I think sex has gotten a really unfair rap in our society.  People are plagued by all sorts of unnatural phobias and aversions to sex; they feel ashamed of their bodies and especially their genitals; they can even feel threatened that a higher power will punish them for even thinking about it.  It’s not right, and it’s not healthy at all...the perception of sex, that is – not the sex itself.

So here is how I imagine things must have gone down.

It must have all started back when we humans first invented clothing.  While it protected us from the elements and enabled us to spread out to less hospitable climates, it created an imbalance in how we perceived one another: it covered up our bodies and made us more sensitive to seeing one another naked, or having sex.  We lost a sense of how different we can be physically, so seeing a naked body other than our own became a shock.

At some point people started taking offense to this shock of seeing other naked bodies, engaged in sex or simply nude, and prescribed that certain parts should remain private.  The genitals were first because they were the raciest, then breasts and nipples because they too could provoke a strong visceral response.  Over time, only the essentials remained public: the functional parts of our bodies that we couldn’t do without exposing in our daily tasks and social interactions – hands, faces – and some of the more neutral parts like arms, legs, feet, neck.  Our extremities were less covered than the more vulnerable and vital trunks of our body, and as a result, were less taboo to be seen in public.  Likewise, intercourse became private because the parts of our bodies necessary for it were also private.

So it became necessary to invent devices to continue broadcasting our gender without showing our actual genitals.  It became prescribed what a boy should look like, and what a girl should look like, according to their public parts (I suppose the exceptional cases between the two genders weren’t given consideration because it was figured they didn’t have an "opposite" that they needed to attract).  The end result became that it was no longer necessary to see one another naked in order to identify a potential mate.

Being able to escape from constant reminders of our sexuality allowed us to blur it out of our thought process.  It was as if humans could be Barbie/Ken dolls, with nothing but featureless bumps under their clothing.  An unhealthy imbalance was created between reality and our state of mind.

But the human race couldn’t propagate by a make-believe stork bringing babies to our houses.  There is a toll to pay for existence.  Our bodies tell us what we need to do, no matter how disillusioned our minds may become.  Eventually, instinct overrides intellect – if it didn’t, the human race in its infinite stupidity would be long extinct by now.  So our bodies pulled us in an opposite direction to our minds, causing us to feel guilty, ashamed, embarrassed of ourselves.

Even nastier quirks would have been introduced in reaction to sexually transmitted diseases.  In the times before we understood what diseases were, and how they spread, sickness was seen as some sort of curse or evil spirit taking hold of the body.  With religion creating the expectation that evil only befalls bad people who do bad things, someone must have got it in their head that the torment of an STD, localized to their genitals after intercourse, was punishment for their promiscuity.  Once bitten, twice shy – and several Religions responded by asserting that sex should only happen for the purpose of procreation.  Any unnecessary indulgence would be punished, as evidenced by the diseases.  Furthermore, the institution of marriage in most cases reduced the number of sexual partners a person could have, even for procreation, to only one.

I have to admit, for stemming the spread of STDs, these superstitious mechanisms were somewhat effective – not because they accurately educated people on STDs and how they could be prevented, but because it scared them into a behavior that happened to work without them truly knowing why.  Yet most STDs still exist today - even Syphilis has resurfaced - so it obviously didn’t stop everyone.  Nevertheless people became scared of sex because they didn’t know where the boundaries of safety were, and even their superstitions couldn’t guarantee them anything.

Since then, science has come along and illuminated a lot of things for us.  Never perfect, but always open for improvement and refinement, science has developed far enough that it can provide us more reliable and realistic explanations of how the world works.  Science would not advance if it dwelled on outdated theories that have been replaced with more accurate approximations, or ideas that have been outright proven wrong.

My feeling is that we need to cast away all of this superstitious residue still hanging around sex, and return to some of the facts and simple truths.  Let’s rebuild our understanding of it from the ground up, with nothing more than modern-day common knowledge.

So here is what I imagine that would look like.

Sex is just another bodily function, like eating, drinking, defecating, breathing, sleeping.  Granted, sex is the least urgent of our bodily functions because our bodies will not cease to function without sex.  Technically we can go for long periods without sleeping too, but it is not pleasant for us.  Our bodies have mechanisms to steer us away from depriving ourselves of any of our basic needs, by making it feel unpleasant for us to do so, or giving us urges when opportunities to satisfy those needs present themselves.

Our life spans are limited, even without things like disease and injury to cut them shorter.   Reproduction is essential for the survival of our species because it counteracts the loss of numbers that we naturally experience.  Not every act of sex will result in reproduction, but we have the urge to have sex as often as possible because it increases the likelihood that reproduction will occur at a rate high enough to maintain our numbers.  Advances in medical science mean we are better at surviving diseases and injuries, but our bodies are still tuned such that our species effectively reproduces faster than we currently need to, in order to maintain our numbers.

Sex has functions for us other than just reproduction, much like our genitals have functions for us other than just intercourse (try peeing without using your genitals).  Sex also serves an important social function for us: it allows us to form stronger bonds with other human beings.  It affords us a level of intimacy and connection that goes beyond our intellect.  It can reinforce our implicit trust of another human being, synchronizing to a common purpose of mutual wellbeing.  Relying on other human beings is perhaps one of our strongest survival mechanisms, and sex, regardless of gender, can help us achieve the trust necessary for that to happen.  While we are capable of stimulating ourselves, this has no reproductive or social value – it is a band-aid fix to temporarily alleviate our urges until a more feasible time.

A caveat is that diseases can make their way into our bodies through the act of sex.  Likewise, diseases can be caught from eating contaminated food, drinking contaminated water, and breathing contaminated air, or by an injury coming into contact with a contaminated surface.  Diseases can enter our bodies any time that we interact with the outside environment.  We can use our intellect to reduce the chances of this happening by being selective of what we take into our bodies, and observant of things that have impacted others negatively.  Modern technology provides ways that we can experience the intimacy of sex without exposing our genitals directly to our sexual partners, much like it has discovered various ways of preventing contamination entering our bodies via food, water, and air.  None of these ways are 100% effective, and still involve some risk of contaminants getting through.  Nevertheless this significantly reduces the capability of disease spreading via intercourse, and also enables us to have intercourse with the opposite sex for purely social reasons.

Count them: four paragraphs is all it took to express a healthy philosophy about sex that is applicable to us in the current day.  Four paragraphs to get the better of thousands of years of superstition, convolution, fear and oppression surrounding a basic human need.  Demons be gone!!

"Banana Cat" Update

Okay, if you roll your eyes every time I bring up our pets in the Publisher’s column, you can just skip to the next section.

Whenever we take Snoopy to the vet for his monthly check-up, we usually show up later in the evening to our 24-hour location of choice, in hopes that things won’t be too busy.  Snoopy meowed all the way to the vet, as he normally does at the upset of being unexpectedly snatched away from the comfort of home.  He hates being in his carry bag, so Steve will open it enough that he can stick his head out and look through the windows at the other cars as we make the drive there.

When we arrive at the vet, we immediately let him out of his carrier so that he can hang out in "Doug’s House" – a little cat house atop a scratching tree that the clinic has in their waiting room.  He usually curls up and stares out at us with loathing, as by now he knows what to expect.

When we arrived this time, we found out that all of the doctors were in surgery.  Since it is a long drive, we decided to wait the estimated 45 minutes to see someone for Snoopy’s check-up.  Though for some reason, Snoopy seemed a little restless this evening.

Finally when one of the doctors was free, they were able to do his blood test.  It takes an additional half an hour for the results to come back, so we opted to stick around to discuss them so that we could decide what supplies to pick up before leaving.  Snoopy became a little more restless, though he had just had blood drawn, so it was understandable.

We got the results back and things appeared to be stable from his past several visits.  The doctor reinforced how remarkable Snoopy was, telling us to continue with our current course of treatment and not to come back for at least three months (the cost of these frequent visits were admittedly adding up).  We picked up enough supplies to last us for that long, and headed home almost in tears with how happy we were at this good news.

Snoopy did not share that sentiment.  Usually very chirpy and relieved on the ride home, this time Snoopy was meowing as much as he had on the trip there.  He forced his way out of his carrier and Steve ended up holding him in his lap, foiling numerous attempts to escape into the back seat.  I remained focused on the road while reassuring him in a soothing voice.

About three quarters of the way home, Steve suddenly howled, "Nooo, Snoopy!"  I was going 80 along Crowchild and couldn’t take my eyes off the road.  "What’s going on?" I asked anxiously.

There was a long pause before Steve let out a laugh of mixed embarrassment and resignation, saying, "He’s peeing in into my hand, and it’s going all over my lap."

I let out a howl of "Nooo, Snoopy!" as well, but there was nothing we could do but let him finish.  It was a long pee - he had been holding it in for nearly two hours.

The rest of the ride home, Snoopy quietly watched the cars out the window, as if trying to forget this embarrassment.  Steve whimpered occasionally as he felt the wet patch get colder and colder in the minus temperatures.  Five minutes later Snoopy was safely home, a few pounds lighter, and Steve had some laundry and showering to do.

Website Updates

We made some useful additions and revisions to the website last month.

The target of our first makeover was the Magazine area, where we cleaned up the layout for the online article view.  This included some rearranging of the order of things on the page to promote easier reading, simpler navigation, and quicker access to share the articles on Facebook, Twitter, and over 300 other services and tools.

The second update that has been getting great results is the colourful "What’s New" bar in the top right corner of most pages.  This nifty tool gives you an instant summary of recently posted articles, news releases, prize draws, polls, chat postings and more - with links that take you right to them.  Now you can see what’s going on no matter where you are on website!

Lastly, if you have a website of your own, we now have a "Link to Us" page with a variety of different code snippets that you can place on your site to link your visitors to GayCalgary.com.  They include a static button image, your choice of various sizes of static and animated web banners, and even a script that will display the cover of the latest magazine!

Magazine Updates

This month we have revised our Classified Ads area to no longer include the form printed in the magazine.  The trend we are seeing is that very few people are using the printed form, while the classified ads are piling in from our website through the online form (www.gaycalgary.com/classifieds).

So we’ve decided it’s finally time to retire our classified ads form from being printed every month in the magazine.  While it will be missed, its sacrifice will allow another article, advertisement, or page of photographs to live.  I would say that we have prepared a collage of all the good times we shared with our classified ads form, but that would be taking this silliness too far.

Besides, the online form is much easier to fill out – it does all the calculations for you, and also goes live on the website the moment we receive payment for it.

If you don’t have access to the internet, you can always phone us and arrange for us to fax or mail you a copy of the form.

What’s that new thing on the cover?

Everyone remain calm, it’s not a UPC code - GayCalgary & Edmonton Magazine is not disappearing off the racks and going paid!  Phew, disaster averted.

All jokes aside, you probably recognize the funky coloured square as something similar to the Tags that we have been using throughout the magazine for the past several months.  But this one is special.

We recently devised a clever adaptation of Tags to cause your mobile device to download the electronic (PDF) version of the magazine when scanned.  See a magazine on the shelf, and take an electronic copy home with you.  Or, scan your copy from home and read it on the go with your mobile device.

The tag on the cover of the magazine will always take you to that particular edition; however we are also including a tag in the Table of Contents area that will download the latest edition of GayCalgary & Edmonton Magazine.  So if you haven’t had a chance to pick up the latest magazine, you can scan last month’s copy (or any previous month’s copy with that tag) to get it on your mobile device!

Isn’t technology wonderful?

By Rob Diaz-Marino, MSc.

I think sex has gotten a really unfair rap in our society.  People are plagued by all sorts of unnatural phobias and aversions to sex; they feel ashamed of their bodies and especially their genitals; they can even feel threatened that a higher power will punish them for even thinking about it.  It’s not right, and it’s not healthy at all...the perception of sex, that is – not the sex itself.

So here is how I imagine things must have gone down.

It must have all started back when we humans first invented clothing.  While it protected us from the elements and enabled us to spread out to less hospitable climates, it created an imbalance in how we perceived one another: it covered up our bodies and made us more sensitive to seeing one another naked, or having sex.  We lost a sense of how different we can be physically, so seeing a naked body other than our own became a shock.

At some point people started taking offense to this shock of seeing other naked bodies, engaged in sex or simply nude, and prescribed that certain parts should remain private.  The genitals were first because they were the raciest, then breasts and nipples because they too could provoke a strong visceral response.  Over time, only the essentials remained public: the functional parts of our bodies that we couldn’t do without exposing in our daily tasks and social interactions – hands, faces – and some of the more neutral parts like arms, legs, feet, neck.  Our extremities were less covered than the more vulnerable and vital trunks of our body, and as a result, were less taboo to be seen in public.  Likewise, intercourse became private because the parts of our bodies necessary for it were also private.

So it became necessary to invent devices to continue broadcasting our gender without showing our actual genitals.  It became prescribed what a boy should look like, and what a girl should look like, according to their public parts (I suppose the exceptional cases between the two genders weren’t given consideration because it was figured they didn’t have an "opposite" that they needed to attract).  The end result became that it was no longer necessary to see one another naked in order to identify a potential mate.

Being able to escape from constant reminders of our sexuality allowed us to blur it out of our thought process.  It was as if humans could be Barbie/Ken dolls, with nothing but featureless bumps under their clothing.  An unhealthy imbalance was created between reality and our state of mind.

But the human race couldn’t propagate by a make-believe stork bringing babies to our houses.  There is a toll to pay for existence.  Our bodies tell us what we need to do, no matter how disillusioned our minds may become.  Eventually, instinct overrides intellect – if it didn’t, the human race in its infinite stupidity would be long extinct by now.  So our bodies pulled us in an opposite direction to our minds, causing us to feel guilty, ashamed, embarrassed of ourselves.

Even nastier quirks would have been introduced in reaction to sexually transmitted diseases.  In the times before we understood what diseases were, and how they spread, sickness was seen as some sort of curse or evil spirit taking hold of the body.  With religion creating the expectation that evil only befalls bad people who do bad things, someone must have got it in their head that the torment of an STD, localized to their genitals after intercourse, was punishment for their promiscuity.  Once bitten, twice shy – and several Religions responded by asserting that sex should only happen for the purpose of procreation.  Any unnecessary indulgence would be punished, as evidenced by the diseases.  Furthermore, the institution of marriage in most cases reduced the number of sexual partners a person could have, even for procreation, to only one.

I have to admit, for stemming the spread of STDs, these superstitious mechanisms were somewhat effective – not because they accurately educated people on STDs and how they could be prevented, but because it scared them into a behavior that happened to work without them truly knowing why.  Yet most STDs still exist today - even Syphilis has resurfaced - so it obviously didn’t stop everyone.  Nevertheless people became scared of sex because they didn’t know where the boundaries of safety were, and even their superstitions couldn’t guarantee them anything.

Since then, science has come along and illuminated a lot of things for us.  Never perfect, but always open for improvement and refinement, science has developed far enough that it can provide us more reliable and realistic explanations of how the world works.  Science would not advance if it dwelled on outdated theories that have been replaced with more accurate approximations, or ideas that have been outright proven wrong.

My feeling is that we need to cast away all of this superstitious residue still hanging around sex, and return to some of the facts and simple truths.  Let’s rebuild our understanding of it from the ground up, with nothing more than modern-day common knowledge.

So here is what I imagine that would look like.

Sex is just another bodily function, like eating, drinking, defecating, breathing, sleeping.  Granted, sex is the least urgent of our bodily functions because our bodies will not cease to function without sex.  Technically we can go for long periods without sleeping too, but it is not pleasant for us.  Our bodies have mechanisms to steer us away from depriving ourselves of any of our basic needs, by making it feel unpleasant for us to do so, or giving us urges when opportunities to satisfy those needs present themselves.

Our life spans are limited, even without things like disease and injury to cut them shorter.   Reproduction is essential for the survival of our species because it counteracts the loss of numbers that we naturally experience.  Not every act of sex will result in reproduction, but we have the urge to have sex as often as possible because it increases the likelihood that reproduction will occur at a rate high enough to maintain our numbers.  Advances in medical science mean we are better at surviving diseases and injuries, but our bodies are still tuned such that our species effectively reproduces faster than we currently need to, in order to maintain our numbers.

Sex has functions for us other than just reproduction, much like our genitals have functions for us other than just intercourse (try peeing without using your genitals).  Sex also serves an important social function for us: it allows us to form stronger bonds with other human beings.  It affords us a level of intimacy and connection that goes beyond our intellect.  It can reinforce our implicit trust of another human being, synchronizing to a common purpose of mutual wellbeing.  Relying on other human beings is perhaps one of our strongest survival mechanisms, and sex, regardless of gender, can help us achieve the trust necessary for that to happen.  While we are capable of stimulating ourselves, this has no reproductive or social value – it is a band-aid fix to temporarily alleviate our urges until a more feasible time.

A caveat is that diseases can make their way into our bodies through the act of sex.  Likewise, diseases can be caught from eating contaminated food, drinking contaminated water, and breathing contaminated air, or by an injury coming into contact with a contaminated surface.  Diseases can enter our bodies any time that we interact with the outside environment.  We can use our intellect to reduce the chances of this happening by being selective of what we take into our bodies, and observant of things that have impacted others negatively.  Modern technology provides ways that we can experience the intimacy of sex without exposing our genitals directly to our sexual partners, much like it has discovered various ways of preventing contamination entering our bodies via food, water, and air.  None of these ways are 100% effective, and still involve some risk of contaminants getting through.  Nevertheless this significantly reduces the capability of disease spreading via intercourse, and also enables us to have intercourse with the opposite sex for purely social reasons.

Count them: four paragraphs is all it took to express a healthy philosophy about sex that is applicable to us in the current day.  Four paragraphs to get the better of thousands of years of superstition, convolution, fear and oppression surrounding a basic human need.  Demons be gone!!

"Banana Cat" Update

Okay, if you roll your eyes every time I bring up our pets in the Publisher’s column, you can just skip to the next section.

Whenever we take Snoopy to the vet for his monthly check-up, we usually show up later in the evening to our 24-hour location of choice, in hopes that things won’t be too busy.  Snoopy meowed all the way to the vet, as he normally does at the upset of being unexpectedly snatched away from the comfort of home.  He hates being in his carry bag, so Steve will open it enough that he can stick his head out and look through the windows at the other cars as we make the drive there.

When we arrive at the vet, we immediately let him out of his carrier so that he can hang out in "Doug’s House" – a little cat house atop a scratching tree that the clinic has in their waiting room.  He usually curls up and stares out at us with loathing, as by now he knows what to expect.

When we arrived this time, we found out that all of the doctors were in surgery.  Since it is a long drive, we decided to wait the estimated 45 minutes to see someone for Snoopy’s check-up.  Though for some reason, Snoopy seemed a little restless this evening.

Finally when one of the doctors was free, they were able to do his blood test.  It takes an additional half an hour for the results to come back, so we opted to stick around to discuss them so that we could decide what supplies to pick up before leaving.  Snoopy became a little more restless, though he had just had blood drawn, so it was understandable.

We got the results back and things appeared to be stable from his past several visits.  The doctor reinforced how remarkable Snoopy was, telling us to continue with our current course of treatment and not to come back for at least three months (the cost of these frequent visits were admittedly adding up).  We picked up enough supplies to last us for that long, and headed home almost in tears with how happy we were at this good news.

Snoopy did not share that sentiment.  Usually very chirpy and relieved on the ride home, this time Snoopy was meowing as much as he had on the trip there.  He forced his way out of his carrier and Steve ended up holding him in his lap, foiling numerous attempts to escape into the back seat.  I remained focused on the road while reassuring him in a soothing voice.

About three quarters of the way home, Steve suddenly howled, "Nooo, Snoopy!"  I was going 80 along Crowchild and couldn’t take my eyes off the road.  "What’s going on?" I asked anxiously.

There was a long pause before Steve let out a laugh of mixed embarrassment and resignation, saying, "He’s peeing in into my hand, and it’s going all over my lap."

I let out a howl of "Nooo, Snoopy!" as well, but there was nothing we could do but let him finish.  It was a long pee - he had been holding it in for nearly two hours.

The rest of the ride home, Snoopy quietly watched the cars out the window, as if trying to forget this embarrassment.  Steve whimpered occasionally as he felt the wet patch get colder and colder in the minus temperatures.  Five minutes later Snoopy was safely home, a few pounds lighter, and Steve had some laundry and showering to do.

Website Updates

We made some useful additions and revisions to the website last month.

The target of our first makeover was the Magazine area, where we cleaned up the layout for the online article view.  This included some rearranging of the order of things on the page to promote easier reading, simpler navigation, and quicker access to share the articles on Facebook, Twitter, and over 300 other services and tools.

The second update that has been getting great results is the colourful "What’s New" bar in the top right corner of most pages.  This nifty tool gives you an instant summary of recently posted articles, news releases, prize draws, polls, chat postings and more - with links that take you right to them.  Now you can see what’s going on no matter where you are on website!

Lastly, if you have a website of your own, we now have a "Link to Us" page with a variety of different code snippets that you can place on your site to link your visitors to GayCalgary.com.  They include a static button image, your choice of various sizes of static and animated web banners, and even a script that will display the cover of the latest magazine!

Magazine Updates

This month we have revised our Classified Ads area to no longer include the form printed in the magazine.  The trend we are seeing is that very few people are using the printed form, while the classified ads are piling in from our website through the online form (www.gaycalgary.com/classifieds).

So we’ve decided it’s finally time to retire our classified ads form from being printed every month in the magazine.  While it will be missed, its sacrifice will allow another article, advertisement, or page of photographs to live.  I would say that we have prepared a collage of all the good times we shared with our classified ads form, but that would be taking this silliness too far.

Besides, the online form is much easier to fill out – it does all the calculations for you, and also goes live on the website the moment we receive payment for it.

If you don’t have access to the internet, you can always phone us and arrange for us to fax or mail you a copy of the form.

What’s that new thing on the cover?

Everyone remain calm, it’s not a UPC code - GayCalgary & Edmonton Magazine is not disappearing off the racks and going paid!  Phew, disaster averted.

All jokes aside, you probably recognize the funky coloured square as something similar to the Tags that we have been using throughout the magazine for the past several months.  But this one is special.

We recently devised a clever adaptation of Tags to cause your mobile device to download the electronic (PDF) version of the magazine when scanned.  See a magazine on the shelf, and take an electronic copy home with you.  Or, scan your copy from home and read it on the go with your mobile device.

The tag on the cover of the magazine will always take you to that particular edition; however we are also including a tag in the Table of Contents area that will download the latest edition of GayCalgary & Edmonton Magazine.  So if you haven’t had a chance to pick up the latest magazine, you can scan last month’s copy (or any previous month’s copy with that tag) to get it on your mobile device!

Isn’t technology wonderful?