O hai. Ur dumped.

Plz to enjoy my last Bed, Bitch and Beyond blog post. My gig at Bitch ends today, so the topic is breakups, complete with much oversharing about my own fraught history of oddball breakups (the LOLCat may remind you of one).

All things must come to an end…whether by voicemail, text, in person or in divorce court. But now that I’m back at Harpyness full-time, I send many heartfelt thanks for all your comments and support while I was at Bitch–especially during the porn-related shitstorms. I’m never breaking up with y’all.

A relationship question for our modern times: Do you Google the people you date? Before a blind date? After a first date? Just quick background check? It’s undoubtedly the greatest invention in history if you want to check up on your exes, but what about Googling the people you’re meeting right now? It was the topic of much discussion in a Jezebel thread last week, and a recent article in the Washington Post.

Now we tackle the issue head-on: Does hitting the search engines ahead of time spoil the thrill of discovery? Does it ruin the romance? Or is checking people out on-line just common sense?

I’ve simply never bought into the idea that all sex must live up to the shining heteronormative ideal of candlelight and roses and true love (which, of course, will progress naturally to an engagement ring and a poufy white dress.) Now, I was always told growing up that “sex is what you do when you love someone.” Well, yes. But also…no. Fun sex with your friends has its place too, especially during dry spells between relationships, which is why my friend Jill often refers to them as “the dick in the glass case” (imagine a fire alarm: In Case of Horny Emergency, Break Glass and Grab Dick.)

Read on for more about the joy of  casual sex and not-boyfriends, and why I hate He’s Just Not That Into You.

Read on for more…including discussions of masturbation, asexuality, and the Kardashian sisters.

Via Liz_Kelly @ Flickr.

In my most recent post for Bed, Bitch and Beyond blog, I actually switched from talking about sex to talking about…no sex. This was in response to a brilliant reader comment: Becky I’m interested to know if you’ve ever thought about abstinence from a sex positive feminist type of perspective. I mean, in some ways it seems like “not having sex” is an option that has been completely co-opted by the abstinence only sex ed types, and exists only as a purely moral decision. I’m struck by the absence of discussion of abstinence from a sex positive feminist perspective. But isn’t it also important to reframe not having sex in sex positive terms? In strange way,though, in all of these discussions you’ve started (at least on Bitch) about sex, it seems like you’ve revealed the most taboo option in the minds of many sex positive folks is not to have sex.

Can you be sex-positive and still choose or advocate celibacy? Or are the two things mutually exclusive?

Via romeotees @ Flickr.

Today in my Bed, Bitch and Beyond blog at Bitch Magazine, my pornography blame-a-thon continues. This week the topic is anal sex. (And let me just say that the Google search results involved in researching this post were…interesting).

Recent scientifc data–which we’ll get to in a minute–suggests that heterosexual women, and especially young women, are having anal sex more frequently than ever before. For our mothers’ and grandmothers’ generation, anal sex was just about the ultimate taboo, a perverse act that couples rarely did or at least, never admitted to. Not anymore.

As with any trend in women’s sexual behavior, I think it’s fair to examine what cultural influences might account for this change. People are more likely to engage in a formerly taboo sex act if depictions of it are widely available, even celebrated. And where is anal sex eroticized, and depicted as not only normal, but totally hot?

Why porn, of course.

Via mathiole @ Flickr.

My latest post from the Bed, Bitch and Beyond blog at Bitch Magazine, in which we explore what Time dubs “the retrosexual”: when reconnecting via Facebook gives you a second chance to hook up with that hot girl or guy you missed out on in high school, an experience poetically described as springing “from an intense, almost uncontrollable mixture of nostalgia and interest.”

Also featuring a blatant and revealing overshare about my own retrosexual experience with my high school crush.

via mickeysacks @ Flickr.

The latest post from my Bed, Bitch and Beyond blog on Bitch Magazine in which I respond to a reader who wrote: Curious to know what you and Bitch readers think about threesomes. I tried a threesome, and feelings got hurt just like I’d feared they might. I think you gotta be very sure there’s no competition between the three, and everyone really is into it (probably obvious, but you know…)

Be forewarned: some of the stuff I fling will not be Glamour-approved.