So it’s Come to This… (for Octomom)
With the rate Octomom is going, she’ll be a bonafide porn star in no time. Which is sad, as she won’t appear in my weekly media roundups. (I generally stick to a no-XXX policy, as it would be way too easy for this column to get too “inside baseball,” if you know what I mean.) So savor this while it lasts… or throw up your hands and thank god that the end is near — though I’m betting most of you are feeling both …

A Mature Look at Masturbation
With the rising tide of those who choose to live single, Mel van Driel proposes that masturbation may be a very important life skill. I couldn’t agree more — part of a healthy outlook on sex begins with appreciating that some of the best sex you have is sometimes with yourself.
It makes sense, after all. Who knows you better than you do? And what better way is there to explore your true heart’s desire without worrying about the judgment of society at large or at least …

Facebook’s Attempts to Shut Down Faceporn and Other Face-Related Sites a Big Faceplant 
You might have heard a lot about a small website called Facebook this week. Something about an IPO, something about raising $100 billion dollars, and something else about investors suing about the numbers not quite adding up. Sound familiar?
While it seems that Facebook could do no wrong (except for that possible discrepancy in its valuation), this little nugget went unreported for the most part — Facebook lost its case to shut down a another site, Faceporn. But Facebook’s …

Teacher in Florida School Fired for Premarital Sex
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again — Florida is America’s weirdest state. Maybe it’s something in the water. Maybe it’s because it really wants to be Hawaii. Maybe it’s because it’s shaped like a flaccid penis.
The latest case in point is a school that fired a teacher on the grounds of premarital sex. On one level its quaint, considering that the country is going forward accepting the right of two people of the same sex to be as miserable as …

China Bans Gen-Xers from Sex on Gondolas
Between censoring anything that has to do with my livelihood (porn) and cracking down on my interests (artistic pursuits and individual rights) China’s someplace I might want to visit but not really someplace I’d want to live.
But if there’s anything that proves that people are the same no matter where you are, it’s their need to have sex. I suppose if you’re in a country with over a billion people, it could be pretty hard to find someplace to get a little alone time.
Thirty-somethings …

Current Administration Adds Abstinence as an Effective Sex Ed Program
Hey progressives, liberals and Democrats — thought the bad old days of “abstinence-only” sex ed were over, now that we have a president who doesn’t list “Jesus” as his favorite philosopher?
Think again.
The Department of Health and Human Services is still listing the advocates of “abstinence-only” sex ed (aka “We’ll just pretend the kids won’t act on their hormones”) as an “evidence based program” that meet something called an effectiveness criteria to prevent teenaged pregnancy. To be fair though, zero is a …

Conservatives Offended By “Porn” in (Elective) College Class, Refuse to Leave Class During Naughty Bits
In institutes of higher learning, you’d hope people would keep an open mind. More importantly one would hope that students would be able to exposed to all sorts of material — even sexually explicit material — because these are adults we’re talking about.
Most would call this a well rounded education, and what most expect from a university or college environment. But I suppose conservatives would describe this as “liberal learnin’!”
Fresno State lecturer Peggy Gish, who teaches …

Lifetime is All About the Happy Ending
Lifetime, the network for women that out-Oprah’d Oprah before she even though of starting OWN, hasn’t been known as being very progressive when it comes to portrayals of sex.
If you thought the only kinds of movies made by Lifetime are either about women being raped and/or overcoming abusive husbands, you’d be in very comfortable company with many other people. However, its latest series stars ’90s teen idol Jennifer Love Hewitt (probably known more for her boobs than her acting) in “The Client List.” Hewitt …

Iran Outs 3,500 Women as Ninja Army, Fan Fiction Sure to Follow
Take any object of nerdlust and put two breasts on it and you’ll have an instant following men imagining what those women look like naked. Photoshopped images of anthropomorphized female transformers and porn are what the Internet’s built on, after all.
So when Iran announced that they had their own army of female ninjas (I am not kidding), it’s a sure bet that it didn’t strike terror into the hearts on infidels but spark comments of “How hot is that?!” …

Virtual Female Voices Develop an Attitude
By now you’ve heard of Siri, Apple’s HAL 9000-esque virtual assistant unveiled with the iPhone 4S. While limited voice recognition and voice response is nothing new with machines and computers, the media attention that accompanies all Apple launches raises the question as to why so many of them have feminine voices.
The conventional wisdom is that people find female voices soothing since a mother’s voice is the first a baby hears. But some are wondering if machines taking on a woman’s voice means sexism is being …