In normal circumstances we would feature an interview with the author of the my blog Erotic Book Club Book of the Month but sadly, Pauline Réage, the author of Story of O passed away in 1998.However, the author's life is so fascinating and the hidden tale behind the Story of O so intriguing, there's no way that we couldn't let you in on it!Story of O is widely acknowledged to be one of the most famous erotic novels of all time. Graham Greene described it as a rare thing, a pornographic book well written and without a trace of obscenity.Harold Pinter called it a remarkable piece of work, while Brian Aldiss proclaimed, I do believe that Pauline Réage had confounded all her critics and made pornography (if that is what it is) an art.These are just a few of the incredible compliments from some of the most prolific literaries of modern times, especially as Story of O has been so controversial and divisive in its approach to sex, feminism, discipline and submission.Pauline Réage was the pen name for Anne Desclos, a French journalist and novelist who also went under the name of Dominique Aury. Each pen name appeared to come with its own persona - Anne Desclos being the humble, well educated, bilingual journalist who was known for her hard work and commitment. Dominique Aury was less shy and retiring, becoming a go-getter in the competitive world of editorial and becoming the only woma.

have had more nuance and sensitivity and less simplicity and black-and-white thinking than I found it to have. Ultimately, despite my strong desire to love this movie, Ive got more critique to offer than waves of my proverbial pom-poms.

The Power of Peers

As an advocate for young people, I loved comments in the film about the power of having confidence in young people to engage in responsible sexual behavior, and I deeply appreciated attention paid to the ways in which parental or adult control,can contribute more to putting young people in danger than keeping them safe, especially when young people leave home, get freedom and autonomy, and then have a tough time managing because they’ve gone from almost-total external control to nearly none. But, there was also a very strong comment made by an adult in the film that peers can’t possibly provide each other with good mentoring or cross-education , a notion I found adultist and also preposterous in a film which showed all the ways adults arent doing it either. In my experience, when peers fail to educate each other well, and adults fail to educate young people well, it’s for very similar, if not identical, reasons, most of which have little to nothing to do with age.

Suffice it to say, particularly given that I do much of my work online, the suggestion in the film that the internet is not a place where quality sex information and education can be found was frustrating. The film showed images only from sites like Cosmopolitan, not from sites like Scarleteen, Planned Parenthood, Brook, Options for Sexual Health, Sex, Etc., Go Ask Alice or RH Reality Check, which often contain more comprehensive and factual sex information than any sex education class can, and which hundreds of thousands of young people find and use every day. After all, that girl talking about using Google to get her sex ed? Chances are good that when she did, she landed on at least one of these sites.

The European Model

By design, this film is specifically about teen sexuality, sex education, and parent-teen sexual communication in America. It sets up a dichotomy between the U.S. and other countries that I found more optimistic than realistic. As someone who works with international populations, I see common threads with sexual problems throughout nearly all nations. By all means, some of the critiques were sound and fair, and I agree with them in some cases, such as when comparing the U.S. and the Netherlands. Like the director, Im on Team Netherlands when it comes to how sexuality tends to be culturally treated and approached there. (There, now I can wave those pom-poms after all.) However, the world is not divided into only two groups of cultures, those like the U.S. and those like the Netherlands. The Netherlands is a unique culture in this respect. There are few nations like it.

For example, despite what I felt was a pretty rosy picture painted of Australia by the director, I hear from young people in Australia who are having trouble with sexual and interpersonal violence, which is a big problem on that continent. I hear from teens having a very hard time accessing sexual health services there, and having other similar issues and problems with sex and sexuality young people have here. Indeed, their teen pregnancy rates are lower than ours (that’s a bit iffy, since there’s no mandatory reporting of abortion there, but their birth rate is around 18 per 1,000, compared to our 52). Their STI rates, however, are nothing to write home about and have also been increasing among young people. Regardless, I don’t think it’s even sound to base the overall sexual well-being of a nation or population, on those outcomes alone, something that happens all too often in commentaries on teen sexuality, and which I find to be part of the problem we face in understanding, evaluating and addressing teen sexuality well.

Lack of Inclusivity

The film gave an important nod to how sex education lacks inclusivity for queer youth, and I always love to see the brave and fantastic Max Siegel. But since the majority of the film itself wasnt inclusive save that small nod, it felt like tokenism to me. Its great to ask for better inclusion, but if youre going to ask, youve got to model it, too, which I dont feel the film itself did.

There were also some presentations of race and class I felt uncomfortable with in the film. For instance, it felt to me like sexually transmitted infections (STIs) and teen pregnancy were presented as issues mostly about people of color. While there was explanation of why some STIs more heavily affect people of color , I came away feeling like that the issue wasnt explained very well, nor did it address the ways in which institutionalized racism plays a large role in perpetuating poor health in communities of color.

The Role of Gender

One of the biggest issues I had with the film was around gender. In the film, there are five young people who disclose very personal things about their sex lives: two young men and their parents, two young women and their parents, and, sans parent or address of parental communication, Max, who has previously disclosed his story in very public venues before this film, so hes in a different spot than the other four of this group.

Only the young women disclose sexual dishonesties in the film. Something about that feels exploitative to me, as .

lks and tests, for example, the percentage of men who would participate rapidly climbed above 75 percent as offers reached between $7 and $8.75 a month. But participation only inched up a little closer to 80 percent when offers were raised as high as $12.25 a month. Above $12.25 the potential participation rate even started to decline a little.

The result that sex workers would participate for much less money may be a result of their especially urgent need for money, Galárraga said. It is still a complex calculation for them, however, because the workers generally can earn more money for engaging in riskier behavior, for instance by not using condoms. On short-term financial basis, therefore, sex workers incur a penalty for doing what seems to be the right thing from personal and public health standpoint. For them, conditional cash payments can provide at least some compensation for making the healthier choices.

The data yielded other insights, including that about 9 percent of the men would not participate at any price. They tended to be more educated and wealthier.

Since obtaining the results, the researchers have continued their work by implementing a small pilot conditional cash transfer program with about 200 male sex workers and gay men with more than 10 partners a month, Galárraga said. The team does not yet have definitive results to report.

The stakes of the research, however, are high as the epidemic continues on the streets of Mexico's capital.

In addition to Galárraga, other authors are Sandra G. Sosa-Rubí and Cesar Infante of INSP; Stefano M. Bertozzi of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation; and Paul J. Gertler of the University of California-Berkeley, where the project began before Galárraga left Berkeley for Brown in 2010.

The National Institutes of Health (grant: K01-TW008016-04) and the Mexican National Center for HIV/AIDS Control and Prevention (CENSIDA) provided funding for the study.

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