One of the more frustrating things about the "radmenz" movement is their ongoing convergence with "radfems." "Radfem" separatists cooked up "the sex strike," which was supposed to bring men to our knees a la Aristophanes'sLysistratda. And since, contrary to popular belief, most "radfem "sex-strikers weren't and aren't lesbians and were thus pretty impatient to get the thing over with they were if anything even more aggravated with women who wouldn't go along with the strike than they were with men themselves.

Turns out "radmenz" separatists have cooked up their own notion of a "sex strike." Only instead of withholding sex till which is fine for the minority who are gay or asexual but no more fun for hetero male separatists than it was for hetero female separatists. And consequently they're just as over-the-top annoyed with men who "break the strike." David Futrelle, who links to "radmenz" sites so I don't have to, quotes one very angry gentleman who

The reason I believe women get away with exorbitant prices (associated risks) for pussy is the existing demand, which sustains the price and favors similar conditions for each subsequent iteration of the trade. …  I fail to understand how catering to a woman’s skewed entitlement and grandiose sense of self-worth (telling her lies, buying her things for sex, investing more time in entertaining her than in actual sex … etc) can ever be helpful or instrumental to bring the market price (risks and costs) of pussy down.

Source: Man Boobz

What. Ever.

What's particularly... well... striking about both the "radfem" and "radmenz" notions of the sex strike is the complete investment in the disgraceful transactional model of hetero sex. I'm sure both sides will say I'm being unfair, which I don't mind since I think their respective enterprises are based on fundamental misunderstandings of... just about everything about human nature. But "radfems" basically believe that if women just withhold sex men will do whatever it is they want, whereas "radmenz" believe if they stop "paying" for sex women will do... whatever it is they want.

Of course an even better approach might be to overturn the whole fucking fetish for transactional sex in the first place. But hey, 40-odd years of "the sex strike" hasn't moved the needle for "radfems" compared to the entirely more reasonable approach of feminists who challenge the transactional model, and so there's no reason to imagine that "radmenz" will move the needle any further the other way.

Hint: I think the idea of a "sex strike" worked a whole lot better back when everyone still believed masturbation made you go blind.

Holly addresses the "damage" a Toronto family is allegedly imposing on their 4-month-old child by... refusing to disclose his or her gender to... other people who really, really want to know. So that they can decide whether to behave towards the four-month-old infant as if he is a "bruising boy" or she is a "blushing girl."

Because of how you were born, little Storm, there are clothes you can't wear, clubs you can't join, ways you can't talk, toys you can't play with, sports you can't play, names you can't use, haircuts you can't get, and entire ways of being and acting and expressing yourself will be closed off to you! For no particular reason!

Have fun out there, and remember, don't do the things half the other kids are having fun doing, or you'll get in big trouble!"

Now that's permanently damaging.

Source: The Pervocracy

It always takes me about 10 times longer to say it, but it's usually not as easy to read. But, yeah, basically it's the nature of "gender" (as opposed to biological sex) to work not by enhancing things about one's own sex but by having things that are (currently) believed to be inconceivable and/or intolerable for your sex to do. Like driving a car, as in Saudi Arabia where it's against the law for women to drive... even women who drove perfectly well while attending college somewhere other than Saudi Arabia. Women can in fact drive a car but since it's not "feminine" to do so it's forbidden.

Meanwhile when I was in 7th grade there was some sort of pre-computer-era scheduling screw up that got me put into a typing class instead of wood shop. Now at that time and in that location, a boy getting assigned to a typing class was as major a catastrophe as a girl getting assigned to wood shop. It simply had never happened before.

And how could it!?!?!? It not being "masculine" to type, boys simply couldn't learn how!

Now by "couldn't" I don't mean "were physically incapable." Instead I mean "couldn't" as in absolutely weren't allowed to. Yeah. I dunno either. Possibly because it would make them gay.

I was only in 7th grade so to be honest I don't know how I wound up staying in the class. But despite the fact that it's just not "masculine" I actually a) learned how to type at approximately the same rate everyone else did, and b) didn't turn gay.

Ironically, if I hadn't learned how to type, I probably wouldn't have taken a computer class in the late 1970s. And if I hadn't done that I probably wouldn't have been hired a few years later by a small but soon-to-be-very-large west-coast software company. And if I hadn't done that then I'd probably be a Walmart return-sales clerk somewhere.

The laugh riot now, of course, is that if you're male and you were born any time after roughly 1970... or actually if you're male and able to enter the URL for this blog... it has never occurred to you that typing would be a girls-only activity.

And of course it's not.

Because society is no longer amputating that skill set from boys in order to "make them a man."

For what it's worth, the same time I got put into a typing class a 7th grade girl was slotted into a woodworking class. Again, I was in 7th grade so I wasn't really following what happened in woodshops. But my guess would be that like... pretty much every boy who took wood shop in the 1970s it didn't materially prepare her for the technology boom that was just beginning to show on the horizon.

But at least it didn't amputate her ability to use a hammer, saw, sandpaper, or linseed oil to make shoe racks in order to insure her "femininity" remained intact.

Gender. It's for morons.

Assuming you're a carbon-based life form you've probably heard the common wisdom that men think about sex more often than women. Common wisdom varies but usually it's every six minutes for men. And while common wisdom is pretty much completely silent on how often women think about sex it's always a foregone conclusion that it's not as much.

Anyway, like a lot of common wisdom that "everyone knows" because it reinforces common... um... stereotypes the actual difference was just too well-known for anyone to bother to go back and check.

Until now. Via Patrick Morgan a preliminary study titled "Sex on the Brain?: An Examination of Frequency of Sexual Cognitions as a Function of Gender, Erotophilia, and Social Desirability" tried to confirm what "everybody knows." And discovered instead that while men do think about it more frequently compared to women they also think about all their other bodily needs (food and sleep as well as sex) more frequently. The upshot evidently (again it's another study conducted by public employees with public grant money that's behind another private paywall) is "it's complicated." Men evidently do body check-ins more frequently than women do, and when they do they think about sex... but they also think about other body needs like food and sleep. Women evidently do check-in less frequently but when they do they think about sex, food, sleep, and other needs in proportions very similar to men.

Anyway, it sounds like in absolute terms men do think of sex more often but proportionately don't think about it more than women do. I don't feel a sufficient urge to know to ask someone to send me an ungated copy of the paper, but I am curious how they feel proportional need-based cognitions is a better metric than absolute numbers.

But they must feel pretty confident about it because the abstract ends with

Overall, erotophilia* was a better predictor of sexual cognition than was sex of participant. Taken as a whole, the results suggest that, although there may be a sex difference in sexual cognitions, it is smaller than is generally thought, and the reporting is likely influenced by sex role expectations.”

Source: Discover Blogs - NCBI ROFL

The next question, especially after a relatively small-scale study like this, would probably be whether there's much variation in erotophilia between men and women. But it's always great when someone takes a closer look at what "everybody knows." As Will Rogers said, "It isn't what we don't know that gives us trouble, it's what we know that ain't so."

* See Cory Silverberg's definition of erotophilia. It's a psychological term for, basically, comfort and interest in sex.

Photo outside co-ed wing of Avent Hall by Flickr user Desales University.
Used under a Creative Commons license.

Reflecting on reactions to news about college students and sex Matthew Yglesias wonders what all the fuss would be about.

As John Garvey explains, “Students in co-ed housing are more likely (55.7%) than students in single-sex dorms (36.8%) to have had a sexual partner in the last year—and more than twice as likely to have had three or more.”

Except strangely Garvey presents this as part of an argument against co-ed dorms. Which is silly. College students are adults. It’s of course true that, thanks to technological change, it’s now important for a large share of young adults to dedicate themselves to additional schooling at an age when traditionally they would have been engaged in full-time back-breaking agricultural labor. But that doesn’t change the fact that a college student is a person fully equipped to enjoy having sex — a fun, affordable, and ecologically sustainable pastime.

Source: Matthew Yglesias

Recalling my own early non-college days and then later college days I'm going to accept the figures at face value but add the very strong caveat that at least as long as there's a choice different kinds of people choose different kinds of housing.  I'd go a step further and suggest that even in schools where only single-sex or only co-ed housing is offered different kinds of people choose different kinds of schools as well.  And finally I'd add that at schools that still have a tradition of in loco parentis younger students (freshmen at least and often sophomores) are probably more closely supervised and more likely to be assigned to single-sex dorms even when both types are available.  And of course contrary to popular belief roughly 50% of college sophomores have not yet had sex (or at least not intercourse) and so unless you're completely wild-eyed and squeamish about sex your studies should control for all of the above.

And finally, whereas there's some small number of students who enter college before age 18 there are scarcely any at all who are still 17 or younger by their Junior years.

I'd like to assume Garvey's sources controlled for obvious stuff like that (I can't tell because his op-ed is behind a Murdoch paywall), but like Yglesias I get the distinct impression that in keeping with Murdoch-publication tendencies Garvey himself sounds too panic stricken about the possibility of adults having

That said, Yglesias is of course 100% correct: the kind of college student most likely to live in mixed housing is an adult, is almost certainly better-socialized to both genders (regardless of his or her individual orientation), and is generally very well equipped to safely and conscientiously decide to have consensual sex with his or her partner(s) of choice when presented with an opportunity. And to both expect to have their decisions to be honored and to honor the decisions of others.

If I can just go one step further out on a limb about co-ed living situations, they tend to present more opportunities for between-sex contact while everyone's completely sober and while people are not likely to be in party/"hookup" mode. With the result that, all else being equal, students in co-ed situations are more likely that segregated ones to form... interesting but not necessarily well-informed opinions about the opposite sex. At least that was my general experience under three circumstances: while living in co-ed apartments with other starving hippies, when working in bars in a big-10 university district when the legal drinking age was still 18 and most students and the single-sex to co-ed housing ratio was around three to one, and much later when I went to college myself and lived in co-ed student housing.

And finally, particularly based on my experience of big-10 single-sex housing students vs later mainly co-ed housing college, there were still instances of sexually abusive situations (by men and women) in co-ed housing they tended to be waaay lower-frequency than with single-sex housing. Even considering factors such as big southern university vs. small northwest college and greater awareness of personal autonomy. The main determinant, in my opinion, was that in housing people of both sexes were in a position to monitor goings on and apply peer pressure and, if necessary, peer intervention when situations began to develop.

Speaking of discussion that shakes out of the Anthony Weiner fiasco without actually involving Weiner himself of Sheryl Gay Stolberg mentions a serious double standard in our expectations of men and women's sexual "propriety." And I'm passing it along because to a certain (I think probably extensive) degree

“I have no hard evidence that women are less likely to engage in risky or somewhat stupid behavior,” Ms. Pearson said. “But women in Congress are still really in a situation where they have to prove themselves to their male colleagues and constituents. There’s sort of this extra level of seriousness.”

And voters demand it. Celinda Lake, a Democratic strategist, says women politicians are punished more harshly than men for misbehavior. “When voters find out men have ethics and honesty issues, they say, ‘Well, I expected that.’" Ms. Lake said. “When they find out it’s a woman, they say, ‘I thought she was better than that.’"

Source: The New York Times

One of my big axioms about expectations is that while nobody's perfect, in the aggregate human beings are remarkably good at rising to their expectations but remarkably bad at exceeding them.

So... what do you think the consequences might be of saying "We can't expect men to control their sexual urges but we expect women to be better than that?"

Note: Celinda Lake isn't saying those are her expectations, she's reciting commonly held social expectations -- expectations that are held as dearly and enforced as rigorously by the likes of arch patriarchs like Mike Huckabee and of uber-radfems like Twisty Faster as well as fans and commentators of relative lightweights like Bret Farvre ("some guys just never grow up") and Britney Spears ("what a slut.")

Check out all the foofaraw over the recent SlutWalk protests. The whole thing was triggered by a Toronto cop setting expectations: we expect women to control themselves because men are incapable of self-control. And the reaction, again from left and right, has had a disappointing tendency to revolve around social expectations that... women must act "respectably" in order not to "make" men behave irresponsibly.

Ironically, but in a lot of ways not at all surprisingly, the only voices of dissent from that particular status quo are the subset of generally-younger feminists who aren't old-school "man-haters" at all but instead have a rather generous expectation that men are human beings and not animals, and who are mostly just over-the-moon exasperated that men don't, won't, or (even more often) are heavily pressured not to meet their expectations.

Those are the feminists, for instance, who got the original intention of the SlutWalk organizers, or like Halifax crisis center co-ordinator Jackie Stevens who, according to reporter Hilary Beaumont (emphasis mine) says

Rather than automatically thinking that way, she says society needs to see that an attacker has chosen to take advantage of someone who is vulnerable.

When Stevens reads articles about drunk driving, the police are quoted telling people to stop drinking and driving. But when she reads articles about sexual assault, there is no warning telling would-be attackers not to rape. Instead, the authorities tell potential victims to take precautions.

...

“Rather than always putting out the messages of ‘don’t walk alone’ or ‘don’t drink’ or ‘don’t talk to strangers’—all of those things—we need to say ‘don’t sexually assault,’” Stevens declares.

...

As a result of these misplaced messages, we say, "She shouldn’t have been walking home alone late at night," or, "She shouldn’t have worn a short skirt," rather than, "He shouldn’t have raped her."

Source: The Nova Scotia Dominion

Not that expectations are all about rape, even though questions about expectation and rape abound. It also boils down to crap as petty as expecting adult men to figure out how to tie their own ties instead of needing their partners to do it for them. (Hint: My dad taught me how to tie a tie on Sunday mornings before when I was about eight. And then expected me to do it from then on. An expectation I've somehow always managed to rise to even during my hippie and every-day-is-casual-Friday tech days when I could go years at a time without needing to wear one. But I digress....)

Anyway, that's the big realization that caused me to drop my lackluster search for a non-misogynist, non-sensitive-new-age-guy men's movement and switch to unapologetic feminism: that feminists had higher expectations for men than not only society at large but of considerable numbers of nominal "men's rights" activists. (Because with a few notable exceptions most of the "rights" MRAs are activist for read a lot more like excuses. I'm pretty sure this is one of the big reasons they get so little traction from feminists and non-feminists a like.)

Does that mean I agree with everything feminism has to say about men? Why no as a matter of fact I don't. And does it mean I think men should just go along with whatever feminism says would be good for us? Bwahahahahah! No, because that would be just more of the same letting women do the heavy lifting expectation-wise wouldn't it? Which in my very sincere opinion would be falling once again into the most insidiously anti-feminist trap possible. It's ok to listen to feminists as human beings contributed to what might be a consensus on expectations, but because they are human beings there's no reason to believe they've got any essential insight. In fact almost the opposite! There needs to be a consensus on equal expectations precisely because society demands as much too much of women as it expects too little of men. That's something we can only all work out together.

Anyway, I seriously appreciate those feminists who've got enough respect for men (and, I'd add, enough realism about women) to recognize that one of the most critical equalities is not simply equality of opportunity ("classic-liberal" feminists) or separate-but equalities (essentialist feminists) or even equality of power (original-radical feminists) but equality of expectations. Because, seriously, the sentiment captured and related, but one hopes not shared, by Celinda Lake does no favors either for men or for women. Period. At all.

Sungold uses reactions to the Rep. Weiner cybersex scandal to emphasize a far more "scandalous" but actually utterly mundane fact about "sexting." (emphasis mine)

I wouldn’t be able to give [reporters asking for a gender-studies take] a pat explanation, because I think that masculine sexual entitlement isn’t the whole story. We all have an unruly id. Men aren’t the only folks playing at sex on the Internet. Every hetero man playing around in the vast cyber sex emporium is interacting with female partners (or at least, so he thinks).

Source: Kittywampus

Yes.  Yup.  Yeah, exactly!  Whatever one might think of Weiner himself (I'm generally forgiving but not at all about to forget) the behavior he actually engaged in was by all (or possibly all but one) accounts step-wise consensual and/or reciprocally escalated.

But how, sez all the knee-squeezing twits who reflexively think "hurr hurr they said 'weiner,'" could that possibly happen if people with lady parts were involved?  Sungold has a suggestion that will shock them even further.

Mainstream practitioners of ev psych systematically avoid theorizing about pleasure. It’s all about “reproductive success.” And yet, the quest for pleasure is by far the more parsimonious explanation for Weiner’s actions. What’s more, it even explains his partners’ actions! Weiner and his partners were looking to get off. They wanted the thrill of being wanted. They enjoyed the thrill enough to risk (or repress) the potential for embarrassment, should they be caught out. Of course it’s true that Weiner, as a congressman, had more to lose, but the women have also been dragged through the mud in ways that were foreseeable. They, too, took a risk.

Shocking I know.  But there you go.  Lady parts don't get wet when you drop a quarter in them (the "women need a reason, men just need a place" theory), or when they think they're going to get a baby (the hysterical womb theory) or even just for their husbands (the monogamous "what evolution does to keep the offspring's father around the house" theory.)

Instead I have it on very good authority (on average more than 103.4 million authorities in the United States alone) that lady parts get wet when women get horny.  And on average when they get horny it feels really, really good when someone rubs their lady parts just right or (gasp!) when they do it to themselves!  And on average stuff like consensual, reciprocally escalated online flirting, sexting, and phone cyber sex makes women horny, which makes them wet, which makes it feel even better when they rub their lady parts.

Hmm... wouldn't it be funny if you had to lay out a similar case to explain why men like online flirting, sexting, and phone- and cybersex?

Now to respond fairly to the field Sungold is interrogating, yes, the fact that rubbing your own lady- or gentleman is really pleasurable is probably a byproduct of evolution.  But only in the same way the hair on our heads grows in such a way that we can enjoy looking at it when we part it in the middle is a byproduct of evolution: as a byproduct of some other probably-more-critical function.

But trying to explain why our drives to reproduce is directly rather than very-indirectly responsible for our appreciation of parting our hair in the middle or rubbing our own parts, without using a general (no-doubt evolved) ability to hack our gene expressions for pure personal enjoyment is going to be a fool's chase.

Hmm... to digress even further, an even better example of the general phenomenon of hacking might be that many people like Jagermeister despite the fact that eons ago our animal ancestors evolved a kind of taste bud that identifies poisonous alkaloids as bitter.  We evolved the taste buds to avoid eating poisonous plants and minerals, but since we're flexible enough to hack taste-bud expression we're able to take pleasure from the flavor of Jagermeister.

To get back on track, anyway, Sungold's right that the general, non-sex-specific drive to create pleasurable sensations from direct stimulation of nerve endings, regardless of their original "purpose" goes way farther to explain why men and women sext and cybersex each other than any amount of speculation about seed spreading or husband retention.

Deep in comments over at Ozymandias's place frequent commenter Kaija has an excellent point about understanding feminism... and consequently about making accusations of it.

As for feminism, I think it's like Christianity...a generally good idea that comes in about 64,000 flavors and some of them really suck (I'm nonreligious myself). However, the fact that Fred Phelps and the Westboro Bible Church exists doesn't make me discount the many Christians I know who are actually doing good works and taking loving action to walk the talk. When you hear that someone is a feminist or a Christian, a good place to start is to ask them what they believe instead of assuming the worst. Judge not lest ye be judged and love your neighbor and do unto others as you would have them do to you seems like pretty good advice to me. There are assholes in every group of people...no ONE has a monopoly on that one. I prefer to gravitate towards the proactive and questioning rather than the reactionary and dismissive. Thanks to those who contributed constructively here...let's keep the conversation going.

She said it here.

I think that's about right. Yeah, there are a couple of Fred Phelps in Christianity, and something like them in feminism too. Same, obviously, with men's rights activists too. That doesn't mean the Phelps's of the world shouldn't be challenged -- quite the opposite! But Kaija's right that you can't point at him and his smug little coven and say "Christianity's bad."

Lori Adelman says (emphasis mine)

Insofar as it’s true that the tale of the falsely accused rapist is a man’s worst nightmare, it’s also a feminist’s worst nightmare. False rape accusations- and false accusations of any kind, really, aren’t good for anyone. They shouldn’t be framed as an anti-feminist issue any more than sexual assault should be framed as solely a feminist issue. It’s when the quest for justice becomes an anti-woman bashing session that feminists have to step in.

Source: Feministing

This is not only entirely obvious but entirely true.

Quick question: who's more likely to file a false rape report?  A radical feminist, a mainstream feminist, a "I'm not a feminist but..." feminist, or a woman with no notion of feminism except maybe a second-hand anti-feminist-inspired belief that whatever feminism is it's bad and wrong?

I mean, what exactly are the common accusations of false rape supposed to be based on here?  According to even the bitterest proponents of false-accusation theory say the primary motivations for those who admit* they filed false accusations are

• Needed an alibi to explain shame or embarrassment over pregnancy, STI, other evidence of sexual activity, truancy, etc. (50%)
• "Rage, revenge, or retribution" against a real or perceived wrong, rejection, or betrayal by the accused (27-44%)
• The remainder is a mix of attention-garnering disorders like Munchausen and borderline personality, criminal extortion, and "unspecified."

None of those reasons rank really high on the old feminist agenda.  Not even the Rush-Limbaugh-fueled "feminazi" one!  In fact, I'm... pretty sure you'll never find exactly zero feminists who advocate filing false rape reports.**

Adelman continues

[I]t’s frustrating to me that there’s such a strong relationship between false rape activists and anti-feminists, because in reality feminists and those trying to reduce instances of false rape accusations have a lot of overlap and a lot in common. We both want a fair and effective justice system. We both want to reduce stigma and discrimination around cases of sexual assault. We both want to find ways to facilitate more honest and truthful dialogue around rape, sexual assault, and violence in our communities and justice systems.

Same here.  It's 100% bullshit for anyone to "cry rape."  It's also 100% bullshit for an actual rape victim's account be, well, discounted. Because...

Ok, another quick question: what percent of rapes that aren't reported are actual rapes?  Ooh, that's kind of an oxymoron isn't it?  And if you figure that even opponents acknowledge that most "real" rapes go unreported we're still looking at a fuck of a lot of unpunished actual rapes and sexual assaults that false-rape activists and feminists alike have a definite and mutual interest in bringing to justice.

Now Adelman brings an accusation that while perfectly accurate is only 50% complete

[M]any men’s rights groups take up the cause of false rape accusations with great gusto, but that their enthusiasm for seeking justice through the law rarely extends to victims of sexual assault.

Again, this is as perfectly true as MRA accusations that feminists don't bring as much enthusiasm for extending sympathy for those who really are falsely accused of rape as they do for seeking justice against those who are legitimately accused.

And I'll just go out on a limb here and say that a) anyone who doesn't take the falsely accused seriously (too many feminists) or b) anyone who doesn't take the falsely disbelieved seriously (an astonishing percentage of anti-feminists and MRAs) needs to step up and see this as two sides of one single problem.

Look, I can see both sides of this issue really, really clearly.  A European immigrant friend was falsely accused of sexually abusing his pre-school-aged daughter based on bathtub photos that a clerk in a Mississippi River town Walmart thought looked suspicious.  (The photos in question wouldn't have warranted a second glance on either coast.)  The process of defending himself basically bankrupted him, nearly ruined his reputation, and tied his extended family in knots.  He wasn't allowed to see his daughter without "supervision" until middle school!  So yeah, false accusations disfigure and burn like acid in the face.

But then again I've sat and talked through the night with women friends who sure as shit were raped and weren't believed, or were so afraid they wouldn't be believed, or knew the family of the rapist*** had enough money, influence, and reputation to first publicly drag her scruffy, lower-class, not-a-virgin self through the mud and then get their son acquitted anyway.  And yeah, true accusations that nobody will take seriously are also symptoms of a deeply, disgracefully diseased society.

So I'm going to put this really simply: if you're an MRA who doesn't put as much heart and soul into insuring all real victims of rape are heard, believed, taken seriously, and see justice done then you're actually not serious about resolving the problem of false accusations of rape.

Meanwhile if you're an activist who doesn't put as much heart and soul into insuring that false accusations of rape is universally understood to be as intrinsically and inextricably deep a manifestation of rape culture as rape itself then you're not serious about resolving the problem of rape not being taken seriously either.

Rape is sexual violence and it happens often enough that everybody should take it seriously.  False accusations of rape and sexual assault are also sexual violence and while not at all as common as rape (since, remember MRAs, most real cases go unreported) and should also be taken seriously.

The problems are nearly inextricably linked, and they'll remain linked till they're addressed head on by advocates for victims of both.

* Probably a really bad idea to pick those who've just been pressured to plead guilty to lesser charges though.  Turns out that can really backfire.

** In fact you might find the opposite! A California anti-rape activist from the 1970s quoted in one of the old Whole Earth Catalogs recommended that rape victims tell police that their assailants only indecently exposed themselves.  Her reasoning went like this: rape victims are almost never believed unless they've got stab wounds, when charges are filed rape defendants are acquitted, when rape defendants are convicted they're often treated with respect by fellow prisoners, and when they get out of jail they're out of jail and that's usually that.  Meanwhile, though, accusations of indecent exposure are taken very seriously, accusers are almost always believed, defendants are rarely acquitted, if convicted of indecent exposure they receive virtually zero respect from fellow prisoners, and at least in California at the time anyone convicted of indecent exposure (but weirdly not, at the time, those convicted of rape) must register as a sex offender every time he moved for the rest of his life.

*** The same very-wealthy surgeon's son who years earlier had assaulted and nearly raped me and did rape the other boy he cornered me with.  And no, neither of us reported it either.

David Futrelle found a seriously complicated expression of the bogus Two Rules of Desire. What's unusual about it is that it's driven so thickly by Rule #2 (It's simultaneously inconceivable and intolerable for a man to be sexually desired.)  Basically he found a seemingly-sincere post from a highly... conflicted young man on the website Is It Normal.  Here's Futrelle

[T]his guy hates female sexuality in part because, well, he thinks the male body is ugly and so assumes – or at least feels on a gut level —  that any woman having sex with a man is being coerced, bamboozled, or raped. Yep, we’re talking about a rich and toxic stew of misogyny and misandry here. Let’s let him explain:

What little mysogyny I have in me is directed at female sexuality. I can’t stand it that females are attracted to males, ever. I hate them a little for it, just feel it in my gut. I thought for a long time when I was younger that females were basically asexual, not interested in sex, and that romance for them was something far removed from physical love. It didn’t occur to me that anyone might find the male form attractive, and I always suspected males were using some form of deception or raping women in some way when they were with them. I don’t understand this hate and distrust for my own sex. It really bothers me.

I hate that I feel there’s something wrong with a female having an active sexuality when I know intellectually there’s not.

...

Source: Man Boobz

Ouch!

The Two Rules of Desire are driven heavily by the mainstream and therefore heterosexual male impression that sex is driven entirely by men's desire and that women only agree to sex in exchange for something... anything else.  The hope of pregnancy, for safety and security, maybe just dinner and a movie, or even cold hard cash are all ok.  But just "I'm horny and I'm hoping you'll help me do something about it?"  Not so much.

It would just be funny or sad if the young man didn't appear to feel angry at women who "violate" his image of what women's sexuality really ought to be.  Even if there was no misandry in his position (there's lots) and even his position wasn't misogynistic (it is) it would still be bloody fucking oppressive.  Because it would still be an almost pure expression of the dominant paradigm's view of men as the "sex class" (obliged eternally to demand sex) and women as the "no-sex class," (completely disinterested in sex per se which must always be reluctantly "earned" or "taken" but never freely offered.)

Ugg!

Pema Levy correctly identifies sex-that-doesn't-punish-women activist Marjorie Dannenfelser as both a liar and a bastard.

The most important way for conservatives to roll back access to family planning is to link it to abortion. To wit, at the Faith and Freedom Conference last week, Susan B. Anthony List president Marjorie Dannenfelser declared: “Every year that contraception and family planning increases, the abortion rate also increases in direct proportion. … This is an undeniable fact.” SBA List will not support a candidate that does not want to defund Planned Parenthood because of this faux-causal relationship between contraception and abortion.

Source: TAPPED

To equate a correlation with a causation is to be either stupid or a deliberate liar. Presiding over a major nationwide political organization requires considerable intelligence; to be president of the Susan B. Anthony List means categorically that Marjorie Dannenfelser not stupid. Therefore she's a calculated, categorical liar.

To a) deliberately lie about a causal relationship between contraception and abortion when b) there is no causal relationship and c) there is in fact considerable credible evidence that women who lose access to contraception instead increase their rate of abortion when d) your stated purpose of making such a correlation is your opposition to abortion and e) you've been previously identified as not stupid enough to make such a mistake in error is... to identify one's self as a mendacious bastard. Marjorie Dannenfelser and her coven of supporters are aggressively performing items A-E. Consequently Marjorie Dannenfelser is a mendacious bastard.

So if access to contraception does not in fact increase the rate of abortion for those who have access to it but instead decreases it, but the decidedly non-stupid president of a nominally anti-abortion organization makes that claim she must be making it to advance an agenda that's... well... not actually causally related to reducing the rate of abortion.

I'm thoroughly prepared to acknowledge that other people have a different view of the origin of human life. And consequently I can acknowledge that other people can honestly and ethically oppose abortion on the basis of their view of when life originates. Even if I disagree with their view. Even if I bitterly disagree!

But by moving beyond the debatable question of when human life begins into the thoroughly unambiguous question of opposing contraception itself, Dannenfelser and her ilk surrender any and all right to claim that their motivations are, at all, about protecting unborn human life.

So if, as I think is an inescapable conclusion that Dannenfelser's organization is interested in far more than opposing abortion, what is their intention instead?

Pema Levy concludes, as do I, that (emphasis mine.)

Dannenfelser's statement has nothing to do with facts and everything to do with the idea that women should, literally, bear the consequences of having sex.

I think that's about right. We can quibble about why the sam hill anyone would want women to think about sex in terms of consequences to be suffered. But there's no quibbling that that is indeed the only conceivable purpose of opposing contraception.

Want a little tip about contraception?

Not one single woman I know has had an unplanned, unwanted pregnancy with a man who's had a successful vasectomy. Not a single woman on earth has had an unplanned, unwanted pregnancy with a man after having a successful tubal ligation.