Sex Advice

October 25, 2007

Sex talks to raise miner productivity

SYDNEY (Reuters) - Australian coal miners are being taught to explore their wives and understand menopause in order to have a healthy sex life, which in turn will make them happy, productive workers.

The "Toolbox Talks" at the Bulga coal mine in the Hunter Valley, north of Sydney, have been such a success that the Xstrata mining company is considering running them at other mines.

"The Toolbox Talks are a series of health briefings ... addressing issues such as fatigue, prostate cancer, nutrition, heart disease and this month we are addressing the issue of menopause," said Xstrata spokesman James Rickards.

"Even though it is a predominately male working environment we have to look at the lifestyles of our employees, making sure they are fit and healthy at work, but also fit, healthy and happy at home," Rickards told Reuters on Thursday.

Bulga's miners are aged mainly from late 40s to 50s and menopause may be affecting their wives, sisters and friends, said Rickards.

"The health briefings provide them with information on how to help and assist their loved ones who may be going through this or approaching this period of their life," he said.

Mine management believe a miner with a good relationship and healthy sex life will be more productive at the coal face.

"If you have a healthy home life you will have a happy work life and sex is an important part of any relationship, and its important to address sex for an individual that is going through menopause," said Rickards.

Posted by ronnie at 12:09 PM | Comments (0)

August 12, 2007

Sex education creates storm in AIDS-stricken India

MUMBAI (Reuters) - Moves to bring sex out of the closet in largely conservative India have kicked up a morality debate between educators who say sex education will reduce HIV rates, and critics who fear it will corrupt young minds.

It's an emotive issue pitting modernists against conservatives in a country with the world's highest number of HIV cases at about 5.7 million, a figure that experts say may balloon to over 20 million by 2010.

Biology teacher Thelma Seqeira infuriates conservatives in India every time she tells her students about masturbation, condoms and homosexuality.

Seqeira is doing exactly what India's federal government wants the country's 29 states and seven federally-administered regions to do -- fight the exponential spread of HIV/AIDS with information on safe sex.

"Sex education is the best way to prepare my students for adolescence and protect them from HIV/AIDS," said Seqeira, who teaches at a private school in Maharashtra state, western India.

But the governments of Maharashtra, Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh don't agree. They have banned sex education at public schools because they say the learning modules are too explicit, and some pictures are too graphic.

Private schools are able to continue the lessons, but many have watered them down to avoid controversy.

The southern states of Kerala and Karnataka -- considered among India's progressive states with high literacy rates -- are also considering bans.

The Indian government has been unable to stop these bans even as it seeks to curb the spread of HIV. In India, about 86 percent of HIV infections occur through sexual intercourse, one key reason being that migrant workers in cities visit prostitutes and infect their wives when they return home.

KAMA SUTRA

Ignorance about sex is widespread in the land of the Kama Sutra, where explicit sex acts are celebrated in ancient temple architecture.

But at home, mothers hesitate to talk to daughters about something as simple as menstruation, and even the basics of the human reproductive system are taught with much embarrassment in schools.

Experts are calling for a change in prudish attitudes to help counter the spread of HIV/AIDS. They say the winds of change must first blow through the country's schools.

"Sex education does not mean you are encouraging sex which is how it's interpreted," Renuka Chowdhury, India's minister for women and child development, told Reuters last month.

"Sex education is an insurance for your child. It will protect your child."

Among the course elements that have generated much heat are discussions on homosexuality and descriptions of sex acts, including masturbation.

Proponents of the ban say the sex education course -- modeled on those taught in many Western countries, will make students imbibe "decadent western morality."

They point to polls showing that an increasing number of young people -- mostly India's moneyed youngsters that live in cities -- have postponed marriage, but not sex.

An India Today poll revealed one in four Indian women between 18 and 30 in 11 cities had sex before marriage. One in three said she was open to having a sexual relationship even if she was not in love.

"AIDS is spreading because of cultural decadence and sexual anarchy," said Shajar Khan, a prominent student leader who opposes sex education at schools.

Analysts say conservative political parties, such as the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, India's main opposition group, are panning sex education courses at least partly to make political capital out of opposing the West.

But for parents bringing up children in rapidly modernizing India, sex education may be a matter of life and death.

"The argument that if you teach about sex the children are going to run out and have sex is very unfounded," said Roshni Behuria, a mother of two girls.

"Killing the education bit won't reduce the propensity towards sex. But it just might end up killing safe-sex ignorant young people."

Posted by ronnie at 01:45 PM | Comments (0)

December 04, 2006

Muslim woman gives sex advice on Arab TV

CAIRO, Egypt - Heba Kotb is a conservative Muslim, wears an Islamic head scarf, and goes on television once a week to talk — frankly and in great detail — about sex.

On her show, "Big Talk," Kotb answers questions from Muslims all over the Middle East about the most intimate bedroom issues with an openness that is shocking and revolutionary in a society where discussing the subject is taboo.

"How do I talk about these issues? Very seriously," the Egyptian sexologist says. "I put on a mask-like face and make sure I speak in the right tone of voice."

She also does it by talking about sex in an Islamic light, arguing that the faith is in favor of pleasure for both men and women, with one important caveat — that it be only in the context of marriage.

"I'm very proud of my religion," Kotb told The Associated Press in an interview at Cairo University, where she teaches forensic medicine. "My studies revealed to me more and more how Islam was ahead in all sexual matters ... I discovered that Islam understood sex long before the rest of the world."

For example, Islam "stresses the importance of foreplay," Kotb said, and she often stresses to listeners that women should also enjoy sex.

Kotb's frankness is a hit in a region where sex education is minimal, male-female contact is often discouraged and talk on the subject is usually in hushed tones, allowing myths to circulate freely.

She lectured in Saudi Arabia and Yemen recently, where she said many men in the audience where shocked, while women — some with veiled faces — bombarded her with questions.

Kotb, 39 and married with three daughters, studied sexology with Maimonides University, a private school in Florida, and combined it with her own knowledge of her religion to produce a dissertation titled "Sexuality in Islam." She opened a sexology clinic in Cairo in 2002, wrote sex advice columns in newspapers, appeared on talk shows and answered questions on an Arabic Web site.

She started "Big Talk" on the independent Egyptian satellite channel El-Mehwar more than two months ago.

Much of her advice is straight biology — laying out facts rarely aired elsewhere. Nothing is too sensitive. She discusses sexual positions, female orgasm, oral sex (allowed, "since there is no religious text banning it"), even masturbation (frowned upon but at least preferable to unmarried or adulterous sex, which is "haram," meaning forbidden by religion).

She takes a strict Islamic line on homosexuality — she calls it a disease.

Along with doctors, she sometimes brings Islamic clerics onto her show, and many callers ask about the religion's rulings on sexual issues.

Because Islam trumps all else on her show, some complain that it's part of a general inclination in the Middle East to view everything through the prism of religion.

"After Islamic banks, Islamic fashion, Islamic TV channels, Islamic hairdressers, Islamic swimsuits, Islamic writers ... now Islamic sex? This is too much," protested feminist writer Mona Helmi in a column in the Egyptian pro-government weekly Rose el-Youssef.

"Sex is an emotional and human condition, not a religious or identity issue," she said.

Some complain that youngsters are watching the show.

"So now girls and boys have heard all about Heba's talk about sex ... that will let them know more than they should and will get them excited," Somia, a housewife, told AP as she watched "Big Talk," too embarrassed to give her full name.

Kotb says frankness is essential and believes 80 percent of divorces in the Arab world are due to sexual problems brought on by ignorance and societal pressure, such as the idea that man must marry a virgin.

"Many women know nothing about their bodies, not to mention sex, and they were raised to believe sex is for men and a dirty thing," she says.

She gives sex education courses for unmarried youths with the consent of their parents, but in her consulting practice takes only married couples. She says she is booked up for two months with couples from across the Arab world.

"It's a beautiful thing what she is doing," said Abier El-Barbary, a psychotherapist and faculty member of American University in Cairo. "It's a long overdue topic tastefully done," she said.