According to the latest issue of Smithsonian Magazine:

To impress females, male houbara bustards strut, run, flash feathers and emit subsonic booms 18 hours a day for half a year. In young males, the more elaborate the display, the better the sperm. But extravagance has a cost. Scientists in Morocco found that after six years [or four years, according to this post], the most flamboyant males produce a greater proportion of abnormal sperm than do their duller counterparts.

Note Wednesday morning — Betty has reached her fundraising goal as of the 10 am EDT deadline. I scanned the list of donors and recognized several Planet Waves readers — thank you for contributing to this very worthwhile cause devoted to art and erotic freedom. A close friend is going to be in the film and I know she’s very excited about it; it was a similar production by Betty, created in the late 1980s, that affirmed my commitment to sex education in a particular style — sexy and fun. Thank you Betty and thank you to her many fans here at Planet Waves — efc

P.S. If you missed the kickstarter deadline, you can still donate to the project here! I just did. – amanda

I’ve introduced countless readers to the work of Betty Dodson, who holds the title Adviser in Chief: Sex and Masturbation on the Planet Waves masthead. I do her chart at EVERY astrology workshop — it is amazing (read about it here). Betty has plans to do a film project in September, and she’s raising her money on Kickstarter. Book of Blue LLC, the photo studio I created that was in many ways inspired by Betty’s work, has just donated $1,000. They have a little under $2,000 to go in order to make their fundraising goal — they’re really close. Once the goal is met, then they collect on the whole pie. Please consider making a contribution, for as little as $10. When this film comes out, you will be very happy you were part of it.

Good evening.

I was sharing an old article from Sexuality.org with a photo subject today, and ended up reading the thing out loud to my friend here in Maine. I had a lot of fun doing that so I thought I would share it with you. The article is called Mixed Emotions; it’s from an old series called Organic Love. The topic is three-way sex. So too is the topic of my new entry in Book of Blue, called Monogamy.

The series at Sexuality.org contains articles from about 1998 through 2002. When I post old articles about sexuality, I like to give a little caveat that I might say some things differently now; I know more, and I have evolved my language and thinking. But I am always happy to see that I am still true to the same basic ethos and that, in a sense, I was ahead of myself. The older stuff is also not in the style of personal narrative; I was not brave enough, or didn’t think I would be well received. I much prefer my new approach, only because it’s more fun and immediate. But my older stuff has a practicality to it; a bit of the how-to feeling, which is what I was going for.

I still remember getting an email the first time the editor of Sexuality.org picked up one of my articles — called Coming to the Revolution, which I originally wrote for Rob Brezsny’s website (hi Rob!). It occurred to me: wow, somebody is taking my ideas seriously.

This all being said, I bid you good night from a very lovely town on the sea.

Love and lovingly,

Portland, Maine

What do you get when you mix Mormons, a virgin porn czar and a high-speed internet connection? The most voracious consumers of subscription porn in the country.

Result number two when one Googles "naughty." Utah's citizens, according to Google Trends, is first in the nation in searches for "naughty," "pornography," "naked girls," "striptease," "topless," "nude" and "strip poker."

The Winter 2009 edition of the Journal of Economic Perspectives published some intriguing research from Benjamin Edelmen of Harvard’s School of Business [click here for the pdf]: In four different measurements analyzing broadband Internet connections and subscriptions Internet porn, Utah’s residents are the number one purchasers of online subscriptions.

High consumption of internet porn seems to be directly related to the level of social restrictions: states that ban gay marriage and are more conservative are more likely to watch heaps of porn. The Beehive state in particular (named for bees, not the hairdo) has duplicity down to a science.

Utah’s vocal about its opposition to pornography, and from 2001-2003 hired Paula Houston, a 41-year old virgin, as Obscenity and Pornography Complaints Ombudsman, aka Porn Czar. While the formal reason for ending the program was lack of funding, I’d venture a guess that the real reason was lack of chafing and increased use of two-handed typing.

Ms. Houston was a firm follower of the Church of Latter Day Saints (LDS), whose headquarters are in Salt Lake City. The LDS’ stance on pornography is unequivocal: “Using pornographic material in any way is a violation of a commandment of God: вЂ?Thou shalt not…commit adultery…nor do anything like unto it’ (D&C 59:6). It can lead to other serious sins. Members of the Church should avoid pornography in any form and should oppose its production, distribution, and use.”

While neither the Church nor the Porn Czar were able to stop Utah’s incessant watching and wanking, they did manage to slow it on Sundays. Mr. Edelman, author of the internet porn study, explains: “on the whole, those who attend religious services shift their consumption of adult entertainment to other days of the week, despite on average consuming the same amount of adult entertainment as others.”

by Eric Francis

If you want a revolution, liberating sexual pleasure is the place to start. And if all you want out of life is to be authentic, open-minded, creative and loving, opening up your sexual life-force is the heart of the matter. How do you do this? If you really want to be free, start with self-love. Learn to give yourself deep and satisfying orgasms, release your guilt and shame, and then watch what happens.

Guilt about sex is guilt about life. Guilt about your own sexuality and shame around your pleasure mean that you are struggling for life. Give up the struggle. Just come into yourself and be alive. In this article, I will give some suggestions for how you can practice doing this in some really fun ways.

I recognize that many of us are in some kind of crisis, living in a state of overload or feeling out of control; many of us are looking for direction, and in response, we’re seeking some form of spiritual enlightenment.

Virtually all enlightenment programs teach that love is the answer to everything, and many speak about loving yourself as the essential ingredient to this state of mind. The Golden Rule is to “love thy neighbor as thyself,” but notice that nowhere is there mention of physical self-love and self-pleasuring. Of course, if religion let on that giving yourself great orgasms was the easiest way to find God, love and freedom, you would probably have reasons for knocking on your neighbor’s door other than borrowing a cup of sugar.

And you’d have more creative things to do on a lovely Sunday morning than sit in a dark building hearing about what a bad person you are.

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To see more from contributing artist Susan Madsen, click here.

I’ve looked for sexual stimulation from outside sources since I had my first orgasm at 12, when my best friend ventured down to my vagina and didn’t come up for two hours. I’ve been chasing that orgasm ever since; first, from a foot massager I got as a present for Chanukah and, soon after that, I was on the family computer printing off erotic writing surreptitiously. I would scurry up to my bedroom with five pages at a time, nervous, flushed and excited to read the new stories, hoping I caught a good one with the limited time I had to scan it on the screen.

Christine from the Book of Blue. Photo by Eric Francis.

There was one story in particular that I kept crumbled between the wall and the frame of my metal trundle bed. It was about a girl who went out in the middle of the night to buy cigarettes from the 7-Eleven across the street. It was pouring rain, and all she had on was a long white tank top, which soon became sheer, leaving her the sole participant in the parking lot’s wet t-shirt contest. Out of the shadows, five men appeared and took their turns with her, touching her and jerking off and fucking her. I loved this story, and would remember every so often that it was there, pull it out and read those last few sentences: the culmination of the gang bang, over and over again until I climaxed.

This all occurred before I had my own computer and discovered video, before I really knew what feminism was and how much it would complicate and enrich my life in the future, before I knew I was gay. I was just a happy, porn reading, vibrator-using, masturbating adolescent. Then feminist politics came along and started teasing me, turning my seemingly innocent masturbation tools around. At first it was just a slight jolt, like the spinning teacups at the county fair. But feminism has a way of reconfiguring things, questioning the power inherent in every aspect of our lives in a wonderfully challenging and frustrating way; and eventually, I was on a ride that more closely resembled the Batman rollercoaster.

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“We are equal beings and the universe is our relationships with each other.”
–Thaddeus Golas, The Lazy Man’s Guide to Enlightenment

“The obstacle was not in Jacqueline, it lay deep within O herself, its roots deeper than anything she had ever before encountered. It was because RenГ© was leaving her free, and she loathed her freedom. Her freedom was worse than any chains.”
–Pauline RГ©age, Story of O

Rare Bird by Via | Psycherotica

For an entire generation or more, right-wing political movements have hit us on the head with “the return to family values” as a top-shelf intoxicant in their political agenda. Visionaries of regressive social movements see the decline of society reflected in the supposed breakdown of the nuclear family, and view the repair of society as starting with what they feel is its most basic cellular element, a fantasy consisting of Mom, Dad and the Kidz contained in a neat package, a centrally-air conditioned, mortgaged suburban home.

Yet equally political is the personal choice to exist in different kinds of family, or what some people call “love-style,” which includes the choice to have more than one lover or life-partner as a natural state of being. It is called “polyamory” or “panfidelity,” and the basic idea is in having committed, long-term relationships with more than one person. This is different than the polygamy of the Mormons or the Jews of the Old Testament because such families generally consisted of one man and a harem of wives. In many polygamous situations across the cultures, a man can have as many wives as he can afford to support.

Polyamorous situations, on the contrary, usually are extended families or networks of men and women who are striving for a more honest, egalitarian way of life. Polyamory distinguishes itself from “swinging,” which is a lifestyle generally involving weekend sex-play among married couples. Though couples involved in swinging often have long-term friendships, the essential nature of the marriages is usually quite traditional, with the couples frequently practicing what they term “emotional monogamy.” That is, it’s OK to have sex with other people, but it’s not OK to be emotionally bonded or in love with them.

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Though it may be difficult to see, we have a serious self-esteem problem in our society. We are, in short, either taught that we don’t exist, taught to hate ourselves, or some combination of the two. Most people you see walking around on the street don’t feel worthy of love. And this seems to be a matter of selflove, or the lack thereof.

Rosendale. Photo by Eric Francis.

Self-hatred is perpetuated by nearly everything we see in the media, but most particularly advertising. It is reinforced hundreds of times a day, perhaps more boldly than any other emotion.

If we are lacking self-esteem — a problem so pervasive as to be invisible — we are going to have a lot of problems in relationships. This can account for much of our stuff around jealousy. For example, if we need a relationship to know that we exist, then we will naturally feel that our existence is threatened if our partner so much as smiles at someone else.

If much of our trip in relationships is designed to cover up a lack of real self-awareness, we are adding several dense layers of complication to finding out who we really are. It would seem that the real solution to our relationship stuff, our jealousy, our loneliness and many other factors, is to figure out who we are, enter a conscious relationship with that person, and then take that into our relationships with others.

In other words, we need to get to the place where the most honest relationship we have in the world is with ourselves, and then let that overflow into our encounters with the people around us — not forgetting what order these things happen. Unfortunately, we are taught to have relationships with ourselves that are based specifically on denying and deceiving ourselves. This is a sad state of humanity, but one that could be easily addressed — if we were somehow relieved of the fear to look within.

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When I was living on Vashon Island in the Seattle area, driving around one day I discovered the island’s little airport. A guy named George gave flight lessons there, and walking into his hangar one afternoon, I told him I was curious to learn more. He handed me a book called Stick and Rudder, written in 1944, still considered by many instructors to be the definitive flight instruction text.

Naomi from the Book of Blue. Photo by Eric Francis.

Its author, Wolfgang Langewiesche, begins the book by telling students that an airplane is not a car, even though it smells like one. Many things about flight dynamics go contrary to what would be common sense on four wheels. On wings, it’s safer to be high up than close to the ground, and safer to go fast than to slow. Certain things that you must do as a pilot will violate every instinct in your body — such as when your airplane stalls, you need to point it directly at the ground to pick up speed and resume flying.

When we find ourselves in an “in love” situation, you could say that we trade in our wheels for wings, but with this we have to adapt to the logic of the new environment. It is not always easy to keep an intimate relationship aloft, and one of the most disturbing things that can threaten its staying aloft is jealousy.

You might think of compersion, which is about embracing the love and pleasure of our lover or anyone else, as a study in flight dynamics. This is akin to pointing the nose of an airplane downward when you go into a stall created by a jealous episode. It takes courage to do this in any event, but particularly when you’re caught flying low to the ground. But it may be the only way to keep from crashing.

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Northwest Herbal Faire in Bellingham, Washington is an annual, weekend-long outdoor festival where herbalists, flower essence specialists, and a wide variety of green witches and craftspeople gather to share their ideas and products, and listen to live music. In the Pacific Northwest, you can be sure it’s pretty good live music.

Photo by Eric Francis.

A few years ago, I was a returning presenter there, speaking about something called the Doctrine of Signatures.

This is the Hermetic principle that says (for example) that the Sun, sunflowers, gold, the heart, love, leadership and Leo are all part of the same idea. In astrology, we associate a planet and a sign; but astrology is part of a larger system of organizing the natural world, and there are many more associations than the few we usually hear discussed. The Doctrine of Signatures is what brings these associations together.

Scanning the workshop board when I first arrived, I noticed that nobody had scheduled a class or group of any kind that discussed sex. Despite sex being a lovely, vital and challenging part of the natural world, and a subject that is part of the practice of nearly anyone who works with others, I was not surprised. It’s a discussion that for whatever reason, people usually avoid, particularly in public. Even most therapists have no specifically required training in sex or sexuality. The ones that do most often acquire their knowledge on their own. It’s considered a kind of special interest, despite the obvious general appeal of the subject, and the fact that handling the subject well requires both literacy and a comfort level with the discussion.

So, looking at this workshop board, I had an idea. It started as a joke. I took an index card and marker and created an event called “Cunnilingus and Clover.”

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