Posted on 05/08/2005 3:09:58 PM PDT by wagglebee
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - From bondage to "breath play" and zoophilia, it's not easy keeping up with society's fast-developing sexual trends.
That's why some of North America's top sexologists are hunkered down with academics and therapists at a Fisherman's Wharf hotel this weekend: to swap findings about everything from teens with underwear fetishes to transgender couples.
"These couples have problems that I didn't know how to deal with," said Olga Perez Stable Cox, president of the Western U.S. region of the Society for the Scientific Study of Sexuality. "You have to understand the culture, otherwise you're an outsider, and you don't get it."
The theme for the society's four-day conference is "Unstudied, Understudied And Underserved Sexual Communities." Presentations range from discussions from autoerotic asphyxiation, or "breath play," to zoophiles, or animal lovers, to more mainstream topics like sex motives of dating partners.
"Let me tell you, it was not easy finding these pictures," Hunter College professor Jose E. Nanin told his audience in a seminar about "specialized" sexual behavior among gay men.
Nanin's photos are more than an explicit how-to of exhibitionism and sadomasochism, he says; they are examples of safe alternatives to sexual intercourse that need to be de-stigmatized in order to fight diseases like HIV/AIDS.
Researchers say their greater goal is to help the medical community, the public and legislators figure out what behavior is merely out of the norm versus downright dangerous.
"As sex researchers, one of our concerns is distinguishing what can be harmful and what is not -- so that instead of being based on myth, public policy can be informed," said Charlene Muehlenhard, professor of psychology and women's studies at The University of Kansas.
When authorities caught a Midwestern U.S. teenage boy stealing girls' underwear, they immediately demonized his underwear fetish, Pennsylvania State University researcher Patricia Barthalow Kosch said. Many clinicians attribute the boy's crime more to broken family relations. The crime was theft, not his sexual fantasies, conference attendees said.
Teen sexuality draws sensational headlines, but suffers from a lack of academic study, researchers said.
Kim Openshaw, a psychology professor at Utah State University in Logan, Utah, who studies teenage sex offenders, said the limited amount of research so far has found that girls make up only 5 to 10 percent of all underage sex offenders.
The numbers are underreported, Openshaw says, because many people are reluctant to acknowledge the problem.
Victims of girl sex offenders tend to be in the immediate family circle. Most perpetrators are victims of family abuse. By contrast, boy sex offenders tend to be more macho, violent and attack outside of their immediate family.
I'm tellin ya, I thought they were all pretty popular, what with them bein' sex and all, but it turns out there are new and different acts from the ones I used to know.
>>"Breath play" or auto-erotic asphyxiation, is a practice whereby a person (usually a male, although it might be engaged by some women as well) attempts to "enhance" his orgasm by bringing himself to a point of near asphyxiation while engaging in "self-pleasuring."<<
Breath play is actually a broader category that includes auto erotic breath play. Autoerotic aspyxiation is then a subset auto erotic breath play.
But basically breath play is anything erotic involving control of breathing.... for example having a partner wear a gas mask.
http://public.diversity.org.uk/deviant/bfbreath.htm#Safety
LOL, left yourself open on that one......
Ever screw in a light bulb?
and it took me forever to pick out the shards....
Yea, but that tagline says it all.....;)
It's funny...sort of how they found out about him. The sicko did't even try to hide what he did. He mounted the animals in the field right beside the road. Cars were coming by and everything.
Once even while a school bus was going by..yuk...
When I was a teenager, we boys had a popular sex act. It was called getting a girl's underwear off. Unfortunately, it was considered unpopular by the girls [most of 'em anyway]. Apparently they just misunderstood our needs. Ya think "how to" pictures might have helped?
Amazing, ain't it? The rest of us have to filter to avoid the pictures, and this guy can't find them? I should send him my spam.
Nowadays you could get a judge to order prudes like these to undergo "sensitivity" training.
I think the real problem isn't that he can't find them; he just doesn't want to PAY for them
As per Encarta
desire for animals: a sexual attraction to animals
See, Laz, that's what you are missing to get the women. The alpaca needs to be wearing a gas mask. ;)
I'm an amputee and you're a "puke"
He must have been severely wrong in the head... ugh.
You're a tougher person than I am.
Umm, very perverse 'bestiality'? Unlike the normal run of the mill bestiality like you'd see at the Kennedy/Clinton compound??? Too funny.
I'm just kidding with ya.
You mean Almost your penis is a body part.
Kinda of brave to be on a sex thread with your screen name.
I saw an ad in a magazine for bread and it said:
You can't Change a Man
Unless he is in diapers.
How dumb, my adult son is a quad and so I didn't find it funny, nor will I ever feel comfortable purchasing their bread product.
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