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Sex researchers shed light on unpopular sex acts
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By Amy Kalin
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - From bondage to "breath
play" and zoophilia, it's not easy keeping up with
society's fast-developing sexual trends.
That's why some of North America's top sexologists
hunkered down with academics and therapists at a
Fisherman's Wharf hotel this weekend: to swap findings
about everything from teens with underwear fetishes to
transgender couples.
"These couples have problems that I didn't know how to
deal with," said Olga Perez Stable Cox, president of
the Western U.S. region of the Society for the
Scientific Study of Sexuality. "You have to understand
the culture, otherwise you're an outsider, and you
don't get it."
The theme for the society's four-day conference is
"Unstudied, Understudied And Underserved Sexual
Communities." Presentations range from discussions
from autoerotic asphyxiation, or "breath play," to
zoophiles, or animal lovers, to more mainstream topics
like sex motives of dating partners.
"Let me tell you, it was not easy finding these
pictures," Hunter College professor Jose E. Nanin told
his audience in a seminar about "specialized" sexual
behavior among gay men.
Nanin's photos are more than an explicit how-to of
exhibitionism and sadomasochism, he says; they are
examples of safe alternatives to sexual intercourse
that need to be de-stigmatized in order to fight
diseases like HIV/AIDS.
Researchers say their greater goal is to help the
medical community, the public and legislators figure
out what behavior is merely out of the norm versus
downright dangerous.
"As sex researchers, one of our concerns is
distinguishing what can be harmful and what is not --
so that instead of being based on myth, public policy
can be informed," said Charlene Muehlenhard, professor
of psychology and women's studies at The University of
Kansas.
When authorities caught a Midwestern U.S. teenage boy
stealing girls' underwear, they immediately demonized
his underwear fetish, Pennsylvania State University
researcher Patricia Barthalow Kosch said. Many
clinicians attribute the boy's crime more to broken
family relations. The crime was theft, not his sexual
fantasies, conference attendees said.
Teen sexuality draws sensational headlines, but
suffers from a lack of academic study, researchers
said.
Kim Openshaw, a psychology professor at Utah State
University in Logan, Utah, who studies teenage sex
offenders, said the limited amount of research so far
has found that girls make up only 5 to 10 percent of
all underage sex offenders.
The numbers are underreported, Openshaw says, because
many people are reluctant to acknowledge the problem.
Victims of girl sex offenders tend to be in the
immediate family circle. Most perpetrators are victims
of family abuse. By contrast, boy sex offenders tend
to be more macho, violent and attack outside of their
immediate family.
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