I've been on the receiving end of these statements because I've chosen not to bear children.

My reasons to remain childfree are plentiful (and nobody's business). Yet I'm constantly asked to justify my choice.

Here's a sampling:

1. Economics: Children are expensive. As of August 2013, the average cost for a middle class family to raise one child for 18 years is $304,480. Giving birth can cost between $3,296 and $37,227. Sending a child to college costs between $8,893 to $22,203 per year, per child. I'll go make myself a stiff drink; those numbers make me dizzy.

2. Logistics: In spite of social and cultural advancements, women are still default caregivers, especially in a child's formative years. Raising a kid before s/he begins school is more than a full-time job. It's 24 hours a day, seven days a week, with no time off for good behavior. I'm not fit to be around adult human beings when sleep-deprived, let alone a child dependent on me for Every. Little. Thing.

3. Environmental: There are an estimated 153 million orphans on Earth. Why add another mouth to an overpopulated planet for an ego-driven biological imperative I don't feel? If anything, I'll adopt.
4. Physical: My body has been through enough physical trauma in its 35 years of being knocked about this world. Post-traumatic stress disorder from surviving a gun crime has wreaked havoc on my nervous system. I also grew up abroad and wasn't exposed to the additives and preservatives rife in American food. Adding just one child to my family means no more organic and clean eating because we can't afford it. Well, we also can't afford cancer.

5. Emotional: Every day I struggle to manage PTSD. Having the freedom to be sleepless when the pain tsunami hits has been a godsend. Being able to sleep for 12 hours uninterrupted if need be has been a savior. I work from home and set my own hours, an ideal situation. Add a child and what happens when depression hits and I can't get out of bed? Or I cry for an entire week? Or during bouts of rage in which I lose complete control?

6. Social: Last time I checked, this world is messed up. There is a school shooting almost every week in this country. Also, there's this gnarly thing called "rape culture" and it permeates every aspect of our society. Many of the children of today will likely be its victims or perpetrators in the not-so-distant future. I'll go ahead and make myself another drink, that is one Big Bad.

When it comes to dealing with pregnant women, I'm no expert. Hell, I still don't even know how to figure out women in general. In fact, I'm the antithesis of an expert. Luckily for you, I've made just about every single stupid mistake and placed my foot so far in my mouth during my wife's pregnancies that I'm overqualified to speak to you about things you need to know to avoid getting knocked out by the knocked up.

Here are the 10 most important things to remember.

1. Feed her constantly.
Everyone knows food is important to pregnant women. But what the uninitiated might not realize is that time is of the essence. The bottom line is, when she says she's hungry, she means it. Feed that woman immediately or she will eat your f*cking face. Know that "I'm hungry" doesn't mean she's looking forward to the dinner plans you have in an hour. It means give her a snack before you leave for the restaurant. And then again when you get in the car. Failure to promptly produce snacks will result in extreme b*tchiness at best, and bodily injury at worst. Just turn yourself into a walking, talking vending machine for nine months and you'll be fine.

2. Food: What's yours is hers, what's hers is off-limits.
There's a good chance you've been married or together a few years now, so it's perfectly understandable that you bought into all that stuff about togetherness and sharing a life, etc. And while some of that still applies, all bets are off when it comes to food. If you eat food that's hers (or food you bought for yourself but she somehow claimed as hers), she will cut you. Not physically, perhaps, but by the time she's finished excoriating you you'll wish it was just a knife wound you suffered. I ate some of MJ's chocolate once, and when she went to find it during a craving and saw that it was gone, she flew into a rage that was one of the scariest things I've ever seen. Just don't do it.

3. Get ready to gain weight.
Notice how all the topics so far have involved food? That's no mistake. Ultimately, at some point, she'll have cravings. When MJ was pregnant with Will, she wanted pizza, Kit Kats and grapefruit. The second time around, it was nothing but fruit salad. But whatever the craving, one of the unmentioned side effects of pregnancy is YOUR weight gain. Yes, the guys gain weight, too. Mainly because we inevitably partake in our partners' cravings and all the extra junk food results in a spare tire. I gained 25 pounds during MJ's pregnancy five years ago, just a shade under the total amount she gained -- WITH THE BABY! So watch your step.

4. Don't point out how big she's getting.
My Boston sports habit notwithstanding, I'm a fairly logical person. I knew MJ was pregnant and pregnant women gain weight. That's why I thought absolutely nothing of pointing out my wife's really cute swollen belly. In my mind, it was just nature progressing and running its course, and there was nothing more beautiful. But after the first two or three times I said it, she snapped on me. "STOP TELLING ME I'M FAT! I KNOW I'M FAT! I DON'T NEED YOU POINTING IT OUT!!" It didn't matter that in my eyes she had never looked more beautiful, or that she was SUPPOSED to be gaining weight. Which leads me to my next point...

5. "Pregnancy Brain" is very real.
I know it sounds like some sort of cutesy, media-created term. But it's not. Pregnancy Brain is legit. It starts with everyday occurrences like looking for her glasses while they're on her head, which is kind of adorable. But it soon progresses to things like leaving the basement door open in 5-degree weather and freezing the entire bottom floor of the house while simultaneously leaving us susceptible to a home invasion. And in a fit of irony, I just asked MJ to give me more examples of Pregnancy Brain, but she couldn't -- because she can't remember.

6. Goodbye, sense of humor.
The good news is: she's gained a baby. The bad news? There wasn't enough room for the baby AND her sense of humor. If you're a smart-a** like I am, this is especially troubling, since I show affection by giving people good-natured sh*t. Unfortunately, my pregnant wife does not appreciate my unique brand of humor while carrying our little parasite around in her stomach. The results are often me firing off (what I consider to be) beautiful comedic quips and zingers, which don't just fall on deaf ears -- they fall on potentially homicidal ears. You've been warned.

7. Say goodbye to sex, too.
Listen to me carefully -- you're about to be sexually frustrated. The first trimester is by far the worst. It's when she'll be going through the most changes and feeling the sh*ttiest. It's everything she can do to avoid throwing up every morning (and sometimes at night), so your feeling unloved and "backed up" doesn't really register. So fire up the porn and give yourself a hand, because you're now a sex camel, my friend. The only silver lining is you'll have sex two times during the pregnancy. You have a one- to two-week window when her sex drive returns early in the second trimester. Enjoy that, because it's not happening again until very late in the pregnancy. Right at the end she'll be so desperate to get the baby out of her that she'll use you in the hopes that sex will send her into labor. It's slightly awkward, but after the drought it's a welcome relief -- as long as her water doesn't break right then and there.

8. Yes, her boobs are bigger; no, you can't touch them.
While we're on the topic of sex, let me tell you about one of nature's cruelest tricks. When a woman is carrying a child, it's a beautiful thing. That "pregnant glow" you always hear about is real, and it does wonders for her hair, her fingernails and -- her rack. A becomes C, B becomes D and C becomes Hallelujah Thank You Jesus! They swell up to gargantuan sizes, literally breaking bras at the seams and popping off her chest in a fit of Playboy glory. The only problem is, you're not allowed to touch them. It's like going to the pet store and seeing the cute puppies behind the glass but not being able to pet them. They're adorable and you want to take them home and keep them forever, but if you try to motorboat her puppies she will slap the sh*t out of you. Trust me.

9. Your dick can't hurt the baby.
Let's get this one out of the way right now -- your penis will have no effect on the baby in your wife's womb. Got that? I don't care if you're on par with Ron Jeremy, your dick is not going to scare the kid and it's certainly not going to poke him in the forehead. Not only that, but any suggestion to the contrary will send your pregnant wife into hysterics. And there's nothing more demoralizing than a conversation that involves your penis and hysterical laughter. So I'm told...

10. You will be replaced by pillows.
Did you spend a crap ton of money on a mattress? Some sort of memory foam or pillowtop deal that makes you feel like 1,000 little angels are massaging you as you fall asleep every night? Well, I hope you also spent money on a comfortable couch, because that's likely where you'll be sleeping for a decent part of the pregnancy. And it's not so much because of the increased space your pregnant wife takes up, either. It's the pillows. Yup, that's right. You become increasingly irrelevant as the pregnancy wears on, but the 37 pillows -- including that godforsaken full-body pillow -- become absolutely vital nighttime companions. And when push comes to shove, you're getting the shove to the sofa.

Mind you, I've never actually been to a strip club. But I had imagined a dark, dingy place where men slink in and out with their eyes averted, afraid they might run into their wives' Pilates instructor (or something like that). Armed with two female friends and more than a few whiskey gingers, I walked into Headquarters Gentlemen's Club to watch Belle Knox's debut stripping performance on Tuesday night with a tote bag full of gym clothes and a grandpa sweater on. Let's just say the bouncers seemed more than a bit perplexed.

When Belle Knox, sex worker and all-around badass feminist, came out as the Duke porn star last month, I immediately went into full-support mode. Knox is refreshingly articulate and steadfast about her beliefs -- especially impressive given that she's only 18. As a sex-positive feminist, I support Belle's choice to work in porn and completely respect her ambition to succeed in her career. So when I got the chance to attend her stripping debut at a New York City gentlemen's club I decided to take it, because frankly, I was curious.
After bee-lining to the bar, my coworkers and I found prime viewing spots directly in front of the stage. There was a swarm of journalists in the club and some poor, unsuspecting (non-journalist) men huddled away from the flashing camera lights. And while we may not have been getting the truest strip club experience, given the bizarre media circus, there was no ignoring the naked and gyrating women strutting around the room.

Our small entourage slowly acclimated to our surroundings as we gossiped and watched Knox's many opening acts come and go from the stage. During the three-hour show (I swear, this was for work), our conversation slowly evolved. We started out nervously giggling, quickly realized this was disrespectful, and attempted to pay attention to the dancers onstage.

Staring at these women exposing themselves for the pleasure of the audience, me and my two heterosexual female companions began to pick apart each performer's body: "Oh my gosh, she is absolutely gorgeous!" "Her boobs are totally fake." "C'mon, I could do a better job than her."

After two hours of standing next to flashing lenses, eager reporters and a dude who actually asked if I worked there, Belle took the stage. With a small army of cameras trailing her, the 18-year-old star made her entrance to none other than Joan Jett's "Bad Reputation."

Anyone who has watched even a few minutes of porn may end up with some very particular ideas about what real-world sex entails.

Porn -- at least, the kind where super-toned, tanned, hairless women are penetrated in a variety of acrobatic positions by equally toned, tanned men -- is full of myths about sex. Redditor black_brotha decided to ask women on the site what they "learned" from porn that turned out to be completely untrue in the real world.

Here are 11 of the most worrying un-truths women said porn taught them:

1. That their bodies were abnormal: "I was 100% convinced that I needed labiaplasty and was really ashamed to be naked in front of [a] guy because I thought he would think I was a freak."

2. That all sex focuses on the guy's pleasure: "I thought having sex with a man meant having to pretend I enjoyed it even if I wasn't, that it didn't matter if I had an orgasm, and that it was normal for a guy not to give a shit about my pleasure."

3. That "sexy" is purely physical, and incredibly specific:

I felt like I had to fit into a box I could never fit in. It made me feel dysphoric about not just my body, but who I was. I'm a clumsy, boyish, awkward female, that couldn't do an attractive striptease to save their life AKA the antithesis of your typical "sexy female"... There is more than just one kind of sexy and its all subjective. I've realized that Im sexy in my own way and I'm much happier now.
4. That men don't like women with hair "down there": "I thought men would expect completely hairless women and they would be repulsed by me."

5. That orgasms are almost effortless: "I thought orgasms were much easier to achieve than they actually are. As a result I thought something was wrong with me for a long time. I just assumed that PIV=almost instant orgasm. I was so disappointed to find that wasn't the case."

6. That men only find certain bodies (white, toned and smooth-skinned) attractive: "It did make me think that only women with perfect bodies ever had sex."
7. That all penises are circumcised and eight inches long: "I didn't know uncircumcised penises existed, because all the porn I'd seen prior had circumcised male performers."

8. That insanely complex sexual positions feel good for everyone:

Those positions? Yeah, most of them don't feel good.I know everyone's different, but it is VERY DIFFICULT, bordering on impossible to have an orgasm with that much distance between the partners! Besides, one of the best things about sex is the closeness of skin-to-skin contact.
9. That you had to do everything women in porn videos did in order for your partner to enjoy themself: "It didn't occur to me until like age 27 that I didn't have to let a guy come on my face if I didn't want to. Or I didn't have to swallow. Or that it was okay to not moan if I didn't feel like moaning."

10. That men are always ready and willing: "I thought that all men liked being aggressive and dominant, like in porn, and that if they were under 50, they were always going to be able to get hard and orgasm."

I have a couple of girl friends whom I really envy. They know exactly what they want — or rather, what they don’t want.  They don’t want to have children.  Two of my girl friends are childless by choice, which means that while they enjoy being involved in the lives other people’s children, they have no interest at all in becoming parents of their own. There isn’t a doubt in either of their minds that kids are not a possibility.

My own feelings on the subject are much more hazy.

In childhood, I assumed I would have lots of children when I grew up, probably because that would have been a continuation of what I already knew. I’m the youngest of five kids and the chaos and coziness seemed like the definition of “family” to me. I also played with baby dolls and was probably socialized, on some level, into believing it was a foregone conclusion that I’d have children.

I felt serious about becoming a mother all the way up and through my first serious adult relationship. I could envision our lives together and fantasized about what our children would look like (cute); we had serious conversations about the sort of career and finance-related decisions we needed to make in order to become parents.

When that relationship ended, the attendant fantasies died with it. At this point something must have switched. Maybe it was that I worried my certitude about having children someday partially scared him away. Maybe it was that I simply recalibrated my own “must have” list for future happiness. But the next serious relationship that I entered was with a man who didn’t want children. He envisioned a life for himself that involved traveling and going out to dinner whenever he wanted and having no responsibility to others, save the ones he already had with his family. He made that lifestyle look really, really appealing (although he, ultimately, was not such an appealing person). For the first time in my life, I seriously considered that I might be happy without children if I had the right partner to spend it with. The next serious relationship — with a divorced guy who had two children from his previous marriage and didn’t want any more kids — only solidified that decision. I could very happily be a stepmom, too.

Now I can see lots of options about parenthood that might appeal to me. Without any sense of certainty anymore about such a big decision, I feel rudderless at age 29. That feels like a perilous age to be adrift on these big subjects like whether I really want to procreate or whether I’ll regret not doing so. My husband seems to feel similarly ambivalent — or perhaps characteristically happy-go-lucky is a better way to put it. When we talk about it, he says “not now but maybe someday” a lot; that’s about the same way I feel, although I’m the one with the ticking biological clock who knows “someday” is realistically some point within the next decade. For now, both of us like being an aunt and uncle to my siblings’ kids and waving hi to cute babies on the street. But we recognize there’s a lot more than that to becoming a parent. Becoming a parent completely changes your life.

Women may be having more types of sex than ever before -- but less sex overall.

So say the findings from Britain's third National Survey of Sexual Attitudes and Lifestyles (Natsal-3), conducted from 2010 to 2012. The 8869 women polled for Natsal-3 reported higher incidences of sex before age 16, same-sex encounters and anal sex than their counterparts in the first and second Natsal surveys, conducted in 1990-1991 and 1999-2001 respectively, as well as a declining frequency in sexual encounters.

Sixteen percent of British women aged 16–44 reported having sexual experience or contact with a same-sex partner, up from 10 percent in Natsal-2 and four percent in Natsal-1. A similar trend was found when it came to anal sex -- 15 percent of women reported having anal sex in the past year, compared with 11 percent of respondents in Natsal-2 and 7 percent in Natsal-1.

It's possible that some of these changes are simply the result of people feeling more comfortable revealing their sexual practices then they have been in the past, perhaps due to decreasing stigma around various sex acts or different survey techniques. But, as William Saletan at Slate put it: "Even if you attribute most of it to changes in candor or interpretation, the willingness of so many women to admit to same-sex activity represents a big cultural shift."

While the types of sex women are having seems to be increasing, they may be having sex less frequently. In 1990, the median number of times that women reported having sex in the previous four weeks was five. This number dropped to four in 2001, and three in 2012.

One explanation for such a drop is that people are having less sex because they're too busy. Professor Kaye Wellings of the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine told The Gloss: "Work comes into our home now and there is no strict divide. People are taking laptops and iPads to bed. People are working very, very hard. They are very busy."

Too busy for sex? That's a sad state of affairs. But we're glad to hear that women feel more comfortable engaging in -- and talking about -- sex that isn't of the vanilla, heterosexual variety.

Facing a double mastectomy with grace takes courage. Facing one with courage and joy is extraordinary.

But that’s exactly what Deborah Cohan did yesterday right before she went into surgery to have her breasts removed. Cohan, an Ob/Gyn and mom of two, held a dance party with her medical team in the operating room of Mt. Zion Hospital in San Francisco.

This inspiring 6-minute-long video, posted on YouTube, shows Cohan busting some serious moves as she wiggles and twerks to Beyonce’s hit “Get Me Bodied.” Cohan requested that friends and family make videos of themselves dancing to Bey too so that she could watch them during her recovery. “I have visions of a healing video montage,” she wrote. “Nothing brings me greater joy than catalyzing others to dance, move, be in their bodies. Are you with me people?”

They were. You can check out videos of Deborah’s fans shaking their booties in solidarity on her CaringBridge page.

Deborah, we wish you a speedy recovery. And can we go clubbing with you when you’re all better?

Female nudity isn't hard to come by in the media, but the bodies we see usually represent a fairly limited scope of sizes and shapes. The Nu Project, a collection of nude photographs shot by Minneapolis photographer Matt Blum, seeks to add some variety to the mix.

Blum started The Nu Project in 2005 but said it really took off when his wife, Katy Kessler, became the project's editor. Blum sees the photos as filling a void. "When I started shooting nudes there was no project like it," he told The Huffington Post in an email. "The things that I had seen either used models with typical model bodies or average people who were made to look extremely unimpressive. I figured there was a way to treat women (of any size/shape) like models and photograph them beautifully, respectfully without a lot of sexual under or overtones."

The women photographed are all volunteers, and most of the pictures are taken in the subjects' homes -- where they feel most comfortable. The Nu Project's website showcases six galleries of nudes, three shot in North America, three in South America.

Although Blum told HuffPost that he feels that they have a "good variety of people involved," he and Kessler acknowledge on The Nu Project website that they'd love for the subjects to be more diverse. "The hardest part for us is that the project is 100 percent volunteer, so I do not see the women until I show up at their door," Blum writes on the website. "We’re doing our best to encourage all types of women, but we need volunteers of all backgrounds and walks of life to make the project more complete."

Blum said he ultimately hopes that these images inspire the women who see them to feel better about their own bodies. "It's been really exciting to hear people react to the images," he told HuffPost. "We get a lot of feedback from women (especially) who have struggled to see themselves as beautiful, and this project has helped them on that path."

Alain de Botton's latest book How To Think More About Sex has an eye-catching title, and is an intelligent discussion of society's greatest obsession. "We don’t think too much about sex," he says. "We’re merely thinking about it in the wrong way."

We interviewed the British writer and public intellectual via email about how none of us are 'normal', why sex will always be difficult, and what the ultimate point of sex is for us all.

Why did you choose to write about sex?
I wrote it because it's rare for anyone to get through this life without feeling – generally with a degree of secret agony, perhaps at the end of a relationship, or as we lie in bed frustrated next to our partner, unable to go to sleep – that we are somehow a bit odd about sex.

It is an area in which most of us have a painful impression, in our heart of hearts, that we are quite unusual. Despite being one of the most private of activities, sex is nonetheless surrounded by ideas about how normal people are meant to feel about and deal with the matter.

In truth, however, few of us are remotely normal sexually. We are almost all haunted by guilt and neuroses, by phobias and disruptive desires, by indifference and disgust. None of us approaches sex as we are meant to, with the cheerful, sporting, non-obsessive, constant, well-adjusted outlook that we torture ourselves by believing that other people are endowed with. We are universally deviant – but only in relation to some highly distorted ideals of normality. So it's time to accept the strangeness of sex with good humour and courage - and start to talk about it with honesty and compassion.

This is what my book is about: an invitation to think more about a subject we mistakenly think we know all about already.


What are the advantages and disadvantages about society's obsession with sex?
The problem lies in the feeling that we live at a time where we're very advanced about sex. We look back at the 19th century, or pre 1960s and think, 'Now they had a problem. Whereas we...' Well, it's not so simple. Whatever discomfort we do feel around sex is aggravated by the idea that we belong to a liberated age – and ought by now, as a result, to be finding sex a straightforward and untroubling matter.

Despite our best efforts to clean it of its peculiarities, sex will never be either simple in the ways we might like it to be. It can die out; it refuses to sit neatly on top of love, as it should. Tame it though we may try, sex has a recurring tendency to wreak havoc across our lives. Sex remains in absurd, and perhaps irreconcilable, conflict with some of our highest commitments and values. Perhaps ultimately we should accept that sex is inherently rather weird instead of blaming ourselves for not responding in more normal ways to its confusing impulses.

This is not to say that we cannot take steps to grow wiser about sex. We should simply realise that we will never entirely surmount the difficulties it throws our way.

What are the biggest issues we face as a society about sex?
It is very rare to have a lot of sex. Very few people do. There are good and bad reasons for this. Here are some of the worse one: we may not be having too much sex because our partner is angry with us - or we with them. The common conception of anger posits red faces, raised voices and slammed doors, but only too often, it takes on a different form, for when it doesn’t understand or acknowledge itself, anger just curdles into numbness, into a blank 'I'm not in the mood...'

There are two reasons we tend to forget we are angry with our partner, and hence become anaesthetized, melancholic and unable to have sex with him.

Firstly, because the specific incidents that anger us happen so quickly and so invisibly, in such fast-moving and chaotic settings (at breakfast time, before the school run, or during a conversation on mobile phones in a windy plaza at lunchtime) that we can’t recognise the offence well enough to mount any sort of coherent protest against it. The arrow is fired, it wounds us, but we lack the resources or context to see how and where, exactly, it has pierced our armour.

And second, we frequently don’t articulate our anger even when we do understand it, because the things that offend us can seem so trivial, finicky or odd that they would sound ridiculous if spoken aloud. Even rehearsing them to ourselves can be embarrassing.

We may, for example, be deeply wounded when our partner fails to notice our new haircut or doesn’t use a breadboard while cutting a bit of baguette, thus scattering crumbs everywhere, or goes straight upstairs to watch television without stopping to ask about our day. These hardly seem matters worth lodging formal complaints over. To announce, ‘I am angry with you because you’re cutting the baguette in the wrong way’, is to risk sounding at once immature and insane. But we may need to spell our complaints in order to get in the vulnerable, trusting honest mood that makes sex possible.