Another wayback post from my pile of inexplicably never-published drafts.

Via Matthew Yglesias we learn that former Bush minion and permanent-war proponent John Bolton is also a follower of pull-it-out-of-your-ass evolutionary psychology. Quoth Bolton

You know, homo sapiens are hard-wired for violent conflict, and we’re not going to eliminate violent conflict until homo sapiens ceases to exist as a separate species. And the whole notion you could even think about eliminating it not just in our lifetime but soon thereafter I think reveals a fundamental misunderstanding of human nature.

Yglesias’s reply refutes not only Bolton but the core assumption of every pop evolutionary psychologist who’s ever flunked a biology, statistics, history, psychology, or logic course.

For comparison’s sake, note that homo sapiens are hard-wired to use stone spears to hunt and kill grazing animals for food. And yet, hunting grazing animals has become a pretty marginal phenomenon in human existence. Doing it as a primary means of subsistence, as opposed to a hobby, has become even more marginal. Doing it with stone tools is even more marginal, though it does of course still happen.

Read the quotes in context here.

Nicely put. If in just a generation or two we can transcend something that was so immediately, directly, and incontestably essential to human survival as the use of stone tools… something that dates back at least 1.5 million years no less… then we can probably also transcend impulses as marginally adaptive as 3-5% biases towards hip-waist ratios in mate selection. Assuming those ratios were ever really shaped by evolution to begin with.

Because whatever other “hard wiring” we’ve got (and sure, we’ve clearly got a lot of it) we’re also clearly hard-wired for something called technology and culture. Not to mention stuff anticipation, learning by example, and, especially, learning from your mistakes. Natural mistake for Bolton to have missed all those, but it’s not due to his “hard wiring.” Having no personal experience of the kind of violence he imagines we’re hard-wired for, nor experience* of the actual capacity for the unprecedented violence of modern warfare (itself only a few generations old!) he’s developed his theories only through the channels of culture and technology he imagines can have no impact on our “hard-wired” natures.

* Like virtually all Bush administration warmongers John Bolton used cultural leverage to dodge military service himself, thus demonstrating his own ability to transcend the “hard-wiring” he alleges we’re stuck with.

Karen Rayne of Adolescent Sexuality who teaches sex ed both directly to K-12 students and at the college level to prospective sex-ed teachers, answers a really critical question: why begin teaching sex ed no later than middle school? (Emphasis mine.)

Most middle school students are not yet sexually active.  I know I already said that, but it’s really important.  Most of the middle school students in my classes are open to conversation – and perspectives that may differ from their own – on many topics.  My co-teacher and I are able to broaden their perspectives through thoughtful, age-appropriate activities and discussions in really amazing ways.  When I have students in my classes who are more sexually active, they are just not as open to thoughtful discussions because the outcomes of these discussion hold meaning for their own understanding of themselves and their identity.

It is simply far better for young people to discuss sexuality with breadth and in-depth for the first time as a theoretical topic that does not hold bearing on their own sexuality rather than as an emerging sexually active individual who now has a whole new raft of conversations and thoughts with which to evaluate their past decisions and therefore their own identity.

She said it here.

Last night I had a long discussion with my 11-year-old about addiction (she asked.) It probably wouldn’t be a good idea to wait till she reached the age where most children begin experimenting with potentially addictive substances to have that conversation. A few days ago I had a conversation with my 13-year-old about driving consciousness. It probably would be a terrible idea to wait till he was driving to bring it up. And while babysitting has a nice balance of rewards and responsibilities, and is almost completely value-neutral at least in our corner of the world, I’m still going to make sure that before they start they take the locally-offered babysitting classes so they’ll be prepared not only for the entertaining elements (which I’m pretty sure they can figure out for themselves) but also stuff like boundaries, first aid, negotiating with adult caregivers (which I’m dead certain has never once crossed either of their minds.)

Considering the complexity and nuance of sex and relationships, their rewards and responsibilities, and of course their potential consequences, it’s hard to argue that children should learn about it long before they’re more than theoretically interested in doing any of it.

Lovely, supportive snark from Holly of The Pervocracy the other day in an aside about social attitudes about men’s orgasms.

(Male orgasms are not interesting, of course. Because women’s orgasms are like intricate flowers blown in fierce waves under a sky of fireworks, and men’s orgasms are like “splurt.” Sigh. It’s tough being a flower, but at least my sexuality isn’t comic relief. Instead it’s the experience of the Other and must be documented for the edification of humans. But anyway.)

She said it here.

My version of this insight is one of the things that made me decide to invert the feminist “sex class” construction such that men are the “sex class” and women the “no-sex class.” Men are considered so automatically, intrinsically, reflexively, and obligately sexual that it’s just assumed that the only possible interesting things about us is when there’s something wrong with our ability to have orgasms. The top two being premature ejaculation and impotence, plus occasional grumblings about refractory periods.

But interest in healthy, non-dysfunctional, normal human male orgasms? Aside perhaps from a peculiar and probably porn-influenced obsession with volume, not so much.

One more bit of evidence, if we didn’t already have railroad cars full, that scientific and medical principal investigators are still overwhelmingly male.

That’s not to say that male orgasms will be the first thing women researchers tackle when they start breaking the glass ceilings of grant administration boards. But it is to say that women, unlike men, probably wouldn’t have the acute performance-related and homophobic “nothing to see there, let’s move along” anxiety combined with “I do it all the time how could anyone possibly be interested” arrogance I think a lot of male researchers have.

Holly of The Pervocracy, talking about normal vs. kinky brings up one interesting data point…

All I know is that if I have to sit through another conversation at work on the topic of “my husband and I are never in bed together and that’s awesome because gosh it’s such a pain having to deal with those icky things he wants”, I’m going to explode and tell them everything.

She said it here.

and one of her commenters brought up another…

Is ‘icky things he wants’ non-vanilla sex or is it sex at all? I’m over on the asexual end of the spectrum, and if I came out with something like, “Actually, I’d be perfectly happy to never bother with sex again,” at work, I would be stuck spending the rest of the season putting up with well-meaning busybodies demanding that I justify my marriage.

He or she said that here.

Pretty wild, right? If you’re “too” sexual (in Holly’s emergency-medical staff workgroup that evidently includes owning a vibrator) you get branded a wild child. But! On the other hand, as the commenter pointed out, if you’re not sexual you’re in for a world of scrutiny as well. All made worse by our general reluctance to discuss whatever “happy medium” it is we’re all supposed to “naturally” have.

Or, as yet another of Holly’s commenters, Mousie76, puts it

I don’t think normal, vanilla people know what normal and vanilla is like, because part of being normal and vanilla is not really talking about it.

Much hilarity does not ensue.

While reassuring yet another correspondent who’s concerned about being able to… I dunno… perform vaginal orgasms Jessi Fischer of The Sexademic nails the crippling folly of making orgasms the stat-counter of sex. That and the equally crippling trap of distinguishing “foreplay” from the “real thing” of intercourse.

Of course, none of this is to suggest you should toss penetrative vaginal sex off the list of enjoyable sexual stimulation. Kissing may not make you come, but damn it feels good.

She said it here.

There’s so much about sex that feels good. Orgasms? Oh yeah, and woe betide those who arbitrarily decides they’re not necessary for their partners! But if the only point was orgasms then why would anyone ever bother with kissing?

It’s not a trick question. There are plenty of things that feel good about sex, sometimes very good, that don’t* make you come. Kissing is only the most obvious.

* Ok, ok, someone somewhere will always pipe in that THEY are able to come from activity X, Y, or Z. But while that’s obviously wonderful for them, if most people don’t come that way it doesn’t refute the point.

Referencing a study comparing continued use of the pill between women who could buy it over the counter in Mexico vs. matched women who received it through standard U.S. insurance or health-clinic plant, blogger Emmma of The Well-Timed Period says

Researches wanted to test the hypothesis that making access to the Pill more convenient — by 1)removing the prescription requirement, and 2) providing users with more Pill packs — could increase Pill use and continuation.

They recruited 1046 current Pill users living in El Paso, TX, a setting where low-income women can obtain the Pill without a prescription by crossing the border into Mexico and buying the Pill OTC from a Ciudad Juarez pharmacy. [532 women received Pill packs with a prescription from an El Paso clinic and 514 women purchased the Pill OTC from a Ciudad Juarez pharmacy.]

The study found that discontinuation was significantly lower for women who used the pharmacy to buy the Pill than for clinic users. When the number of Pill packs was taken into account, discontinuation rates were higher…for clinic users who received one to five pill packs. Only clinic users receiving 6+ pill packs had continuation close to pharmacy users.

Read the quote in context here.

If you’re talking about medications with short-term use like antibiotics or
pain killers there might be an excellent case for distributing only limited supplies. For most women who take the pill it’s a long-term proposition. And while many women discontinue use because they have side effects they don’t enjoy, studies like this one (see also) suggest inconvenience is a big factor as well.

I mean, it would be bad enough if you could only by a month’s worth of toothpaste or floss at a time… and then you could only get new supplies at the store you bought it the first time.

Bwahaha, listen to me talking about it as though it was a hypothetical instead of how it works basically everywhere in the U.S.

Sheesh!

Also from 2008, Svutlana on rebranding monogamy (emphasis mine.)

But maybe monogamy just have problem with position. Word monogamy sound like same game that couple play over and over and over. Maybe need for change name for something little bit more excite so that more peoples want for do. Maybe rename monogamy fucktomonamy (say fuck-toe-moan-a-me). Fucktomonamy sound fun for do and little bit pervert at same time. And fucktomonamous sound good too! If no want for be fucktomonamous forever, for sure there is something terrible wrong with you.

She said it here.

First you smile a little and then you start thinking “O.M.G. you really would be something wrong if you didn’t want to be fucktomanamous forever!”

(She gets points for some good digs at the utter predictability of evo-psych earlier in her post.)

Genuinely interesting sex blogger alert: Svutlana posts from Canada but says she’s originally from a fictional sex-positive island, Svutlandia, in the Baltic Sea. She certainly writes English with a very heavy “Baltic” accent. That said, while her language can be colorful her content is dead-on intelligent, accurate, nuanced, and progressive.

Consider her reaction to the widely circulated headline that Gone With the Wind actress Vivien Leigh was “a serial bisexual adulterer.” (For example see here or here.) Svlutlana begins with warm humor…

Like Svutlana mother always say, if it take only two adjective and one noun for describe your sexual proclivities in headline, you no try hard enough.

She said it here.

and a bit later makes the serious point

In Svutlana opinion, too much be make of how Ms Vivien be bipolar, as if voracious sexual appetite in womens always must be due for mental illness.

She also makes the perfectly accurate point that if the whole point seems to be digging up and passing along scandal why there’s so much focus on allegations of her “serial bisexuality” and not on, say, allegations that she and her one-time director George Cukor would go cruising for “rough trade” male prostitutes together. One would think the latter accusation would be more eye-opening than the former. My guess is that the former better fits dominant narratives about women’s agency

And here’s her take on a recent labioplasty conference and counter-demonstration in Las Vegas

Svutlana says

Here be tale of two Las Vegas hotel. On top be Venetian Cosmetogynosurgical hotel and below be Tuscan hotel where stalwart defender of surgical-unalter labia will stay:

What horse would you bet on—Labia by Nature or Labia by Martha Stewart (with free promotion spreads from billion dollar porn industry)—for win this Canfucky Derby?

Oh, it be Svutlana most fond wish that cosmetogynosurgeon stick finger inside womens for test pelvic floor strength and angry vagina clamp down with all its might and refuse for let finger go! In Svutlana dream this be cautionary tail for all cosmetogynosurgeons.

Read the quote in context here.

And finally, from her first post back in February 2008, her take on the quest for “female ejaculation.”

Hear Svutlana about female ejaculate class at sex shop where everybody get in circle and watch womens squirt with big eye like she be fish that just jump out of sea and wiggle on beach. Nobody know where squirt come from. Is it from little gland inside like female prostate? Is it little bit urine? Little bit fructose? Little bit country? Little bit rock and roll? Who for fuck know?

No care Svutlana one little bit what be inside female ejaculate! Why make sex act like rest of life where peoples have for work and work and work for get credential? Have me multiple orgasm! Have female ejaculate me! Is like have me engineer degree! Have MBA me! Run me Boston marathon!

...

Be Svutlana much more impress when womens say have good sex life that make them happy happy for be alive than womens who say can squirt across room or shoot ping pong ball from between leg or suck up whole banana with vagina.

She said it here.

Reading the whole piece it’s clear she’s not mocking women who do it, or even women who are curious to learn (she mentions exercises you can try.) She’s really unimpressed with the emphasis put on it as something to be performed.

And finally, behind a little light humor her most recent post, Svutlana perform first (and last) semens analysis, is straight-up sex ed.

Pretty lucid perspectives whether she’s really from the islands of the Baltic or the islands of Ontario.

While referencing Utah’s dismally low same-sex marriage acceptance, Em & Lo quipped

Apparently polygamous marriages are okay, but only 22% of the state agrees with gay marriage.

They said it here.

This is actually a pretty not-unreasonable snark based on a non-illogical syllogism: broader society tends to brand both homosexual and group marriages as deviant, and defenders of the “between a man and a woman” standard see permitting gay marriage as a slippery slope gateway to polygamy, (overwhelmingly so!) therefore would-be practitioners of one should be supportive of the other.

I’m going to do a little U-Turn on that position and say that while it’s a perfectly reasonable line of thought it’s also almost completely mistaken: same-sex marriage and Utah-style polygamy couldn’t possibly, possibly be more different. In fact public disapproval is the only thing they have in common!

First of all let’s clear up one other minor misunderstanding. Long-term popular public opinion, as collated, for instance, in the egregiously cis-centric Purity Tests that emerged during the dawn of the networked-computer era, assume that either homosexual or multiple-partner experiences are fetishistic, “kinky,” perverted, or otherwise a departure from “vanilla” normalcy. The first obvious problem being that the vast majority of LGBT community members are as vanilla as cafeteria pudding*. And contrary to any possible myths or fantasies, religious polygamists are just as likely as religious monogamists to have a “for reproduction only” approach to sex. Point being that popular culture’s fantasies of deviancy or licentiousness notwithstanding, actual average gay or polygamist individuals don’t consider themselves “kinky” at all.

But to get to my main point, I think the biggest reason gay marriage is least tolerated in areas that would most tolerate historically polygamous marriage isn’t so much homophobia (though there’s obviously that) but a complete and diametric understanding of the purpose of marriage and the functional roles spouses inside of marriage.

The essence of gay marriage is the love in the subtitle of Stephanie Coontz’s Marriage, a History: How Love Conquered Marriage. Whereas the essence of historic polygamy, especially religious polygamy in the American inter-mountain west, was (and, where still practiced, is) the acquisition, consolidation, or transfer of property, wealth, or obligations between (pretty much exclusively male) heads of families.

For traditionalists, the way two men would exchange property or obligation would be to do a standard business deal or, if they’re a little more old-fashioned, to arrange a marriage between subordinate family members. And for traditionalists, who historically believed women have no autonomous legal, personal, or property rights, letting two marry is as pointless as letting a man’s cattle marry his house.

Meanwhile I think you’d have to look long and hard to find many same-sex couples who want to marry for reasons larger than to legally and socially cement their personal relationships with each other.

This is not to say that polygamists don’t value love for each other, nor that same-sex couples don’t value tax breaks, powers of attorney, and succession of estates. But it is to say those aren’t the essences of the respective forms of marriage.

So. I think the real question isn’t so much why Utah, with its tradition of polygamy, is so antagonistic to same-sex marriage: the purposes are so diametrically opposed it should be no surprise at all. The real question might instead be whether same-sex couples would be similarly antagonistic to efforts to legalize Utah-style patriarchal, property-based polygamy.

My guess would be yes, same-sex couples would probably be particularly antagonistic. All the more reason, then, not to be surprised that same-sex marriage is least popular in Utah.

Just sayin’

* Quentin Crisp’s flamboyant visibility notwithstanding, for instance, there are far more gay men like the quiet “marines, scaffolders, and rugby players“ he partnered with.

Along the same lines as my previous post, here’s the answer I submitted a while back for this week’s Em & Lo’s Wise Guys feature. The question was “What’s the best way to turn down a guy who you’ve been on a date or two with, but don’t want to go on any others?” My answer?

The most gracious way is also maybe the most practical. You want to say some variation on “I wouldn’t have gone out with you the first time if I didn’t like you. I wouldn’t be saying no now [i.e. instead of just disappearing] if I didn’t respect you.” The point being to make it clear it you didn’t make a mistake saying yes the first time, and that not being a perfect match for you doesn’t make him a loser. That’s the gracious part.

The practical part is that men start learning as early as fairy tales that we have to be persistent, to never take no for an answer, to strive and achieve, and if we just work at it long and hard enough we’ll always “win over” the reluctant girl in the end. Letting him down with ego intact makes it less likely that he’ll try redoubling his effort to win you over. If he can walk away feeling respected he’ll be more likely to respect both you and your decision.

I said it here.

If only I’d figured that out years ago. That and understanding you should probably say the same thing to a woman you didn’t want to go on a 2nd or 3rd date with.

Sigh.

The other wise guys’ answers are pretty good too, as are the comments.