Kiwiblog

Cherie Howie at HoS reports:

Sex parties are attracting regular noise complaints from neighbours.

Auckland Council environmental control team manager Mervyn Chetty told the Herald on Sunday his officers were being called to noisy swinger parties by neighbours unaware of what was going on inside.

“They just hear loud music coming in from there but when the [noise control officers] get there and the door opens, it’s some weird swingers’ party. It’s happening a couple of times a month.”

Generally if I’m hosting a party that could be quite noisy, I’ll invite the neighbours to attend, as if they are at it, they won’t be trying to sleep complaining about it.

So that seems the obvious solution to those hosting sex and swinger parties – invite the neighbours along.

The Daily Beast reports:

Match.com gave The Daily Beast an exclusive first look at the results of its second annual Singles in America survey—a dive into the values, attitudes, and sexual patterns of 6,000 American singles. …

Been texted screen shots of the annual Durex survey about NZ MPs. They seem to have two additional questions this year. First the normal question:

Off memory John Key has won the male title for the last two years but with Winston back and a more prominent David Shearer, he may have competition. Also the addition of Jami-Lee Ross into the ranks. I suspect his harem in the Research Unit will be voting for him multiple times.

Nikki Kaye won the female award first time, and then Jacinda Ardern the following year. None of the new Green MPs are included (for which I am sure they are very grateful) so the old favourites may battle it out.

I suspect more women will answer this question, than men. But, hey who knows.

Another new category, with several different names there. I wouldn’t want to be the person who has to inform the winning MP, they have won.

Rachel Browne at Stuff writes:

A survey by Relationships Australia has revealed that people’s sex lives improve along with their income – and that the magic number for satisfaction starts at about A$80,000.

Only 44 per cent of people with a household income under A$60,000 a year are sexually active, compared with 81 per cent of people with a household income of more than A$80,000 a year.

Maybe this is why Labour is determined to tax higher earners more?

The Herald reports:

A homestay host wants the Education Ministry to issue guidelines on sexual matters after catching his 45-year-old wife having sex with a teenage foreign student the couple were hosting.

The North Shore man – who did not want to be named – said he had contacted police after his wife’s encounter with the 19-year-old South American, but was told they were powerless to help as the student was legally an adult.

Ummm, I think he need guidelines for his wife, not for the homestay students!

I mean one could tell homestay students that it is a bad idea to have sex with the wife of the host you are staying with. But I figured he knew that.

The man said he had faced issues in the past, where international students he hosted sneaked friends into the house late at night for sex.

“We really need to know what we can do in such situations, and I’ve suggested they add it to their pastoral care code. Is this something international students should be allowed to get away with?”

Well if you don’t let them smuggle their friends in for sex, then they end up having sex with your wife, so personally I’d let them bring home friends.

The Daily Telegraph reports the latest essential research:

A survey of 50 members of the Society for Sex Threapy and Research, who counsel and treat couples with sexual problems, suggested the time range for adequate, too short and too long copulation.

Oh yay an official guide. And the times are:

1. Too short: 1 -2 minutes (no kidding!)
2. Acceptable: 3 – 7 minutes
3. Desirable: 7 – 13 minutes
4. Too long: Over 13 minutes

I wonder how much taxpayer funding in the UK went towards this research.

The HoS reports:

According to a global survey on market research website onepoll.com, New Zealand women are the most sexually experienced in the world, with an average of 20.4 sexual partners in a lifetime, more than any other nationality.

Comedian Michele A’Court thinks the findings prove New Zealand women are more honest than those in other countries.

In the US, for example, some young women proudly proclaim their virginity, despite engaging in non-penetrative sex acts, she says. “Without making myself sound like a slapper, my initial reaction is that 20.4 doesn’t sound like a huge amount over a lifetime.”

20 is quite a bit more than Cactus Kate’s number and quite a bit less than Busted Blonde’s!

Society has changed massively in the last 30 years. Women used to not go to university, work for a few years, marry their first or second boyfriend in their early 20s and start popping out kids.

Now far more women than men go to university, and are career focused. I’d say the same proportion still want kids, but not until the early to mid 30s – and generally one or two only.

And this reflects in relationships also. As the baby age has got older, the marrying age has changed from 20ish to 30ish. And in that extra ten years of singledom, a couple of different bonks a year isn’t a huge deal.

Sexologist Dr Michelle Mars puts the result down to the failings of Kiwi blokes.

“New Zealand men aren’t very good at picking up women unless they’re really drunk. So what tends to happen is in New Zealand, women are just as likely to ask men to have sex as men are to ask women.

Heh, Australian women are even more, umm, assertive.

“While a lot of people would read that statistic quite negatively, I think it’s quite a positive. It’s more of a gender balance in people getting the kind of sex they want.”

Former gossip columnist Bridget Saunders, who is writing a book on bad sex, believes New Zealand women are “incredibly sexually active” and is worried by the trend.

“A lot of it is to do with the new ‘ladette’ culture,” she says. “It’s almost like wanting to be one of the boys, or to be more like one of the boys than the boys are themselves.”

One sees the ladette culture, in more than just the bedroom. Go to a rugby match – once they were 90% male spectators, and now there are huge numbers of female fans.

Society used to teach young men and women to have very different expectations in life. Women’s job was to get married and have kids, and men’s job is to get a good job and by the family provider. Men with multiple partners were studs and women were sluts. Men were seen as more suited to higher education, and women were not.

I think one of the best things about living in today’s world, as opposed to in the past, has been the increasing equality of women.  WWII started the cultural change, and it has been for the better – even if some people don’t like the fact that women are catching up to men in the bedroom stakes – not just the education and work stakes.

The Sydney Morning Herald (h/t Lindsay Mitchell) reports:

As we all know, hooking up for casual sex is bad for young people because it causes emotional or psychological damage.

Right?

Well, actually, no. At least not for young adults between the ages of 18 and 24, according to a new study by University of Minnesota researchers.

Even they found the results startling.

They asked more than 1300 young Minnesota adults about their most recent sexual encounters, their self-esteem and their emotional wellbeing. Interestingly, only about one-fifth of the subjects said their last encounter was casual. But their overall emotional status was no different than the four-fifths who said they were in committed relationships with their most recent sexual partner.

“We were so surprised,” said Marla Eisenberg, an assistant professor at the university’s School of Public Health who studies adolescent and young adult health.

“The conventional wisdom is that casual sex, ‘friends with benefits’, is hurtful. That’s what we’ve been teaching kids for decades,”, she said.

So friends with benefits is now officially deemed beneficial!

I’ve just blogged at curiablog, on a morality poll by UMR. Respondents were asked how morally acceptable (or unacceptable certain activities were. Below is the morally acceptable score for each activity and the net acceptable score (acceptable less unacceptable)

From most to least acceptable, they were:

1. Divorce 81%, +68%
2. Sex outside marriage 77%, +59%
3. Having baby outside marriage 71%, +48%
4. Stem cell research 63%, +38%
5. Homosexual relations 61%, +29%
6. Euthanasia 55%, +18%
7. Abortion 55%, +21%
8. Gambling 52%, +10%
9. Animal medical testing 52%, +12%
10. Wearing or buying fur 48%, +4%
11. Death Penalty 43%, -7%
12. Animal Cloning 27%, -40%
13. Suicide 20%, -48%
14. Married people having affairs 13%, -70%
15. Polygamy 11%, -74%
16. Human cloning 7%, -81%

Now this was asking about moral acceptability, not legality. So while only 55% think abortion is morally acceptable, that doesn’t mean only 55% think it should be legal.

Now what would my answers have been. None of the first ten I would regard as morally unacceptable. I do regard the death penalty as unacceptable – not keen on states being able to kill it citizens. Tend to regard suicide as morally unacceptable in most circumstances but not all (ie terminally ill). While generally I think it is not a good idea for married people to have affairs (and if married I would not), I’m wouldn’t label it as morally unacceptable as it is between those two people. I don’t think polygamy should be legal but nor do I regard it as morally unacceptable. And finally I don’t believe human cloning is automatically morally unacceptable.  I favour very very tight restrictions on it, but think there are potential benefits.

So bottom line is there is very little I believe is always morally unacceptable. Mainly just the death penalty really.

I’m sure very few here will agree with me!

Labour’s Mangere MP Su’a William Sio is showing some good leadership reports the Herald:

Open discussions about sex should be encouraged to prevent young women from getting rid of their newborns, an MP said.

Last Thursday a Samoan woman gave birth during a flight from Apia to Auckland and dumped the child in a rubbish bin. The woman was later found inside Auckland International Airport looking pale and bloodstained and was taken to hospital – with the child, who was found alive.

Mangere MP Su’a William Sio said it was not the first time a Samoan woman had tried to get rid of her newborn.

Cultural stigma and the shame of having a child while unmarried were some of the key issues surrounding why young women – both in Samoa and New Zealand – dumped their children, Mr Sio said.

“This is mostly derived firstly by fear – fear that they’ve done something wrong and fear of shame of the [unmarried] mother bringing to the family.” …

Mr Sio acknowledged that because many Pacific parents tended to shy away from talking about sex with their children, it was difficult for young unmarried women who found themselves pregnant.

I think Sio is right that the solution is changing the culture to one where young Samoan women especially don’t feel they can’t tell anyone they are pregnant.

A few years back at one workplace, one of the staff was a Samoan woman – probably aged around 25. One day she didn’t turn up to work. This was unusual as she was the most reliable staffer you could imagine. We were all worried something had happened, and then a bit before midday her boyfriend phoned to say she had given birth that mornng, so will be off work for a couple of days.

Everyone was pretty staggered. Partly because she didn’t look pregnant (and she was not large), but also because we could not work out why she wouldn’t have at least told her boss and arranged maternity leave, let alone give the office daily updates on her pregnancy like most pregnant women do

But of course that is where cultures can have such differences. It was a good lesson about not assuming everyone reacts the same way. It was somewhat sad though that what can be such a joyful period for many women, was seen as a period of shame or embarrassment.

The Herald reports:

VANCOUVER, British Columbia – The Chinese-Canadian film star in a racy scandal over photos that showed him in bed with eight of China’s best-known actresses and singers testified against the person accused of accessing his private laptop, which held the images.

They don’t make clear whether or not he was bedding all eight at the same time, or sequentially. It is an impressive achievement either way, but there is a key difference!

Sorry but can’t resist headlines like this one: Oral sex the new abstinence.

Is this like “Chocolates the new salad”?

“For young people it’s an almost universal practice now, with 90 percent trying it before the age of 30,” said Basil Donovan, a professor of sexual health at the University of NSW.

90% by age 30?? I would have said age 20.

Another sexual health expert, Dr Juliet Richters, author of the book Doing it Down Under, said she believed the rise of feminism was the key to the trend

Yay for feminism

The dramatic shift has occurred in one generation, with people aged over 50 having had oral sex for the first time an average of eight years after first having standard sex.

Good God.

“Now it’s a one year gap and in many groups the oral intercourse comes first, some times by a few years,” Prof Donovan said.

I would have thought that it was more common for oral sex to precede vaginal sex. I certainly know a few people who see oral as a sort of enhanced third base!

In the wake of John Edwards cheating in his cancer (but it was in remission) stricken wife, The Times has done a list of the ten best political sex scandals. They have five who got caught and five who did not.

1. The Profumo Affair (if you don’t know what that was, go back to school) – Secretary of War John Profumo with Christine Keeler who was also sleeping with a Russian spy.
2. Gary Hart (should be known to everyone over 30) – challenged the media to follow him, so they did – right to Donna Rice.
3. Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky. Her surname became slang for a blowjob. Also had the wonderful lawyerly defence that he did not lie when he said he had not had sexual relations with her, as he had not recipricoated her fellatio with cunnunlingus.
4. Lord Lambton – snapped in bed with two prostitutes in 1973. Said it was the pressure of the job and a battle over titles which made him do it, as he “sought to soothe this obsession by engaging in frantic activities such as gardening and debauchery”. Hmmn gardending doesn’t look that soothing to me
5. Eliot Splitzer and Ashley Alexandra Dupre – a very expensive hooker

And the five who did get away with it:

1. Francois Mitterrand – actually had two families, and this was basically never published until his daughter was pictured at his funeral.
2. JFK – Marilyn Monroe and scores or hundreds others.
3. FDR and Lucy Mercer. Mercer was 23 when it started in 1914 and they broke off after ELeanor found out but possibly rekindled during WWII, as she was with him when she died. It seems FDR’s daughter helped get them back together!
4. Lord Boothby had lots of affairs, and probably fathered one of the sons of his party leader – Harold MacMillan’s wife. He is thought to have fathered three children with the wives of other men, but also had an affair with Ronald Kray – the gangster.
5. John Major. I have been reading Alastair Campbell’s diaries and just got to the day where he says he learnt of Major’s affair with Edwina Currie. Says it was one of the few times in politics he was genuinely stunned.

Hat Tip: Andrew Bolt (who poits out all the US ones are Democrats!)

Most people will have seen a comment at some stage about how much money men spend on sex through dinners, presents, flowers etc.

Cactus Kate has reversed the equation and calculated how much money a woman spends on looking beautiful for men. Her calculations are:

Hair monthly (basic not “hair extensions”) $300 per month = $3600
Waxing and other beauty treatments $100 per month = $1200
Massage, pedicures etc $100 per month = $1200
Make-up/skin cleansers/toners and moisturisers = $300
Annual clothing spend on clothes you only wear out to meet men or with your man = $3000
Personal trainer/gym fees/education and reading material = $300 per month = $3600
Shoes. I consider it compulsory to spend lots of money on fabulous shoes = $2000
Phone calls/Drinks/lunches and dinners with girlfriends to drown your sorrows of bad relationships ie. therapy = $500 per month = $6000
Condoms & contraceptive pills (because lets face it – men over 30 years old totally suck at carrying rubbers) = $400 annually
Sex toys (again men have no clue so girls have to buy – Kiwigirl I am calling you out, you can add a zero here) = $500 annually
Pregnancy and STD checks (compulsory for anyone with half a brain and lets face it – the man doesn’t have to worry about being pregnant in the morning) = $250 per annum

So my rough estimation is a cost of $22,050 annually spent on looking and feeling good in the most part for men.

Kate goes on to say that if she gets sex only once a week then women are paying $424 per bonk, so men should stop whiming about their costs.

Her final advice:

So men, next time you take a single woman to dinner with the intent of asking her home afterwards, don’t ask her to split the bill.

Just shut the fuck up and pay.

Other financial words of wisdom from Kate have been how you don’t book her to fly economy class if you are flying business class!

The allegations against the UK rugby players are dominating the front pages over here in London. Even The Times has the lurid story as its lead.

An interesting story in the Herald on Sunday. I have to say there is a high degree of cynicism about the allegations, but that due process needs to be gone through, so unless people were in the room, no-one knows for sure what happened. A key issue will be whether charges are laid obviously.

Our own Samantha, Cactus Kate, reviews the Sex and the City movie. Don’t read it if you don’t want to know what happens!

The Centre of Comparative Genomics in Western Australia has found that sex between cousins is okay, with no serious genetic issues for most people.

It reminds me of a certain South Park song about uncles!

An amusing news report:

Police said a neighbor in Bellevue videotaped Art Price having sex — termed as “relations” — with his picnic table on four separate occasions, WEWS-TV in Cleveland reported.

It wouldn’t be illegal if he had put the umbrella in the right place to block views!

The Telegraph reports:

A survey of sex therapists has concluded that the optimal amount of time for sexual intercourse is three to 13 minutes.

The findings, to be published in the May issue of the Journal of Sexual Medicine, strike at the notion that endurance is the key to a great sex life.

However, the time does not count foreplay, and the therapists did rate sexual intercourse that lasts from one to two minutes as “too short”.

One minute? Is that even possible? Maybe when you are 16!

NZPA reports on the jailing of a 41 year old man for unlawful sexual connection with a 15 year old girl. While there is nothing funny about a young girl being exploited, I did have to laugh at this part of the story on how he got caught:

Defence counsel Elizabeth Bulger said: “It seems there was some affection between them. He was apprehended because he was taken home to meet her parents.”

Meeting the parents is not a recommended activity, if you are having sex with an under-age partner. And especially when you are probably older than the parents.

New York Governor Eliot Splitzer, has been named in a federal prosecution of a prostitution ring.

Now personally I don’t think the fact he paid up to $5,500 a time to bonk some high class hooker means he is unfit for office. But because he has prosecuted prostitution rings in the past and campaigned on ethics, the hypocrisy is notable.

Most pundits are picking he will resign. Time will tell.

A link from Frog Blog led me indirectly to this page, which has the top 10 ways to Green up your sex life.  A summary:

1. Sex toys made from glass, metal, silicone, hard plastics, or elastomers – and avoid those containing phthalates.
2. Organic lube – avoiding petroleum products, artificial scents, flavors, and colors.
3. Glyde condoms for vegans – no milk enzyme as in latex.
4. Gifts – Organic massage oils, fair trade chocolate, or a bottle of biodynamic red wine
5. Showering together can save water
6. Bamboo bed sheets (yes seriously)
7. Eco-undies
8. Going vegetarian to improve the taste of your “love juices”.  Their words – not mine.
9. Natural aphrodisiacs – ginseng, kava kava root, damiana leaves, kelp, tribulus, ginko biloba, rhodiola rosea, and horny goat weed!
10. Green matchmaking sites such as Green Drinks.

Where would we be without the Greens to help us with such good advice