What I learned from googling ‘sex’ everyday for four years

[Update 19-04-2017: Due to a website redesign, many of the below links are now dead. However, you can read many of the mentioned articles HERE.]

I learned very many things thanks to my weekly column ‘Sex in the Press’. And as the column inches towards its 200th edition, I still feel that I have very much more to learn. Yes: sex ed should be considered a lifetime undertaking.

The column collects global news stories related to affairs of the heart and the loins. So for me to stay, um, atop of these issues, I have to, um, insert ‘sex’ into Google News almost every day. Sure, I also appreciate getting sex-related links from friends and colleagues. But Google usually beats them to the punch. Thanks Google! You’re a true perv. Respect.

‘My orgasm is purple. What colour is yours?’
‘Animal genitals: A gift that keeps giving’ 
‘How to date a sex doll‘

Sex in the Press appears on the acclaimed sex&relationships platform Love Matters (for more on LM and my role as editor, go HERE). Every week, the column is published on the India and Kenya websites, before being bounced to spark conversations with the millions of LM followers on Facebook. It’s also regularly translated into Chinese, Spanish, Arabic and Hindi for the other LM websites. It’s also often picked up by other media such as Youth Ki Awaaz (India), This is Africa, Kenya Buzz and Kenya’s major print newspaper The Star.

‘The penis in history’
‘Vaginas of yesteryear’
‘Ass from the past’

So yes, my column gets around – but don’t you dare slut-shame it.

ONE OF THE FIRST THINGS I LEARNED ABOUT SEX:
After years of writing about such basics as food, drink and travel, I quickly realised that my usual ‘journalistic’ approach of having a little taste of everything is not applicable to that other basic: pleasurable sex&relationships. It’s just not sustainable – no matter how many fancy pills you pop.

‘Penises for a better world‘
‘Vagina warriors‘
‘The optimistic ass‘

A FEW OTHER THINGS I LEARNED ABOUT SEX:
That when you search Google News for sex, you have to swim like a headless sperm through a lot of news stories about creepy American high school gym coaches before you find something interesting… That penis size is a global insecurity among those who dangle… That many of those who dangle are frightened by vaginas… That everyone is kinky in their own special way – especially stockbrokers… That not everyone thinks gender is a happy rainbow… That people like to read about the weird things people do with their penises (1, 2, 3) and/or vaginas (1, 2, 3)…

‘The deepest of sex secrets’
‘A sperm discovers an egg. You won’t believe what happens next’
‘Things we don’t think about when we think about porn’

… That transgender, polyamory, asexuality and prostate milking are currently trending – perhaps to compensate for the fact that gay marriage has finally become a rather boring subject… That we live in deeply strange times – and that in the future, the times are only going to get stranger and stranger… That, while indeed it is stereotyping, Japan remains a remarkable source for deeply weird sex stories… That if the distance between your urinary opening and your clitoris is more than 2.5 centimetres, you likely can’t orgasm from traditional penetrative sex alone…

‘1001 uses for a condom’
‘69 sex positions to try before you die’
‘An orgy of orgies’

… That animals have intricate and fulfilling sex lives – but they can’t compete with the red hot sex lives of green plants… That loneliness kills – and so does heartbreak… That there’s such a thing as ‘psychedelic sex ed’… That people turn up the volume when confronted with noisy sex… That men and women still have a lot to learn about each other… That the same tech that might cure HIV, might also produce some arbitrarily defined master race… That contemporary sex toys embrace the outer limits of the human imagination… And that – perhaps most importantly: sex remains the most slapstick of all activities…

‘How to kill your relationship’
‘Super Gonorrhoea and the Herpes Apocalypse’
‘It’s time for testicles to grow a pair’

HOW I BECAME A BUTT PUNDIT
My most popular article was probably ‘Bums, booty and the passion for ass’ about how the taste for curvy bottoms has bounced far beyond its traditional strongholds of hiphop videos and communities in Africa and Latin America. The story spread like chlymadia and got picked up everywhere (my favorite was the illustration-enriched version that appeared on This is Africa). It made me a Bum Pundit of sorts. I was even called by South Africa’s Power FM talk radio for an hour interview. I began with the heavy stuff: how a broader acceptance of big bottoms in the mass media was a good sign – as long as it came with a more inclusive sense of beauty and didn’t become some kind of anti-anorexia. The interviewer, clearly bored, cut me off to ask me to please share some of my more fun bum facts. Naturally, I obliged. Later, a caller complained that the global spread of booty’s popularity was another example of cultural appropriation from Africa. I agreed with him, but still felt the need to get serious again and meekly plead: ‘Well I’d like to think that booty belongs to us all…’ The interviewer then decided it was a good time for a commercial break.

SEX ONWARD
Anyway, feel free to browse around: A selected archive for Kenya/Africa is HERE, and the full archive for India is HERE. If there are any publishers out there, I’d love to re-mix these columns into a book. After all, it’s said that sex sells – especially when it’s sex that you are selling.