A Second Hand Conjecture

Lesbian feminist Lily Tomlin once joked that the only reason cretinous men walked upright was to free their hands for masturbation. Fair enough, but the posture of the lady might soon lack for any better purpose. According to a new survey, 92% of British women between 18-30 now masturbate regularly. That’s up from 62% in 1953. And regularity is the key word. Today 2/3rds of British women masturbate more than four times a week. That’s quite a lot.

I suppose you could interpret these results as further evidence of a liberated femininity and/or behavioral equilibration between the genders. Or of course if you’re a social conservative sexually repressed prude, you could lament the finding as evidence of the corrosion of internal moral self-restraint.

But one might also suggest that it is an adaptive reaction to a newly hyper-sexualized external society. As Westerners we’ve already voted to live in a constitutionally protected, sexually intoxicated media environment. One which is thoroughly permeated with permissive sexual suggestion at almost all levels. Men and women are being bombarded with sexually stimulating media on a permanent basis, even for the purpose of advertising something as unstimulating as cheeseburgers. Living in this environment could only be expected to enhance the collective desire on the part of people, to achieve sexual gratification more frequently. One might even suggest that immersion in this environment mandates it for a young and largely unmarried demographic group.

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Sadly, it seems Angela Keaton has finally resigned from the Libertarian National Committee. If you haven’t been following this little bit of salacious Libertarian Party drama, here’s the “Resolution of Discipline” against her from December 1st, which details many of her alleged injuries to the “public image” of the party. My personal favorite demand:

An apology [from Angela Keaton] to the Libertarian National Committee for offering sex to the LNC officers conditional on the performance of our Presidential candidate by stating in an Internet interview on June 26, 2008, “If Bob Barr breaks 1%, the officers of the national party can pass me around like a pu-pu platter.”
(IPR)

For the record, Bob Barr received 0.4% of the national popular vote in 2008, and thus Angela was spared the indignity of becoming a Chinese appetizer in a vorarephilic Libertarian orgy. That in itself is probably a source for some of the hostility by members of the LNC. It’s one thing to brutally mock your party, it’s something altogether more offensive to be proven accurate in your mockery.

Yet with the passing of the colorful and combative Ms. Keaton, there is once again officially no immediate reason to pay attention to the doings of the LNC that I can think of. Not that anyone outside the LP was paying attention to this either…which does call into question the integrity of the charges made by Angela’s critics. After all, a “public image” which is subject to injury, does tend to require a public audience.

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According to research conducted in the UK, women find men with facial scars more physically attractive, if the scar appears to be the result of violence. Unfortunately it may be a brief affair for the scarred, as some theories suggest that the scars only stimulate women’s interest in a short-term relationship, as a facial scar may convey a signal of a masculine but risky personality type.

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I recall it being reported at the height of the sordid and tedious Monica Lewinsky scandal, that Bill Clinton personally felt he had not violated his wedding vows because in his view, receiving fellatio did not constitute adultery. Evidently Clinton had researched the topic at some length and found a kind of tortured reinforcement for his perspective in the Bible itself. At the time I thought it seemed a rather instructive example of the essential convenience of Clinton’s morality, as well as providing a further lesson that one can find divine justification for almost anything in scripture if they look hard enough.

But in 2003 it was revealed that the New Hampshire Supreme Court had grown to share Clinton’s view as a matter of law. And today, it seems the idea may have trickled into youth culture, as a survey of students at Montrose High School in Colorado revealed a majority of them didn’t consider oral sex to be sex at all. Which may of course provoke lament from those enrolled in the increasingly pessimistic venture of social conservatism, but causes even more distress for our shared language. That’s because if oral sex isn’t sex, what then should we call it? Fellatio, analingus and cunnilingus are cumbersome and particular words after all.

Having consulted the online thesaurus for advice, some social conservatives will perhaps be pleased to learn that in failing to find a suitable synonym it asks, “did you mean irreligious?” But this of course won’t do for the rest of us.

Taking a cue from the dictionary, we might call it “oral stimulation.” However, this may tend to unnecessarily confound the boundaries between a blowjob and an interesting conversation.

Therefore, I propose the use of “oral nonsex” for its utility in both complying with the children’s liberalized definition, and preserving the capricious nature of public morality for the prize of irony. Also, social conservatives disappointed by the purposes of redefinition itself, could be comforted with a gifted advantage over their adversarsies. After all, anyone contending that “oral sex is nonsex”, has a certain literal and yet ridiculous argument on their hands.

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Does the object of our desire tend to change during tough times?

Yes, according to this paper on men’s preferences when it comes to Playboy’s models:

Consistent with Environmental Security Hypothesis predictions, when social and economic conditions were difficult, older, heavier, taller Playboy Playmates of the Year with larger waists, smaller eyes, larger waist-to-hip ratios, smaller bust-to-waist ratios, and smaller body mass index values were selected. These results suggest that environmental security may influence perceptions and preferences for women with certain body and facial features.

For those wishing to do their own analysis you can download the data here. Tyler Cowen notes that the hypothesis is not fully supported by 2008’s selection.

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There’s a teenage sexual revolution underway in Chile, that is animated by the emergence of a rebellious new generation of kids born after the 1988 referendum and democratic transition. A generation with no memory of the moral strictures of a conservative dictatorship. One of the bar games, called poneco, invites kids to kiss as many random people as possible. Seventeen year old Michele Bravo: “We are not the children of the dictatorship; we are the children of the democracy.”

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According to an expose in Japanese magazine Shukan Taishu, Kim Jong Il instituted a training program in sexual espionage for the DPRK’s female secret agents. They’ve been used to seduce and entrap everyone from foreign government officials to defectors.

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Ramadan always means new soap operas in the Arab world. I learned today it also means not even thinking about masturbation. A small thing to you perhaps, but in a repressive sexual society where the curves of the female figure are a matter of imaginative mystery, this is a serious lifestyle sacrifice for young men.

For me, Ramadan always means sharing a cigarette on a dirty floorboard outside Cairo. I’d offered my driver my last smoke in the midst of the holy month when he’d picked me up from a camel train. I’d held it out with an appeal that God was after all merciful. Tobacco is haram, forbidden, during the daylight hours of Ramadan. He’d stared at it for a long time. ‘Western devils and their temptations’ might have been in his thoughts. Finally he said “Yes. But not here.”
(more…)

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British lesbians rate Rachel Weisz as their top celebrity sexual fantasy. It’s a fine choice in my opinion, particularly in her 1930s bob-cut incarnation as Greta Szabó in one of my favorite movies, the Hungarian historical epic Sunshine.

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It seems that the competition goes on after the race has been run.

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I’m honestly kind of surprised that people are surprised John Edwards had an affair on his cancer-ridden wife and fathered a baby. I mean, I know that’s something we thought was limited only to Republicans like Newt Gingrich and Rudy Giuliani, but honestly? That’s a big shocker? So I asked my friend Dave, one of those clear-eyed Obamanauts I enjoy asking about current events, what he thought.

Josh: so hey how about that John Edwards
omigod a politician lied about having sex!
that’s so new and we’ve never had to deal with that before!

David: HAHA I KNOW
what the public wants to know is:

Josh: and people are freaking out about it
IS IT CURVED

David: WILL OBAMA DENOUNCE HIM!?!?!

Right, so there you have it.

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Alan Finch, Helen Finch, Alan Finch the Revenge

Looking over our logs, it’s incredible how much global traffic we get from people searching for information on Alan Finch (August’s #1 ASHC keyword and a top-30 quantity since February). Perhaps a little odd for a blog that tends to focus on American party politics, economic theory and international affairs.

To recap you, Alan is an Australian man who had a double sex-change (first from male to female and then from female to male). He was the subject of a very brief AtW post by myself in February, and thereafter became the source of all this traffic.

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(photo: Serguei Kovalev)

Christopher Hitchens once said that the trouble with biographers of Thomas Jefferson, is that there appears to be the collective assumption on their part that the great man was without a penis. I’m reminded of this truth in reading about the very hot water Mr. Al Franken –the all-but-certain Democratic nominee for US Senate in Minnesota– has gotten himself into, over a satirical and sexually explicit essay he wrote for Playboy magazine in 2000. Hot water originating not only from GOP women, but also from within the Democratic Party.

The piece is without doubt salacious, even enormously kinky (naughty NSFW excerpts available here). But one could be forgiven the crime of commonsense in expecting that a writer tasked with composing anything for such a magazine on contract, would tend to produce something somewhat sexually suggestive if he wished to be paid. One might even go so far as to posit that writing something entitled “Porn-o-Rama,” for an unabashedly pornographic publication, isn’t all that shocking. I mention the title because in defiance of reason we are told by Liza Porteus Viana that the title itself (and neither the publisher nor the substance of the essay), is what is most politically objectionable here.

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photo: Martin Dixon

Here’s a grim laugh for your Friday morning. A Muslim propaganda video which preposterously seeks to explain the death and burial of Pompeii and Herculaneum in the 1st century, as the result of the wrath of Allah against the decadent Roman empire. The video marvels at how people were struck down with little warning by the eruption of Vesuvius, and cites the Quran as evidence of divine retribution. Particularly offensive is the implication that slavery was a uniquely Roman institution. Something that no doubt would come as a great surprise to slaves who suffer to this day, under cruel ownership by devout Muslim masters in Africa and Saudi Arabia.

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photo: Socar Myles

According to a new study from a McMaster University research group, female rats prefer the scent of sexually active males in choosing their own sexual partners.

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It seems the great economist, an obsessive tabulator of everything, tabulated his sex life in two very different diaries. The second in code complete with assigned numbers (grades?)

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Alex Tabarrok compiles the data:

Number of people killed per minute in the Rambo series.

• Rambo: First Blood (1982): 0.01

• Rambo: First Blood Part II (1985): 0.72

• Rambo III (1988): 1.30

• Rambo IV (2008): 2.59

His source, Peter Gordon, observes:

There is also a tabulation of “Number of sex scenes. ” All zeroes, no trend, not a chic flic.

So sex scenes are for women? Maybe so!

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(photo: enric/baldiri)

Nigerian magazine editor Madam Adunni Adediran, is appalled by the decline of traditional moral conduct in her country. In particular she’s concerned about rampant promiscuity and abortions among young women. To combat the trends she’s helped organize a ceremonial celebration called “Nigerian Virgin Girls” this month in Lagos. Prizes for participation include certificates of virtue, gold jewelry and university scholarships, if the girls can establish they’ve had no carnal knowledge of a man.

Well, remembering college life quite well, it seems to me that if you want to keep women virgins, sending them to college might not be the wisest idea in the world.

Not to make too much light of the problem of youthful promiscuity in Nigeria or the commendable effort to promote chastity against it. Even though the HIV epidemic in Africa is substantially less serious in Nigeria, in 2005 it was estimated there were 2,900,000 people living with the disease there. A sobering figure. And while group celebrations of a rather private matter such as sexual indulgence might seem peculiar in the West (even though it happens), it’s far easier to accept within the communal traditions of Africa.

There was also this peculiar remark from Madame Adediran:

“Last year October was when I got the initiative. I found out that men use the blood, pure blood from virgins for money rituals But if a girl is being disvirgined by her husband, it’s a pride for the family, and respect for the family members.”
(Vanguard)

While that’s new to me (and would tend to suggest an advantage for losing one’s virginity), there’s also the horrifying problem of a common belief among many Nigerian men that sleeping with a young virgin can cure HIV and other diseases. Prostitution and international sex slavery are also among the many hurdles young Nigerian women face.

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