Links for Keyword: Sexual Behavior

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What’s So Bad About a Boy Who Wants to Wear a Dress?

By RUTH PADAWER The night before Susan and Rob allowed their son to go to preschool in a dress, they sent an e-mail to parents of his classmates. Alex, they wrote, “has been gender-fluid for as long as we can remember, and at the moment he is equally passionate about and identified with soccer players and princesses, superheroes and ballerinas (not to mention lava and unicorns, dinosaurs and glitter rainbows).” They explained that Alex had recently become inconsolable about his parents’ ban on wearing dresses beyond dress-up time. After consulting their pediatrician, a psychologist and parents of other gender-nonconforming children, they concluded that “the important thing was to teach him not to be ashamed of who he feels he is.” Thus, the purple-pink-and-yellow-striped dress he would be wearing that next morning. For good measure, their e-mail included a link to information on gender-variant children. When Alex was 4, he pronounced himself “a boy and a girl,” but in the two years since, he has been fairly clear that he is simply a boy who sometimes likes to dress and play in conventionally feminine ways. Some days at home he wears dresses, paints his fingernails and plays with dolls; other days, he roughhouses, rams his toys together or pretends to be Spider-Man. Even his movements ricochet between parodies of gender: on days he puts on a dress, he is graceful, almost dancerlike, and his sentences rise in pitch at the end. On days he opts for only “boy” wear, he heads off with a little swagger. Of course, had Alex been a girl who sometimes dressed or played in boyish ways, no e-mail to parents would have been necessary; no one would raise an eyebrow at a girl who likes throwing a football or wearing a Spider-Man T-shirt. © 2012 The New York Times Company

Related chapters from BP6e: Chapter 12: Sex: Evolutionary, Hormonal, and Neural Bases; Chapter 7: Life-Span Development of the Brain and Behavior
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 8: Hormones and Sex; Chapter 13: Memory, Learning, and Development
Link ID: 17157 - Posted: 08.13.2012

Evolutionary battle of sexes drives human height

By Stephanie Pappas Senior Writer For women looking to pass on their genes, it pays to be short. For men, tall is the ideal. The result? An evolutionary tug-of-war in which neither gender reaches their perfect height. Those are the results of a new study published Aug. 7 in the journal Biology Letters. The research finds that an evolutionary battle of the sexes keeps the genders in an endless feedback loop of height variations across the generations. "We should not simply assume that when a trait is beneficial for one sex, that selection or evolution will necessarily favor this trait," study researcher Gert Stulp, a scientist at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands, told LiveScience in an email. In the same way, traits that harm one sex but not the other may not be "weeded out" by natural selection, Stulp said. "This may even hold for health-related traits, such that genetic underpinnings beneficial to the health of one sex may increase the susceptibility to disease in the other sex," he said. In modern western societies, studies have found that women who are on the short side tend to have more children. In contrast, average-height men do the best, reproductively speaking, outpacing short and tall men in number of children fathered, Stulp said. © 2012 NBCNews.com

Related chapters from BP6e: Chapter 12: Sex: Evolutionary, Hormonal, and Neural Bases; Chapter 6: Evolution of the Brain and Behavior
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 8: Hormones and Sex
Link ID: 17140 - Posted: 08.08.2012

The way your pupils dilate may show sexual preference

By Susan E. Matthews The way people's pupils react when they see other people is an effective way to assess sexual orientation, according to a new study. The reactions of study participants' pupils revealed that heterosexual men responded most to images of women and homosexual men responded most to images of men. Additionally, researchers found that homosexual women responded most to images of women, and heterosexual women expressed arousal in response to both men and women, though they were more likely to choose to watch men. Previous studies have shown that people's pupils widen in response to seeing others who they find attractive; the new study showed that, indeed, a person's sexuality is evident in their pupils' responses. Results also revealed that bisexual men were attracted to both men and women, an idea that has been disputed, and that heterosexual women may be aroused by both genders, despite being straight. "The pupil reacts very quickly, and it is unconscious, so it's a method that gives us a subconscious indicator of sexuality," said lead study author Gerulf Rieger, a researcher at Cornell University. Sex researchers don't always want to rely on people's own reports about who they are sexually attracted to, because cultural and societal pressures can influence what people say, he explained. The findings are detailed today (Aug. 3) in the journal PLoS ONE. © 2012 NBCNews.com

Related chapters from BP6e: Chapter 12: Sex: Evolutionary, Hormonal, and Neural Bases; Chapter 18: Attention and Higher Cognition
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 8: Hormones and Sex; Chapter 14: Attention and Consciousness
Link ID: 17128 - Posted: 08.06.2012

Zoologger: colour tricks help put a cuckoo in the nest

by Will Ferguson Let's face it, child rearing isn't for everyone. Midnight diaper changes, a seriously compromised social life, and trading in the two-seater coupe for a mid-size sedan can be too much for some of us to handle. Readers who find themselves in this category might be reassured to know there's at least one other creature on the planet that is, in all likelihood, even more keen to shirk parental responsibility. The common cuckoo is notorious for pawning off its young on other birds, like the Eurasian Reed Warbler (Acrocephalus scirpaceus). Unfortunately for these more willing caregivers, the cuckoo is a ruthless parasite. Upon hatching, young cuckoos push their surrogate brothers and sisters from the nest, leaving the unsuspecting host with a single cuckoo chick rather than a brood of its own. For obvious reasons, reed warblers have never been happy with the arrangement. They will attack female cuckoos on sight, reducing the chance of their nest being targeted. However, the sly cuckoo has developed an innovative way to avoid hostilities. Female cuckoos have evolved two different guises to minimise the chance of being recognised and attacked by warblers. It's unusual for female birds of a single species to come in different colours, but the phenomenon is surprisingly common for female cuckoos. Some are brownish-red, while others have grey, hawk-like plumage that deters other birds from attacking them. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Women’s brains may age prematurely, possibly because of stress

By Michael Slezak, Even though women live longer than men, their brains seem to age faster. The reason? Possibly a more stressful life. As people age, some genes become more active while others become less so. In the brain, these changes can be observed through the transcriptome, a set of RNA molecules that indicate the activity of genes within a population of cells. When Mehmet Somel, a computational biologist at the University of California at Berkeley, and his colleagues compared the transcriptome of 55 brains, they found that the pattern of gene activation and deactivation that occurs with aging appeared to progress faster in women. “This was just the opposite of what we’d originally expected,” says Somel. He says that because women have longer lives, his group had expected to see slower or later aging-related brain changes. “But it fits everyday observations on aging. Not all organs within an individual age at the same rate.” Somel’s team compared the expression of more than 13,000 genes in four brain regions. In the superior frontal gyrus, which has been associated with self-awareness, the researchers found 667 genes that were expressed differently in men and women. Of those, 98 percent were skewed toward faster aging in women. Some of these gene changes have been linked to general cognitive decline and degenerative disease. © 1996-2012 The Washington Post

Related chapters from BP6e: Chapter 12: Sex: Evolutionary, Hormonal, and Neural Bases; Chapter 15: Emotions, Aggression, and Stress
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 8: Hormones and Sex; Chapter 11: Emotions, Aggression, and Stress
Link ID: 17120 - Posted: 08.04.2012

Fruit flies offer DNA clue to why women live longer

Scientists believe they have discovered a clue to why women tend to live longer than men - by studying fruit flies. Writing in Current Biology, they focus on mutations in mitochondrial DNA - the power source of cells. Mitochondria are inherited only from mothers, never from fathers, so there is no way to weed out mutations that damage a male's prospects. But one ageing expert said there were many factors that explained the gender difference in life expectancy. By the age of 85, there are approximately six women for every four men in the UK, and by 100 the ratio is more than two to one. And females outlive males in many other species. In the research, experts from Australia's Monash University and the UK's Lancaster University analysed the mitochondria of 13 different groups of male and female fruit flies. Mitochondria, which exist in almost all animal cells, convert food into the energy that powers the body. Dr Damian Dowling, of Monash University who was one of the researchers, said the results point to numerous mutations within mitochondrial DNA that affect how long males live, and the speed at which they age. "Intriguingly, these same mutations have no effects on patterns of ageing in females," he said. BBC © 2012

Related chapters from BP6e: Chapter 12: Sex: Evolutionary, Hormonal, and Neural Bases
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 8: Hormones and Sex
Link ID: 17119 - Posted: 08.04.2012

Our Brains See Men as Whole and Women as Parts

By Stephanie Pappas women, men, processing image, social psychology People focus on the parts of a woman's body when processing her image, according to research published in June in the European Journal of Social Psychology Image: Yuri Arcurs, Shutterstock A glimpse at the magazine rack in any supermarket checkout line will tell you that women are frequently the focus of sexual objectification. Now, new research finds that the brain actually processes images of women differently than those of men, contributing to this trend. Women are more likely to be picked apart by the brain and seen as parts rather than a whole, according to research published online June 29 in the European Journal of Social Psychology. Men, on the other hand, are processed as a whole rather than the sum of their parts. "Everyday, ordinary women are being reduced to their sexual body parts," said study author Sarah Gervais, a psychologist at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln. "This isn't just something that supermodels or porn stars have to deal with." Numerous studies have found that feeling objectified is bad for women. Being ogled can make women do worse on math tests, and self-sexualization, or scrutiny of one's own shape, is linked to body shame, eating disorders and poor mood. But those findings have all focused on the perception of being sexualized or objectified, Gervais told LiveScience. She and her colleagues wondered about the eye of the beholder: Are people really objectifying women more than men? © 2012 Scientific American

Zoologger: Sloths have slothful attitude to mating

by Michael Marshall If you believe the Manic Street Preachers, there is no true love – just a finely-tuned jealousy. Once we've decided that another person is our special someone, we can become dangerously possessive and murderously unwilling to share them with others. Such all-consuming jealousy has a major downside: it's just so much effort. What if you can't be bothered? That seems to be how Hoffmann's two-toed sloths treat their sexual partners. Males do defend territories from rivals, but their slothful natures mean they aren't much good at holding onto females. Slow, so slow All sloths have a reputation for being lazy. This is sometimes exaggerated – they don't sleep much more than humans do – but basically correct. Sloths have unusually low metabolic rates and spend hours each day doing nothing. Hoffmann's two-toed sloth is a case in point. It spends the day hanging upside-down from branches high in trees, often hidden away within tangles of vines. During the night the sloths move around and feed, often for 7 or even 11 hours. But they're not exactly athletes, moving along branches at just 14 centimetres per second. They are also completely and utterly antisocial. Unless they're mating or caring for a youngster, you hardly ever see more than one sloth in a tree. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Dumpling squid slowed down by sex

By Ella Davies Reporter, BBC Nature Promiscuous dumpling squid take 30 minutes to return to normal swimming speed after mating, say scientists. The short-lived cephalopods, named for their rotund shape, are known to mate with as many partners as possible. Researchers studying this behaviour found that swimming endurance was halved after mating for both sexes. They described mating as "costly" for the squid because it reduced the energy available for avoiding predators and feeding. The study of wild-caught squid is published in the Royal Society journal Biology Letters. A dumpling squid Dumpling squid hide from predators amongst sea-grass or buried in silty seabeds during the day "The squid mate for up to three hours and the male must physically restrain the female during this time," said researcher Amanda Franklin from the University of Melbourne, Australia. "It was exciting for us to show that this affects their physical abilities after mating because this has not been shown before." Dumpling squid (Euprymna tasmanica) are members of the bobtail squid family and found along the southern coast of Australia. BBC © 2012

Related chapters from BP6e: Chapter 12: Sex: Evolutionary, Hormonal, and Neural Bases
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 8: Hormones and Sex
Link ID: 17060 - Posted: 07.18.2012

Zoologger: Inbred wandering albatrosses sleep around

by Michael Marshall As Katie Holmes has just demonstrated, sometimes a marriage can hit rocky patches. The question is, what do you do then? Marge Simpson has expounded (and demonstrated) one approach to the problem: "You've got to stick it out, even if you picked the loser… to the bitter end." That's one solution, but it's not the one the wandering albatross applies. Despite forming lifelong pair-bonds, wandering albatrosses are far from paragons of steadfast monogamy. They may stick with their partners year after year, but their relationships are distinctly open. A long-term study of one population offers a possible explanation for the birds' cheating hearts. Stick with me Wandering albatrosses have the largest wingspan of any bird, at 3.5 metres or more, although other birds are heavier. As their name suggests, they spend most of their lives wandering aimlessly around the chilly Southern Ocean, hunting for fish and other marine animals. Every other year they breed, returning to one of a number of isolated islands. One such site is Marion Island in the southern Indian Ocean, which been continuously monitored since 1987. Once they've reached maturity, wandering albatrosses find a long-term partner. Courting pairs stand facing each other, spread their wings and cry out. Each bird also points its beak skywards before clapping it. Once the bond is established, which can take three years, the pair will normally reunite every two years until one of them dies. Females prefer males of about their own age, who should live as long as they do. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

The Bowerbird's Sexy Optical Illusion

by Kat McGowan When she’s looking for a mate, how does a female know what she likes? Macho mating displays—turkeys strutting, lions roaring, bighorn sheep colliding—quickly tell her who is biggest and burliest. But some females prefer a more subtle approach. Evolutionary ecologist John Endler of Deakin University in Australia discovered that among great bowerbirds, pigeon-size birds native to northern Australia, females are dazzled by craftsmanship. In nearly every species of bowerbird, males impress females by building elaborate structures called bowers: long, twiggy corridors that open to a courtyard decorated with small objects. Great bowerbirds go one step further, creating optical illusions to intrigue the ladies and make them more likely to mate. Endler realized the wooer uses a trick called forced perspective. The birds arrange objects by size, so the smallest are closest to the entrance and larger pieces farther away. From the female’s point of view inside the corridor, the bigger, more distant items look about the same size as the nearby smaller ones. The courtyard may appear smaller, potentially making the male seem larger to deliberating females. Photographers regularly use the same trick. If you stand some distance from the Leaning Tower of Pisa, a friend can take a picture that looks as if you are propping up the tower. Creating this illusion is a priority for great bowerbirds. When Endler rearranged their objects, they put their courtyards back in order within three days. © 2012, Kalmbach Publishing Co.

Related chapters from BP6e: Chapter 12: Sex: Evolutionary, Hormonal, and Neural Bases; Chapter 10: Vision: From Eye to Brain
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 8: Hormones and Sex; Chapter 7: Vision: From Eye to Brain
Link ID: 17036 - Posted: 07.12.2012

Firefly sex success: the secret is in the gift-giving

By Victoria Gill Science reporter, BBC Nature, Ottawa, Canada Male fireflies, known for attracting mates with a flash of light, also seduce with a gift, say scientists. This gifts comes in the form of a spermatophore: a package containing sperm and nourishment for the female. Researchers from Tufts University in Boston, US, found that females preferred males that had the largest, most nourishing gift. The team presented their findings at the First Joint Congress on Evolutionary Biology in Ottawa, Canada. With supervision from his colleague Sara Lewis, who has been studying fireflies for 20 years, Dr Adam South used LED lights to mimic the flashes of amorous male fireflies. They showed one group of females artificial male flashes in patterns and durations that had been proven attractive in previous studies. Another group of females saw "unattractive" flashes. In the wild, females are very picky about what males they reveal themselves to during this part of the courtship routine. Females will only "flash back" to males they are attracted to. But in this experimental set-up, after several minutes of the courtship flashing, males and females were paired together in miniature chambers. The Tufts biologists filmed the encounters under infrared illumination to see what was happening when the lights went out. BBC © 2012

Is Your Child Gay?

By Jesse Bering We all know the stereotypes: an unusually light, delicate, effeminate air in a little boy's step, an interest in dolls, makeup, princesses and dresses, and a strong distaste for rough play with other boys. In little girls, there is the outwardly boyish stance, perhaps a penchant for tools, a square-jawed readiness for physical tussles with boys, and an aversion to all the perfumed, delicate trappings of femininity. These behavioral patterns are feared, loathed and often spoken of directly as harbingers of adult homosexuality. It is only relatively recently, however, that developmental scientists have conducted controlled studies to identify the earliest and most reliable signs of adult homosexuality. In looking carefully at the childhoods of gay adults, researchers are finding an intriguing set of behavioral indicators that homosexuals seem to have in common. Curiously enough, the age-old homophobic fears of many parents reflect some genuine predictive currency. J. Michael Bailey and Kenneth J. Zucker, both psychologists, published a seminal paper on childhood markers of homosexuality in 1995. Bailey and Zucker examined sex-typed behavior—that long, now scientifically canonical list of innate sex differences in the behaviors of young males versus young females. In innumerable studies, scientists have documented that these sex differences are largely impervious to learning. They are also found in every culture examined. Of course, there are exceptions to the rule; it is only when comparing the aggregate data that sex differences leap into the stratosphere of statistical significance. © 2012 Scientific American

Sex endows evolutionary advantage in tough conditions

by Michael Slezak Evolutionary biologists have a problem with sex in difficult places. Earth's complex and varied environments should, in theory, offer asexual species advantages over their sexual counterparts, says Matthew Goddard at the University of Auckland in New Zealand. An asexual species should adapt more quickly to a specific niche in the environment than a sexual species, because gene mixing between sexual individuals from different niches will produce maladapted hybrids that will not reliably pass on useful adaptations. "All else being equal, the sexual populations should be outcompeted by asexual populations," says Goddard. But the evidence around us suggests that this doesn't actually happen: environmental niches are almost always far more complex than the simple set-ups used in most lab experiments, and yet sexual species abound. To get a clearer idea of what is going on, Goddard and his Auckland colleague, Jeremy Gray, turned to yeast, single-celled organisms that can reproduce sexually or asexually. Goddard and Gray created two environments for the yeast in their lab – one containing relatively little carbon at an uncomfortably hot 37 °C, the other limited for nitrogen instead, at a less stressful 30 °C but with an "osmotic stress" caused by an unusual balance of salts. The researchers then placed sexual and asexual populations in both environments. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Related chapters from BP6e: Chapter 6: Evolution of the Brain and Behavior; Chapter 12: Sex: Evolutionary, Hormonal, and Neural Bases
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 0: ; Chapter 8: Hormones and Sex
Link ID: 17007 - Posted: 07.07.2012

Zoologger: The fish with its genitals on its head

by Michael Marshall The male fish, a Phallostethus cuulong just 2 centimetres long, weaves between drifting vegetation in the sluggish waters of a canal. He closes in on a female, swims alongside her and tries to mate with her. But to an outside observer, he seems to be doing it wrong. His head is right next to the female's, but he's at a 45-degree angle so his rear end is well below hers. Sounds misguided, but actually he's doing it exactly right – it's just that his gonads are on his head. This is the challenge faced by all priapiumfish, a little-known group of Asian fish that have their reproductive organs on their chins, just behind their mouths. How does this Cronenbergian arrangement work? Phallic fish P. cuulong is only the 22nd known priapiumfish, which are named after the ancient Greek fertility deity, Priapus. They all belong to a family called Phallostethidae and live in south-east Asia. The new species was discovered in July 2009 by Koichi Shibukawa of the Nagao Natural Environment Foundation in Tokyo, Japan. He saw one swimming alone in a canal near the Mekong River in Vietnam, and managed to catch it in a net. Working with colleagues at Can Tho University in Vietnam, he realised it was a new species. Male priapiumfish don't have a penis like humans and other mammals. Instead they have a unique organ called a priapium, which faces backwards and looks like a muscular nozzle. It's actually a modification of the fish's pectoral and pelvic fins. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Two-Faced Fish Tricks Competitors

by Sarah C. P. Williams Talk about showing your feminine side. On one flank, a courting male cuttlefish looks like a normal male of his species, with tigerlike stripes extending horizontally down his skin. But on the other, he resembles a female, displaying marbled browns and whites. He needs the male pattern to attract the female, while the female motif keeps competing males from fighting him. That’s scientists’ best guess for now, at least, to explain the devious cuttlefish behavior that they’ve observed and reported for the first time. “Cuttlefish are a very smart group of fish,” says lead researcher and ecologist Culum Brown of Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia. “And it’s pretty obvious that they are specifically using this display in a tactical way.” Researchers knew that cuttlefish (Sepia plangon) could camouflage their skin to match their surroundings, and that they could show different patterns on each side. Their skin contains a highly concentrated layer of chromatophores—various colored pigment-containing cells—that can be moved closer or further from the surface to change the pattern on the fish. But scientists had never seen a male fish mimicking a female on only one side as a trick of courtship. Brown and his colleagues first observed the behavior in a large aquarium in their lab. They wondered whether males in the wild did the same thing, and if so, when and why. So they combed through photos of 108 distinct groups of cuttlefish taken on previous dives of Sydney Harbour. They found that when a male was in a group with one female and one other male, he displayed the dual patterns—a male side facing the female and a female side facing the male—39% of the time. In other situations, such as an all-male group or a male matched with two females, the dual display was never seen. © 2010 American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Related chapters from BP6e: Chapter 12: Sex: Evolutionary, Hormonal, and Neural Bases
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 8: Hormones and Sex
Link ID: 17004 - Posted: 07.05.2012

New Olympic testosterone-testing rules for female athletes spark debate

By Helen Shen, Globe Correspondent The International Olympic Committee has issued new rules for the 2012 London Games that would require checking testosterone levels in athletes whose eligibility as females is called into question. Several elite female athletes have previously been accused of secretly being males, including South African runner Caster Semenya , who was investigated and later cleared after her 2009 world championship victory in the 800-meter event drew accusations from competitors. The IOC says its intent is to identify athletes who would be ineligible “by reason of hormonal characteristics” -- not to determine gender, but the policy has drawn criticism. Stanford University bioethicist Katrina Karkazis said the inclusion of a gynecologist and geneticist on the IOC examining panel contradicts this message. “It’s way more than a blood test or a series of blood tests. There will be genital exams, there will be genetic testing,” she said. Athletes will be disqualified to compete as females if they are found with testosterone levels typical of males, and if they possess cellular receptors that respond to the hormone’s effects, which include boosting muscle mass and strength. “They chose something that really does discriminate between males and females,” said Dr. Joshua Safer, an endocrinologist at Boston Medical Center and expert in transgender care. Testosterone levels vary from one individual to another and, for a given individual, can vary widely by time of day. But the overall ranges of testosterone are about 10 times higher in men than in women, he said. © 2012 NY Times Co.

Related chapters from BP6e: Chapter 12: Sex: Evolutionary, Hormonal, and Neural Bases; Chapter 5: Hormones and the Brain
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 8: Hormones and Sex; Chapter 8: Hormones and Sex
Link ID: 16999 - Posted: 07.03.2012

Mysterious Phenomenon of Orgasm Headaches

Content provided by Jeanna Bryner, LiveScience Sometimes mind-blowing sex is not cause for celebration, as some individuals experience intense headaches that explode in pain at the moment of orgasm. Until now, only two cases of these sex headaches had been reported in teenagers. Two new cases, 16-year-old boy and an 18-year-old girl, bring the odd, though not life-threatening, phenomenon to light. And doctors are hoping the sex-headache cases will make both other doctors and teens aware of the temporary disorder. "What I wonder about is whether there are many other adolescents out there who are having this problem and aren't telling anyone," said Dr. Amy Gelfand, a neurologist at the University of California, San Francisco School of Medicine. "This is why pediatricians should be aware of this, so an adolescent doesn't have to raise this issue." About 1 percent of Americans have experienced a headache as the result of sex, called a primary sex headache, in their lifetimes; about 50 percent of individuals who have primary sex headaches also get migraine headaches. Even so, their cause remains a mystery. Primary sex headaches come in two varieties — one that gradually builds up in intensity during sex and the other develops explosively at orgasm. © 2012 Discovery Communications, LLC.

Related chapters from BP6e: Chapter 12: Sex: Evolutionary, Hormonal, and Neural Bases; Chapter 8: General Principles of Sensory Processing, Touch, and Pain
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 8: Hormones and Sex; Chapter 5: The Sensorimotor System
Link ID: 16993 - Posted: 07.03.2012

More Women Look Over the Counter for a Libido Fix

By ABBY ELLIN Since Ms. B. entered her mid-40s, she says, sex has been more about smoke and mirrors than thunder and lightning. She is rarely if ever interested enough to initiate it with her partner of 10 years, and she does not reach climax during the act. She wishes it were otherwise. “Sex just isn’t a priority anymore,” said Ms. B., 45, a professor in New York who spoke on the condition that only her last initial be used. “Still, it would be nice not to feel sexually dead.” Ms. B.’s plight is far from unique, and now the marketplace is starting to respond. In the absence of a government-approved female counterpart to men’s potency drugs like Viagra, Cialis and Levitra, many women are turning to over-the-counter products, including lubricants, arousal gels, massage oils, nutritional and herbal supplements, and vibrators. Drugstore chains are now selling these products right next to the bandages and heating pads. K-Y Intense, a female arousal gel that claims to heighten clitoral sensitivity, is sold in Walmart, Walgreen and Rite Aid. Sensuva’s ON, an arousal oil, can be found in 640 GNC stores nationwide. Intimina by LELO, an “intimate lifestyle line” that manufactures personal massagers, apparel and “intimate cosmetics,” is sold at Pharmaca Integrative pharmacies. And Zestra Essential Arousal Oil is now sold in 1,800 Walmarts, up from 880 in 2010. “The average woman in a committed relationship is having sex once a week,” said Rachel Braun Scherl, president of Semprae Laboratories, the manufacturer of Zestra, which recently signed Kris Kardashian Jenner as a spokeswoman. “Our idea is not to get them to have more sex — it’s that if they’re having sex they should enjoy it.” © 2012 The New York Times Company

Related chapters from BP6e: Chapter 12: Sex: Evolutionary, Hormonal, and Neural Bases
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 8: Hormones and Sex
Link ID: 16992 - Posted: 07.03.2012

Loving some complex melodies? You could be ovulating! Or not.

By Scicurious Before I started college, there was a sudden rage amongst my male friends. A rage for one specific thing. Not phones or computers or cars or clothes. Nope. It was for a guitar. Most of the guys I knew, in the year or two before college, suddenly became obsessed with the guitar, picking out melodies, trying to match still changing warbling voices to a hopefully tuned instrument. I couldn’t figure it out. What was up with the guitar obsession?! Some of these people were people who never had displayed a musical bent their entire lives, and here they were, sitting experimentally on the benches outside my school with guitars in hand. Finally, I asked my brother (who also, of course, had taken up the guitar), why every guy seemed to want to play the guitar. Why not the cello or the piano or the trombone or the kazoo? My brother rolled his eyes at my denseness. “For the GIRLS, of course” (And yes, specifically, they ALL wanted to play this song. I would hypothesize that about 80% of the men I know can pick out this song on the guitar. Considering that a substantial portion of the female populace does indeed have brown eyes, I realize the efficiency of this method, but for those of us with non-brown eyes, this song is IRRITATING BEYOND BELIEF. This has been a public service announcement.) © 2012 Scientific American

Related chapters from BP6e: Chapter 12: Sex: Evolutionary, Hormonal, and Neural Bases; Chapter 9: Hearing, Vestibular Perception, Taste, and Smell
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 8: Hormones and Sex; Chapter 6: Hearing, Balance, Taste, and Smell
Link ID: 16937 - Posted: 06.20.2012

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