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Many of these men and women are in marriages or long-term relationships. Their lives are dysfunctional and they know it. They'll expect to spend months, if not years, in 12-step meetings, individual therapy and marriage counseling in hopes of saving their relationships. If they're lucky, they have understanding partners who can see beyond the addiction.

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Ask a woman why she endures the awkwardness and discomfort, and she’ll probably respond, “They make me look, and feel, more attractive.” Newly published research suggests this perception is accurate, but perhaps not for the reason you’d expect.

It’s not the artificially increased height that turns heads. Rather, it’s how such footwear changes the mechanics of a woman’s gait.

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But this past year was different: I waited to have sex for the first time since my first time. (It counts even though it was my partner who insisted on it, right?) I suppose you could say that I'm marginally less cynical about sexual resolutions this year and, as a result, I figured I would make some. This way, on December 31, 2013, I'll be able to see just how far I've come, so to speak, or at least be able to measure how horribly I've failed my "li'l Naomi." (I also appropriately re-christened my vagina this year.)

With the weighty authority of an online sex columnist with a bachelor's degree in English, I hereby recommend that you maybe possibly consider some of these resolutions for yourselves.

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“Do you even need me to come home anymore?” he asked.

As a sex writer, I have a lot of toys, and this wasn’t the first time I’d bought the so-called Cadillac of vibrators, an extremely powerful plug-in electrical massager that's been my go-to sex toy for over a decade. I already had one at my apartment in Brooklyn, but I wanted one for the long stretches of time I spent at his place, and the toy is way too large and unwieldy to cart back and forth.

"It’s just a vibrator,” I told him. “Of course I need and want you.” That seemed obvious to me, but it wasn't as clear to him. As I probed further, I discovered I had tripped into sensitive territory. Owning one Hitachi Magic Wand was all right, but apparently two was overload, even for a boyfriend who once worked in marketing for a sex toy company.

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I also had the added pressure that comes with being black. That all black men have huge penises is the one stereotype we don’t riot in the streets over. I couldn’t be responsible for bringing shame to the race by walking around with a sub-nine-inch penis. What would my ancestors think? I could only hope that Marcus Garvey wasn’t looking down from the heavens shaking his head in disgust at my lack of girth.

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Since the early ’80s, men who have been unsatisfied by their “cuts” have banded together for the cause and formed acronym-heavy groups with varying degrees of wit: Brothers United for Future Foreskins (BUFF), UNCircumcising Information and Resources Centers (UNCIRC), and Recover A Penis (RECAP), among many others. The spectrum is wide, yet the mission remains relatively stable: These dudes want their foreskins back, and they want them now. Plus, they don’t want any more unsuspecting babies to get snipped.

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Certainly, the Christian Right would have had a better chance of bringing more hardcore social conservatives to the High Court if Republican Mitt Romney had been elected president on November 6, whereas President Barack Obama has shown a tendency to nominate justices who are at least centrist in their judicial philosophy. And now that Obama is getting ready to begin his second term, he will be more likely to appoint justices who will uphold or perhaps even expand Supreme Court decisions that are favorable to gay rights (Lawrence v. Texas), contraception (Griswold v. Connecticut and Eisenstadt v. Baird), or one’s right to possess sexually explicit adult erotica (Stanley v. Georgia).

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As far as neighbors went, the sex workers were fine — quiet, courteous, not prone to cooking stinky tofu. The few times my clothes fell from the bamboo poles used to dry laundry in China, they saved the garments for me until I could make the trek downstairs to retrieve them. We didn’t share an entrance, though a window in the back of the parlor opened onto my stairwell, and on my way home on hot nights I would see the women brushing their teeth. (Even the room that doubled as a kitchen and bathroom glowed fuchsia.) As the years passed I rarely had reason to think about the brothel. But it remained a difficult thing to explain to overseas guests, invariably evoking one of those questions about China that evade any quick, pat answer.

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But it's no Human Sexuality textbook: De Botton, author of the bestseller "How Proust Can Change Your Life," is more concerned with big ideas than hard evidence. For example, he writes, "The more closely we analyze what we consider 'sexy,' the more clearly we will understand that eroticism is the feeling of excitement we experience at finding another human being who shares our values and our sense of the meaning of existence."

This seems intuitively true and wise, doesn't it? But desire is not so easily explained. It requires great temerity to make such grand, un-footnoted generalizations given that sex researchers continue to devote their lives to finding empirical evidence to answer such big questions, and such research is often highly nuanced and not easily summarized.

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Infidelity, sex tapes and scandal -- oh my!

You would think it was 1998 from our shock at the power of sex to take down powerful men. But no, it's 2012, and we still find ourselves shaking our heads at the thought that David Petraeus could risk his position as head of the CIA by carrying on an extramarital affair with his biographer, that a team of Secret Service agents could put their jobs on the line for a Colombian prostitute or that Chinese politicians could be captured in flagrante at a sex party or fall for a so-called "honey trap." We're astounded that Kristen Stewart could possibly desire more than Edward Cullen himself or that 76-year-old Fred Willard could be arrested at an adult theater. And when our upstanding neighbors are revealed to be clients of the "Zumba prostitute," we still clasp our pearls.

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Favor-Hamilton, 44, had been working for the illegal Haley Heston’s Private Collection operation under the alias "Kelly Lundy," in various cities across the U.S., including Las Vegas, Chicago and Los Angeles, while simultaneously running a real estate brokerage in Madison, Wis. with her college-sweetheart-turned husband and their 7 year-old daughter. Favor-Hamilton, who also delivers motivational speeches and does promotional work for Disney, described her call-girl life as an "exciting" break from her routine.

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We were residents at a strict segregated rehab in Southern California, and communication between opposite sexes was extremely limited. This made the task of seducing Alicia all the more daunting, more exciting and more intense. I was a serious drug abuser: I’d do anything for intensity.

I started by violating the “sprinkler rule,” a strictly enforced regulation that forbids men and women from holding eye contact for more than three seconds—or around the time it takes for a lawn sprinkler to pass by a patch of grass. I ignored this rule. In fact, for a few days I sat in the lounge gazing intently at Alicia until she noticed. Somehow, she received my message without being creeped out—at least not entirely. But how could I be sure? We had never spoken a word.

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The Full Bench of the Federal Court ruled Dec. 13 in favor of the woman, who cannot be identified for legal reasons, and rejecting the appeal of the federal government's insurer.

The woman was hospitalized after being injured in 2007 during sex with a male friend while staying in a motel in the town of Nowra, 160 kilometers (100 miles) south of her hometown of Sydney.

During the sex, a glass light fitting was torn from its mount above the bed and landed on her face, injuring her nose and mouth. She later suffered depression and was unable to continue working for the government.

Her claim for worker's compensation for her physical and psychological injuries was initially approved by government insurer Comcare, then rejected after further investigation.

An administrative tribunal agreed with Comcare that her injuries were not suffered in the course of her employment, saying the government had not induced or encouraged the woman's sexual conduct. The tribunal also found the sex was "not an ordinary incident of an overnight stay" such as showering, sleeping and eating.

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For instance, I just Googled “black on black crime,” and the very first link that came up  was to a blog post by an African-American writer, discussing the relative lack of attention the writer claimed the African-American community pays to crimes committed by black people against other black people.

This is an example of how, in America, a white person who commits a crime is merely a criminal, while a black person who commits a crime is a black criminal.  In other words, being black in America tends to make one a member of what sociologists call a “marked category.”

The easiest way to explain what that means is to contrast it with its opposite: If I ask you to picture a police officer, what does this person look like?  I’m pretty confident that, whatever other characteristics the person may have, he is a man – just as if I ask you to picture a kindergarten teacher, you almost certainly will conjure up an image of a woman. We don’t usually notice the gender of male police officers because we expect police officers to be men: In this context, maleness is an unmarked category.

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In a court motion, the defense claims that the state law against bestiality deprives 32-year-old Carlos Romero of his "personal liberty and autonomy when it comes to private intimate activities."

But it's actually not quite as crazy a move as it might seem. The lawyers aren't arguing that Romero necessarily has a right to sex with donkeys, or any other farm animals for that matter. They're specifically targeting the language of Florida's anti-bestiality law, which does not require proof that an animal has been harmed or "of the sexual activity being non-consensual," or even of penetrative sexual contact.

The attorneys write, "Therefore, the only possible rational basis for the statute is a moral objection to sexual acts considered deviant or downright 'disgusting.'" And that, they argue, is unconstitutional: "The personal morals of the majority, whether based on religion or traditions, cannot be used as a reason to deprive a person of their personal liberties."

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For those of you who are visiting the World Wide Web for the first time ever, a GIF is a static or animated, looped image that's been compressed for quick loading. The rest of you have probably come across your fair share of GIFs showing dramatic reactions, catly shenanigans, dancing politicians or Ryan Gosling doing any number of things. Most GIFs are meant for laughs, but, increasingly, they're being designed to tickle a different bone.

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Just ... not originally.

The shots are found on the Instagram account Antidates, which carries the explanatory tag line, "actual responses to dating ads. they never had a chance." It's one of several sites that have popped up with the express purpose of making fun of tactless online daters -- and the vast majority happen to be men attempting to court women. (This is no doubt in large part because men are more often the initiators on online dating sites, and there is something inherently awkward about initiating contact with a person you've only met virtually.) It isn't just absurd self-portraits -- most of the sites focus on outrageous come-ons, off-putting self-descriptions and horrific misspellings.

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That’s the key finding of a newly published study that suggests sexual mores remain stubbornly stable. It concludes that, more than a half-century after the introduction of the birth control pill, the sexual double standard is alive and well and still influencing women’s everyday behavior.

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