Weird Sex

To kick off, here's the story that inspired the theme of today's post. A Franciscan monk from a monastery near Krakow in Poland has leapt into the bestseller lists with a Catholicism-friendly sex-manual for couples "who love God". Hailed as a Catholic "Kama Sutra", Father Ksawery Knotz's book - demurely titled "Seks" - has been published with the blessing of the Polish Church and goes (apparently) well beyond the "missionary position" of lore, though it keeps with holy tradition by counselling against contraception (The Guardian).

But when it comes to sex education, it is perhaps the Germans rather than the Poles who need to learn the facts of life, or at least, German editors do. In a shock result, a poll by German youth magazine Bravo has revealed that teens have a familiarity with drink and porn that belies their "tender years". The 2009 "Dr. Sommer Study" found that 79% of youths aged 14-17 had seen pornography, and 50% had been drunk at least once, 36% to the point of incapacity. This latter result may also go a way to explaining the 28% of teenagers who admitted to having had unprotected sex (The Local).

Perhaps Germany could take a leaf out of North Carolina's book, where the "Adolescent Pregnancy Prevention Campaign" has started a service where teens can text-in for sex advice from their mobile phones, getting the answer back the same way(Fay Observer). I wonder what answer you get if you text "Hlp my cndms splt! Wht doi do?", "Ur 2 L8, mrri hr!" perhaps?

Of course it's easy to pull off a discrete text message, but there are times when it's necessary to get your sex advice in person, with all the embarrassment that entails. Except that is for patients to the UK's Chalmers Hospital, where as part of a major refurbishment a private corridor is being added to and from the sex-clinic, so that visitors need never have to pass through the public areas (BBC News).

And as if to show that the British medical profession has its finger on the pulse of sexual health, members at a recent conference of the Royal College of Nursing voted 93% to 7% to call for the legalisation of "co-operative" brothels. Their hope is that by encouraging prostitutes to band together in licensed "mini-brothels", they would be safer from violence and exploitation and be more easily screened for STDs (The Scotsman).

But it's not just women who sell themselves. In the second "No Duh!" moment of today's post, a UK journalist posing as a woman desperate to have a baby, recounts her encounters with the kind of sleazy, oddball men who are willing to give up their sperm, "no questions asked" (Daily Mail).

Mind you, not every man is so willing to hand over his sperm. A court in Haifa, Israel rejected claims by an unnamed man that a woman who had become pregnant by him had "stolen" his sperm. The man, who was seeking to legally compel the woman to have an abortion, further claimed that becoming a father so young would cause him "financial damage and emotional anguish" and adversely affect his chances of a later, better marriage (as if his legal action hadn't done so already). Wisely, Judge Varda Maroz dismissed the petition, but declined to rule on whether the "sperm theft" had in fact happened (Ynet News).

Also, it seems, it's not just the financial banks that are in trouble, sperm banks look to have a rough road ahead of them too. In a recent ruling, a US judge gave the go-ahead for a teenager with "fragile X syndrome", a condition that leads to severe learning difficulties, to sue the sperm bank that provided her mother with the necessary material under product liability law. The ruling could lead to many similar cases being heard (New Scientist).

But if a patron can sue a sperm bank for supplying a "faulty product", might not sperm banks someday seek to sue their "suppliers"? Well fortunately it turns out that the best way to protect yourself may be to become a regular contributor. Australian researchers have discovered that regular sex appears to improve the quality of your sperm, with one researcher even going so far as to recommend daily ejaculations (Portfolio.com).

Of course, some people's sperm seems to need no help. Chris Biblis for example, who had a sperm sample frozen when he underwent years of chemo- and radiotherapy for lukemia, aged 16, and is now, at 39, the father of a healthy baby-girl thanks to that same sample, which had been preserved in cold storage for an amazing 22 years (The Sun News).

Finally, the winner of Ireland's "most romantic man" award, Aiden Clifford, has been stripped of his title, after it turned out he had two prior convictions for following young women around in a car while masturbating (Belfast Telegraph).

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