sb: Marisa Tomei has given up pole dancing since her days on The Wrestler.

The actress - who performed nude dance routines in her role as a stripper in the 2008 Mickey Rourke-starring film - says she hasn't gone on to use any of her new found skills off set.

"I can't say that I'm still pole dancing. It's hard!" the 44-year-old told People magazine. "I understand the hazards of the exotic dancer in a way I never imagined."

cs: That’s the piece I’m showing in the group show Talk Dirty To Me, opening tomorrow night.

Ken at This Heart’s On Fire wrote it up yesterday, including the image, and has since come under fire from his advertising affiliates at Glam Media:

“I’m sorry about the below confusion & I appreciate that Talk Dirty is a very cool exhibition well worthy of coverage.

However, as I am sure you will appreciate; TK Maxx (and the majority of advertisers that we work with) position themselves as a family brand & are concerned about the impact that this could have on their reputation.

(Silly I know, but unfortunately these guys just don’t get art I’m afraid…)

So we have two options: Either we switch the image that accompanies the article for a less NSFW pic – or we call it quits.”

Being the stubborn patriotic American that he is, Ken not only didn’t take my offending image down, he posted the whole exchange, along with a couple more copies sandwiching Kiera Knightly for good measure.

My question is: if families come from sex and vaginas, why are sex and vaginas considered offensive to families?

Sex & Sadomasochism: Trust & Consent

rl: There are two basic and fundamental concepts which, above all others, define and guide the sadomasochistic lifestyle: trust and consent.

It takes a great deal of trust and courage to submit voluntarily to a whipping, or to kneel at another person's feet in true humility.

But I strongly feel it requires considerably more trust and courage to acknowledge that one wants to do so initially. What do we do in sadomasochism?

We learn to trust: Whom to trust; how to trust; when to trust. Because without trust, we are in great peril.

Some of my best friends are lovable dingbats, somewhat flaky but fun. But I would not do SM with them.

In sadomasochism, we need to trust our partners, subs especially need to trust their dominants. I submit that trust is like the brakes on our vehicle: Without them, we cannot safely drive.

rl: A little boy walks up to his mom and says, “Mommy, what’s an orgasm?”

“I don’t know, dear,” she replies. “Ask your father.”

An oldie but a goodie, that one. And like most jokes, it’s funny ’cause it has its roots in truth.

It’s generally easy for men to have orgasms, whether with a partner or on our own. But when it comes to helping our female loved ones get to O-town, our attitude tends to be shoulder-shrugging indifference.

In a recent survey of 1,026 heterosexual men over the age of 18, a full 75% of respondents said that if their partner doesn’t have an orgasm during sex, it’s not her fault. And not their fault, either.

“You are responsible for your own orgasms, not your partner’s,” said sex therapist David McKenzie. “So it’s a very healthy response.” Sex Graph

It’s not that we don’t care. Far from it, in fact. Out of the men surveyed, 64% said it’s very important that their partner have an orgasm, and 29% said it’s at least somewhat important.

“Men on the whole do care, just like women are,” McKenzie said. “When they come for sex therapy, they’re only more than willing to help their partners have an orgasm, because it’s very exciting for them.”

Thing is, it’s just so fucking easy for us. According to the survey, men have about four orgasms per week, half with a partner and half while playing solitaire. S

“Anthropologists believe that men need to have a physical release, ie. orgasm, every 24 to 48 hours,” said Calgary-based sexologist Trina Read, author of the upcoming Til Sex Do Us Part: Make Your Married Sex Irresistible.

“It’s your biological predisposition because you need to spread your seed,” said Read. Somehow that sounds both strangely clinical and slightly dirty at the same time.

But most guys have a limited set of sexual tools, and getting our partners to join us for a ride on the O-train isn’t always easy.

If we bust out all our moves and at the end of it all she still isn’t there, we don’t really have any more material to fall back on, Read said.

“I find men always have a checklist in their heads,” she said. “They go to please their partner, and they try this check. Doesn’t work? Try this check. Doesn’t work? Try this check.

“They go through their list of things they think are going to get their partner excited, and if it doesn’t and work and their checklist is finished... ‛Well, I guess that’s it! That’s all I know!’ ”

“Maybe women are more at fault for not telling men what their sexual needs are,” said Read. “We are supposedly sexually emancipated, and when it comes to long-term sex, we’re not.

“We just sit back and take what we’re given and bitch about it to our girlfriends. And then the guys don’t get as much sex as they’d like.”

gb: On 31 January I answered a problem from a reader asking what to call her daughter's genitals - something that wasn't too twee, euphemistic or overly anatomical.

I asked other readers how they dealt with this; many of you replied. I forgot to ask if people minded if I used their names or not, so I've played it safe and made everyone fairly anonymous.

Edward was the first to write in: "I am trying to spread the use of the term 'twinkie'. This is assonant with 'winkie' which is quite a good word for a penis. Another good one is the french 'zizzi'."

Lots and lots of you wrote in to suggest 'yoni', which is a Sanskrit word but also that used in the Kama Sutra. And more of you than I had anticipated call it a 'front bottom'.

Sara suggested 'ladybits' which I rather like. V called it 'tweenies' - "as a female child growing up in the 50s and 60s, my mother (who was a nurse) called mine 'tweenies'. My sister and I think it came from between the legs."

Cathy Keir has already blogged on the subject and referred me to her entry.

I wanted to find something similarly unique, but more to my liking for our daughter. My partner and I came up with 'mimi'. We liked it, as it sounded both cute and pretty, which is how we ultimately want our daughter to feel about her 'bits'.

Dominique put a French spin on it: "My sister and I are both French and married to Englishmen. We grew up calling the female private parts 'nenette'. My grandmother (my mum's mother) called it 'la lune' (the moon).

I have two daughters and in our house we call it 'nenette'. The term only refers to the part where the pee comes out. I do not use any different terms for the sex organs. I use their anatomical names."

Some time ago, my sister overheard her daughter and son talking about this very subject. 'If a boy's willy is called a penis, what's a girl's thing called?' said my niece to her younger brother. In all seriousness, he replied that it was called 'Fine China'. [Think of the rhyming slang]

But I think my favourite was Mary's suggestion. Her daughter (two-and-a-half years old) calls hers her 'sparkly bits'

rl: I asked Kink.com’s Thomas Roche what I thought was the million-dollar question. And for Kink that million dollars is probably literal.

“Thomas. You work at Kink. The Fucking Machines site is insanely popular. Why!? Why do people want to watch women have sex with machines, and pay good money to do it? What’s the appeal?”

Thomas is of course used to this type of outburst from me onstage. His response was fantastic, including conjecture about the viewers projecting themselves into the scene, but he centered on the basic fact that it’s a woman alone, pleasuring herself, with no unnecessary window dressing tacked on.

It’s true that a machine enables huge variations in how one conjures an orgasm, as in speed, stroke, size, vibration, steadiness, how long it all lasts — things that wouldn’t be possible with a human.

Thomas told me, “There are many other advantages to sex with a human, and many things you will not get — yet — from a machine, like skin touch, smell, eye contact, tenderness, etc.

"Those things that humans alone can provide (so far) are only part of the sexual experience, but they are so fraught with intensity that they can often dominate the experience." (read more]

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