Sexy Snack from Juicy Squirt Princess

Happy New Year! I don’t think any of us can say it’s off to the best start. With omicron surging, many of my holiday plans were cancelled or modified which I’m assuming was a common scenario last week. Thankfully, it wasn’t a total bust. I did get to see some family and friends and have a few good laughs. We got a new game called Ransom Notes which shares a structure and the potential for raunchiness with Cards Against Humanity. Players use word magnets (remember when magnetic poetry was all the rage) to answer writing prompts like “apologize to your neighbor for running over their cat” or “welcome newly landed aliens to earth.” One player is then chosen as the judge and picks the best note. Not surprisingly, some of the prompts are sex related. My mother-in-law almost won the “write a diary entry for the day you lost your virginity” round because her note included the phrase “little tug” but she lost at the last minute to the teenager whose entry ended with “itch after.” The judge (me) could totally relate. The best entry of the holiday, however, goes to the 11-year-old who, when prompted to explain “the sexual fantasy of the player who last served as judge,” came up with “sexy snack from juicy squirt princess.” This not only won but was instantly nominated to be today’s headline. The good news is that it’s vaguely appropriate at least for the last story which looks at some of PornHub’s 2021 stats. Shockingly, squirt princess was not one of the top search terms this year but people seem to be really into tentacle porn which isn’t too far off.

FDA Approves First PrEP Injection

In December, the FDA announced that it had approved the injectable drug Apretude as a new form of Pre-Exposure Prophylactic (PrEP), a strategy for preventing HIV infection. The injection is initially given as two doses one month apart followed by shots every two months. Clinical trials found this strategy to be more effective than once-daily pills and experts hope that it can help people overcome barriers to PrEP use.  

PrEP was first introduced in 2012 with the approval of the once-daily pill Truvada for use by HIV-negative individuals who were at high risk of infection. A second drug was approved in 2019. According to the CDC, PrEP can be 99% effective in preventing the sexual transmission of HIV if taken as prescribed but we know that many people have difficulty adhering to a daily drug regimen. (It’s why the contraceptive implant, for example, is so much more effective than the pill—both use the same mechanism but the one that is left in your arm rather than your night table drawer essentially takes user error out of the equation.) The hope is that an injection that only has to be given once every two months can do the same thing for PrEP.

The clinical trials suggest it can. The first study randomly assigned over 4,500 cisgender men and transgender women who have sex with men to receive either Apretude or Truvada (to keep the study blind, those who got the shot took a daily placebo drug and those who took the pill got a placebo injection every two months). The trial showed participants who took Apretude had 69% less risk of getting infected with HIV when compared to participants who took Truvada. A second study, conducted with over 3,000 cisgender women, had even more striking results: participants who took Apretude had 90% less risk of getting infected with HIV when compared to participants who took Truvada.

In both studies, however, participants getting Apretude were more likely to experience side effects. These included injection site reactions, headache, fever, fatigue, back pain, muscle aches, and rash.

Some experts are hoping that this can be a game changer for expanding the use of PrEP. CDC data suggests that 1.2 million people met the criteria for PrEP in 2020 but only about a quarter of them got a prescription for it. The government has made other recent moves to increase PrEP usage, including expanding the CDC guidelines for who is eligible and requiring almost all health insurers to completely cover PrEP drugs as well as clinical visits and lab tests needed for use.

And, now we have a new option for how to use PrEP. Debra Birnkrant, M.D., director of the Division of Antivirals in the FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, said in a statement: “This injection, given every two months, will be critical to addressing the HIV epidemic in the U.S., including helping high-risk individuals and certain groups where adherence to daily medication has been a major challenge or not a realistic option.”

Others, however, are wary of the impact the new drug can make because of the additional infrastructure that an injection program will require. Kenyon Farrow, who is the managing director for the advocacy group PrEP4All (and used to be my editor at thebody.com), told NBC News that “implementation of this option will likely take years to make it real for most people.” He cited an overburdened public health system that is losing workers to COVID burnout, the need for new insurance coding, and the education and training that nurses will require as things that could delay widespread rollout of this new option. Still, he said his organization is “definitely happy to see the FDA approval of another option for people who want to use PrEP.”

Oklahoma Lawmaker Tries Draconian Tactics for Book Banning

The 2022 legislative session in Oklahoma doesn’t start until February but state Senator Rob Standrige has given us a preview of what’s to come in the ongoing battle between Republican lawmakers and books.

The first of two bills he’s introducing will guarantee that no student in the state will ever be exposed to any information about gender identity or sexual orientation (unless, of course, they take their phone out of their pocket and do a quick Google search). But at least they won’t be exposed to it in the school library (unless, of course, they take their phone out of their pocket and do a quick Google search while they happen to be sitting in the school library). 

In all seriousness, though, SB 1142 outright bans from public schools all “… books that make as their primary subject the study of sex, sexual preferences, sexual activity, sexual perversion, sex-based classifications, sexual identity, or gender identity” as well as “books that are of a sexual nature that a reasonable parent or legal guardian would want to know of or approve of prior to their child being exposed to it.”

The bill also seems to make parents—and not necessarily reasonable ones—the sole arbiters of what is and is not appropriate by levying heavy fines and punishment on schools that don’t immediately comply with parental demands. Any parent who believes a school is in violation of this ban can submit a written request to the school district to have the offending literature removed. The school then has 30 days to comply. The law does not say that the school has 30 days to review the request and possibly decide that the parent was not reasonable or the book should stay. It says only that it has 30 days to take the book off the shelf.

Here’s the kicker. If this is not done within a month, the staff person who should have done it (presumably the school librarian) is to be fired and prohibited from being employed by any school district in the state for two years. But, wait, there’s more. The parent who filed the request in the first place is entitled to compensation of $10,000 a day for each day past the 30 days that the book remained on the shelf.

I have no idea how likely this is to pass in Oklahoma. It sounds too harsh even for a red state. But, Republicans control the legislature in the state with a stunning majority (39 to 9 in the Senate and 82 to 19 in the house) and the party is clearly coming after books about sex. Remember, the goal here is to get parents all riled up about a non-issue ahead of local, state, and federal elections and they are using the same playbook they used (often successfully) to come after sex education and condoms in school.

What We Searched for in 2021; Pornhub Version

Each year, Pornhub, one of the premier sites for adult content, releases data on porn viewing habits worldwide that allow us to be voyeurs in a different way than when we’re actually watching porn. Here are some of the highlights:

Who is Watching

• The U.S. topped the list for Pornhub traffic followed by the UK, Japan, France, Italy, Mexico, and Canada.   

• Worldwide, 35% of Pornhub’s visitors were women but this varied greatly by country. In the Philippines, more women than men (52% v. 49%) visited the site while Colombia and Argentina had an almost equal split. Men were the primary consumers in most countries, however, with France, Germany, Netherlands, and Sweden tied at 28% women v. 72% men.

• Most visitors fell into either the 18 to 24- or the 25 to 34-year-old range but older people watched porn as well. In the U.S., 17% of visitors were over 55 and in Australia, more visitors were between 44 and 54 than between 18 and 24 (23% v. 19%).

What We’re Watching

• Hentai, a Japanese word that can refer to any kind of fetish, became the number one search term worldwide after it surpassed both “lesbian” and “Japanese” in the United States.   

• Categories that were up in 2021 included Big Ass (+314), Bisexual Male (+228%), Female Orgasm (+93%), and Transgender (+23%).

• The top searches were remarkably similar for women and men, just in slightly different orders. Japanese ranked one for men and two for women, and MILF* took the number two spot for men and number three for women. Interestingly, Big Dick, Big Tits, and Female Orgasm were pretty much in the same spots regardless of gender.

• The generations have different tastes. Gen Z looked for lesbian sex more than their older counterparts, Gen Y searched for Asian more often, Gen X had more interest in cartoons, and Boomers looked for some old-fashioned hand job action (a little tug, perhaps).

For How Long

• The average time spent on the site dropped by almost 30 seconds to 9 minutes and 55 seconds worldwide.

• People in the Philippines spent a little more time on the site than others (11 min, 31 seconds) while those in Russia were on and off in just 8 minutes, 11 seconds. 

Trends in porn may tell us a lot about the state of sexuality around the world or they may not. It could be that more people are “into” transgender porn because they have discovered a new partner preference or fantasy. Maybe Hentai has become more popular because Americans are ready to explore their fetishes. Or it might be that we learned a few new words and typed them into our favorite X-rated search engine to see what happened.

As the people at Pornhub point out, the drop in time on the site might indicate that we’ve become speedier masturbators but is more likely the result of better internet speeds in some regions and an improved algorithm on the site. It is likely people are getting got to the videos they wanted to see faster but took the same amount of time to get off.

Hard data this may not be, but it’s still fun to look behind the search curtain and see how our neighbors are spending their downtime. Perhaps we can flood Pornhub with searches for “juicy squirt princess” before next year’s data drops.

 *Footnote for my septuagenarian copy editor who wondered if others might not know: MILF stands for Mother I’d Like to F**k.