Cartoon by Barbara Smaller. For more: http://nyr.kr/Uodtjp

    Some sex offenders download child pornography, but have never molested children. Is it right to imprison them for heinous crimes they have not yet committed?   

   In this week’s issue, Rachel Aviv follows John, a child-pornography convict, as he moves through the criminal-justice system and, eventually, is detained indefinitely, lest he molest children when he is released. Click-through to continue reading: http://nyr.kr/UoQuH8

Cartoon by Danny Shanahan. For more: http://nyr.kr/Twg9IV

…the sex party is vexing for the Party because it highlights the gap between the artifice of official solemnity and the unadorned reality beneath, a gap that has become more pronounced in recent years as the Web eats away at the monopoly on authority. 

Click-through to continue reading Evan Osnos, a New Yorker staff writer living in Beijing, on the “Lujiang Indecent Photos Incident”: http://nyr.kr/NHXedM

Bob Mankoff on Helen Gurley Brown, Sex, and Cartoons: http://nyr.kr/PpRgfO

You think you were nervous your first time? Imagine how the condom felt. In “Unprotected,” the Shouts & Murmurs column published in the magazine this week, Simon Rich tells the story of a condom’s long-term residency in his owner’s wallet: http://nyr.kr/LyLJoT

Margaret Talbot with the case against single-sex classrooms: http://nyr.kr/Oa4TwA

What has changed since the nineties is the notion of who single-sex education is supposed to help most. In the nineties, it was girls. … But that did not turn out to be the long-term problem.

Girls Will Be Girls

Over all, it’s a show that reminds you that the sexual revolution is a done deal, that few women today see sex as a bargaining chip in a bid for commitment, and that gender parity tends to go along with more sex. You can see that as a tradeoff or as a benefit, but studies have shown it to be true: societies in which the sexes are more equal are societies in which people have more sex. Still, to those disinclined to see this as a good thing, “Girls” offers some validation. Much of that awkward sex is awkward in familiar and timeless ways, but some of it is awkward very specifically. That would be solipsistic, niche sex that takes its expectations from porn, in which the man involved seems to feel weirdly and arrogantly entitled to the satisfaction of his particular fantasies—the guy Hannah is sleeping with has one about an eleven-year-old heroin addict with a Cabbage Patch-doll lunchbox—and to the coöperation of a partner who really isn’t that into them. “Guys my age watch so much pornography,” Dunham told the Times. “When I first started kissing boys, I remember noticing things, certain behaviors, where I thought, ‘There’s no way you learned that anywhere but on YouPorn.com.’ ”

Were you puzzled by the above Michael Crawford cartoon that appeared in last week’s issue? The good folks over at Vanity Fair asked Cartoon Editor Bob Mankoff to explain it. Here’s his response: http://nyr.kr/GH9bdb

(Source: newyorker.com)

In the latest “From the Desk of Bob Mankoff” post, our Cartoon Editor asks - with the help of some cartoons - are sexes necessary? http://nyr.kr/wY5mX9