On Claims of Porn in Schools

There's a call to arms on a social media from a few people who think the memoir in graphic novel form, Gender Queer by Maia Kobabe (e/em/eir pronouns), should be removed from shelves in school libraries for being pornographic. For the uninitiated, "graphic novel" means it's a cartoon, not that it's graphic in its content. My former school was named as one of the offenders who dares to carry such smut, so of course the post had the ironic effect of making me curious enough to go out and buy a copy of the book to see what all the fuss is about. 

Content Warning: Kobabe's drawing of a sex act is further down. Don't scroll down if you think you might be offended.

The original social media poster suggested parents call Family and Children's Services with their concerns about this bit of pornography in our schools, which is a horrible idea that would put undue stress on a service that has much more important needs to tend to than mediating quibbles around which ideas and images teenagers should be privy to. She doesn't seem to understand the scope of the organization. She also doesn't seem to understand what pornography is or what might actually harm teenagers today. 

My only criticism with the book is that, while it shows the main character, Maia, incrementally more courageous as e finds eir voice, illustrating specifically noteworthy events in eir life, the telling doesn't have a strong story arc. A graphic novel memoir that does this brilliantly, for comparison, is Persepolis, which is also a series of true events, but Satrapi crafts scenes together with a trajectory and more elements of storytelling, making good use of foreshadowing for instance. Gender Queer didn't end as much as it just stopped when e got to the present. But that's besides the point here.  

On Cuties, Euphoria, and Promising Young Woman

My social media feed is full of political scandals that I have no ability to affect, so I've immersed myself in movies and shows. Bechdel test for the win for this trio!

Film both reflects and affects society, like all forms of art but even more than most as it's a visual, auditory, and narrative medium. We sometimes see ourselves in the movies more clearly than in novels or paintings or songs. It's this reflection in the film Cuties, I suspect, that got thousands of people riled up enough to cancel their Netflix subscriptions and garner it an embarrassing 3.1/10 on IMDb. But beyond Netflix's many second rate sequels and unwatchable remakes, I'd argue that Cuties is one of the better films on the current marquee. 

Cuties is about an 11-year-old girl, Amy, who's new to town and trying to fit in with the cool kids. She's successful because she takes their competitive dance moves to the next level with sexy additions that she's seen online. Those dance scenes are what's driving the outrage, but it's the most realistic part of the film (which steps into the surreal from time to time). Kids are made to imitate what they see, and this is what's out there for real. 

On the Necessity for a Public Takedown

When, a couple months back, I read Katie Way's depiction of a date between "Grace" and Aziz Ansari, at first I felt badly for him to be outed as such a crappy date. How embarrassing. Then in the New York Times, Bari Weiss responded that Ansari was being asked to be a mindreader. My rejection of that idea led me to a more nuanced understanding of the issue. I commented there,

But then, as is so often the case, a discussion with students in my class clarified the issue even further.

This is an important issue to be raised. It still seems, based on this conversation with a room full of teenagers, a common problem on dates. Guys will ignore body language and use subtle leaning, pushing, guiding, and grinding as a way to progress an event that isn't explicitly desired by the pushed and leaned upon party. By using movement rather than words, it feels easier to act as if they merely misconstrued the situation. By taking it out of the realm of verbal communication, they can better claim a problem with interpretation instead of straight up consent.

On Marriage and Divorce and Trolls and Haters

I moderate my comments because I once got 67 comments about carpet cleaning on one post. I rarely get comments at all, so I hate to block any I do get, but an anonymous writer sent in a comment on my recent post on Krakauer's latest book. The comment had little to do with the post; it's largely just misdirected vitriol, so I thought I'd share it here for some closer scrutiny. (Sorry about the swears.)

We men must boycott marriage, and never marry. Why? Because there are ZERO benefits for men in marriage. If you get married, there is at least a 50 percent chance that your wife will divorce you, kidnap your children from you, and steal all your money in divorce. 

So, what are the alternatives to marriage?
1. Learn how to game and seduce women
2. Fuck prostitutes
3. Masturbate to porn
etc 

Did you know that it's cheaper to fuck a prostitute once a week than to maintain a wife? You will get bored of fucking your wife after the first six months of marriage but with a prostitute you can fuck a new one every time. 

There is already a MASSIVE anti-marriage campaign worldwide, with men basically giving up on marriage and refusing to get married. Here are two recent articles on it:

ABOUT THOSE ARTICLES:

This main article is from Peter Lloyd of the Daily Mail (the second article is merely reporting on the first link). Lloyd writes about a new book that suggests the falling marriage rate is all women's fault:

"Ultimately, men know there’s a good chance they’ll lose their friends, their respect, their space, their sex life, their money and — if it all goes wrong — their family,’ says Dr Helen Smith, author of Why Men Are Boycotting Marriage, Fatherhood And The American Dream." 

Lloyd discusses primarily the legal ramifications of marriage that skew everything in favour of the mom now in Britain (and elsewhere): "The Children Act of 1989 specifically declares: ‘The rule of law that a father is the natural guardian of his legitimate child is abolished.’"

And this is a real concern. It's not uncommon for challenged power structures to flip, Animal Farm style, instead of dissolving into a beautiful puddle of equity. Until recently, women were in a position to lose everything without a husband to grant them legitimate children and a home and a name, but once women found the numbers and strategies necessary to fight back, the dynamics flipped, and now child support and custody absolutely favour women.

I know this first hand. When I was splitting from my kid's dad, I sat down to look at how much I'd need to maintain my daughter's life at the same standard of living. This is what child support is supposed to be about - making sure children don't suffer during a break-up. But then I checked the Ontario child support tables, and found that I "had a right to" THREE TIMES that amount, which amounted to almost 45% of his take home pay. So I showed him the tables, asked for a third of the suggested amount, and we did it all without lawyers or courthouses. I'm all for primary caregivers getting support, but I question an amount that leaves the secondary caregiver struggling to get by.

And I know some women might get a little greedy when they see the dollar signs, and, possibly, when they have a lawyer that suggests they should get as much as they can to invest for the child's future. It's asking a lot of people to see what they could have and hope they choose to take less. In fact, if we could manage that at all, we wouldn't be in the dire straights we're in environmentally.

I've been through this twice. The first time round, a rookie, I immediately went to a lawyer who aggressively tried to convince me to get back-pay from the moment my oldest was born - amounting to $20,000.  I knew that a lump sum payment like that would set my ex back significantly, and I declined. But I had to be firm on that. My lawyer was ready to fight for things I didn't want. I can imagine a less anti-materialistic person having a hard time refusing to get into that battle.

I'm not sure how prevalent it is for women to go for the gold. I know it happens. But what's interesting to me is how strong that stereotype is. Even though I took only what I really needed and not a penny more in order to work towards an equitable solution for the best of the kids, both exes started down the road of common lines from these types of arguments.  It took a while to erode the stereotypes enough for them to remember what I'm actually like:

I'd stop their random drop-in visits, and get the standard accusation: "You're trying to keep the kids from me!" and I'd respond with "Not at all - let's arrange another day each week at your place." And that extra day would inevitably just fall away as they realized they didn't actually want to take them more than half the time. Restrictions can be hard to live with, so a sense of freedom can help people see what actually works best.

They'd want to buy something they couldn't afford and accuse me of being in it for the money, but a quick look at my expenses, how frugally I live, and how much I could have asked for, eventually ended those random attacks. I can't afford travelling through Europe either.

It's to a point that it can be hard to be heard above the cacophony of stereotypes around broken homes: conniving moms and deadbeat dads or disney dads. I wasn't ready for it the first time round, and it took me by surprise to be automatically slated into the bad guy role, but when I heard the same words in round two, which was a very different scenario, I knew it was a bigger cultural issue and not something I was provoking. The role models of how to make this work amiably are few and far between.


BACK TO ANON'S DIATRIBE: 

First of all, the divorce rate has actually gone down significantly. It peaked at 50% shortly after becoming easier to get, but it's not still up there. But it is true that marriage is in decline. I've never actually married myself, not for the reasons Anon suggests - all those prostitutes! - but mainly because I don't think we can actually vow to love anyone for any amount of time, much less to death. I touch a bit on other thoughts here.

But it's clear from that portion of Anon's comment that he - I'm going to go right ahead and assume it's a 'he' - really sees marriage as all about sex, even about money for sex no matter how you slice it. I find this so weird in this day and age when casual sex outside of marriage is so much more acceptable. First of all, as I explain here, there's nothing that states that sex has to be part of a marriage. It's just part of what might happen. But, that being said, some studies show that sex actually gets better after marriage. Being with one person for a while can open up new adventures that don't often happen on the first try - even with a skilled professional. But there are other things partnering up can offer: an extra set of hands to help around the house, someone to actually raise children with jointly, and maybe even at chance at some company and, if it's not asking too much, support when you need a kind word or pat on the back. Yes these things can be had outside of a marriage too, but many people find them key benefits to their marriage. Whatever works.


BUT HE HAS EVEN MORE TO SAY!

Anon goes on to explain that the problem isn't just about marriage, but about - wait for it - feminism:

Now, there are THREE main ways we can destroy feminism forever and take women off the massive pedestal they are on. We must fund and promote the following three technologies: 

1. Virtual reality sex programs,   2. Artificial wombs,   3. Sex Robots

Once these three technologies are in place, women will no longer have any power in society. After all, why would you waste time chasing after fat women in real life when you can fuck hot supermodels in virtual reality or fuck a female sex robot? And since women's main power comes from their reproduction capacity, if we REMOVE that capacity from women through the technology of artificial wombs, then women will have ZERO power left in society and thus feminism is finished forever.

THIS is the solution, gentlemen! Now we must do our part and spread the above message to as many men as possible so that we can raise the consciousness of men worldwide. I am the guy who created the famous Boycott American Women blog, which reached around 40 million people worldwide through the internet campaign I created. Therefore I know what I am talking about.

In summary:

Do not ever get married. Simply seduce and bang women, or fuck prostitutes, and help promote the above three technologies, and we will DESTROY FEMINISM FOREVER! Thank you!

If you still have doubts about WHY you should not get married, I strongly recommend you to read the following article.

Apparently, there's a belief out there that the power feminists have comes entirely from the hold we have over men as the only means to satisfy their need for sex and children. With robots to provide these services, women would lose all their hard-won gains.

It makes me wish I could write science-fiction; I'd like to see what Robert Sawyer could do with that initial premise. I picture some men spending all their money on sex machines, the way they currently might with prostitutes, and then the rest of the world just carrying on, falling in love and marrying and having babies the old-fashioned way. It might put flesh-and-blood prostitutes out of work, but there coud be openings in other fields now that men are so busy with their robots and their "iWomb" children. Would child-care become an entirely male centred activity? If so, then it's just a flipped version of the 50s, with the men home with the kids and the sex toys, and the women freed up from their mothering and sexual duties to really get powerful.

Careful what you wish for!


BUT... ONE MORE THING:

It's hard when you've been destroyed by someone close to you. It's hard when you started at square one and are now twenty paces behind in the game. That really sucks. Absolutely.

It's especially hard when your expectations of relationships don't come close to matching the real world. You know that real world, where women are more than just jizz buckets who make sandwiches; they're actually people worthy of the same respect given to men. Some women are jerks, of course they are, and so are some men. That's another part of reality that can be hard to get used to. If you come to a relationship expecting a housekeeper with benefits, then I can understand your disappointment. But it's that expectation that need to shift, not the services granted by the women encountered. That's a difficult journey to begin, but I know it's possible to get there.  This guy does a great job of explaining it all:



It can feel really good to find a scapegoat for all that pain and suffering, but this is when we have to be so, so careful about what we attack next. There's a built in reaction in all mammals: the pain-aggression response. When we feel pain, we'll attack the first thing we see. Ever stub your toe then yell at your friend for something completely unrelated? It makes sense if you're in the jungle to immediately attack when pain hits, but it makes far less sense in our day-to-day lives. I believe we have big enough brains to override this instinct - most of the time.

Here's the thing: your pain is not the fault of feminists. It's got precious little to do with the movement that helped to get women up to the same legal status as men. And attacking feminists just gets you written off as a nut-job instead of really listened to, and then nothing can change.

Stereotypes are deadly.

I work to remember this myself: When another kid gets killed by police I take a minute to remind myself of all the awesome cops there are out there who are risking their lives to keep us safe. If we start assigning the behaviours of a few bad apples to the entire group, then we'll just have so many more to hate and so few allies to work towards a better way to live and love together. We can't take sides in a ridiculous war. The stakes are way too high right now. We work together as fellow citizens of this wounded planet, or we all die trying.


ETA: This link on sex with robots:

"But for all our creativity, are we so unimaginative that we can’t conceive of any other way to interact with sentient beings besides domination? The human ability to designate subhumans (in this case, robots) represents the worst in our species’ capacity; if men by and large don’t treat women well, gynoids won’t help any more than owning slaves has made men less likely to abuse their wives. We cannot improve as a society or a culture through replication."

Sex Ed Redux

The papers are full of stories about the fight for and against new sex education legislation.  Wynne seems to be holding her ground this time, though, so I'm not sure any of the debating will come to anything.  But it's raised some interesting questions and ideas, and provoked a long talk with my 10-year-old daughter, which I get to below.

The curriculum (and all school curricula) is easy to find on-line.  Curriculum documents are unwieldy though, and it might take a while for the uninitiated to know which bits to look at.  There are many pages that aren't really essential reading for parents, so I've included the important pages for each grade below from the grade 1-8 Health and Physical Education Curriculum, revised 2015:

Grade 1 - Caring and exploitative behaviours and feelings; potential risks; body parts - including the external genitalia (penis, testicles, vulva, vagina); hygienic procedures (92-93)
Grade 2 - Standing up for yourself; medicine use and substance abuse - there's a bit leaning towards healthy living over the use of medication; stages of development (106-110)
Grade 3 - Processed vs unprocessed foods; broadening the range of eating choices; safety guidelines; factors you can and cannot control; real and fictional violence; more on substance abuse, healthy decision-making, and misusing medications; healthy relationships; respecting differences - this is the bit about the variety of families out there now (120-124)
Grade 4 - Healthy eating and nutrients; food safety; safe use of technology; bullying - particularly on-line issues; assessing risk; smoking; changes during puberty (139-144)
Grade 5 - Nutrition; media influence on eating; threats to personal safety; effects of alcohol use and abuse - including alcohol poisoning; the reproductive system including menstruation; interpersonal stresses (155-160)
Grade 6 - Nutrition; positive social interactions; community resources; conflict management; anger management; illicit drugs; decision-making in relationships - including wet dreams and masturbating; risk assessment - including dental emergencies, caring for pets, and hypothermia; stereotypes and assumptions including homophobia, racism, bigotry (171-177)
Grade 7 - Healthy eating; technology dangers including online privacy, bullying, harassment, body image, substance abuse, delaying sexual activity and how to say no (what consent looks like), sexual acts (vaginal, oral, and anal sex are explicitly in there), STIs and pregnancy, sexual health, relationship changes  - I think this is the scare the crap out of them year.  (194-201)
Grade 8 - Healthy eating; addiction; sexual decisions including reasons to wait; reducing risks; impact of violence; mental health; stress management; gender identity; sexual orientation; contraception; consent; intimacy; dating violence (214-220)

I was a really innocent kid.  I didn't think other kids were even kissing in grade 7, but then one of the kids in my class actually got pregnant - for real.  I didn't kiss anyone until well into grade 11.  But I don't think kids today are significantly worse in this respect.  From surveys we do in social science classes, I'd guess that most kids are still pretty innocent in grade 9.  There are a few doing a lot in earlier grades, but I get the sense that's uncommon.  If they're misleading on the surveys, I'd expect them to say they're doing more than they are, and I only get a couple doing anything harder than pot in grade 12.  Despite the norms generated by movies - particularly the kind we watched in the 80s - many kids in grade 12 don't drink OR have sex.  At all.    

The curriculum is, as always, jam-packed, and I'm a little unsure that everything can be covered thoroughly.  But it's clear to me the focus is on personal safety - how to stay alive and in one piece, physically and emotionally, as you grow up.

One concern I have is how the line "...including First Nation, Metis, and Inuit food choices, cultural habits and teachings, relationships..." is unceremoniously plunked down throughout the teaching strands. It feels uncomfortably like tokenism.  I appreciate the idea that we have to be more inclusionary, but this doesn't quite feel like the right way to go about it.  And I question to what extent these teachings really will be incorporated into every section of the health curriculum at every grade when many of the teachers haven't learned any of this material in university or come across it in life. Unless the ministry is willing to provide teachers with more than just "mention that medicine wheel stuff," then teachers might do a cursory job or worse.


Here's what my 10-year-old had to say; she told me I could write about it here.  What she thinks should be taught is pretty close to the above.  Mainly.  She wasn't sure 6-year-olds need to know about the names of their body parts, but I asked what if someone touches them there, and they need to be able to use the right word to tell somebody.  She's pretty convinced nobody would do that to a little kid, and then I felt it necessary to ruin that illusion for her.

She thinks being gay or lesbian should be discussed earlier - in grade 3 - because "it helps people understand who they are and will be so they know they're okay".

Most importantly, in about grade 4, they should tell you everything to NOT worry about:  "wet dreams, period, B.O., crushes on people of either sex... because people start to ask questions and worry about the things they don't understand, so they need a list of things that are normal and okay."

I told her that one concerned parent was worried that there's lots of talk about sex, but nothing mentioned about love.  He's right.  She actually seemed to be more uncomfortable talking about love with me than about sex. "Love is a strong word" was about the most I could get out of her on this one.


My stance is towards adding to it - as if there's time in the day.  I see teens after they've been exposed to prejudices and cruelty - particularly online - so I applaud any and all efforts to nip that in the bud. I want them to know that they're okay.  I've had more than one student hospitalized for alcohol poisoning because they had no idea it was possible to die from drinking a lot at once.  I've seen kids destroyed by the idea that there's only one true love for them out there, so if it ends at 17, then it's over for them forever.  And too many think if they can't get a date, then they can't go to any dances or proms because we're stuck in a coupley mode of thinking.

First of all, back to grade 1, I'd like it if we could all acknowledge that the entire external part of a girl is the vulva, and the entryway to the uterus is called the vagina.  That's just what they're called.  I'm glad the clitoris is mentioned in grade 7, and I hope it gets the attention it deserves.

By grade 8, at least, I'd like to see acceptance of all types of sexuality discussed - those who think it's an act of love to be saved for one person - and we're doing a serious disservice to some if love isn't mentioned at all -, those who think it's a form of recreation (but only with profound respect from involved parties), and those who don't have any interest in engaging for any reason.  Imagine if we could obliterate the terms "prude" and "slut"!

This is a long shot, but what I'd really like is to get rid of words related to LGBTQ and trans and cis.... and just have people who wear a variety of different clothes and make-up and are attracted to a variety of different people and have different levels of comfort with their own bodies that are sometimes helped with surgery.  We're bags of bones mysteriously drawn to other bags of bones of random shapes and sizes.  But that's probably asking too much of society yet - and too much of struggling individuals who get comfort in the support of groups of people who similarly self-identify.  But one day...

I'd also like to see more on body image and how quickly people, young and old, hone in on that one vulnerability in order to destroy one another.  My little girl biked to St. Jacobs with me yesterday, in 30 degree weather, in jeans because she doesn't like her legs.  Heartbreaking, that is.  It's not the shape, but the hairiness.  Despite the fact that I often don't shave, she felt self-conscious because kids at school have already made fun of her for having hair.  So I bought her some razors and taught her how to shave, and now she's wearing shorts.  I would have LIKED to changed the patriarchal world we live in and convinced all the girls in her school that hair is cool wherever it grows, and that shaving pubes can lead to infection (which garners no mentioned in the curriculum), and that Juliette Binoche had hairy pits in The Unbearable Lightness of Being and she was sexy as all get out!!  But that's a job for tomorrow.  For today, she shaved.

We do what we can.  Baby steps.

...ETA - And then there's Norway.

Changing the Curriculum

Months ago, Kathleen Wynne proposed guidelines for sex ed in Ontario, and many parents are still furious.  A group called Campaign Life Coalition has put quite a spin on it all.  In grade one, kids learn all the correct names for all the parts of their body. CLC calls that "graphic lessons on sexual body parts." And at grade three, when kids learn about fluid gender identity, they call it "normalizing a mental disorder." The teachers will also "normalize homosexual family structures without regard for the religious/moral beliefs of families." Piece of work.

Wynne tried this before, but backed down because of parental concerns. But this time she's forging ahead. I hope she stays the course. As a parent, I want all kids to know their bodies and understand the diversity of people and family structures so that difference isn't fodder for bullying - like it sometimes is in Queen's Park. Some kids don't have understanding parents to whom they can openly ask, "Why did Billy call me a c*nt?" Little kids know a shocking number of words for their body parts already; wouldn't it be great if they also learned the right ones? And as a high school teacher, I see the results of kids being ostracized throughout grade school. We need this education to start as early as possible.

My spin on it is that some parents are protesting because they want to maintain bigoted views through the next generation of children, and the education system is stymying their efforts. Knowing about sex doesn't make kids have sex, but knowing about "no means no" could help prevent sexual abuse.  We worry too much about the lost innocence of children through education unwilling to acknowledge that many lose their innocence though ignorant information on the playground - and sometimes from home. We need kids to know the correct information before they hear too much misinformation.

But wouldn't it be amazing if Wynne also revamped the environmental science curriculum to start at grade one? Imagine if little kids understood that climate change is real, and caused by people. What if we told them, at school, that they could help save the world by walking instead of driving, by turning the A/C off and the heat down, by eating tofu dogs instead of meat by-products dyed pink, and by reducing the amount of toys they buy?

When the blue box recycling program was introduced, kids heard about it at school and went home to guilt their parents into recycling.  It worked! When I was a kid, school was all about preventing littering, and that worked too - but once it stopped being a concern, it stopped being taught, and now kids will toss wrappers on the ground without a second thought. I had a young boy try to convince me that it's okay he dropped his garbage because the wind will just take it away. When we stop teaching it, they stop learning it.

Can we combat our current crisis by getting children on board with the nag factor forcing parents to walk to the store every time?  Yes, there will be an outcry from parents who think the school board is shoving a belief system down their children's throats, but we can just forge ahead with the plan for the benefit of everyone. Earth is quickly becoming inhospitable to life, and we are sadly running out of time for interventions.

ETA:  Here's what one 6-year-old had to say:

On Sex Ed, Double Standards, and the Red Herring of Consent

My philosophy class discussed Erin Anderson's article from Friday's Globe and Mail, and it provoked a whole gamut of topics.  I'll try to encapsulate some of them here.  The article starts with an important question:

"The question left is whether we'll waste this moment, leaving the teenagers today to have the same conversation decades from now.  It's time to talk about solutions - in the courts, on the Internet and in our schools."

SEXUAL EDUCATION

The article calls for better sex ed in the high schools.  I agree, but what Anderson fails to realize is that, while Ontario students must take one Health and Physical Education credit to graduate, they can take it in any grade.  They don't all have to take the grade 9 health curriculum that focuses on sex ed.  And there were many stories from my class of some of the fear-inducing or just plain silly lessons from middle school health classes.  Sex ed must be improved dramatically to include "consent training" and "bystander training," as the article points out, but I think that has to happen outside of health class as well.  It must be part of mandatory courses, and I think it's particularly suited to fit randomly throughout English and civics courses.

Luckily, new curriculum documents (I believe for all courses) have or will have "front pages" - a reference to the preamble before the actual essential course learnings - that demand a focus on environmental education, healthy relationships, equity and inclusive education, and financial literacy as it applies to the subject area.  History got a curricular make-over just this past year, and the new Social Science blurb (p 41) on healthy relationships sounds pretty good:

"Healthy relationships are based on respect, caring, empathy, trust, and dignity, and thrive in an environment in which diversity is honoured and accepted.  Healthy relationships do not tolerate abusive, controlling, violent, bullying/harassing, or other inappropriate behaviours."  

This is or will be an actual part of every course now which is much more effective than forcing it into a few weeks of one course.  In teachers' college, we had a week of equity and inclusion studies that many deemed "pink week," and ridiculed it as such.  When I taught Careers, I tossed in an article about sexual harassment in the workplace in the middle of discussing employee dynamics, with no discernible backlash from students.  If we can sneak this type of education in throughout all our courses, it could actually foster a cultural shift.  I'm ever optimistic!

But, of course, we have to make sure it's addressed well.


CONSENT IS A RED HERRING

But one problem I have with Anderson's article, is the way it frames the issue of sexual assault as a matter of innocently misunderstood signals.  Yes, that happens here and there as we continue to see the rape myth perpetuated in films enough that some might still think resistance is part of the mating dance.  But I think it can often be an excuse for behaviour - "It was all just an honest mistake!" - and part of a larger issue of a lack of respect for women in general.  The fact that the article started with a discussion about Jian Ghomeshi makes it curious that it went down the "consent training" road.  From all reports, it's pretty clear that JG didn't misunderstand the signals he was getting.  He just wanted to hurt some women.

And, skirting an uncomfortable issue but no less relevant to my argument, my students got into a good analysis of the double standard.  "Men can have many partners and be cool, but women can't."  "Even if guys are okay with a girl who's slept around, girls like that have to deal with the consequences that no guy will actually date her."

Still.  In 2014.

Of course no discussion on this topic is complete without the requisite Breakfast Club double-edged sword speech:



My questions, as always, is "Why?"  Why does that happen?  What cultural forces maintain that dichotomy that hasn't budged since I was in high school in the early 80s.  I watched all sorts of gains made in racial issues and LGBTQ issues, but this one hasn't moved.  Do we want it to continue for some reason?  Who's benefitting from it?  Why won't it die??


Biology

Some said it's part of nature.  I guess since women have children, we have to protect them from being tainted with bad seed.  Many philosophers over the centuries have written about the importance of knowing for sure that a wife's children are actually her husband's, so a chaste woman is necessary to ensure proper lineage.

Almost 200 years ago, Schopenhauer said it's natural for men to be okay with multiple partners. Their will to live is satisfied by the possession of love - i.e. sex - regardless whether or not the desire is shared by the woman:

“But yet that in every case of falling in love, … the essential matter is not the reciprocation of love, but possession, i.e., the physical enjoyment. The certainty of the former can therefore by no means console us for the want of the latter; on the contrary, in such a situation many a man has shot himself. On the other hand, persons [i.e. men] who are deeply in love, and can obtain no return of it, are contented with possession, i.e., with the physical enjoyment. This is proved by all forced marriages, and also by the frequent purchase of the favor of a woman, in spite of her dislike, by large presents and other sacrifices, nay, even by cases of rape.” 

And, he continues, women are biologically determined to want love more than sex so they, and their children, can live securely.

Nowadays many of us call that essentialism and believe we are more than our biological or evolutionary mechanisms.  Our brains are more complex and efficiently designed than most of the other animals with segregated gender roles.  And, since we have birth control and DNA testing, how much does it matter if women have a variety of partners?  So why is this still maintained so vociferously?

There's another bit of biology that came up though - that the act of penetrating is different than being penetrated.  That women are a vessel that contains men's semen.  If she's been with 50 men, then she'll be "loose."  I countered that women give birth and bounce right back, but I should have argued that she could be with one man 50 times and not raise the same concerns.  It's the "kill count" that matters.  It's the image of the hot dogs down the hallway, the jizz bucket, sloppy seconds, damaged goods - as if sexually active women don't bathe and sex destroys their genitals - but only if it's with many men.  They can be tainted in a way that men can't because men leave something behind, deep inside, that seems to leave a lasting mark - forever.

But the vagina cleans itself out, kids.  Regularly.  Geez!

I can't scoff too much because I remember being in grade 12,  just when AIDS was first discussed, and, because it seemed relegated to gay men and prostitutes, my group of friends surmised that if one man's sperm touches another man's sperm it's actually fatal!   That's why sex education is so important.

But their imagery paints a picture that can be hard to shake.

ETA - And four classes later, someone raised the "vaginal looseness" argument AGAIN, so I was able to discuss the 50 times vs 50 people argument after all (and reiterate that they really need better sex ed classes).  But another argument was added to the fray:

"If a woman's vagina couldn't go back, then the tampon industry would go under because sexually active women's tampons would be falling out all over the place.  So if a woman's vagina can accommodate a tampon, it's likely small enough for your needs."

Whatever works to get the point across.


Religion

It's all because of religion.  Like the biology explanation, I think this is too simplistic. And there were myriad sexual restrictions long before the Christians ruined all the fun.

The Code of Hammurabi - written centuries before Genesis - states:

142. If a woman wishes to divorce her husband and refuses him sexual rights, an inquiry shall be held. If she has not committed adultery but her husband has, she may take her dowry and return to her father's house. 143. If she has committed adultery, then she shall be executed by being thrown into the water.....154. If a free man has sexual relations with his daughter, that man shall be exiled....159. If the first wife and a female slave of a free man both bear him sons, and the father acknowledges the sons of the female slave as his own, then the sons of the female slave shall share equally with the sons of the first wife in the paternal inheritance after the death of the father....171. If the father did not acknowledge the sons of the female slave as his own, then the sons have no right to share in the paternal inheritance; but both the female slave and her sons shall be given their freedom.

Sexual restrictions are part of society to maintain social order.  Sometimes they're officially legislated, but it's an easier time to keep order if they're part of the social fabric.  It can cause conflicts if we all sleep with anyone without respect for who's bothered by our shenanigans.  So my beginning position is that there is an order that is somewhat maintained by the sexual double standard.  Maybe if we can get to the perceived necessity for the structure, we can dismantle the attitudes.

Social Control

We ran out of time before I could postulate my own theories, but I think it's mainly about control.

If sexually confident women - or even just attractive women -  are sluts, then it reduces the competition for nice hetero girls.  So girls definitely benefit from reinforcing the dichotomy even if it's to their own detriment later.  It can be a means for girls to keep other girls from their guy by labelling them as diseased so that they become less attractive to their potential mate and even shameful to be seen with.  The solution to this dynamic is to recognize the abundance of potential mates available.  We don't need to complete with each other.  If she likes him, and he likes her back, let him go.  There are plenty to go around.

But I think for men the dynamic is perpetuated because many guys still like the upper hand in a relationship.  Not nearly all, of course.  There are confident men who can be with an experienced woman, but some really can't.  Like Silent Bob explains in Chasing Amy:



Personally, if a man has kept himself chaste and demands the same of a woman, I can respect that.  But if a man has seen some action, or tried to, and has a different standard for the women he dates, then I really can't tolerate that hypocrisy.

As I said in a previous post, saying no can precipitate retaliation of the weirdest sort.  I once turned down a guy just on a date to a movie, and he denigrated me to his friends mercilessly.  And it was just a movie, AND I was in a relationship at the time.  Some people don't take rejection well.  It's not the problem of the nay sayer, but that retaliation, unfortunately, is something women sometimes have to cope with.  So some girls say yes when they don't want to. And then they're ruined in the eyes of the Silent Bobs of the world.  But some girls want to say yes because they want to.  And that should be okay.

Here's the dynamic I think's at play:

Last summer I went on a date with a guy who I discovered, part way through the meal, loves Stephen Harper.  He challenged me to say one bad thing about him.  I listed a medley of dismantled environmental laws and regulations that are permanently destructive to Canada, not to mention the stranglehold he has on scientists.  But, I think separate from his politics, this guy's response was very interesting:

"Yes but, you can't talk about that because I don't know anything about the environment.  It's not fair because you're an environmentalist, and that's not my field."

So... let's get this straight.  I shouldn't discuss any piece of knowledge I have that a man doesn't have during a debate?   This man anyway.

But it's not just this one guy.  I've seen that same type of response here and there in other relationships over the years.  An early boyfriend whined that I'm so much more worldly than he because I lived in Ottawa for a year - Ottawa - so we just don't fit.  And a male friend insisted I didn't influence his musical tastes even though he hadn't heard of Ween or Primus before he met me and now is a rabid follower of both.  It feels to me like it couldn't be possible for him to have been influenced musically by a woman.  I could be wrong on this, of course, but it feels like a significant behaviour - a dynamic primarily between two sexes.

There's an insecurity there.  A fear.   And it hinges on what real men do and don't do.  Real men don't learn things from women, and part of that means that they should be the most experienced in the bedroom.  And the underlying current here, is that women don't have the status to teach, to know, to have seen more things - and they won't be respected if they have.  This likely ties in with the reality that smart, successful women are often single:

A study conducted with 121 British participants reported findings that females with high intelligence in male/female relationships were seen as problematic. Their intelligence were predicted to cause problems in the relationships. Whereas, high intelligence in the male partner was not seen as problematic, but desirable.

My sense is that until we can address this behaviour and belief system, we're going to be stuck with the double standard and with the sexual assaults.  It's all part and parcel of the same mentality:  This woman isn't really worth anything, so I can use her as a sex toy, as a punching bag, as a maid, as a nanny for my kids....

But then there's this guy, Terry Crews on Manhood, Feminism, and the Mindset that Leads to Rape:

"People are scared of being controlled....Feminism is not saying women are better than men....We're talking about... true gender equality.  But the problem is that men have always felt that they're more valuable....I have been that guy....Men have been manipulated to chase their win....You have to know you're already valuable."

People are getting their sense of value from their conquests, from their stuff, from their trophies, instead of from within.  Some men have a sense of entitlement over women and see women as a trophy that they deserve, whether she likes him or not.  And, I think, part of that includes wanting to be the only man the woman has ever known.  Crews says, "Never should that ever be accepted."

He suggests that men have to step up the join the battle against the patriarchal mindset that damages everyone:

"I relate it to...civil rights....Let's say the people who were silent....and the black school with two books, and the white school had everything, and you were quiet.  You were accepting it.  Same thing with men right now. You're not saying anything, you are, by your silence, accepting it.... 

The big thing for me is just that when you see another person as your equal there are things you just won't do....You would only go ahead when someone says no unless you feel you own them, you're above them....you feel they're your property.... 

We're not battling people, we're battling a mindset....It's like cutting a tree down by the leaves, it just grows back....nobody's getting at the stump.  The stump is the mindset that people feel they're more valuable than one another.....You think you're better than everybody.  The issue is every man wants intimacy....all intimacy is [that] you want to be known...and loved....Sex comes later.  The problem is people are chasing sex to chase intimacy, and you'll never be satisfied."  

Men are weaker, more fragile, more vulnerable than they feel they could ever admit. De Beauvoir discussed this at length almost 70 years ago.  Hiding that fragility is a huge burden to maintain.  Crews says, "Admit you don't have it....Keep a moment where that pride is out of here."  And maybe we can stop the competitions, and begin to see one another with respect, on an even plane, as actual equals.


BUT WOMEN LIE ABOUT RAPE A LOT

The only discussion I cut off during the class was this one.  Like the evolution vs creation debate, and the climate change vs natural fluctuations debate, saying some women lie to ruin men's lives doesn't rate an equal billing with some women get raped.  'Nough said.

It'll Be Fast: On Yes Means Yes

Globe and Mail.

I was struck by the report of an intimate exchange between a man and woman in today's Globe & Mail; the woman later questioned how consensual the act really was.  She said, "Please stop," and he responded, "It'll be fast."  Later she says "yes," then later again "no."

But that "fast" line struck me because of when else it's typically said.  We don't offer the cushion that an event will be over quickly unless we're well aware that it's not an event that's desirable.  I might say it when my child's about to get a needle, or when I'm enticing her to clean her room.  It implies that an event has little to redeem it except that it will all be over before you know it, and you can get back to more enjoyable pursuits.  So it's curious that it wasn't clear that the woman wasn't interested when speed was the best persuasion he could muster.

This is very complex issue, and I applaud how many of the bits and pieces are at least given a mention in the article.

It's a Huge Issue, and It has Barely Budged

"At least one in five women say they have experienced sexual assault that includes penetration by the time they graduate...Roughly one-third of the students surveyed agreed that rape happens 'because men can get carried away in sexual situations once they've started,'....believe that men 'can't help it,' and that drunk women who cross their paths have themselves to blame."

This is no different from attitudes in my high school in the early 80s.  But it felt like it all shifted for a time; it felt like people were gaining an awareness of these myths through an openness towards sexual discussion.  Now it feels like it's all come full circle back to the crappy place pre-rape shield law.  Actually it's so much worse.  We never had to worry about videos of an assault going viral.   The only evidence I have is anecdotal: in 1991, several teens in my school felt the need for a Gender Equality Club to discuss these issues.  Then, after a few years, that went away.  It no longer provoked like it once had. Now, in 2014, we've got another group of teens feeling the need for these kinds of discussion outside of a classroom setting.

Maybe in the in between time, too many of us were resting on our laurels, relaxing that we waged that war and won a couple legal changes and some attitudinal shifts that might protect us a little more.  How hard is it for people to remember that nobody should be doing anything sexual that they don't feel like doing?  But I think we might have to be vigilant about this one forever - even when times seem good.  It's an easy victory to have slip away.

On Coercion and Culture

"If you include unwanted touching or being 'coerced' into sex...the [sexual assault] rate rises to more than 50 per cent."

I cringe at the word "coerced" for two reasons.  First, I hate the image of adults, women and men, as childlike puppets, easily manipulated into doing something they don't want to do, to the point that if they say 'yes' loud and clear, it doesn't count if they later reveal they were coerced.  They didn't want to, but got talked into it.  It makes us seem so weak.

But, secondly, I hate the reality of that situation.  Saying 'No, thanks' doesn't just deny two people of some carnal pleasure, it can often be punitive to the objector.  If it were just about sex, then choosing a yes or no would still be a complex decision of physical attraction, timing, and feelings.  But in our culture, it's also about reputation.  For girls, being a prude isn't cool, and if a guy rejects a girl, he's seen as gay; both terms are still seen as insults.  What if it gets around?  Furthermore, people may be punished for a 'no' response in subtle ways.

Turn down a colleague, and he could make your days at work very difficult despite your efforts to smooth things over.  Some people are sore losers.  Or just losers.  So a choice to have sex often isn't always just a choice between having sex or not having sex.  It can be a choice between having sex you're not into OR being hassled for years by the proposing partner and whomever hears his/her slanted side of things.   This is the realm of the few men who get angry if "friend zoned," who somehow think a friendship should blossom into more in order to be worth anything of value.

From here. 

It's Not Always a Big Misunderstanding

"Human beings can read body language in the bedroom as easily as they can in other social interactions....[Sexual assault] is about someone making a decision to ignore the cues." 

Sometimes our cues get misinterpreted, absolutely.  Look a little too long at someone, and they might think you're into them when you're not.  And we have this strange idea that body language tells truths that our mind might not be aware of, so sometimes no verbal explanation can help sway a belief in the depth of feelings you appear to have for someone you barely know.  It does happen, and it can be frustrating experience for all involved.  

But too often misunderstandings can be an excuse for an act of aggression.  Most people can tell when someone's pulling away, and they stop.  Some people notice the gesture, but choose to ignore it.    It seems like such a little transgression, ignoring a gesture, but it's huge.

The Legal Issues

The 'Yes Means Yes' campaign, "frames sex more positively, shifting the focus from what a victim did (or didn't do, or couldn't do) to the steps a perpetrator failed to take to proactively ensure consent."  Instead of someone needing to say "no" to stop it, now they need to say "yes" before beginning AND throughout.  Without a clear "yes," it's assault.   "If it's not loud and clear, its not consent."  

But it will ever be difficult to determine what happened behind closed doors.  Nothing short of cameras everywhere will alleviate that problem.  A false accusation that gets thrown out of court can be enough to ruin a life, but so can a real sexual assault.  The worst reality is that it sometimes takes more than one transgression by a perpetrator (of accusations or assaults) to get any action from the courts because of the complexity of the issue.  I do think we need to err on the side of believing the alleged assault victim when in doubt, however, but that's a post for another day.  Laura does a good job of explaining that in this post, where she says, in part, "I understand that there are false accusations of rape. They are rare, but they do occur. Sexual assault, however, is not rare."

There's also this Alternet post, which clarifies that rape and false rape accusations are not equivalent problems.

But It's So Awkward! 

"[T]here's a large part of us [that] wants things to be spontaneous and free - and it enhances our experience....asking permission is 'awkward' in that it suggests the guy, still usually expected to initiate sex, 'doesn't have game." 

Asking for, and giving, consent repeatedly throughout various stages of intimacy doesn't have to ruin the moment.  It's not a matter of taking a break to re-draft a contract to be signed in triplicate.  It's merely a matter of saying, "Is this good?  Does this work?  Do you want me to keep going?" from time to time.  If we're weighing reducing sexual assault with reducing the spontaneity of sex, then I think spontaneity has to take a back seat.


We've come a long way in our acceptance of all manner of sexual relationships and habits, but the one I think is still in the closet, is the desire not to have sex.  Abstinence-only education has become such a joke, that the choice to abstain has become denigrated right along with it.  If we put up ads to suggest it's okay, it comes across as pushing religious doctrine rather than acceptance.  But it's not the case that all men are always horny, or that sex is all every hormone-laden teen is thinking about.  There are a lot of other things we can do together.  Sex has to remain just one of many choices in order for it to be freely chosen at al.  

On That List of Excuses for Not Having Sex Floating Around the Interweb

I wanted to chime in on a facebook discussion about that list (a man made a spreadsheet of his wife's excuses for refusing sex), but it wasn't started by an official FB friend, so I couldn't comment on it.  I'm not sure the etiquette on this, so I'll just keep everyone anonymous.  Here's the opener attached to a link that suggests women never owe men sex:

This analogy seems to suggest that, like a game of badminton in which nobody actually hits the ball is not actually a game of badminton, marriage in which nobody has sex isn't actually a marriage.  That's an archaic notion of marriage, and even in more religious times the union needed to be consummated only once to be validated.  Today, sex isn't necessary to prove a marriage is valid or invalid - even in religious circles.  I know more than one Catholic who's had a marriage annulled even though there were children produced.  Having sex doesn't make a marriage and not having sex doesn't unmake one.

And this is a progression to be celebrated.  There was a time when raping a woman was enough to legally make her your wife.  Now, here at least, it's illegal.  We've come to a place in which whatever people want to do sexually between consenting adults is accepted.  It's their own business.  But one choice that's less accepted is the choice to abstain while in a relationship.  It's curious how all or nothing we are about that.

The original poster continues:

Let's look closer at "a de facto exchange of fidelity for participation."

There's nothing in marriage vows suggesting sex is a necessary part of the union, but we can skip that type of argument and look at what the culture actually believes about marriage.  I think he's right that many people accept this type of agreement - at first.  But things come up.  Kids happen and people get tired or bored or sick of playing a game that they don't enjoy as much as their partner does.  Maybe they never actually "win the game," so to speak because their partner wins too fast every time.  Whatever the reason, I think in the first blush of matrimony there may be an assumption made that sex is a significant part of the marriage, and too many people unwisely don't discuss the what if's around this assumption.  But later on, it seems some people acknowledge and often accept a waning of interest.  The mutual understanding shifts over the course of time.

I'm not a marriage advocate largely because I don't think we can actively promise to love another until we die (as explained in this), but I also think it's too much to ask to promise we'll be the same kind of person and want the same kinds of things for decades into the future.  We are beings constantly in flux, yet some marriages expect consistency.  It's wonderful when people grow and change together, accommodating changes as they arise and working through them, but sometimes the changes are too great to be accommodated.  That's just life; it's nobody's fault.

Furthermore, because many people believe it to be true, that marriage is an exchange of fidelity for participation, doesn't make it right.  Just because it is that way for many people, doesn't mean it ought to be that way.  As we evolve to recognize individual rights, we have a moral duty to respect that we all have a right to do what we want with our bodies.  If a partner wants to have sex, it has to come as a  request, not an expectation.  That spreadsheet-man's wife's reasons for saying "no" to sex are seen as "excuses" implies that he believes sex is her duty, a chore, and she's trying to weasel out of her responsibility to him like a kid explaining why she can't clean the bathroom right this minute.  But it's not a duty for her to perform while she lies back and thinks of England.  Sex is an act to be freely shared between partners.

1 Corinthians 13:4-8

Ideally marriage is about caring for another without expectation.  It's about loving another person, which is not self-seeking and keeps no record of wrongs.  It's a public gesture that makes a commitment to care about the well being of another.  Publicly humiliating a partner by posting "excuses" online shows a profound lack of care and respect.  

I agree with the writer that the couple needs to "dispel a mutual illusion."  They clearly need to have a conversation, and spreadsheet-man has approached his personal problem in, I think, one of the worst ways possible.  No matter the initial intent of their marriage, that's changed, and they're not coping well with that reality.  It's a very real and serious problem for people when they're mismatched sexually, I agree, because they've promised not to go elsewhere.  It's not like if one person wants to see a movie, and the other declines, and the desirer can call a friend.  But that's not enough to suggest the solution is the assumption of participation.  Almost any two given people will have different desires at different times, and there are myriad ways to cope with that reality besides "Participate when I want it or we're over!".

Most importantly, a mismatch must be seen as just that.  There's no right amount of sex to have, so someone agreeing to it three times a month must be accepted as much as someone wanting it several times a day or never at all.  It just is what it is.  A mismatch is a problem for both the person not getting as much as they desire, and for the person denying the request, but it's only a problem at all if people hold sex in their relationship as more important than care, respect, and love.  If you care enough, you can become attuned to one another's needs.  It might mean not asking even if you're feeling it, and it might, for some people so inclined, mean doing things you're not really into right now.  Love isn't about giving everything of ourselves to another person, though, or solving all their problems ourselves, it's about caring about their issues enough to be there while they find their own way.  

On Our Continued Sexual Repression

Sherlock & John

I watched the first episode of the new season of Sherlock last night.  There's a sub-plot with NO spoilers here:  John Watson gets engaged to Mary.  Mrs. Hudson, the landlady, is shocked that he's engaged to a woman since he and Sherlock were obviously so "close" - and so soon after his passing and all.   John vehemently objects to the insinuation that he is now, or ever was, gay.  

In class before the break I read a bit about Montaigne's affection for La Boétie, and the very first comment I got from a pretty enlightened group was, "He was obviously gay."

Montaigne and La Boétie, BFFs

And then one of the essays I marked contained a discussion of the openness of sexual ethics today compared to historic restrictiveness.  And I commented on the paper that I don't think we've come nearly as far as we think we have, even if we just focus on this part of the world.

Our sexual ethics have changed, for sure - over the relative short term in particular.  I've lived long enough to see an unbelievable change in our respect for same-sex relationships, from killing them to revering them in my short lifetime.  Now homosexuality is in fashion to the point that some people want a gay friend or two to make them more interesting by association.  The same goes in some circles for polyandry.  But we're still messed up about sex.  And we don't understand our history on this enough to see our trajectory.

R. & Julie

Romance as the end all and be all of relationships is a relatively new idea - maybe 200-years-old or so.  Previously, passion towards one person was seen as a social problem - look what it did to Romeo and Juliet.  That wasn't written as a romance to emulate - the way most remakes will have it, but as a cautionary tale.  It's a tragedy after all.  

For centuries, people could bond with the same sex without an assumption of sexual tension.  Now that homosexuality is accepted in these parts, it seems to be a looming perception in the background of close friendships.  This is part and parcel of a view that a relationship with sex is the ideal - an accumulative view - which is the real problem.  As long as a sexual relationship trumps any other kind of dynamic, we have a greater potential to lose a variety of connections with others.  

Why is it so hard to believe that Montaigne and La Boétie loved each other but didn't have sexual feelings for each other?  I think it's because we can no longer imagine closeness without sexuality - which is repressive.  It restrains our freedom to have close, non-sexual relationships.  It's legal and overtly acceptable, but there's a subtle social pressure that suggests it's not quite right.  

Friends can be close, but not too close.  If any two people spend too much time together, they must be having sex - or they should be; they need to take it to the next level (as if it's a sign of progress).  Or, if they shouldn't be having sex, then they shouldn't be spending so much time together!  We've lost the idea of best friend, of companion without a sexual flavour.  Everything is coated in nuance.

I had a 15-year friendship with a guy that ended because of the number of people who insisted either we should be getting it on, or we actually were.  His girlfriend couldn't take it and gave him an ultimatum.  He picked her.  And lengthy conversations with men at parties are always suspect.  I have to stick with the women in the kitchen to avoid provoking the stink-eye (and that kitchen-thing still happens too).

We still approach love and connection fearfully and possessively.  

We've created a new normal that's no less constricting our experiences.   It seems that it's not the case that restrictions leave as we become more accepting, but that they just change and become less physically harsh.  Nobody is beaten for their desires (except pedophiles, that's still right out), but coersive social forces are no less a barrier to living comfortably with who we are and what we like.  There's a subtle social means of encouragement to stay within unnecessary and nonsensical boundaries.  

And that's not the only bit of sexual repressiveness of our times.  

It's blue because it's so cold!

I recently saw Blue is the Warmest Color and was surprised to see, in full detail, that women shave or wax their pubic hair right off even in France.  In the U.S. one study found that 60% of women 18-24 get rid of everything - and that it's really harmful!   Check out this video for a healthier perception of pubes (with puns galore). Beyond that, the rise in labioplasty convinces women that natural isn't beautiful unless it's perfect.  Looking the way we do naturally has always been an issue, but now it's gone further to include the bits that almost nobody ever sees.

Fetishes are still taboo.  People can talk about them on sensationalist TV shows, but, however kindly the host speaks to them, that they're there reveals them as freaks.  It's still not a conversation for social settings where other sex tales might be parlayed.  And, similarly, people who just aren't into sex that much keep it to themselves.  Any talk of either is met with concern and doctor suggestions.  It's seen as unhealthy not to desire sex with another person.  

Liking it too much or too varied is also a problem particularly for women.  Slut shaming isn't going away.  And the fact that people feel shameful about sexual encounters makes rape that much easier to get away with since victims are loathe to report.    

What keeps it all going, also, is the notion that talking about sex is somehow beneath us as intelligent people.  It's trivial and base.  So these issues aren't getting the attention they deserve.  As Freud said almost a century ago in Civilization and its Discontents, 

The demand for a uniform sexual life for all, which is proclaimed in all these prohibitions, disregards all the disparities, innate and acquired, in the sexual constitution of human beings, thereby depriving fairly large numbers of sexual enjoyment and becoming a source of grave injustice.

There's no evidence that Montaigne was gay, something he makes clear in "Of Friendship," but the suggestion of such is evidence that we still haven't grown enough as a culture to completely accept a variety of relationships including strong and lasting non-sexual friendships.  That's a shame.

On Designer Vaginas and Media Influence

Labiaplasty is on the rise.  Who knew?

There's an article in the Guardian in which Daisy Buchanan argues that we can't blame porn for this rush towards plastic surgery to pretty-up our lady bits because it's everywhere; in mainstream music videos we can see about as much as porn shows.

I'm not sure what bands Buchanan follows, but I haven't see much in the way of actual labias in my regular, mainstream video-watching, nor in any of the movies I watch - and I watch a lot of movies.  Even Miley Cyrus doesn't actually show her junk.  So, if men are complaining enough for women to save up cash and courage to go through with this, then clearly porn is to blame for this significant cultural shift.  But I do agree with Buchanan that we're seeing a whole lot more skin these days, and I wonder if labias are next.

Paternity Rights in Rape Cases

It's an interesting moral dilemma to have a judge decide a child has access to a father when the only contact the mother and father had was a sexual assault producing this child.  This isn't entirely the story here.  In this article, it could be a case of statutory rape.  It's possible there was a relationship for a while, that led to vocally consensual, yet not actually legal, sex.  It's not clear from the article if it was a guy jumping out of the bushes or a romantic tryst gone wrong or something in between.

The young mother, H.T."says she lived with her mother, who had to quit her job to care for the baby."

Well...the grandmother didn't have to quit her job to support the baby.  That was a choice she made - a difficult choice, but not the only possibility.  It makes me nuts when someone says they "had to" make some sacrifice for someone.  Apparently abortion wasn't on the table even though she was 14 when she gave birth, but that could have been an alternative to suffering caused by one fewer paycheque in the family.  It was her choice to leave her job.  But that's just a minor point.

Silence During Tragedy

I went to a history conference, and one of the PhDs at the front was talking about the common occurrence of silence during tragedy.  And, while those around me discussed WWII, and the Iran-Iraq war, and internment of the Japanese in Canada, I started thinking more about how uncomfortable people are talking about rape.

It all fit together for me largely because of a woman I once met, a friend's mom, who had lived in a concentration camp in Poland.  She had nine kids, and two were born there, while she was separated from her husband.  The guards routinely took women into their cabins.  But, she said, the difference between that time and place and now, is that when a woman came out of those cabins, the rest of the women were ready for her, with open arms and warm blankets and a soothing touch.  According to this smiling woman with only one good leg and numbers on her arm, rape couldn't be hidden there, so it was much, much easier to recover from.

On Our Rape Culture: Rehtaeh Parsons' Unfortunate Legacy

And another one gone - a victim of assault and revenge porn enacted and filmed by a bunch of teenaged boys who had more power than they might have ever imagined:  they could kill from a distance.  As Elizabeth Renzetti says of these double-barrel assaults, they are, "not just an act of violence but a spectator sport."  And here we thought we had come so far from the bloodlust days of the Colosseum.

The act isn't dissimilar from torturing an animal and showing pictures to people.  It's a behaviour that is absolutely depraved.  Who looks at those types of visuals without looking differently at the goon who took them?  Unfortunately, they have enough of an audience that we need to be afraid.  For some people, their body responds to the visuals even if their brain might hope it didn't.  So clips are saved and circulated endlessly.

Circulating the film is also a mean of re-shaming the act.  After years of the rally cry, "Rape is a crime, not a shame!" some perpetrators are working hard to make people ashamed to be raped for obvious reason:  if they're embarrassed by it, they won't tell.  But Rehtaeh did tell.

When Men are Raped

A man was sexually assaulted by four women in Toronto, and the story is make the facebook rounds.  I hate to say "of course," but of course people think it's hilarious.  Here are some choice comments directly copied and pasted without names - but these were all written by men (or, I suppose, people posing as men):

"Lucky basturd!"
"Get any phone numbers?"
"Dayum...And I try to look suspicious to female security at an Airport just so I can get frisked."
"where is this club ? whats the cover charge ? will the women hurt you if you cant get it up?"
"lets give him a luckiest boy in the world medal"
"wierd stuff because most men would not complain unless they tried to cut it off or something"
"Jesus they were about 14 stone each .. fuck me poor guy like getting attacked by hippos , sure he would not of complained if they were of the smaller sized females either way hope they could of raped em I don't know what did they do put there finger up his ass so his cock went hard? Haaa"
"Is he bragging or Complaining?"
"Why do things like this never happen to me???????" 

My comment, in the middle of the fray and largely ignored:  "Wow. Rape is rape no matter the gender. If a guy isn't into it, then it's rape, and it's not fun or cool, and he's not lucky. It's an assault that can cause lasting emotional trauma - even for men."

Undergrads: Underloved or Just Under Grads

An article in the G&M today expresses concerns with the "hookup culture" of university students.   There's a big fear that casual sex will create "a drastic divide between physical intimacy and emotional intimacy," and that people will see human bodies as disposable and "become incapable of creating 'valuable and real connections'."  The author goes on to quote researchers who have concerns about the quality of the sex as well.

I think there's a bigger problem that they've missed:  the connection between physical intimacy and emotional intimacy to begin with.  That fact that we see love primarily as a romantic connection between lovers, keeps intimacy from being part of less intense and exclusive relationships - even hookups.  We've created a false dichotomy between true love and nothing at all to the extent that some people, so concerned to clarify their lack of romantic intention, end up acting like jerks to partners in a  temporary encounter.

On Sex and Perversions

I want to revisit one of Freud's ideas further in light of a few news articles from yesterday's paper.  He said,

"The demand for a uniform sexual life for all, which is proclaimed in all these prohibitions, disregards all the disparities, innate and acquired, in the sexual constitution of human beings, thereby depriving fairly large numbers of sexual enjoyment and becoming a source of grave injustice" (C&D 53).

He goes on to discuss not just S&M and, what's old hat now, LGBTQ and "non-genital" sexual experiences, but also our practice of monogamy.  He opens the question of why civilization, it seems, necessarily restricts sexual practices in a way that doesn't happen with most other mammals, but he's at a loss to answer it.  In a previous post, I suggested the following:

On How to be Happy

At 74, after the roaring twenties came to an end, and the depression was just beginning to settle in a while, Freud wrote Civilization and its Discontents. This was a few years before the Nazis would allow him to leave the country but only after forcing him to sign a statement saying he was not mistreated.  He sarcastically asked if he could add, “I can most highly recommend the Gestapo to everyone.”  This is something to remember:  He was a ballsy guy.  To write the books he wrote at the time he wrote them, took courage. He also famously noted, “What progress we are making.  In the Middle Ages they would have burned me.  Now, they are content with burning my books.”  The following year, after a long struggle with cancer, his doctor helped him die with an overdose of morphine.  He missed all the burning the Nazis did.  This book explores how to be happy in the face of misery, and he espouses a surprisingly open view of sexuality near the end.  (This very well may be the longest post in all the land!)