Technology: Sex, love and robots: is this the end of intimacy? - by Eva Wiseman

The world is ending. The sports fields are empty, the science labs closed. No babies have been born for years. Cut to a split screen of human and robots kissing passionately. “They’re trapped!” says the narrator, voice like gravel.

“Trapped in a soft, vice-like grip of robot lips.” Words slam against the screen, a warning. “Don’t. Date. Robots.”

Except Futurama’s 2001 episode “I Dated a Robot”, with its post-apocalyptic world of silvers and blues, wildly overestimated how long it would take before this fear became flesh. It’s November 2015, and in Malaysia, where humidity is at 89% and it is almost certainly still raining, David Levy, a founder of the second annual Congress on Love and Sex with Robots, is free to talk on the phone – he is less busy than planned. “I never expected to end up here,” he says. I hear a shrug.

The Congress on Love and Sex with Robots was meant to begin on 16 November, but was deemed illegal days after Levy arrived from London. “There’s nothing scientific about sex and robots,” inspector-general of police Khalid Abu Bakar told a press conference, explaining why. “It is an offence to have anal sex in Malaysia [let alone sex with robots].”

“I think they thought people would be having sex with robots or some strange thing like that,” Levy’s co-founder Adrian David Cheok said afterwards, explaining that they had planned a series of academic talks about humanoid robotics. But some strange thing like that, some strange thing like a human having sex with a robot, is what Levy, Cheok and others are predicting is almost our reality. They have seen the future of sex, they say, and it is teledildonic.

Sex, love and robots: is this the end of intimacy? | Technology | The Guardian

Switzerland: Sexual assistants: The stigma of helping disabled Swiss

For several years now, Jacques Arnould has been giving disabled people in Switzerland the right to a little tenderness and sexual attention. But for many, his work as a professional "sexual assistant" treads a thin line between a caring profession and prostitution.

Aged 50 and married with three children, Jacques is one of the rare Swiss assistants to openly speak out about the services he provides. Even in Switzerland, where the job of sexual assistant has had a proper legal status for more than eight years, the subject remains taboo.

The job of the sexual assistant to respond to these needs and give people who might otherwise have little chance of being sexually active due to their handicap the opportunity to feel like a normal human being.

For more: Sexual assistants: The stigma of helping disabled Swiss

Turkish sex researchers: "Size" really does matter after all - by Judy Mandelbaum

Fat is fun! At least, that’s the word from Turkey this week. Researchers at Erciyes University in Kayseri have just completed a year-long study correlating body mass index (BMI) and male sexual performance. Their findings: men with excess body fat last longer in bed. In fact, heavier men were able to make love for an average of 7.3 minutes, while slender men could count themselves lucky if they held on for a mere 108 seconds.
 
The reason? Female hormones. Men with excess fat showed higher levels of the female estradiol sex hormone. This substance apparently disrupted their bodies’ natural “male” neurotransmitter chemicals and slowed their progression towards orgasm. Ironically, the less masculine their bodies appeared, the better lovers they proved to be.


For more: Turkish sex researchers: "Size" really does matter after all - Judy Mandelbaum - Open Salon

The Netherlands: STI Rates Among Swingers

In 2008 the Dutch government set up a system whereby sexual health clinics could track STI rates among swingers in much the same way they do for other groups identified as being at greater risk for STI infections (e.g. men who have sex with men, sex workers, youth). When an individual comes to one of the free clinics for testing they are asked about swinging. Specifically, if they identify themselves as heterosexual, as being part of a couple, and as having sex with other heterosexuals, they're tagged as swingers. Granted this may not be the way everyone would define swinging, but it's something.

Apparently the system isn't getting used consistently across the Netherlands but a team of researchers in South Limburg compiled data from a two year period starting in January 2007 that sheds some light both on demographics and potential risk profiles for swingers. Just under 12% of people coming to the clinics were identified as swingers. This number is much higher than the estimate of 2% of the U.S. adult population which was previously proposed by researchers.

In terms of risk for STIs the paper looked at tests for chlamydia and gonorrhea and noted that swingers, particularly swingers over 45, had a higher prevalence of STIs when tested at the community clinics. In fact they had the second highest rate of combined STIs among the four groups considered (which, in addition to swingers, included men who have sex with men, sex workers, straight people who weren't swingers).

For more: STI Rates Among Swingers

baltimoresun.com: Sex, Health & Happiness - "Things are looking UP" Deborah Kotz

For the complete report from the baltimoresun.com/US News and World Report click on this link

Sex, Health & Happiness - "Things are looking UP" Deborah Kotz

Comedian George Burns once cracked that "sex at age 90 is like trying to shoot pool with a rope." Clearly, he was speaking for his own generation. Today's seniors, their sex lives liberated long ago by one pill and extended indefinitely by another, have every intention of staying in the game. The scope of the sexual shifts launched by Viagra a decade ago--perhaps as monumental as those triggered by the birth control pill--is now becoming apparent. A July study published in the British Medical Journal found that considerably more 70-year-olds are enjoying sex regularly than 30 years ago: 57 percent of men and 52 percent of women today versus 40 percent and 35 percent back then. (And that's before the baby boomers arrive with their outsize expectations.)

About one quarter of those ages 75 to 85 are now sexually active, according to recent research from the University of Chicago. "We used to think seniors didn't have sexuality at all," says Helen Fisher, a professor of anthropology at Rutgers University and author of Why We Love.

"Viagra has caused many older people to put sex way up front in their relationships." That could explain why U.S. sales of the little blue pill and two newer drugs have skyrocketed to more than $1.5 billion--or 19 million prescriptions--a year, causing drug companies to salivate over the possibility--still distant--of a "pink Viagra" for women. Further along in the pipeline: a testosterone gel to reverse libido loss after menopause and a pill that boosts desire by acting on serotonin receptors in the brain.

A Scottish study found that people who enjoy sex every other day looked about seven to 12 years younger than their peers, on average.