The proposal to legislate for abortion under these limited circumstance was put forward by the Socialist Party TD Clare Daly, but it was roundly rejected by 111 votes to 20. Fine Gael, Labour and Fianna Fáil voted against the draft legislation.

According to Fine Gael TD Michelle Mulherin, fornication is “probably the single most likely cause of unwanted pregnancies in this country”. Fornication is sex outside of marriage, but what is largely overlooked in the abortion debate is that a very large percentage of unwanted pregnancies happen in marriages and long term partnerships. A great percentage of the women accessing abortion services in the UK and Europe are already mothers, but who do not have the financial means to care for another child. Unplanned pregnancies don’t just happen to teenagers who have had one too many Bacardi Breezers…

The Dublin Aids Alliance are offering free HIV and STI Testing at their office 53 Parnell Square West on Wednesday May 9th from 1:45 to 4:00pm. This is a walk in service so no appointment necessary.

It should be pointed out that the survey of 1000 British women was conducted by Wonderbra. So not exactly scientific evidence…

Now personally I don’t any problem with getting out the girls on a date. We all try and put our best…ehem… foot forward when we are after a little something something from the opposite sex. All’s fair in love and war as they say.

Nor do I have a problem with using your cleavage to attract a barman’s attention. But it’s useless if the server happens to be female or is a gay man. But I can’t see how having great cleavage is a boon in the workplace. If anything it’s a problem. At least that’s according to some of my better endowed friends who complain that (some) male superiors treat them like silly dolly birds because they happen to have cracking cleavage. Not something I’ve ever had to worry about, she sighs.

The Wonderbra survey also asked who had the best cleavage and the winner was TV personality Holly Willoughby. So because I’m nice, here’s a pic of Holly!

Since 2006 the landmark Toronto sex store, Good For Her, has been running the Feminist Porn Awards. The idea behind the awards was to give kudos to erotic films, documentaries and websites that challenge stereotypical depictions of sexuality, whether this be female or male sexuality. The awards also highlight films that depict marginalised sexualities in a positive light.

In order to be considered for an award, a female director, producer or writer has to have been involved OR the film must depict female pleasure in a realistic and believable way OR it has to challenge the sexual stereotypes and boundaries common in mainstream and commercial porn.

The 2012 nominees has been released and includes straight sex, gay sex and educational videos such as Tristan Taormino’s Expert Guide to Advanced Anal Sex.

The whole thing seems pretty insulting to men, as if the presence of a woman turned them into slavering beasts. It also seems a bit ridiculous. After all, men spend their days surrounded by women – working with women, studying at the same colleges, catching buses, trains or sharing the same road space, queuing in banks or coffee shops etc etc. None of these are segregated spaces, which if this study was correct, would mean that men spend their days in a fug of indecision and stupidity.

I can imagine that a specific woman (or man) might have an effect… being around someone whom you find particular attractive can scramble anyone’s brains. But this study says that merely the presence of women is enough to affect men’s ability to think (or impairs their cognitive function to use the shrink jargon.)

It’s always wise to be a bit sceptical about psychological studies. A great deal of the time, meta-analyses of all studies covering a particular topic show that the evidence cannot always be reliably replicated, or that other studies contradict the initial findings, or that the effects are so slight they are negligible.

Recently I wrote a post for the Oxford Dictionaries Blog about sexist language to tie in with International Women’s Day. One of the things I was curious about was why terms for sexually promiscuous men and women are so different. Being labelled a “slut” is negative, while being called a “playa” just doesn’t carry the same judgement.

Anyway, I decided to research these words and find out their etymology. The OED tracks a word’s meaning and usage by finding examples of it in print.

Slut is of doubtful origin. The earliest reference to it comes from as far back as 1402, and used to mean a slovenly or untidy woman. The first known reference to slut as a promiscuous woman is from around 1450 – “Com forth, thou sloveyn! com forthe, thou slutte!”

Here slut is used ambiguously and could refer to a woman of unclean habits. Clearer examples can be found in Nicholas Breton’s 1577 Floorish vpon Fancie (“To haunt the Tauerns late And swap ech slut, vpon the lippes, that in the darke hee meetes”) and Robert Burton’s The Anatomy of Melancholy from 1621 (“A peevish drunken flurt, a waspish cholerick slut.”). Of course, references to unclean habits don’t necessarily exclude sexual behaviour – since 1599 dirty has been used to mean ‘morally unclean’, ‘impure’ or ‘smutty’.

Slapper used to mean a large object or a strapping, or overgrown person. In its modern sense the term found its way into the 1990 Bloomsbury Dictionary of Contemporary Slang, which describes slapper as a working-class term from East London and Essex meaning ‘prostitute’ or ‘slut’. It’s possible that the word may have its roots in the Yiddish schlepper, meaning an ‘unkempt, scruffy person; gossipy, dowdy woman’ but its etymology is unclear.

Slightly less egregious – although not by much – is bimbo. Bimbo comes from the Italian, bambino, meaning ‘little child’. In American slang it dates from around 1919 and was originally used as a contemptuous term for ‘fellow’ or ‘chap’ but since the 1920s bimbo has been used to describe a prostitute or a sexually attractive woman of little intelligence, which is now the usual sense of the word.

While slut and slapper are the most common terms in use today, there are plenty of synonyms for them – tart, harlot, minx, jade, strumpet, hussy, trollop and tramp. While there are equivalent terms for men, these don’t carry the same pejorative connotations.

Consider the slang neologisms such as manwhore and playa. The amusing if not terribly scholarly Urban Dictionary defines manwhore as (among other things) ‘a badge of f***ing pride’, and notes that ‘it is “cool” and “hip” to be labeled as a “playa”. A female version of this would be slut.’

Older terms for promiscuous men include philanderer – “a man who philanders; a male flirt”; rake, which the OED explains is “a fashionable or stylish man of dissolute or promiscuous habits”; and sybarite, who we may disapprove of for being “devoted to luxury or pleasure” and “an effeminate voluptuary or sensualist” to boot. As I’m sure you’ll have noticed these terms are not in frequent usage these days, nor are whoremonger, lecher, debauchee or roué. Even playboy sounds a little outdated to contemporary ears.

Playboy originates from Irish English and refers to a wealthy man who pursues pleasure, is irresponsible and sexually promiscuous. The original playboy was Christy Mahon from JM Synge’s 1907 play, The Playboy of the Western World, although these days when most people hear the term they think of a dirty magazine and the smoking-jacket-wearing old codger who made a fortune from it.

A look at the actual study itself shows that the sample of women surveyed were from Samoa and New Zealand, which means the results are culturally specific.

I was wondering what y’all think: beards – yah or nay?

I’m confused…

How exactly is that possible? This would only make sense if there were significantly more women in the UK than men, but of course, that’s not the case. The population is divided roughly in half.

Maybe I’m missing something here but it seems to me that if there were 1000 men each with an average of 10 separate partners, that’s 10,000 sexual experiences. If there are 1000 women each with 5 sexual partners that’s 5,000 sexual experiences. Something is wrong here as 5,000 separate sexual encounters are missing (or added). If there were a few women, picking up the slack, who had a huge amount of sexual partners that would raise the overall average anyway.

I suspect that the old cliché that there are “lies, damn lies and statistics” may be the issue as data is only as reliable as the method of collection and when it comes to sex, people tend to lie. Like blazes.

Firstly, if the data was collected using face-to-face interviews, you can be sure that there was plenty of fudging of the facts. Secondly, people tend to lie in anonymous self reporting surveys too. It’s partly to do with lying to yourself especially if you are uncomfortable with the truth. Thirdly, what people regard as sex differs. Some people regard oral sex as sex, whereas others see it as a more intense form of making out. As Bill Clinton infamously remarked of his encounter with Monica Lewinsky, “I did not have sex with that woman.” Strangely enough, some people would disregard penetrative sex too if they didn’t enjoy it or it didn’t result in an orgasm.

I guess the more pertinent question is: does it matter how many partners you have had? If you are safe, free of disease and treat all your partners with respect, does it matter if you’ve had one or one hundred? Probably not, but being insecure, jealous and possessive humans we do seem to be overinvested in our partner’s sexual score and, what’s more, judge him or her accordingly. Until that changes, the chances of finding reliable sexual statistics is unlikely.

Labiaplasty is on the increase in the UK (and presumably here too). According to the British Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology there was an increase of 70% in operations compared with 2007 1,118 labiaplasty operations on the NHS in 2008; 669 in 2007 and 404 in 2006.

I’m all for genital grooming, but anything involving scalpels can result in loss of sensation or complications.

You can read all about it here.