Figleaf's Real Adult Sex

The breathless headline (probably not written by Wired UK science writerLiat Clark) says "Sexual Arousal May Help Women Ignore the Yuck Factor."

Really! Wow, yeah, I mean we all know women are so sensitive and easily squicked and... and...

Oh wait, the very last paragraph of the article says...

A 2009 paper did come to similar conclusions when investigating the affects of sexual arousal on the disgust mechanism in male undergraduate students.

Source: Wired Science

In other words men and women, both, are made of snakes, sugar, snails, spice, puppy-dog tails, and everything nice. In about equal measure.

It's kind of a cool research topic, incidentally, in keeping with the SIS/SES hypothesis of arousal Emily Nagoski evangelizes. And the intention is evidently to explore certain (possibly common) sexual dysfunctions. And it's cool that one set of researchers decided to do coverage of women after others did coverage of men.

But wow, watch those gender-reflex headlines, gang.

Quick followup on my previous post, An Illustrated Guide to the NiceGuy™ Loses to Bad Boy Myth

The problem is that even many of the worst "bad boys" think of themselves as "nice guys."

Thus the experience of "nice guys" being left by someone is almost universal.

Meanwhile, surprisingly few men consider themselves to be actually bad guys.

And contrary to myth but conforming to actual common sense, most women aren't particularly attracted to men who are actually are and know they're bad!

With the result that nearly every guy who gets broken up with believes women always leave nice guys.

The law of averages, plus maybe a little selective memory, is all we need in order to "know" the story that "women leave nice guys for bad boys" is "true."

Image from George Takei's Facebook page."

In his accompanying text, George Takei asked "Who's been there or done that?*"

Short answer, of course, would be me! And about eleventy-million other guys who mistakenly believe that smothering a partner in devotion and near-servitude will buy love any better than money or threats.

The problem is that relationships, real relationships, last only between equals. Yeah, you might worship the ground she walks on, and be prepared instantly to set anything and everything aside to do her the slightest favor. But...

But...

To a first approximation, whereas nearly everyone enjoys visiting a spa pretty much nobody wants to live in one. Similarly nobody wants to marry their doorman, waiter, shoe salesman, or even masseuse with the expectation that they'll continue to be treated like a customer or patron.

Don't get me wrong. Loyalty's great. Backrubs are great. Being willing to listen is great. Making time for someone you're interested in is great too. Nothing wrong with any of that, m'kay? People do it all the time even.

But never making demands in return? Never expecting favors in return? (Except for "validation," a relationship, or, um, sex?) Always "being there?"

See. Here's the thing. It all presupposes that women are only interested in parsons or monks. (You know, like men are only interested in schoolmarms, right? Oh wait!) Or, of course, that women are secretly interested only in "bad boys." (You know, like men are only interested in strippers, right? Oh wait!)

The fact of the matter is that "bad boys" aren't any better off that "nice guys." It's just that social expectations (particularly the expectations us men are indoctrinated with) make it very easy to notice, and remember, when the next boyfriend is a "bad boy." Those same expectations make it almost invisible each time a woman dates a "good boy" after breaking up with a "bad" one. I think that's called selection bias.

Note: The comic is curiously devoid of authorship or even provenance. I tried tracking it to its origin with Google Images search. If Google's to be believed the thing has been posted and reposted more than 19,000 times! By every imaginable kind of website from individual lawyers to MotorTrend Magazine's website to, well, George Takei's Facebook funnies page. If you recognize the style I'd be interested to know whether the original artist identifies as a man or a woman.

I'm guessing man. Because while I really actually have known women who've left their perfectly nice but stiflingly sweet partners for "bad boys" I've never, ever known a woman to say, in advance, "yeah, he's so nice. I think I'm gonna break his heart and dump him for a greaser."

Extra bonus clue: The vast majority of women I know who've left stiflingly "nice guy" ideal partners have left them for...

... nobody at all!

Because, sometimes, after feeling boxed in by someone who at least outwardly behaves as if he's willing to wait on you hand and foot? Sometimes you just want to be on your own for a while.

In practice I've noticed that, stereotypes and anonymous cartoons notwithstanding, it's almost completely random who someone dates after a breakup. Ones again, yeah, we notice when someone breaks up with someone "ideal" and later takes up with someone "less than ideal." But when they instead later take up with someone who's just as ideal or (gasp!) is otherwise a more equal, suitable, compatible match? Maybe it's because it's more of a "dog bites man" story not a lot of people brood loudly about that. Or draw comics about it.

* Yes, it's happened to me.

So where does Naomi Wolf get off thinking she can write a correspondingly bogus book claiming vaginas are distal lobes of women's brains?

This is not a "what about the menz" question, incidentally.  Going back to antiquity are already plenty of books and letters asserting pretty much that men's penises do much of our thinking for us.  Some of them even assert it proudly. Though others who make the case call it phallocentrism.

And it's not like plenty of others have written long and loud, again dating back to antiquity, making cases disturbingly similar to Wolf's!  Only for most of them it's not vaginas, it's "wombs."  And they didn't call it "depression" they called it "hysteria."

Sorry gang, we're not our genitals, m'kay?

This does not mean we don't or can't express ourselves through our genitals.  We can! But only in the same way we can express ourselves with our hands (see violins, typing, massage, fooseball) or our mouths (see arias, lectures, kissing, epicurian cuisine) our eyes, feet, etc.  But usually when we say an artist or athlete has a direct connection between his or her hands or bodies we recognize we're speaking metaphorically.

Heck, even when we say something coarse like "he lets his dick do the thinking" we still recognize we're speaking metaphorically.

Oh.

Oh! 

Back to that phallocentrism business for a second.  Wolf claims she and all women have a special, unique connections between vaginas and brains.  Unique erotic/sexual ones too, not just spiritual ones.  Ones that men couldn't possibly share.

It would be cool if she said women, being human beings, can discover (if they haven't already, um, noticed) a connection between mind and genitals that thanks to, oh, maybe, the bogus Two Rules of Desire women have traditionally been pressured to deny or repress in ways that men often have not.  But she didn't.  Which I think is a mistake.

I dunno.  Outside of harsh traditions of gender binding it's either a mundane observation or a really dumb one.  So what the heck?

Cropped image from TheAtlanticWire.com.

I was sorry to hear Shulamith Firestone, author in 1968 1970 of The Dialectic of Sex: The Case for Feminist Revolution, passed away late last week.

Her book is, I think, harder to read today than it was when it came out now nearly half a century ago. The world has really changed since then. Medical science, academia, feminism, and even mainstream, non-complete-wingnut conservative chauvinism(!!) have changed since then. And I think to at least some extent her book was responsible for some of that change.

Some of the things she said, though, still resonate like a bell. While I wasn't as taken by her "futurist" passages I learned a lot when, too late in life, I finally read the darn book.  I liked it, and her, a lot.  She hugely influenced how I wrote thereafter.

Update: By the way, when I said things have changed since 1970 (I mistakenly said Firestone's book came out in 1968) I obviously didn't mean everything's changed. But, especially considering it came out years before Roe vs. Wade was handed down, society was really, really different then. For one thing, unlike us, she didn't have 40+ years of radical, moderate, and progressive feminism to lean on. Instead she had nada. (In fact one of Firestone's widely-noticed "radical feminist" pieces was an answer to the "father of abortion rights" Bill Baird, who had opined that maybe someday actual women would become angry enough about limits on reproductive rights to become activists in what he largely considered to be his movement.) So. Yeah. We're not living in utiopia here in the 21st Century. But the world was radically different then.

Photo by Flickr user craighamnett. Used under a Creative Commons license.

That is all.

Photo by Flickr user DoctorWho. Used under a Creative Commons license.

Drinking and sex in College? I'm not a big fan of alcohol and sex. (And not just because I've got a faulty gene that keeps me from enjoying alcohol myself.) So I really appreciated this list of tips for college students from Em & Lo. The whole list is great but #3 is a real keeper.

Don’t do it drunk. You will get drunk. Too drunk. Way too drunk. Probably on more than one occasion. We’re not talking about a good, healthy buzz — because let’s face it, that’s the only time sex is going to happen for you this year — no, we’re talking completely sloshed. And when that happens, when your balance starts to fail and your voice gets really loud and the room spins a bit, try with all your might NOT to hook up. The chances of it not going well are exceedingly high. Think: poor sexual performance, blackouts, accusations of date rape, actual date rape, mid-sesh vomiting, forgotten birth control, accidental pregnancy, the list goes on.

Source: Today on EMandLO.com

What's great is their acknowledgement that asking students to refrain from drinking entirely is unproductive. Instead they just lay out the conditions and consequences: a glass of wine with dinner, or a couple of drinks over a night of dancing and romancing? Not the end of the world.

But past the point where responsible friends would ask for your car keys? Oh yeah, if you're too sloshed to make a competent decision not to drive you're definitely too sloshed to competently decide that, yes, you really want to be doing this right now. Let alone deciding your (possibly equally sloshed) acquaintance has competently decided he or she wants to be doing it with you as well.

Seriously. Most of the stuff that gets in the papers? That gets friends shaking their heads? That gets guys (especially) branded as a creep or a loser or someone To Be Avoided? The ones where someone ends up getting battered or worse?

Yeah, there are exceptions to every rule but alcohol is behind just a heck of a lot of very bad sex-related behavior.

I'm not going to say never get technicolor-yawningly drunk. I certainly won't say never have sex, or even have sex! But I gotta agree, based on a ton of first-, second-, and third-hand experience, that mixing the two is a heck of a recipe for more regrets than fond memories.

Photo by Flickr user DJOtaku. Used under a Creative Commons license.

Tumblr blogger STFU Fauxfeminists passes along the following comment following a series of posts about penile circumcision. I'm passing it along too because it makes a point that seems to be increasingly difficult to get across. Emphasis mine.

I know there were a million other things wrong with the male circumcision ask that you needed to address, but I think it should be pointed out that every time someone starts a question with "why don't feminists do X" they should do a Google search to see if it actually is true that no feminists do that. Plenty of feminists are against male circumcision; I feel like there are probably more than who are for it. We're just not into false equivalencies to female genital cutting.

Source: STFU Fauxminists!

Speaking personally as the victim of a botched, unauthorized circumcision initiated by a nurse against my mom's and my (pediatrician!) grandfather's direct order that I not be circumcised, I'm still on board with this.

Heck, despite the fact that I'm personally opposed to male circumcision of all sorts I'm still on board with this!

Male circumcision is generally a bad, stupid idea and when it's done on people who are unable to consent (particularly to gratify the esthetic, habitual, economic, or even "religious imperative" urges of third parties) it's not just bad and stupid, it's bad, stupid, and wrong!

But even in my case, where the consequence of my genital mutilation included considerable sensation loss I gotta say there's a false equivalence between conventional female and conventional male genital mutilation.

How can that be? I'll tell ya.

The stupid, sullen, class-obsessed nurse who caused me to be circumcised against my family's wishes nevertheless would have been appalled that I lost sensation over much of my penis and would have been thankful to know I at least retained a couple of "good spots." Because loss of erotic sensation in men is never the intention of male circumcision.

The intention of female "circumcision," however, is absolutely and unapologetically the complete erasure of erotic sensation in women.

In other word my circumcision was considered botched because I lost some sensation. A woman's circumcision, on the other hand, is considered botched if she retains even partial erotic sensation.

Does any of the above make male circumcision right, ok, tolerable, or anything less than bad, stupid, or wrong? Duh no! It's still completely bad, stupid and wrong.

But anybody who thinks either the intention or the result of routine male genital mutilation is equivalent to routine female genital mutilation is... well.. bad, stupid, and worse-than-Todd-Akin-and-Paul-Ryan wrong.

Speaking about his own daughter's unplanned, unwanted pregnancy Tom Smith is generally considered to have equated the serious matter of criminal sexual assault with unwed pregnancy. Believe it or not, the American Taliban Republican Senate candidate is an even bigger capital-P Patriarchal knuckle dragger than that! Check out Christine Roberts' succinct summary of Smith's remarks. (Emphasis mine.)

"Now don't get me wrong. It wasn't rape."

When pressed by another reporter, the 66-year-old reiterated the comparison of his daughter’s out-of-wedlock pregnancy to becoming pregnant from rape.

"Put yourself in a father's position. Yes, it is similar," he said.

Source: Daily Kos

Never mind how the daughter might feel about an unwanted pregnancy with a lover vs. a criminal sexual assailant, to conservative Republicans (oh, and the Taliban) what's important is how her father feels about it! Contrary to the common interpretation he's not saying it's no difference to her! Just that it makes no difference to him!

As a father!

Either way in Tom Smith's old-fashioned Patriarchy all that matters is she's damaged goods and a burden on her family so what difference could it possibly make?

Basically these guys don't just want to repeal the Sermon on the Mount and the 14th - 24th Amendments to the U.S. Constitution, they want to repeal the whole fucking 20th and 21st Centuries and get back to the good old days of English Common Law, which defines rape -- both statutory and "forcible," as property crimes with the father, husband, or other custodial male as the victim rather than, well, the actual victim.

Sweet Mother of Pearl!

Photo by Flickr user Trevor Coultart. Used under a Creative Commons license.

So my heart sank when I read the headline at Medical Daily: How Oral Sex or Having Sex Without a Condom Can Be Good For Women's Health. My heart sank even further at the lead sentence:

Performing oral sex or having sex without a condom may benefit both mental and physical health in women, according to scientists who analyzed the effects of semen's "mood-altering chemicals."

It sank because I assumed the "new" research the blogger, Catharine Hsu, referred to was finally going to corroborate "evolutionary" psychologist Gordon Gallup's ten year old "research" paper that made the same claim.

I needn't have worried.

Following the link it turns out that yet again someone's stumbled across Gallup's original paper -- Archives of Sexual Behavior, Volume 31, Number 3 (2002), 289-293, DOI: 10.1023/A:1015257004839 and breathlessly reported on it as if it were new. Or news. Or fact. Or, um, science.

This isn't new research. Gordon Gallup's (grievously suspect) paper was published 10 years ago, in 2002, not 2012. In those 10 years no researchers have reproduced his results. Nor has Gallup followed up with further research on what, on the face of it, one would consider pretty significant news.

Even more tellingly, in those 10 years pharmaceutical companies have conducted clinical trials, let alone primary research, on semen-based anti-depressants. When you consider the seemingly limitless market for depression treatments this is the most significant "market based" refutation of Gallup's alleged research.

Add in the part about how married women, who are presumably most likely to be regularly "exposed" to "doses" of semen, typically report being less happy and healthy than when they were single.

Add in the fact that men, even straight men, are rather routinely exposed to semen without it seeming to do us much good in the mood department ("even after adjusting for intercourse.")

Add in that Gallup is a psychologist, not an MD nor even a biologist.

Don't get me wrong. As a straight man I think it would be really, really nice if my semen had health benefits for young college women. Even nicer if the (small) benefits Gallup claimed to be able to detect in completely unprotected sex outweighed the (very large) adverse consequences we tend to be more familiar with. Instead it's old-guy, frat boy, and shock-jock wish fulfillment, not actual, you know, medical science.

Note: More than five years ago I wrote nearly the same post when Psychology Today breathlessly exhumed the same too-good-to-check zombie "research. But as I said then and I'll say now.

Like a lot of other stories along these lines this one continues to circulate not because the research was credible (it wasn’t!) or the researcher widely respected by his peers (he doesn’t appear to be.) Instead it circulates because it’s too good to fact check. Too good for lad-magazines and anti-feminists to pass up because, hey, it’s another line for doods to use on chix. Too good for for feminists to pass up because, hey, it’s outrageous. Too good for health professionals because, hey, it’s a chance to fret about increased risk of infectious disease.

...

If you like semen that’s just great. If you don’t, well, that’s great too. If you’re hungry for it, well cool, but it’s not addictive. If you wouldn’t go near the stuff, it’s not like you’re missing out on anything. I propose that you should enjoy it, or not enjoy it because it’s semen, not because it might cure anything.

I said it here.

Till next year. When yet another reporter will pop up with the same old too-good-to-fact-check "news."