Over the 4th of July weekend, Jessica Pentz and her husband, Nate, were vacationing in Wisconsin when she realized she left her oral contraception at home. She stopped at a Walgreens drugstore to pick up condoms but the clerk refused to sell condoms “because of my faith.” Continue reading “Walgreens Clerk Refused To Sell Condoms ‘Because Of My Faith’”
A scene from Boy Culture: The Series Some news items you might have missed: • Boy Culture: Boy Culture: The Series will make its ‘down under’ debut at the 2022 Mardi Gras Film Fest in Australia, and will also be featured at the premier LGBTQ film fest of London, BFI Flare. Continue reading “News Round-Up: February 23, 2022”
(images via Depositphotos) A recent thread on reddit asked folks to chime in with “the worst sex-ed advice you received at school?” A lot of comments shared how little sex education was actually offered in their schools with many hailing the saving grace of the Google – “Thank God for the internet, seriously I don’t know what I would have done.” Abstinence made several appearances in the thread:
• “Don’t have sex or your penis will fall off.”
• “If you have sex, you will get gonorrhea, and you will die.”
• “Haha, we had an hour and a half long lecture about abstinence, in high school.”
• “Virginity is like a handkerchief. If you let some boy sneeze in it, do you think anyone else would want to use it?”
Of course, masturbation was a big topic:
• “Masturbation elongates your penis. Half of my class was just tugging their slugs for the rest of that afternoon.”
• “When I was homeschooled, my mom told me that masturbating caused cancer because you’d be too aggressive to your ballsack due to ‘the motion.’ I feel bad for my father now.”
• “In seventh grade we had a speaker come talk to the whole school in the auditorium. This motherf**ker told us that if we pleasured ourselves, we were statistically much more likely to be rapists and pedophiles. Every guy in that room including myself felt instantly ashamed. F**k that guy.”
Condom use was addressed from several angles:
• “Condoms are worthless so don’t bother.”
• “Wrap it twice, just as nice.”
• “What you do is you put one on and then ad hot-sauce and then put on the other one. You will notice if one of them breaks.”
Not quite advice, but one Redditor did share a fascinating sex ed ‘factoid’ we’ve never heard:
• “My sex ed teacher told us, ‘Ejaculate is the whitest substance on Earth.'”
Several remembered getting a sex ed/morality lesson using two pieces of tape, like this one:
• “My teacher took two pieces of tape and stuck them to her sleeves. She would then peel them off and re-stick them to her sleeves getting the backside of the tape more linty each time. She said that the pieces of tape were people and every time she put them on her sleeve it represented them having sex with a different person. Eventually, when she put them together, they didn’t stick very well from all shirt fibers and this meant they were so emotionally disconnected they couldn’t form a lasting bond. So don’t have sex or you’ll be a broken shell of a person unable to love.”
And then there are these random thoughts:
• “They didn’t tell us u need to use lube. They just said it’ll work out some way. Fun story: I’m gay sooooooo yeah, that hurt… Like, really really bad.”
• “That lubricants are not needed ‘if the man is doing his job right.'”
• “Not school but my mom told me that anal could get somebody pregnant. But since I’m gay this doesn’t matter.”
• “I was homeschooled. All my dad told me was “you stick it in, you jizz, then it’s over..” Thanks, dad.”
• “It was unsolicited sex advice from a psych TA. ‘Don’t go into dark alleys because you WILL end up having sex in there.’ With whom? No freaking idea. Maybe the weird alley sex goblins.”
• “We were told that a wet dream produced an amount of fluid tantamount to wetting the bed. They didn’t even tell us what fluid it was.”
• “That men had to be circumcised before having sex or the foreskin would rip, leading to all kinds of infections, permanent injury, or even death.”
• “‘Men are completely incapable of controlling themselves.’ Made it sound to everyone like we had no control over our bodies, thoughts, or actions, and that we spray urine and semen at everything that crosses our path.”
Click over to the AskReddit thread for more nuggets of sex-ed here.
A new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows a startling rise in the number of cases of syphilis, gonorrhea, and chlamydia in 2018. The CDC’s annual Sexually Transmitted Disease Surveillance Report indicates more than 2.4 million infections of the three STDs were reported in 2018, an increase of more than 100,000 from 2017. The New York Times reports the CDC points to multiple factors for the increase:
• A decline in condom use among young people and men who have sex with men
• Increased screening among some groups
• Cuts to sexual health programs at the state and local level
There were more than 115,000 cases of syphilis reported in 2018 representing an increase of 71 percent since 2014. Gonorrhea cases increased by 5 percent in 2018 to more than 580,000. That’s the highest number reported to the center since 1991. And chlamydia diagnoses rose by 3 percent in 2018 to more than 1.7 million cases. Again, a record-breaking figure for the CDC.
The report noted that gay and bisexual men were disproportionately represented in the increase in infection rates. Fifty-four percent of all syphilis cases in 2018 were found in men who have sex with men (MSM).
Unfortunately, these figures may not be a full accounting of STDs in America today as many cases of syphilis, gonorrhea, and chlamydia go undiagnosed.
While we’re big proponents of the use of PrEP (pre-exposure prophylaxis), it’s easy to wonder if MSM are putting themselves at more risk than they imagine by not using condoms…?
• Austin Wolf does the “How Hard Did Age Hit You?” challenge (above). I wish age would hit me that hard… LOL. And is it just the fact I’m older that I think most people’s ‘after’ photos look better?
• Ohio’s new GOP governor has signed a new executive order banning LGBT discrimination in regard to state business.
• Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii has declared her candidacy for the Democratic presidential nomination, but does her history as a full-throated homophobe disqualify her?
• The Houston Public Library has been sued over a city-sponsored Drag Queen Story Hour by haters who say the event violates their ‘religious freedoms.’ Several similar events have taken place across the nation in an effort to promote literacy.
• Donald Trump is reportedly distancing himself from Republicans possibly losing the House after the midterm elections telling friends privately, “These are their elections … and if they screw it up, it’s not my fault.”
• Scientists have invented a ‘self-lubricating’ condom. The surface contains polymers that capture moisture from water and bodily fluids, trapping liquids on the condom for a consistently slippery feel.
• Some states are reporting higher than usual early voting in the midterm elections with Democrats outpacing Republicans which could signal a “blue wave.” Las Vegas reported the first day turnout was triple that of the last midterm elections.
• Upcoming pop recording artist, LIVVIA, recently released her first official single, “Damn,” and has already garnered almost half a million views on YouTube in only two weeks.
In addition to creating some hooky pop music, LIVVIA also put in the time and effort to graduate this past Spring from the prestigious University of California, Berkeley with a degree in Economics.
Smart and talented – there you go.
“Damn” debuted on the Top 20 of Spotify’s New Music Friday & Apple Music’s A-List Pop. Check it out below.
This video, featuring a mucho macho Spaniard, shows the proper ways to work with condoms.
I’m sure if this guy – even speaking Spanish – taught my high schools’ sex-ed classes more folks would have paid attention 🙂
Hunky (and shirtless) Tony Duque brings up lots of issues: failure to unroll all the way, using lubrication, incorrect removal and more! Think of the unwanted pregnancies and STIs that could have been avoided.
Note: NSFW. Actual penis shown as part of the demonstration.