Desire vs. Intimacy

This is a great Ted Talk a friend told me about from the author of "Mating in Captivity". I have often thought about how the idea of the nuclear family has led us to expect our partners to fulfill every need we have, when in fact that is the role of an entire social network (and I don't mean Facebook). I like how she tackles this topic and reminds us that in order for relationships to survive we need our own worlds and we need to be able to fulfill ourselves lest we devolve into co-dependence. She is a brilliant woman and after watching this I downloaded the audiobook version, which she reads in her amazing french accent. Hope you enjoy this, good food for thought.

The Genderbread person - the gender spectrum brilliantly explained in pictures.

Came across this wonderful info graphic recently and have been sharing it with all kinds of people in hopes of helping to shed light on the many facets of sexuality that kids, and all of us sometimes have a hard time grasping. I like how this speaks to the fact that there are spectrums of all these aspects of gender, and while a majority may appear to fall into one end or the other, in fact it's all pretty nuanced. One in 1000 babies is born intersex, with a mix of male and female genitals and more and more people are speaking up about the fact that their biology does not necessarily line up with their venter identity, or how they think about themselves. Despite being a country that is fairly progressive in terms of it's laws on homosexual marriage etc, we still hear "that's so gay" and I still have kids telling me "it just means happy". No it doesn't kid, so let's talk more about what it does mean.

Porn Sex V.S. Real Sex, the Differences explained with food

A great video that helps us get real about some of what we see, versus the reality, with great british narration. Good facts too. I showed this to some grade 10 girls this week and one said it may have ruined Nutella for her...so be warned.

Icebergs of Filth...

A friend just showed me this video, which I thought was a great conversation starter about pornography. I don't know that I think that all porn is always bad for all people, but I agree with pretty much everything that Russel has to say about this and am interested in what others think about this too. He also manages to do it in such a candid, funny and honest way and I appreciate him being honest about his own experience as a man and how he feels he has been shaped by his own porn consumption and the ubiquity of soft core porn in mainstream media (on billboards, in magazines, on the internet, an even in movies like 50 shades of Grey). He also quotes some research that has demonstrated the impacts this has started to have, especially on adolescents.