Kind of weird what you get when you run that L.A. Times article about Tim Gunn's 29 years of celibacy" through Regender.com.

The original article is kind of a piece of work. The reporter (and, evidently tens of thousands of people querying Google) are somewhere between shock, fascination, and denial that the Project Runway co-host hasn't had sex since the early 1980s. All the more so because Gunn says it hasn't been a very big deal for him.

The real hoot is that people who (correctly) don't bat an eye that Gunn's last relationship was with a man nevertheless disapprove of his failure to be sexual at all for three decades.

Another weird thing about the original article is that the reporter asked, of all people, a surgeon who specializes almost exclusively in women's health and sexuality to opine on Gunn's "condition." (You'd think they could find at least one psychologist or urologist in LA who regularly sees gay men. Or men period.)

Even weirder, or more like unpleasant, is what the surgeon, Dr. Jennifer R. Berman, has to say.

...Gunn's 29-year, self-imposed dry spell was "not a natural state."

[and]

Berman said that, if she were treating Gunn, she'd like to know: Does he continue to be celibate by choice -- or out of fear? For example, she said, if we lived in a magical world where sexually transmitted diseases and AIDS were not an issue ... would Gunn still abstain from sexual intimacy?

"It's not a natural sort of decision, nor is it biological or physiological -- we are not wired that way," she said. "It sounds like there are issues relating to trust," she added.

Source: The Los Angeles Times

Or, as Jill of I Blame the Patriarchy put it

"If she were treating him for this “illness,” she says, she would get to the bottom of his debilitating trust issues, for Man Must Boink!"

She said it here.

Look, I don't want to single out Berman, or even the reporter, and certainly not all the people who think this is just earth-shattering news. Imagine, a man! Who doesn't have sex! Inconceivable! Almost intolerable!* But that whole "man must boink" business is as clearly socially constructed as a Windsor tie. What's really chilling is that a man who doesn't "boink" isn't just weird, he's broken and wrong and by gum we'd better fix him or else really break him!

Call it the opposite of the other obligatory gender construction, "slut shaming." A man who, when given a choice to take it or leave it picks "leave it" ought to be ashamed of himself. And the only reason people don't shame the crap out of them is there are just a whole lot more places to hide, and a whole lot fewer witnesses (how does one witness not doing it anyway?)

There are a lot of really bad consequences to this assumption that "man must boink." Really bad. And given that, going back as far as the late 1970s researchers have notice that as many as 15% of adult men really would rather not, that's a lot of potential bad stuff. For instance you know that eternal "joke" about how 90% of men masturbate and the other 10% are liars? If you're not one of the 100% who everyone "knows" wants sex then you're going one of a couple of ways, none of them very good and some really bad. For instance you might do really ugly stereotype-ish things because you're trying to "pass." Or you might take the prim/prudish path and say all sex is sin and should only be done "for reproduction." If that. Or you might just lie a lot. But since we live in a misogynist culture pretty much all the ways of "passing" involve misogyny, and since people trying to pass tend to be over the top then, yeah, you can end up with a lot of over-the-top misogyny.

Most of which (though not all) could be mitigated (though probably not eliminated) if the asshats at USAToday and "experts" from the L.A. Times would keep their ignorant, stereotype-enforcing pie holes shut.

A few years ago I got a brainstorm from one of Twisty Faster's posts and decided that in a lot of ways it makes more sense to say that men are the "sex class" (meaning they're the class constructed to be reflexively, uncontrollably, obligately sexual) while women might be better designated as the "no sex" class where it's simultaneously inconceivable and intolerable that a woman would ever experience, let alone admit, sexual interest. In either case, people who don't fit their respective stereotypes aren't just thought to be somewhere on the normal bell curve, and they're not just considered maybe a little quirky, and they're not maybe just in a less-obvious part of the population, they're broken, sick, wrong, and actually kind of a threat. One that needs to be "mended," or explained away or even outright denied.

The opprobrium heaped on Gunn just makes the case. He's male but not obligately sexual and he's suddenly weirder than if he had three buttocks.

More proof, by the way, that society's patriarchal. And classed. And gendered.

Me? I'm not on the same part of the bell curve as Gunn but since my first trip through a gym lockerroom in 7th grade I've experienced intense pressure not just to "be a man" but to be compulsively sexual. Sexual's fine -- I like being sexual -- but compulsively? No, that's not been good at all -- it pushed me into places I'd rather not have gone, before I was ready to go there, and I'm just continuing to confront, over and over, the places that pressure told me to go that I really should never have gone and wish I hadn't.

I wish Tim Gunn and all the other asexual and unsexual people in the world the best of luck, sure, but even more I wish they got a little more understanding too. Actually, more than that, earnestly hope someday they'll be as tolerated and accepted as "not broken" as anybody else.

Ugg. Sorry about the rant. Hope it doesn't sound like man'splaining, it's just... I've got a lot of frustration about this. And I'm really glad you brought it up, Jill, because if we're ever going to get out of the patriarchy/gender trap (I know we have different opinions about whether we can) we're going to have to get people to stop contemplating psychiatric "fixes" for men who don't fit the "and the other 10% are lying" stereotype.

* Where have I used that kind of language before? No, I probably won't make it Rule #3. But...

Note: I lightly edited this post for clarity and a couple of more glaring typos when Andrew Sullivan linked to it. There are bound to be plenty of other typos and general grammar failures. --fl

Image from ICanHasCheezeburger.com anti-SOPA site lifeaftersopa.cheezburger.com. Used, as I always attempt to do on this blog, with correct acknowledgement and link back to the host site.

So there's a big call to action today by right-minded internet users and providers about the thuggish powerplay cooked up by a collection of 20th-Century-nostalgic content middlemen (RIAA, MPAA, Rupert Murdoch, et. al) and some of their stupider lackies in Congress.

The issue isn't protection of intellectual property -- people who create content really ought to be able to seek compensation for it!  Instead the issue is about how much "security theater" hampering needs to happen in order to protect that intellectual property.  Proponents of bills like SOPA and PIPA believe that every American should be treated like criminals (how do you like seeing those lingering, un-skippable FBI warnings on every #%!#% DVD you try to play?)  They believe further that no measure is too draconian, no inconvenience is too great, no destabilization of the entire fucking infrastructure of the internet is too great, and, in the case of SOPA especially, no legislation too capricious.

Just the threat by sites major and minor to go dark today has had some effect.  But, as this post by Joan McCarter of Daily Kos makes clear, the results are more cosmetic than substantial.

The weekend was good for opponents of SOPA and PIPA, notably for the assurances to Rep. Darrell Issa from Majority Leader Eric Cantor that a SOPA vote in the House wouldn't happen "unless there is consensus on the bill."

Judiciary Chair (and copyright violator) Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX) is going to try to force consensus by resuming the markup on the bill next month. From his press release:

Stop Online Piracy Act Markup to Resume in February

Washington, D.C. - House Judiciary Committee Chairman Lamar Smith (R-Texas) today said that he expects the Committee to continue its markup of the Stop Online Piracy Act in February.

Chairman Smith: "To enact legislation that protects consumers, businesses and jobs from foreign thieves who steal America's intellectual property, we will continue to bring together industry representatives and Members to find ways to combat online piracy.

"Due to the Republican and Democratic retreats taking place over the next two weeks, markup of the Stop Online Piracy Act is expected to resume in February.

"I am committed to continuing to work with my colleagues in the House and Senate to send a bipartisan bill to the White House that saves American jobs and protects intellectual property."

Which means the legislation is far from dead, and Smith just as hell-bent on passing this bad legislation as ever, with a big assist from the MPAA.

Which means tomorrow's internet blackout, in which hundreds of sites are participating, is still absolutely necessary.

It also means members of Congress have to hear from us. You can use this form to send an email to your representative, and this one to contact your senators to tell them to oppose this bad bill.

Source: Daily Kos

Three weeks ago it looked like this thing was a sure shot to pass quietly.  The authors of the bill, and their stenographers in Congress, have roughly zero intention of giving up.  Don't you give up either.

What Katie Halper at Feministing said!

The ouch factor is even higher given that Halper's post gives a fair hearing to what Hitchens might have been referring to when he made the blanket statement that girls suck at math women aren't funny.

Photoshopped Image from LadyMissKate on Tumblr. Used under a Creative Commons license.

Anyone care to guess how the paragraph in quotes, below, might directly affect your sex life?

Wall Street Journal columnist Eric Felten points out a fascinating problem with the new federal Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, which intentionally or not, makes it a pretty severe crime to fail to follow (for instance) any of the conditions set out in Apple's seventeen thousand word terms of service agreement that you have to click in order to download an iPhone app or iTune MP3.

No. Federal prosecutors aren't very likely to bring charges. But it's still interesting to note that if the obscenely over-stated law is not overturned or amended that...

As it stands, the statute allows punishment of anyone who "exceeds authorized access" to any computer. According to critics of the law, such as Prof. Kerr (himself once a computer-crime prosecutor at the Justice Department), that vague and broad statutory language makes it a federal offense to violate any Terms of Service agreement. Take the user compact for the dating site Match.com, which states "You will not provide inaccurate, misleading or false information…to any other Member." At the congressional hearing this week, Prof. Kerr argued that, given people's natural propensity to fudge when cataloging their physical assets, "Most Americans who have an Internet dating profile are criminals under the Justice Department's interpretation of the CFAA."

Source: bookofjoe

Postscript note for any anti-government conservatives in the audience. The term you're looking for here isn't "government-bureaucratic overreach," it's "regulatory capture by industry."

Via Joe Stirt,