Echidne of the Snakes says, simply,

Why do we call people with the names of sexual organs when we are angry with them? Sexual organs are nice! Sexual organs are, in fact, our gateway to this world, and sexual organs may be the only gateway to paradise we shall ever experience.

Instead of honoring nasty people by calling them c***s (trying to avoid the censors here), why not call them humids? Because humidity is truly awful. Awful.

She said it here.

Nicely put.

Although to be perfectly honest there are occasions where humidity can be very nice I’m… pretty sure it would be easier to try and “reclaim” humid than it would be to reclaim male or female genital-based epithets. And far less consequential if those reclamation attempts failed.

Amanda Brooks of Bound, Not Gagged posts the story of a 40-year-old business owner and mother of three who was arrested while moonlighting as an escort. One needn’t favor legalization of sex work (as I do) to appreciate either her story or the following, really fucking critical point:

When I called the police after being beaten by my first husband, they refused to protect me. In fact, they blamed me for his drinking and womanizing. Even after the doctors told the cops that I was one blow from having my skull shattered, they blamed me. When I was brutally raped on a date rape, kicking and screaming, and went to the police, they did nothing. They blamed me because I’d been drinking. And, you know, for being female. Great. So now I’m happily making money, stimulating both the economy and the gentlemen of the area, and here they are banging down my door. Like the Gestapo. They told me they were “protecting” me. From what? As an escort, I could afford condoms, blood screens, regular medical checks. Gentlemen who are willing to pay for sex are, in my experience, much more respectful than the ones who expect it for free. The ones who raped and battered me were getting free sex. The ones who paid, were kind and respectful.

She said it here.

Point #1: the police (or, more correctly, society and its instructions to and constraints on police) aren’t particularly effective at protecting women from assault, abuse, rape, or battery. Consequently anyone who argues they’re trying to “protect” the sex workers they rescue is a liar.

Point #2: Considering the conservative bona fides of your average anti-prostitution activist, her words about the differences between men who pay for sex and the men who expect it for free ought to resonate with Über-conservative silverback Newt Gingrich’s repeated point that humans have an astonishing tendency to abuse and neglect that which they don’t pay for. I happen to believe Gingrich is mostly batshit insane, but that shouldn’t be a problem for conservatives. The point remains, though, that in the eyes of their abusers there really doesn’t appear to be much more consideration, nor less resentment, of sex workers who charge men for money, and “ordinary” sex-partners who don’t.

Point #3: How exactly is it the case that notifying a sex worker’s employer (who, fortunately in this case, was also her daylight-business partner) “protecting” her? The common reaction for employers (all too common!) is to find cause to fire the sex worker, with the result that her odds of leaving sex work go down. And her odds of having to return to sex work go up.

Point #4: None of this implies that all sex workers are hearty, happy self-determined entrepreneurs. Many are not. Many, in fact, not only don’t enjoy their work but are trapped either by circumstance, conscription, or outright coercion! It’s not exactly clear to me, however, how making their work or even their customers illegal improves anyone’s odds of getting out or moving on. Based on conversations with individuals who’ve made poor choices in the past, it’s not clear to me at all how an arrest record, let alone a conviction record, let alone a jail record, let alone public record of one’s activities, makes any form of employment other than either marginal/minimum-wage or criminal ones possible.

Point #5: If society and/or the police really were interested in protecting sex workers they’re fucking protect sex workers instead of, well, policing them. Instead of arresting them they’d let sex workers put their numbers in speed dial. Instead of arresting them they’d establish clear relationships with sex workers and sex-worker alliances to instead police of the very-large number of people who currently get away with raping, robbing, roughing up, and murdering sex workers (and, cough, non-sex workers.)

Point #6: As I said above, you don’t have to like prostitution to see the arguably-intractable problems with current policies regarding its legality.

Jessi Fischer of The Sexademic, who’s just received her masters degree in sexuality from San Francisco State University says

This blog has seen its fair share of feminist bashers, quoting Valerie Solanas and Andrea Dworkin as if they represent a synthesized doctrine of Feminism. But those fools have it all wrong. In all the gender studies and women’s studies courses I took I never once read those women.

You want classic feminist theorists? Try Mary Wollenstonecraft. Try Virginia Woolf. Try Charlotte Perkins Gilman. Try Sojourner Truth. Try Simone de Beauvoir. Fuck, how about John Stuart Mill, Frederick Douglass or Henrick Ibsen? How about our modern feminists like Betty Friedan, Gloria Steinem or Susan Faludi?

Feminism is not about man-bashing, porn-censure or making sure every woman works outside the home.

Feminism is about choice.

And because we are individuals with vastly differing opinions, feminist theorists contradict each other and argue with each other. There is no unifying feminist doctrine except choice.

She said it here.

That sounds about right. There are a lot of ideas about what feminism is all about. And even more ideas about how best to express feminism. And yeah, some of them can be as bitterly and sometimes even violently in conflict as any other broad social and political philosophies as broad as Christology to as (seemingly) obscure as taxonomy.

The other major element in her post is a pean to condoms, which she introduces with…

I know what you’re thinking. Condoms? Yes. My contraceptive method of choice allowed me to take control of reproduction and, consequently, my life.

I try to imagine worlds where sex with a man often leads to pregnancy. Or worlds without protection against STIs. The freedom to learn and develop my mind could be hindered by childrearing or health complications.

If you had a very narrow or, particularly, a very conservative notion of feminism (where “conservative” refers both to the right-wing conservatism of, say, Nikki Haley or the separatist conservatism of Mary Daly) you’d might raise an eyebrow, at least, at the idea of sex with men, let alone sex with men using the iconically “male” condom as contraception. Eh. Maybe so. Some schools of feminism really do balk at the idea of contraception (Haley) or men (Daly) let alone using contraception while having sex with men. But just as it would be a mistake to confuse their thin-ice edges with the more-literally-central ideas it would be an even bigger one to pick either one of those arguably doctrinally choice-limiting extreme cases and decide it represented the whole.

Emily Nagoski of Sex Nerd jumps hard on Jesse Bering, one of Scientific American Magazine’s go-to guys for sex reporting for being a giant squeamish prick jerk. In an article that starts out weird (wondering if Minnesota water was responsible for a lurid erotic dream) and then gets gynophobic while trying to winnow out something to do with differences in sperm count between ejaculation from masturbation and ejaculation from intercourse.

He seems to think collecting semen from masturbators is easy but when discussing collecting semen from hetero intercourse he… um… editorializes. (Emphasis mine, and Nagoski’s)

Well, Baker and Bellis are clever empiricists. They also apparently have stomachs of steel. One way that they tested their hypotheses was to ask over 30 brave heterosexual couples to provide them with some rather concrete samples of their sex lives: the vaginal “flowbacks” from their post-coital couplings, in which some portion of the male’s ejaculate is spontaneously rejected by the woman’s body.

He said it here.

Emily calls him out (emphasis hers)

I’m going to move straight to the plain old RUDENESS of that paragraph.

Apparently collecting ejaculate requires no particular digestive toughness, but ejaculate in cervical mucus requires industrial strength gastric abilities.

Should we conclude that Dr. Bering himself has felt nauseated by the fluids of any female sex partners he may have had? Indeed, the blatant, unapologetic, flinching gynophobia made me wonder if he’s gay, which it turns out he is, but that doesn’t make it okay for him to discuss female fluids as physically disgusting.

In Scientific American.

She said it here.

The “In Scientific American“ part is important. You can argue that it’s somewhere between annoying, edgy, and maybe cute when Dan Savage opines on his disinterest in, say, cunnilingus in his Savage Love columns. In that capacity he’s a columnist. In that capacity his sexual orientation is part of his schtick. Maybe a core part. And that sort of edginess is a core part of his alt-weekly employer, The Stranger as well. While I think it’s fair to say Scientific American has lowered its standards somewhat in recent decades Jesse Bering is still no Dan Savage and Scientific American is no The Stranger. So he should keep his opinions to himself and/or his editors should keep them for him the same way we’d expect them to shut the pie hole of a heterosexual who opined about the ick factor in an article about research into gay or lesbian sexuality.

It’s not about some ideal of having no personal opinions. Heck, it’s not even a matter of covering up ones opinions in the interest of “journalistic objectivity.” It’s about assuming everybody else is going to share your opinions. Or share your knee-squeezing prudishness.

My one quibble would be that Bering is by no means alone in his prejudice, nor is his orientation necessarily a factor: any number of gay and straight people, male and female, from any number of cultures appear to be completely appalled when anything at all flows from someone’s vagina. Including ordinary lubrication from ordinary arousal.

And no, it wouldn’t have been any better, nor could it have been less professional, if someone else had spoken enviously instead of disdainfully of collecting flowback because he assumed everyone shared his “creampie” fetish.

Sheesh!

[Note: I originally called Bering a prick, which is a highly-gendered insult. I’ve revised the wording but left the original to remind myself that it’s harder than one thinks to get away from using gendered insults. —fl]

Well this is about as random as my posts get. So since the beginning of the year my family has been watching an episode per day of the teenage-Superman soap opera Smallville. Go Netflix. For some reason the combination of angst, adventure, intrigue, romance, danger, lust, and parental modeling has just worked to keep us in all-ages conversation about all sorts of things. We’re currently toward the end of season seven, which is probably more episodes of anything I’ve ever watched. Go figure. But I digress…

Today for some reason I decided I wanted to know what Michael Rosenbaum looks like with hair. He’s the guy who plays the perpetually, almost delightfully complex Lex Luthor character.

Anyway (yeah, yeah, I’m getting to the point) I found a bunch of photos on Google Images (the link, again) and randomly clicked on a thumbnail, expecting to get a better look.

What I didn’t expect, but what I instead got, was a link to page “M” of a blog called Ticklish Male Celebrities, hosted by Lady, evidently from Bulgaria (judging from her email domain’s country code) who’s description reads

I’m a woman of art, who has one weird… weakness – ticklish guys :)

The side description says

The blog’s besically an alphabetical list of famous actors/musicians/writers/footballers, etc, who’ve admitted they’re ticklish. You can check the “Tickling Media Forum” to see their list of male celebs, so you’d know where I got most of the information from. Myspace mesaging also helped LOL :) I’d also upload photos of the guys in question, barefoot if possible.

That’s pretty much exactly what the blog is about. It’s been around since September, 2008, which makes it fairly venerable in blog years. And though the unusual method of just adding new entries to one of 26 “alphabetical” posts makes it hard to tell, Lady keeps it active and up to date.

Anyway, if you’re into very, very soft-core “man candy” images, or if you’re into mostly-barefoot men, or if you’re into ticklish men, or you’re just looking for unusual celebrity trivia the site could be just the ticket.

-==-

Doh! While researching fetishes (there’s this persistent but obviously mistaken belief, going back to Freud no less, that only men have fetishes) I discovered that, according to The Manual of International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems (ICD-10 version 2005), something is technically a fetish if and only if it involves a fixation on or use of inanimate objects for sexual gratification. If one is instead attached to activities instead of inanimate objects then the technical vocabulary is “paraphilia.” I think most people have probably heard the term paraphlia. What I didn’t know was that when one is erotically fascinated by specific body parts like feet or hair it’s called “partialism.” Since most people’s sexual attachments to objects, activities, or body parts aren’t obsessive enough to count as “diseases and related health problems,” though, it’s fine to lump them all together or to mix or match them. Or you could just call it all “kink.” Or, as long as it really isn’t interferingly obsessive, since appreciation for sexual variation is actually pretty common you could do what I do and call it “normal.”

-==-

Getting back to my original obscure intention, the photos of Michael Rosenbaum didn’t really show what he looks like with hair so my search continues. But just for the record here’s her entry on Rosenbaum, bare feet and ticklishness quotes included.

Michael Rosenbaum (plays Lex Luthor on “Smallville”) This is how his AOL Live interview went (9/02)..
Hi Michael! Are you a ticklish guy? If so, where?

MichaelRLive: “Sure. Where am I not, that’s the question.”
http://www.michaelrosenbaum.com/aol.html

Scroll way down to find the entry.

Cool and completely unexpected discovery.

So late last week there was a Richard Feynman quote buzzing around the Twitosphere

“Physics is like sex. Sure, it may give some practical results, but that’s not why we do it.”

A while ago Heather Corinna of Scarleteen made a similar but much more specific about an element of sex and sexual anatomy that’s overlooked surprisingly often. (Emphasis mine.)

Usually, when we’re looking at a layout of sexual anatomy it’s through the lens of reproduction, so it’s all about penises and vaginas, testes and uteri. But from a standpoint of pleasure and sexual response, sexual anatomy is about far more than genitals and is far less about reproductive organs. Ultimately, all the parts of the body are potential or actual sexual organs in the context of pleasure, though some parts or areas, overall, tend to play a bigger part for most people than other parts do.

She said it here.

Something to keep in mind next time you hear someone talking about sex as if it was all one thing and, especially, as if it all leads to a certain conclusion. When we’re concerned with reproduction and/or avoiding it then yeah, the straight-up (and, err, straight) emphasis on interlocking genitalia is relevant. Just don’t confuse that with sex. And especially don’t confuse it with the ways we enjoy sex!

If I can be downright ornery for a moment, consider what happens when two 100% chaste, abstinent, and virginal individuals responsibly end their date with an hour of humid but hands-outside-the-pants necking and petting… or even just longing looks while holding hands across the malt-shop counter and talking about how much they have to look forward to on their wedding night.

M’kay, usually at this point a lot of us are going to stop them right there and start talking realistically about how first times usually go, and not to build up expectations, and how it sometimes takes more times than you image before those nearly-mythical bells can begin to ring, and even how for some significant fraction of people (more-often women but men too) those bells remain forever mythical, etc., etc., etc.

But that’s in their future, this is now. And now, after sharing thoughts and maybe kisses and caresses, the parties in this chaste couple virtuously retire to their respective beds in their respective homes to… cope with their respective activated libidos as they see fit. (Including, for the purpose of this example, nothing more than combinations of cold showers and fevered dreams.) And as they do, with considerable pleasure and affection, week after week, date after date.

If you think of sex purely in terms of genital copulation then there’s no way you can say my hypothetical couple is having sex. And certainly no way is it reproductive! But… But… their experiences are erotic, their enjoyment is of a sexual nature, and they take enough pleasure in it to continue, cold showers notwithstanding.

I say that’s sex. And if that’s sex then so’s quite a lot of the rest of what we do (including, obviously very enthusiastic genital intercourse) even though most of that doesn’t produce “practical results” either. What do you say?

Since this post is about stereotypes about gender and feminism what I’m going to say first is going to sound a little out of the blue… but it’s absolutely incredibly relevant. According to my intro to physics professor when Albert Einstein first published his theory of relativity there were only a handful of people in the world with advanced enough mathematics to understand his proofs. But, he said, by the 1980s the math had become well-enough understood that college physics professors were expected to teach it… and college physics students could be expected to learn it.

I mention this because Razib Khan of Discover Blogs has a really, really important guess about why women with advanced degrees are starting to have children at rates similar to women without such degrees.

The context is a post with charts by Matthew Yglesias that shows the following graph

Image from Yglesias’s blog at ThinkProgress.org

Khan says

I think the reason this may be occurring is a dilution of the sample bias of women who have higher education in relation to the general population. In other words, as more women attain advanced degrees the pool of those women become less atypical vis-a-vis the general population

He said it here.

In other words, the largely-feminist, largely hugely focused and committed women who pioneered academia, law, and business in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s might have fit some of the earlier stereotypes about feminists. But as Khan points out they even more-closely fit the more-accurate stereotypes about pioneers!

Which gets me back to my physics professor’s lecture: Einstein was a excellent physicist and a very good mathematician, and when he first pioneered his theories only a few others were qualified to follow him right away. But once he created the path it became a lot easier for others to follow, and for still others to build social and educational infrastructure so that even more could follow.

And here’s the point my professor wanted to make: First, thanks to the work of pioneers, in feminism as in physics, the once-unthinkable is now accessible to wonderfully ordinary people. But second, there’s a tendency after the fact to wonder if those pioneers really were such hot stuff since undergraduates can now blithely sign up for courses in special relativity or for internships in areas that were once the exclusive domain of men. Um, yeah, they were. It’s a best of both worlds thing.

Little-known sex-related movie trivia: Since the 1970s the movie Last Tango in Paris has been indirectly responsible for a surprising number of minor hip and leg abrasions and pinky-finger strains. The cause? That scene where the Marlin Brando character seemingly-effortlessly rips the panties from the Maria Schneider character.

Like many other things you see in the movies that trick is harder than it looks. In case you’ve ever wanted to try it yourself or with a partner, Cumingirl of the absolutely 100%-accurately-titled blog Christian Nymphos has a completely practical tutorial.

One thing that can be really passionate in the bedroom is having your husband RIP your panties off of you just before you make love.  But sometimes the fabrics are too hard to rip and sometimes your panties are too expensive to throw away!  If you are interested in adding this spice to your bedroom, then listen up to some quick and easy tips that will make it easy for you and your husband!

First off, you need to find some sexy panties (thongs work the best but any kind will do) really cheap.  Make sure that you KNOW they will fit you well, and then buy lots of them.  I found some lacy thongs on sale one time for $1/each.  There were just tons of thongs all thrown on a large display table in the middle of the lingerie dept.  I think I bought 25 or so that day!

Now, once you get home, put a pair on and stand in front of the mirror.  Imagine that you and your husband are making out and you want him to be able to just RIP those panties off of you so that you two can make passionate love!  In order to make it easier for him (and to make sure that he doesn’t hurt you in the process) you need a pair of fingernail clippers or scissors.  A knife will work but fingernail clippers or scissors work better.

She said it here.

I adore the group of authors at Christian Nymphos because it just so head-on contradicts stereotypes about the sexuality of people with profoundly-deep faith, and about people of different abilities and ages. I admire them too because they’re so up front about finding solutions to problems facing women who’s libidos are higher than their husbands who are also very committed to the tradition of marriage. But I digress…

Anyway, I won’t say how I know this but there actually are a couple of tricks to successfully tearing someone’s undies off when they haven’t been prepared first.

The first, most important trick is being able to quickly recognize when not to do it, whether its because they’re too nice, too comfortable, too expensive, or otherwise hard to replace or just because they’re not going to tear. There are more than enough other entirely mutual-mood-enhancing ways to remove underwear so why set your heart on that one particular way, at that particular moment, when you’re not 100% sure it’s going to be 100% pleasing for both of you?

Next tip? It’s a two parter. First part? You weren’t thinking you/he would just walk over, grab the waistband and yank middle-school-wedgie style were you? Didn’t think so! No. Again I won’t say how I know this but like a lot of things related to sex, romance, and role-playing undie ripping works, um, very well indeed after considerable, passionate hugs, burning kisses, strokes, caresses, locked eyes, sultry looks, flared nostrils, and just general all-round exploration… while still mostly clothed. And yes, it takes a little multi-tasking ability but while you’re losing yourself in each other’s embraces you want to reserve enough of capacity for strategic thinking to find seams or other weak points, and, if it looks like it’s a good time, to subtly test, pre-stress, and generally loosen them. That way when the time comes you’ll know where to start and which way to tear.

Next? Again don’t ask how I know but it doesn’t really ruin the mood if you get a tear going from the elastic of a leg band that stops dead at the waistband. As with a lot of role-playing it’s the thought that counts… plus a little deftness. If you do hit an extra-strong seam or binding before the whole garment comes apart just switch to one of those other ways to slip, slide, lower, otherwise get them the rest of the way off while staying in whatever character you and your partner have been playing.

Great keyboard-thumping example of the two-sphere model of gender run amok. Plus the Two Rules of Desire run wild. Plus the “no-sex” class paradigm in full bloom. Echidne of the Snakes says

One misogynist comment in that place where they now gather (the Atlantic Monthly) stated that women are useless creatures because the only reason they feel the faintest sexual desire is testosterone. And testosterone belongs to men!

She said it here.

M’yeah, and since nipples belong to women any man with nipples is gay. But I digress.

What was I going to say? Oh yeah — Great sweet mother of pearl!

Would a been nice to get a link but…

Clearly I’m a bit speechless. Not at the misogyny of course, but of the blunt misunderstanding of anatomy, physiology, and endocrinology. Not that I’m a huge expert but that’s the whole point — I learned most of what I know about it in a berloody 10th-grade “applied chemistry” class!

Anyway, from the Wikipedia entry on testosterone (emphasis mine)

Testosterone is a steroid hormone from the androgen group and is found in mammals, reptiles, birds, and other vertebrates. In mammals, testosterone is primarily secreted in the testes of males and the ovaries of females, although small amounts are also secreted by the adrenal glands. It is the principal male sex hormone and an anabolic steroid.

In men, testosterone plays a key role in the development of male reproductive tissues such as the testis and prostate as well as promoting secondary sexual characteristics such as increased muscle and bone mass and hair growth. In addition, testosterone is essential for health and well-being as well as the prevention of osteoporosis.

On average, an adult human male body produces about ten times more testosterone than an adult human female body, but females are, from a behavioral perspective (rather than from an anatomical or biological perspective), more sensitive to the hormone. However, the overall ranges for male and female are very wide, such that the ranges actually overlap at the low end and high end respectively.

Source: Wikipedia

Yup. About that last part? Based on testosterone production-decline curves the sort of cranky 50-year-olds who, well, crank out testosterone uuber allies malarky are quite likely to have lower testosterone levels than many healthy women in their 20s.

Unlike healthy 20-year-old women at least healthy low-testosterone middle-age men can thank testosterone for the nice big manly erections they can still get, right? Oh wait!

...an appropriate amount of estrogen is required in the male in order to ensure well-being, bone density, libido, erectile function, etc.

So presumably men are also useless creatures because the only reason we can ge erections is because of estrogen. And estrogen belongs to women. Right?

I mean right?

Stupid gender essentialists!