The man on the other line emits a dry, high-pitched exhalation, somewhere between a sob and a squeal. Akara throws her head back and laughs, revealing pearly pink gums.

“Harder,” she demands. “Do it again or I’m gonna call your wife.”

He cries harder, his breathing more ragged. “No,” he pleads. “No.”

“Are you crying?” Akara asks. She titters, covering her mouth with one hand like a cartoon schoolgirl.

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The controversy inspired Maria Bustillos at the Awl to write a defense of Hoinsky with a great big nod of sympathy to all the "shy fellows" out there. I disagree with her contention that Hoinsky's advice is harmless -- but we do agree on one thing: There is nothing wrong with wanting to attract women -- whether it's for a one-night stand or a long-term relationship. The problem arises when the advice is sexist, demeaning or hostile.

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It wasn't until Nakia Grimes recently tried to renew her driver's license that she noticed her birth certificate mistakenly stated she was male. When she tried to update the document, a state official told her she would need a pap test to prove that she was a woman.

"She [the state worker] said I needed to go have a pap exam, have a doctor write a note verifying you’re a woman, and bring it back -- notarized," Grimes told Fox 5 Atlanta.

Fox 5 Atlanta reported the invasive request to Vital Records Services, where the director told her there was no need for the exam and that the employee's request was not standard protocol.

Instead, state record officials simply used the birth certificate of Grimes' son, which lists her as his biological mother, to verify her sex, Grimes says.

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We’ve all been where Sally was on “The Quality of Mercy,” last week’s episode of Mad Men, but not all of us have Glen. When she jumps up and yells for him to help her from the other room, where he’s gone with the pretty blonde, we’re thinking, or I was thinking, “He’s hooking up, he’s going to be pissed, he’s not going to come through.” Or: he’s going to want Sally – that’s what’s going to happen – she’s going to have to repay him. But what does Glen show us? That’s he’s the only virtuous man – the only non-man child – on the show. And possibly on the earth.

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That said, allow me to express my general cynicism going into this. I tend to think that Birchbox, as with most things, is a capitalist invention that helps fuel consumer insecurity and delusion about the potential for the right product to make them finally love themselves. (I have also considered subscribing.) In the same way, Birchbox-for-sex products hold the promise of fixing your sex life, which, if it's really in ruins, can probably only be improved by things that money can't easily buy.

But the novelty and surprise of a monthly mailing service does seem well-suited to "spicing things up in the bedroom," as they say. So I will proceed under the assumption that none of us are expecting to magically gain self-esteem or fix an emotionally dead marriage with any of these products. Deal? Deal.

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After excerpts of Reddit threads in which Hoinsky instructs men to forcefully touch and otherwise pressure women into having sex began circulating on the Internet, people outraged by the book's premise began to call on Kickstarter to cancel the project.

But Kickstarter allowed it to proceed, calling the guide "abhorrent" but not in violation of "our current guidelines." The campaign exceeded its fundraising goal by 800 percent.

While Kickstarter admits it "missed the window" to cancel the project, it apologized for allowing a book that promotes sexual assault to be funded on its website and vowed to change policies to ensure it doesn't happen again:

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While obituaries are calling him an “unlikely” and “improbable” sex symbol, I felt just the opposite. While I’ve been attracted to, dated, and slept with many types of people, if pressed to say I had a type of man I typically swoon over, it’s fat guys. Or big guys. Whatever you want to call them. In an ode to big bellies at The Black Table in 2004, I wrote, “Nothing gets me hotter than a nice, big belly, perhaps not so surprising since I consider James Gandolfini and Monica Lewinsky both people I’d fuck in a heartbeat.”

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Thing is, this isn’t just relevant to people whose work intersects with sex. Jeffrey J. Douglas of the Free Speech Coalition tells me that because this law is overly broad, "every person who engages in 'sexting' images" violates it. Which is to say: EVERYONE AND THEIR MOM IS BREAKING THE LAW. Of course, 2257 is rarely, if ever, used to target people outside of the porn industry -- but that doesn’t change the fact that the law itself might permit it, he says. "Whenever the government is allowed to engage in systematic violations of the Fourth Amendment" -- which protects against unwarranted searches -- "everyone is at risk,” says Douglas.

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Give credit where it's due in the latest example of this old trope – when the Cut ran a story on "Fucking on the First Date? How It Worked Out for 8 Women" Monday, it did at least include a few ladies whose entire lives were not ruined just because they were down for it right away. Inspired by a new book (called "It's Okay to Sleep With Him on the First Date," a title straight out of the Department of Things I Didn't Know We Needed Permission For), author Alyssa Shelasky admits she'd never go all the way that soon. But she also cites women who managed to find their soul mates, who fondly assert relationships launched with "our pure and uncomplicated sexuality from the start."

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I will get right to the point: I am having a very hard time coping with something that happened between my spouse and another person three years ago. That something was an affair. It was not only physical, but also emotional (the two of them professed their love for one another). Our then 15-plus-year marriage had grown cool and distant, responsibilities of everyday life getting in the way, and also resentment over various and assorted disappointments with one another. When I found out about the affair and my spouse confessed what had been going on for some months, we both felt a flood of emotion (emotion that had been lacking in our marriage for some time, as I mentioned) and discussed at length how and why it happened. I acknowledged my part in it as did my spouse. We felt strongly that saving the marriage and our family (we have children) was what we both wanted to do, and that coming so close to ruin made us realize both were indeed worth saving. The sticking point became the other person. My spouse felt sad for this person, this person who was also said to be wronged. I, perhaps not surprisingly, did not feel sad for this unmarried other person.

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In an interview with the New York Times, the Chicago-bred rapper indicated that his sixth album, “Yeezus,” would provide articulate commentary on race, a subject that he first tackled in "College Dropout's" "All Falls Down." A "Saturday Night Live" preview of album cut "New Slaves" demonstrated bold, anti-pop beats rallying against privately owned prisons. It was a perfect opportunity to start a real conversation. Kanye has the audience, he has the gravitas, and he has the intelligence to make people actually listen.

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Turns out the editors of the much-ridiculed magazine were often asking themselves the same questions as the general public: Who reads this?

Those "tickle gizzard" fans -- "the wankership," as she puts it -- would flood her desk with letters. "Frequently, the handwriting on the envelopes [was] what one might call 'serial killer,'" she writes. "Just as frequently, it was heart-inflected in the manner of a giddy teenager. Sometimes the pages were tacky or crumby with substances better not wondered about." The mail was "totally creepy, a little bit heartwarming, and super tragic," she says. "Always, it made me need to immediately wash my hands." Among those were the often bizarre submissions from everyday men who wanted to appear in the magazine. She remembers one that read, "'I would like to pose in your prestigious magazine as a lumberjack and beside a nest of hornets."

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Female genital mutilation (FGM) has no medical benefits and has been banned in Egypt since 2008, but the parents of Soheir al-Batea brought her to Aslan Fadl's private clinic near Cairo to have the procedure performed anyway.

After her blood pressure dropped as a result of the surgery, al-Batea was rushed to the emergency room on Thursday of last week; she died that night.

Fadl turned himself over to the authorities, but has denied any wrongdoing: “The operation was successful and the girl did not suffer any bleeding,” he said.

UNICEF and the United Nations Population Fund in a joint statement called on Egypt to enforce its law against FGM and urged authorities to launch a full investigation into al-Batea's death:

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"Isn't that theory -- that women are better suited to monogamy than men -- struck you as a little too convenient and comforting for men?" Bergner asked a skeptical Colbert. "Science is telling us something very different."

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It seems to be the year of female Internet vigilantes taking on male misbehavior. Just last week, as Salon's Anna North reported, a woman outed on Facebook a stranger she allegedly overheard boasting about his marital infidelities. Naturally, the post went viral. A couple of months ago, Adria Richards tweeted a photo of men at a tech conference who she claimed were making sexually inappropriate jokes. It too blew up online, and one of the men was fired.

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Reportedly inspired by a joke George Clooney made during an interview -- "I got [my balls] unwrinkled. It's the newest thing in Hollywood, ball ironing," he cracked to an Esquire reporter last January -- a Santa Monica spa has started offering a service known as "tackle-tightening." The 45-minute procedure uses lasers to correct discoloration and remove hair and wrinkles on the scrotum, making your balls look as shiny and new as a pair of Christmas ornaments.

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My voice rose, along with a sense of dread. “For a threesome?”

“No, for you — to sleep with,” he said. “I could watch. From the closet. He wouldn’t know I was there.”

I fought a swell of revulsion. Jack wanted me to sleep with other men? And he wanted to watch? It defied the laws of romance.

Jack and I met online four months earlier (although his name isn’t really Jack). He was cute, with blue eyes and dark stubble. Feeling lonely after having recently moved 3,000 miles from Brooklyn to San Francisco, I ignored my initial anxiety about his age (39 to my 29). He was an accomplished artist and musician and, being a sucker for tortured creative types, I invited myself over to his place at the end of our first date, where we finished off a bottle of cheap Cabernet before having hazy sex that I could barely remember the next day.

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This is a book for every woman who has ever felt like a man for being sexual.

It is largely a sexual autobiography, but also self-conscious proof-positive that women are capable of being just as desirous as men. She writes poetically about having her partner ejaculate on her: “I love this. The sudden wet coolness on me. The smell: summer rain on cement. Fresh, open windows.” Of her lover's swollen member, she says, "It is beautiful. It unnerves me, in its gorgeous attentiveness." It would be a daringly personal work for any woman to write, but perhaps especially so for Angel, a Cambridge-educated academic and feminist who has researched female sexual dysfunction.

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