Photo by Flickr user avlxyz. Used under a Creative Commons license.

Speaking of (mostly-male) researcher's obsessive fixation on "female sexuality" and (almost complete) neglect of men's sexuality, Dr. Petra Boynton brings it home with the following thought experiment. She's talking about yet another case of "does she or doesn't she" research on, what else, whether women have "g-spots."

[C]onsider how this scenario would look if it were penises under the microscope. While there are undoubtedly distressing issues facing men around penis size and stamina the stereotype for men is they all experience pleasure from their dicks. If you talk to men you discover some get intense pleasure from testicle stimulation and are unable to orgasm without this. Some hate their balls touched. Some get a lot of pleasure if attention is paid to the shaft of the penis. Some find direct stimulation to the glans uncomfortable. Others experience more pleasure from anal stimulation.

Yet we do not suggest because men can and do experience pleasure from different areas in their genitals that there are specific spots that guarantee male orgasm or that men are somehow deficient if they do not experience say, a left testicle orgasm. We don’t scan, survey, or perform autopsies on penises to establish the most sensitive parts. Nor do we have self help books, courses or sex toys designed to coach men into experiencing orgasm through stimulation to specific areas of their genitals.

Indeed suggesting this usually results in people laughing. Why would we do this? But we do seem to feel the need to continue to make women’s bodies and sexual responses seem complex and difficult. Actually that’s not quite true. One journal and the media appear preoccupied with this. Most people are not that bothered and certainly most sex researchers are not.

Source: Petra Boynton

First of all, hey, left-testicular orgasms! WTF? Where can I get one of those!?!?!? Why aren't there tons of books and DETAILS magazine articles telling me, and my partner(s) how to find this elusive "L-T spot?" Oh, right.

Hey, is it time to get out the bogus Two Rules of Desire of the dominant women-as-the "no-sex" class paradigm yet? Thanks to Rule #1 (it is simultaneously inconceivable and intolerable for a woman to express sexual desire) "female" sexuality is a big, giant mystery. A medical problem! Heck, did I say medical? It's an out-and-out engineering problem! Meanwhile, thanks to Rule #2 (it is simultaneously inconceivable and intolerable for a man to be sexually desired) there... pretty much isn't a field anyone calls "male sexuality."

It goes without saying that neither women nor men benefit from what amounts to the academic equivalents of trying to get a peek into the girl's lockerroom.

Now. Does that mean there's anything particularly wrong with turning an interest in the sexual details of the kind of people you have an orientation for into a topic for research? Not specifically. Unless for some reason the vast, vast, vast majority of researchers are of one sex and one orientation.

Similarly is should we be particularly put out that guys like this Adam Ostrzenski would prefer to feel more comfortable, say, dissecting dead 83-year-old women to trying to help, say, live 21-year-old men have left-testicle orgasms? Eh. It might be a little phobic but you can't say there's not a heck of a lot of social pressure on straight men not to spend a lot of time thinking about other men's penises.

So!

Not to sound petty or self-interested but this seems like as good a reason as any to encourage more women to become academics in STEM fields. As commenter PattyCake put it in my last post "Because who wants to think about guys jacking off? (Me!)"

Something to keep in mind about the recent Secret Service / Sex-worker scandal in Cartagena, Columbia. When an American tried to pay a sex worker only $30 after previously agreeing to pay her $800 she complained to the police.

She complained to the police.

If you're an American take a minute to wrap your head around that.  Take more than a minute if you need to.  And you might.  But let's look at that again.

She. Complained. To the police.

The possibility that a sex worker would complain to the police almost certainly never occurred to the American.

The possibility that the police would listen to her probably never crossed his mind.

Because in America, where that kind of sex work is universally illegal it just doesn't work that way.

Because every American customer, let alone every American criminal/sexual predator, knows that no American sex worker dares go to the police no matter how badly they're treated.

And of course it's not just American customers and predators who can't wrap their head around the concept.  Nominal sex-worker defenders who can speak only in terms of "prostituted women" don't seem to get it either.  Nor is the general public, immersed as we are in cop shows, "gritty urban realism" metaphors, "heart of gold hooker" movies like Pretty Girl, and Krucher Ashton videos, likely to have much luck either.

So.

Small wonder then the American Secret Service agent thought he could get away with treating a Colombian sex worker the way he would treat (has treated?) sex workers at home or elsewhere abroad.

I mean, even if you "know" sex work is legal in the "3rd-world" town* you're visiting it's unlikely it would occur to you that if you bilk a sex worker she'll complain to the police.

The American made a bad decision to effectively rob a sex worker.  Unfortunately for him a decision under Colombian law makes it safe for sex workers to complain to the police.

Standard disclaimer: One can oppose sex work as an industry and still celebrate social, civil, and legal protection for those who practice it.  Further, the social transformations required to end the sex work industry does not require that sex work itself remain illegal.  And finally, one can oppose the sex work industry and still recognize who benefits most from laws prohibiting it.

* Note: Socioeconomically speaking Cargagena, Columbia is considered a thriving, multi-industry middle-to-upper-middle class city that regularly hosts international economic and trade summits.

According to this morning's Seattle Times

The Vatican orthodoxy watchdog announced Wednesday a full-scale overhaul of the largest umbrella group for nuns in the United States, accusing the group of taking positions that undermine Roman Catholic teaching on the priesthood and homosexuality while promoting "certain radical feminist themes incompatible with the Catholic faith."

Would the Catholic Church ever consider chartering nuns to investigate and discipline priests and bishops for taking positions that also undermine Roman Catholic teachings on the priesthood and homosexuality while also promoting "certain misogynist and/or pedophilic themes incompatible with Catholic faith?"

No. They wouldn't because regardless of the merits the optics of giving an exclusive-to-women enterprise complete dominion over an exclusive-to-men one would seem arbitrary, capricious, unfair, punitive, and wrong. And probably sexist.

So why on this great blue marble does the Catholic Church think it's a good idea to give a skutload of men complete dominion over an order they themselves have restricted entirely to women?

Yes, yes, I'm aware that according to the Bishop's doctrines raping a woman or sodomizing a child is a repentable venal sin whereas saving a pregnant woman's life is an unrepentable mortal one. And so as a matter of degree one could accept the notion that reviewing the policies of nuns would be more in order than a similar review of policies for priests. (I'm not saying I'd rank them the same, just that on paper you could see differences in priority.)

And yes, I'm aware that since homosexuality in both sexes are considered wrong it could be completely coincidental that the Bishops chose first to review an order of nuns before a corresponding review of an order of priests. (I'm not saying I'd rank them the same, just that again on paper I could see how you might tackle one before tackling the other.)

What I don't get, however, is the batshit insane optics of appointing an all-male team to...

oversee the overhaul of [an organization of priests], which will include rewriting the group's statutes, reviewing all its plans and programs — including approving speakers — and ensuring the organization properly follows Catholic prayer and ritual.

How about, oh, maybe, if you think an overhaul is really needed, for the Church to appoint a team of priests and nuns to do the job?

I'm...

I'm trying to be fair here, and I'm obviously trying to limit the scope of my objections to a purely procedural level, but since it would stick in my craw if the Church appointed only nuns to crack down, hard, on American priests it similarly sticks in my craw that they're appointing only priests to crack down hard on nuns.

Photo by Flickr user Eoin Gardiner. Used under a Creative Commons license.

Em & Lo report from the Institute for Public Research that really nail shut the coffin on the misogynist fantasy that women innately "hypergamous" gold-diggers.

Is there any generation that doesn’t consider itself a watershed? We’re suckers for studies that prove we were born at a true turning point. Research by the Institute for Public Policy Research — a lefty, UK-based think tank — shows that “marrying up” is becoming a thing of the past, and the change really started with women born in the 1970s (hi!). While there has been a slight rise in the number of women who “marry down” (we prefer to think of it as a rise in the number of men seeking “aspirational marriages”), the most significant change is that more and more women are choosing to marry men of a similar social status, rather than trying to “bag a rich man,” as the classy saying goes.  Sorry, Don Draper.

Amongst women born in 1958, for example, 38% married “well” — and please take those distancing quote-marks seriously! 23% married someone from a poorer background, and about a third married someone of similar status. Amongst women born in 1970, the number “marrying up” dropped by 5%, and 45% married someone of similar status. And for women born between 1976 and 1981, only 16% married a Don Draper.

Source: Today on EMandLO.com

Hmm... how 'bout that "hypergamy instinct" women are supposed to have evolved according to the usual evo-psycho suspects?

A 50% drop in the number of women "marrying up" and a corresponding increase in the number marrying across would require a heck of a lot of "evolution" in a single generation. On the other hand, if women were, like, people maybe it's something more like when when have the financial, economic, and political resources to marry who they want instead of who they have to you marry who they want!

Incidentally this is really, really good news for men and (some varieties of) men's rights activists who've correctly observed that men have been socially constructed to value ourselves only as innately unattractive, possibly unlovable "walking wallets."

In other words, this information further demonstrates how bogus the bogus Two Rules of Desire really are. Especially Rule #2.