Figleaf's Real Adult Sex

So one of the hardest things for us modern Western people to wrap our brains around is the ancient pre-Christian idea that things like one's death is foreordained by fate and, thus, there's simply no escaping it.  For instance in the Illiad, Homer stresses over and over again that at their appointed time men could die courageously in battle, or as cowards in battle, or of disease back at the camp, or by choking on a chicken bone back at home.  But one way or another you were going to die so...

Well, in pre-Christian fatalist thinking if you had no choice the thinking went that you should go ahead and try and have as good a death as possible: the heroic-in-battle one.

This Richard Mourdock guy is taking pre-Christian fatalism to a new extreme.  As you've probably heard (about a million times already in just the few hours since he spewed it) he's Indiana Senate candidate (guess which party, natch) who said tonight that he opposes abortion in cases of rape because 

...even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that it is something that God intended to happen.

Which would be fine, I guess.  If he was just a typical inconsiderate tea-bagger misogynist and rape apologist.  But he says he's not.  In fact after the debate where he made his first... interesting assertion he said this:

"Are you trying to suggest that somehow I think God ordained or pre-ordained rape? No, I don't think that anyone could suggest that. That's a sick, twisted - no, that's not even close to what I said," he told reporters, according to the Evansville Courier & Press.
But he reaffirmed his view that conception is determined by a higher power.

See?  That's where it gets complicated.

Because if Mourdock's saying that a) God intended the conception but did not indend the violent sexual assault that led to it then...

Well, it looks to me like Mourdock thinks that specific spermatazoa was fated to merge with that specific ovum.  And the manner by which it was immaterial.  It was going to happen anyway, at that moment under any number of possible circumstances ranging from the romantic to the clinical to the criminally brutal.  The conception was foreordained, by God (or maybe, what, The Gods?)  With neither the Mother or the Father (victim and assailant in this universe but drunken pickups, test-tube donors, or life partners in others?) or God(s) having any more say in the matter of how than an 8 ball has a say in where it will roll when struck by the cue ball.

Does that sound Christian to you?

No, it sounds more Homeric, or, to be generous, maybe Stoic.

As a Washington State progressive I wouldn't vote for Murdoch if I could (or indeed if he was the last man on earth!)  But If I fancied myself a conservative Illinois Christian, as many Illinois Republicans claim they do, I'd be hard pressed to vote for Richard Mourdock.  He doesn't sound very much like one of them. 

Just suggesting.

Photo by Flickr user Sharyn Morrow. Used under a Creative Commons license.

Jennifer P, a.k.a. Captain Awkward takes a crack at one of the giant double standards that, despite two decades of Sex and the City re-runs, plus maybe 50 years of Cosmopolitan magazine, continues to persist about young people and masturbation.  Particularly young women and masturbation. (See also Rule of Desire #1.)

The question was from a mom who asked her teenage daughter if she'd like a vibrator, expecting the daughter to say "eww, no." Instead the daughter said "heck yeah," at which point the mom started feeling a little "eww" about it. And asked Captain Awkward for advice. The advice, is, as usual, a masterful combination of diplomacy and non-common sense, and you should go read it yourself.

What I'd like to call out, though, is her quick summary of the whys and hows of that immediate squeamishness and surprise at the daughter's enthusiasm. (Hint: it also echos reasoning used by former Surgeon General Jocelyn Elder, Oprah, Heather Corinna, and others.) Check it out (emphasis mine.)

Teenage boys are FAMOUS for spending long periods of time alone in the bathroom or their bedrooms, and everyone knows what they’re doing and laughs it off as no big deal. It’s only fair that teenage girls get that same privacy and room to become their own first and best sex partners. I think that feeling that this makes you a bad parent is that old double standard you were raised with lurking in the back of your mind, the one that says that the sexuality of teen girls MUST BE CONTAINED or else SOCIETY CRUMBLES. I think that a teen girl who understands her own desires is going to be a better advocate for herself when she does start having sex. If you feel like people in your life would be judgy, invoke privacy. There is no reason that you have to share this decision with anyone other than your daughter or seek anyone’s approval.

Source: Captain Awkward

Quick aside: I gotta say that it's probably not ok that the theory, practice, and needs of teenage boys are left pretty much unspoken as well, leaving them in a lurch of their own when the time comes for them to have sex. Most notably, whereas society acts scandalized at the inconceivability that girls might masturbate, it acts disgusted that boys do. With the assumption that no "man" would masturbate if he could instead, including by hook or by crook, "get" sex from someone else. But I digress...

I can't find the link but there's a point in one of the CherryTV round-table discussions where one of the women says something like "growing up we thought masturbation was just a guy thing." So she ended up going much longer before trying it than she might have done. One doubts she was alone.

Anyway, I have it on very good authority that teenage boys spend a great deal of time in their rooms not masturbating (don't ask me how I know but even, um, 20 times a day leaves a young person quite a few hours in between for non-masturbatory pursuits.) And so it's a bit creepy that people laughingly assume that's what they're all doing just because gender stereotypes (not to mention the dominant paradigm of men as the obligatory "sex class") insist that's how it must be.

Meanwhile I have it on somewhat less-personal authority that some of the time teenage girls spend in their rooms sometimes does involve masturbation. And it's just as creepy that so many people primly assume they don't, wouldn't, maybe even couldn't just because gender stereotypes (not to mention the dominant paradigm of women as the disinterested, rather-knit-or-talk-about-their-feelings "no-sex class") insist that's how it must be.

Instead, left to our own devices (huh, huh, I said "devices") boys and girls probably would end up distributed across bell curves that largely overlap. Better to acknowledge it than pretend it ought to be some other way.

This post examines several sides of the collision of privacy and freedom to offend.  And comes to a conclusion that surprised me.

There's a lot of complex hand-wringing, celebration, and outrage making the rounds about the recent Gawker post that outed internet uber-troll Michael Brutsch, who for years has led an anonymous and wildly successful movement on Reddit and elsewhere to be as calculatingly cruel as possible to victims of previous crimes and other offences.

The hand wringers are pretty uniformly people who recognize Brutsch for the flaming fucking asshole he is... but who nevertheless feel conflicted about people's rights to a) post anonymously and b) retain a right to free speech.  Oh, and possibly c) a right to privacy.

There are others who feel that the mere nature of Brutsch's deplorability (and, seriously, the guy is utterly deplorable) deprives him of his rights to free speech and privacy.

And there are yet still others who feel that the very deplorability of Brutsch's "speech" (and again, seriously, his entire on-line presence revolved around creating, celebrating, and nurturing deplorability) somehow enshrines his rights to free speech and privacy.

Sorry, gang, there's no paradox, no cause for outrage, no cause for censorship, and definitely no cause for hand-wringing.

Instead it's a matter of standards.  Standards of decency.  Standards of deplorability too.

It is, of course, equally deplorable to either a) to offend sensibilities by encouraging others to jack off to photos of dead minor children as Michael Brutsch, operating under the pseduonym Violentacrez did, or b) to offend sensibilities by outing someone who posts anonymously on the internet, as Gawker Media did.

Sorry, on the hand-wringer-y side it's just true: if you're offended by one you should be offended by the other -- and thus people offended by outing Brutsch's "speech" must by definition be offended by Gawker outing him.

Similarly, sorry, on the censorship side it's just true: if you defend Brusch's right to post calculatingly deplorale "speech" on the internet then you by definition must defend Gawker Media for outing him.

And finally, sorry, on the free-speech side it's just true: if you agree that Brusch should have been outed for posting his deplorable speech then by definition you agree he should be able to post it.

If you think you can weasle out of it by picking one side or the other you're mistaken. (Well, while remaining a progressive anyway: conservatives do it with self-serving ease but that's why they disgust us.) If you think you need to wring your hands over it you're also mistaken.  (Well, while remaining progressive anyway: liberals do it with self-defeating ease but that's why so many of them disgust everyone else.)

Update: Other variations include

If you support censor Gawker for outing Brutsch you support censoring Brutsch

If you support taking revenge on Gawker for outing Brutsch you support taking revenge on Brutsch

...is the author of a method of political philosophy rather than the author of bodice ripping fiction.

For Rand worshipers consent is compromise. For Rand worshipers compromise is only for the weak.  For Rand worshipers the strong don't compromise they take.  Therefore in Rand's impoverished little moral universe "legitimate" rape, which 'wingers are always so careful to distinguish, is the only legitimate "method of conception."

And, of course, Paul Ryan is a Rand worshiper.

In a Huffington Post, err, post hypothesizing about (white? western?) men's fascination with women's breasts Larry Young and Brian Alexander reference the old sociobiology canard about men. Something about the way they said it made me feel even more skeptical than usual. (Emphasis mine.)

But men aren't known for being particularly choosy about sex partners. After all, sperm is cheap. Since we don't get pregnant, and bear children, it doesn't cost us much to spread it around. If the main goal of sex -- evolutionarily speaking -- is to pass along one's genes, it would make more sense to have sex with as many women as possible, regardless of whether or not they looked like last month's Playmate.

Source: Huffington Post

Is this true? Are men really not particularly choosy about sex partners? Really?

And even if they are is it really because of biology?  Or is it maybe more about 

Are that many men completely indifferent about their even casual partner's unplanned, unwanted pregnancies?  Enough so that it can be tossed off as a blanket statement about all men?  Because under normal circumstances even the most desperately non-choosy men are generally pretty appalled to learn their current or erstwhile partner is "knocked up."  (That alone ought to scotch the whole "seed spreading" meme.)

I mention "normal circumstances" because there are circumstances of dislocation such as military or wage-seeking migrant separation where men don't appear to be as choosy, and there are circumstances where shame-driven alienation (religious/social strictures) or fear-driven alienation ("wide stanced" men in homophobic cultures) drive men to be less choosy.  But almost by definition those aren't the normal circumstances in which most men live most of their lives.  

I mean...

Look, if you lock men, or women, in confined quarters for months at a time they routinely start smearing the walls with their feces.  Yet somehow we don't make statements such as "men aren't known for being particularly choosy about where they smear their feces."  That's because, actually, under normal circumstances people are actually pretty well known for not smearing their feces.

And speaking of normal circumstances...

Really?

Really?

Men aren't particularly choosy?

Are you kidding me?  First of all, if men weren't particularly choosy then Cosmopolitan Magazine wouldn't have a circulation rate of three million would it?  If men weren't particularly choosy there would be no traditions of partnerless women behind stories or songs about "wallflowers" would there?  If men weren't particularly choosy there wouldn't be so much frickin' choosiness expressed in endless comments on various porn and not-so porn websites about how anyone short of utterly flawless doesn't measure up at all.  Nor would there be male-to-male putdowns like "I wouldn't fuck her with your dick."  Nor would you have other commenters on the right opining that they wouldn't want to have sex with, say, Hillary Clinton, or equally as bad there wouldn't be commenters on the left making similar judgments about, say, Ann Coulter.  Nor would there be so very many married women (especially women bloggers) so aching with frustration with their long-term partner's lack of libido that they blog or comment about it.

More importantly, nor would there have been the online post that inspired me to write "The limits of 'no means no'" which was about a woman's observation that the misogynist notion that "women have the power" in sexual relations applies only to those women who are asked!

Clue: in any given year, month, week, or day an enormous number of women are not being asked.

Anyway, I know, I know, it's part of the dominant paradigm to just "know" that men are the "sex class:"  reflexively, uncontrollably, and otherwise eternally obliged to seek sex at every opportunity and never to decline it.  And, being ingrained in the dominant paradigm it's almost impossible not to bake the assumption into even somewhat skeptical scientific discourse.

But...

But...

Is it true that men are not particularly choosy? Or do we just "know" it's true... so true we don't even bother to check.  (Or even so true we outright discard men from the data set if they don't fit the profile?!?!?)

Basic Instructions comic by Scott Meyer.

"You keep hitting on Athena."
"You can't blame me for trying!" 
"Sure I can, it's your fault.  She certainly hasn't encouraged it." 

Nicely said.

Update: For those unfamiliar with the reference, a rodeo clown's job is to run in front of a bull, distracting it while someone else gets out of the way.

Image from Someecard.com. Used without permission though I doubt they care.

I'd like to tell you that Rush Limbaugh is alone in his theory that his dick is small because of feminism. But alas, no.

Read it in context here.

What's funny of course, beside the blunt truth that, no, feminism doesn't make your penis smaller (though maybe your conservative neighbor's industrial effluents might be) there's the even more fundamental man-hating anti-feminist idea that penis size is the only element of sexual attractiveness in men.

Quick aside: The author Mary Roach excels at highlighting tragic/comedic aspects of the human condition. In her excellent, readable book Bonk, the Curious Coupling of Science and Sex, she mentions that, evidently, men with larger-than-average penises are at least as likely to seek out "enhancement" treatments as average or smaller-sized men! This suggests, at the very least, that male anxiety about "size" is about waaay more than size. (Further aside: I'm... pretty certain this anxiety is what drives so many men to email or post penis photos to dating sites, Tumblr "ask" boxes, etc.)

Anyway, as Kaili Joy Gray points out in her DailyKos post, Rush Limbaugh, Rep. Alan West, and other winger-est of the wingers evidently sincerely believe that feminism isn't just "emasculating" men, it's actually making our pee-pees smaller.

Just stumbled across this awesome refutation of the bogus Two Rules of Desire and the entire array of social expectations that drives them.  It's by ThePeacockAngel on Tumblr. Have to repost the whole thing because it's... awesome. Sometimes you'll hear men's rights activists grouse about the way society hates men. Often they'll blame feminists of all people for somehow being part of it. Here's exactly why that's a mistake. Actually, she gives a whole bunch of reasons why it's a mistake.

The Patriarchy Even Denies Women The Right To Fully Love A Man

You know what pisses me off, even though women are supposed to be these passive creatures utterly devoted to their men, the patriarchy denies us the right to even fully and properly LOVE a man. It denies us even enough agency to be allowed to care for and about a man the way men are women.

• We’re supposed to wait to be protected by our knight in shining armor, we’re never allowed to stand up and fight alongside our partner. Like if there’s a noise downstairs, and you actually CARE about someone, you don’t let them go down there alone to check it out, you grab a heavy object and you go downstairs with them, because two people are more capable of overpowering a wild animal or intruder than one.
• We’re not supposed to care how men look, so we can’t think our boyfriend/husband/partner is the most fucking beautiful thing on earth, and we’re shallow if that was ANY part of the reason we chose to be with him. Because we live in a heteronormative patriarchal society men aren’t ever supposed to be “attractive” or “sexy”
• We’re supposed to passively receive expensive gifts and not give the same in return (semi-understandable with the wage gap, but still)
• We’re supposed to let our men protect us, sacrifice themselves for us, and are somehow castrating harpies if we lift a finger to stand up for them in return. It’s supposedly emasculating to be a man who has a woman who loves you enough to fight for you, and that’s REALLY fucked up, because if you really truly and completely love someone, you WILL stand up to help them when they need you.
• We’re apparently “emasculating” our partners if we try to earn more money to help support them, or buy them nice things because we care about them.
• We’re so fully objectified that we’re objects capable of receiving love and lust, but never giving them in return.

Instead we’re supposed to sacrifice our identities, our dreams in exchange for a white knight who will protect us from the scary world, and honestly, that’s not fucking romantic, that’s… if it were actually necessary the most purely mercenary thing I can think of doing. We’re told women don’t like “nice guys” if we don’t date a white knight (and punished) because womanly love is actually supposed to be coldly pragmatic according to society, and we’re breaking the script if we don’t choose an option society sees as “The best host for our benevolent parasitism” All we’re allowed to do (and therefore what we are ALWAYS supposed to do) is stroke wounded feelings and look pretty.

And fuck that, i don’t want to be forced to be a parasite, I don’t want to be the fragile pixie who’s character is defined be her romantic entanglement, I actually want to be allowed to be a person who loves another person, and is that actually too much to ask?

She said it here.

I mean, read through that post and see if you can see, anywhere, anything less than an enthusiastic, passionate, uncompromisingly feminist embrace of heterosexual partnership. In opposition to coruscating anti-feminist insistence that both women and men live inside the strangling gendered rules that capital-P patriarchy demands.

Seriously, I could write ten posts about each of her points and sub-points.  Actually, over the years I've written <em>about</em> many of them... but neither as succinctly or as passionately or as well.

(Via Lipstick and Ligature.)

Answer? Nobody.

In a great post titled "The Myth of the Boner Werewolf," Cliff of The Pervocracy points out that excuses about "blue balls" and other (mythical!) forms of male uncontrollability make women less enthusiastic about being sexual around men.

There's a pernicious myth out there that the male sex drive is unstoppable and irresistible--that once a man is aroused, he literally cannot control his actions. We tell jokes about "thinking with the other head" and "all the blood went out of his brain" that aren't entirely jokes. We have a cultural narrative in which sexual arousal makes a man into a goddamn werewolf.

And we expect women to tiptoe around this uncontrollable male sexuality. We tell them to watch how they dress, lest they wake the beast. We tell them "some guys can't control themselves"--not won't, but can't. We tell them to be careful what they start, because they'll be expected to finish it. Hell, way too often we outright tell them that they have no right to withdraw consent once sex has started.

My response to myths like this, more and more, is "shit, if I believed that, I'd never have sex with a man again." I wonder if the story would change if more guys realized that saying "if a woman gets me turned on, she'd better be ready to go all the way" is the same as saying "getting me turned on is dangerous, better not take the risk."

Source: The Pervocracy

Anyone here wish women felt sex with men was more risky rather than less? Show of hands here? If not then is it really worth perpetuating the dominant paradigm of men as the obligatory, reflex-driven, and therefore high-risk "sex" class." In exchange for what? A marginally higher chance of receiving grudging pity sex of some sort? Whee!

Screen shot of Google Analytics for Realadultsex.com, Oct-2008-Sept-2012

Maybe I need to start taking this site a little more seriously again!

That doesn't even include now-lost stats from the years before 2008 when this blog was really popular. (When I blogged more about sex than politics and gender.)