Romantic relationships are important to most of us - not necessarily all of the time, but at many points in our lives this tends to be true. Women and men have long been fascinated, pained, enthralled, saddened and mystified by romance and sexuality, and how people come together, stay together and/or fall away from each other - and sometimes, how they return.

Human beings have looked at relationships from diverse angles - science, art, story telling, painting, sculputre, music, and comics. Though I had evidence of the ability of comics to do this, largely through reading Calvin and Hobbes, it is my dear and wonderful friend, artist Rama Hughes, who I credit for opening my eyes to how comics can be used to explore relationships in interesting ways. 

Some of this has been through showing me other people’s work - one of the more beautifully painful, and heart wrenchingly true examples of this is Blankets by Craig Thompson (really, please consider reading it). Another example is this very touching comic by Rama that you can view here - it is something I’ve come back to again and again that, when I’ve been alone, has made me miss being in a relationship. And when I’m loving and being loved, it warms me to know that I can experience that unusually good place where you have a private world all of your own within someone else’s arms or bed.

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Okay, I’ve been holding out. Last month, as some of my friends and colleagues know, I taped an episode of The Tyra Banks Show in NYC. This wasn’t just any episode, either - it was an episode about one of my favorite topics: the vagina and vulva. This episode, titled "What’s Up Down There?" will air on Monday November 5. Check your local listings or this part of her site to see when it airs in your city.

There were several exciting parts to the day of taping, including the fact that Tyra taped an interview with Barack Obama while we were in the building (his green room was only doors down from mine, but the secret service made us stay in the green room so our paths never crossed). But even more exciting was working with committed producers and Tyra herself to develop an episode with much-needed information for women. I was incredibly impressed with Tyra Banks’ commitment to airing important information about women’s sexual health on television. I was also impressed with her production team -  Kareen Gunning and Dan Fitzpatrick worked tirelessly to find out which topics were particularly important for women to learn more about.

You can view a preview of this episode: go to Tyra’s site (click here) and then click on the Monday Nov 5 episode - and yes, that is me with curled hair and a vulva puppet sitting on my lap, a puppet which I bought some time ago at Good Vibrations in Berkeley, California. While we’re on the topic of my curled hair, Tyra’s team did an incredible job making me up for the show - see the before and after photos after the jump.  (more…)

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Check out these couples Halloween costumes - my favorite is the Spartan cheerleader set. Least favorite? Take a guess

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According to this New York Times article written by Patricia Leigh Brown, gayborhoods (neighborhoods with a gay identity and a disproportionately large number of gay/lesbian/bisexual/queer identified residents) seem to be changing. Of course, most things do change and the societal forces that encouraged gayborhoods into being are not necessarily as prominent in 2007 as they were in previous years, and the fact that families are now infiltrating gayborhoods and making them less urban is not necessarily something to mourn or for single gays and lesbians to flee. 

But with these changing demographics, what will happen to gay identify? Who will turn the rougher spots of town into the trendy, hip (and yes, more expensive) parts of town? What would we do without the Castro or Boystown? How can these gayborhoods transform rather than disappear (this last question was, sadly, not addressed in the article). This article, by the way, includes quotes by fellow sexuality professor, sociologist, author and Indiana University colleague Dr. Elizabeth Armstrong. Go Hoosiers!

Image from this site.

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This week’s Book of the Week is The New Male Sexuality by Bernie Zilbergeld, PhD. Men often don’t buy sex/relationship books - or at least not often as women do - but this is truly a book that I think most any man would benefit from reading. Women and men who like, love or are interested in becoming romantic or sexual partners with men might also enjoy reading this book. It is packed with information about how men shape up to be the lovers and partners that they become, as well as techniques for dealing with common problems such as occasional or even ongoing erection problems, premature ejaculation, and performance anxiety. This is truly one of my all-time favorite books about sex and relationships and one of the few absolute "must-reads" I suggest. It is also commonly recommended to couples as part of sex therapy.

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