Rome Considers Zone of Tolerance for Prostitutes

Italian prostitutes (The Telegraph)

The Roman neighborhood of EUR is considering enacting various “zones of tolerance” around the city within which prostitution would be legal. Certain places would off-limits, such as public parks, churches and schools. This makes sense: A country-wide law dictates that cities can issue boundaries on where prostitution can and cannot occur. This is a bit of a legal loophole in Italy, where aiding prostitution is illegal (but restricting it to certain areas is fine), but paying for sex is totally cool.

Naturally, the prostitutes themselves are not happy with this, as it would cut into their business. The Catholic Church isn’t too pleased either, for obvious reasons.

There are precedents for these zones: In 2012, Montreal was mulling a similar thing, but wanted to restrict it to one street, away from the busy main thoroughfare. In 2006, the English town of Ipswich considered a tolerance zone after a spate of prostitute murders shook the community.

EUR hasn’t come (heh) to a conclusion yet, but it’ll be interesting to see what precedent this sets for the city, Italy and the rest of the world.

How Does Marijuana Affect Sex?

Medical marijuana grows, May 15, 2013, at the River Rock Medical Marijuana Center’s natural light cultivation site in Denver. (Anthony Souffle/Chicago Tribune/MCT)

Happy Friday! Some people have strong stances on whether or not they enjoy having sex while on marijuana or not. This makes sense anecdotally, but what do the numbers say?

Well, the data is split too. In the studies done on how marijuana affects sex (and there aren’t many), respondents are split on whether the drug enhances, inhibits or doesn’t affect fornication at all.

Studies have been done in the U.S. in the 1970s and 1980s, and in Canada during the last decade five years apart. The first study centered on hormone suppression by way of the drug, but failed to find any results. The 1980s study found that most respondents found using marijuana enhanced sex, though for other it had an adverse or negative effect on the act. Both of the two Canadian studies found that using marijuana enhanced sex for around half, or just over, the respondents.

More research is needed, especially since each of these studies had minuscule sample sizes (sample sizes have thus far ranged from 41 to 104 subjects) and so cannot be projected to the general population. We also don’t know the methodology used to find these results.

Thursday Trends: Censorship of Cunnilingus on Film

‘Black Swan’ cunnilingus (That Just Won’t Do)

With the announced remake of the 1973 film “Don’t Look Now” on the horizon, there’s a good chance that one of the film’s most controversial scenes will once again make the cut: Laura Baxter receiving cunnilingus from her husband John. (Julie Christie and Donald Sutherland played the roles in the original film.) But this time, it might not raise much of an outcry.

Movies began to be bolder about depicting cunnilingus around the end of the last decade. In the 2009 movie “Away We Go,” the opening scene shows Burt (John Krasinski) going down on his partner Verona (Maya Rudolph). Two years later, “Blue Valentine” showed Dean (Ryan Gosling) pleasuring Cindy (Michelle Williams). However, this depiction led to some pushback on the part of the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), which tried to give the movie an NC-17 rating. Interestingly, the 2010 film “Black Swan” was in theaters, which also featured an oral sex scene, but with two women: Mila Kunis and Natalie Portman. “Blue Valentine” star Ryan Gosling spoke out against the hypocrisy of rating a film with an oral scene involving two women an R, while a film that depicts the act with a heterosexual couple (as well as within marriage) would get slapped with an NC-17. “Blue Valentine” eventually received an R rating.

Within the past two years, more films involving cunnilingus scenes have been released: “Wild,” “Charlie Countryman,” and “The Counselor.” A very notable example occurred in 2014’s “Gone Girl.” Amy (Rosamund Pike) ecstatically receives pleasure from Nick (Ben Affleck) after their first date, which occurs within the first 15 minutes of the film. There was no pushback from the MPAA regarding ratings for this one (presumably, they didn’t need to fight that battle twice).

It’s great to see cunnilingus depicted as normal within the smorgasbord of sexual acts. Let’s hope media depictions of the act continue to grow so more people become normalized to it.

#ThrowbackThursday: “Don’t Look Now,” 1973

‘Don’t Look Now’ sex scene, 1973 (Film Strategy)

Last week, “The Hollywood Reporter” reported that StudioCanal is remaking “Don’t Look Now,” the 1973 occult thriller starring Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie. The movie follows a married couple (Sutherland and Christie) as they travel to Venice and meet with clairvoyants to try and connect with their recently deceased daughter.

The film immediately became notorious for an explicit sex scene between Sutherland and Christie. Debates exists today as to whether the actors actually had sex during the scene. But it did blaze the way for female pleasure: It’s one of the first depictions of cunnilingus on film.

“Don’t Look Now” received an R rating in the U.S. and an X rating in Britain.

How Many People Identify as Asexual?

AVEN Logo (Asexuality.org)

Along the spectrum of sexuality sits asexuality. (Actually for Alfred Kinsey, he put the concept outside his famous Kinsey Scale, marking it with an “X.”) Those who identify as asexual do not feel sexual desire and/or want sexual intercourse (though they may still have romantic feelings).

Asexuality and its nuances have been misunderstood for decades, as have those who self-identify with the term. So how many people identify as asexual?

It’s hard to say. Like many sexual statistics, it’s all self-reported. But there have been a few studies done.

Kinsey estimated that asexuals numbered around 1.5% of the adult male population in the later 1940s to early 1950s. But he didn’t mention female asexuals, and we don’t know how thorough his methodology was.

Elsewhere, a 2004 British study analyzed data and found that around 1.1% of Brits claimed the label. A recent article on “Wired” named estimates ranging from .6% to 5.5%.

There’s no definitive way to tell. But hopefully more data will be uncovered as research into asexuality grows.

How Many States Outlaw Abortion?

Hillary Clinton (ABC News)

With Hillary Clinton’s recent announcement that she’s running for president, women’s issues will be front and center as a talking point this election season. It’s all but certain that one perennially hot-button topic will be brought up: abortion.

Right now, 42 states prohibit abortions, according to a study performed by the Guttmacher Institute. Exceptions can only be made in the case of a threat to the mother’s health. Even then, there are time limits up to which an abortion can be performed. Thirty-nine states require that the procedure be performed by a licensed physician, but health insurance can be a problem: Health care providers can refuse to pay for it in 46 states.

Those are some damning stats, and you can see more in the Guttmacher Institute’s report. Let’s hope this election brings progress and changes to these detrimental policies.

Sofia Vergara’s Frozen Embryos: Is There A Precedent for IVF Egg Custody?

Last week, “Modern Family” actress Sofia Vergara’s former fiancé Nick Loeb penned an op-ed for “The New York Times” regarding Vergara’s frozen eggs. The pair had initially frozen the eggs via in-vitro fertilization (IVF) in case they later wanted children, before their relationship ended last year. (Vergara is currently engaged to “True Blood” actor Joe Manganiello.) Now Loeb wants to unfreeze an eggs to implant within a surrogate, and have a child using his ex-fiance’s egg. (When the two were together, they had signed an agreement regarding using the eggs only with permission from both of them, but there wasn’t any discussion on what might happen if they split.) Vergara, as owner of said egg(s), is (naturally and understandably) refusing to release her eggs.

I wanted to find out of there was a precedent set for IVF egg custody. According to “Chicago Lawyer” magazine, there are no definitive laws or one-approach-fits-all (yet), but 10 states so far have made rules regarding IVF custody and procedure cases.

One big commonality between a lot of these approaches is an issue familiar to sexuality: consent. Courts are generally weighing the desires of each partner, called “balance of interests.” This can be applied if one partner wants to use the eggs, but the other doesn’t want that person to use them. Iowa takes a “co-consent” approach, in that both parties must agree to “sign off when the embryo is implanted in the woman.”

Contracts guide decisions in other states. In these instances, courts rely on “contracts drawn up by the couple before the embryos were created.” New York, Washington, Texas and Oregon follow this method.

Some states take a blended approach (kind of like a blended orgasm). Tennessee, New Jersey and Pennsylvania first look for existing contracts between both parties before moving on to consent.

Other states are complete outliers in their approach. Iowa has “contemporaneous-mutual-consent,” which is a written agreement that states that both parties must sign off on use of the embryos. Massachusetts is another outlier, stating that the woman receives custody of the embryos in event of divorce.

Vergara and Loeb’s situation may bring attention to this dilemma shared by other ex-couples, and it could drive inquiries and move future legislation forward. We’ll have to see how it plays out.

How Many Countries Offer Paternity Leave?

Dad with newborn baby (Babble)

Happy Friday! Last month, Massachusetts passed a law requiring businesses to give eight weeks of paternity leave. That’s right, paternity leave. For the fathers. The U.S. doesn’t have a paid paternity leave policy (come on, we don’t even have a paid maternity leave policy), though the 1993 Family and Medical Leave Act offers 12 weeks of protection, but only if the employee has been working for the company for over a year and the company contains over 50 people. The new law would include companies with a minimum of six employees.

Work-life balance is increasingly becoming more of a concern for men as well as women, and the concept comes sharply into focus with the addition of children. The U.S. lags behind other countries in our paternity leave policies. A 2013 Pew Research Center study examined 38 countries, and found that 25 of them have guaranteed paternity leave for new fathers. Time off can range from less than one week to over eight weeks.

Several countries that offer paternity leave are within Europe. Norway, Ireland, Iceland, Slovenia, Sweden and Germany have protected paternity leave, which would allow a new father time off secure that he’ll be able to return to his job without being fired or let go. At least a portion of this time off is required to be paid, except in Ireland.

South Korea also has a paternity leave policy, in which new fathers can take up to five days off. But parents with children under three years old can request to work part- or full-time for one year to care for their child. It appears that this policy applies to both mothers and fathers.

Hopefully this new law will push policy towards a national paid leave policy, for both mothers and fathers.

Auction Prices of “Playboy”‘s First Issue: By The Numbers

Marilyn Monroe cover for ‘Playboy,’ Dec. 1953 (NY Daily News)

As I noted earlier today, a first issue of “Playboy” is scheduled to be auctioned off later at Nate D. Sanders in Los Angeles. (For all I know, it could’ve already happened.) The issue is expected to be sold for about $2.7K.

I wanted to see if this estimate was in line with how much previous first issues of the periodical sold for.

A 2011 “Icons and Idols Hollywood” auction held by Julien’s Auctions opened bidding for the “Playboy” first issue at $1K-1.5K. The winning bid was $7K+. I also checked eBay, but all the first issues listed were for reprints, not originals, so I didn’t count those.

If this auction proceeds (or proceeded) anything like Julien’s did four years ago, the issue could very well sell for a lot higher.

#ThrowbackThursday: “Playboy,” 1953

Marilyn Monroe cover for ‘Playboy,’ Dec. 1953 (NY Daily News)

“Playboy” creator Hugh Hefner put out the first issue of his influential magazine in December 1953. It featured actress Marilyn Monroe on the cover and centerfold. Hef knew exactly what his mag (originally titled “Stag Party”) was all about: The introduction to Volume 1, Number 1 clearly states that the periodical isn’t a “family magazine.”

Today, this legendary first issue that spawned an empire is up for auction. Put up by Nate D. Sanders in Los Angeles, it’s expected to go for $2.7K. This first issue is very rare, as only around 54K copies were printed since Hefner wasn’t sure if it would be successful. Luckily for him, it took off immediately, and American culture was never the same.

Sex & Stats: Where Numbers Come to Bang

Statistics. Economics. Sex.