Intern Katy of Jezebel dryly observes...
No word yet on whether this is also true of men, or gay couples.
Does it really matter what the study's actually about?
Photo by Flickr user FL4Y. Used under a Creative Commons license.
Yesterday I asserted that there are two meanings of the word seduction: one that's in a class with obtaining sex by force and the other as more what autonomous people do when they're both interested in sex but haven't necessarily worked out the details.
In response to a comment I made on Maggie Hays's post another commenter named Sophie said**
Interestingly enough, I've never heard of the second meaning. I checked the dictionary too (I don't think anyone who stands with the word 'seductive' as not related to rape would want to check my dictionary; it spells it out as persuading someone to do something they wouldn't otherwise do).
Bottom line is... yup, as far as the dictionary goes Sophie's right. In fact, all the definitions of seduction are pretty gross!
se·duce (si do̵̅o̅s′, -dyo̵̅o̅s′)
transitive verb seduced -·duced′, seducing -·duc′·ing
1.
1. to persuade to do something disloyal, disobedient, etc.
2. to persuade or tempt to evil or wrongdoing; lead astray
3. to persuade (someone) to engage, esp. for the first time, in illicit or unsanctioned sexual intercourse
2. to entice
And then there's the etymology
Etymology: ME seduisen < LL(Ec) seducere, to mislead, seduce < L, to lead aside < se-, apart (see secede) + ducere, to lead
Or more literary and less formal definitions...
To draw aside from the path of rectitude and duty in any manner; to entice to evil; to lead astray; to tempt and lead to iniquity; to corrupt.
Specifically, to induce to surrender chastity; to debauch by means of solicitation.
Notable quotes:
Voltaire: It is not enough to conquer; one must learn to seduce.
Jean Paul Sartre: If I became a philosopher, if I have so keenly sought this fame for which I'm still waiting, it's all been to seduce women basically.
Suggested synonyms include "debauch," and "undo."
We won't even go into what the "seduction community" thinks they're doing, although they do have that big emphasis on using various methods to approach women they by-definition believe wouldn't ordinarily give them the time of day.
So... yeah, Sophie's right about strict dictionary definitions but...
But...
But...
But...
If that really *was* the only meaning why so many objections to the characterization of seduction as a form of assault by those of ill will... usually men... against, primarily, the innocent (sexually or otherwise)... usually women or, ew, children?
Because it still seems like there's more to it than that, at least in common use. Something that happens between the *non* innocent. Something that self-knowing songs with titles like "Fever" and "Fire" have in mind. Something to describe what *consenting* adults, single, coupled, or long-term-involved do besides negotiate the equivalent of a vanilla (or, heck, non-vanilla) safe word and shucking their outerwear.
I mean, I'm *prepared* to be wrong -- the whole reason I post, as I used to say, was "to learn from my mistakes so you won't have to." I just don't think I *am* wrong. So what, if anything, am I missing here?
[** Cool post by Sophie at 2 B Sophora. --fl]
Looks like voting has begun on the biggie of weblog awards, the, well, Weblog Awards. And once again there's no category for sex blogs. Not even blogs like this one that are a lot more about the politics and sociology of sex than about things one does, has done, or can do with his, hers, or ter's moistey frictiony bits.
Oddly they've got an LGBT category, which is actually pretty nice of them: It'll be hard to choose between Pam's House Blend since Pam (who also blogs at Pandagon) rocks on politics at the intersection of orientation, gender, and race, and Susie Bright's Journal since while Susie certainly blogs about LGBT issues she actually blogs about Teh Sex in *all* its dimensions including L, B, G, T, A(sexual), and S(traight.)
But alas I'm not so much an LGBT blogger -- the (functional and dysfunctional) conniptions of heterosexuality being both interesting enough and, more to the point, *dire* enough to keep me busy nearly almost full time. Since I blog a fair amount about feminism (or perhaps more accurately about anti-feminism and anti-anti-feminism) there might have been room for Real Adult Sex in a feminism category. But alas while there are thousands of feminist blogs, and hundreds of excellent ones, there's no category for those either.
There's also a Best Culture Blog category, but that seems more appropriate to The Cool Hunter or Art of Manliness's articles like How to Shave Like Your Grandpa than this blog or, say, Andrea Zanin's Sexgeek.
True, in 2006 sex-blogger par excellence Zoe Margolis's Girl With a One Track Mind won an award in the Best UK or Irish Blog category but, alas again, this isn't a UK blog nor was hers a WeblogAwards award (hers was from The Bloggies. So that's out.
And since I'm coming up on my fourth (or is it fifth?) anniversary it's way, way too late to land a Best New Blog award but there are... well... too many great new sex-and-sexuality blogs this year to even imagine picking what my first choice would be.
So...
Kind of a bummer there's nothing for us. It's not like sex is insignificant in the grand scheme of things. And even out of date as it usually is my sidebar is still full of excellent sites, many of which I think would be great candidates in a sex-blog category. If only someone wanted to host a category for them.
Oh well, we know who we are. For that matter *they* know who we are! And if they're uncomfortable unrecognizing us we'll have to recognize each other. Hats off (at the very least) to everyone willing to do good work here in the "pink ghetto."
Image: A Room with Two Views by Flickr user J.B. Kochanie (yes, that's me)
One day I found a mouse caught in a trap. With her leg pinned to the wooden plank by a bar of steel, the mouse had crawled twelve feet across a stone floor. She tried to escape into a small gap in a concrete wall, a passageway between the world of bright lights, whirring machines, heat and food to the dark hidden world of narrow spaces, cold and blessed quiet. The trap was too big to pull through the gap, so the mouse remained there -- half in one world, half in the other -- until Death or His agent, in the form of this author, arrived on the scene.
It occurred to me that the mouse with her leg caught in the the trap was the perfect metaphor for my failed attempts to balance work and life.
If you expected me to say that the trap represented "marriage" or "mortgage," the metaphor would be just as apt for work, money, and love are interrelated. Mortgage and marriage "go together just like a horse and carriage," to paraphrase the lyrics of the old song. Intoxicated with love and the validation we have been seeking since childhood, we become the emotional big spenders, making big plans and life-long commitments. Big plans per se are not bad. I could argue that those big dreams urged me to pursue a list of accomplishments that I would not have thought possible when I was a child. But everything has its price and the currency demanded, in one form or another, is Time which is precious because our share is finite.
While work is an essential part of our existence, ensuring that our families are clothed and fed, work rarely feeds our souls. Even if we are employed by a charitable organization dedicated to eliminating poverty or illiteracy, we will grow weary of the tedium of staff meetings, deadlines, and reports. If we developed the unfortunate habit of checking our email during the evening commute, we may have given up the few minutes of quiet before returning home to family and chores. Perhaps we avoid those quiet moments because if we stopped being busy, we would realize what drones we had become, how many promises to ourselves and others we had broken in the name of work.
In his book, The Heart Aroused: Poetry and the Preservation of the Soul in Corporate America, poet David Whyte describes the effect of these broken promises.
Some time ago, at AT&T, I found myself working with a roomful of particularly thoughtful managers. We were looking at the way human beings find it necessary to sacrifice their own sacred desires on the altar of work and success. Out of this a woman wrote the following lines. She read them slowly from the back of the room, unaware how stricken we all were by the silence she created:Ten years ago
I turned my faced for a momentand it became my life.
Five years ago, if anyone had asked me if I read blogs, I would have answered with an emphatic, "No." With my workload, I found it difficult to find the time and energy to write or read for pleasure. Nor did I want to waste that time reading someone else's litany of complaints about work and life. Looking back, that is exactly what I did need -- reading someone's else's words -- because it may have resuscitated my own neglected writing. Neglect is dangerous because it is an easy first step to being silent, being voiceless.
In his essay, The Longing: the Web and the Return of Voice, David Weinberger explains how readily we allow ourselves to be silenced.
A managed environment requires behavior from us that we accept as inevitable although, of course, it is really mandatory only because it is mandated.It requires this by stressing the virtue of "professionalism." To a large degree, that translates as being voiceless. Professionals not only act according to a canon of ethics but also dress like other professionals (one eccentricity per person is permitted — a garish tie, perhaps, or a funky necklace), decorate their cubicles with nothing more disturbing than a Dilbert (formerly Far Side) cartoon, sit up straight at committee meetings, don't "undermine the authority" (i.e., be smarter than) their superiors, make idle chatter only about a narrow range of "safe" topics, don't curse, don't mention God, never let on whether they're going to shit or pee, make absolutely no reference to being sexual (exceptions made for male executives after the new secretary has left the room) and successfully "manage" their home life so that it never intrudes unexpectedly into their business life.
Most of us don't mind doing this. Like Sartre's waiter, we actually sort of enjoy it. It's like playing grownup. Having extremist political banners hung in cubicles or having to listen to someone talk about his spiritual commitments or sex life would simply be distracting. Disturbing, actually.
And yet ... we feel resentment.
...Just about all the concessions we make to work in a well-run, non-disturbing, secure, predictably successful, managed environment have to do with giving up our voice.
Nothing is more intimately a part of who we are than our voice. It expresses what we think and feel. It is an amalgam of the voluntary and involuntary. It gives style and shape to content. It subtends the most public and the most private. It is what we withhold at the moments of greatest significance.
Our voice is our strongest, most direct expression of who we are. Our voice is expressed in our words, our tone, our body language, our visible enthusiasms.
Management is a powerful force, part of a larger life-scheme that promises us health, peace, prosperity, calm and no surprises in every aspect of our lives, from health to wealth to good weather and moderately heated coffee from McDonalds. We are all victims of this assault on voice, the attempt to get us to shut up and listen to the narrowest range of ideas imaginable. This assault is literal as well as metaphoric. It shows itself in the embarrassment over having an accent, in the reduction of political thought to two identical parties, in the lust for buzzwords and catchphrases, yadda yadda yadda (and, of course, in the use of the phrase "yadda yadda yadda").
It is only the force of our regret at having lived in this bargain that explains the power of our longing for the Web.
You can read the entire essay by David Weinberger here..
Five years ago, I was sick to death of professionalism. I had become so professional I was voiceless. What I needed was to read the words of others such as the wise, pleasure-loving Minx:
I compromise my artistic soul so that I can afford to live — but I have great difficulty living with said compromise. Hence this blog.
So I began to read the blogs I previously had scorned. After a time, I dared to submit a comment. One blog in particular helped me to regain my voice. It is the blog which you are reading now.
Sungold of Kittywampus has called bloggers the adjunct professors of the media, and I agree. It takes discipline and dedication to inform and inspire on a daily basis, especially when the basement floods, the kids are sick, and you can't find pants that fit.
So if you have not done so already, please cast your vote for Figleaf as the Bloggers' Choice Hottest Daddy Blogger (the badge in the sidebar will take you to the site) and for Sungold as the Hottest Mommy Blogger.
Reference:
David Whyte, The Heart Aroused: Poetry and the Preservation of the Soul in Corporate America, published by Currency Books (a division of Doubleday), ISBN 0-385-42350-0, pp.230-231.
Maggie Hays of Feminists Against Pornography says seduction is a form of rape. Natalia Antonova and Sungold of Kittywampus disagree.
I think it's more complicated than that. Inside my theory of the "no-sex" class paradigm, where men are indoctrinated believe normal, compromised women never just *naturally* want sex and, therefore, that sex must be obtained through some sort of leverage, the difference between from rape to exploitation of economic disadvantage to aphrodisiacs to dinner with roses are only a matter of degree and legitimacy**. That's the way Hays appears to look at it: from inside that dominant paradigm.
One big problem, of course, is that by and large women don't perceive themselves as asexual, and certainly not disinterested in sex. Instead as Emily Maguire puts it in the Sidney Morning Herald***
If the oceans of female drool spilt over Obama (and Daniel Craig and Jude Law and Roger Federer et al) isn't enough to convince you, consider the fact that women continue to have sex with men despite not being legally or economically or in any other way compelled to do so.
Sometimes women even have sex with men for no other reason than - shock horror - physical attraction.
The should-be-obvious truth is that straight women love men's bodies. That it sometimes seems otherwise is only because pervy men are more acceptable in our culture than pervy women.
...
Girls get the message early on that it is not acceptable for them to want to boff a bloke just because he's buff. They learn that yearning for male bodies can be expressed only if those bodies belong to smart, funny boys who are kind to puppies and old people.
Which brings us to Antonova, Sungold, Maguire and... many other women's side of the issue: whereas for most anti-feminists, "Pick-up Artists" in the "seduction community," possibly Scott Adams, and a subset of feminists that include Hays' school of thought, seduction is a unilateral act undertaken by men to extract sex from women who would otherwise "know better," for people who *aren't* into that mindset seduction can be something entirely different. Like the persuasive interaction between individuals who are sexually interested but haven't finalized a decision... or who *have* decided and are mutually enjoying a form of extended arousal.
One word. Two *entirely* distinct things.
Which brings me back to the bugaboo Andrea Dworkin quote that encourages people like Hays and enrages just about everybody else: “Seduction is often difficult to distinguish from rape.”
Well, yeah. She was right. 'Member the text from that Twix ad I mentioned the other day?
Being interested in politics is so lame. Why won’t the hot girl shut up? Her caring about the world is interfering with my attempt to score.
I know, I will lie to her. Later she will feel bad, but I won’t care because I’m an asshole. Buy some Twix.
The message in that ad? Besides "buy Twix?" You want to get sex out of this woman so which method is the best way to extract it? So she won't feel bad till *after?* As opposed to, oh, say, *before?* The distinction I'm talking about, and that I think Dworkin was looking for, is absent.
And absent, by the way, in the *man's* mind *regardless* of the motivations, interests, desires, or agency of the object of his own intention. (A *real* asshole, it doesn't occur to him that she might *not* feel bad because she's perfectly aware that after accurately assessing him she actively decides only thing she expects, or wants from him is a roll in the hay. But I digress...)
Anyway, *that's* the point where I find myself more confident between Hays camp and Antonova and Sungold rather than solidly in one or the other.
The answer, I think, is to continue subverting the dominant paradigm, to the point, maybe, where even Twix Boy can distinguish the difference between seduction (his and Hays' version) and, well, actual *seduction.*
[** Where use of violence instead of, say, lies, marriage, alcohol, or cash offers are as much "poor form" as they are crimes. --fl]
[*** Via Hortense of Jezebel. --fl]
Reminded by Lynn Gazzis-Sax of Noli Irritare Leones of the Bush "administration's" new Medical Conscience Rule I've got a couple of questions. Again.
So… if I’m a conscience clause then I can also ignore, say, prohibitions on dispensing Plan B to minors, right? Without fear of being fired, right? And I can in good conscience refuse to participate in stupid, cynical foot-dragging, deliberately women’s-health-endangering “waiting periods” and “fetal viability” lectures for abortion-seekers without fear of firing, right? Heck, I don’t even have to be a member of a progressive, liberal denomination. I could instead interpret Matthew 24:19-20** and the corresponding passages in the other Gospels to mean Jesus just thought it was a really bad idea to be pregnant or nursing, period.
(And sure, that would be a really stupid cooked-up misapplications of the text undertaken to advance a political position… but then this whole debate is over really stupid cooked-up misapplications of texts… as in the “hormonal birth control is an abortifacent” and what’s the Bush “administration” proposing to do… establish correct and incorrect religious doctrine?)
On the other hand, if a random caregiver were, say, a Salfists Moslem, an ultra-ultra-Orthodox Jew, or a member of one of the arch-fundamentalist Christian denominations that practices segregation of the sexes outside of marriage he could in good conscious refuse to admit women to a hospital that also treated men or that employed male caregivers, right? And if he was fired then regardless of how extreme his position the hospital, clinic or institution he worked for would lose federal funding.
I think people keep mistaking these questions for rhetorical ones. They’re not rhetorical at all! Conscience is conscience, faith is faith, and people of those faiths have jobs in the health industry Unless the feds we’re proposing establishing some religions as government-sanctioned and others not then it doesn’t seem rhetorical at all.
It's not just a bad idea in the sense that "I don't like the way conservatives do everything they can to destroy women's lives." I mean it in the sense that "I don't like intrusive, ill-considered introductions of logical, moral, and constitutional chaos."
[In Matthew 24:19 Jesus says of the end of days "And woe unto them that are with child, and to them that give suck in those days!" Where, it's almost universally agreed, by "woe to" he means "it'll be terrible for" in the compassionate, not retributive sense. And hmmm... seems like one more area one could build an entire faith-based progressive, conscience-based theology for women's-health and child-welfare. If anyone was interested... --fl]
Technically it's more accurate to say "we have love" and "we make sex" than the more common opposites.
"Having" sex is wrapped up the no-sex-class paradigm where sex is this not-intrinsic-to-us thing we just happen to have happen to us. Have happen to the 51% of us who happen to be female... at the hands of the 49% of us who "have" ostensibly pre-conscious and inescapable urges "happen" to them.
Instead of sex is something we actively *do.* Or *don't* do. Not something that we passively have (whether we like it or not.) Or *don't* have (whether we like it or not.) Sure, maybe saying it's something we "have" gives us plausible deniability... but it's way more honest, to ourselves, each other, and society in general, to say we make it.
Love, meanwhile, especially in the construction "making love" is something that's supposed to magically be created by... fucking? Yeah, like *that's* how love happens.
I mean, honestly!
Photo by Flickr user HoldThatTiger. Used under a Creative Commons license.
Amanda Marcotte of Pandagon, riffing off a public interview with Alaska Governor Palin's minor daughter, points to the basic contradiction of "abstinence-only" marketing, especially as it's presented to girls.
In other words, it’s “obvious” that you shouldn’t take the greatest step in your life that fills it with joy and perfection and bliss and did I say perfection? Getting pregnant at 17 will complete you, girls, so don’t do it! That trifling boyfriend of yours will, the second you get pregnant, become so devoted to you that he’ll tattoo your name on his finger, and your mother will give you a year to plan the perfect wedding you’ve been encouraged to dream about since you could first turn a page in a bridal magazine. Having a baby in high school is so fucking great, so girls, don’t do it!
Pardon me if I find the whole situation disingenuous.
What's weird about this whole business to me is that in terms of reproductive *topography* it's not even a bad idea in social-theory terms to encourage young people to a) have their own children while their parents are still young enough to provide in-home support and assistance and b) parents are themselves still young enough when their children go off on their own (to grandparent their *own* children's children part-time!) that, still in their own 30s, they can then launch full-blown and reproductively-unencumbered careers, lives, etc. As opposed to, say, getting up a full head of steam career-wise and then... interrupting it to go "nuclear" (family) in your 30s and then try and get back off the parent track it in your 40s or 50s (or 60s as will be the case for me!)
And not to put too fine a point on it, with such a model it really *wouldn't* matter as much if one or the other parent was a massive flake or not long-term, grow-old-together compatible because... there'd still be plenty of close supporting infrastructure, not only for, say, the abandoned father but also the interested-in-resuming-dating daughter.
I'm not saying that's the *best* model, but it wouldn't be the end of the world.** *If* that were the conservative model. Which it manifestly *also* isn't.
Instead the model seems to be to *trap* children in these weird double-binds that result in a) high expectations, b) sense of personal failure, c) making poor interpersonal/partner choices that d) you're then stuck with that result in...
e) What midwife and birth instructor Penny Simpkin rather hauntingly refers to as "the empty years" where, *especially* if you're a "traditional" woman, your children are out of the home and you have, basically, *nothing* left to live for because all you were raised to believe in was being a stay-at-home mom or a work-yourself-to-death dad.
So, sort of like Marcotte, I'm thinking would be fine if they wanted to have it one way -- teenagers *really are* fucked up by pregnancy if they're not really ready -- or fine the other -- when you get pregnant we'll lavish you with a wedding and tons of parental support. But trying to have it both ways -- if you get pregnant you're really fucked up but we're going to lavish you with big wedding and tons of support -- just... ruins it for *everybody!* The joy of sex. The joy of parenting. The joy of having a career. Even the joy of *grandparenting!*
[** It wouldn't even be the end of the world population-increase-wise if everyone still limited themselves to two children. In fact as long as I'm speculating wildly I suspect a start-your-life-after-kids model would actually *increase* interest in smaller rather than larger families. --fl]
Doctor Spurt of Effortless Incitement says of a (said-to-be repeatable) study on the influence of context on gender differences. We've seen studies like these in the past but this one's a pretty compelling. (Emphasis mine.)
This study looked at women's performance at mathematics. The subjects completed a test including two mathematics sections separated by a reading comprehension section. The middle section was an experimental manipulation, with one of the following four essays:
(G) This essay argued that there were mathematics-related sex differences, and that the explanation was genetic.
(E) This essay argued that there were mathematics-related sex differences, and that the explanation was experiential.
(NS) This essay argued that there were no mathematics-related sex differences.
(S) This essay primed the question of sex without making reference to differences in mathematical ability.
The hypothesis was that in the second test participants in condition (G) and (S) would underperform those in condition (E) and (NS). This is just what they found, a result that was replicated in a schematically similar study where the manipulation was heard, rather than read. See the figure below.
This isn't surprising at all - it's consistent with a pile of established social psychology on the effectiveness of stereotypes. But it's definitely important.
In other words women tended to perform poorly when gender differences were suggested, and well when gender differences were denied or excused as experimental error.
And while the study was conducted on women this isn't (duh) an effect limited to women. Studies that similarly manipulate reminders of how men "should" behave have similar effects on men's behavior.
Which, incidentally, reinforces this point by Lisa of Sociological Images who, pointing to a recent candy bar ad, reminds us...
This stereotype of guys as dumb, immature assholes isn't doing anyone any favors
(Via Research Blogging)
(Oh, and think there are any self-confidence, body-image, or "does this make me look 'gay'" implications in that study?)
Anyway, none of this suggests there are or aren't innate, even genetic differences between men and women when it comes to mathematics. In fact it precisely *doesn't* suggest it. Instead what it suggests is that cultural background noise is sufficiently loud to make it *profoundly* difficult to take seriously those who make such allegations lightly.
Four interesting things about Scott Meyer, the comic author of Basic Instructions: 1) he starts by writing the sort of dry instructional prose found in "business etiquette" guides, employee handbooks, and dating magazines and embellishes them with often-self-deprecating cartoon dialogue; 2) he employs a deceptively simple-looking drawing style, based on an old photo-tracing technique once popular in low-budget print shops, that's almost necessarily unflattering to its subjects.
Here's an example...
3) since updating his website software lately he now gets comments from readers. And, like any accommodating instructional designer, responds.
Here's an example...
4) It can take up to 24 hours to realize he's not just consistently hilarious, he's capable of astonishingly dry sarcasm about stereotyping.
You can order his new, ought-to-outsell-Garfield-if-there's-justice-in-the-world book, order t-shirts and other paraphernalia including the awesome custom drawn "infini-t" portrait shirts, and see actual photos of Meyer and his partner here.
Anyway, if you haven't spotted his comics in your local alt-weekly you can get them fresh from the source.
HNT founder Osbasso's end-of-year assignment was to repost our favorite Thursday photos from the previous year.
I've got two.
This was the most fun, part of a series I did based on spam email titles. This one was a post called "HNT - Got Wood Disaster"
On the more serious/artsy/sexy side I liked this one, HNT - Painting Project, from when I was cleaning up a previously-finished garage conversion.
Of course those are only my favorites -- feel free any time to pick your own favorites from my HNT archives.
Anyway, I've really, really enjoyed participating this year, and really appreciated visiting other participants and seeing the huge, huge variety of what it means to be "half-nekkid" anyway.
Happy New Year.
Photo by Flickr user ~BostonBill~. Used under a Creative Commons license.
Via Bad Man'sTumbler post about a get-a-clue-NiceGuy™ rant I just (finally?) stumbled across Heartless Bitches International. I haven't read enough of to endorse it out of hand but it looks pretty interesting.
From their intro page
Despite the statements of some of our more Bitter Heartless Bitches, Heartless Bitches International is NOT about Man-Hating. We don't discriminate against stupidity, arrogance, irresponsibility, bloated egos, or immaturity on the basis of gender.
Has HBI got you all hot under the collar? Before you run off in a snit, ready to send email detailing the extent of your ire, look up the words "irony", "satire" and "caricature" in the dictionary..
Which is a long way of getting around to a question that kept popping into my brain during my mostly-delightful, snow-induced hiatus:
You know that old "male bashing" line "If we can send one man to the moon, why can't we send them all?" It's usually associated with feminism but... I dunno... the more I think about it the more it seems like the kind of "Sex in the City" style anti-feminism that masks passive-aggressive resignation behind "perkiness."
Via Phil Plait of the (well, except for this I guess) entirely non-sex Bad Astronomy on the latest debunking study about "abstinence only" sex education.
“Taking a [virginity] pledge doesn’t seem to make any difference at all in any sexual behavior,” said Janet E. Rosenbaum of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, whose report appears in the January issue of the journal Pediatrics. “But it does seem to make a difference in condom use and other forms of birth control that is quite striking.”
Lots of people have remarked on this study -- for the most part limiting themselves to predictable, progressive forehead thumping and "duh"-ing that there should ever be any question. And to be honest my own forehead's a bit sore... though the keyboard marks are already starting to fade.
What I haven't seen pointed out so far, an even more damning indictment of abstinence-only education, is that they can't fall back on educational-incompetence dodge (a.k.a. "abstinence-only education can't be wrong, it can only *taught wrong.*") Because, not to put too fine a point on it, they're hitting *all their other objectives!* However unhelpful or actively counterproductive it might be to their actual health or well-being students who go as far as taking the approved "abstinence pledges" are "correctly" skeptical of condoms. They're about 10% less likely to use them than matched peers who didn't drink the abstinence-only Kool Aid...
... but no less likely to not have sex period.
Conclusion? It ain't how they're teaching it that's leading to failure of students to actually be abstinent: for better or worse they're teaching everything else they teach just fine. It's just that, evidently, even using the best methodology money ($175 million just last year!) can buy you just can't teach people to abstain from sex.
Another great one from Holly of The Pervocracy, this time on the overlap between perverts and geeks.
Geeks didn't get laid in high school--or even if they did, they were still mocked for being unsexy and they probably felt they weren't getting nearly as many sexual privileges as the cool kids. Well, we're grownups now, so in your face, cool kids!
And the most important, probably, is fantasy. Many perversions are really enactments of sex as high drama. Probably the one defining feature of geekery, more concrete than any other, is escapism. So naturally, we have to escape ordinary human sex. My bedroom is a dungeon, my lover a beautiful monster, violence making our sex so much more intense and passionate and dramatic than reality. Perversion creates a heightened world, sexier than mere sex, a world insulated from reality, (a world where you're really awesome cool and sexy) a world you can be swept away in.
I used to run around with my friends and get bruised and dirty playing that we were grand mythical figures. Now I do... really, the same thing, but with less pants.
There's so much cool stuff to unpack there. The big one about how geeks (i.e. the non-beautiful crowd) not being acknowledged even for the sex they *were* having, harks way, *way* back to one of my earliest posts, from a now long, long gone blogger named Cat Nastey, along the same lines. Nastey said
I was hanging out with a friend of mine last night and we got to talking about sex...big surprise with my friends!!
Both my friend and I consider "sex" to be more then just about the
penis-in-hole action and tend to get frustrated with partners (straight guys)
who seem to have this "penis-in-hole-or-nothing" attitude when it
comes to "sex" and the having of "it". For us,
"sex" can involve many different activities from mutual masturbation to oral sex and doesn't (nor should it) involve JUST the penis-in-hole definition.We started joking that *most* straight guys complain that they aren't getting
enough sex and that "non-straight" people seem to be having lots and
lots of sex...well, what if it's all about the definition? Wouldn't it make
more sense that one might be getting more "sex" if one included more
activities into the the definition of "sex"?
(Even in 2005 that was an archived post (Oct. 2003!) She had such a great perspective on sex. I learned a lot from her blog and I'm sorry she's gone.)
Another big point I like in Holly's post is her reference to the progressive double standard of approval for active women who get bruised and dirty everywhere *but* during sex... where *participating in and enjoying* getting dirty and bruised is supposed to be sick and wrong.
Holly of The Pervocracy, in another bout of what she calls Cosmocking, takes Cosmopolitan magazine to task for, as always, warning women to put us men first, foremost, and always lest our rock-solid faith in the "no-sex" class paradigm be shaken. For instance, from an article in the January issue called "Surprising Things that Turn Him Off"
Being Kinky in Bed (At First)
There's nothing wrong with showing enthusiasm. But when it comes to off-the-wall sexcapades, setting the bar--or stripper pole--too high the first few times can make guys wonder what else you have in common with Jenna Jameson. "It feels weird to say it out loud, but I really don't want a girl to be completely uninhibited in bed when I first start sleeping with her," says Jon, 27. "I like to feel like we discover some stuff together and then work up to the really experimental stuff."
I'm actually about halfway with Jon here--it's awesome to discover new ways to have fun together--but only if you're actually discovering them. If you're just biding your time as you reel out the tricks you already knew, it's not experimentation, it's pretense.
Yup, nothing makes us men less comfortable than imagining what might consider "experimental stuff" she thinks is practically passé. (Note: consider that sex manuals from the 50s and early 60s considered both woman-on-top intercourse and any kind of oral sex "experimental" for both women *and* men.)
Remember that one of the peculiarities of men's self-induced no-sex class indoctrination says men should expect (and, according to Cosmo anyway, even *demand*) a "no" from women... and thus to keep asking (no condom this time?), and asking (anal?), and asking (threesome?) till we get one. And since men, too, have comfort zones we're kind of hoping to get to that "no" before we get out of ours (uh... threesome... with your *dad?!?!) The great thing about *kicking* that indoctrination, by the way, is there's no advantage to "pushing" anybody's boundaries just to see how far they'll go before saying no. And here's the deal with that: if you're not "experimenting" to see where one's partner's "no" is you can actually *experiment,* *together* no less, to see what you both really enjoy doing *together!*
Way to be, Cosmo.
World-class cynic Scott Adams of Dilbert.com Blog turns science news into dating tips for the pointy-haired-boss "seduction community."
I always need to eat something before I attempt writing or else nothing comes out. ... I always assumed this was just a combination of ordinary hunger plus a habit that borders on OCD. ...
Recently a reader sent me a link about a writer who has the same experience but better research to explain why. The bottom line is that writing requires will power to avoid distraction, and will power is correlated with your glucose levels. In other words, your free will is actually sugar.
http://scienceblogs.com/cognitivedaily/2008/03/practicing_selfcontrol_consume.php
This makes me wonder if there is an optimal food strategy for seduction. Apparently bringing a woman chocolate will only increase her glucose levels and with that her ability to resist you. In fact, a guy should want his woman to be good and hungry, preferably on a diet. It turns out that resisting one sort of temptation makes it harder to resist a different sort at the same time.
If that is not enough, I just did a Google search to confirm that alcohol lowers your glucose levels. That fits the theory. Everyone knows they have less will power after a few drinks.
Of course the whole shebang is predicated on the "no-sex" class assumption that a woman who's willing to go on a date with a man isn't interested in sex... or at least sex with him... or at least sex with him *right then.* And it's further predicated on the "no-sex" class assumption that *because* women just aren't naturally interested in sex... or at least sex with *you*... and therefore it's ok for you to use leverage to "break down" her will to say no. (Which belief makes you, um, a rapist?)
It's also predicated on the destructive-to-men (not to mention dangerous to women) circular assumption that a man's worth is equated with his "score" on the one hand, and that his ability to score equates with his worthiness on the other... and of course on the corresponding assumption that *women's* worth is equated with the degree of her reluctance to have sex when she (being a human being and all) *wants* to... in favor of "holding out" till she can bestow sex (her "favors") as an acknowledgment of male worthiness.
All of which makes possible knuckleheaded scenarios like... looking for women on diets, just before dinner, who've had a drink, and (if you read the rest of Adam's post) have been led into further temptation by resisting going into a store the man steers her past on the way to dinner.
Instead of just, I don't know, assuming that a woman is human, and therefor interested in sex, and looking for ways to make her comfortable with saying yes -- or even initiating it herself! -- instead of assuming she'd rather not have anything to do with it.
Small wonder Adams is drawn to stuff like this. The bitter, almost misanthropic jokes practically write themselves.
