"But what about those who swing both ways? AC/DCs?"

I realize that in writing this I'm holing myself up quite solidly in my ivory tower, but I'm prepared to deal with that. This is, after all, my damn blog.

I've been waiting around to hear some responses to the new bisexual men study from Northwestern University before talking about it here because I find the news that--shock!--there might actually be men who are attracted to both sexes out there not particularly amazing. And I find it totally head-shake-worthy that scientists are just now getting around to taking a more legit look at the topic. So the whole thing left me kind of happy but annoyed at the same time. Like, "Really, guys? That's the best you can do in 2011?"

I guess it's a good thing that the subject is getting a good look, I'm reserving excitement over it. The discussion has been solidly centered, so far, around the term bisexual. Which is fine. There are lots of peeps out there who are totally bisexual, and like guys and girls as such, and awesome! Rad! But despite the numerous references to the Kinsey scale in most of the articles I've read about this study, lots of people are overlooked when you restrict the conversation to "bisexual." Especially for men in our mixed-up nation in which the gay/straight binary is hugely problematic if you wish to get into the far-more-seductive gray area, "bisexual" presents sexuality as a simple equation. Man + woman = straight. Man + man/woman = bisexual. Man + man = gay. But how boring is that? How unrevealing? Can't we go farther?

The study in question selected for men who self-identified as gay, straight, and bisexual, which is a bit limited to my way of thinking. From a scientific method standpoint I recognize that setting up control groups and measurable criteria for a study of fluid sexuality and gender expression and so on might not be the easiest thing to do. Science does, after all, like things to be easily quantifiable, and as the ongoing struggle for a definition for the term "queer" proves, taking sexuality at face value and giving it the dignity of an ability to fluctuate is a very difficult thing to grasp hold of linguistically, socially, and definition-wise. But this study looked at, according to Slate, "erectile arousal while watching videos of male and female same-sex intimacy" in men. The "bisexual" ones had to prove "sexual experiences with at least two people of each sex, in addition to a "a romantic relationship lasting at least three months with a person of each sex." Sure, easy to quantify and study. Got that part... 

But what about men who identify as queer, who have had relationships with trans people or genderqueer people who identify as neither? Do their partners not count? Are bisexual people, now that they exist (at least the men do--god knows what the scientific community will do with the idea of female sexuality; the existing track record is not oh-so-impressive), limited to identification only if they have been fortunate enough to find understanding partners of typically recognized genders and had sex with them? What about people who have trouble finding dates because they're "bi" and that can be tough to negotiate with a new partner? Are those people not bisexual?

It's not that I have answers to any of these questions, or that I think I have some solution to the gender binary assumption the study is imposing on its subjects. It's not that I know how to study these things less black-and-white-ly. But I feel it's important to vent my frustrations about a study that is ostensibly cracking open a door of legitimacy for a part of the population that has rarely seen the light of recognition before, yet which is imposing the same kind of biased, problematic thinking that forces these people into the dark locked closet in the first place. It's maybe a half step forward, I guess, after digging down deeper into the already-well-traveled path.

...anyway, anybody recognize that little quote I used for the title?

Reflections on Going to the Gyno

I wonder what it's like to be a gynecologist. I'm sure the experience varies wildly depending on your type of practice, geographic location, specialization, and so on, but every time I go to visit my gynecologist I just can't help thinking that the job must be joyful and joyless at the same time. Joyless because there you are, consigned to look at female reproductive bits all day almost every day in the most sterile, clinical environment imaginable, which to me is kind of the opposite of when those bits are at their best. But then again, the knowledge that you are doing much good for many women by keeping them reproductively healthy and counseling them through the difficult terrain of womanhood must be a source of much pride, too.
I mean, as a woman who's knee deep in smut and butt-cheek deep in constantly thinking about sex, and also neck-deep in loving women, I find vulvas, vaginas, and all that goes along with them totally awesome and fascinating, but just like reviewing porn for years left me a little "meh" on actually watching it for personal pleasure, I can't imagine that looking at the least sexy possible version of those parts on exam table every day wouldn't put a bit of a dull pallor on your feelings about womanly goodies.
But then again, being an expert on some of the most mysterious parts of the human anatomy must be very empowering. Helping women navigate the numerous confusing twists and turns of having internal sex organs isn't just a job--it's a moral calling. There are few things in our world we know less about than how to understand the female body--I think we probably know more about the surface of the moon and the bottom of the Mariana Trench than we do, collectively, about why our bodies do what they do on a daily basis. "Does it look funny?" "Is it supposed to smell like that?" "Is that supposed to be this color?" "Is something wrong with me?" These are questions I find myself asking about my own body almost every day and having almost no way of answering on my own... and I know a LOT about human sexual anatomy, biology, evolution, and etc. I imagine for women with less research under their belts, the things going on under their underpants are even more confusing and sometimes terrifying.
Going to the gynecologist only once or twice a year for the most part, a lot of women end up sitting around worrying about their private parts for months at a time, and the visit itself ends up being less of a physical examination than a laundry list of anxieties and paranoias. Gynecologists are less MDs than therapists for a lot of us, and especially when the news isn't good, they're witnesses to, I'm sure, numerous spectacular emotional breakdowns, tears, and fears. They deal with the results of sexual trauma, lost and unwanted pregnancies, emotional dysfunctions, and countless other difficult-to-navigate areas of what goes into being a woman in this world. And all while smiling, nodding, and trying to make the speculum as comfortable as a device designed specifically to be uncomfortable can possibly be. The best of gynecologists can make a visit into a warm, rich, educational, and safe experience--a feat not to be underestimated, given that it's constituted of a nervous waiting room experience, embarrassing gown malfunctions, breast groping, and all sorts of unpleasant pokes, prods, and insertions. People lie to you, get embarrassed, blurt out things you don't need or want to hear, cry, giggle uncontrollably, over-prepare, under-hygiene themselves... God.
It's got to be a thankless job. I wonder if there's a National Gynecologist Appreciation Day. There damn well should be.
That being said, I just got back from mine. She's great. But I am SO going to take a shower and wrap myself up in a bathrobe and feel quietly, mildly, uncomfortable for the rest of the evening. Where'd I put my favorite tea cup?

Oooooooh This Makes Me Mad

A not-very-thought-provoking read on Al Jazeera (to their credit--in the Opinions section--by Naomi Wolf: "Is pornography driving men crazy?" An interesting title, actually, because she doesn't really talk about what she means by "crazy" in the first place. I think "crazy" here might be retranslated to "those who willingly watches pornography." I'm frankly hoping someone else titled the article to make it sound more provocative than just yet another ho-hum "porn will poison your mind" piece. Goodness knows we haven't had enough of those yet. *eye roll* But I doubt that's the case. It seems far more likely that Wolf just wanted to trap as many people as possible into reading her predictable, uninspired, and unhelpful article about how men are silly, simple creatures easily taken in by their own brain chemistry when confronted with the monolithic evil that is modern porn. I think she wanted as many men as possible to read her rant and say, "Well that must be what's wrong with me! It's not MY fault I act like a bit of an idiot--it's PORN'S fault!" And I think she wanted equally as many women to read it and say, "This must be what's wrong with my husband/boyfriend/son/male friend! It's all PORN'S fault!" Porn, of course, and the frail and obtuse psychology of the male brain.

The fact that this article is blazingly, unrepetently sexist is only the beginning of its problems, though. Wolf, like many other "feminist" writers like her, seems to miss the fact that by adopting fundamentally anti-sex and anti-porn views when they sit down to write without examining them first, she is helping exactly nobody. She's so eager to upset some mythical apple cart in which the rest of us are supposedly sitting, twiddling our thumbs and assuming that everything is hunky dory with the way we all relate to sex, that she fails to realize that none of this finger-pointing or irresponsible wielding of scientific information they are not qualified to apply helps anything. When I read articles like this, which feint toward taking arms against a sea of smut that hurting all of us (apparently) without actually picking up a single spear, I want to write in the comments: "...so? What are you going to do about it?" I usually don't, though, because, what's the point? Here's what I'm up against: thousands of years of patriarchal assumptions about sex and gender being turned neatly upside-down in an unimaginative and unproductive way. Opposing something isn't difficult, Ms. Wolf. Coming up with with a whole new way to approach gravity is.

There's nothing new in what Wolf says here. The assumptions she's going on are almost too numerous to bear listing, but here are a few I took away from the article:
1) men are rather simple creatures with very little in the way of defenses against compulsion,
2) porn is bad and feeds right into the male sex's reprehensible sexual compulsions,
3) sending people naked pictures of oneself is inherently a bad thing,
4) there's not really anything we can do about it, because porn in unchangeable,
5) so let's bitch.

Well, I see a few major problems with each one of these assumptions. Actually, many. But let's pretend for a moment that "feminism" is a blanket one can throw over blatant sexism. (Or, for that matter, the parenthetical statement: "There is some new evidence, uncovered by Jim Pfaus at Concordia University in Canada, that desensitisation may be affecting women consumers of pornography as well." Well by golly, I didn't know women had compulsions, too! Good thing you put that in there!) Let's pretend that it's only men who are affected by all of this horrendous porn-related degeneracy, shall we?

So... then what? So you think that hardcore pornography and the fact that it is easily available for free on the internet to feed these poor, sad male creatures' compulsions is a negative thing? So you wish there was less free porn online to fan the fire? You wish men would stop watching so much of it? So what are you going to do about it? Are you going to single-handedly shut down the porn industry, like Shelley Lubben wants to do? Good luck turning the entire history of the human species on its head and denying us our sexual imagery. Not gonna happen.

So then what? Are you going to spend some time making serious inquiries into what can be done to make this situation better? Are you going to talk to pornographers about how you'd be more likely to assure their bottom line by purchasing their products if they would make more responsible, less shocking material that feeds into "porn addiction"? (This question stands upon a pyramid of other assumptions about why shocking material is popular and whether it's "good" or "bad," but I don't have time to get into that at the moment... maybe more to come on that later.) Are you going to work with the porn industry to help curtail the piracy of their video content, thereby making free pirated porn less available to the sadly semen-besotted masses? Are you going to help in any way to make this situation better?

Or are you, like Gail Dines and Shelley Lubben and a whole lot of other small-minded people who would rather rely on an entirely unrevolutionary set of assumptions about sex, gender relations, morality, and sexual imagery to make a boring pseudo-point that helps you wag your finger in the face of a multi-billion dollar industry and click your tongue about how naughty it is? Are you going to actually face the music and try to affect real, positive change in the way we talk and think about sex, thereby helping do away with the attitudes that make viewing porn such a compulsive, addictive, surreptitious behavior in the first place and diminishing the shame that surrounds it so we can have healthy, honest, open discussions about sex? Or are you going to throw up your hands like so many, declare that porn is just too terrible to get involved in, and bitch?

I'm Not an "Ordinary Person"

I really want to fill out the questions in this survey from Clarissa Smith, Feona Attwood, and Martin Baker about the ordinary person's use of and relationship to pornography. For maybe the first time ever, some serious researchers (in England) are getting together not to talk about how good or bad porn is, or whether it's destroying or elevating our sexuality, or where the moral line is drawn. Instead, they want to do a huge-as-possible survey of normal people who use porn and find out just when, why, where, and how people use it, how they feel about it, and how the actual, everyday use of pornography applies to real life.

From the site: "Our project is concerned with the everyday uses of pornography, and how the people who use it feel it fits into their lives. Pornography is of course a highly topical issue, subject to many opposing views and ‘strong opinions’. And we are not saying that there are no moral or political issues.  But we are saying that the voices of users and enjoyers have been swamped.  In fact, there is very little research that engages with the users of pornography, asking how, when and why they turn to it."

Oh my gosh! No finger-pointing, no soap-box standing, no preaching. Just an honest look at what porn really does and how it works at the ground level!

However, my problem is this: the questionnaire "will enable us to understand the patterns of use of porn by ordinary people." And, well, I'm not exactly your ordinary user/enjoyer of porn. I'm more of a professional porn viewer and thinker. I don't think the researchers are looking for my responses because I think WAY more about all the topics they're considering than your average porn consumer. Anyone who wants to Google me can find out my views on porn in no time flat. It's the REST OF THE WORLD they need to hear from. So I thought, "Since I can't participate, I'll try to get as many OTHER people to participate as possible!"

Please, readers, do what I can't! Help inform the world about porn and your life! Go fill out the questionnaire, and come back and tell me all about it in the comments! Your input is important; if the world is ever going to get a fair, even-footed, rational look at the realities of our "pornified" world and views about pornography, it has to come from data collected in a study like this. All this mumbo jumbo about smut's "damaging" nature or "immorality" or "morality" or "positive" nature is mostly hearsay at this point. Let's change that and start having a REAL conversation!

...Have you not clicked on the link yet? Jeeez, what's Easter Sunday for if not filling out 20-minute online porn surveys! Go! Do it!

Tidbits to Tantalize You

 I may not appreciate all the sentiments in The Observer article, but I gotta admit,

this graphic is quite entertaining.

Welcome to spring, my lovelies! It is officially post-spring equinox now, and we are officially on our way toward warmer days and higher libidos! I don't know about you guys, but I find it a whole lot more difficult to get randy when my toes are freezing and I'm under five blankets. How are you supposed to throw your partner around and enjoy yourself when it's fifty degrees in your apartment?

Oh, wait, that's just me because my landlord's a psycho and keeps the heat too low? Ah. Well. At any rate, I'm looking forward to warmer weather. This winter in NYC was brutal, outside and inside.

Anyway, as it's getting warmer I'm having a harder time sitting still to write. I'm assuming you are, too. Given it's a beautiful spring weekend, let's not be too serious about our fodder today, shall we? Let's link:

1) Fascinating study results on the LUG (Lesbian Until Graduation) phenomenon: turns out women don't experiment with other women nearly as much in college as we all thought they did. Surprisingly (or not) enough, less-educated, less-privileged women have substantially more same-sex sex and relationships. Well I'll be damned! You mean less-educated working women have rich and interesting personal lives less informed by what society expects of them and less carefully considered in light of what feminist literary theory says? No way!
Actually, this news makes me feel much better about my notably less-than-lesbian college experience. I've known for most of my adult life that I liked women, but I've never been good at expressing that to other women. Especially as a petite, femme-by-genetics woman who also liked men, I just never knew how to attract women who wanted to "experiment" as much as I wanted to. When I found one who wanted to make out in a bar, it always turned out she was experimenting for the benefit of the watching men nearby. I wanted to take her home. It never worked out further than some awkward fumbling, and I felt very sad about this because I believed that women were supposed to do this in college and I must have just been that unattractive to the experimental ones. That or I was at a Catholic university... hm... Might've been the Catholicism, now that I think about it.

ANYWAY...

2) The Observer says that young people in New York are no longer interested in sex because they're too busy worrying about their online personas getting mixed up with someone else's, preserving their mystique, and doing cocaine. Lucky for the libido of the city, however, we're assured that the younger generation, the 19- and 20-year-olds, are horny as ever and ready to take their places.
I've never been much of a hard partier or bar-goer myself, so I guess I can't comment much on the phenomenon, but I think some of the ideas mentioned in the article as side notes should be taken way more into consideration than your Facebook wall the day after a one night stand: for instance, Freeman mentions that "the cab right back to Bushwick" after a Manhattan bar is awkward and better avoided. But Freeman seems not to take this into real consideration: he's assuming that, A) the young professionals have enough cash to get a cab way the hell out to Bushwick, and B) that it's ridiculous to think young people would let a commute get between themselves and boning. But let's be real. A) Most young people between 21 and 30 in NYC are people like me, who have taken the very worst of the brunt of the recession. We're not exactly swimming in cash here. Cabs are expensive. An awkward cab right is one thing: a fluorescent-lit, crowded, uncomfortable, and too-long-because-the-MTA-never-fixes-anything subway ride? Dealbreaker. If one of you lives in Astoria and the other in Bushwick and you've got work tomorrow and you need to rely on getting the N train home after midnight? Fucking forget it. Sex is great, but it's not worth that. Make a date for later or drop it. B) Speaking of getting reamed by the recession more than the opposite sex: anyone who wants to have a real career in NYC right now who's at the "assistant" or "associate" level at his or her company isn't make shit for a salary and is probably working another job when he/she gets home at night. We all have blogs, some of which are professional in nature. Lots of us wait tables or tend bar to make extra cash to cover the rest of the bills in this overpriced metropolis, or we take night classes in the hopes that someday we CAN make enough money at one job. By the time our daily routine of work, work, and more work is over, that subway ride home with a new acquaintance is looking more dismal than ever.
Look, I'm not saying they're RIGHT. I know plenty of people who have fun random hook-ups all over the place. But I admit, I often marvel that they can muster the energy. Being young and in New York right now is exhausting. It's always been exhausting, but I'd argue that most of us are balancing a whole lot more work than social life right now to stay afloat, and sometimes, even when you're young, it's too much to want to get it on with that cute piece of ass at the end of the bar.
Also, c'mon Observer. Can we please be done making new and improved versions of "Sex and the City" headlines and titles for things? God, that show's been off the air for years now, and it's obviously ruined living in New York for everyone young and sexy by making people expect way too much out of our libidos already! Thanks.


3) Can I just show some more disgust for Apple real quick? Seriously, I've been annoyed at this company for subtly brainwashing its faithful into a weird state of Mac-crazed, glazed-eyed submission for years now. And I was pretty annoyed that in some circles the release of the new iPad outweighed the disaster in Japan as a newsworthy topic last weekend. And I've always found Apple's creepy sense of over-morality unsettling: come on, you make some of the most user-friendly tech gadgets in the world and you won't let people put porn apps on them? WTF?
But now I'm really pissed. While the App store continues to deny anything "overtly sexual" admittance to the Pearly, Sleek, and Impossibly Cool Gates, it's ok with the Exodus International app. Exodus International is a virulently anti-homosexual organization that favors exorcism, the God/Satan dichotomy, and demon-blaming when it comes to homosexuality. Ummm... Apple? You got anything to say about this? You might, um... Want to do that. Stat.

Gangbangs = Clone Armies

1) This has just occurred to me. I'm waiting for round 1 of questions from our gangbang queen, Sabrina Deep, regarding gangbang etiquette to be returned to me, and in the meantime I've gotten to thinking: Gangbangs = Clone Armies. Or at least they could. Think about it. The biological, evolutionary desire for gangbangs and group sex in general, most scientist seem to agree, comes from the female's urge to promote "sperm warfare" in her reproductive tract. Baker and Bellis have long promoted the idea that men's sperm goes to war with other men's sperm if (and when; evolutionarily speaking, this happened, and still does happen, a LOT) for the privilege of fertilizing the waiting egg. Women usually promoted this competition for the most worthy DNA via surreptitious means, but in today's less-genetically-driven sexual landscape, gangbangs are very large-scale and often-filmed public showcases of this behavior. Of course, I doubt that most women who take part in gang-bangs are really thinking about their potential offspring's genetic material when they get all randy and do it with multiple men, but it occurred to me that these pioneering women, whose bodies, it could be argued, are acting a megalomaniacal impulse to produce the best offspring, might be engaging in just-as-megalomaniacal thinking, too.
Think about it: one of the salient features of most gangbangs in this day and age isn't the possible fertilization of a woman's egg, is it? Bodily fluids get thrown around like it ain't no thang, but very few of them actually land in possibly-fertile territory. Instead, the cumshots are key, and sperm goes flying all over the place, landing mostly on the female's body. One assumes (and I did ask this question, which is what got me thinking on this perverted, paranoid path) that the excess spermies get wiped off and edited out of the footage most the time, but then what does the lady DO with all that semen?
What if... stay with me now... What if the pioneering nature of women who used to have sex with lots of men in order to get the best babies are now pioneering in another, less-ripping-of-the-private-parts-during-childbirth kind of world-dominating way? What if they're collecting semen samples from all the men at the gangbang in order to clone them and make armies? CLONE ARMIES! To do their domineering bidding!! Seriously, women whose personalities classify as "wilting flower" don't want clone armies, so this might sound silly, but those women also don't do gangbangs too often, do they? Or film them for posterity, so someday, after they've taken over the world with their clone armies of doom, they can show the world where it all started? No, they don't. Women who do gangbangs and film them are high-energy, very type-A personalities with the will to take over the world, but today's medical technology allows them to do it in a much more direct way: rather than having a few babies to pass on their genes, these women now can create hundreds of clones to keep in sexual slavery until they're ready to go out and rain doom down upon all of our heads.
Well, hey, at least in the new world order, sex probably won't be such a hush-hush topic.

2) Also, it never ceases to amaze me that when people come to my house and we sit around bullshitting in my office, which happens a lot as it's the biggest room in the house, they almost always find and pick up my riding crop. It's a pink, white, and black leather riding crop that I use in my, ahem, personal life for fun spanking times. I brought it into the office because, recently, someone found it on a coffee table in the living room and started to spank everyone in sight mercilessly with it. I said, "Dude, you have no idea where that thing has been," and he quickly put it down, at which time I brought it into the office and placed it in a very quiet, unassuming corner. Last night, a friend with whom I was recording a podcast picked it up and started playing with it. I didn't want to interrupt our recording session to mention that the pink, white, and black braided riding crop he was fondling might, surprisingly enough, not be used on horses but rather people's asses. He's quite sexually conservative, so who knows what might have happened if I'd mentioned to him that the leather he was touching had been used on many areas of bare skin on my and my lovers' bodies that he might not be entirely comfortable coming into contact with, even indirectly. So I let it go and didn't mention it to him.
But, honestly, people, if you walk into someone's apartment and see a whip lying around, does it seem like a wise thing to start playing with? First of all, whips tend to be used, in private residences, for particularly private things. And secondly, this person obviously owns and uses a whip. You might be biting off more than you can, or want to, chew, if you go into their toy stash and start poking around. They might whip you. Or ask you to whip them. Who knows what could happen! Lots of fun, or lots and lots of awkwardness.
I'm just saying, caution and tact, peeps. Caution and tact. I realize it might behoove me, since people seem so curious, to put the whip away somewhere that it won't attract attention. But fuck that; I want my whip handy when I need it! So just be respectful, people!

Anti-Rape Mechanisms, or Over-Wrought Interpretations?

In an article today from Jesse Bering at Slate, "Darwin's Rape Whistle," findings from recent research about "phase dependent female rape-avoidance mechanisms" are discussed in detail. The new research is based on the idea that, controversial as the topic may be, human males may have evolved certain behavioral and anatomical traits in order to more effectively rape women. Nobody wants to think this is true, and many people are damn well convinced that it's not, but if we're looking at the topic from a purely evolutionary, "must pass on DNA at all costs" kind of animalistic perspective, there are plenty of arguments scientists can make suggesting that men have evolved to get their spermies inside vajayjays at all costs, and sometimes those costs include coercing or forcing a woman into copulation. Not pretty, but science tells us it's very likely true at our most basic, pre-human levels. So, goes the thinking, what about the women? If millions of years of evolution prepared men to take a woman by force when there seemed to be no other choice (dear god I hate writing about this, but that's not the point here), then doesn't it seemlikely that women evolved to be able to fend off attacks? From Kinsey on, all scientific inquiry into human female reproductive strategy has left researchers even more impressed by the intricacy and efficacy of female's ability to pick and choose their mates: every detail, from the type of cervical mucus being produced at different times in the woman's menstrual cycle to the temperature of her body and her changes in preference from masculine to feminine males, is part of an incredibly complex, subtle, and effective strategy that females use without even knowing it to choose, copulate with, and either keep or ditch the father of their children. Rape constitutes a violation of millions of years of sexual evolution that women have worked very hard to get through. It causes psychological and physical damage, of course, and it's reprehensible in every way, but more than that, it takes away a woman's power to use her armory of strategies for getting the DNA samples she wants from the man she wants. Rape is effectively a big fuck-you to nature's plan. It seems unavoidable that along the route from pre-hominid to thinking human female, nature would have built in a few mechanisms to keep us ladies safe from being impregnated by some dude we don't want to be knocked up by.

And, according to Bering, scientists are finding "convincing" evidence that women at their most vulnerable--ovulating women who are most likely to be fertilized by any copulation--tend to be primed for evading forced sex. A 2002 study from the University of Albany, he says, found that ovulating women, when presented with a story in which the female protagonist was about to be raped, suddenly saw a dramatic rise in physical strength, as tested by hand-grip pressure. This makes sense: a woman whose egg is ready to be fertilized might just find a well-spring of raw power within her that she never knew she had if some schmo has his eye on the prize.

Ditto the 2007 study by Christine Garver-Apgar that found ovulating women tend to be a lot more suspicious of strange men, and the evidence from two other studies that ovulating women tend to stay home, or in safe places, more than non-ovulating women. While I've read the results of studies that say the exact opposite (that women tend to show more skin and take more sexual risks with strangers while ovulating, ostensibly because their bodies are telling them "it's now or never, lady, get yourself spermified!"), I suppose situation may have a huge effect on the way women tend to see men. If a woman is ovulating and feeling horny, she may be more willing to out LOOKING for a mate and be more willing to find evidence of good genes in someone she might not usually be attracted to, but if a woman is ovulating and finds herself on the street surrounded by men who she doesn't find attractive or interesting, her body would do well to point out their flaws to her in no uncertain terms so she doesn't end up waking up the mother of an inferior-gened child by a stranger. And while she might be more likely to take a stranger home because her body is telling her to look for someone, the very fact that her subconscious is focused on passing on her DNA in the best way possible might make her much less likely to seek unwanted attention from inferior males, and to see more men as inferior than she normally would. I guess it's a two-way street.

But the last bit of evidence Bering cites, from Michigan State's Carlos Navarette, which states that ovulating women tend to be more racist than non-ovulating women... I... I just don't know about that. Part of me wants to deny that this might be true, in the same way that my knee-jerk reaction to "men have evolved to be capable of raping women" shows that I want to think better of human beings. But I'm no scientist, and I won't argue what trained professionals say they've found to be true, necessarily. It may very well be true that paranoid, safety-seeking ovulating women DO find men of other races more intimidating at that particular time of the month, much as I wish it weren't so. But my lack of scientific prowess aside, I'm having a hard time swallowing Navarette's justification for his findings: "The women who happened to be ovulating scored especially high when it came to fear of black (as opposed to white) men, a fact that the authors interpret as reflecting an evolved disposition to avoid so-called 'out-group males,' who 'may not have been subject to the same social controls as in-group members and would have constituted a threat in antagonistic situations.' In this case, skin color serves as a convenient marker of group identity." ...Yeah, could be. After all, we evolved in small groups of people who shared a whole lot of physical traits and dangerously close DNA to ourselves, and that at its very base could arguably the root of racism even today: people who look different from us don't belong in our "group" and are therefore suspect. Ok, I can buy it as a very general concept, int he same way that I can buy that men evolved to rape women sometimes--it may be true but it's no excuse for practicing these vestigial evolutionary byproducts today. But. I mean... Navarette, it seems like you just MIGHT be stretching the science a bit thin here to avoid saying what seems like a MUCH more likely culprit than 'suspicion of out-of-group males' during ovulation: out and out racism.

I hate to be the one to bring this up, because I DO think that Navarette has a decent point and because I do NOT like to point out social iniquity any more than the next guy, but, dude, seriously? You don't think it's more likely that women who are ovulating and therefore more protective of their naughty bits might be more likely to see black men as a threat because they've been trained to see black men as exotic, big-dicked, aggressively sexual monsters? You don't think that Hollywood's treatment of African Americans as somewhat less-intelligent, hyper-violent, sex machines has something to do with this? You don't think that the segregation that continues to affect the lives of blacks and whites all over America even in the 21st century and the still-prevalent exotification of black skin might have the teensiest bit of influence over the fact that white women, who have heard implicit and explicit statements their entire lives about how black men are DANGEROUS, are suspicious of them? Or that the faces we see in mug shots and police sketches and blurry video footage from crime scenes on the news every night are almost invariably dark? Or that we still vilify black people in almost every way? Pretending that science backs up racism by PC-ing it up and saying it's an evolutionary tactic is a cop-out and one that requires a lot of fancy footwork, at that. It's not that I think Navarette is WRONG in his findings, it's just that he's searching under the tiniest rocks for a deeply evolutionary explanation for something that has a much more glaring cause at a much more easily-attached level. It's not enough to say that racist reactions might be part of our evolutionary heritage, because doing that basically tells everyone that it's not the best thing, but that it's ok because it's in our genes to suspect "out of group" people--it's irresponsible to pretend that our deeply rooted ancestral responses can't be overcome by the brains we've evolved and the highly social and civil lives we lead, which have a whole lot more of a place in this world than our crocodile brains.

I'm. Gr. I'm kinda pissed off. I'm gonna go.

Hung Like Horses: Rural Guys Have Huge Dicks

The world just recently turned over a new leaf: more than half the world's population are living in urban centers (aka cities) these days, and the exodus has had wide-ranging effects. Here in the US we're seeing an ever-higher incidence of country vs. city cultural divide. (See: Sarah Palin, Cracker Barrel, and hipsters.) For a country fueled very largely on the hard work of rural areas, where food is grown and factories are located, America has long given city dwellers more credit for brains, sophistication, worldliness, culture, and sex appeal.

But NO MORE! A study from Bulgaria (ok, admittedly that's far from the US, but bear with me), has found that rural boys and young men have bigger schlongs. Not a whole lot bigger, mind you--the numbers are only about .2 inches apart in length on average--but statistically significant. Fucking weird. Take THAT, urban superiority! Hang your tiny heads in shame and behold the behemoth genitals of the Bulgarian bumpkin!

The study itself was aimed at the idea of boys hitting puberty earlier in life, and so the scientists involved don't have any data on why country boys might be hung like their horses, but I think it's high time we start speculating! Having absolutely no way to back up any of the following wild generalizations and silly ideas, here are my hypotheses:

Maybe it's the average amount of exercise a boy on a farm gets versus an apartment-dweller in the city. Perhaps people in the country (in Bulgaria, at least) eat a healthier and less-processed diet. Could be that the population over there is slightly less mobile than here, and for some reason the genes that have stayed in the country just happen to be passed down from a long line of long dongs. Or maybe exposure to horse and donkey cock at an early age psychosomatically affected the boys on farms. Then again, perhaps the air quality in cities is bad enough to have a negative effect on penis growth. Or mayhap being packed into small spaces with more males during daily life triggers less testosterone during growth to prevent aggression (a trait which can get you in more trouble in a crowded subway car than out in a field), which in turns affects sexual development. Or perhaps the tight jeans of the aging hipster community have just damaged their sperm enough by now that their kids are suffering the consequences... But then again, I can count on one hand the number of times I've seen a hipster in tight jeans and been impressed by the size of his bulge... Maybe hipsters move to cities in the first place because cowboy-style tight jeans are too embarrassing for them: the other cowboys have wild west wangs and the hipsters have to escape the anonymity of American Apparel, where all the bottom bits are itty-bitty, and where they then pass on their tiny-tadger genes to another generation of moustachioed, red-wine guzzling dweebs...

Could be anything! And I think we've established how I feel about hipsters. But the point is that, now that we've got this information from Bulgaria, I'm hoping that similar studies will follow suit in more countries. If the big-dicked bumpkin is a worldwide phenomenon, I wonder if the world may soon see its first female- and gay-male-exodus. From the cities where the brains are big, the sniffling sophistication sky high, and the jeans far too tight, perhaps those who love a lengthy lovestick will see fit to repopulate the countryside, sending back the finest erotica and amateur porn, along with artisinal cheeses and organic produce from the expat hipsters, to us poor, puny-peckered city dwellers.

The future is looking bright!

Actually, it's not. I mean, .2 inches isn't much to crow about, and once you factor in how impossible it is to tell what all those Bulgarian boners would look like erect versus flaccid, all speculation goes out the window. We've all known some guy whose bulge was impressive during conversation, but barely ballooned at all when he got aroused. And we've all known someone with a laughably small package that sprouts into a redwood when he gets randy. It's a crap shoot, and I dare say I don't find a fraction of an inch difference pre-wood to be much of a promise of better sex in the country: city boys might not have as much to swing around in a wine bar, but they might have been exposed to a few more ideas about positions and foreplay. Then again, country boys may have more free time to go for a romp in the hay or in the back of their pickup and may have learned a thing or two even without sex clubs and seminars. I think, if I decide to move back to the country someday, I'll do it for the love of fresh air and leave the hope of better straight sex out of it. And anyway, my boyfriend here is from the country. Hah!