by yoursl | Jul 30, 2015 | Sexual Discussion |
Recently, I spent nearly two weeks in The Netherlands with my partner, Dutch, whose family is from this small European country. My take-away from this vacation was not the indulgence in freely available marijuana or the Red Light District and its openly accepted prostitution; I came home still thinking about the Holocaust and its victims. The Holocaust ran from January 30, 1933, to May 8, 1945. The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, was a genocide in which six million Jews and countless others were murdered by Adolf Hitler and his Nazi regime in the name of racial superiority. The Netherlands alone was home to 107,000 Jews; some arriving there as they fled persecution in their native Germany, which borders The Netherlands to the east. Only 5,000 of the Jews living in The Netherlands survived the Holocaust. My education about the Holocaust began at Verzetsmuseum (the Dutch Resistance Museum) in Amsterdam. Dutch and I visited this museum because the Dutch Resistance helped save the life of one of Dutch’s family members during World War II. Dutch grew up with knowledge about this group and wanted me to learn about them as well. The Dutch Resistance helped undermine the Nazis during their occupation of The Netherlands in World War II. This group forged birth certificates and passports to help male Dutch citizens avoid working in the German labor camps, which were just slightly better than concentration camps, and to assist in hiding Jewish citizens from the Nazis and avoid deportation to the concentration camps, where death was imminent. The Dutch Resistance provided counterintelligence, domestic sabotage and communications networks that...
by yoursl | Jul 9, 2015 | Dating/Relationships, Sexual Discussion, Women's Sexual Health |
Your Sexy Librarian is on a much-needed vacation. Instead of writing a new blog for this week, I want to share one of the hardest-to-write blogs from this past year. http://yoursexylibrarian.com/domestic-violence/...
by yoursl | Jul 2, 2015 | Men's Sexual Health, Sexual Discussion, Women's Sexual Health |
When a person experiences stress, his or her body releases cortisol, a steroid hormone. Cortisol belongs to a class of hormones called glucocorticoids, which are present in almost every vertebrate animal cell, and is produced from cholesterol in the two adrenal glands located on top of each kidney. In addition to being released during times of stress, the body releases cortisol after a person wakes up and during and after exercise. Cortisol and the hormone epinephrine, which is also known as adrenaline, work together in “fight-or-flight” responses. After an individual is faced with stress, the adrenals secrete cortisol, which in turn floods the body with glucose (a simple sugar used as a source of energy in living organisms) that supplies immediate energy to large muscles. Cortisol causes this glucose release when it taps into protein stores in the liver. Cortisol’s focus is on supplying the body with glucose for quick energy which is why cortisol blocks insulin production as well. Insulin is a hormone produced in the pancreas that regulates the amount of glucose in the blood. Lack of insulin causes a form of diabetes. As cortisol narrows the arteries, epinephrine increases heart rate. Both of these occurrences force blood to pump harder and faster through the body. Once the stressful situation is resolved, hormone levels return to normal. All this sounds very simple in theory, but many health experts theorize that our fast-paced lifestyles with ever-present stress causes our bodies to pump out cortisol almost constantly, which can have a negative impact on our health in general and on our sexual health in particular. Since cortisol stops the...
by yoursl | Jun 25, 2015 | Just For Fun, Sexual Discussion, Women's Sexual Health |
Representative Jackie Speier (D-Calif.) is planning on introducing legislation that would make the posting or sharing of non-consensual pornography a federal crime. She is calling her proposed bill the “Intimate Privacy Protection Act.” The bill is aimed at reducing “revenge porn,” which is the act of posting or sharing of sexually explicit images online without consent of the depicted. University of law professor Mary Anne Franks wrote in a Huffington Post article the term “revenge porn” is “misleading” because “while a number of cases do involve bitter exes whose express purpose is to harm or harass their former partners, many perpetrators don’t know their victims at all.” Franks further explains, “A more accurate term is non-consensual pornography, defined as the distribution of private, sexually explicit material without consent.” Websites, such as Twitter and Reddit, have taken steps to stop the posting of non-consensual pornography. Google recently announced it would “allow people to petition for such images’ removal from search results” on its site. This is an interesting move on the part of these websites as federal law currently grants legal immunity to Internet service providers and online platforms for most content posted by third parties, with exceptions for child pornography, copyright infringements and sex-trafficking ads. The advocacy groups Without My Consent and the Cyber Civil Rights Initiative have helped increase awareness of online privacy and both sites offer advice on what to do when someone is a victim of “revenge porn.” The mission statement of Without My Consent, which appears in bold print on the group’s main website page states the group “empowers victims of egregious online privacy violations...
by yoursl | Jun 18, 2015 | Men's Sexual Health |
The testes, or testicles, are part of the human male’s reproductive system. There are two main types of cells found within the testicles: germ cells and Leydig cells. A germ cell is a reproductive cell, in this case a sperm cell. Each mature germ cell contains a single set of 23 chromosomes containing half the usual amount of DNA found in a human and half the number of genes found in a human because the egg germ cell contains the other half. When the egg and the sperm cell join to form a fertilized cell the full set of DNA is thus created. Leydig cells are found adjacent to the seminiferous tubules in the tesicles. Leydig cells produce steroids, including the androgens testosterone and dihydrotestosterone (DHT) which play a vital role in male fertility. Testosterone is thought to help regulate sex drive or libido, bone mass, fat distribution and muscle mass. Healthy males produce germ and Leydig cells in equal proportion, which gives the testicles their roundness, firmness and fullness. Most human testicles are egg-shaped. The testes work best at temperatures slightly cooler than the rest of the body. Sudden temperature changes can cause the testicles to shrink up into the body or fall away from the body. One testicle is usually smaller than the other, which is the same scenario for female breasts. One testicle typically hangs lower than the other as well. This is normal in terms of anatomy. Testicles in human males develop over time. During infancy, testicles are at their smallest in size. At the on-set of puberty, the testes begin to grow as they...
