FEMINISM UNADULTERATED: THE MYTH OF THE VAGINAL ORGASM

I wish my first time (my first CONSENSUAL time) had not been with someone who was drunk and using me. I'm not sorry I did it, only who I did it with.

I wonder how many of us would say the same thing. I read a study of straight women which said that, on average, their first sexual partner was a male four years older than them. When you're 13-16, four years older is a significant difference in power. It seems hard for me to believe they are meeting as equals, with sweet exploration and unhurried joy.

I remember when the Hite Report came out in 1976. The consciousness-raising and other women's groups I was in at the time could talk of nothing else. Straight women were focused on sex as if it was a brand-new idea. Women married for decades discovered orgasms. You think I'm exaggerating, but I'm not.

The woman I became lovers with when I was 17 and she was 22 had been married for four years and had one child, plus had been pregnant twice more. She didn't know she had a clitoris. She had never come. When she had her child, the doctor performed an episiotomy and then stitched her up with "one extra stitch" which he explained with a grin was "for her husband". She was grateful for the medically-recommended six weeks abstinence period after birth, but her husband chose not to wait, forcing her into intercourse after a month. That "extra stitch" was torn out.

They were considered to have a good marriage. A Christian marriage.

But here's the thing: Six years ago I went out to eat with a group of straight women who were, like me, all connected with local community radio. Women who were activitists, producers, extremely smart and independent, verbal and definitely feminist. Mixed class, mixed race, a couple of them married to progressive husbands. Over our pho, someone brought up the topic of orgasms. We began comparing notes, and of those very sexually active women, none had orgasms more than half the time. I was appalled. I began asking questions about technique, and I wound up having to draw diagrams of female anatomy on a napkin because they were unaware of all the structures in their own body. Or the possibilities therein. We sat a long time after the food was gone, talking excitedly (well, they were) about the chance to have more fulfilling sex.

I think we're still faking it. By we, I mean women as a group, not me. I never have, because I've never had to. The sexual relationships I've been in have had enough leeway for me to simply say I hadn't come, if I hadn't. And, when you do what me and my lovers liked to do, faking is pretty hard to do anyhow. We're both women, we've got our faces and hands involved, and (for me at least) paying attention to what was actually going on with my lover -- not just the verbalized response, but the actual physiological changes down there -- was as pleasurable as coming myself.

I know there are straight men who share this kind of consideration and attention, I've talked with one or two. But my straight women friends say they are few and far between. Yeah, I've known some assholey, selfish dykes, too, and slept with a couple (though not repeatedly). I think this is a matter of conditioning, and it appears to me as if we've lost ground over the past 30 years. Ground we seriously did not need to lose.

It's been replaced with fakery, with porn instead of intense intimacy, with role-playing which I know can create strong orgasms but satisfaction is a lot more than coming, it's building layer on layer of connection and trust. I always laughed when I got called vanilla, because as a cook I knew that genuine vanilla flavor required pure ingredients and much more skill to achieve than other flavors.

In an interview a couple of years ago, Shere Hite said "Women can have orgasms very easily, but the kind of stimulation women need isn't being included in sex...Women need to be half of the equation, and, if we're going to have equality in sex, it has to be re-thought because female orgasm happens in a different way than during the act. This implies many things for redefining intimate activity. I'm arguing for sex to be two bodies trying to communicate. We should be trying to get each other as aroused as possible rather than racing each other for orgasm."

The Wikipedia article on her work states 'Shere Hite has focused on understanding how individuals regard sexual experience and the meaning it holds for them. Hite has criticised Masters and Johnson's work for uncritically incorporating cultural attitudes on sexual behaviour into their research. For example, Hite's work showed that 70% of women do not have orgasms through in-out, thrusting intercourse but are able to achieve orgasm easily by masturbation or other direct clitoral stimulation. Only 30% of the women in her study reported ever experiencing orgasm during thrusting intercourse. She has criticised Masters and Johnson's argument that enough clitoral stimulation to achieve orgasm should be provided by thrusting during intercourse, and the inference that the failure of this is a sign of female "sexual dysfunction." Whilst not denying that both Kinsey and Masters and Johnson have been a crucial step in sex research, she believes that we must understand the cultural and personal construction of sexual experience to make the research relevant to sexual behaviour outside the laboratory. She offered the criticism that limiting test subjects to "normal" women who report orgasming during coitus was basing research on the faulty assumption that orgasming during coitus was normal, something that her own research strongly refuted.'

The Hite Report was the first conducted by women for women, without funding from pharmaceutical or other profit-based sources, was completely anonymous, and created world-wide controversy because of "its groundbreaking conclusion that women can orgasm easily (during self-stimulation), that it is is not women but society that has a problem and needs to change". It argues against penis size, dominance, or pounding penetration as being related to women's pleasure. The attacks on Hite from male-dominated institutions was so ferocious that she eventually gave up her U.S. citizenship and moved to Germany, where she is a respected scholar today.

Oh, yeah, we gotten stop someone who's talking about women's pleasure taking precedence. Just another example of when feminism GOES TOO FAR.

Well, here's the essay that started us down the road to pleasure (or perdition). Enjoy.

THE MYTH OF THE VAGINAL ORGASM

by Anne Koedt (1970). A classic article by the NY based feminist writer. Widely read throughout the women's liberation movement at the time. Found at the Chicago Women's Liberation Union Herstory Archives -- please give them your support.

Whenever female orgasm and frigidity are discussed, a false distinction is made between the vaginal and the clitoral orgasm. Frigidity has generally been defined by men as the failure of women to have vaginal orgasms. Actually the vagina is not a highly sensitive area and is not constructed to achieve orgasm. It is the clitoris which is the center of sexual sensitivity and which is the female equivalent of the penis.

I think this explains a great many things: First of all, the fact that the so-called frigidity rate among women is phenomenally high. Rather than tracing female frigidity to the false assumptions about female anatomy, our "experts" have declared frigidity a psychological problem of women. Those women who complained about it were recommended psychiatrists, so that they might discover their "problem" -diagnosed generally as a failure to adjust to their role as women.

The facts of female anatomy and sexual response tell a different story. Although there are many areas for sexual arousal, there is only one area for sexual climax; that area is the clitoris. All orgasms are extensions of sensation from this area. Since the clitoris is not necessarily stimulated sufficiently in the conventional sexual positions, we are left "frigid."

Aside from physical stimulation, which is the common cause of orgasm for most people, there is also stimulation through primarily mental processes. Some women, for example, may achieve orgasm through sexual fantasies, or through fetishes. However, while the stimulation may be psychological, the orgasm manifests itself physically. Thus, while the cause is psychological, the effect is still physical, and the orgasm necessarily takes place in the sexual organ equipped for sexual climax, the clitoris. The orgasm experience may also differ in degree of intensity - some more localized, and some more diffuse and sensitive. But they are all clitoral orgasms.

All this leads to some interesting questions about conventional sex and our role in it. Men have orgasms essentially by friction with the vagina, not the clitoral area, which is external and not able to cause friction the way penetration does. Women have thus been defined sexually in terms of what pleases men; our own biology has not been properly analyzed. Instead, we are fed the myth of the liberated woman and her vaginal orgasm - an orgasm which in fact does not exist.

What we must do is redefine our sexuality. We must discard the "normal" concepts of sex and create new guidelines which take into account mutual sexual enjoyment. While the idea of mutual enjoyment is liberally applauded in marriage manuals, it is not followed to its logical conclusion. We must begin to demand that if certain sexual positions now defined as "standard" are not mutually conducive to orgasm, they no longer be defined as standard. New techniques must be used or devised which transform this particular aspect of our current sexual exploitation.

Freud -- A Father of the Vaginal Orgasm

Freud contended that the clitoral orgasm was adolescent, and that upon puberty, when women began having intercourse with men, women should transfer the center of orgasm to the vagina. The vagina, it was assumed, was able to produce a parallel, but more mature, orgasm than the clitoris. Much work was done to elaborate on this theory, but little was done to challenge the basic assumptions.

To fully appreciate this incredible invention, perhaps Freud's general attitude about women should first be recalled. Mary Ellman, in Thinking About Women, summed it up this way:

Everything in Freud's patronizing and fearful attitude toward women follows from their lack of a penis, but it is only in his essay The Psychology of Women that Freud makes explicit... the deprecations of women which are implicit in his work. He then prescribes for them the abandonment of the life of the mind, which will interfere with their sexual function. When the psycho-analyzed patient is male, the analyst sets himself the task of developing the man's capacities; but with women patients, the job is to resign them to the limits of their sexuality. As Mr. Rieff puts it: For Freud, "Analysis cannot encourage in women new energies for success and achievement, but only teach them the lesson of rational resignation."

It was Freud's feelings about women's secondary and inferior relationship to men that formed the basis for his theories on female sexuality.

Once having laid down the law about the nature of our sexuality, Freud not so strangely discovered a tremendous problem of frigidity in women. His recommended cure for a woman who was frigid was psychiatric care. She was suffering from failure to mentally adjust to her "natural" role as a woman. Frank S. Caprio, a contemporary follower of these ideas, states:

...whenever a woman is incapable of achieving an orgasm via coitus, provided the husband is an adequate partner, and prefers clitoral stimulation to any other form of sexual activity, she can be regarded as suffering from frigidity and requires psychiatric assistance. (The Sexually Adequate Female, p.64.)

The explanation given was that women were envious of men - renunciation of womanhood. Thus it was diagnosed as an anti-male phenomenon.

It is important to emphasize that Freud did not base his theory upon a study of woman's anatomy, but rather upon his assumptions of woman as an inferior appendage to man, and her consequent social and psychological role. In their attempts to deal with the ensuing problem of mass frigidity, Freudians embarked on elaborate mental gymnastics. Marie Bonaparte, in Female Sexuality, goes so far as to suggest surgery to help women back on their rightful path. Having discovered a strange connection between the non-frigid woman and the location of the clitoris near the vagina,

it then occurred to me that where, in certain women, this gap was excessive, and clitoral fixation obdurate, a clitoral-vaginal reconciliation might be effected by surgical means, which would then benefit the normal erotic function. Professor Halban, of Vienna, as much a biologist as surgeon, became interested in the problem and worked out a simple operative technique. In this, the suspensory ligament of the clitoris was severed and the clitoris secured to the underlying structures, thus fixing it in a lower position, with eventual reduction of the labia minora. (p.148.)

But the severest damage was not in the area of surgery, where Freudians ran around absurdly trying to change female anatomy to fit their basic assumptions. The worst damage was done to the mental health of women, who either suffered silently with self-blame, or flocked to psychiatrists looking desperately for the hidden and terrible repression that had kept from them their vaginal destiny.

Lack of Evidence

One may perhaps at first claim that these are unknown and unexplored areas, but upon closer examination this is certainly not true today, nor was it true even in the past. For example, men have known that women suffered from frigidity often during intercourse. So the problem was there. Also, there is much specific evidence. Men knew that the clitoris was and is the essential organ for masturbation, whether in children or adult women. So obviously women made it clear where they thought their sexuality was located. Men also seem suspiciously aware of the clitoral powers during "foreplay," when they want to arouse women and produce the necessary lubrication for penetration. Foreplay is a concept created for male purposes, but works to the disadvantage of many women, since as soon as the woman is aroused the man changes to vaginal stimulation, leaving her both aroused and unsatisfied.

It has also been known that women need no anesthesia inside the vagina during surgery, thus pointing to the fact that the vagina is in fact not a highly sensitive area.

Today, with extensive knowledge of anatomy, with Kelly, Kinsey, and Masters and Johnson, to mention just a few sources, there is no ignorance on the subject. There are, however, social reasons why this knowledge has not been popularized. We are living in a male society which has not sought change in women's role.

Anatomical Evidence

Rather than starting with what women ought to feel, it would seem logical to start out with the anatomical facts regarding the clitoris and vagina.

The Clitoris is a small equivalent of the penis, except for the fact that the urethra does not go through it as in the man's penis. Its erection is similar to the male erection, and the head of the clitoris has the same type of structure and function as the head of the penis.

C. Lombard Kelly, in Sexual Feeling in Married Men and Women, says:

The head of the clitoris is also composed of erectile tissue, and it possesses a very sensitive epithelium or surface covering, supplied with special nerve endings called genital corpuscles, which are peculiarly adapted for sensory stimulation that under proper mental conditions terminates in the sexual orgasm. No other part of the female generative tract has such corpuscles. (Pocketbooks; p.35.)

The clitoris has no other function than that of sexual pleasure.

The Vagina -- Its functions are related to, the reproductive function. Principally, 1) menstruation, 2) receive penis, 3) hold semen, and 4) birth passage. The interior of the vagina, which according to the defenders of the vaginally caused orgasm is the center and producer of the orgasm, is:

like nearly all other internal body structures, poorly supplied with end organs of touch. The internal entodermal origin of the lining of the vagina makes it similar in this respect to the rectum and other parts of the digestive tract. (Kinsey, Sexual Behavior in the Human Female, p.580.)

The degree of insensitivity inside the vagina is so high that "Among the women who were tested in our gynecologic sample, less than 14% were at all conscious that they had been touched." (Kinsey, p. 580.)

Even the importance of the vagina as an erotic center (as opposed to an orgasmic center) has been found to be minor.

Other Areas -- Labia minora and the vestibule of the vagina. These two sensitive areas may trigger off a clitoral orgasm. Because they can be effectively stimulated during "normal" coitus, though infrequently, this kind of stimulation is incorrectly thought to be vaginal orgasm. However, it is important to distinguish between areas which can stimulate the clitoris, incapable of producing the orgasm themselves, and the clitoris:

Regardless of what means of excitation is used to bring the individual to the state of sexual climax, the sensation is perceived by the genital corpuscles and is localized where they are situated: in the head of the clitoris or penis. (Kelly, p.49.)

Psychologically Stimulated Orgasm -- Aside from the above mentioned direct and indirect stimulation of the clitoris, there is a third way an orgasm may be triggered. This is through mental (cortical) stimulation, where the imagination stimulates the brain, which in turn stimulates the genital corpuscles of the glans to set off an orgasm.

Women Who Say They Have Vaginal Orgasms

Confusion -- Because of the lack of knowledge of their own anatomy, some women accept the idea that an orgasm felt during "normal" intercourse was vaginally caused. This confusion is caused by a combination of two factors. One, failing to locate the center of the orgasm, and two, by a desire to fit her experience to the male-defined idea of sexual normalcy. Considering that women know little about their anatomy, it is easy to be confused.

Deception -- The vast majority of women who pretend vaginal orgasm to their men are faking it to "get the job." In a new bestselling Danish book, I Accuse, Mette Ejlersen specifically deals with this common problem, which she calls the "sex comedy." This comedy has many causes. First of all, the man brings a great deal of pressure to bear on the woman, because he considers his ability as a lover at stake. So as not to offend his ego, the woman will comply with the prescribed role and go through simulated ecstasy. In some of the other Danish women mentioned, women who were left frigid were turned off to sex, and pretended vaginal orgasm to hurry up the sex act. Others admitted that they had faked vaginal orgasm to catch a man. In one case, the woman pretended vaginal orgasm to get him to leave his first wife, who admitted being vaginally frigid.

Later she was forced to continue the deception, since obviously she couldn't tell him to stimulate her clitorally.

Many more women were simply afraid to establish their right to equal enjoyment, seeing the sexual act as being primarily for the man's benefit, and any pleasure that the woman got as an added extra.

Other women, with just enough ego to reject the man's idea that they needed psychiatric care, refused to admit their frigidity. They wouldn't accept self-blame, but they didn't know how to solve the problem, not knowing the physiological facts about themselves. So they were left in a peculiar limbo.

Again, perhaps one of the most infuriating and damaging results of this whole charade has been that women who were perfectly healthy sexually were taught that they were not. So in addition to being sexually deprived, these women were told to blame themselves when they deserved no blame. Looking for a cure to a problem that has none can lead a woman on an endless path of self-hatred and insecurity. For she is told by her analyst that not even in her one role allowed in a male society-the role of a woman-is she successful. She is put on the defensive, with phony data as evidence that she'd better try to be even more feminine, think more feminine, and reject her envy of men. That is, shuffle even harder, baby.

Why Men Maintain the Myth

1. Sexual Penetration Is Preferred -- The best physical stimulant for the penis is the woman's vagina. It supplies the necessary friction and lubrication. From a strictly technical point of view this position offers the best physical conditions, even though the man may try other positions for variation.

2. The Invisible Woman -- One of the elements of male chauvinism is the refusal or inability to see women as total, separate human beings. Rather, men have chosen to define women only in terms of how they benefited men's lives. Sexually, a woman was not seen as an individual wanting to share equally in the sexual act, any more than she was seen as a person with independent desires when she did anything else in society. Thus, it was easy to make up what was convenient about women; for on top of that, society has been a function of male interests, and women were not organized to form even a vocal opposition to the male experts.

3. The Penis as Epitome of Masculinity -- Men define their lives primarily in terms of masculinity. It is a universal form of ego-boosting. That is, in every society, however homogeneous (i.e., with the absence of racial, ethnic, or major economic differences) there is always a group, women, to oppress. The essence of male chauvinism is in the psychological superiority men exercise over women. This kind of superior-inferior definition of self, rather than positive definition based upon one's own achievements and development, has of course chained victim and oppressor both. But by far the most brutalized of the two is the victim.

An analogy is racism, where the white racist compensates for his feelings of unworthiness by creating an image of the black man (it is primarily a male struggle) as biologically inferior to him. Because of his position in a white male power structure, the white man can socially enforce this mythical division.

To the extent that men try to rationalize and justify male superiority through physical differentiation, masculinity may be symbolized by being the most muscular, the most hairy; having the deepest voice, and the biggest penis. Women, on the other hand, are approved of (i.e., called feminine) if they are weak, petite, shave their legs, have high soft voices.

Since the clitoris is almost identical to the penis, one finds a great deal of evidence of men in various societies trying to either ignore the clitoris and emphasize the vagina (as did Freud), or, as in some places in the Mideast, actually performing clitoridectomy. Freud saw this ancient and still practiced custom as a way of further "feminizing" the female by removing this cardinal vestige of her masculinity. It should be noted also that a big clitoris is considered ugly and masculine. Some cultures engage in the practice of pouring a chemical on the clitoris to make it shrivel up into "proper" size.

It seems clear to me that men in fact fear the clitoris as a threat to masculinity.

4. Sexually Expendable Male -- Men fear that they will become sexually expendable if the clitoris is substituted for the vagina as the center of pleasure for women. Actually this has a great deal of validity if one considers only the anatomy. The position of the penis inside the vagina, while perfect for reproduction, does not necessarily stimulate an orgasm in women because the clitoris is located externally and higher up. Women must rely upon indirect stimulation in the "normal" position.

Lesbian sexuality could make an excellent case, based upon anatomical data, for the irrelevancy of the male organ. Albert Ellis says something to the effect that a man without a penis can make a woman an excellent lover.

Considering that the vagina is very desirable from a man's point of view, purely on physical grounds, one begins to see the dilemma for men. And it forces us as well to discard many "physical" arguments explaining why women go to bed with men. What is left, it seems to me, are primarily psychological reasons why women select men at the exclusion of women as sexual partners.

5. Control of Women -- One reason given to explain the Mid-eastern practice of clitoridectomy is that it will keep the women from straying. By removing the sexual organ capable of orgasm, it must be assumed that her sexual drive will diminish. Considering how men look upon their women as property, particularly in very backward nations, we should begin to consider a great deal more why it is not in men’s interest to have women totally free sexually. The double standard, as practiced for example in Latin America, is set up to keep the woman as total property of the husband, while he is free to have affairs as he wishes. [Note: I have reproduced this essay as originally written, but insist in pointing out and decrying the overt racism of the term "backward nations", which renders this entire paragraph open to criticism.]

6. Lesbianism and Bisexuality -- Aside from the. Strictly anatomical reasons why women might equally seek other women as lovers, there is a fear on men's part that women will seek the company of other women on a full, human basis. The recognition of clitoral orgasm as fact would threaten the heterosexual institution. For it would indicate that sexual pleasure was obtainable from either men or women, thus making heterosexuality not an absolute, but an option. It would thus open up the whole question of human sexual relationships beyond the confines of the present male-female role system.

Books Mentioned in This Essay
Sexual Behavior in the Human Female, Alfred C. Kinsey, Pocketbooks, 1953.
Female Sexuality, Marie Bonaparte, Grove Press, 1953.
Sex Without Guilt, Albert Ellis, Grove Press, 1958 and 1965.
Sexual Feelings in Married Men and Women, G. Lombard Kelly, Pocketbooks, 1951 and 1965.
I Accuse (Jeg Anklager), Mette Ejlersen, Chr. Erichsens Forlag (Danish), 1968.
The Sexually Adequate Female, Frank S. Caprio, Fawcett Gold Medal Books, 1953 and 1966.
Thinking About Women, Mary Ellman, Harcourt, Brace & World, 1968.
Human Sexual Response, Masters and Johnson, Little, Brown, 1966.
Copyright © by Anne Koedt, 1970

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SUPER BULLSHIT

There will be no scores reported at this blog today, and no team colors displayed.

I love the Olympics, I love people who engage in physical activity for work or play, and, within limits, I can see the value of team sports. But what appears on television is entertainment, not a reflection of character or even regional pride. Organized sports in this country is part of the hired entertainment complex. It has no meaning beyond that, and it has no place being part of news broadcasts. It is no more news than what's on sale at Wal-Mart or what color Britney wore today.

Many people close to me have argued that playing sports offers a healthy outlet for natural human aggression. Well, first of all, I don't feel that kind of aggression or the need to slam my body against that of another, and I think I'm a natural human. Second, I see no evidence that men who play sports for a living are less aggressive or violent than other men, and plenty of evidence indicating they are more so.

As I see it, organized sports serves eight main functions:

(1) It offers the daydream of "getting rich" to entire classes of folks who would never have a hope otherwise of lifting themselves from poverty and foreshortened hard-working lives. It's as much a fantasy as the notion of becoming a "star" is. Feeding that myth doesn't just keep American Idol and ESPN on the air, it also keeps a huge number of people from realizing how rigidly class stratified our culture is and maybe doing something about it.

(2) It offers a way for men, mostly white men, to funnel a great deal of money directly into the educations and pockets of other men, almost entirely bypassing women (Title IX notwithstanding).

(3) It gives white bigots everywhere an excuse to claim they are not racist. "I love Michael Jordan, man." Uh-huh. Dating your daughter? Moving his less affluent cousins onto your block? Hanging with his buddies on the street corner? Running as your President?

(4) It gives men who are terrified of their own feelings and terrified of the company of other men an excuse to hang out, pretend they are close, and have something to talk about with no requirement that they engage their intellect or their emotions.

(5) It has given these same men an excuse to not spend time with their families on weekend or holidays.

(6) It gives men a pretext for feasting their gaze on the bodies of other men. Exaggerated shoulders via padding, cup-enhanced codpieces and pants that cling lovingly tight to buttocks, all without a clearly visible face or the need for conversation: A pederast's dream but also a safe haven for the ordinary longing men and boys have (but are denied) for basic human touch with their own kind.

(7) It affords a pretend way for men to be smart: Memorizing statistics as a substitute for thinking. Once a game is over, the stats involved in its playing are of no consequence whatsoever. Time marches on. But men who cannot remember the birthdays of their own children or parents can tell you inning by inning numbers of a game thirty years ago, and get jobs based on that ability. It also offers dumbed-down "truth is simple" metaphors as a replacement for the real complexity of social organization and struggle. If you've heard one athlete post-game try to explain why they won or lost, you've heard them all. It's nonsense to ask them the question. It's delusional.

(8) Most of all, it maintains the cult-like worship of masculinity as what separates men from all Others. Jock is a key synonym for masculine. A few women dare to interlope, and get called dykes or nappy-headed hos as a result.

I lived a dozen years without Super Bowls occurring, and let me assure you, people still had good, productive lives before 1967. I can remember when the evening news had actual speeches from politicians in them, and interviews with concerned citizens that lasted longer than 1.7 seconds. If you couldn't attend a game, you missed it, buddy. You could read the scores next day in the paper but there were more important things to think about. Like disaster preparedness, climate change, genocide around the globe, rape, inequality, child abuse -- when did we vote on removing those from the news in favor of watching grown men toss balls around?

As long as we're taking on the massive imbalance in this country, I'd like to see sports returned to playing fields where it is funded locally, with team slots and scholarships open to all regardless of ability. It should be relegated to "fluff for the fluffy-brained" TV as surely as specials about Natalee Holloway and Anna Nicole Smith (who are, like the Elvis T-shirt says, "Dead. Really dead.")

And if you're having trouble seeing this objectively, here's a few questions for ya:

What would you do with your sons if you didn't have school sports to babysit them?

How would your relationship with your spouse fare if watching sports on TV was reduced to one game a week?

What if sewing became a competitive event, with every stitching lingered over in close-ups? (Way more interesting than golf or most of what goes on in a baseball game.) What if folks memorized the cost of Butterick vs. McCall's patterns back into the early part of last century and could reel off the minute changes in styles at hard-drinking "sewing" bars? What if using steroids to increase hemming and basting speed was thought to merit Congressional investigation? At least with a sewing competition, you'd have usable garments at the end instead of Gatorade stains and future orthopedic bills.

I'm now going to dare turn on my TV and see if the crapfest is over yet.

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BROAD CAST 8 SEPTEMBER 2007: REALITY OR REAL-LITE?

I've written more than once about the American myth of self-invention and what trouble it's gotten us into. I guess great minds (?) think alike, because Stephen Colbert just produced a "The Word" segment on this topic. Here's a quote from it:
But now, Wiki-Scanner threatens another concept that’s even more American than democracy: self-invention. The idea that you can be whoever you want to be, whoever you say you are. Now you may come from generations of Connecticut blue-bloods and gone to the finest prep schools out east, but if you clear brush and talk with a Texas twang, you are a cowboy!

(Quilt "Talk of Nation" by Anna Young of the extraordinary Gee's Bend quilters)
Orcinus (I seem to recommend them a lot) has produced another superb essay on the intersection of racism and classism at What's Lynching Got To Do With The Price of Cotton? It's very worth the long read, and especially going to the suggested essays at the end on an effective truth and reconciliation process. For now, here's a quote from it:
"It's old news that economic stress increases tension between the various working classes in America. But [a new study linked to in the article] study brings up a couple points that shed some new light on where we find ourselves today.

"First, the study is striking in that it shows very directly how a poorly-performing economy correlates with extreme forms of racial violence. Whether it's violence against African-Americans in the South during the lynching years, Asians on the West Coast in the first part of the 20th century, or Mexicans in today's faltering market, a depressed white working class always means those just below them in the economic pecking order are sitting ducks for a wave of vigilante violence. The more you look at the history, the clearer it appears that the cause-and-effect relationship is both ubiquitous and inevitable. It's a fact of American life that whenever the economy tanks, people of color are going to pay the price in blood.

"Right now, of course, the wealth gap in this country is yawning ever-wider. It's as big now as it was during the 1920s heyday of sundowning and lynching across the country. (snip) When you get this many have-nots, there are only two ways to go. They're either going to turn on each other -- or organize.

"Which brings me to my second point. This kind of violence has always been instigated with a hard shove from the economic royalists, who would rather have the lower classes killing each other on the courthouse lawns rather than going inside the courthouses to challenge the structural inequalities they find so profitable. We know the Minutemen are backed by wealthy supporters, who are using the group to promote exactly the same kind of racial scapegoating that tore apart the early Populists -- and, no doubt, for exactly the same reasons. Now, as ever, divide-and-conquer is proving to be a handy-dandy little trick that never fails to prevent people with similar economic interests from recognizing their common concerns, and pulling together for real, long-term change."


I was fascinated by an article in the Washington Post about how Persistence of Myths Could Alter Public Policy Approach. I'm going to quote from it at length because it has some subtle, precise points that I think we need to learn in order to effectively counteract the massive lying of Bushistas:

"The research is painting a broad new understanding of how the mind works. Contrary to the conventional notion that people absorb information in a deliberate manner, the studies show that the brain uses subconscious "rules of thumb" that can bias it into thinking that false information is true. Clever manipulators can take advantage of this tendency.

"The experiments also highlight the difference between asking people whether they still believe a falsehood immediately after giving them the correct information, and asking them a few days later. Long-term memories matter most in public health campaigns or political ones, and they are the most susceptible to the bias of thinking that well-recalled false information is true.

"The experiments do not show that denials are completely useless; if that were true, everyone would believe the myths. But the mind's bias does affect many people, especially those who want to believe the myth for their own reasons, or those who are only peripherally interested and are less likely to invest the time and effort needed to firmly grasp the facts.

"The research also highlights the disturbing reality that once an idea has been implanted in people's minds, it can be difficult to dislodge. Denials inherently require repeating the bad information, which may be one reason they can paradoxically reinforce it.

"Indeed, repetition seems to be a key culprit. Things that are repeated often become more accessible in memory, and one of the brain's subconscious rules of thumb is that easily recalled things are true.

"Many easily remembered things, in fact, such as one's birthday or a pet's name, are indeed true. But someone trying to manipulate public opinion can take advantage of this aspect of brain functioning. In politics and elsewhere, this means that whoever makes the first assertion about something has a large advantage over everyone who denies it later.

"Furthermore, a new experiment by Kimberlee Weaver at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and others shows that hearing the same thing over and over again from one source can have the same effect as hearing that thing from many different people -- the brain gets tricked into thinking it has heard a piece of information from multiple, independent sources, even when it has not. Weaver's study was published this year in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

"The experiments by Weaver, Schwarz and others illustrate another basic property of the mind -- it is not good at remembering when and where a person first learned something. People are not good at keeping track of which information came from credible sources and which came from less trustworthy ones, or even remembering that some information came from the same untrustworthy source over and over again. Even if a person recognizes which sources are credible and which are not, repeated assertions and denials can have the effect of making the information more accessible in memory and thereby making it feel true, said Schwarz.

"Experiments by Ruth Mayo, a cognitive social psychologist at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, also found that for a substantial chunk of people, the "negation tag" of a denial falls off with time. Mayo's findings were published in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology in 2004.

"If someone says, 'I did not harass her,' I associate the idea of harassment with this person," said Mayo, explaining why people who are accused of something but are later proved innocent find their reputations remain tarnished. "Even if he is innocent, this is what is activated when I hear this person's name again.

"If you think 9/11 and Iraq, this is your association, this is what comes in your mind," she added. "Even if you say it is not true, you will eventually have this connection with Saddam Hussein and 9/11."

"Mayo found that rather than deny a false claim, it is better to make a completely new assertion that makes no reference to the original myth. Rather than say, as Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.) recently did during a marathon congressional debate, that "Saddam Hussein did not attack the United States; Osama bin Laden did," Mayo said it would be better to say something like, "Osama bin Laden was the only person responsible for the Sept. 11 attacks" -- and not mention Hussein at all.

"The psychologist acknowledged that such a statement might not be entirely accurate -- issuing a denial or keeping silent are sometimes the only real options. So is silence the best way to deal with myths? Unfortunately, the answer to that question also seems to be no.

"Another recent study found that when accusations or assertions are met with silence, they are more likely to feel true, said Peter Kim, an organizational psychologist at the University of Southern California. He published his study in the Journal of Applied Psychology.

"Myth-busters, in other words, have the odds against them."

(Willow Rosenberg and Tara Maclay)

One of the most effective tools we mythbusters DO have is humor. For all you Buffy fans, here's a short, hilarious quiz: GOP Frontrunner or Buffy Villain: You Decide!



A recent article from the Sci-Tech section of CBS News covers a study which illustrates in interesting detail how one of the evils of sexism -- the reduction of women to their appearance -- is internalized and reinforced by both genders:

"In the study, participants were asked before the session to fill out a questionnaire about what they were looking for in a mate, listing such categories as wealth and status, family commitment, physical appearance, healthiness and attractiveness. After the session, the researchers compared what the participants said they were looking for with the people they actually chose to ask for another date.

"Men's choices did not reflect their stated preferences, the researchers concluded. Instead, men appeared to base their decisions mostly on the women's physical attractiveness. The men also appeared to be much less choosy. Men tended to select nearly every woman above a certain minimum attractiveness threshold, Todd said.

"Women's actual choices, like men's, did not reflect their stated preferences, but they made more discriminating choices, the researchers found. The scientists said women were aware of the importance of their own attractiveness to men, and adjusted their expectations to select the more desirable guys.

"Women made offers to men who had overall qualities that were on a par with the women's self-rated attractiveness. They didn't greatly overshoot their attractiveness," Todd said, "because part of the goal for women is to choose men who would stay with them".

But, he added, "they didn't go lower. They knew what they could get and aimed for that level." So, it turns out, the women's attractiveness influenced the choices of the men and the women."

(Image from the wonderfully irreverent Art Is Not A Scam)

And, back to humor for our conclusion, a completely heartening story from the Asheville, Tennessee IndyMedia covers how creative and courageous prostestors used ridicule in a brilliant way to drive a Nazi and Klan rally out of Knoxville. Read it and pass it on! White Flour Forever!

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THE ILLUSION OF HOME AS SANCTUARY FOR CHILDREN

(Graphic from Steve Audio)

Tonight's Austin evening news was full of a story about a 5-year-old boy who was assaulted in a public swimming pool restroom by a man in his 50s. The little boy was punched in the stomach and forced to perform oral sex on the man. The locale, Lakeway, is one of the most affluent neighborhoods in Austin, and the parents interviewed on TV were in disbelief that this could have occurred to one of "their" children.


Yesterday's national news cycle had a CBS story about how "over the last 60 years, at least 5,100 adult leaders were kicked out of the Boy Scouts because of allegations of sexual abuse". The lightweight and sensationalist story did not mention how many of those accused were married and heterosexual, although that's a natural enough question given the Boy Scouts overt homophobia toward gay scout leaders.

And, of course, the current "big shocker" story out there is about Senator Larry Craig (R, Idaho) tapping feet in the stall next to him at a Minneapolis airport men's room. I can (and will at some point) write in a traitorous way about how, gay rights aside, I'm fucking sick of male sexuality intruding on public spaces, especially bathrooms. I'm really not going to be interested in gender-neutral public facilities until those places have been made completely safe for children to go potty without male predation OR male sexual behavior in the environment, whatever the sexuality involved. Last night Letterman, a big old homophobe, said "As far as I'm concerned, if you spend more than two minutes in a men's bathroom, you've already crossed the line" and I had to agree with him on a basic level: It's for crapping and pissing, then washing your hands and getting the hell out.

Yeah, I know, gay oppression has driven people to desperate circumstances. But when the lurking you're doing is linked with body evacuation and pedophiles, you might want to rethink what territory you seek to defend.

But, where my mind has wandered tonight is how far off the mark all these stories are. Yes, Republicans should never again, under any circumstances, be allowed to call themselves a party of morality or family values. And clearly, as TRex at FireDogLake said, they're all secret pansies.

Yet, the real circumstances of child sexual assault and male predation is not about bathrooms or even the Boy Scouts. It's about what is going on in the average American home.

I did the math. The current report rate of child sexual assault (which is likely far below actual incidence, but we'll go with what we can say with certainty), averaged over both genders, indicates that about 30% of people will be sexually abused in some way before they are 18 years of age. The 2000 census for Austin listed a population of 656,562 people, of which 22.5% (or 118,181 people) were under the age of 18. If, over the period of 18 years, 30% of those young folks are sexually abused, that averages out to 1969 a year, or 5.4 kids per day.

Imagine a news show that covered this every day, as they give us allergy reports and endless stupid trivia about sports. It would, at least 90% of the time, be a report about 5 or 6 children each day who were molested by a member of their family or a very close friend of the family, 98% of the time a heterosexual male. Imagine having that reality being reflected back to us on a daily basis, and what changes you'd start demanding.

I don't agree that America is sex-phobic. Sexual content permeates everything around us, including our children's lives. But it's sexual dishonesty, conflated with power games.

Susie Bright has a good essay up right now that I want to quote from, Is There a Republican Senator Who's NOT Having Bathroom Sex?

"From now on, as far as I'm concerned, every single Republican legislator is a Reeking Freak Closet Case until proven innocent.

"These men wouldn't know 'safe, sane, and consensual' if you tied it to their weener with a red flag. I won't call them 'gay' or 'kinky' because that would be an insult to the healthy spectrum of human sexuality. Instead, they're the worst face of sexual repression, because they don't care who they hurt, or how many lies they tell. Their whole life is a SHAM.

"The GOP Narcissists aren't the exception to the rule— they ARE the rule. They personify the very sexuality they campaign against. If they vote against gays, we know they're queer. If they're hopped up about "child porn," we can guess their internet habits. If they hold up monogamous marriage as a Christian ideal, we know they're adulterous, blasphemous fools.

"Here's what they all have in common; They pretend it didn't happen. They try to buy people off to shut them up. They cry that they've been victimized. And then they continue to persecute everyone else by:
* Voting YES on constitutional ban of same-sex marriage.
* Voting NO on adding sexual orientation to definition of hate crimes.
* Voting NO on expanding hate crimes to include sexual orientation.
* Voting YES on prohibiting same-sex marriage.
* Voting NO on prohibiting job discrimination by sexual orientation."


But, to address the issue more comprehensively, I'm going to reprint an essay I sent out via private e-mail last October, when the Mark Foley scandal fill the news cycle.

Okay, let's take a look at The Reality of Child Sexual Abuse.

The overwhelming majority of people who have a sexual interest in children and teenagers do not fit the classic definition of a 'pedophile'. They are, statistically, interested stimulated sexually by a variety of triggers, only some of which are young people; they are (around 98%) male; they are heterosexual; they are married or in strong relationship with another adult; and they would not identify their feelings as pedophilia.

The perception of those much younger than us as sexually arousing is completely interwoven into our culture. It is why we simultaneously, as a culture, support such things as child beauty pageants and also get upset when we see the actual photos of Jon-Benet Ramsey. It is the foundation of a high percentage of advertising strategy. It is why we have cheerleaders and Disney characters and the WB. It is part of the nuclear family dynamic.

As a culture, it is almost impossible for us to name desire without imagining it as occurring between two individuals who are "different" in a way that includes a power imbalance. Male desire, in particular, is taught to boys as being dependent on the greater helplessness, receptivity, and "softness" of their partners.

Sexual desire is imprinted on us in our culture while we are still children -- it's impossible to know at what age it would naturally occur, because we have no escape from sex as a commodity, so we have no control group. And this definition of desire is imprinted on children who will then learn to view those around them -- other children and teenagers -- as their first objects of longing. Some of us, many of us, never outgrow those first impressions and remain fixated on children and teenagers.

The child pornography industry is so voluminous that, even taking into account the reality that most consumers may be repeat consumers, more than half of adult American males are taking a dip in this world. It is the norm, rather than the aberration. It will remain the norm until we find another definition for desire, one that does not in any way include a power imbalance. A few people -- feminists of a certain stripe, mostly -- have begun the work of finding that definition for themselves without simultaneously embracing any ethic which declares sex "bad".

Neverthless, this effort has been persistently called "anti-sex". It is, definitely, an effort away from the Western male definition of desire and sex. And it takes a lot of hard work. The kind of work that most people find too disheartening to undertake, even if they understand and agree with its value.

So, the broader definition of pedophile includes more than half the population. The more focused definition -- those who have these desires and choose to act on them, either with physical contact or, as is far more common, with suggestive but non-physical interactions between themselves and those younger than them or as voyeurs and exhibitionists -- are a smaller but still significant category, perhaps 10 to 25% of the population. For these people, pedophile is a sexual orientation, in the same way that heterosexual or homosexual is a sexual orientation. It is compelling, it feels like a core identity, and suppressing it is difficult.

The majority of pedophiles (over 80%) identify as heterosexual and most (at least 90%) prey on children in their own families and friendship networks, Approximately two-thirds of repeat predators select girls when they are able, and about one-third choose boys. But access and proximity are far more relevant to this statistic than a gender preference. The one-third percentage for boys likely reflects the fact that boys are not as closely watched as girls, especially within family or close community settings. The identification of pedophilia as something that "gay people" do is erroneous and leaves children at grave risk.

At least 25% of women and 17% of men self-identify as having been sexually abused in some form as children. This statistic is undoubtedly much higher, considering how many people have a hard time making this self-identification. It is even more difficult to extrapolate from this how many active pedophiles there are in the general population, since the average number of victims per pedophile before he is stopped is around 100. (For pedophiles who act out on boys, the number is around 125 victims; for those who act out on girls, the number is around 85.)

At least 95% of pedophiles who have been caught say they were themselves molested as children. Most of these men (over half) claim their early molestation was not really harmful or was in some sense consensual. These same percentage claim the children they victimize are not really harmed and that the children likewise "consent". Most child predation is not violent; it is coercive, persuasive, and often does not involve frank acts of penetration. This confusion about the nature of consent is, likewise, woven into the fabric of our culture.

Clearly, then, pedophile as a sexual orientation is learned. The ability to undo this orientation depends on whether the pedophile also has other orientations equally strong, how early he is caught (repeated predation intensifies the orientation), what kind of reparative therapy is used, and probably other factors not yet clearly understood. Most of the methods used to deal with pedophiles are highly ineffective.

I personally believe that all sexual preferences and proclivities are learned. We pick it up from the adults around us as we go along, and we make a decision about ourselves based on the best information we have at the moment. All of the studies to date which claim to demonstrate a gay brain or a gay gene have serious scientific flaws. None of them demonstrate a shared biology between gay men and lesbians, and none of them demonstrate a biology that does not also occur in heterosexuals.

It is clear, at this point, that with our enormously plastic brains, behavior does a great deal to re-shape the brains we were both with. Conditioning remains the best-proven explanation for why we are who we are. And if you have a feminist understanding of the confusion of sex with power and the identification of women as the "abnormal" gender, then sexual preferences as choices (made so early they don't feel like a choice) becomes sensible.

The current scandal regarding Mark Foley is exposing all sorts of interesting things about our culture. The Right, desperate to reduce political fall-out, is now trying to claim Foley was not exposed as a predator because they were unwilling to out a gay man without proof. (If you fall that for that argument, from the same folks who consistently declare gays to be the number one problem in American, then I've got a Congress Street Bridge to sell you.)

The failure of Republican leadership to not only go public with the predation in their midst (and if you read all the instant messages and e-mails, it's clear it was predation of a virulent nature), but to also fail to even try to stop him, seems to be the most startling piece of the story. Except not for me, because I assume these Republican men in positions of leadership to have their own background with and preference for confused sex-power dynamics and desire based on power imbalance. He was one of their own, and not just politically.

Likewise, the reaction of Matt Drudge (a closeted Right-wing pundit) that these teenagers were someone "egging on" Matt Foley and are equally culpable, and the dismissal of the predation by Tony Snow, Bush's press secretary, as "naughty e-mails" reflect their comfort with this reality, not just their attempt to excuse any behavior by the party to which they have sworn unthinking allegience. Congressional pages are the bottom cogs in an intense hierarchy that uses servitude not far removed from slavery as a means of teaching and reinforcing the hierarchy. Of course they are perceived as fair game in that kind of setting.

So, then, this will consume the news cycle for a while to come. If it would give people information and an honest opportunity to re-examine their own conditioning and our larger culture, it would be a grand thing. I have no illusions that it will, except for those of us who are already doing such work. And in the meantime, the loss of the basic human rights first set out in the Magna Carta, the despicable war ravaging hopes for world harmony, the demonization of immigrants, the dismantling of liberation gains made in the past for women and people of color, the destruction of our economy and our environment -- all of these will recede to later in the news cycle, if they are covered at all.

Because sex sells. And that's the problem, right there. Anything you can do to not buy, do it.

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Who Feasts and Who Famishes

During the middle years of my childhood, there was not enough food in my family to last the month. Not enough to go around. My father was seldom home, and when he was, suddenly the meals were generous. I have never figured out if this was because he brought money with him or my mother held back money to make sure he was well-fed while he was there. I don't want it to be the latter. I don't have anyone I can ask about it now.


The way my mother managed it, she put together whatever dinner she could and if there was not enough for her to have a share, she stood by the stove, scraping what she could from the sides of the pot after having put down our three plates for us. She stayed in the room so she could talk with us, so it was a family meal. (Yes, I've written a poem about this.) I was the skinny, skinny one whom she was desperately worried about, so I had to sit where she could keep an eye on me, urge me to take another bite, honey. In the middle was my little brother Bill (3.5 years younger than me), and on the other side, not quite in her view, was our older brother Craig. The ravenous teenager.

When Mom stopped to light a cigarette or take a sip of coffee, Craig would steal Bill's food. Grab a piece of meat or a roll or whatever he could gulp down. Since he was always chewing nonstop, it wasn't noticeable once it went into his mouth. Bill knew better than to complain; he shared a bedroom with Craig, and punishment would be, well, unspeakable.

I had to time my moves very carefully, so that neither Craig nor my mother saw them. But I was ever so good at sneak. I'd hide food from my plate, whatever was portable, in my napkin. Whoosh, there's another bit gone. After dinner, my mother would examine my leaving critically -- there were always leavings, I didn't want to eat, not the least of which was that whatever I left on my plate, I knew she would eat. She'd sigh and tell me okay. As I left the kitchen, I'd hear the clank of a fork on my plate. Bill and I would wander off casually to an unobserved part of the house, and I would give him the contents of my napkin, keeping guard while he gratefully ate.

There are many layers to this memory. I've worked on most of them. But here's the question I'm posing today: What was it in the conditioning that Craig and I received, both older siblings to Bill, that caused Craig to steal Bill's food and me to go hungry in order that Bill eat?

Craig was a sick fuck, but it really isn't just him. I have talked with countless women over the decades, and the reality of brothers stealing food from their siblings is rampant. Often, in farm and poor families, it is overt and/or institutionalized by the mothers or fathers. I think it's linked to male and female conditioning. Males are supposed to satisfy their hunger, at the expense of those less powerful than themselves if necessary, and females are supposed to do the feeding.

This observation is not original. During the 1970s, we parsed it out and felt a generation's rage that it was so. We spent a lot of time trying to understand what was being said and done, in the raising of little boys, to give them the message that their needs came first. We were determined to stop this pathology in its tracks. But every time we suggested a change, men screamed that they were being misunderstood, misused, discriminated against, not included enough....the list is endless. And our training to make sure they felt satisfied sooner or later would kick in.

I have read, in the last few years, that double blind studies of infants interacting with their mothers reveal male infants are markedly less able to be self-sufficient or comfort themselves -- at any age, in any race or class group. Perhaps there is a biological difference. But, given the messages we have about gender, perhaps they've already learned their mothers see them as needier and more helpless.

When someone whose job it is to care for you and teach you about the world treats you as if you cannot care for yourself, you will come to believe this is true. When the expectations you are told you will encounter as an adult do not include cooking your own meals, cleaning your own house, raising your own offspring, or finding solace for your feelings on your own, you will feel a profound disconnect from reality because for small children, the only reality is what happens at home. The rest of the world is foggily understood.

So, when in your beloved universe, you are told "Oh, you'll never have to do any of these things", you will wonder what, then, is your connection to the real world and what is your value in it. That would certainly make me ragingly insecure, trying to keep the attention on me, trying to make sure I was loved and coddled even though I wasn't sure what I was bringing to the relationship, and, especially, trying to make sure my lack of skills remained hidden. In much the way white collar managers fill their days with pointless meetings and reports, because deep down, they know they aren't doing the work of the company and they certainly don't deserve the inflated salaries they receive.

It's a shell game. And the backlash against feminism for revealing the ugly truth has been to turn out new generations where not only boys, but now a certain number of girls, are kept isolated from the work that makes a home and family. We tell children their job is to be smart, look good, stay on top of pop culture, and someday somehow find a job that makes them feel valuable. While mom has a job and still does most of the housework, and dad gets praised for doing the laundry on nights when there's no game on TV.

And if a male shows up needy, hurt, not feeling seen for who he is, not being completely included no matter what? Well, then, it's the fault of females. We all agree on that. Except for a few old dykes who clearly cannot keep up with the new order. Hell, let's blame them, no one will stick up for them.

The only ending I can think of for this story at the moment is that Craig choked on his own vomit, alone on the floor, and I'm still alive. Telling the tale.

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