I’m not entirely sure why this came to mind this afternoon, but in one of the early episodes of The Beverly Hillbillies (a ratings record-holder to this day), the Granny Clampett character chops up a bunch of firewood in the kitchen, throws it into the oven door of her fancy new electric stove, and lights it.

Smoke naturally fills the room. Granny’s conclusion: a) “folks call that a real stove;” b) “the stove is so ‘primitive’ it doesn’t even have a chimney;” c) it didn’t work the way she believed it should so it was a piece of crap.

When I talk about men indoctrinating themselves to believe that women are the “no-sex” class — innately disinterested in sex and therefore in need of continuous male management — I’m talking about the same mentality Granny Clampett brings to an electric stove: despite being perfectly functional she believes a stove must have a fire lit inside it in order for it to work. In fact she insists it must work that way despite considerable evidence to the contrary.

Sound familiar?

A couple of parallels: The Granny character is like a lot of social conservatives: to them it doesn’t matter what new capabilities might have been discovered, or developed — stoves (or women) simply shouldn’t be any other way than the old-fashioned way. Now a lot of liberal and progressive men think they’re way more with it when it comes to women but we’re generally more like the Jethro Bodine character: they put firewood in the oven and then turn on the broiler because that’s how you’re supposed to light a modern stove. But in either case it’s simply inconceivable that a stove might heat up without first sliding a little wood into it.

Sound familiar?

Now let’s think about the TV show for a few lesser parallels.” First, in the context of the show were the Beverly Hills millionaires the Clampetts wound up amidst any better connected to reality than their rustic neighbors? No. Were they any more admirable? No. Would there have been much of a show if either side had been either more flexible, less willful, or less thoroughly inculcated in their world-views? No. Would everybody have been better off if the hillbillies had adopted the Beverly Hills lifestyle? No. If the millionaires had adopted the Clampett’s Okie lifestyles? No. But might they have had less misunderstanding, fewer attempts to take advantage of each other’s cupidities and stupidities, and perhaps a more vibrant synthesis of cultures if they’d pulled their respective heads out of their butts and instead looked, listened, and learned instead of knee-jerk reacting to each other? Yes.

Sound familiar?

Woo-hoo I’m a happy man!

I happen to have nothing but respect for the scientist E. O. Wilson, who originated the strict biological/behavioralist idea called “sociobiology.” But then I have nothing but respect for Charles Darwin who originated the strict biological/taxonomic theory of evolution. The social gadflies and politicians who tried to cash in on those respective ideas by applying them in order to explain… whatever social structure benefits (or at least comforts) them best? I have nothing but lack of respect for them.

And so it gives me great pleasure to articulate a sociobiological basis for men’s ridiculous (but ridiculously pervasive) idea that women “no-sex” class. It’ll only take a second (like most sociobiologists.)

Now as pretty much everybody who’s had children has probably noticed, it’s very common for women to experience a pronounced drop in libido after giving birth and while nursing. Not everybody, no, of course not, but this is one of those areas where I’m comfortable saying it’s not a stereotype. (In fact it’s precisely not a stereotype in the sense that most women, like Heidi Raykeil buck it pretty hard.

As do their partners.

Yup. If, as sociobiologists claim (almost… as if… they were *genetically compelled to!!!) women have “cryptic ovulation” and all sorts of other cunning heritable traits oriented around giving men lots of pussy so they’ll stick around to help raise their offspring then… this big, roughly-two-years-long post-birth libido plummet really shouldn’t be there.

Think about it — women are supposed to evolve all these astonishingly subtle behavioral “tricks” and then, right when theory and practice would say it would be most convenient in a primitive state-of-nature nuclear family to have the dad sticking around the house (in order to stick his dick around… or something), I mean right when all that pussy-evolving ought to be needed the most… the bottom falls right out of dad’s sexual gravy train.

How the one is supposed to be enough to coax an otherwise utterly feckless (quoth the Sociobiologists) guy to stick around while the other isn’t supposed to send him packing is a question that’s been largely…. um… completely ignored by sociobiologists because it would make their theories that women evolved to put out to pencil-necked, pimply-faced beta males wrong.

But take heart. I’ve got a suggestion. Admittedly it’s probably not a real sociobiological hypothesis since those guys seem to pin all the behavioral evolving on women ( hypothesizing, for instance, that women evolved big, buttocks-resembling boobs so that men could handle face-to-face intercourse… instead of more “animal-like” and… what?... less feminine rear-entry intercourse? I dunno.) Anyway, they pin it all on women and leave men to be hale, hearty, completely evolved… um… suckers while my hypothesis requires men to be no less capable of evolution than women.

Here goes: men who hang around women who’ve had their children instead of high-tailing it off after, I dunno, high tail, have more offspring survive to reproduce. (Offspring surviving to reproduce being the big metric of evolution.) So guys (being so dumb they can’t tell boobs from butts) evolve to believe women who don’t put out must be parents of their children and help provide “for the family.” And them wily women (who, after all, evolved the use of red lipstick so men would think there labia somewhere near those pseudo-buttockial breasts? sigh!) would evolve to behave as if they didn’t enjoy sex even when they did in order to get men to provide for them even when they aren’t the mothers of the men’s children.

Yes, yes it all sounds stupid. Precarious. Unlikely. Insufficient.

In other words exactly like the typical socio-sociobiological explanation for human gender relations. :-)

@!_(*~@

Binsk of A.K.A. Binsk took some kind of test on CNN.com that was supposed to demonstrate that homosexuality is innate rather than acquired. She doesn’t provide a link to the CNN page but for the purposes of this post her conclusion matters more than CNN’s.

Researchers say this is further proof that gay is a gene, not a choice.

I got your proof right here researchers.

Do you think I would actually choose to like males if I sat down and really thought about it?

Uh no.

Kidding.

Sort of.

More details of the study itself here.

When I talk about men consistently perceiving women as the “no-sex” class — possessed of no innate interest in sex and therefore perpetually requiring sexual shepharding from men — I try to focus on the consequences that has for men. I focus on it because I believe it’s a paradigm created and enforced largely by men and therefore it’s up to us to try on another world view.

Now the weird thing about the “no-sex” class paradigm is that, unlike the classic feminist theory of women as the sex class (instead of the “no-sex” class) is that there’s really no benefit for men.

Take street harassment. Guys do it for a wide variety of reasons including, heavily, a wishful sense of resentment that whistling from a passing car is the only contact they’ll ever have with their victim. And yet… and yet… were we to refrain from setting women’s teeth permanently on edge that way we might have a) a better chance of closer connection leading to b) less of that sense of resentment that c) leads us to catcalls that d) lead to remarks from women like Binsk: “Do you think I would actually choose to like males if I sat down and really thought about it?”

Guys, I…

Guys, I just…

Guys! I… just… have this feeling that if we stopped behaving towards women as if they’d never willingly have sex with us then… they might be more willing to have sex with us!

I mean, it’s just not that complicated! Women, being people, enjoy sex. Unless someone gives them deep and profound reasons not to. And who exactly is the main source of those profound reasons not to…? And who exactly benefits from this situation? (Trick question: the answer is “nobody we know, and maybe nobody period.”)

So….

Let’s say the average man’s libido magically dropped to half that of the average woman’s?

I’m finally reading Heidi Raykeil’s Confessions of a Naughty Mommy: How I Found My Lost Libido (which I bought last Valentine’s Day in combination with Joan Sewell’s excellent I’d Rather Eat Chocolate: Learning to Love My Low Libido.) Between that and reading Raykeil’s column at LiteraryMama I’m still stuck at “compared to what?”

In Raykeil’s case it was “compared to my pre-pregnancy libido.” For Sewell it was “compared to my partner’s.” And, for a lot of men, I think, it’s “compared to as often as I wish I could.” (That last not being at all related to “how often I, or anyone else, actually could!“)

So…

I was thinking what if men’s libidos were half that of women’s?

This actually isn’t meant as a trick question, by the way. Although I have my suspicions about the exact gender ratios between experienced and expressed desire this has nothing to do with that. Instead it’s just a straightforward question: what if men’s libidos were half that of women’s?

Would heterosexuals have sex more often, less often, or about the same? Would we simply switch roles, with men’s magazines and books worrying about boosting libido and “getting it back?” Would we still tell stories about how evolution conditions men to “spread their seed” through promiscuity? Would men be less inclined to promiscuity? Would women be more? Would society look pretty much the same (except possibly with reversed gender-interest roles?) Or would it be completely, radically different?

Ok, it’s still not a trick question. But all our “getting it back” literature and Dr. Phil and John Gray lectures and “not tonight dear I have a headache” punch-lines notwithstanding… I think we already have the answers. It’s just that hardly anyone is looking.

Think of it this way. Let’s say libido is distributed on a normal bell-shaped curve. Men get one bell, women get another. We set our X and Y dimensions to any value we choose — number of preferred couplings per day, week or month for instance — and chances are that even if it’s not that different it’s still not going to be a perfect match. And unless it’s a perfect match you’re going to have non-overlapping areas between men and women. And it’s almost certain that if there’s a spot where women’s libidos are 50% of their respective partner’s. (That’s where everybody starts writing those books, articles, and blog posts.) But then it’s also almost certain that there’s a corresponding point on the other side of the two curves where men’s libidos are 50% of their respective partners’.

“But figleaf,” you might protest, “you’re assuming the normal bell-shaped distributions are of exactly the same magnitude and amplitude for men and women.” To which I would reply, if you protested that way, that even so there would be a point somewhere on the two curves where men’s libidos are 50% of their respective partners’.

And that’s the spot — a spot that pretty much has to be there — that you’d find the answer to my question. Only… not that many people are talking about it. And those who do often do so apologetically, as if their inevitable location on a curve is not just wrong but unpredictably so.

(This isn’t part of my question but, dialing back out again for a moment, isn’t it also inevitable that if you’re matching up two even slightly dissimilar bell-shaped curves that some women would necessarily be at a point where their libido was 50% of their partner’s? Without it being anybody’s fault?”)

Anyway, now that I’ve pointed out that it’s already that way for some fraction of the population of heterosexual men and women I’ll ask my original question again: what if men’s libidos were half that of women’s?

So I was thinking that an interestingly under-explored part of the whole bondage and discipline business is the halfway areas. How would it all be different if it wasn’t strictly about tops or bottoms… more like evening of odds in terms of height, strength, aggression, reach. And that left me thinking about what half-bondage would be like. One strong hand immobile, yes, and one still free.

I know not everyone would want to play it that way. Maybe there are great reasons why nobody ever talks about it. If you had a chance, though, could we make it work? And how?

The The Over-Educated Nympho raises a perennial question about oral sex that I’d like to try out with the “no-sex” class paradigm filter.

Many of my girl friends and female readers have told me that their man doesn’t like going down on them. Why the fuck not, I ask politely. Cooch is awesome. I’ve gone bush-diving and I’m down for another round or eight any day.

I’ve always known that it was common for girls to find the penis icky – it grows, it shrinks, it waves hello, it shoots things in your eye– but I haven’t heard about many guys who don’t like going down on a girl. What the fuck is this shit?

She says it here.

This is one of those areas where in terms of discourse I don’t really see a lot of give and take. Usually eating in one direction is cool, maybe even obligatory, and the other’s an imposition. Or worse. Sometimes it’s the cunnilingus that’s the nasty duty, other times it’s fellatio that’s the act of oppression. Then there are the real traditionalists who say it’s all nasty. I actually happen to think most people think it’s fine either way but in terms of public narrative we just don’t really hear from them.

But in terms of discourse (as opposed to what people actually choose to do) the “no-sex” paradigm pops up a lot. Here’s a totally random selection…

• “Nice girls don’t suck dick,” of course, is the quintessential “no-sex” class mantra.
• So is the startled disbelief implicit in the epithet “cocksucker”
• So is the almost fetishistic avidity some men have for cunnilingus, seeing it as the key to “unlocking” women’s sexuality and/or distracting her from her gatekeeper role
• Same with the idea that cunnilingus is warm-up “play” grudgingly undertaken before “real” sex.
• Radical theorist Catherine MacKinnon staked her reputation on fellatio not only being undesirable for women but impossible without physical injury to them. She was widely misinterpreted even by the men in her audience.
• Men coin endless depricating euphemisms for fellatio to distance themselves from the possibility that their partners might enjoy doing it to them
• when women express concern about partners licking them “down there” men take it as adorable sexual cluelessness

And a couple of other slightly less random points

• Sometimes you hear people say “a woman is never more powerful than when she’s on her knees in front of a man.”
• Typically by which they mean “having a powerful effect on the man she’s fellating”
• Which says nothing about any effect she might have on herself.
• Oddly, when men eat their partners the effect can be every bit as profound
• Yet no one ever says “a man is never more powerful than when he’s on his knees in front of a woman.

But one of the real hallmarks of the “no-sex” class paradigm is that

• Men who perform cunnilingus on their partners are often spoken of heroically — either for “giving” his partner such a wonderful service or for putting up with the flavor and/or smell
• Women who perform fellatio on their partners are generally spoken of as “wild” at best or “coerced” at worst. It’s still seen as a service, yes, but generally as a routine service rather than a heroic one (even if she “swallows.”)

And finally, a couple of non-no-sex class points:

• For some reason when men won’t kiss their partners after fellatio they’re often accused of subtle homophobia
• For some reason when women won’t kiss their partners after cunnilingus they’re often accused of fastidiousness or increased sensitivity.

Looking at all of the above it’s not like there’s a definitive smoking gun, an a-ha… not even any real trend. Just a sort of floating tendency, a drift off center one way or another, such that the reasons given in favor of or against this or that form of oral sex never corresponds, never matches… rarely even comes close!

But stepping outside of all the above, I discovered years ago that eating a partner, performing cunnilingus, tasting and touching, seeing and smelling her, hearing her, feeling her hands on my hands, on my face, in my hair, syncopating myself with her rhythms, anticipating, teasing, rushing, harmonizing, completing her responses with mine. Is it powerful? Sure. Profound? Can be that too. But… it’s just… it’s fun! It feels great! I have to assume all that is available to someone else when she chooses to eat me. What are we missing that we so often miss that?

If you journey through the blogosphere and visit the ports-of-call known as the sex blogs, and if you read carefully what is written there, you will discover that a fair number of sex bloggers, both men and women, have written about their experiences of abuse: physical, emotional or sexual; during childhood or adulthood. Some observers might scoff and say this is evidence of the victim mentality of modern culture. While it may be true, as one psychiatrist has said, that “the statute of limitations has expired on most of our childhood traumas,” that may not be case with early childhood abuse or neglect. The act of writing, in the anonymous media of a web journal, may be an essential part of the writer’s healing process. The reason why this is so can be attributed to the different types of memory.

In the nineteenth century, the psychiatrist Pierre Janet suggested that one of the most basic activities of the mind was the sorting and storing of sensory information into memory, and retrieving that information when needed. He noted that certain types of sensations did not follow this basic pattern. He theorized that painful events produce intense emotions which are repressed, and not retrieved like other stored data. These memories of trauma are retrieved as sensations: unexplained fear; somatic symptoms of stress such as headaches or high blood pressure; visual images in nightmares or flashbacks.

Joan Borysenko, Ph.D., cofounder and former director of the Mind/Body Clinic of Harvard Medical School explains this process of repression as follows:

Repression can occur because there are two types of memory. The usual kind is called semantic or declarative memory, which is stored in the words through which we recall events. This storytelling mode of memory hinges of the ability to verbalize our experience, encode the memory traces in a part of the brain called the hippocampus, and then consciously fit the memory into the scheme of our existing experiences. Since semantic memory doesn’t occur until we are old enough to speak, we can’t generally recall much before the age of three or four. We do, however, have memories of that time encoded in a different system that stores images, or icons, of our experience. The early childhood memory system relies on the amygdala, which is also the storage site for emotionally charged or traumatic memories. The icons, or visual representations, do not fade over time as semantic memory does. And while semantic memory falters under stress, the iconic memories surface: whereas semantic memories are linear and rational, iconic memories are timeless. They are as strong today as they were when they were first engraved by the neurotransmitters within the amygdala.

Borysenko also states that “conscious censors,” which keep the repressed memories at bay, weaken as we age. So while we may seem to have placed the horrors of childhood behind us, with careers and accomplishments in early adulthood, traumatic memories often emerge, inexplicably it would seem, in the late thirties and forties.

It does not take a major occurrence of a new trauma to make the repressed memory rise to the surface. Something in a current event, even the feeling of acute stress — a dispute with a boss, a car accident, the nighttime crying of a teething baby — is an echo which reminds us of the original event, the images of which have been dormant.

Borysenko refers to the work of Bessel Van der Kolk, a psychiatrist at Harvard, to provide the following explanation:

Research has shown that, under ordinary conditions, many traumatized people, including rape victims, battered women and abused children, have a fairly good psychosocial adjustment. However, they do not respond to stress the way other people do. Under pressure, they may feel, or act as if they were traumatized all over again. Thus, high states of arousal seem to selectively promote retrieval of traumatic memories, sensory information, or behaviors associated with prior traumatic experiences.

Because we seek the comfort of the familiar when we relive the emotions of a past trauma, we may inexplicably choose to remain in a toxic or abusive situation, when rationally we should leave as fast as we can. So how do we stop this endless cycle that is controlled by memories we did not know we possessed?

Through therapy, by which we try to make sense of our feelings and emotions with the guidance of a professional. Some trauma victims will repeatedly tell their stories to friends or family, or write them in a journal. Boryshenko gave this poignant example:

When my father, ill with cancer, ended his life by jumping from a thirty-seventh story window, my mother was emotionally devastated. She told and retold her story to anyone who would listen. Some of the family became concerned that the constant repetition would do her more harm than good. But speaking and being listened to heals. It actually changes our neural circuitry, as does touch.
To speak, to be heard, and to be held are basic to healing, as is the creation of meaning.

While the anonymous web journal can provide the survivor of past trauma a medium with which to tell his/her story, and to hear the stories of other survivors, it has an inherent risk. The anonymous reader may be bolder than he or she would ever be in person. Remarks that would never be made if speaker and listener were face to face have become commonplace in the blogosphere. If the listener had to stifle contempt or disbelief in the past, with this new anonymity he or she has no such compunction. And so the survivor may choose to remain silent rather than experience the shame of being questioned, dismissed, or ridiculed.

How does one provide a safe place for the unfinished stories that need to be told? While some blog owners feel that censoring comments may infringe upon free speech, I think there are a sufficient number of venues where caustic remarks and diatribes will pass for wit. Advise such commenters to go there and good riddance.

And if by chance you come across such a story, told by someone whom you know could “never” be your friend, whose opinions you vehemently oppose, take a moment before you compose that witty, acerbic comment. Remember that even your enemy is entitled to this: to speak, to be heard, and to be held.

Sources:
The Body Keeps The Score:Memory and the Evolving Psychobiology of Post Traumatic Stress by Bessel van der Kolk
http://www.trauma-pages.com/a/vanderk4.php

A Woman’s Book of Life: The Biology, Psychology, and Spirituality of the Feminine Life Cycle by Joan Borysenko, Ph.D.

A funny thing has happened over the last 500 years, at least in Western Civilization. In olden days (and, bitterly, not so olden) rape was considered a crime of property committed not against the victim but against her male custodial guardian (usually her husband or father.) That’s an astonishingly offensive perspective by today’s standards but the had, well, an astonishingly different perspective back then. While it defies credibility today it was once believed that women were utterly amoral when it came to sex. It was believed that, given the opportunity to get away with it they’d offer only token resistance. Instead it was men who were expected to be the moral and sexual gatekeepers not only for themselves but also for the women in their lives. Now was that true? Well, no more true than the equally stupid contemporary “no-sex” class notion that given an opportunity women leap at any chance to avoid having sex.

I don’t believe women were consulted before either belief was established.

Anyway, from the old perspective of victims wanting unasked-for sex to the current perspective of victims “asking for” unwanted sex the legal system has evolved to… pretty much keep victims miserable no matter what.

Yesterday in Slate Magazine, legal correspondent Dahlia Lithwick writes about a new obstacle raised against victims of rape: a Nebraska judge ruled that use of the words “rape, sexual assault, victim, assailant, and sexual assault kit” can’t be used by prosecution attorneys, witnesses, and even the victim because it might be prejudicial against the accused.

Mmmkay.

Lithwick, while not completely unsympathetic to the argument that certain words might prejudice a jury to draw “legal conclusions” in the general case is pretty unsympathetic in this specific one.

The real question for Judge Cheuvront, then, is whether embedded in the word sex is another “legal conclusion“—that the intercourse was consensual. And it’s hard to conclude otherwise. Go ahead, use the word sex in a sentence. Asking a complaining witness to scrub the word rape or assault from her testimony is one thing. Asking that she imply that she agreed to what her alleged assailant was doing to her is something else entirely. To put it another way: If the complaining witness in a rape trial has to describe herself as having had “intercourse” with the defendant, should the complaining witness in a mugging be forced to testify that he was merely giving his attacker a loan?

Read the rest of her analysis here.

I’d like to go one step further and point out that the very word “intercourse” — yet another genteel euphemism for fucking — implies mutual, consensual engagement. For instance:

in·ter·course (Ä­n’tÉ™r-kôrs’, -kōrs’) n Dealings or communications between persons or groups.

Intercourse noun: The exchange of ideas by writing, speech, or signals: communication, communion, intercommunication.

To have inter-course is to run with, to speak with, to build with together. And no matter how one parses it, whether one is the victim or the perpetrator rape is neither conversation nor trade by other means.

Oddly, this is entirely consistent with both the ancient and modern understandings of women’s role in sex — in olden days believed animally incapable of declining an opportunity, in modern days deemed angelically incapable of accepting one, and so in either case incapable of sexual intercourse in the sense of an autonomous individual exercising free will.

Which brings us to insights on the matter from Amanda Marcotte of Pandagon:

The conservative-sexist model of rape is the same one used to define a foul in basketball. Basically, when sexual intercourse happens, the man team has scored a point against the woman team. Each team is allowed some strategies and disallowed others. In basketball, you’re supposed to snatch the ball from the other team, but you can’t cross certain lines or you’ll get a foul. This explains why rape trolls are so eager to find out what the “rules” are, i.e. when they are permitted to force sex. (“Is it rape if she’s drunk? What if she says yes and changes her mind? Is it okay to bully someone into it, so long as you don’t actually hold her down and force her? Are guilt trips okay?, etc.”) If there’s some ambiguity when the referee calls a foul, your teammates (other men) are supposed to clamor to your defense, regardless of whether or not you actually fouled. If the foul is called, then the woman team scores a point (or a free throw in basketball, but you get the idea). The idea that it’s wrong to have sex with someone unless she really, really wants to do it makes about as much sense as saying that you should only be allowed to get the ball in basketball if the defense hands it to you.

This and other pearls of wisdom first appeared here.

While that’s a grimly accurate summary attitudes towards women and sex in general, but of sexual assault in particular: it’s not about choice or mutuality, working together, running together, or discourse. There has to be a defense to beat or it’s no fun! Marcotte prefers to label this the “conservative-sexist” approach. I prefer to call it the “no-sex” class paradigm. (Not least because too many progressives are enmeshed in the paradigm to call it exclusively conservative.)

Marcotte outlines a brilliant alternative that she chooses to call the “liberal-feminist” model (although for framing reasons I’d rather call it “normal.”)

The liberal-feminist view of sex is that it’s not a war or a game, but more of a mutual collaboration, less like a battle and more like playing music. In this model, to be a sexual person is to be a musician and sex is playing your instrument. Sometimes you play by yourself, sometimes you get with others and jam, and sometimes you actually have a band that you have a long-term relationship with. There aren’t winners and losers, but there can be good and bad sex, just like there can be good and bad music. The collaboration model of sex explains why acceptance of homosexuality and kinkiness are generally liberal views. It makes no more sense to call homosexuality immoral than it does to posit that rock is more moral than jazz; it’s all a matter of taste. Homosexuality creates a lot of grief to those who have a fairly strict conservative view of sex because you can’t even tell who’s notsupposed to be the offense and the defense. It’s simply outside of their model, and it creates cognitive dissonance, which often makes the person suffering it want to wipe out the source of the dissonance.

...

The very idea that getting someone to play in your band or jam session who is reluctant or openly hostile makes no sense, thus the idea of “winning” in sex by getting a reluctant woman to submit is repulsive to feminists, period. Trying to figure out the rules of when coercion is acceptable and when it’s not makes no more sense than asking if it’s okay to make someone play in your band by holding their kids hostage, threatening to fire them, locking the doors so they can’t leave or simply laying a guilt trip on them. You can vaguely understand the desperation sometimes, if no one will ever play with you, but in the end, it makes no sense. Even if you can force someone to go through the motions, odds are the results are going to suck because they don’t even want to be there. Music is supposed to be fun, so if it’s not fun, it negates the entire point. Same with sex.

Bottom line: I’m not saying that sexual assault will vanish once we discard the stupid “no-sex” class paradigm. I am saying, however, that when we do our relationships will much more closely resemble making music together than attempting to draw fouls. I’m also not saying that after the “no-sex” class thing is history life will be all sweetness and light: we’ll still have Celene Dion and most of us will still play oompa music. But at least we’ll be doing it together instead of one against the other.

—-

Aside: another reason I didn’t care for the “conservative vs. liberal” divide is that even in the music world not everyone can nor wishes to start a band with just anyone walking down the street. Conservatives can still be conservative in that model, without treating pussy as a resource-extraction problem.

Boy, you wanna talk about inherent bias in language, look up the word “lassitude.”

1. a state of comatose torpor (as found in sleeping sickness) [syn: lethargy]
2. a feeling of lack of interest or energy [syn: languor]
3. weakness characterized by a lack of vitality or energy [syn: inanition]

The word “languid” fares no better these days

1. Lacking energy or vitality; weak: a languid wave of the hand.
2. Showing little or no spirit or animation; listless: a languid mood.
3. Lacking vigor or force; slow: languid breezes.

In fact it took a little digging to find a definition of “lassitude” that matched my recollections.

2. a condition of indolent indifference: the pleasant lassitude of the warm summer afternoon.

Having arisen from the libido-free doldrums of my weekend I daydreamed of posts involving all manner of acts both creative and plain… but for each idea there’s a counter-claim, an objection, a reservation, an explanation… not least for the parties who might be involved…

So instead of focusing on the diligent, purposeful, animated, energetic, spirited, forceful, and strengthening (but also possibly exceptional-to-some) activities we generally tend to call “sexuality” in our work-ethic-y world I thought I’d instead look to the moments after…

Look to the slowing of breath, the fading of flushes and glows, the cooling of sweat, the lolling of still-turgid-but-softening parts across thighs and bellies, the untangling tug of clean sheets sliding reluctantly across salt-moist skin. Of eyes re-focusing, of “o-faces” re-animating, of shy/proud/happy grins, of hands brushing hair from eyes, of legs and feet, backs, shoulders, and hands shifting and stretching from unfamiliar points. Of arms and elbows snaked and unsnaked around waists, necks, bellies, legs, to find newer, cooler configurations. Of murmurs and kisses, lips lazily clinging, parting reluctantly. Of eyes so recently pinched tight shut or started-wide unseeing now soft-lidded and alert, traversing new/familiar, timeless/unique lines and curves, textures and forms as if remembering the unforgettable. And all the while feeling no pressure to arise, to enterprise, to mark or meter the work you’ve both done. No keeping scores, no leaping for alarms, no flights to catch or phones to ring… and nowhere to be for hours or maybe even days… and as fingertips idly stroke softening flesh, as languid lips desultorily meet, as cooling skin seeks cooling skin for warmth… there’s nothing even to rule out the vigor of re-ignition.

The word of the day is “lassitude.”

Mmmm. Lassitude.

So over at young Ezra Klein’s there’s a big to-do about differential satisfaction rates for adult men who get circumcisions.

As with all circumcision discussions it immediately broke out into a debate of the pros and cons, with lots of people saying foreskins aren’t technically necessary for satisfactory sex so why not cut them off, and lots of (generally non-religious) men squeezing their knees together on behalf of their infant sons.

During the course of the debate in Ezra’s comments it occurred to me that while comparisons to North-African-style female genital mutilation are specious, comparisons of male circumcision to the roundly decried practice of labiaplasty which is springing up in trendier beauty-obsessed (porn obsessed?) parts of the country: there are extremely minor claims of “health” improvements (reduces possible chaffing and eliminates sticky creases where germs can hide.) There are claims for esthetic improvement. There are claims that partners like it better when your bits are trimmed.

I dunno. Except maybe for the God-says-so part, I really don’t see any argument against circumcision that wouldn’t apply equally to labiaplasty, nor any argument in favor of labioplasty that wouldn’t apply to circumcision as well.

Yet a surprising number of people reflexively balk at one while shrugging off the other. (In a world where piercing, branding, and tattoo parlors are as sought after as skateboard shops it doesn’t matter which comes first. This post is about gender-based double standards in general, not one in particular.)