Hot Topics Volume 2, Issue 1: January 2003

Welcome to the latest issue of Hot Topics, the newsletter from www.smartsextalk.com.

We invite you to send your suggestions, your questions, and your comments to us at editor@smartsextalk.com.

**Please note: Let us know whether or not you want your mail to be published. We will NEVER publish your mail or identity without your permission. You may send mail anonymously, but if you do not wish it to be reprinted, you must say so. We want you to feel safe to write - please address any questions about our confidentiality policies to editor@smartsextalk.com.

In This Issue:

Letter From The Editor
New Year's Resolutions
Stop Smoking Week/ Smoking and Erectile Dysfunction
Featured Topic: Transsexual Teacher in Vancouver BC
Humour
Final Thoughts

Letter From the Editor

Hello Hot Topics readers!

This issue marks the beginning of the second volume of Hot Topics. We've been at this for a while now, and have learned a lot along the way. However, I thought that as this is a time of new beginnings, I could ask you for some help: we need your feedback!

My job is to edit Pega's material, to make suggestions about form and content, and to bring this plain text newsletter to your email in-boxes and the web version to the site. Between the two of us, we are pretty good at coming up with topics, and researching materials, and finding the best way to communicate our ideas. But still, we are only two people, and that limits the content of this newsletter, and ultimately, www.smartsextalk.com (you see, I am also the webmaster).

I am breaking out of my usual behind-the-scenes role to come forward and ask for some feedback. The newsletter and the site will be better for it.

What topics would you like to see discussed?

- Would you like a regular Q & A section (and if so, please send us your questions!)

- Would you like to have the option to receive the newsletter in HTML format (like a web page in your in-box)?

- Are there things you want to see on the site, like polls, a bulletin board, web chats?

- What about links to affiliate sites?

- Would it be helpful to have sex toy, book, and/or video reviews?

Responses can be sent via email to editor@smartsextalk.com (for the newsletter) or webmaster@smartsextalk.com (for the site). I know, I know - they are going to the same person, but it gives me an easy way to organize your feedback. Thanks in advance for taking the time to think on this. We want to make the newsletter and site a place you want to visit because it has good information and resources about sex and relationships. This is your chance to help us shape what smartsextalk.com will become.

Happy New Year, everyone. I can't wait to hear from you.

~ Editor

New Year's Resolutions

As a sort of post script in last month's Hot Topics, I mentioned the value of making New Year's resolutions (I've been known to dub them 'revolutions'), which serve as annual reminders of our one year goals. I am always surprised at how long a year seems at its beginning, and how short it appears in reflection. To remind myself to look at the list throughout the year, I keep it in my daybook and mix ambitious goals (write a book) with pragmatic ones (fix the sticking dresser drawer). I made five resolutions last year (one ambitious year contained 15!), and ticked off four of them (the fifth will carry over). I feel satisfaction at my accomplishments, and feel some excitement as I list the items for the new year.

I encourage you to ask yourself where you'd like to be in a year. What would you like to have accomplished this time next year? What would you like to change? How? What behaviours could you adopt during the next twelve months that would make you happier? What would make you proud?

This change of calendars offers us a chance to reflect and to look forward. Let's strive to make the most of this opportunity in as many ways as possible.

~ Pega Ren

Stop Smoking Week/Smoking and Erectile Dysfunction

The week of January 12th to 18th is National Non-Smoking Week, with the fifteenth named "Weedless Wednesday". If you haven't quit smoking yet, this is the time to do it!

Smoking is one of the major contributors to erectile dysfunction. As men age, cardiovascular changes make getting an erection less automatic and cause the erections themselves to be less firm. Smoking vastly accelerates this process, causing some men as young as forty to have trouble, and smoking compounds the effects of aging.

Stopping smoking will halt the progress of the deterioration, but enough abuse will impact even the most resilient body permanently. Even if the threat of heart attack and lung cancer seem too remote to influence you, sex is too important and immediate a need to ignore. Hooray to us all who are smoke-free on the fifteenth!

Featured Topic: Transsexual Teacher in Vancouver BC

In mid-December a news story broke about an elementary school teacher who had been teaching successfully in the Vancouver, BC school system for a decade. The popular teacher had taken the Fall semester off on leave and is returning in January. Why is this newsworthy, you ask? This particular educator left at the end of the school year as a man, and is returning as a woman.

I watched with interest to see how the media would handle this hot potato. And I was pleasantly surprised. The school district had prepared the students and staff about the issue of transsexualism in an accurate and dispassionate manner. The children interviewed seemed a little confused about why anyone was paying such close attention to what they had come to see as a corrected medical condition (which, of course, it is). The school staff was supportive as well.

It was only a few of the students' parents who were upset, some even removing their children from the 'offending' teacher's classroom. Fathers voiced flimsily-veiled homophobic concerns while the mothers cautioned that children of this age (grade five) were curious about sex and bodies and school was no place for them to learn this sort of information. They were concerned about protecting their children from any sexual information. They seemed to fear that transsexualism was contagious, and knowledge would make the tots susceptible to the disease. How sad.

Like all news, though, this issue got old fast, and the overall impression I got was that the students, the staff, and the school district were all squarely behind this popular and effective teacher, whatever the presentation. The TV stations and newspapers reported from many viewpoints and refused to vilify the transsexual condition. I'm proud of my city. This may well foretell a welcome adoption of flexible and inclusive values and attitudes. I'm hoping so.

Things that are difficult to say when you are drunk:
- Specificity
- British Constitution
- Passive-Aggressive Disorder
- Loquacious transubstantiate

Things that are downright impossible to say when you are drunk:
- Nope, no more booze for me
- Sorry, but you're not really my type
- Good evening Officer, isn't it lovely out tonight?

And Finally,
- Oh I just couldn't...no one wants to hear me sing!

Final Thoughts

As we move into this brand new year, let's remember to keep ourselves safe and take a few risks. Experience and balance are keys to happiness. Let's all rejoice at our accomplishments and opportunities.

A wonderful new year to all of you. May we all enjoy peace and tranquility throughout 2003.

Copyright 2003. Dr. Pega Ren. All Rights Reserved.