1. Miss USA: Alcohol Trumps Sex
Tara Conner retained her Miss USA crown when pageant co-owner Donald Trump "forgave her" for drinking in public while underage. The question came up because Miss USA is supposed to be morally pure (that's why Trump is in charge, see).
In contrast, a few weeks later Katie Rees lost her Miss Nevada
crown--after the internet featured photos of her exposing her breasts,
passionately kissing other young women and simulating oral sex with
some friends. It all took place when she was over 21. But Miss USA
contestants are supposed to be morally pure, and hot sex isn't.
So if you're keeping score at home, breaking the law is acceptable,
while having too much fun--legally--isn't.
One hesitates to point out the obvious, but Miss Nevada--morally pure?
The world capital of prostitution, gambling, and tasteless gold jewelry
can't abide a little girl-girl action, a little boob flashing?
Presumably the problem is that she's an amateur. When there's money
involved, it's commerce. Without money, it's just sin.
The Miss USA program isn't outdated at all. It still reflects American
values--moralism, hypocrisy, and salacious disrespect for sexuality.
Teaching Kids Respect By Destroying Them
Actually, it's worse.
A young male was recently busted for pinching a girl's butt in a
Maryland school. Across the country, a guy in Texas was suspended for
hugging a teacher way too enthusiastically, rubbing his face in her
chest.
The Maryland kid is 5. The Texas kid is 4. They were each disciplined
for "sexual harassment."
Officials in both schools acknowledge that neither boy might have been
acting with sexual intent--"but if [a behavior] fits under the
definition, then it is, under the state's guidelines, sexual
harassment," said Maryland school spokesperson Carol Mowen. That helps
explain why 28 kindergarten students in the state were
suspended last year for "sex offenses," fifteen for sexual harassment.
Kindergarten kids. Five-year-olds.
Conservative columnists like Nicholas Jackson blame it on
pornography--he actually says the average age of first exposure to porn
in America is now five. He obviously sees sex everywhere--what
a pervert. The Religious Right, of course, blames the media: Jerry
Falwell famously complained about a gay Teletubby, while James Dobson
says Spongebob Squarepants is advancing the insidious gay agenda. Other
people blame sex education: then-Surgeon General Joycelyn Elders was
accused of saying kids should be taught to masturbate (she didn't), and
Educator Sol Gordon was accused by Phyllis Schlafley of promoting
bestiality (oh, c'mon).
The real problem is the definition of "sexual harassment." Well-meaning
adults are projecting their feelings onto 5-year-olds, the same way
19th century missionaries did with native peoples. Missionaries knew
that going bare-breasted would have enormous sexual implications for them,
so they imputed licentiousness to the islanders they met, and
demanded they stop. The Puritans did the same with the Indians they met
who had institutionalized wholesome non-monogamy. The Puritans claimed
it simply couldn't be wholesome.
Only modern people terrified of sex would apply adult categories like
"sexual harassment" to little children. They'd pathologize kids'
life-affirming impulse to rub their face in the massive chest of a
grown-up lady. And they'd teach kids that getting your butt pinched is
bad because of sex--not because it's annoying, disrespectful, or
painful.
Oprah-blessed "addiction therapists" like Doug Weiss say that
9-year-olds can be porn addicts. Again, assuming that children make
decisions like adults is a fundamental mistake. And when adults make
this mistake about sex, it says more about them then it does about sex
or children. Of course, Doug Weiss boasts that one of his professional
credentials is "15 years' recovery from sex addiction," so his vision
of reasonable decision-making is badly skewed.
Traumatizing kids around their erotic impulses is the most common form
of sex abuse in America today. How does this help kids? What does the
"pinch her butt once and you're outta here" rule tell kids about sex,
relationships, and feelings? That they're wrong, wrong, wrong.
Not that we're in favor of aggression...but since a 4- or 5-year old
can't understand why breasts or butts need special protection (there's
no good reason) and the impulse to touch them is dirty and bad (ditto),
what do they learn? That they themselves are bad. They
also learn that some people are really, really uptight about sex. That
would be a valuable lesson--if they were empowered to accept and
nourish their own sexuality at the same time.
America's schools: scanning vigilantly for 5-year-old perverts.
No Womb Left Behind
It's a script rejected by both Saturday Night Live and the Bizarre
Fantasy Caucus of the Democratic Party: the Vice-President, from the
political party that wins elections by saying homosexuality is more
dangerous than terrorism, has a gay daughter. And she gets pregnant!
But it's true: whether the intervention was scientific or divine, Mary
Cheney is expecting. She and partner Heather Poe have been together 15
years--longer than most marriages. They also have a more stable
environment for their child than most families--a planned conception,
and parents with lots of money, above-average intelligence and
education, and plenty of
child care.
Nevertheless, the Right threw Mary and Heather a cold, cold baby
shower. Concerned Women of America said "They're deliberately bringing
a child into the world without a father, leaving a gaping hole.
Father absence is the biggest problem we're facing in this country."
And
the Family Research Institute warned of a life of "privation and
disruption: By this selfish action, Cheney is not merely disrupting
society, she is being cruel to her child."
We used to say a conservative is someone who wants to shrink government
small enough to fit under your bedroom door. Turns out they want it
even smaller--small enough to fit into Mary Cheney's womb.
Although Cheney and Poe recently attended a White House dinner
(honoring Prince Charles and Camilla Bowles) as a couple, their rights
ended on
their drive home. That's because last month, Virginia voters passed a
constitutional amendment banning both gay marriage and civil unions. In
a nightmare-in-the-making, state law is unclear as to whether Poe can
legally acquire parental rights to her own child. Where are the
so-called "pro-family" people when you need them?
Mary Cheney, II
In 2004, Fox TV's Undersecretary of Ignorance Bill O'Reilly criticized Presidential candidate John Kerry for disrespecting Mary Cheney's private life by mentioning her lesbianism in a TV debate. Last month, however, O'Reilly did an entire segment on Cheney's pregnancy and same-sex parenting. He speculated that the child would "suffer a deficit" being raised by two women, and suggested perhaps it should be mandatory for lesbian couples to bring in a male presence to help the child. Yes, the "male presence" of O'Reilly, or Mark Foley, Ted Haggard, or Jack Abramoff will certainly help the tyke learn about manliness.
Consumer Alert: Covered Nipples
What you can take off when you strip, and do once you're naked, depends
on where you live.
Last week, the Missouri Supreme Court unanimously struck down a law
banning full nudity in strip clubs. At the same time, Alabama's
law--requiring that nipples, lower breast, and buttocks be covered--was
reaffirmed.
Does that mean that Missouri's strippers are less dangerous than
Alabama's? Or that men in Missouri are better at resisting these
she-devils?
Alabama's law says the taboo areas can be covered with opaque
substances such as cosmetic
latex, body paint, or foundation. Exactly what
does this accomplish? It isn't as if the audience forgets that women
have these body parts--or that the parts are any less compelling. State
legislators must imagine Bubba saying, "I get so hot from looking at
strippers' nipples I go right out and disrespect my wife and rape
strange women, but once those nips are covered with opaque tape, well,
I just lose half my lust and remember all of my manners."
Another point of contention is how far dancers need to be from
customers. Various states require 4, 6, even 8 feet; Missouri wanted
ten, plus an on-stage railing (in case some man has 11-foot arms). Is
this to protect dancers from all those men who insist on giving them
money and appreciation, or to protect men from cheap perfume, toxic
hair dyes, and lipstick on their collars? Is forbidding lapdances a
helpful ploy to keep men from going home with embarrassing stains
on their boxers?
Besides, if you're ten feet away from a stripper, can you actually tell
if her nipples are covered with body paint? If men think
they're seeing uncovered nipples when they're actually seeing
paint or tape, aren't the nipples just as dangerous as if they
were uncovered? If so, protecting society requires that men get closer
to the strippers, not further.
In striking down the law, Judge Richard Callahan said that "like it or
not, nude dancing qualifying as expressive conduct is constitutionally
protected within the First Amendment of the United States
Constitution." To put it another way, if a city or state wants the
privileges of belonging to the United States, it doesn't get to vote on
whether or not people have the right to express themselves without
hurting others. There's a Constitution already in place that covers
such situations.
It was a radical idea 200 years ago, and apparently still is.
Yes, They Really Said That In 2006
We're going to run this feature periodically, so if you see something
worth repeating (3 sentences or less, please), send it in. Here's a
roundup from 2006:
* "The Internet: Where men are men, women are men, and children are FBI
agents."
--Anonymous
* "Americans swept the Nobels this year in medicine and science. What
good does it do us if we withhold medical and sexual information from
people?"
--David Satcher, Former U.S. Surgeon General
* "I'm treating more and more kids as young as nine who are porn
addicts."
--Sex therapist Doug Weiss
* "You don't defend what she's writing, you defend her right to write
it."
--Warner Mariani, attorney in the Karen Fletcher "Red Rose" obscenity
case
* "How's my favorite young stud doing? Strip down and get relaxed.
Good, so you're getting horny? Cute butt bouncing in the air. Get a
ruler and measure it for me."
--Rep. Mark Foley (R-FL), chairman of the Congressional Missing &
Exploited Children's Caucus, to a 16-year-old
* "If you're not electing Christians then in essence you are going to
legislate sin. The separation of church and state is a lie...because
God is the one who chooses our rulers."
--Katherine Harris, supervisor of the 2000 Presidential recount as
Florida's secretary of state.
* [I introduced a bill to ban sex toys in South Carolina because] "some
constituents had asked for it...if someone is caught kidnapping someone
and using these devices on an unwilling victim, this would be another
offense with which they could be charged."
--Rep. Ralph Davenport
* "Millions of men and boys are falling for the destructive myth that
looking at 'adult' porn is normal, healthy and harmless for 'regular
guys.'"
--Jan LaRue, Concerned Women For America
* "Treating sex as dangerous is dangerous."
--Joycelyn Elders, Former U.S. Surgeon General
Our Favorite Review (so far)
Our favorite review (so far) of America's War On Sex was
written by Mark Kernes for Adult Video News. He says:
"Dr. Marty Klein's recently published America's War On Sex is
quite simply the best book yet written dealing with the collision
between the adult industry, sex-positive activism and the religious
right."
To see the rest of the review, click
here.
RSS Returns
To make SI even more timely, I'm planning to write one
or two articles every week instead of doing 6 or 7 at the end of each
month. You can go to the SI website each week (we'll
remind you), or wait for each month's issue to be emailed to you as
usual.
To get a message each time a new article is published, just use the
system called an "RSS Feed." It's easy to set this up if you use the
latest version of Internet Explorer or Mozilla/Firefox:
1. Open your web browser and go to www.SexualIntelligence.org .
2. Click on the orange RSS icon on the right of your screen.
3. Click "Subscribe now" and "OK" (for Mozilla/Firefox), or "Subscribe
to this feed" and "Subscribe" (for Internet Explorer).
(For more detailed information, click here.)
Then just wait to be notified of a new SI article. Of
course, you can just ignore this system and wait for your monthly
email. Either way, thanks for reading SI--and do let
your friends know how much you enjoy it.