So I was playing around with a broom today (I’d already swept) and since no one was around…

Extra credit photos: click the two thumbnails for full-size images.

Happy HNT (or Half-nekkid Thursday!)

In a very short post Ann Althouse of Althouse says

Is he 107 because he stopped having sex when he was 30?

Chan Chi’s wife died in the Japanese invasion. Imagine going 77 years without sex. Few would do it on the hope it would make life last longer. And who even believes that it could? But it’s touching to think of a man who lost his wife and remained faithful to her.

Because it was so short I’ve excerpted the whole post. It originally appeared here.

According to various sources the idea that going without sex extends mens’ life or increases their vitality is widely accepted.

The sociologist’s term for it is “semen conservation” and if you Google for that term you’ll find all kinds of, um, helpful information. (Note: Since I have it at hand I’m relying mainly on Elizabeth Abbott’s A History of Celibacy but numerous other sources confirm the following tidbits.)

Semen conservation is allegedly a central (philosophical) principle in the Hindu tradition. Taoists and Buddhists believe in it too. It’s been documented in various shamanistic traditions in South, Central, and (I believe) North America as well.

Closer to home, late 19th-Century and early 20th Century movements including Muscular Christianity, the Boy Scouts, health food, infant circumcision, and opposition to “self-pollution” were based on the obviously-unfounded but widely held view among British and American doctors that the “loss” of semen during a single act of sex was equal to losing a pint of blood. It was generally believed that sex with one’s wife even twelve times a year was a one-way ticket to insanity and early death. Dr. Kellogg invented corn flakes, and Dr. Graham developed his crackers with the expressed belief that a sufficiently bland diet would preserve and extend men’s lives by curtailing their libidos. And finally, the Victorian euphemism “to spend” was based on the idea that men produced only so much semen in a lifetime and once it was gone so were you.

(It’s also worth pointing out that the stress of semen conservation on men, combined with a general belief that women could have sex with no ill effects, contributed to the upside-down-to-use idea that women were naturally sexually amoral and unchaste while men were the virtuous guardians of sexual restraint. Which is no less stupid than our current Purity-ball mentality that dumps all responsibility for restraint on women.)

The point being that while it seems daft to us (ok, it is daft), the idea that it’s not just moral but health-improving to abstain has been and remains a very popular belief.

Not that such belief takes anything away from Chan Chi’s faithfulness or devotion to his late wife. 77 years is a very long time, and 30 is very young. Dr. Kellogg notwithstanding, most traditions allow a “grace period” during one’s reproductive years. Abstinent or not he certainly could have remarried. That he chose not to is very touching.

There’s a cool meme going around about a Senegalese woman’s experience with female genital mutilation. Most people are attributing it to the wonderful Ema of Well-Timed Period but after following the links it looks like it was first brought to light by frequent commenter and general incredible font of information A of A Changing Life.

The original blog is written in French by Papillon of Excision: le chemin de ma reconstruction (Which Bablefish translates as “Excision: the way of my rebuilding.” “Excision” is a common euphemism for female genital mutilation a.k.a. “female circumcision” a.k.a. “carving out the clitoris and inner labia and sewing the outer labia almost completely shut, with no anesthesia, and often with no trace of antiseptic conditions.”)

It turns out as well that A did the translation into English that most people have quoted.

In a nutshell the author gradually concluded that her FGM had ruined her life. She assumed her father had been behind it. No one from her family would talk to her about it. Finally she remembered a cousin who had been living with them at the time and asked her.

So I wanted to know. To know as much as possible what had happened. I didn’t dare speak to either my mother or my father. My sister refused to speak about it and got stressed when I bought up the subject. One morning on the metro I had the idea of calling my cousin. She had been brought up by my mother and was living with us at that time, I was sure. I was apprehensive (“And what if she won’t speak to me?”) and I was very surprised at how easily she spoke to me. I had been circumcised at four years, at the same time as my sister, in my father’s village at the instigation of my mother and my paternal grandmother. My father wasn’t there that day. He had gone to find my cousin at her father’s house. It was done behind his back. When he returned, my cousin told me, he flew into a terrible rage. He said he wanted to divorce my mother. Had it not been for the pleas of my grandmother who claimed all responsibility of our circumcision, he perhaps might have.

My cousin did me a service by telling me all that. For years I had believed that my father, if he hadn’t been in cahoots with my mother, had at least shown some indifference to “women’s trouble”. I had also believed that it had happened in my mother’s village and it was my maternal grandmother who had arranged everything. That was completely wrong. I held it against my father, convinced that he didn’t love me, and I hated my grandmother all these years. All these years…

Read the rest of A’s translation here.

So, assuming your skin’s stopped crawling, there are a couple of points that jump out of this narrative.

The first being that Teh Patriarchy is as real, and as deadly serious, as broken-bottle scalpels. (And as serious as the death threats Papillon’s reconstructive surgeon receives.)

The next, however, being that not all patriarchs are men, nor are all men patriarchs.

Yes, yes, the mother and grandmother thought they were doing some abstract image of a future husband a favor… when they chose to act against both the interests and the intention of the concrete and real husband/father/son in front of them. And yes, yes, one can claim that while the actual men in their lives wanted nothing to do with mutilated partners (let alone mutilation of *their own small children!) the women were nevertheless in thrall to Teh All Seeing Patriarchal Eye that binds them all up on some mountain top back in Mordor. To do so, however, would be to deny their agency in the endeavor they undertook with deliberation, calculation, and knowledge of right and wrong.

Using my preferred terms of stereotypes, the mother and grandmother’s stereotypes of men and women were so powerful they chose to surgically alter reality to make it conform to those stereotypes. In other terms the nominally jailed subverted paternal authority and became the actual jailers. The tortured subverted the narrative of masculine authority to become torturers.

Twisty Faster of I blame the patriarchy has argued (sorry, I can’t find the link) that patriarchy would remain with us even if there were no men, and believes further that escape will come only with the extinction of our species. I’m more optimistic than she but stories like Papillon’s suggest her pessimism is not entirely unfounded.

And Sara of Sara Speaking has recently been debating with others the extent to which feminists should examine the extent to which men are also oppressed by gender. Even a quick glance at the current state of men’s studies one suggests her, and my, frustration with that but sooner or later we men will get there ourselves. If I were instead to offer advice for academic feminists I’d suggest examining women’s roles as not just passive or resistant subjects or objects of patriarchy but their active agency in shaping and perpetuating it.

‘Cause even if men dropped their hands from the wheel, without understanding that I’m pretty sure would keep right on rolling for generations.

Cherrie of The Sensuous Libertine posts yet another excellent reason for casting a wary eye on evolutionary psychology.

Do we really believe that these results emanating from the past decade have any bearing on our ancestral past? Think about it for a moment. For 4 to 5 million years our ancestors lived in groups of 15 to 75 persons, of which there were a total of 5 to 35 men as possible choices as mates, not much of a selection pool; but, how they chose each other is nothing more than pure conjecture. Symmetry sounds good, but so does tall, or funny, or sensitive, etc.

Then, as we arrive at the time of recorded history, some 6,000 years ago we know that women had very little, if any choice in her mate as marriages were arranged…primarily for economic and/or defense purposes. So much for selection by symmetry or anything else for that matter concerning female choice.Now, it’s possible that symmetry, etc. plays an unconscious role in today’s mate selection; but, 200 plus years in an evolutionary span of 5 million hardly equates to the genetic role these researchers would have us believe.

Read her quote in context here.

Attempts to explain complex human behavior in terms of animals (or, in the case Cherrie reviewed, Japanese scorpion files) are as common as fevers during flu season. Just usually not as helpful. It’s not that there aren’t documented preferences for symmetry in humans (see, for instance, this post from Randy Dotinga at Sex Drive Daily.) Instead the problem lies in the interpretation.

Yes, people (and scorpion flies, and lots of other organisms) seem to idealize idealized forms. But as Cherrie’s correspondent points out, through much of human history (and for a sizable minority in the world for whom arranged marriage remains the norm) there may not have been much leeway for individuals in partner selection.

But basically any time you read one of these “it must be genetic” ideas ask yourself (at least) two questions:

- Is that the only possible reason we’d have the trait in question?

- Is that trait really strong enough to be a major selection factor?

In the case of symmetry, for instance, while we might be (consciously or unconsciously) drawn more to symmetrical people, you’ve probably noticed we’re drawn to all sorts of symmetrical things. Rings, stars, and valentines come to mind. And while we might give our sweeties a ring on Valentine’s day and then made her see stars with our tongues, we rarely mate with those… or nearly any other… symmetrical objects. Also, while we may be attracted more to visibly symmetrical people, and while humans are highly visually-oriented organism, does anyone suggest looks is our primary criteria for partner selection? (Note: Whereas porn consultant Sam Sugar has pointed out that at least in porn if two stars have the same the same characteristics most people select the more attractive person, it’s no less true that when considering two people who are similarly attractive most people select the one with more character.)

Hmm. Actually, there are a couple of other questions it doesn’t hurt to ask either:

- Is the cultural context in which the cultural trait is supposed to have evolved actually old enough for selection to have had any effect at all?

- Are the organisms we’re being compared to even remotely close to us in the evolutionary tree? (The last common ancestor to humans and scorpion flies predate the Cambrian explosion.) And if so, do we see any consistent patterns of similar behavior in organisms more closely related to us?

So. If, but probably only if, the answers to all those questions is yes, then there might be some substance to the theory. Otherwise, it’s probably best for the researchers to keep collecting data and leave the interpretations to the tabloids.

Remember, I’m not saying human behavior has no genetic basis. I’m just saying those components need to be very strong, or very fundamental to be observable above the background noise of everyday human social variation and psychological sophistication.

Since I often argue there should be fewer abortions I want to take a moment to agree wholeheartedly with Amanda Marcotte, Jill Filipovic and many others that abortion is a moral good. I’ll recap why I’d like to see fewer abortions in a moment but first I’d like to firmly settle the point that moral arguments against abortion are off the mark.

As Marcotte puts it: “it’s good if people with serious problems have solutions for them.” An unwanted, unplanned pregnancy can be a serious social, economic, emotional, psychological, and/or medical problem and it’s very good to have a solution for it.

Marcotte laid the marker down this way at Pandagon

I think that abortion is not only a good thing, but I’d like to posit that it seems to me that in the vast majority of abortions, the choice made was the most moral choice for that woman.

To see that abortion is moral, you just need to look at women as human beings with lives that have value. When a woman chooses abortion, she’s not indulging some guilty pleasure, like sneaking in a round of adultery at lunch, to bring up a genuinely immoral action that should not be criminal. She is probably thinking about her family’s well-being and yes, her own well-being. Taking your own well-being into consideration is called “selfish” by anti-choicers, but I think valuing yourself is a moral good, even if you are female. In fact, especially if you are female, since you live in a world where having self-esteem can be an act of moral courage that requires some defiance. If I got pregnant, I wouldn’t even have to suffer much mental strain to realize that abortion would be the best choice for myself, my family, and my relationship. Abortion, not just the right to abortion but the actual procedure, is a moral good that helps women and families and should be honored as such. Women who get abortions should be recognized as people who can accurately weigh their choices and make the most moral one.

Read the rest of her post here.

and at Filipovic, echoing Marcotte, adds

Abortion itself, though, can be a savior for women, and a positive choice. Abortion is a medical procedure and, like most medical procedures, is preempted by some sort of negative event. And yet the discourse around abortion is focused on how “tragic” it is. Is open-heart surgery “tragic”? Is an appendectomy “tragic”? Obviously the circumstances leading up to open-heart surgery and appendectomy are bad. But the procedures themselves, I would argue, are good responses to bad situations. As is abortion.

See her take on the issue here.

And if Filipovic echos Marcotte, I’d like to echo Filipovic to explain why there should be fewer abortions — within the stand that abortion is a moral good.

Just as few question whether a major medical procedure like heart surgery is a moral good, even fewer question the morality of root canals and ankle surgery.

Yet dentists argue we should brush, floss, and rinse our teeth so we won’t and podiatrists agree we should wear athletic shoes so we won’t sprain or break our ankles. They ground their arguments on not moral ones.

A root canal is an invasive procedure. So is ankle surgery. Surgery entails risks of primary injury or secondary infections. They’re painful and at least temporarily incapacitating. Having stood by with my partner while she had the standard surgical procedure for abortion (dilation and extraction) after miscarrying I’ve come about as close as a man can get to experiencing the procedure. It, um, hurt. Aftercare was time consuming. The list of (strictly medical) admonitions and “watch out for’s” for the next couple of weeks was lengthy.

Not as lengthy, I hasten to add, as the pain, risk, and aftercare of labor and delivery, which I’ve also witnessed with my partner. (For instance abortions rarely involve several feet of suture thread, a month of bed rest, or “she might need a transfusion.” Nor do they involve hospitalization for preeclampsia or emergency caesarians to forestall an impending stroke, as has happened to other pregnant friends.)

[Note: The increased risk of pregnancy-related illness, injury, and death is one of many excellent reason why banning abortion is less moral than protecting it. —fl]

But if abortions are not as risky as pregnancy, labor, and delivery, contraception to avoid pregnancy is even less risky, painful, expensive, and time-consuming than either of the above.

And that’s where I come down. Root canals, and ankle surgery, and abortions are unquestionable (and largely avoidable) moral goods.

Extended question: Nobody argues that dentistry should be avoided since abstaining from all starches and sweets (virtually) eliminates the need for toothbrushes and floss. And nobody argues that hiking boots or athletic shoes are problematic because ankle injuries can be avoided by abstaining from walking, hiking, running, or playing sports. So where do people get off saying we should avoid contraception just because one can avoid pregnancy (and, consequentially, abortion) by abstaining from sex?

Final point: Will oral hygiene ever completely eliminate root canals? No, no matter how much progress dentists, oral surgeons, and health teachers make we might need them less and less often but we’ll always need them. Will better footwear, playing surfaces, and improved coaching ever eliminate podiatrists? No, as technology improves we’ll need them less and less frequently but we’ll always need ankle surgery. And will safer, more effective, less expensive, more widely available, and easier to use contraceptives ever eliminate the need for abortions? No. Even though we’ll need them less and less often as contraception becomes more available and reliable there will always be a need for safe, legal, and it’s-a-moral-good-get-over-it abortions.

This is why I can consistently support abortion while working to make it less necessary.

So a few weeks ago I ran across a new (to me) blog called TheBeautifulKind. The doesn’t appear to have a name or pen name so I guess for now I’ll call her TBK for short. I’ve been enjoying her eclectic posts, which discuss her interests in (among other things) landscape photography, celebrities and pop culture, relationships, socks and sock puppets, and pez dispensers. Oh, and oral sex. Of all sorts. In other words she’s a classic old-style blogger with interests, and interesting perspectives, on just all kinds of topics.

She’s also a self-photographer who’s built up an extensive portfolio documenting her collection of sexy underwear. Undies don’t seem to give me the thrill some people get from wearing, looking at, or playing with them but as undies go she’s got some very nice ones. She’s got some kind of scripting on her homepage sidebar that changes the image each time you revisit (or refresh) the page.

While reading back through her archives I had a nice epiphany about pubic hair. Some of her panties are pretty sheer and in those you see the shadowed delta of hair on her mons through the fabric.

Say what you will about shaving and waxing (and sure, there are plenty of nice things to say about it.) But goodness there’s even more to be said about how erotic it looks when it’s natural or only lightly trimmed. In or out of clothes.

Wordslut of hopelessly bad says

Monogamy and/or abstinence?

Oh, yes, I recall several years of marriage that combined monogamy and abstinence pretty damn well.

She said it here

She’s evidently not the only one. I’ve mentioned AlwaysArousedGirl’s dilemma. Madame X of The Madame X Files has mentioned frequently that her ex-husband (the “ex-hole”) almost didn’t even consummate their marriage.

I once had a partner who was interested in intercourse on the second day of her period. And that was it. Otherwise she was almost never interested in any kind of sex at all. Putting the shoe on the other foot another partner felt I was cold and withholding because I’m not able to shift gears and have make-up sex after a big argument — something she, unfortunately for both of us, really enjoyed.

Any of my other readers care to chime in with tales for their own?

[Note: This is not an invitation to cast aspersions on our lackadaisical current or former parters — there are two sides to almost every story. And in my experience people tend to be more sympathetic when you just tell them the circumstances. —fl]

Early last summer during the big blowjob flareup I dinged a Dan Savage column where Savage advised a reader who’s partner wasn’t into eating him to…

Dump her… Sucking cock can no longer be regarded as some sort of above-and-beyond-the-call indulgence. Blowjobs are standard. Any make or model that doesn’t come with blowjobs should be immediately returned to the showroom.

Source: TheStranger.com

Well, this afternoon an alert reader, Chris Goodwin, pointed out that the very next entry in the same column had identical advice for a woman who’s partner wasn’t cunnilingus her.

Dump him… Eating pussy can no longer be regarded as some sort of above-and-beyond-the-call indulgence. Cunnilingus is standard. Any make or model that doesn’t come with cunnilingus should be immediately returned to the showroom.

I feel like a nitwit for failing to notice the second column the first time around. However, while I admire Savage’s egalitarianism (I really do) I’m going to stand by the main point of my post that “mandatory” and “sex” rarely play well together. I happen to think that anyone who doesn’t enjoy performing cunnilingus is missing a treat, and no doubt others feel the same way about giving blowjobs. But those would be our opinions. “Opinion” and “obligation” are very different words.

(I think one of the more pernicious ideas in sex these days is the dumb idea of eating your partner with the expectation that they’ll be obliged to reciprocate. My strong personal feelings? If you like to eat your partner just eat your partner. If you don’t then please don’t. )

To bleg: “A blog entry consisting of a request to the readers, such as for information or contributions. A portmanteau of ‘blog’ and ‘beg’. Also called ‘Lazyweb.’” This post includes a request for information from readers, preceded by an explanation of why I’m interested. —fl]

So one thing that keeps coming up for me as I read Joan Sewell’s I’d Rather Eat Chocolate: Learning to Love My Low Libido is the distinction between sex and sexual dynamics.

In her chapter “Love and the Sex Bank” Sewell discusses Barbara DeAngelis’s What Women Want Men to Know Sewell reflects on the sexual dynamics of exchanging non-orthogonal favors

DeAngelis believes women have evolved to include an area in their minds that she refers to as a “Love and Sex Bank.” If a man doesn’t deposit enough love into the bank, then she won’t be able to withdraw any sexual feeling for him. “Often it’s how you’ve been treating your partner for hours, days, even weeks before you approach her to make love that will determine whether or not she is in the mood.” DeAngelis says women tally it all up, whether big or small, and then when a man wants sex, we determine whether he’s welcome in our arms.“

[Italics mine —fl]

And then there’s this brutally frank discussion (she’s quoting an acquaintance) about the sexual dynamics of relationship survival.

“I know. I wish I had the guts. I need him. It’s so pathetic. Sometimes I think he’ll leave me. He works with this woman and I ask him what she’s like, and he says she’s attractive and, you know, they work closely together. I’m afraid if I turn him down for sex he’ll go get it from her.”

Stuff like this comes up throughout the book, in her analysis of other relationship pundits and in her own reflections.

And it keeps reminding me of the coup counting and survival strategies you hear about in incarcerated or effectively incarcerated populations where lacking any authentic, extrinsic power inmates are reduced to operating on each other — maneuvering intensely over status, cigarettes, and strict accounting of grudges and favors (including, obviously, sexual favors.)

Which, when you think about it, is an awful lot like the dynamics of heterosexual sexual dynamics in most of the world for most of recorded history.

Now Sewell, and evidently most of the pundits she cites, believes strongly that these dynamics are innately fixed in gender — that men are hardwired to behave one way while women are equally programmed to behave another. I’m reluctant to accept that in part because we studied multiple instances of this sort of behavior regardless of gender, or even sexuality, when I was in college studying the social theory and sociology of small groups.

So! Almost all the social/sexual research I’ve seen has involved either mixed groups (e.g. high school, obligatory social clubs, colonial and ex-pat communities, certain Soviet-era gulags and WWII-era concentration camps) or predominantly male (prisons, certain military situations, “outpost” dynamics) but aside from incomplete and almost certainly biased information on “ladies who lunch” dynamics I’m having a hard time finding credible information about sexual dynamics in closed societies of mostly women.

Anyway, my working hypothesis is that when Sewell, DeAngelis, and pretty much everyone else talks about “libido imbalances” they’re confused by what I believe to be a very, very strong overlay of power dynamics. This imbalance is fairly well documented in predominantly male and mixed-group situations. I’m asking about the dynamics in women’s-only situations in hopes of denying or supporting my hypothesis.

Since almost everything I’ve tried to Google about the social and sexual dynamics in women’s detention facilities is either outright porn or… well… more porn (women in prison being a confusingly well-established genre.) Frankly at this point I’m ready to believe that all rumors about inmate sex and sexual dynamics in women’s prisons are apocryphal and/or fantasy-driven.

I’m hoping one of my readers could point me to some credible first-hand or well-recounted second hand information about it.

Thanks.

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This post is mostly about vaginas. (Actual vagina vaginas, not the common euphemism for women’s genitals that vaginas are only a part of.) I obviously don’t have a vagina, but I think it’s ok because I’m going to speak, based on experience with partners who do have them, about public perceptions and (serious) misperceptions about them.

So one of the things that bugs me about the whole Purity Ball / Laura Sessions Stepp approach to chastity is the chirpy double standard wherein everybody fetishises women’s chastity but — unless maybe he picks up an incurable STD or prefers men — nobody expects men to remain chaste till marriage.

One clue to this can be found in Stepp’s easily mocked house analogy: “Think about the first home you hope to own. You wouldn’t want someone to throw a rock through the front window, would you?”

She also has an analogy about the desirability of smorgasbords after everyone’s picked through it. Harder core Purity types analogize about rosebuds with all the petals pulled off. Or gum after it’s been chewed. (But, since they don’t care about men, never anything about levers that have been pulled after the breaking of glass. But I digress…)

Anyway the one thing they all have in common is the idea that sex somehow physically ruins a woman. (It’s got to be something physical, right? Because if it was psychological damage they’d worry about men too. But, again, no metaphors about how nobody wants to use a pump after the handle’s been used. So it’s definitely about some physical change.

Well. Some people evidently have a very poor grasp of women’s anatomy (including a surprising number of women, I might add — and not just the ones who refer to their genitals as “down there.”) And since some people evidently still think there might be teeth “down there” let’s see if we can’t clear up a couple of misconceptions.

I’ve mentioned the two-sphere gender model (for woo-woo types there’s the equally wrong yin-yang gender model.) You know, if men work outside women have to work inside. If men hunt women obviously ought to farm. If women are emotional and loving men are supposed to be pragmatic and watch a lot of sports. You know, that sort of thing?

Well, I think the feeling goes, if men’s cocks are strong, stiff, and able to take a lot of pounding then women’s corresponding part, her actual internal vagina, obviously has to be pliable and delicate and fragile as… well… rose petals or picture windows or smorgasbords or gum, I guess. The point being, though, that if you put so much as a fingertip, let alone a tampon, a vibrator, or definitely a cock… you’re just going to ruin it.

Yeah, yeah, that’s a out-of-control irrational idea — see, for instance, baby’s heads and blah blah blah — but then so is the idea that there might be teeth down there and Google returns 104,000 entries on that!

So here’s a clue. Vaginas spring back as good as new. Very quickly. Even after they’ve engulfed a cock. Even after they’ve embayed a very large cock. And no, not they’re not springy because of some Teh Baby-Head magic either (like anyone’s cock competes with baby head in the first place.) Instead it’s that vaginas are part of the human body (a shock to some, I know) and human bodies are dynamic, resilient, and strong.

I mean, one probable point of confusion is that the vulva (pussy, cunt, “down there,” vajayjay) just outside the vagina is athwart with nerve endings and so it’s pretty easy to irritate or even cause pain through clumsiness or carelessness. (And of course while nobody ever does you could say the same thing about heads of cocks.) But sensitive to the touch and easily-and-irreparably damaged are two very separate things, and the Purity/Stepp concern seems to be that even (especially) if the vagina encounters something it’s totally designed for it’s suddenly as ruined as a picked-over smorgasbord, a smashed window, or a wilted rose.

Sorry. The same things that make vaginas (and the vulvas they’re part of) that make them so warm, moist, and responsive — millions of nerve endings, a rich blood supply, remarkably strong and sophisticated musculature, supple folds and furrows — also makes it extraordinarily resilient.

As resilient as the physiologically not-dissimilar similar flesh covering of a man’s cock.

And cocks, the Purity/Stepp mentality would have us believe, is practically invulnerable — certainly by anything as mundane as a little — or even quite a lot — of vigorous intercourse.

And soooo… neither is the vagina!

—-

Notes:

Why vagina and not vulva: I’ve concentrated on the internal vagina instead of the rest of the genital area it’s because all but the very loopiest chastity nuts believe women can, for instance, ride a bike without mashing their pee-pees into picked-over smorgasbords, wilted roses, or broken picture windows. Therefore if Teh Cock is going to ruin you for someone else I figure they think the damage must be internal. And that would be the vagina.

During and after arousal: Another possible source of misconception is the effect intercourse has on someone’s vulva and vagina. If you weren’t very experienced, or if you let your preconceptions trump evidence, or if you had a shocking lack of imagination, you might imagine that a vagina is just a hole “down there.” And if you didn’t know better you might have some idea that it gets slippery somehow, and there’s that clitoris thing, and depending on which high-school health book you learned everything from you might even have some sort of notion about “tenting” and “cervical sipping.” But what you wouldn’t know is that the whole complex system of highly sophisticated internal and external organs undergoes incredible (but temporary) changes during arousal and, especially, arousal with intercourse so that it looks very very different immediately before, during, and immediately after sex. It swells and reddens as it grows engorged with blood. It blooms open as the clitoris and inner and outer labia grow turgid with arousal. It lengthens and enlarges as different core muscles shift and the pelvis subtly (or not so subtly) tilts. It seeps creamy, heady liqueurs from visible and invisible sources. The sophisticated system of voluntary and involuntary muscles make it pulse and open and squeeze. If you’re imagining maidenly, passive, “sheaths” or “holes” you’re in for a pleasant surprise. Or, if you’re not comfortable with the idea of women as active and dynamic participants in sex and prefer to think of them as passive receptacles for men’s cocky dynamism, you’re in for a rude shock because the changes during high arousal are as striking, and almost as obvious, as men’s arousal. But here’s the deal: after women relax and recover from arousal their genitals return to their original, no-longer-engorged, tucked-out-of-the-way-until-next-time condition. Just like men do.

- Resilience: I’m not quite sure what it’s about, but when men imagine other men their partners have slept with they evidently tend to imagine those men have larger penises than they do. (Odd, I know. Sort of the opposite of the 80% of people who say they’re above-average drivers.) Not to worry. ‘Member I said vaginas are active, dynamic, resilient parts of active dynamic people, and that they’re rich with nerves and muscles, especially around and just inside the entrance? They’re very stretchy, right? Well they’re also just as squeeze-y. Since some people are able to go from stretching around their partner’s whole hand to squeezing his cock hard enough to hurt moments later, it’s not bloody likely that her next partner, days, weeks, months, or years later is going to notice any difference at all.

- Childbirth: Yeah, vaginal delivery can do a number on a woman’s vagina. But guess what? A lot of those changes happen before delivery, during the quite striking changes bodies undergo during pregnancy to prepare for birth. And even after caesarian delivery the body still takes quite a while to unwind all those changes. (At least some OBs and midwives will tell you it takes roughly nine months to gear up and another nine to return pre-pregnancy conditions.) If it’s a hard birth with tearing then yeah, then recovery can take a little longer. But it’s a myth that OBs or midwives put in an extra “lover’s knot” stitch to tighten women back up while making repairs. Unless there’s really traumatic injury the vagina recovers very nicely on its own and/or with the help of kegels and/or (important!) a partner who’s able and willing to share infant and child care with the mother so she has time and energy and inclination to recover. BUT here’s the kicker. The save-yourself-till-marriage people aren’t talking about pregnancy, labor, and delivery so even if having children make that much difference (and in my experience with partners with children it doesn’t) it’s still a moot point. They’re saying just having Teh Sex ruins you. (I gather they don’t think mothers have sex lives at all. Their moms certainly never did.)

- Maturing: I think this is the secret sleeper effect responsible for a lot of the misconceptions resulting in stupid smorgasbord and rose-petal analogies. Being parts of women’s bodies and all, vaginas change over time as they gain or lose weight, exercise or don’t exercise, and as hormone levels ebb and flow. But those changes are going to happen whether or not the woman has sex.

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Bottom line? Based on my experience with numerous partner’s vaginas — those who have never had sex at all and those who have partied with equivalent of the Prussian army and their horses — Laura Sessions Stepp and the rest of the wait-till-marriage crowd are talking through their hats. They might have problems with sexually experienced women but those are strictly mental problems. And just to be clear I’m talking about their mental problems, not sexually experienced women’s.