Here’s one for the geeks amongst you …
Cartoon of the Week
Category Archives: sexuality
Wax on, Wax off
Thank gawd someone else agrees with me!
Cartoon of the Week
Sex and Religion in Public Life
Jeana over at MySexProfessor writes an incisive post about why it is more important that we know about the religious lives of public figures than their sex lives — albeit the article is built on the words of one of my hate figures, Richard Dawkins. It isn’t that I disagree with the sentiments behind much of what Dawkins says (I don’t), but the bigoted and intransigent way in which he says it — he is just as fundamentalist as any of the religious believers against whom he rails.
As so often others have said what I think so much better than I can, so here are a couple of seminal extracts.
[O]ur society has so many hang-ups about sex that we’re practically responsible for creating an environment in which any sexual expression could potentially be deviant […] even fairly innocuous acts (which one could argue, taking pictures of one’s genitals counts as) are made out to be of huge significance because so many people are hung up on the idea that ANY sexual expression outside the norm is automatically inappropriate or gross or bad.
…
Dawkins asserts that it does matter what a public figure’s religious beliefs are, since those beliefs, far more than their sexual acts, may determine how they pursue public policy. He gives these examples: “[…] George Bush has publicly boasted that God told him to invade Iraq […] To push to an extreme, who would deny Congress’s right to ask whether a candidate for Secretary of Health is a Christian Scientist or a Jehovah’s Witness? Or take a Christian sect that fervently desires the Second Coming of Christ, and believes the key Revelation prophecies cannot be fulfilled without a Middle East Armageddon. Would you wish the nuclear button to be made available to a follower of such a creed?” This is scary stuff.
…
[W]e must grant people the dignity of privately pursuing things that oppose the sexual mainstream.** Just because a politician likes unconventional sex doesn’t mean they’re going to try to force it on everyone through legislation. Unfortunately […] politicians have done much to make anything that deviates from heterosexual monogamous reproductive sex a crime.
** And not just the sexual mainstream. People must have the right to deviate from and oppose mainstream thought and opinion on anything. For that is how opinions are changed, new ideas formed and progress made. But this doesn’t give anyone the right to force or attempt to force (violently or otherwise) their opinions on others.
Of Men and Boys
In the still ongoing process of clearing out the toot from the study the other day I came across an article from 1989 (Carol Lee, “How We Hurt Our Sons”, Sunday Times Magazine, 22 October 1989, 54-58) in which the author maintains that we are continuing to screw up our boys by not allowing them to understand and express the full range of their emotions, fears, during adolescence.
In re-reading the article I realised the author is right. I realised that I too had been blighted by this – despite having relatively bohemian and enlightened parents. That what Carol Lee was saying was true in the 1980s. And it is still largely true today.
Moreover because this is important (and because Times newspapers are now behind a paywall) here are a few salient extracts of what was for a Sunday magazine article well written, thoughtful and useful.
Time and again when working in schools … I have come across boys who go through agonies … They suffer particular pain because of a strong sense of being alone in whatever they’re feeling. Unlike girls, they are not encouraged to share their problems and more intimate fears. They think they will be laughed at if they show weakness. This leaves them fewer outlets for discovering that their particular “shame” is shared by most of us, and is of human rather than monstrous proportions … The strongest impression they gave was a sense of isolation, guilt and anxiety. Feeling isolated and afraid is a painful experience at any age. It can be devastating during adolescence.
[…]
The loss of “normality” is experienced by both girls and boys as they leave childhood for the difficulties of puberty. Both sexes suffer the loss of the intimate, gaily-coloured world of their primary schools with their own familiar teacher, and classrooms decorated with their own pictures. This Garden of Eden is suddenly replaced at the age of 11 with a large secondary school which is frightening for many children. Then, at the same time as nice, cosy “Miss” or friendly “Sir” has been replaced by a bewildering stream of different subject teachers, children’s bodies suddenly start becoming hostile territory, too. This affects boys more than it does girls … Girls are given positive images of womanhood: menstruation is no longer a “curse” and libraries contain an array of books on young women’s health, rights, body-images and on issues like self-assertion. They do not seem to have similar material for young men.
[…]
Girls are taught to be articulate, to express emotions like anger and to be proud of being female. They are no longer wrapped in cotton wool. Boys are still brought up to be tough … Notions of maleness have changed considerably in the past two decades, but the bringing up of boys has not kept pace. There is little in the way of a rite … of passage which takes them from childhood to the increasingly complex business of being a man.
[…]
[P]uberty for boys is not seen as a positive experience, but a negative one. Mothers withdraw from boys because they are afraid of making cissies of their sons, and also because they are uncertain how to treat developing male sexuality … The confusion is experienced by boys, too. Their bodies are now prone to hydraulic uncertainties called erections. Boys are fearful in case unwanted erections happen in front of – or because of – mothers. Mothers, aunts and other concerned females have the same problem. So boys suddenly find themselves pushed out in the cold.
[…]
When given the chance to discuss such issues … teenage boys will say how abandoned, neglected and anxious they feel. They will tell you that their mothers avoid them “like the plague” and that their fathers don’t talk to them anyway. They will also express envy at the way girls are more mature and self-sufficient than boys of the same age.
[…]
A boy’s journey from childhood into manhood is dictated by his ability to be unemotional, to bear pain and also to die for his country … Why should they be any less hurt when their first romance ends? Do we want them to be human or inhuman? … Man is no longer a slayer of dragons or a knight in shining armour. But this change in attitude has left a vacuum in the condition of being male.
[…]
We hurt boys by believing they are ‘alien’. We deny them their ability to nurture. That’s why they end up different, because we believe they are, and make them so. And fathers still don’t nurture their sons in the way women do their daughters.
[…]
[B]etter adjustment is achieved by allowing boys a full range of emotions instead of the traditional “stiff upper lip”. What goes wrong is that boys are not invited, as girls are, to be sensitive, caring and considerate.
[…]
Society praises youth for the way it flings itself into life, romantically, impetuously, protected; yet this same society offers youth no room for spontaneity, for improvisation or sincerity, for relationships that are irrational or non-utilitarian, either in its social structure or in its everyday routine.
If anyone out there especially wants a copy of the full article, then ask me nicely and I’ll send you a PDF.
Healthy Sexual Development
It is important that we all develop our sexuality and our attitudes to sexuality in healthy ways. But it seems this ain’t easy especially as this is a many-sided coin. However at last a diverse group of experts have codified what healthy sexual development means. There’s a summary with commentary/interpretation over at Scarleteen.
I commend the reading of this summary to all parents – and indeed anyone involved with the development of children.
Like many of these things it is little more than common sense. It is thus something all good and thinking parents will intuitively know. Nevertheless it is useful and important it is all brought together as a coherent whole especially as large swathes of it often get swamped by the excesses of both our tabloid and religious sub-cultures.
As the author of the summary observes, this is “an excellent framework for working towards cultures which are sexually healthier than most are and have been”.
Quotes of the Week
This week’s collection …
Never put off until tomorrow what you can do the day after tomorrow.
[Mark Twain]
Now I know foreigners do things strangely but …
The 31-year-old king of the tiny Himalayan country of Bhutan announces his intention to marry this October.
[BBC News report]
Oh, that’s alright then. As long as he’s not marrying last October. That would be necrophilia.
I masturbate because it makes me feel warm, embodied, juicy, alert, calm, self-possessed, and fulfilled. I masturbate to celebrate my body and my sovereignty. I masturbate and am not ashamed to do so. There are other things I do when I’m alone that are far more embarrassing.
[Allison at http://thesexpositivephotoproject.blogspot.com]
One really shouldn’t laugh at other misfortune, especially in wartime …
9 May 1941 … We’d just got down to the Victoria in Turners Hill when there was a whoosh and a bang as a [250kg high explosive] bomb fell where the Fire Station is now – it was old Bertie Simpkins’ junk yard then. Mrs Whiddon who lived opposite had an old lavatory pan come in through her front bedroom window!
[Peter Rooke, Cheshunt at War 1939-1945]
Flowers always make people better, happier and more helpful; they are sunshine, food and medicine to the soul.
[Luther Burbank]
Photography takes an instant out of time, altering life by holding it still.
[Dorothea Lang]
Are you suggesting coconuts migrate?
[Monty Python and the Holy Grail]
[20/52] And up yours too, Brother!
Week 20 entry for 52 weeks challenge.
“The Spinnaker” at Portsmouth, taken from The Hard. Having now seen it in the flesh, as it were, I’m still not sure I like it. And it is certainly pretentious, standing proud above the waterfront area. 🙂
Perhaps this should be in celebration of May being Masturbation Month?
Cartoon of the Week
Sex up Your Pub Quiz Knowledge
Just in time for your next pub quiz night I came across this curious list of odd sexual facts. Amongst the gems are:
80% of men living in the USA have been circumcised.
Which I find at best sad but not surprising.
During sexual intercourse, in addition to the genitals and breasts, the inner nose also swells.
Weird! But why?
A teaspoon of semen contains approximately 5 calories.
So it ain’t going to do too much damage to your diet!
During an average man’s lifetime, he will ejaculate approximately 17 litres of semen.
Good grief, that’s almost two buckets! Although at an average 5ml a pop it is only one ejaculation a week between the ages of 16 and 81. Are you really getting enough?! Especially knowing that …
It’s possible to relieve depression through masturbation.
Now that sounds like the best excuse ever for a bit of Onanism!
All taken from www.lustability.com/facts.php