Page Two Notes:

*Simone*

An update on my notes:

A sex shop is a shop that sells products such as sex toys, pornography, erotic lingerie, erotic books, and safer sex products such as condoms and dental dams. The euphemisms "Adult Video Store" and "Adult Book Store" are commonly used to refer to sex shops that sell or rent pornographic videos, books, and magazines. However, a lot of adult films are not rated when released to video or DVD. In most jurisdictions, sex shops are regulated by law, with access not permitted to minors, in most countries/states, the age depending on local law. In case of doubt, on entering a sex shop, one may have to present a valid ID. Some states/countries don't tolerate sex shops at all, e.g. many Islamic states. In some jurisdictions that permit it, they may also show pornographic movies in private booths, or have private striptease or peep shows. In Japan, the sex shops contain hentai magazines, adult videos and DVDs, plus video games rated "Z" by the CERO. Near borders of countries with different laws regarding sex shops, shops on the more liberal side tend to be popular with customers from the other side, especially if importing the purchased materials by customers to their own country, and possessing them, is legal or tolerated.

Deviant behavior is behavior that is a recognized violation of social norms. Formal and informal social controls attempt to prevent or minimize deviance. One such control is through the medicalization of deviance. It is not the act itself, but the reactions to the act, that make something deviant. Crime, the violation of formally enacted law, is formal deviance while an informal social violation such as picking one's nose is an example of informal deviance. It also means not doing what the majority does or alternatively doing what the majority does not do. For instance, behaviors caused by cultural difference can be seen as deviance. It does not necessarily mean criminal behavior. An example of a group considered deviant in the modern United States is the Ku Klux Klan. Milder examples include punks and goths.

Love triangles can either be relatively balanced, in which the two candidates each have a fair chance of ending up with the protagonist, or they can be lopsided, in which the hero or heroine has an obvious romantic interest in one of the candidates, and considers the other candidate as "just a friend," but withholds a confession to avoid hurting his or her feelings.

Women are always held by a high standard in society. They have so many rules on what they can and can't do. One of the things they were never allowed to feel was sexual pleasure. They were taught to be fringe in bed. It was absurd for a woman to know what sexual pleasure really was. If she did, then she was considered a harlot. They accepted this belief without any questions. But then, the feminists came along and opened the eyes of many women. Now, women are just as free as men.

Most forms of psychotherapy use only spoken conversation, though some also use various other forms of communication such as the written word, artwork, drama, narrative story, or therapeutic touch. Psychotherapy occurs within a structured encounter between a trained therapist and client(s). Purposeful, theoretically based psychotherapy began in the 19th century with psychoanalysis; since then, scores of other approaches have been developed and continue to be created. Therapy is generally used to respond to a variety or specific or non-specific manifestations of clinically diagnosable crises. Treatment of everyday problems is more often referred to as counseling (a distinction originally adopted by Carl Rogers) but the term is sometimes used interchangeably with "psychotherapy". Psychotherapeutic interventions are often designed to treat the patient in the medical model, although not all psychotherapeutic approaches follow the model of "illness/cure". Some practitioners, such as humanistic schools, see themselves in an educational or helper role. Because sensitive topics are often discussed during psychotherapy, therapists are expected, and usually legally bound, to respect client or patient confidentiality. In an informal sense, psychotherapy can be said to have been practiced through the ages, as individuals received psychological counsel and reassurance from others. Purposeful, theoretically-based psychotherapy was probably first developed in the Middle East during the 9th century by the Persian physician Rhazes, who was at one time the chief physician of the Baghdad hospital. In the West, however, serious mental disorders were generally treated as demonic or medical conditions requiring punishment and confinement until the advent of moral treatment approaches in the 18th Century. This brought about a focus on the possibility of psychosocial intervention - including reasoning, moral encouragement and group activities - to rehabilitate the "insane". Psychoanalysis was perhaps the first specific school of psychotherapy, developed by Sigmund Freud and others through the early 1900s. Trained as a neurologist, Freud began focusing on problems that appeared to have no discernible organic basis, and theorized that they had psychological causes originating in childhood experiences and the unconscious mind. Techniques such as dream interpretation, free association, transference and analysis of the id, ego and superego were developed.

A velvet prison refers to a prison in the mind. Physically, the prisoner is free. But, they are suffering in their mind. They feel trapped. They think that their loved ones are the guards and wards keeping them in their prison, leaving them to die a slow and miserable death all alone. A velvet prison can be tied into mental illness. The best example of a velvet prison is the story The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. The narrator was locked away in the nursery due to her postpartum depression. She ended up going mad and tearing down the wallpaper. A velvet prison can be a deadly thing.

Sexual fetishism is the attribution of attractive sexual qualities to non-living objects as an overwhelming alternative to the sexuality of a man or a woman, or as an enhancing element to a relationship. The concept has its origins in the late 19th century with Charles de Brosses' theory of fetishism as a primary stage in the evolution of a religion, and from the advent of psychosexual/psychodynamic theories of society and individuals by (amongst others) Alfred Binet, and Sigmund Freud. In the common English language, any degree of attention given to a singular inanimate object, body part, body feature or sexual behaviour may be said to be a sign of sexual fetishism. This use of the term is considered an overly compensatory gesture to the cognitive and emotional uncertainty caused by the liberation of sexual discourse, tastes and practices in the 20th century. In 1998 the popularity for sexual knowledge, experimentation, and the pornography delivered by the internet prompted the faux news publication The Onion to pen an article titled "Area Man Has Naked-Lady Fetish" in order to satirise the migration of simple sexuality into a new fetish. The definition and qualifying criteria for personal (or cultural) fetishes, or fetish objects has become unclear as a consequence of its common use and the normalization of the means of its motivation, but a degree of commitment remains in clinical psychology whereby sexual fetishes alongside partialisms, the attraction towards isolated parts of the body, are included within the family of paraphilias as conditions affecting psychological health. Fetishism was introduced as a psychological scientific term in 1887 by Alfred Binet and meant sexual admiration of an inanimate object. At that time, fetishism was considered pathological. In time, the term's meaning was extended, e. g. in 1912 Richard von Krafft-Ebing referred to fetishism as the admiration of body parts. In 1927 Sigmund Freud published his psychoanalytic view of fetishism which was responsible for introducing the term to common usage. With the Kinsey report and the sexual revolution, scientists began to part from the idea of fetishism being an illness or a maladjusted form of sexual behaviour. As a consequence, the diagnostic criteria for paraphilia and fetishism developed its exclusivity. During that process, the two major diagnostic manuals ICD and DSM diverged in their interpretation: While today ICD has returned to its original focus on inanimate objects, DSM includes both objects and body parts. Today, the scientific term fetishism still is subject to discussions about scientific relevance and political correctness. In some cases, "fetishism" has been used to include the predominant ideals of beauty within a particular society, e.g. the preference for small feet in old China, or the modern western preference for perfect breasts. A formal social scientific concept of fetishism has never been introduced and it has not been shown that a change in the ideal of beauty goes together with a change in number or type of fetishists. However, it must be noted that all features which do not form the greater parts of an authoritative group's predominant fashion may be called fetishes.

What is the best season for romance? Spring is the season for mating and finding a lover. The animal kingdom tries different methods to attract a mate. Summer is the time when things become really hot and sensual. There tends to be less clothes and lustful looks. Autumn is the season of change. One of those changes can bring new love into one's life. Winter is a time to be warm. The lovers cuddle close and kiss under mistletoe. So, what is the best season for romance? Any time seems to be the answer.

Glass sex toys are commonly made from clear medical grade borosilicate glass of which Pyrex is a brand. This material is completely non-toxic and will withstand extreme temperatures as well as physical shock without compromising its structural integrity. Glass toys made of borosilicate are completely safe. A properly annealed inch thick piece of borosilicate will withstand up to 3,000 lbs of pressure and extreme heat and cold. Glass dildos are also non porous and can be sterilized to help prevent infection with reuse. These types of sex toys are not only durable, but also very visually appealing often considered by some to be works of art. Glass sex toys are a viable and long lasting alternative to the less expensive and less appealing toys on the market.

What can go wrong in a marriage? Infidelity, imbalance of control, old habits that turn out to be annoying, lack of communication, the list goes on. What can a couple do when their marriage "goes south?" There are many options. Counseling, divorce, changes in routine, letting in other people, and everything else that couples can think of to improve their ailing marriage. But, not all the cures work. Most sick marriages end in death or murder. One can't be too careful at times... Relationship counseling is the process of counseling the parties of a relationship in an effort to recognize and to better manage or reconcile troublesome differences and repeating patterns of distress. The relationship involved may be between members of a family, couples, employees or employers in a workplace, or between a professional and a client. Relationship counseling as a discrete, professional service is a recent phenomenon. Until the late 20th century, the work of relationship counseling was informally fulfilled by close friends, family members, or local religious leaders. Psychiatrists, psychologists, counselors and social workers have historically dealt primarily with individual psychological problems. In many less technologically advanced cultures around the world today, the institution of family, the village or group elders fulfill the work of relationship counseling. Today marriage mentoring mirrors those cultures.

In this modern age, the internet has made everything much easier to access. One can find just about everything on the World Wide Web. Including sex. There are more than one thousand sites of pornography on the internet. This is really a double-edged sword. On the up side, one doesn't have to pay for it; the material is just free. On the other hand, it adds more fuel to the oversexed disease in addicts. So one has to be very careful.

The doctrine is based on a passage in the nativity narrative of the Gospel of Luke, that Mary, the mother of Jesus, was "overshadowed" by the Holy Spirit (Luke 1:35), and reached its final formulation in the fourth century in the context of the debates which characterized the church following its adoption as the State religion of the late Roman and early Byzantine empires. From a theological perspective, the doctrine of the Virgin Birth showed Jesus' divine and human natures at once united, paving the way for all of humanity to be united with God. Polls indicate that contemporary belief in central tenets of the Christian faith, including the Virgin Birth, is highly variable among both the clergy and the laity, in all branches of Christianity. Nevertheless, the belief in the Virgin Birth remains central to Christianity, and those conservative Christians who continue to hold it, do so as a supernatural event outside the laws of science. Although they believe in the Virgin Birth, Muslims do not call Jesus "Son of God", rather "Servant of God". In the Qur'an, Jesus is consistently termed "Isa ibn Maryam" - a matronymic - because, in Muslim belief, he had no biological father.

Some little facts and stats about sex and alcohol:

80-90% of college students have had sexual intercourse.

Almost 50% of unplanned sexual encounters are under the influence of alcohol!

80% of first sexual experiences occur under the influence of alcohol!

By senior year, 81% of students have had sex because they were drunk.

College students who mix alcohol and sex report having more partners whom they know only "slightly" or "moderately."

Alcohol impairment often leads to: not knowing your partner; not having a condom available; not using a condom; or not using it correctly.

In two-thirds of unplanned pregnancies, the woman was intoxicated during sex.

60% of STDs are transmitted when the partners are drunk.

Drinking games are used on campuses as a way for males to deliberately get females drunk quickly, often for purposes for sex.

40% of men in one study thought it was acceptable behavior to force sex on a woman who was drunk.

75% of admitted date rapists said they used alcohol to get dates drunk so they would have sex.

90% of all sexual assaults occur under the influence of alcohol!

Chronic or continuous drinking, even in college students, destroys testosterone in males, causes withering of the testicles, enlargement of male breasts, loss of hair, and impotence.

Large doses of alcohol in females may cause lack of lubrication or orgasm. In males, it can cause difficulties in achieving or maintaining erections.

So sum it up, alcohol and sex are not the brightest thing to try.

In psychology the terms affection and affective are of great importance. As all intellectual phenomena have by experimentalists been reduced to sensation, so all emotion has been and is regarded as reducible to simple mental affection, the element of which all emotional manifestations are ultimately composed. The nature of this element is a problem which has been provisionally, but not conclusively, solved by many psychologists; the method is necessarily experimental, and all experiments on feeling are peculiarly difficult. The solutions proposed are two. In the first, all affection phenomena are primarily divisible into those which are pleasurable and those which are the reverse. The main objections to this are that it does not explain the infinite variety of phenomena, and that it disregards the distinction which most philosophers admit between higher and lower pleasures. The second solution is that every sensation has its specific affective quality, though by reason of the poverty of language many of these have no name. W. Wundt, Outlines of Psychology (trans. C. H. Judd, Leipzig, 1897), maintains that we may group under three main affective directions, each with its negative, all the infinite varieties in question; these are (a) pleasure, or rather pleasantness, and displeasure, (b) tension and relaxation, (c) excitement and depression. These two views are antithetic and no solution has been discovered.

BDSM is any of a number of related patterns of human sexual behavior. The major subgroupings are described in the abbreviation "BDSM" itself:

Bondage & discipline (B&D)

Domination & submission (D&S)

Sadism and masochism (or sadomasochism) (S&M)

Many of the specific practices in BDSM are those which, if performed in nonconsensual contexts, could be considered unpleasant, undesirable or abusive. For example, while pain, physical restraint and servitude are traditionally inflicted on persons, in BDSM, these activities are engaged in with the mutual consent of the participants, and typically for mutual enjoyment. This emphasis on informed consent and safety is also known as SSC (safe, sane and consensual), though others prefer the term RACK (risk-aware consensual kink), believing that it places more emphasis on acknowledging the fact that all activities are potentially risky. There is discussion and dispute about the meaning or intent of the terms, but in essence, both terms refer to all participants acknowledging and accepting some level of risk.

BDSM may or may not involve sex of any kind.

BDSM may or may not involve sexual role-playing.

How dominant or submissive a person may be in their regular life does not necessarily indicate which role they will play in a scene.

Some BDSM players are polyamorous or sexually monogamous but engage in non-sexual play with others.

A couple may engage in BDSM sexuality with an otherwise non-Dominant/submissive relationship dynamic. In the context of BDSM, bondage involves people being tied up or otherwise restrained for pleasure. Bondage is usually, but not always, a sexual practice. The paraphilia of being sexually aroused by bondage is sometimes known as vincilagnia. Studies in the U.S. have shown that about three quarters of all men find the idea of bondage to be erotic; many women do as well. As with any study of sexual thoughts and behavior, the available studies are not well controlled and the best studies are now out of date. It is worth noting that bondage has sexual appeal to persons of both sexes and all sexual orientations. However, a subculture of gay men, sometimes called leathermen, were arguably among the first group to make obvious hints of their tastes in bondage in public. The growth of the gay leather subculture parallels the biker culture that arose after World War II -- a number of early leathermen were WWII veterans, and the military traditions of discipline and structure were an important influence in Old Guard leather. While the bikers were not identified as homosexual, the leathermen admired their toughness, tenacity, and willingness to ignore mainstream social mores. Consequently, they adopted the biker style of dress, particularly the use of black leather. While this served a utilitarian purpose for the bikers, in providing warmth and protection from "road rash", it was primarily of fashion and fetishistic value to the leathermen, who for the most part did not ride motorcycles extensively (although there have been and are numerous gay leather motorcycle clubs). Beginning in the late 1960s, heterosexual groups began to come together to explore bondage and power exchange. With time, these groups have grown and have raised their profile somewhat, to the point where most U.S. cities of any size have one or more such groups. A major goal of most of these groups is to provide semi-public opportunities for BDSM, in an effort to provide a safe environment for relative strangers to engage in such activities. As such, these groups attach high importance to objective safety rules, such as the use of safewords. On a physical level, BDSM "sensation play" often involves inflicting pain, even if without actual injury. This releases endorphins, creating a sensation somewhat like runner's high or the afterglow of orgasm, sometimes called "subspace", which many find enjoyable. Some use the term "body stress" to describe this physiological sensation. More eloquently, the philosopher Edmund Burke defines this sensation of pleasure derived from pain by the word sublime. The regions of the brain that manage sexual stimuli and pain overlap, resulting in some individuals associating pain with sexual pleasure as the neurological reactions are intertwined. Rope bondage is bondage involving the use to rope to tie and wrap the body as part of BDSM activities. Most modern rope bondage techniques derive from the Japanese erotic rope bondage art form of shibari, which was in turn developed from the now-defunct Japanese military restraint technique of hojōjutsu.

Sacrifice is commonly known as the practice of offering food, or the lives of animals or people to the gods, as an act of propitiation or worship. The term is also used metaphorically to describe selfless good deeds for others, or a short term loss in return for a greater gain. The practice of sacrifice is found in the oldest human records. The archaeological record contains human and animal corpses with sacrificial marks long before any written records of the practice. Sacrifices are a common theme in most religions, though the frequency of animal, and especially human, sacrifices are rare today.

Collective guilt is the controversial collectivist idea that a group of humans can bear guilt above and beyond the guilt of particular members, and hence an individual holds responsibility for what other members of his group have done, even if he himself hasn't done this. Advanced systems of criminal law accept the principle that guilt shall only be personal. This attitude is not usually shared by primitive systems of law. Assumption of collective responsibility is common for feud. Such systems tend to judge the guilt of persons by their associations, classifications or organizations, which often gives rise to racial, ethnic, social and religious prejudices. Collective guilt is regarded by some as impossible because it seems to presuppose that collections of humans can have traits, such as intentions and knowledge that strictly speaking are claimed to be truly possessed only by individuals. The principle of collective guilt is totally denounced in libertarian social thinking. However, there are those who consider such judgments on collective guilt to be overly reductionistic and accept the existence of collective guilt, collective responsibility, etc. Sometimes the idea of collective guilt can be a form of association fallacy. Humans seem to have a natural tendency to attribute collective guilt, usually with tragic results. History is filled with examples of a wronged man who tried to avenge himself, not on the person who has wronged him, but on other members of the wrong-doer's family, or ethnic group, or religion, or nation, or tribe, or army. Likewise collective punishment is often practiced in different settings, including schools and, more transcendentally, in situation of war, economic sanctions, etc, presupposing the existence of collective guilt.

Addiction is like a monster in our souls. It keeps eating and eating. Its brain doesn't have the signal to tell it, "Okay stop, you're full now!" The monster wants more and more food to feed its endless hunger. But where does it end? When its host has nothing to loose anymore? When its host is disgraced and isolated? When its host is near death? But all is not lost. There is a way to beat the monster.

Deception is the act of convincing another to believe information that is not true. Deception involves concepts like propaganda, distraction and concealment. Fiction, while sometimes manipulative, is not a deception unless it is portrayed as the whole truth; not to be confused with half-truths. In many cases it is difficult to distinguish deception from providing unintentionally wrong information. One of the reasons for this is that a person or an entire organization may be self-deceived.

If one thinks of romantic love not as simply erotic freedom and expression, but as a breaking of that expression from a prescribed custom, romantic love is modern. There may have been a tension in primitive societies between marriage and the erotic, but this was mostly expressed in taboos regarding the menstrual cycle and birth. Before the 18th century, as now, there were many marriages that were not arranged, and arose out of more or less spontaneous relationships. But also after the 18th century, illicit relationships took on a more independent role. In bourgeois marriage, illicitness may have become more formidable and likely to cause tension. In Ladies of the Leisure Class, Bonnie G. Smith depicts courtship and marriage rituals that may be viewed as oppressive to both men and women. She writes "When the young women of the Nord married, they did so without illusions of love and romance. They acted within a framework of concern for the reproduction of bloodlines according to financial, professional, and sometimes political interests." Subsequent sexual revolution has lessened the conflicts arising out of liberalism, but not eliminated them.

Dating sometimes begins to play a role in some people's lives as teenagers, typically at the expense of time spent with peer groups or cliques. Some who have dated for a while may decide to "go steady", or enter an exclusive relationship with a single partner. Commonly cited reasons for doing this are relief from the stress of dating new people, and being able to rely on an escort for occasions of perceived importance. Cited disadvantages are non-specific feelings of being tied down, arising from the loss of opportunities to date a variety of other people, and from feeling obliged to focus on the growth of the steady relationship at the expense of their own growth. The phrase "X and Y are dating" can mean that X and Y are in an exclusive relationship with each other, or are courting. It can also mean that X and Y are independently involved in dating. The intended meaning must be inferred from the context.

Promiscuity is the practice of making relatively casual and indiscriminate choices. The term is most commonly applied to sexual behavior, where it refers to a person who does not limit their sex life to the cultural norm, typically one partner, or to the framework of a long term monogamous sexual relationship. Because of the popularity of this usage, the remainder of this article discusses sexual promiscuity. People, who are called "promiscuous" under this usage, may in fact be quite selective in their choice of sexual partners. Promiscuity is discouraged by conservative modern day religions. However, some sects, cults, and religious orders have a place for promiscuous behavior. For example, there were special examples of religious prostitution in ancient Mesopotamia, Greece and Rome.

I still have a long way to go for the New Year! And it’s only January!