Figleaf's Real Adult Sex

Summary: Given the vast empty space between squeamish (or non-existent) sex education and industrial porn it’s not surprising that some people might get… funny ideas about how to be sexy in bed.

Via someone or other on Twitter, Ashley Lindstrom of Zelda Lily takes a tip from Mary Elizabeth Williams (at Salon.com) and the magic question: Is Porn Making Men Bad at Sex?

[Williams] suggests that “the goal-oriented, money-shot, male-centric perspective of most porn (hint: Women don’t need to see that much fellatio) have changed us.” The ubiquity of this porn has put new pressure on women (and men; we’ll get there): Shaved pussies are expected. Pole-dancing skills don’t hurt either.

Men have new standards for themselves, too, regarding size and performance time – things that they perceive women wanting. (Which is a little funny, given the first sentence of the last paragraph; these poor dudes are doing it to themselves.) That’s where Williams comes in: “...thinking you can learn to make love to a woman from watching porn is like thinking you can learn to drive from watching The Fast and the Furious.”

Read the quote in context here.

That sounds about right. There’s all this debate about whether porn is bad because it does, or doesn’t, hurt the women who perform it. There’s all this debate about whether porn is bad, or isn’t, because it sets up expectations that porn-consumers partners have to be even more Cosmo-style performers.

But there’s not a lot of talk about how porn might be bad for the men (and it’s still primarily men) who are consuming it.

And I don’t mean “bad for men” in the sense that it makes them complicit in the (much-debated) degradation of pornography’s subjects. Or in the secualr sense that it makes them immoral and/or unfaithful. Nor in the even more narrowly secular sense that it makes them masturbate. Nor in the sense that it makes them judgmental or insensitive to their partners. Those have been debated, and settled to everyone’s satisfaction (ok, different settlements but still satisfying to their diverse adherents.)

What’s not debated so much is how porn might be bad for men’s sex lives.

I’ve talked about it before but Salon’s Williams nails it with

He’d been jackhammering away for what felt like hours. “You like that, baby? You like that?” he asked, though he didn’t notice I wasn’t answering. And then, somewhere around the 18th time he said it, it hit me — I wasn’t just having bad sex. I was having bad porn sex.

She said it here.

Thing is, based on my own experience, jackhammering away hoping your partner “likes that, baby, likes that” isn’t as good as it gets for men either.

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Obligatory disclaimer: Obviously not all porn demonstrates bad sexual technique. Just the 90% of it that, according to Sturgeon’s Law, is crap.

Summary: Hard to believe some people think feminism is still all about burning bras (myth) and singing “I am Woman Hear Me Roar.” They’re still around. They’re also still wrong.

Ariel Levy in The New Yorker finds a… startling assertion from Washington D.C. Republican analyst Leslie Sanchez, who’s got a new book out called “You’ve Come a Long Way, Maybe: Sarah, Michelle, Hillary and the Shaping of the New American Woman”

“I don’t agree with the feminist agenda,” Sanchez writes. “To me, the word ‘feminist’ epitomizes the zealots of an earlier and more disruptive time.” Here’s what Sanchez would prefer: “No bra burning. No belting out Helen Reddy. Just calm concern for how women were faring in the world.”

Read the quote in context here.

Hmm… let’s see… “bra burning” happened in 1968. Helen Reddy’s “I Am Woman Hear Me Roar” came out in 1972. For that matter Virginia Slims, the “feminist” cigarette who’s slogan Sanchez twists in her book title, also came out in 1968.

Question for Sanchez: you want us to assess your Republican party based on their ideas in 1968-1972? Another question for Sanchez: Are you saying there’s been no development or refinement of thought in the Republican Party since 1968-1972?

More to the point, is Sanchez saying her Republicans are still pushing for passage of the Endangered Species Act and establishing the Environmental Protection Agency, or promising to federalize national transportation planning, pressing for a greater role for the Department of Education, pushing for urban renewal and investment in America’s inner cities, and, especially, kicking out members of the John Birch Society the way they did 42 years ago?

In fact no, I think she’d say you were a stupid moron if you said yes, they have the same agenda. And she’d be right.

To be blunt, therefore, she’s a stupid moron for claiming the modern feminist agenda is unchanged.

Summary: Rather than argue moronic anti-feminism point by point Regina Barreca gets to the heart of the matter: anti-feminism is unsexy.

See… this is how you do it.

The twitosphere just coughed up a nice critique of one of “evolutionary psychologist” and London School of Economics professor Satoshi Kanazawa’s perennial screeds he decided to call “Why modern feminism is illogical, unnecessary, and evil“

The critique, from last August, is by Andrea the Nerd who points out that even before you get to his text the illustration he chooses proves he’s already wrong. Andrea says:

See what’s wrong with this image? They’ve replaced the word “people” with “men” in the Feminist Mantra. Already they’ve set up a subliminal Straw Man (or is it Straw Woman?) of Feminism to topple over.

She said it here.

Graphic illustrating Andrea’s point appears in Kanazawa’s Psychology Today post.

So what we see here is that, as usual, Kanazawa’s just plain fundamentally wrong. And not just wrong in the sense that I disagree with him, but wrong in the sense that he can’t get to the end of a short sentence about feminism without misunderstanding it.

One could spend a great deal of time responding to Kanazawa’s factual and procedural errors point by point. That would be playing to his strength: it’s infinitely easier to make shit up than it is to refute it since for the latter you, well, can’t make shit up.

Fortunately another Psychology Today blogger, Regina Barreca of the University of Connecticut, demonstrates what I think is a more effective way to respond in Why Anti-Feminism is Illogical, Unnecessary, Evil, and Incredibly Unsexy.

Barreca’s subtitle is even better: “Satoshi Kanazawa is just so cute when he rails against feminists!”

I think that’s about right. Kanazawa claims feminism is illogical because it’s a belief that men and women are identical. M’kay. He believes it’s unnecessary because Monica Lewinski was more “powerful” than Bill Clinton. M’kay. And he believes it’s evil because women’s “happiness” has decreased… three tenths of one percent in the last 35 years! Again the only “formal” answer this deserves is m’kay ookums, isn’t that just special?

What’s effective, and subversive, about Barreca’s title is that she finds such arguments deeply unsexy! Effective because saying a man is unsexy cuts deep. Subversive because it challenges the anti-feminist mantra that to be a feminist woman is to find all men unsexy.

Summary: Reading too much anti-feminist schlock, dreck, whining, ignorance, and parroted cliché my testosterone level plummeted.

Did a search on Twitter on the keyword “feminism.” After reading entries and following links it sure seems like the keyword is used primarily by both kinds of anti-feminists — the regular misogynists and the kind who say they used to be feminists but now they’re “done with all that.”

Suzie of Echidne of the Snakes, ruminating after grazing, perhaps, on similar straw, says

The Feminism 101 blog says most sexism is unintentional, born out of ignorance. If so, a close second has to be sexist statements made by people who think feminists take ourselves too seriously, want special treatment, are not really oppressed or blame men for everything.

She said it here.

I dunno. The recurring theme that anyone who says “feminism is a movement to end sexism, sexist exploitation, and oppression” can’t be a feminist because their definition of feminism means “women in wool socks with braided armpit hair who hate men, sex, the transgendered, and people of color” is making me particularly gloomy.

Bad or gloomy moods in men are often the result of depressed levels of testosterone brought on by a sense of loss of personal or group status or standing. Which is how I’m feeling after reading those several hundred anti-feminist tweets. Therefore a good way to elevate my mood in the short term would be a nice testosterone patch. And a good way to elevate my testosterone level and thus mood in the long-term would be to find a way to get more people on board with feminism.

I think I’m supposed to say that something about the preceding paragraph is ironic. Maybe it’s just my curmudgeonly mood but I don’t think so.

Summary: If feminism was what Campos-Duffy imagines it is she’d be right about Sarah Palin.

The Twittersphere was all lit up today over a post in Anderson Cooper’s corner of CNN.com saying former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin is “redefining feminism.” The Twittersphere being what it is most of the chatter was retweets of people saying no she’s not and who does Cooper think he is.

I followed the link and… it looks like it’s actually an excerpt of a post by Rachel Campos-Duffy, described as “a mother of six, author, blogger, and conservative pundit” and author of “Stay Home, Stay Happy: 10 Secrets to Loving At-home Motherhood,” on the website Americano.

Campos-Duffy, who describes herself as a Hispanic stay-at-home mom, says Palin won her heart and mind by, I guess, admitting she was once herself a stay-at-home mom.

Near the end of the interview, in a gracious moment of praise and admiration for her host, Sarah recalled the days when she watched the Oprah Show more regularly, “back when I was a stay-at-home mom in the 90s”. That’s right, back when I was a stay-at-home-mom. When have we ever heard those words come out of the mouth of a female politician, much less one who is a possible contender for the highest office in the land?

In that one innocent phrase, Sarah did more than endear herself to Oprah or to stay-at-home-moms across the country; together with her husband Todd, Sarah Palin, is radically, and perhaps irrevocably redefining feminism. Sarah’s biography is the very public proof of what many women have already confirmed in their own lives: that success and female empowerment are not necessarily incompatible with early marriage, unplanned pregnancies, stay-at-home motherhood, or a large family.

She said it here.

Summary: An inquiry into gendered assumptions about nutrition and “manliness.”

Amanda Marcotte of Pandagon notes a conservative columnist, Debbie Schlussel, has taken up a banner raised by some actor, Jeremy Piven, who claims drinking a bunch of soy milk gave him “man boobs.” Soy being some kind proxy for liberalism or something, Schlussel tried to make some kind of ‘winger crusade out of it. Amanda took issue with the entire premise, pointing out that from photos it looks a lot like Piven’s just put on a little weight. Her conclusion?

...my theory on why Thanksgiving seemed like such a good idea for pushing the “anxious masculinity” button in conservative readers was this: after watching endless hours of strong, athletic men throw a ball around while unimaginably huge throngs of people cheer for them, a lot of dudes with masculinity issues start to feel a little insecure, and need a mean-spirited blonde to buck them up by telling them they don’t have “man boobs”, though I’m fairly certain many to most of them do.  Because men put weight on there.  It’s just a fact of life.

Read the quote, and follow the links, here.

I mention this in part because Amanda’s point is grounded in entirely prosaic reality. But also because it nicely consolidates a curmudgeonly notion I was mulling over last night while doing some post-holiday cleanup.

Human beings, at least modern/civilized ones have a tendency to just worry endlessly about dumb stuff. I don’t know why but we do. My epiphany last night was that maybe men don’t have to worry about nutrition and diet so much because we keep ourselves too busy worrying about masculinity instead.

Given that humans are able to survive and thrive in more environments than even seagulls, rats, or roaches it doesn’t seem likely that there would really be such a thing as an ideal or optimum diet. Or that, even if there was it would be so fragile that failing to check the pH of your food or accidentally cooking something, or getting starch in it, or maybe getting meat in it will kill us dead, dead, dead.

Similarly, given that humans have managed reproduced in virtually every conceivable environment from salt deserts to arctic ice it seems extraordinarily unlikely that there’s such a thing as ideal or optimum “manliness.” Or that, even if there was it would be so fragile that supporting a losing team, or washing a dish, or drinking the wrong yeast poop, or touching your wife’s purse, or, I guess, drinking a soy latte could “unman” you.

Anyway, it’s a mistaken assumption in macho culture that worrying about diet or nutrition is an innate characteristic of women. Instead it’s a consequence of the absence of worrying about manliness… in the face of human being’s need to worry needlessly.

That’s my story and I’m sticking to it. At least till I get my blood sugar back up.

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Note to Jeremy Piven and Debbie Schlussel: One imagines Rush Limbaugh doesn’t even put soy sauce on his steaks, let alone eat drink soy milk or eat tofu. He nevertheless has “man boobs” the size of watermelons. Discuss.

Summary: An example of the political, law-enforcement, and practical problems of detecting vs. dealing with potential terrorists supports Echidne’s analysis of the problem with breast-cancer detection recommendations.

Matthew Yglesias discusses the difference between “common sense” anecdotal evidence and statistical evidence.

Suppose I invent a magical device that can be pointed at a Muslim and say with 90% accuracy whether or not he’s an al-Qaeda operative. Well, if I start waving it around and it starts beeping on one guy, what should we conclude about him? A terrifyingly large number of people are going to say “there’s a ninety percent chance he’s with al-Qaeda! Let’s panic!” In fact, that’s not the case. There are a billion Muslims in the world. A test with 90 percent accuracy is going to mistakenly classify about 100 million of them as al-Qaeda operatives. And al-Qaeda actually has fewer than 10,000 people working for it. I’m going to get something like 10,000 false positives for every actual terrorist I find.

Meanwhile, applying the test to people is going to have severe consequences. The public doesn’t understand this correctly and is going to be put into a wholly unwarranted state of panic about the prevalence of terrorists. People will, of course, demand that those flagged by my machine be subjected to extra-heightened scrutiny. It’s easy to imagine lots of innocent people being mistakenly killed or subjected to discrimination or shunning. And that sense of beseigement and unfair treatment would ultimately heighten tensions between the world’s Muslims and the West, while wasting massive quantities of law enforcement resources chasing basically worthless leads.

Read the quote in context here.

It seems odd to call a discussion of terrorism and racial profiling “non-controversial,” and perhaps even more odd for me to quote so extensively about something seemingly so remote from anything having to do with my main topics of relationships, sex, and gender.

Yet I bring it up to support a post by Echidne of the Snakes defending the statistics and methodology behind the new mammogram restrictions.

It was seriously principled, and courageous, for her to go out on a limb like that. Like a lot of problems in mitigation it’s easy to point to someone who benefitted from the status quo, but harder to identify those who suffered from it.

I think Yglesias’ post explaining the cost of more testing at certain ages (even if the tests were very accurate — which they aren’t in either Yglesias’ nor Echidne’s cases) would tend to overwhelm the system, and individuals, with false positives on the one hand, and still-treatable cases on the other.

Without intending any gender equivalencies, at all, it’s instructive to note that a similar situation arose in prostate cancer detection 10 or 15 years ago: PSA tests brought the price of detection down and the early detection way, way up. But, as you note, detection isn’t the same thing as treatment. At all. In fact detection isn’t even the same thing as understanding the disease!

For better or worse, because the imbalance between detection on the one hand and both understanding and treatment on the other hand was so lopsided it became a big problem for medical ethics: first, it turns out overwhelming numbers of men over 50 or so have detectable early prostate cancer. But for most it’s so slow to grow they die of old age before they can die of the cancer. For most but not all. Enough die, and die fairly horribly, to make treatment a consideration. But the treatments (burning off, cutting off, or poisoning) are generally so debilitating and expensive they shouldn’t be undertaken unless you’re sure it’s the bad kind. Which makes it a shame that researchers then, and now, still can’t tell whether an early cancer will go bad.

The line between the risks and benefits of breast-cancer testing are much harder to draw than prostate-cancer testing was. And so we’re stuck (or I should say “stuck”) with statistical analysis. Which is why it’s really nice to have a committed, ethical, and highly-interested statistician explain these particular findings for us. And with breast cancer the benefits are close enough to the costs (barring further progress in the development of treatment anyway) that it’s really hard to say what the right thing to do might be. And so we’re likely to run into really big shifts in the conclusions.

On a final note I especially appreciated Echidne’s explanation of not only the cost vs. benefit of testing, but how the cost incurred for marginally-valuable testing might be diverting funding from research into treatment or prevention. (emphasis mine.)

Screening is not treatment. To do it at all is based on the hope that early detection raises the odds of survival. This has been shown to be true for cervical cancer and the pap test and also for colon cancer screenings. But the most recent evidence suggests that breast cancer screening is less effective than previously thought. As I mentioned in an earlier post, researchers now suspect that mammograms capture a lot of tumors which might either disappear on their own or never grow much, while missing the very aggressive tumors which develop very rapidly. It is the latter types which are reflected in the mortality statistics

...

The choice to pay for screening (by both individuals and the society) is ultimately a value judgment. But resources are not infinite. If money is spent (by both individuals and the society) in one type of screening, it is not available for other types of screening or for other types of prevention or treatment.

It’s hard when answers aren’t cut and dried, and even harder when the ranges are so close you can get these big shifts in recommendations. And when it’s a controversial subject it’s even harder. Cool that she was willing to dig into it.

Update: See also Amanda Marcotte’s take, with another allusion to prostate cancer (it’s being downscaled too) and more backup links.

Summary: A discussion of different kinds of mostly physical “bad sex” from the depressing to light-hearted.

I’m a sometime contributor to the Wise Guy column from Em & Lo but not this week. Here’s my take on this week’s question.

“What’s the definition of bad sex?“

Read this week’s Wise Guy’s answers here.

First of all let’s get over the notion that a bad day of sex is better than a good day at the office. You might not remember a good day at the office but memories of bad sex can last a lifetime. Really bad sex can ruin good sex for the rest of your life.

One form of bad sex? When you’re too young or otherwise not ready for it. This can obviously include being forced into it but can also include forcing yourself because, say, you think you should or you think you won’t get another opportunity.

One of the Wise Guys, James, mentioned the archetypal drunken husband. I’m also thinking of the archetypal fathers, uncles, or even frat brothers who used to… and I hear sometimes still do… take very young men to brothels to “initiate” them or otherwise “make a man” of them. They think they’re doing the young man a favor but — based on my own near miss in 7th grade with some older neighbor boys who said the girl they knew was better than the women their fathers took them to — it can create lasting anxiety.

On a more prosaic level bad sex is sex when you’re each doing it for the other, it’s gone on too long, for whatever reason neither of you is going to come, and you’re both waiting for the other to finish and wondering how long they’re going to take.

On a more one-sided note, it was bad sex when your partner says either “are you done yet” or, after, “did you come?”

And on a humorous-only-in-retrospect note, it can be bad sex when the partner you rendezvous with right after she got off work had spent the afternoon chopping habanero peppers. It’s a good reminder that kink involves a lot of intentionality and planning, as opposed to one partner saying “ow, ow, what the heck, I’m burning up” followed by the other’s “arrrrr it’s on me too!” :-)

Summary: The title says it all.

The question for the Wise Guys feature this week at Em & Lo seems like a pretty straightforward gender-cliché-confirming opportunity to, well, confirm a cliché!

Does every guy see a woman and immediately assess whether or not he’d want to have sex with her?

See the rest of the question, answers, and reader comments here.

And sure enough, the two straight guys (one married, one single) confirm the stereotype: yes, they assess whether or not they’d like to have sex with her.

Then more generously but perhaps nearly as male-cliché, the gay single guy said “Every human creature that falls within your sexuality spectrum is instantly sized up as a potential slap-and-tickle.”

Where it gets fun, though, is in the comments:

• Chelsea B Says: I feel the same way as a woman though. Almost every time I see a remotely attractive man, I asses his “bangability.” I am in a long term relationship as well. I feel like it is in human nature, not just men. Maybe I’m completely wrong, but I don;t think so
• Elea Says: Same here! Human nature.
• Jen Says: I guess my only difference is I almost never would want to do them :p Not that I don’t question it. And I have to ‘like’ a specific guy (or say, be dating him) to want to add him to the, er, show.
• Dannie Says: Totally human nature. I think the range may vary from time to time–obviously, people with asexuality probably wouldn’t have this thought process as often, but anyone with any interest with sex most certainly will have sexual thoughts on their gender of attraction. Sometimes, though, it’s not even about the sexual fantasy; it’s just…people using their imaginations in the way that sexual creatures do.
• Michael Says: For me, the woman doesn’t really have to be attractive–it’s just about curiosity. I’ll be watching the news, and the anchorwoman is perhaps just somewhat attractive, and I’ll think, “I wonder what she looks like having an orgasm.”
• Rei Says: Women totally have these same fantasies as well as men!!! Any attractive man I see I wonder how big he is between his legs, and how he’d make love/sex. I’m married to a great man, but as humans, everyone has fantasies, and fantasize about someone not their sig other. It happens. But, you shouldn’t always think about the bus boy/or waitress, every time your man/woman is pleasuring you!
• Emi_ Says: I never used to because I thought it was wrong to think about another guy while in a relationship. But luckily I don’t guilt myself over it anymore. And although sometimes I do think about cute guys other than my boyfriend, I wouldn’t actually do anything.

• Madamoiselle L Says: The Wise Guys actually made me laugh out loud. “A walk in part in some fantasy.” “Jessica Rabbit.” “We’d never leave the house.”
  I remember in college playing “Would you fuck that guy?” (Quietly!) while sitting on the Quad with other women or gay friends (never played it with straight guys, though, you KNOW they’d ask.. ...Hell, the gay guys would ask, “Say I was straight, or really really drunk, would you….) The answered about the men walking by ranged from “Ew!” to “Hell yeah!” to “Maybe I could, if he was nice.” “Maybe I could, if he lost that perm.” (Some of the girls needed some Trust Fund or other financial incentive included, not kidding.) We were young, dumb and full of…...energy then.
  My Man does this, during movies or TV shows (he does it during the news” “What about him? Is he hot? If I were a chick, I’d think he was hot.” (He doesn’t get my obsession with House…..my Man looks just like him.) However, I DON’T ask him. But, he tells me anyway. :) Not bragging, but the closer a woman’s look is to mine, the more likely he is to want her, no matter what her age. (although tall blondes, which I am surely not, wouldn’t be said “no” to in this game…) I’m more picky than he is, that’s for sure.
  In nature,(animals) the female usually does the choosing, while the male takes whatever comes along and is reasonably healthy looking. Makes sense.

Yeah, yeah, the answers in comments have too much sample-selection bias, self-selection bias, and all that to have much statistical relevance. But anecdotally it’s very nice confirmation of, well, confirmation bias: if you only asked men you’d confirm a cliché about men. If you ask everybody though… and you learn something much more interesting.

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Speaking for myself I don’t know if it’s because I’m older, or that I’ve grown more confident, or that I no longer believe in heterosexual sexual scarcity and the whole rest of the no-sex class indoctrination men give themselves, but I can’t say I immediately assess someone for sexual compatibility. Eventually, maybe, and probably sooner than I start guessing about, say, their computer savvy. But probably after I assess them for, say, political/philosophical compatibility. Which, now that I think about it, is sort of the same thing.

Summary: Speculation about the peculiar gaps in application of sexualized slander against highly-visible women. With a quick allusion in a note at the end about the soft underbelly of privilege.

Quote of the day (ok, from sometime last week) from Echidne of the Snakes:

It’s nearly impossible to separate Sarah-Palin-hating from Sarah-Palin-as-female-hating, and that offers a nice opening for any closeted misogynist to exercise his or her inner demons without getting caught doing it. Ultimately the whole topic turns into free-for-all about tits and power and shit, and the only valid conclusion is that we are far from an equal world when it comes to getting and using political power.

She said it here.

She says the no-win-edness of the situation makes it not worth blogging about.

I’ll just say it’s worth pointing out that you could pretty much replace “Sarah Palin” in the line above and replace it with, oh, many but not all highly-visible and/or controversial women politicians and pundits (Hillary Clinton anyone? Ann Coulter? Carrie Prejean? Janet Reno? Even Anita Bryant back in the 1970s.)

Funny thing, by the way, that gets me as I look at the list is it’s not so much the person’s looks (for instance Condoleezza Rice is conventionally attractive but rarely targeted) or their degree of partisanship (For instance “Dr. Laura” and Rachel Maddow tend to be more partisan than average but rarely targeted.)

Instead I think it’s most likely to happen when women step into new domains: homophobia in Prejean or Bryant’s case, law enforcement in Reno’s case. Activist First-Lady in Clinton’s case. Conservative firebrand in Coulter’s case. And, annoyingly, technology in the case of… pretty much every woman who’s ventured into technology. Indicative example: I seem to remember that Ariana Huffington caught quite a lot of sex-baiting when in the Clinton-activist-first-lady role with hapless former husband Michael’s arch-conservative Senatorial bid in California, but since returning to her “proper-role-for-a-woman” location in progressive politics I just haven’t seen that much sex-baiting. Even though she’s conventionally attractive, politically powerful, and reliably highly partisan. And even though her Huffington Post has a huge on-line presence I think she escapes the fate of women in technology by appearing as a media personality rather than appearing to grapple directly with technology.

All of which is poorly-informed speculation offered to support a third alternative to Echidne’s dilemma: it’s not that women are hated per-se, it’s that they’re particularly hated, in highly gendered ways, when they encroach on traditionally male turf.

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Note to self: If I have time I’ll try and post about why this rabid, sexualized reaction by (mostly) men to women’s encroachment demonstrates the freakish self-loathing and insecurity that is the flip side of (intrinsically un-earnable and thus always unearned) male privilege. And if I have time I’ll compare it to the “tough guy” conservative tendency to absolutely wet their pants at the prospect of 9/11 terrorists being tried in New York City or imprisoned on on U.S. soil even in SuperMax-security prisons. I might not have time, though, but I want to note the possibility.