well as its rewards.

A bit more concerning than Meyer's baseless claim that ReproCo has never heard of STDs is this allegation:

In addition to playing games, attendees will have the chance to purchase items from a company called Pure Romance. This organization has a similar party theme when speaking about sexual activity: "Empower. Educate. Entertain." Founded by Patty Brisben, who is described by The Globe and Mail as "a churchgoing mother of four who sells sex toys at private, in-home gatherings not unlike Tupperware parties," Pure Romance sells performance enhancing sex toys and lubricants.

Their website lists items such as "vaginal vibrators," "tie me up tape, "anal play" toys and many other bondage-type products to promote sadomasochism. In Allegheny's Campus Center, this company will be selling its wares in arguably the most frequented location on campus.

Meyer is scandalized by those "vaginal vibrators," but the real issue here is that Pure Romance's history on college campuses is somewhat checkered. Pure Romance sold toys at Yale's Sex Week back in 2008, and some have called the multilevel company a pyramid scheme — even though it pulled out of the event in 2010, Pure Romance's involvement may be one reason Sex Week almost got banned this year. Pyramid-scheme claims aside, letting a company sell sex toys at Sex Fest seems like it might commercialize an event that's supposed to be about health and safety.

It might — except it won't happen. A rep from Pure Romance told me,

Pure Romance is NOT involved in the event at Allegheny College in any way. I believe the confusion came about as a result of early conversations a student had with a Pure Romance rep regarding the event but nothing was ever confirmed and no one from Pure Romance is involved with the event.

So Pure Romance's involvement is rumor, and nothing more. In fact, Meyer's whole CNS freakout may have been precipitated by rumor — an Allegheny student told me that "one of our senior students informed CNS about [Sex Fest] and the article posted is not only misleading, it's trashing the entire school and any woman who is in control of her own sexual identity." If that's true, then basically a pissed-off senior emailed CNS with some hearsay about Allegheny, and Meyer printed it without checking any of it. Which is a great way to drum up outrage, especially if you don't give a shit about the truth.

'Sex Fest' Comes To Allegheny College: 'Food! Games! Condoms!' [CNS]

Welcome back to Guysourcing, where a panel of helpful gentlemen answer your questions! This week, inspired by a reader inquiry, we asked about erectile dysfunction: How does it happen? How often? What are your thoughts when it happens? How would you prefer a partner to respond? Below, guys share their stories of not-so-hard times.

Side effects

For me it happens mostly due to the Xanax I take for anxiety problems. It's rarely a complete failure but often a matter of not quite getting hard enough to penetrate or hard enough to penetrate but not hard enough for a condom to reliably stay on. Sometimes it happens because I've drunk too much and sometimes it happens just because I'm stressed (though strangely some types of stress can make me get much harder than usual.) It's hard for me to say how often it happens. I'm in an open relationship and with my primary partner we mostly do oral sex and other things, because for medical reasons she can't use hormonal contraceptives and I worry that given the Xanax issue the condom might slip off and since neither of us wants to be parents it just seems more responsible to find non penetrative ways to get each other off. Which means I don't pay a ton of attention with her as to how hard I get. That said, she and I sometimes do want penetration — at which point I just go and take a Viagra. That's sort of a pain in the ass though because Big V does have some speed based properties and does leave me sort of wired. She'll want to sleep and I'll be wide the fuck awake with my fifth erection of the night but too sore to even go into the bathroom to do anything about it.

When I have dates with other partners or potential partners I bring Viagra along with me and leave it up to them whether they want PIV or not. Either way I'm generally happy. I've found that some women find PIV really important, some don't. Some have been happy with the situation because they know it means I'll spend a lot more time on oral sex than the average dude will (and that's cool with me because I find going down on a girl to be as exciting, and sometimes more exciting, than actual fucking.) As to how I'd want a woman to deal with it? Just understand that sex isn't just about sticking it inside and it doesn't mean we have to stop making out, touching each other, kissing each other everywhere. Some women seem to to think that the lack of an erection means that the sexytimes have to stop — and they don't. Just because I'm not sporting wood does not mean I'm not turned on. I am, it's just the meds get in the way of the plumbing sometimes. Also understand that what my dick does has nothing to do with you or how attractive you are. It has nothing to do with you at all and simply has to do with my body chemistry.

Q&A

I've actually never had trouble getting hard ... I tend to have more trouble lasting long. In either case, if trouble arises, I think a nice way for you to respond is to keep your body close to his and make the problem less relevant by asking in a warm tone of voice, "would you like to _____?" or "would you like me to _____?". Fill in the blank with something sexual that you know he enjoys that doesn't require him to be hard. Perhaps safest are ideas not involving his penis: "would you like to spoon me?", "would you like to wrestle me and pin me down?", "would you like me to give you a back massage?", "would you like to spank me?", "would you like me to spank you?", "would you like to finger me?", "would you like to feel and kiss my breasts?", "would you like to feel and kiss my legs and ass?", "would you like me to peg you?", "would you like to put your head in my lap while I run my hands through your hair?", "would you like to do me with a strap-on or vibrator?", "would you like to hold each other and just look into each other's eyes for a while?" The two important factors are (1) that you are reasonably sure that you both enjoy this activity as an end in itself, and (2) that he doesn't worry that you are suggesting it as a means to get him hard. (To prevent that worry, you could follow up your sexy question with a clear statement like like "it's okay if we don't have sex tonight... I'm just asking if you'd like to _____ because it might feel nice for both of us.")

First times

Annoyingly, I've only had performance problems during my first couple times being intimate with a girl. I'm at my most nervous, I'm most focused on performing, and I'm at risk of just kinda...not achieving liftoff. After I get more comfortable with her, it ceases to be a problem. I think my brain and my junk are cross-wired to sabotage potential one-night stands. I hate when it happens; I feel like less of a man, like I'm trapped by my own shortcomings. And I've never had someone be cruel or unpleasant about it, but overcorrecting by excessive sympathy (too much head-petting, cooing, or "let's talk about it") can be almost as bad. The best thing a lady can do is not to overreact. "Sorry, that really sucks, but don't let it bug you. We'll try again later," would be my ideal reaction.

Dennis Rodman

Though I've yet to be blessed with what I'm apparently supposed to have every time I drink whiskey, I guess I'd hope that my partner wouldn't try to cheer me up with an almost backhandedly encouraging, "It's okay; it happens to everyone." But more importantly, I hope I'd realize that just because I'm not functioning correctly, that doesn't mean she isn't. Sadly though, knowing myself, I'd probably have to preface that by running around yelling stupid things like, "Well call me Dennis Rodman because my dick's broken!" until I remembered the task at hand. Then there's a good chance I'd laugh at "task at hand."

Image by Jim Cooke and Kazyavka/Shutterstock