The Global Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Individuals' and Couples' Sexuality

The COVID-19 pandemic and its related restrictions significantly impacted individuals' health, wellbeing, and security. Isolation, limitation of movement, social distancing, and forced cohabiting have had a strong influence on all areas of people's lives as well as on their sexuality. Investigating how the COVID-19 outbreak and its consequences impacted people's sexuality was the primary aim of this review. Particularly, we focused on: (1) the variables associated with the improvement or the deterioration of individuals' and couples' lives during the pandemic; (2) the use of sex as a coping strategy; (3) the impact of COVID-19 outbreak on LGBT people. Results have shown that the worsening of sexual life seems to be related to couples' conflict, emotions and psychological difficulties, being female, being single or away from the partner, being a health care worker, and having children. Moreover, a detrimental effect on sexuality was associated with stress, forced cohabitation, routine, anxiety and worry about the job and the pandemic, feeling partner distance, being unhappy with their partner, and lack of privacy. On the other hand, improvements in sexuality were associated with living happily with a partner, being happy and satisfied with a partner, feeling less stressed and more bored, having more free time, having fewer recreation opportunities, and having minor workload. During the pandemic, there was an increase in using sex toys, pornography consumption, masturbating, and trying sexual experimentations. Among LGBT people, an increase was found in the number of casual sexual partners potentially due to the perceived lower likelihood of transmission through sex. Moreover, the increase in sexual activity may have represented a coping strategy to quarantine-related distress.

Bluetooth Orgasms

Bluetooth-operated sex toys penetrate and are penetrated by the human body, leaving code behind. This article analyzes the relationships that develop between bodies and Bluetooth-operated interactive sex toys. Resembling the pods and portals of David Cronenberg’s film eXistenZ, interactive sex toys allow us to consider how technologies relate intimately to the sexual body. I use Massumi’s work on virtuality and affect theory as a starting point from which to frame embodiment, virtuality, and the circulation of affects. Further, I consider the importance of embodiment and the translations of intensities and vibrations through digital coding among the open sexual body, the technology of the sexual machine, and the applications that foster those connections, in the context of Bluetooth-operated sex toys. This article advocates the need to consider intimate encounters between interactive sex toys and bodies as complex technological and biological assemblages, where vibrating machines and the human body’s flesh come into intimate connection through datafication.

Successful Transabdominal Removal of Penetrating Iron Rod in the Rectum: A Case Report

Foreign bodies in the anus and rectum are not uncommon presentations globally. Reasons for foreign bodies in the rectum can be trauma, assault, psychiatric reasons but the most common reason documented is sexual pleasure, and objects range from sex toys to tools to packed drugs. Regardless of the reason, health care providers must maintain nonjudgmental composure and express empathy. Numerous cases have been reported of anorectal foreign body due to various causes. Removal of the objects has mostly been through rectally but some does need surgical intervention. A multidisciplinary approach and radiologic investigations are important to guide in the management outline. Establishment of guidelines for anorectal foreign bodies are needed to guide surgeons and emergency physicians on the course of treatment. We present a case of an eleven-year old school boy slid and fell on an iron rod that penetrated his rectum through his anal canal. Presented with clinical features of peritonitis, where emergency laparotomy was done and the iron rod was extracted abdominally with primary repair of the rectum. The boy recovered well and was discharged four days after with no complications.

Rectal perforation caused by a self-inserted foreign body: a case report

Rectal foreign bodies have a storied history as a part of anorectal trauma. Objects encountered are most commonly household objects consisting of bottles and glasses. Other objects include tooth brushes, deodorant bottles, food articles, knives, sports equipment, cell phones, flash lights, wooden rods, broom sticks, sex toys including dildos and vibrators, light bulbs, nails, or other construction tools, christmas ornaments, aerosol canisters, cocaine packets, and many more. The reasons for insertion in decreasing order of frequency are autoeroticism, concealment, attention-seeking behavior, accidental, assault and to alleviate constipation. Here we presented a case of 32 years old presented to the ER with complaints of pain in lower abdomen and anal region for 12 hours. He complained of severe pain when he tried to defecate. He gave history of self-insertion of an empty drug vial into his rectum. Rectal foreign bodies represent a challenging and unique field of colorectal trauma. The important factors in dealing with these patients are careful history and physical examination. Patients are often embarrassed about this condition and may conceal the truth. So, a high index of suspicion is required to accurately diagnose.

Safe sex practices among women who have sex with women in Tanzania: implications for HIV and STIs control among this group

Background: Women who have sex with women (WSW) are at an increased risk of sexually transmitted infections (STIs) due to engagement in high-risk sexual behaviors. Safe sex practice is hence critical for the WSW. The aim of the study was to assess safe sex health behaviors and practices among WSW to inform sexual and reproductive interventions targeting this group in Tanzania.Methods: This study was cross-sectional descriptive and retrospective conducted in Dar-es-Salaam region, the largest commercial city in Tanzania. Study population included WSW aged 18 years and above who met inclusion criteria. Data was collected using focus group discussions, in-depth interviews, key informant interviews and life stories. Data analysis applied thematic analysis.Results: Few WSW reported practicing safe sex. WSW used condoms only when engaging in sex with men. Some WSW lacked information on availability of protective devices; while some WSW did not use of protection despite having information on availability of protective devices. Majority of WSW used good hygiene practice (cleaning body, vagina, mouth, and sex toys) before and after sex to prevent transmission of infections; and some WSW used pre- and post- exposure prophylaxes. Low access and high cost of protective devices, being in a monogamous relationship, low health risk perception, fear of developing cancer from using lubricants, and advise from health worker against using lubricants, were reasons given by WSW for not practicing safe sex.Conclusions: Given the current evidence of overlap between the homosexual and heterosexual populations in STI transmission, comprehensive education on potential routes of STI transmission among WSW is critical.

Sex During Pandemic: Panic Buying of Sex Toys During COVID-19 Lockdown

The COVID-19 pandemic has affected almost every part of human life which reveals several peculiar human behaviors. Panic buying is one of the erratic phenomenon that has been observed in many countries of the world during this COVID-19 pandemic. The selling of online sex dolls, lingerie, and sex toys was increased during the COVID-19 lockdown in several countries like Australia, UK, Denmark, Colombia, New Zealand, Italy, Spain, France, India, North America, and Ireland. The increase in sex toy market turnover has several implications such as customization of recreational facilities, limitations in alternative sources of pleasure, need to have sex and unfortunately, and unavailability of a partner. We speculate that people may buy sex toys in response to perceived scarcity, perceived short supply, the anticipation of price hike, or to get control over the environment. However, there could be other factors such as an extra time to explore sexuality, and being apart from the partners. There is a need to study the sexual behavior and sex toy use among people in the post-pandemic era and their repercussions on the intimate relationship.

Play! A Special Issue

Sexuality, as it relates to video games in particular, has received increasing attention over the past decade in studies of games and play, even as the notion of play remains relatively underexplored within sexuality studies. This special issue asks what shift is effected when sexual representation, networked forms of connecting and relating, and the experimentation with sexual likes are approached through the notion of play. Bringing together the notions of sex and play, it both foregrounds the role of experimentation and improvisation in sexual pleasure practices and inquires after the rules and norms that these are embedded in. Contributors to this special issue combine the study of sexuality with diverse theoretical conceptions of play in order to explore the entanglements of affect, cognition, and the somatic in sexual lives, broadening current understandings of how these are lived through repetitive routines and improvisational sprees alike. In so doing, they focus on the specific sites and scenes where sexual play unfolds (from constantly morphing online pornographic archives to on- and offline party spaces, dungeons, and saunas), while also attending to the props and objects of play (from sex toys and orgasmic vocalizations to sensation-enhancing chemicals and pornographic imageries), as well as the social and technological settings where these activities occur. This introduction offers a brief overview of the rationale of thinking sex in and as play, before presenting the articles that make up this special issue.

Toy stories: The role of vibrators in domestic intimacies

This article draws on the findings of qualitative research on the ways in which the domestication of sexual objects, such as vibrators, is central to relationships amongst (non)household members and social interaction within the home. Interviews with a purposive sample of 32 female participants were subjected to interpretative phenomenological analysis. In analyzing experiences and complex senses of belonging, the paper identified different circumstances and issues of public presentation and private realization that lie behind the meaning and use of vibrators. I suggest that objects, such as vibrators, come to be experienced as offering emotional, spatial, relational, and moral structures of both social integration and social distancing. All objects, even sex toys, contain culture, and by examining the domestication of such objects we can enrich knowledge of the affordances that constitute the materiality of sex.

From screen to stage: Mutantes’s sex-positive influence on King Kong Théorie

In order to rectify important gaps in scholarship, this article examines how Virginie Despentes’s documentary Mutantes: Féminisme Porno Punk (2009), her autobiographical essay King Kong Théorie (2006), and its theatrical adaptation play off one another to advance the argument that Despentes’s transnational feminism has its roots in the sex-positive movement that began in the United States in the early 1980s.1 At the heart of her work, this feminism influences King Kong Théorie and much of her fiction.2 Despentes, inspired by the sex-positive movement that began in the United States in the early 1980s, interviewed its American pioneers in 2005 for her documentary, Mutantes. These interviews articulate a sex-positive feminism that strives to destigmatize sex work by promoting it as a legitimate, lucrative, and often enjoyable way to earn a living. It resoundingly refutes the notion of the sex worker as victim. Mutantes also focuses on the performances by European postporn collectives trying to find non-binary ways to express sexuality and desire. This “pro-sexe” stance would shape both Despentes’s feminist manifesto King Kong Théorie one year later and her fiction, for she evokes it in brief references to sex workers in her Vernon Subutex trilogy. In a nod to the campy personalities and performers in Mutantes, Vanessa Larré’s production of King Kong Théorie (2018), that she adapted to the theater with Valérie de Dietrich, also aims to educate and challenge. With provocative and jocular scenes and shots, Mutantes and Larré’s play knock viewers and theatergoers off kilter to make them reflect on the ways gender-based and heteronormative binaries stifle both men and women in patriarchal societies. While some of the performances, images, and non-binary sex toys in Mutantes may be upsetting to viewers, that is exactly the point: to defy gender and sexual norms to open up new possibilities for individuals shut out by the binary. Both the documentary and the play tackle taboo subjects with ludic humor in a way that stimulates reflection on the part of the audience in a disarming, unthreatening manner. This paper uncovers the way the camp sensibilities in Mutantes rub off on the play’s adaptation since both capture the humor, joviality, playfulness, and oftentimes self-deprecation of the sex-positive American feminists that worked their way into Despentes’s writing. Mutantes and the play also concretely underscore the ways Despentes’s works are shaping contemporary feminist writers such as Chloé Delaume and Gabrielle Deydier and artists and actors such as Larré and Dietrich.

Percepções estéticas de mulheres lésbicas acerca de produtos de sex shop

Este artigo busca entender as percepções estéticas de mulheres lésbicas acerca de produtos de sex shop. Assim, esta é uma pesquisa exploratória, básica e descritiva, que se desenvolveu a partir de pesquisa de campo com entrevistas, utilizando um questionário semiestruturado. Esse questionário foi aplicado em grupos focais, de maneira on-line e presencial, sendo a análise desses dados desenvolvida de forma qualitativa. No caso deste estudo, foi possível identificar que as percepções estéticas de mulheres lésbicas acerca de produtos de sex shop seguem desde uma relação de poder com a parceira até uma relação de estranheza com o objeto, gerando possíveis desconfortos. Ainda, tanto na pesquisa on-line quanto na pesquisa presencial, foi possível identificar que há uma preferência por sex toys fálicos e com cores e formas artificiais.