Occam's Razor

Washington Wizards center Jason Collins came out today. It was a top story on Yahoo News and on many other news sites. The reason why Jason’s proclamation was news was because he is the first major athlete of a U.S. team to do so. Apparently our professional sports teams are assumed to be full of homophobes because Jason was somehow the first to do so. Most likely this “news” will soon become as newsworthy as the fact that there are gays in the military. I know I read the headline and simply shrugged and moved onto the next article.

Gays are all around us. They always have been around us. Most of us heterosexuals just preferred to ignore or discount the evidence. The difference between 2013 and, say, 1963 is in 1963 this was not obvious to us. Few even knew that homosexuals existed, but assumed that if they existed, they were some tiny fraction of the population, like twins conjoined at birth. Now even in deeply red states people know that gays are out there by the tens of millions. While there are still some prejudiced anti-gay bigots, if anything, they constitute a smaller percent of the population than gays and lesbians do. Some of us may still have some moral qualms about gays marrying or think that gay sex is disgusting. But all but a handful of us now understand that there is nothing we can really do about it. If there is anything newsworthy about Jason Collins’s admission, it should be why it took so long.

I really doubt there is anyone on the Washington Wizards or anyone in playing in the NBA who really gives a crap about Collins’s sexual orientation. I doubt any of the fans care either, although they will care if his performance starts to suffer. Ten years ago maybe a player or two might have felt awkward being in the shower with someone openly gay and their sex. Maybe they wondered if they would be sexually assaulted if they reached over to pick up that bar of soap they dropped. Or that they might be secretly gay, as evidenced by the boner they might get when in the shower with the gay guy. Maybe. Not anymore. I certainly never give these things a thought when I am in a public shower. Heck, I doubt I would even register shock if a team of women basketball players joined us in the shower. Unless you are sexually inexperienced or never saw any porn, it’s not like the human body is a mystery. If anything, seeing people naked makes us appreciate that all but about five percent of us look better with clothes on than without them.

Being homophobic is not a natural state of affairs; it is a learned behavior. I grew up in a lily-white community. I don’t recall even seeing a black or oriental person until I was more than ten years old. It sure was strange and uncomfortable for me when we moved south and suddenly I was surrounded by all sorts of blacks. But I got over it. It became normal. After a while I simply gave it no thought. In fact, now I find I like living in multiethnic communities. It’s like moving from a black and white world into a Technicolor world. A multiethnic, multiracial community is far more interesting a place to live in. If nothing else, the choice of dining tends to improve greatly. It would be a real challenge to go back to living in one of these virtually all white communities. It would seem so unnatural now; I’d feel like I had hives.

Sexual orientation is not obvious. Of course some gays choose to flaunt their sexual orientation, but even among gays there is incredible diversity on how they choose to express their sexuality. But that’s true of all of us. We all have our kinks and peculiarities. Most transvestites are happily heterosexual men. The sorts of weird behavior that make me queasy are those that I would never do. Sadomasochism is something I would never do, but some people are into it. As long as it is consensual and I am not participating, it’s perfectly fine by me. I am old fashioned enough to request some civility. I ask that it please be done indoors, preferably with the curtains drawn and not with kids in the house. I cannot be offended by something I cannot see.

You certainly cannot see someone’s sexual orientation. Try as you might you will never see it. You might see behavior that is often associated with gays or lesbians, but I’ve been proven wrong leaping to these assumptions. The only way someone’s sexual orientation matters to me is that it takes her out of my potential dating pool, and since I am married that’s not something to worry about.

I’m sorry that Jason Collins felt the need to come out at all. Granted, it is tougher to be gay and black than gay and white, so perhaps there is some bravery coming out while being both of these. Sexual orientation simply does not matter anymore than it matters whether someone has blue eyes or brown, is short rather than tall, or has size 14 feet instead of size 4. The qualities about someone that truly matter are intangibles like their character. All the rest, including sexual orientations, are simply tests on our character.

I’d like to find out some of that character stuff about Jason. That might be newsworthy.

(Warning: this blog post is Rated R.)

It’s day three of convalescing from sinus surgery. It was made more interesting when we lost power Friday night due to the massive line of powerful thunderstorms that blew through. This meant futilely trying to sleep in an un-air-conditioned house while my sinuses made all sorts of interesting gurgling noises. There was all this plus regularly hobbling to use the bathroom in the dark and changing gauze with the aid of a flashlight. We were relatively fortunate as these things go. Power returned eighteen hours later, before our refrigerated food went bad. Now I can feel miserable in an air-conditioned house.

There is also a lot of time to fill. Most of it is spent popping pills, changing the gauze under my nose and attempting but failing to sleep. I don’t have much attention span. Even web surfing to my favorite sites is boring. With so much time to kill and eager as ever to increase my blog’s traffic, I decided this was the perfect day to head back to that den of sin, shock and hilarity, specifically the Washington D.C. Craigslist Casual Encounters section to see what is new.

In November 2009, when I last reviewed the site, I declared it a complete waste of time, at least if you are a guy looking for a woman and are hoping to have a casual sexual encounter. I am happy to report that it remains a complete waste of your time for that purpose, but it remains sporadically amusing as well as frequently deeply disturbing. Let’s see what little morsels I can glean from Washington D.C.’s Casual Encounters section today. Anything new?

Well, this is interesting:

Cuckhold!!!!!!!!!! – mw4m (nova) Do you like watching a couple while being tied to a chair? If you are an older mature male drop us a line. We do this on evenings and weekends. Prefer you be in the Dale City area as we decide at the very last minute. Clear face with body pic to head of the line. Please put your age and exact location in subject line to eliminate spam. Thanks!

I don’t remember any of this cuckold business on their site back in 2009. Back then it was all about BBCs, an acronym for big black cocks. As we all know (?), African American men are all endowed with enormous penises. It’s true. Haven’t you seen Blazing Saddles? Make no mistake; there is still plenty of interest in BBCs on Craigslist. Generally, it is from some couple where the male is interested in seeing his wife take a big one. Presumably the wife is accommodating.

Anyhow, cuckolding seems to be the new “in” couples activity. Naturally in this ad, the poster could not bother to spellcheck. Cuckolding apparently involves a dominant wife and a submissive husband. The submissive husband, at least in the world of Craigslist, must submit in a humiliating way while another man gives his wife the sexual pleasure he apparently cannot. That’s probably because he does not have a BBC. Anyhow, there are two things that make this ad interesting. First, it has nothing to do with cuckolding. Second, WTF, you are going to let strangers tie you to a chair? This “couple” apparently lives in Dale City, Virginia. I imagine the call to Prince William County police is getting old. “We have a report of another naked guy tied to a hotel chair who has been robbed.” Any male who replies to this ad certainly gets what he deserves. Hmm, maybe it has something to do with cuckolding after all. You will be humiliated and likely robbed as well.

Being heterosexual, I don’t find much interest in reading male for male ads, but in the interest of fairness I glanced through these ads today, and judging from the volume of these postings the number of gay guys must be about 25% of the population, not 2%-3%, and a surprising number are in heterosexual marriages. Moreover, most of them don’t seem to be very concerned about picking up STDs. This one (warning: explicit content) is, sadly, typical (bring drugs):

boTTom 4 Top – m4m – 32 (suitland md) bottom latino some body hair shaved head looking for top with parTy favors poppers to come and get busy ….

And what are women looking for in a guy? Gullibility seems to be their prime criteria because as usual most of these “women” likely aren’t women at all. If they are women, they are likely whores. Most likely they are sophisticated email address collecting schemes. Some though are upfront that they are running an escort service, but isn’t the Dominican Republic a long way to go to get laid? I mean, if you are not Rush Limbaugh. Their ads will likely get quickly flagged:

Sexy girls!!!come and get it!! – w4m (washington, DC) Hi I have very nice hi end clean and cut girls available here in santo domingo willing to please your needs My girls will take care of you they know how to behave in public and you will have alot of fun. They are available for out calls I have hourly and daily rates. email me with any questions and for more info and pics of girls my girls are 18-25 please do not ask for any younger I do not have

Do you like larger women? How about much, much larger women? There seems to be plenty of BBW (Big Beautiful Women) posting on Craigslist, so many that I suspect these too are illegitimate and are marketers going for some tangent. Some guys are into women with “extra” which is fine, but I suspect most who would choose a BBW are likely desperate, or don’t understand that BBW does not mean twenty pounds overweight. Here’s a sample.

let’s do it all day – w4m – 40 ( Your place) Good morning! I’m hot and horny this morning and looking to make love to a well endowed man all day. Let’s order in sleep eat and fuck all day. I am AA BBW. I’m insatiable love oral and basically uninhibited. Let’s make our own heat wave. Got a friend? I may be open to that too. Safe play only…be ddf! Please provide a pic or you will be deleted. Also put how many inches you are and your city in the subject line….lol…gotta admit that’s kind of hot. Ex. 10 inches in Reston

Men looking for women still post a disproportionate number of ads. Still, you got to admire simple honesty when you see it:

Wanting To Lose My Virginity – m4w – 18 (Fairfax) Hi – This is not a joke and yes, I can prove my age. I’m looking to lose it before I go to college. Average build, white, swirly hair, clean (obviously) Let me know if you can help

Here’s a guy that will give you a place for you and your paramour or gang to have discreet whoopee. Only I’m betting the room is bugged and has a two-way mirror. Warning: you may find videos of yourself and friends posted to xhamster.com:

Need a place to play? – m4mw – 52 (Falls Church) Ahh, the summer: a time for passion. Like the other 3 seasons. Do you want a safe, private, lovely home to play? I’m glad to host you, Wednesday afternoon through Saturday morning… No questions asked. A place for a tryst? GB? Your inner slut? I’m glad to watch, play, or stay out of the way. Your call. I’m cool, athletic, and smart. You will need to bring a partner: I’m not going to fix you up. M4T, T4M, w4mm, mw4mm and all the other possibilities…

Women are looking for other women, of course. As usual most are looking to explore and aren’t quite ready to acknowledge with their SO they are attracted to their gender. Ads, well, like this one:

Looking to explore – w4w – 25 I am very interested in meeting a woman for the first time. I am a MWF 25, petite, DD free and really ask for you to be discrete and DD free as well. I am available almost anytime this coming week after normal work hours. Please women only, I already have a man in my life and no he won’t be involved in anyway. Hope to hear from you soon!

BTW, I think she wants a discreet relationship, not a discrete one, although one at a time is usually a good idea.

And the most disturbing Craigslist casual encounter ad of the day? What could possibly go wrong here? (Address embedded in the ad has been redacted. Since it is so disturbing, I chose not link to it.)

rape me – 27 (arlington) I’m looking for a guy who wants to sneak in, come upstairs, find me naked in bed, and rape me. (202) I live at 2400 [redacted]. in arlington and i’ve left the door to my apartment unlocked. [redacted]. Yes i’m serious. it’s sunday afternoon and i’m real. [redacted]. i’m 27yo white and drug/disease free, you be too please. email me or call me if you are interested.

Color me confused. Vagina is now a dirty word. I had no idea. I’m not sure Michigan House Member Lisa Brown did either when she uttered the word last week during an abortion debate in the state’s House of Representatives. Granted, vagina is not a word that most people use everyday, but it struck me as a perfectly appropriate word to utter in a debate that tries to legislate who gets to control a woman’s vagina. For her apparently foul mouth, Ms. Brown was blocked by House majority leader Jim Stamas from further participation in the debate.

Michigan women seem to be largely agreeing with Brown. The incident triggered a public performance of “The Vagina Monologues” on the steps of the capitol in Lansing, with thousands of people in attendance, including Lisa Brown. Vagina was doubtless uttered many times and into the ears of thousands of people, assisted by loud speaker systems. But in the state House of Representatives there was no further utterances of the word vagina while the great legislators of the state of Michigan went on trying to restrict what women can do with their own vaginas.

To guys, when you don’t have a vagina, or menstrual cycles, or cramps or any the other complications that come with being born female, it’s hard to be sympathetic. It’s hard for me to imagine how a bill could affect men like this one affects women. Certainly one highly improbable response to the abortion issue would be bills to regulate penises. (Wait a minute? Is penis a dirty word? It probably is, if it were to come up in debates in the Michigan legislature.) Abortion is usually the result of an unplanned pregnancy, after all, so why not have legislation that keeps all men’s penises in cages until their lawfully wedded wife decides it is okay to attempt procreative sex which, if it succeeds, will go full term? Maybe husband and wife would have to go to the police station where the wife would swear that their sex will only be for procreative purposes, and then the police officer would release the man’s penis from its cage. (Probably there should be a special room at the station for these purposes.) Yes, it’s an audacious proposal but such a proposed law if it had a serious intent would doubtless enrage men. No one messes with our penises without our consent, thank you very much. The Lansing state capitol might be a smoldering pile of rubble once Michigan men vented their anger. Yet many of us men turn a deaf ear when women make the same argument, either with soft or raised voices.

What makes a word dirty, anyhow? What are the criteria? Particularly if you are to utter such a word in a public sphere, how can you possibly know if you are doing something worthy of admonishment if there are no firm guidelines in place? We all develop a sense of which words to avoid in polite company, but in my mind vagina was not one of them. I can see myself much like Lisa Brown, debating the issue of abortion with colleagues and protesting that regulating women’s vaginas should be off limits. I would not first check myself to see whether someone would be offended by the term. It comes with the topic of discussion. It certainly was germane in the Michigan House of Representatives during that particular discussion.

To me, there is nothing more titillating about a vagina than there is about an appendix. If anything, I hope women will spend more time talking about their vaginas because then there might be some parity with men. Lord knows men certainly spend a lot of time talking about penises, although rarely using the clinical term. Instead, we use the many slang variants out there. And except for a few of us, we are hardly offended. The closest equivalent we have to a vagina is probably our prostate (wait, is prostate also a dirty word?), which is also well hidden and mysterious but which keeps many of us men in middle age and beyond rising frequently during the night to use the bathroom. It’s possible that some guys will discuss prostate issues, but given the choice they’d rather talk about penises, in particularly penises in relationship with vaginas. Because the truth is that to most men, the vagina in itself is not interesting except in relationship to whether our penis can get inside one.

Now I am a bit picky when it comes to swearing. I don’t do it as a rule and I tend to think less of people who swear chronically. I suspect they are doing it for attention. Swear words by themselves though are not bad. They’re just words. What makes them offensive is how other people react when you use them. Most likely in a group of sailors, swearing will be completely inoffensive because it is part of the culture. My daughter is a frequent swearer, and I let her know I don’t like it. I don’t like it not because I think swearing is bad, but because it is hard to have conversation that is meaningful with her when expletives are flying. For her, an expletive means nothing, but to me an expletive is designed to have a high emotional impact, simply because it is so rarely said aloud. It’s supposed to be like shooting a bazooka instead of a handgun. So I rarely utter an expletive, largely because I grew up in an environment where swearing was abnormal. When I hear them, it jars me. So when I do swear, it is for a just cause. I used one with a friend at work some months back, the first time I ever remember doing so with her. I wanted this person to know, as part of a private conversation, just how upset I was by proposals suggested by some Republicans to cut our pensions. I used the word to impart special impact, that I was really that upset. It got the message across only because I so rarely swear.

Representative Lisa Brown never even used a swear word. She used a clinical word that made it clear just how upset she was about such a sensitive issue as abortion. Yes, it’s a sensitive subject but apparently not sensitive enough not to be broadcast live to the citizens with cable TV in Michigan. Had she used the C word instead, she would have been rightly censured. That was not the case here. Apparently her real offense was to explicitly state just how offensive she found the legislation. That, in the eye of some people, is just like swearing.

Now there’s something we should swear off.

Thank goodness at least some people you would think would not bother continue to listen to Rush Limbaugh. The conservative radio host says so many outrageous things that it is hard to keep from being inured by his latest rants. At least one person in the progressive blogosphere must tune in, because otherwise his outrageous comments on Sandra Fluke, a 30-year old Georgetown University student might have gone wholly unnoticed.

Ms. Fluke, as you doubtlessly heard, was called a “slut” and a “prostitute” by Rush on his radio show last week. Once was apparently not enough for Limbaugh, who double downed his assertions the following day on his show, suggesting her every sexual encounter should be filmed for the benefit of her sponsors, the American taxpayer. Over the weekend he had a sudden change of heart, likely because his advertisers starting withdrawing their sponsorship of his show en masse. Limbaugh sort of apologized without really apologizing, and like the whiny liberal stereotype he likes to lampoon, blamed much of his behavior on liberals. At least forty of his sponsors have pulled the plug so far and more are likely to join the parade.

It’s curious that these obviously false assertions should get him in trouble when so many others have gone, if not quite unnoticed, at least unchallenged. Limbaugh coined the term “Feminazi” to describe feminists. He’s been using the term for decades but like so much other slander and filth out of his mouth, we tuned it out. You would think equating the tens of millions of peaceful but assertive American feminists with a group of fascists that were responsible for the deaths of millions of Jews, homosexuals, and other minorities might have triggered advertisers to bow out from supporting his show long ago. But almost all advertisers are glad to keep sponsoring a show to reach a target market unless it suddenly becomes politically expedient to drop them.

If only there were some tiny speck of truth in his allegations. Fluke “testified” before an unofficial panel of House Congressional Democrats, only because the six male members of the requisite House committee wouldn’t let her or any woman testify on the need to have birth control covered in employer-based health insurance contracts. Fluke wasn’t even talking about herself, but about a friend at Georgetown who needed birth control, not to sleep around, but to control PCOS. Lots of women need birth control for reasons other than to prevent pregnancy, such as for PCOS and to control periods that would be dangerously heavy or excessive. Even when women take birth control to prevent pregnancy, it doesn’t mean that the government is subsidizing birth control. The issue is whether employers should be required to offer birth control as part of their health care coverage, as is required in a majority of states already. That’s it. No government subsidies involved.

And clearly few of the 99% of women who use birth control at some point in their lives are sluts. Some have legitimate medical reasons why their periods need to be regulated. Others are happily or otherwise married women who just don’t particularly want a bun in their oven but want the freedom to have a sex life with their husband. I am not sure how you define a woman as a “slut” but I do know that since Rush cheated on his wives he was putting his dipstick into places where people like him would argue it should never be. However, Rush can avoid the “slut” label because he is a guy. Guys can’t be sluts. There’s not quite an equivalent word for a guy, because it’s okay for guys to sleep around. Granted I don’t hang around men’s locker rooms very often these days, but in my day those guys who bragged about their multiple exploits in locker rooms tended to be envied by the rest of us virgins, who would have been happy to get an opportunity to have sex with something other than our right hands. In any case, when Rush takes vacations alone in the Dominican Republic without his spouse, caught entering with illegal Viagra and is cited for the offense, this sounds like a guy who was aching to be a male slut.

Maybe it’s just me, but I hate the “slut” word. Plenty of women have high sex drives, and I’ve been fortunate to have known a few of them in the biblical sense. Having a high sex drive means you really enjoy sex, which is entirely fine and natural. Having many sex partners at the same time is probably not a wise choice if you are trying to avoid sexually transmitted diseases. It is possible to be sexually active with multiple partners and be reasonably safe at the same time. Undoubtedly some women do put out for reasons other than having a high sex drive, but the same is true with men. Whether a woman chooses to live a life of celibacy, refrains from intercourse until marriage, sleeps around before marriage or has multiple sexual partners at the same time is a choice she must live with. The same is true with men, but for some reason we don’t dwell on satyrs except possibly to envy them. It’s something about being a woman that makes being sexually active with multiple men (or women) at the same time especially morally reprehensible. Maybe its because Mary the mother of Jesus never slept around, or so we assume. Apparently Mary Magdalene did, and Jesus considered her a close friend.

Insurance companies of course are glad, even eager, to provide free contraceptives to its insured women. Entities like the Catholic Church don’t have to compromise any of their cash on principle, an accommodation that was recently granted by the Obama Administration. Fifty dollars a month in birth control pills and paying a couple of hundred dollars a year for the woman to see a gynecologist is infinitely cheaper than the costs of bringing up an unplanned child.

What really annoys the Limbaughs of the world is that many women won’t choose to live the stereotypes they would prefer they live. At the root of Limbaugh’s anger is a frustration that people like him cannot always control the intimate lives of women. They get angry when women choose to exercise their right to be free and liberated human beings. People like Limbaugh want to exert power over women, but really power over any person whose morals they object to. Democrats simply want to put freedom of choice into the individual’s hands, particularly women who otherwise could not afford $50 a month for pills and hundreds of dollars a year in doctor and lab fees to ensure their reproductive health. Let women decide whether they want to use birth control or not, since it is safe and effective. Because it is almost universally used by women, simply make it available as a health choice for them like any other treatable health condition. Because health insurance is all about maintaining personal health and by extension happiness, the same happiness our founders talked about in our constitution that we are all supposed to crave. It appears that the Limbaughs of the world very much want to take away such freedoms from anyone they don’t like while inconsistently and furtively giving themselves license to indulge.

I told former Representative Chris Lee when he abruptly resigned in February that he would not be at the back of the line of unfaithful politicians for long. Perhaps I should claim an award for precognition but really, it’s a no-brainer. Philandering (almost always male) politicians are a dime a dozen, and every couple of months at most another one gets caught. The latest, of course, was Rep. Anthony Weiner (NY) who was exposed by the puritanical and anally obsessed conservative Andrew Brietbart for the political sin of posting pictures of his, well, wiener on YFrog, which is a sort of Twitter server optimized for linking Twitter content to pictures.

Like Chris Lee, Weiner does not appear to have done anything actually illegal. Unlike former executive of Prince Georges County Maryland, Jack B. Johnson, Weiner won’t be going to prison for accepting more than $400,000 in bribes. Rather, Weiner is guilty in the court of public opinion of “emotional infidelity”, general stupidity and the egregious misuse of Twitter to badly seduce women over the internet. He did this by sending pictures of what appears to be his erect penis masked behind some briefs (and allegedly more explicit pictures) to one or more woman not his wife over the Internet, none of whom he actually met. Weiner apologized to his wife and family and says he plans to stay in Congress. No other member of Congress will come within a hundred feet of him, of course, probably because they are afraid they will get cooties. Washington’s neo-Puritans, of course, are calling for his head. Thou shalt have no member of Congress who cannot successfully mask his or her sexual urges for someone other than their spouse because, as we all know, one moral slip means you cannot do your job.

Occasionally though a politician finds himself with his pants down publicly and manages to hang on anyhow. Bill Clinton did it, even though it was pretty clear that he was guilty of perjury. I too might have perjured myself rather than admit I had an oral affair with a buxom and comely office intern half my age. (I might have bragged about it in the shower room, however.) Clinton was impeached anyhow, but not convicted. His bar license was taken away from him, but he left office happily, established charities, worked for international peace and made tons of money as a speaker and author. In fact, he left office with some of the highest approval ratings of any president, in spite of his sins. It turned out that Americans judged their president more by whether they had a job and their standard of living increased than about a minor bit of philandering and lying about sex. So my advice to Andrew Weiner: if you were as effective as they say you are, hang in there anyhow. You may be guilty of emotional infidelity (what exactly is that anyhow?) and, like Chris Lee, bad judgment likely due in part to your sky high testosterone levels, but your work in Congress until now has been excellent.

I will not claim that I am holier than Andrew Weiner. I can truthfully state that I have not sent pictures of my privates over the Internet. Why would I feel the need to do so? It helps for me to be married, of course, but my experience with women is they are much more interested in the whole person than your junk, so if you really want to seduce a woman on the Internet, do it with your words, not pictures of your crotch. Also, I suspect I am not as “gifted” as Weiner.

However, if I was gay, then I might have sent such a lewd photo because guys, regardless of their sexual orientation, find penises professionally interesting. We find pictures of penises in relation to other mostly naked people arranged in a prurient fashion particularly interesting. Unlike ladies, we don’t need a mirror to see our private parts. If we didn’t touch our private parts multiple times a day, we would soil our clothes. If I was gay and hunting for a hot date over the internet, and I might be able to close the deal for a meeting with a picture of my privates, I might have done it. I certainly would not have done it using my real name, however.

Andrew Weiner is guilty of stupidity, something that happens to otherwise intelligent men more frequently than we would care to admit. It is likelier to happen particularly when our testosterone levels are high, or our spouses are on their periods or (like many spouses) they just aren’t in the mood to fool around, which sometimes can go on for months. Insurance actuaries can attest that high testosterone causes otherwise sensible teenage boys to wrap their cars and themselves around telephone poles, and even the smart students do it, but perhaps less often. In middle age, high testosterone sometimes makes men like Andrew Weiner send pictures of their engorged underwear to very unlikely romantic prospects electronically over the Internet. In earlier generations these guys acted more like Andy Capp, hung out at the local tavern and pinched the bums of the local wenches. We’re so much more discreet about it now that we have the Internet thing. We’ve come a long way, baby.

Weiner is a reasonably handsome guy, but he must have realized that his chances of scoring a home run were about one in a thousand. What this did for him, at least for a short while, is scratch his chronic itch in what likely seemed to him to be a relatively safe way. You may catch an Internet virus sending that photo to a distant potential paramour, but Norton Antivirus will kill it. You sure won’t catch a STD. Weiner’s action was still stupid but as any guy with sufficiently high hormone levels knows, your probability of doing something stupid increases with elevated testosterone levels. That’s just a fact. Ask any guy, but those who claim otherwise are probably guilty of being sanctimonious liars.

Here’s the thing though: even when your hormone levels are high, a guy can still exercise reasonable judgment about other things as long as they are not sexual. You still can multitask. You can still ask a probing question in a committee hearing. You can even do stupid stuff like Weiner did and still love your spouse. Now I know what you women will probably say: he does not love me if he does stuff like this in the first place. Duh! Yes, it is possible that he does not love you and he has mentally left the marriage. It’s much more likely that he still loves you, but loves you on his terms, not yours. Most likely it was either you or society which imposed either explicitly or implicitly what those terms were going to be. To a guy, except for those so deep into the bowels of religion that they cannot recognize their own legitimate feelings anymore, this duality is all perfectly consistent, particularly when your hormones are surging.

One of the virtues of middle age in men is that your hormone levels tend to surge less often, so you are less likely to do overtly stupid stuff like Weiner did. Still, the likelihood remains as long as you are a male. We didn’t ask for it, but we men are programmed to be overtly sexual. Masking it in any way is somewhat unnatural. We control it, to the extent we can, by having an excellent sex life with our spouse (which rarely happens) and by daily mindfulness. But it’s sort of like being an ex-smoker asked to never smoke another cigarette again. You can follow strategies to reduce the likelihood of smoking, but the craving will always be there.

Many of you will disagree with me, particularly if you are a female, but I assure you there is a huge Alleluia Chorus of guys out there too shy to leave comments singing “Ahem”. Yes, what Weiner did was hurtful to his spouse and family, but it was not illegal. From the standpoint of fitting into polite society and advancing in a social hierarchy, which is very important to politicians, it was extraordinarily stupid. Yes, if he meditated on it long enough he probably could have prevented it. Still, Weiner is basically guilty of being a guy with an active endocrine system. Give him a break for a first offense.

A couple weeks back I received some LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) diversity training. Frankly, I figured the seminar would be a skate. While I am your typical heterosexual white male, it’s not like I have not known people in the LGBT community. As a Unitarian Universalist, I have also helped our church become a welcoming congregation for LGBTs. I was even Standing on the Side of Love at their annual assembly in Salt Lake City last year. Still, I was not quite prepared when I walked into the classroom, and left more than a little confused.

That’s probably partly by design, and partly because I have some trouble when an issue has too many permutations. Two instructors showed up from Out and Equal, a San Francisco based non-profit that is helping integrate the LGBT community into the workplace. Of course, the LGBT community has always been in the workplace. For the most part, they stayed silent about their natures at work. During the last couple of decades, more from the community have come out at work. In San Francisco, you expect LGBT to be out in the workplace. In other parts of the country, like many places in the Deep South, if you know what is good for you, you remain closeted at work, and maybe in your community as well. In Washington, D.C., being LGBT not that big a deal, as like most major cities we have a rather large LGBT community. For the most part the LGBT community just blends in. In general, there is an unofficial “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy in the workplace. You disclose as much about your personal life as you feel comfortable disclosing. However, it is also perfectly okay to come to work, do your job, act pleasantly and then go home with your colleagues not much the wiser. Miss Manners does not approve of prying questions anyhow. So we generally don’t pry.

One of the instructors was a fifty something lesbian dressed as a man, right down to the blue suit and pinstripe tie. I first mistook her for a man until I heard the pitch of her voice. She spent most of her career in the military, but left the day the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy went into affect. She was eligible to retire anyhow, but said she could not live with an official policy where she had to remain closeted. The gentleman was much younger, gay and frankly gorgeous. He was skinner than Fabio but otherwise looked a lot like him, but with long dark locks mixed with blond streaks that flowed down his back.

Men dress up for work all the time, however, most of us just dress for success, which means that while we may look good in a suit, we are indistinguishable. When we get home, we revert to blue jeans. This man was as beautiful and any woman I’ve ever seen exiting out of a beauty salon. Frankly, he had me a bit mesmerized. Obviously, I need to get out more because I had no idea my sex could look so good. By the end of the day, I realized what my problem was: I found him attractive. I had no desire to put the moves on him nor I could not imagine myself intimate with him but the same is true with the many attractive women I run into everyday as well. I realized I found him attractive because he took exquisite pride in how he looked and in many ways, this made him seem effeminate to me, and this was the source of my attraction. Finding a man attractive has happened to me before, but only rarely, and generally about every five years or so. Generally, I don’t see my fellow men. I know them as people, but I don’t see them the way heterosexual women do. During the seminar, we were encouraged to challenge our assumptions, and I must say I was challenged.

I have always said I was heterosexual, yet few of us who call ourselves heterosexuals really are entirely heterosexual. Whether we wish to acknowledge it our not, we fall somewhere between the extremes of heterosexuality and homosexuality. Most of us tilt rather markedly toward one side or the other but at the same time, many of us have had homosexual experiences, generally when we were younger. Many like me assume we are completely heterosexual because even if occasionally we do find a man attractive, we don’t act on it.

From the seminar, I learned there is much more to someone from the LGBT community than just their sexual orientation. There are in fact at least four aspects to sexuality to consider about any person. The first aspect is our birth sex, which is straightforward enough. However, there are exceptional cases where someone is born with both obvious male and female genitalia. The second aspect is our sexual orientation, or the sex to which we are attracted. For most of us straights, this is all we think about when we consider someone from the LGBT community. The third is the gender we identify with. A transgender person, for example, has a conflict between their birth sex and the gender they feel inside. For example, if they have male genitalia, they may find it disgusting and unnatural. This often leads to stress because they are inhabiting the wrong kind of body. Lastly, there is the aspect of gender expression, or how someone chooses to express their sexuality. Transvestites, for example Eddie Izzard, like to dress in the clothing of the opposite sex, even while most remain extremely heterosexual. If you think about it, this means that a person might fit into any one of 24 possible categories. Moreover, categories are simply conveniences for us to try to organize aspects of someone in our own mind. A person’s actual sexuality includes all sorts of other possible variants.

By the end of the class my head was spinning. For example, I could be a biological man who so strongly feels I am a woman to the point that I might consider sex change surgery and hormone replacement therapy to look like a woman. Yet, even though I feel inside like a woman, even after all that surgery to make me a woman, I might prefer to dress like a man. Moreover, I might prefer men to women, which suggests I am not homosexual, but a heterosexual woman in a man’s body who prefers a “butch” look. Most would label this person as a homosexual simply because they are attracted to men and be done with it. We were asked to ponder how we would make the workplace an accommodating and friendly environment for people like this so they don’t have the stress of living a closeted identity. Indeed, they will probably be most productive in a work environment where they can truly be out and equal. Before taking the seminar, this all was so less confusing. Of course, I just chose to remain largely ignorant of the many variations of humanity out there.

As confusing as the LGBT world is, it is relatively straightforward stuff, compared it with the kinks many of us straights have but choose to keep in the closet. Since my wife has many friends from the LGBT community and well the kink community, about a decade back I purchased the book Come Hither, A Commonsense Guide to Kinky Sex by Dr. Gloria G. Grame. It sits next to my bed. I am a reasonably sexually curious person, but curiously in the nearly ten years, I have owned the book, I still have not finished it, although I genuinely mean to finish it. Frankly, I find the numbing variations of kink too confusing to fully get my mind around. Although I’ve gone through the definitions many times, I still cannot quite get the difference between a “top” and a dominant, and submissive and a “bottom”. To my wife it all makes complete sense and is intuitive, but to me it is a confusing muddle. Moreover, power play is just one aspect of the whole world of kink that seems to me to be an endlessly confusing hall of mirrors.

So I figure that if once every five years or so I run across a guy that I find attractive, then overall I must be a very vanilla heterosexual. Because of the seminar, I certainly will be more respectful of those in the LGBT community and mindful of the diversity inside it. In fact, I may be less “don’t ask, don’t tell” than I am now, simply because I don’t want them to feel they have to shutter some part of their life when they come to work.

Frankly, I don’t care if someone at work is or is not part of the LGBT community. If they want to have a picture of their same sex spouse in their office, that’s fine with me. I am glad to hear about their weekend activities with their lover or same sex spouse. I hope they would voluntarily open their lives to my gentle inquiries, because so much of their world still confuses me. My philosophy is people are just people, and these sort of variations should not matter at all as long as in the workplace there is no harassment. Which of the 24 squares a person falls into perhaps helps in understanding where they are coming from and how to manage them. I hope that I can set a standard with my employees that these variations do not matter and we should welcome anyone in the LGBT community we happen to work with for the complex person they happen to be.

I hope I will eventually understand all these permutations. Right now, I just wish my head would stop spinning. Once again, my black and white world seems to be mixed with too many colors to wholly comprehend.

This is the thirteenth in an indeterminate series of entries that provides my “real world” lessons to young adults. It is my conviction that these lessons are rarely taught either at home or in the schools. For those who did not get them growing up you can get them from me for free. This is part of my way of giving back to the universe on the occasion of my 50th birthday.

Surfing YouTube last night, I spent most of my time enjoying the excellent TED channel. There I stumbled across this video by Cindy Gallop, a “lady of a certain age” as they like to be called who is fortunate enough to bed many men half her age or more. One thing she has noted is that young adults today confuse pornographic sex with real sex. The sad truth that many young adults cannot discern is that pornographic sex has about as much in common with real sex as a Formula One racer has in common with the Honda Civic that you drive. To help you out, Gallop created this site. Gallop, however, just scratches the surface of this topic.

The confusion is understandable. Like it or not young adults have probably been exposed to hundreds of hours of pornography on the Internet, often before they have sex with someone other than their own right hand. Lord knows that in most cases their parents cannot be bothered to clue them in on how real adults have sex. They are more likely to completely hide their sexuality from their children and make sure they are asleep or being very quiet while having sex.

It may surprise you to learn that your parents probably are still having sex. They are probably not coupling every night anymore as middle age takes a toll on many things, including their sex drives. There is no one size fits all when it comes to sexuality. There are couples in their middle years still going at it like bunnies. Others can go months without having sex and it is fine with both of them. Most likely, when they do get around to making love it bears no resemblance to a pornographic movie. Most likely, neither will your sex life.

This is because pornography is about fantasy, not real life. Moreover, the vast majority of videotaped pornography is for the male, not the female. Since women these days watch a lot of pornography too, you may be under the impression that they are being trained to enjoy the male-oriented version of pornography. Perhaps some of it is rubbing off (no pun intended) but likely not very much. However, pornography might carry with it the implication that modern women should enjoy or at least accommodate men by engaging in sexual acts rife in modern pornography.

Ask any porn actress how much they enjoy being in porn. A certain amount will lie for the trade presses, but when interviewed most will candidly admit (gasp!) they are in it for the money and get little or no pleasure from participating in sexual acts in front of the camera. Any great sex they have likely happens off camera. For one thing, they are being tightly directed. Second, they are expected to act so of course for the most part they will be faking lust they do not genuinely feel. They are following a script for a few quick bucks so you (generally a guy) can get off. Their directors know what you want because they analyze their sales and follow trends. So if you see a lot of videos about something like anal sex, they are there to meet your market demand. Satisfying your lust is simply a business. Pornography attempts to render idealized sexual fantasy, nothing more. It is particularly unhelpful in educating you on how ordinary people make love.

So while you may think a sex act like anal sex might be very arousing, chances are any female you have a real life sexual encounter will not. Now, as in most things in life, there are some women who are into anal sex, and if that is also your passion, you two will have a lot of fun in bed together. Most likely though she will be into anal sex about as much as you would be if she were doing it to you. Most men don’t want to go down that road because it kills the fantasy and has homosexual implications. In any event, rest assured that those couples that do have anal sex are doing it slowly with lots of artificial lubrication and probably using a condom, something you are unlikely to see in a pornographic video.

The same can be said about almost any sexual act portrayed in pornography. If you are a male and can find a woman who is genuinely into your kinks, you are likely going to be a happy man in the bedroom. Most but certainly not all women may be into a couple of your kinks. Oral sex, for example, is now fairly out of the closet mainly because the tongue is much more expressive than a penis or a vagina. It is not too hard to find a woman who is willing to satisfy you orally, particularly if you are willing to return the favor. However, most women see oral sex as foreplay (although for many it is the only way they can get off with a man, providing he knows how to do it to them right). Relatively few women see mutual oral sex as the primary way to have orgasms. Do not expect your partner to be Linda Lovelace for she is no more likely to have mastered the gag reflex than you.

The majority of women cannot have an orgasm from intercourse alone. In fact, you may not be able to even give them an orgasm. Some women never achieve orgasm, but those that do often need a lot of foreplay and need you to exercise a lot of patience. You may need to slow down when nature says go faster because they may need to also use their fingers or a vibrator to get off.

The truth is that having a great sex life with your partner takes a lot of time and energy. Your first experience with someone new is likely to be memorable, but only so-so as far as actual sex is concerned. That is because we are all different and no matter how much experience you have between the sheets, the first time two people couple they are really just getting to know each other sexually. If you are a guy and your pattern is to move from woman to woman, aside from the dangerous aspects unless you practice very safe sex, you are likely to be disappointed.

In most cases, the best sex between two people happens months or years later after they really know each other, both as sexual creatures and as people. In short, sex becomes better the more trust and understanding there is between two people. Most likely, you will find that sex is best not when you are engaging in the latest bizarre position you saw in some pornographic Internet video but when in the sex act you become one passionate creature with your partner, each feeding off the signals from each other. When you do X to your lover in a certain way that creates a passionate response tailored to their sexual buttons and she responds similarly, that’s when sex really becomes great and transcendent. You feed off her signals and she feeds off yours and, if you are both lucky, for a few special moments you will experience transcendent pleasure, although the time before and afterward will be great fun too. You should feel connected sexually, emotionally and spiritually to your partner when this happens. Your orgasm, when it happens, will be so much more than an orgasm. Rather than be kinky as you see in pornography, it should feel wholesome, godlike and spiritually uplifting. What positions you are in do not really matter, nor does it matter how kinky or pedestrian the act is when it happens. What is important is the overwhelming sense of pleasure and intimacy between two people.

Trust me, it is way better than anything you are going to see in a pornographic video. No video can capture these feelings that happen inside you during these short but exquisite moments. The high comes from the feeling of mutual connection, not because you also had an orgasm. The orgasm is the frosting on the cake. The mutual connection is the cake itself. This is the difference between making love and having sex.

My suggestion is to go into sex in a spirit of mutual playfulness. Sex can have many meanings, both for good and ill. At its best, it is warm and playful intimate adventure between two people who are just really into each other, not just as sexual creatures, but also as people and with all the dimensions that this encompasses. That is way better than anything you are going to find in some pornographic video.

(Warning: This post is rated R.)

Every couple of weeks I log into Google Analytics and check out my blog’s web statistics. A fuller report will come in 2010 but I have noticed a few trends. Visits are down by about a quarter and page views are down by about a fifth. This is not necessarily bad. In the past, my page views were artificially inflated by the less than one percent of my blog entries that discuss pornography, particularly this one and that one. Thankfully, page views for those posts are receding at last.

What is increasing? A simple eulogy I wrote and published when my mother died back in 2005 has received twice as much traffic as the year before (over 4300 page views, averaging twelve page views a day). However, my fastest growing blog entry is one in wrote in late 2005 on the Casual Encounters section of Craigslist. Interest in this topic is up 127% from a year ago and averages more than fifteen page views a day. While I have nothing more to say about pornography, in the interest of getting more traffic I could find something more to say about Craigslist.

So over the long Thanksgiving weekend, I put on my dark glasses and revisited Washington D.C. Craigslist Casual Encounters to see what was new. When I reviewed it in 2005 it was a pretty crass place. I am sad to say that four years later the situation is much worse, which I did not think was possible. If I were Craig Newmark, who founded Craiglist way back in 1995, I would be too embarrassed to host it anymore.

At least Craigslist will take the time to warn you that most of the postings in this area are fraudulent.

SCAM ALERT – scammers posing as potential romantic partners are directing CL users to age and identity verification sites, dating/adult/cam sites (where you can see their “pics” or chat with them), even sites designed to deliver malware — all in hopes of earning affiliate marketing commissions at your expense.

In response to the high volume of spam, Craigslist has taken some steps. It has made it harder to post ads, in that you have to go through the open source reCaptcha system first. (I am using it too to filter comments.) The good news is that this means that whoever posts to Craigslist is a human, rather than a robot. The bad news is that it does not appear to be deterring spammers in the least. There must be enough money to be made trying to sell sex as a “casual encounter” on Craigslist to go through the bother anyhow.

Also in response to the high volume of spammers lurking in the Casual Encounters weeds, Craigslist has provided tools to “vote a poster off the island”. If enough people say that an ad is spam, it is marked as spam and shortly prohibited from display. Craigslist then sends the poster an email, which apparently contains a convenient link which if you click on it lets you repost the message. The result is that it appears that Craigslist Casual Encounters is now largely a flame war between people pissed off by the spam and the spammers.

What is getting lost? Well, casual sex connections on the site, which were probably largely an illusion anyhow. However, there a number of ads that appear to my untrained eye to be wholly legitimate. At least I assume that is true of the many ads posted by “BBWs” (Big Beautiful Women, or judging from their pictures when they post them, morbidly obese women) looking for a good time. Whatever, they are likely to be quickly voted off the island as well. Maybe the BBWers are in reality spammers. Or maybe the Craigslist men just hate fat women. The result appears to be a toxic mess of spam and vindictive people willing to flag everything.

Perhaps you read about the murder that happened in Boston in May to a woman who advertised in Craigslist Erotic Services. Since then Craigslist has tightened up its Erotic Services board, apparently charging anyone a fee to post, and prohibiting ads that suggest you will receive actual sex. The result of this policy seems to be to move the whores into the Casual Encounters area instead. As was true in 2005, there appear to be plenty of “women” whoring over there. Certain words though must be getting flagged because these “women” have developed a whole new vocabulary for asking for money. Mostly they want “roses”. Men are not beyond asking for “roses” either, particularly when they are advertising for their own gender. The typical ad is like this one:

I could use your help with bills. If you could use a good bj, let’s help each other. 100 roses for bj. I can host. Must be clean/ddf.

There are even people out there selling manufactured group sex. If I were interested in group sex, I suspect I would find a local swingers group where, presumably, you can swing safely and with people who are not psychos. I sure would not expect to pay for the privilege, particularly when multi-partner sex with complete strangers can kill you. Moreover, who is to know if you go to some stranger’s apartment you will not end up robbed or worse?

hot gangbang 2nite only!!!! 46DDD, big nipples, wet pussy. horny. TIGHT ASS HOLE 5’8 black I CAN HOST TONIGHT ONLY. $

Even if you can find a legitimate poster for a gangbang, do they want you? No, apparently they are into fantasy, which means you must be very well endowed, not Mr. Six Incher. With our African American president, black must be the new “in” color. Well-endowed black men seem to be in great demand, particularly for group sex.

Seeking 4 to 5 more Black males to join our GB grp.. Requirements is as follows.. Must be clean and dd free. Able to perform in a grp setting. 8′ or better. Must be in shape. Must not be camera shy.

8 feet or better? Good luck with that. Okay, well, Craigslist posters are not exactly known for their spelling skills and can’t seem to be bothered to reread the posts before the make them.

In short, if you want to waste your time, want to catch some sort of deadly social disease, want to get robbed, are into hugely obese but possibly horny women, want to have an encounter with a woman who turns out to be a transvestite or love flagging spammers then Craigslist Casual Encounters is your perfect destination.

To the many horny men out there, I am sorry, but if you want to get laid, it’s time to start frequenting bars and clubs again. At least you can see what you are getting in a bar. Good news: most are non-smoking these days, so it’s easier to discern the good looking women from the not so. I cannot see how you can possibly find what you are looking for on Craigslist.

Back in 2005, I said that surfing Craigslist Casual Encounters was like rubbernecking past an awful accident. In 2009, I can say it does not even have the appeal of rubbernecking. It is the definition of a complete waste of time.

Four years ago, I wrote about the folly of teaching substandard or abstinence-only sex education. Now we have proof, or at least a darn convincing clinical study.

Teenagers who pledge to remain virgins until marriage are just as likely to have premarital sex as those who do not promise abstinence and are significantly less likely to use condoms and other forms of birth control when they do, according to a study released today.

The new analysis of data from a large federal survey found that more than half of youths became sexually active before marriage regardless of whether they had taken a “virginity pledge,” but that the percentage who took precautions against pregnancy or sexually transmitted diseases was 10 points lower for pledgers than for non-pledgers.

For most teenagers taking a pledge to remain a virgin until marriage is an exercise in satisfying their parents’ anxieties rather than a sincere conviction. It is hard to know just how sincere teenagers were when they took the pledge. In many cases, they make pledges like this long before they have the maturity to do so. Whether sincere or not, the lure of Mother Nature seems to trump Mom and Dad’s counsel. All that abstinence sex education, sermons in church and lectures from Mom and Dad seem to have no effect on whether and when you decide to have premarital sex. The study started tracking teenagers who took the pledge in 1995. Curiously:

By 2001, Rosenbaum found, 82 percent of those who had taken a pledge had retracted their promises …

Apparently, if you take the virginity pledge and become sexually active, you are also more reticent to take precautions. Did taking the pledge at least delay the onset of sexual activity? Apparently not:

… and there was no significant difference in the proportion of students in both groups who had engaged in any type of sexual activity, including giving or receiving oral sex, vaginal intercourse, the age at which they first had sex, or their number of sexual partners. More than half of both groups had engaged in various types of sexual activity, had an average of about three sexual partners and had had sex for the first time by age 21 even if they were unmarried.

So there was no benefit for taking an abstinence pledge except falsely assuaging Mom and Dad’s anxieties. However, by taking the abstinence pledge when your child does decide to have sex they are more likely to get pregnant or pick up a disease. They could even pick up AIDS, which is currently incurable and will eventually kill them. This could be the price you and your child pay for trying to assuage your anxieties about premarital sex.

How about trying something different? How about insisting that your children get a comprehensive sexual education rather than one that leaves them woefully ignorant on vital information they need to know? If you are pro-abstinence, it is perfectly correct to point out that, unless your child is raped, it is the only way to guarantee they will not become a parent or pick up a social disease. Of course, abstaining until marriage is no guarantee that they will never pick up a social disease. They may marry a philanderer for a spouse. I know you think your wonderful son or daughter would never do this, but just in case they do, wouldn’t you want your son or daughter to at least be aware of what might await them?

Ignorance is always stupid. To some extent, when it comes to sex education the inclination toward ignorance is understandable, since it is typically an uncomfortable topic for both parent and child. Yet, this inclination must be resisted. If you love your son or daughter you have to make sure they have a comprehensive sex education and that they are prepared to handle the emotional and physical consequences of their choice. For it will be their choice. Even if they do “just say no”, this does not really help them resolve the difficult transition from sexually inactive child to sexually active adult. You can preach as much virtue as you want, but statistically by the time your son or daughter is 21 they will have had on average three sexual partners. Since people are marrying at later ages, they are almost certain to have premarital sex. It is better to get them prepared for that reality.

You can do it by insisting that your school system provide complete and unbiased sex education and by making sure your child takes the course. Abstinence can certainly be mentioned, but it needs to point out that for most teenagers it will be ineffective. Mother Nature fills them with hormones and sexual curiosity. The need to be sexually active is not unlike a hatchling needing to learn how to fly. It is innate and entirely natural. Since most of our precious children are going to be sexually active before marriage, if you really love your children, you must arm them with the information needed to succeed in this transition.

If your school district, like most of them, gives sex education short shrift, there are alternatives. You likely are not a Unitarian Universalist, but you can inquire with a local church to find out when their program, Our Whole Lives, will next be taught. It is one of the few programs out there that is unbiased and covers not only the physical aspects of sexuality but the emotional aspects too. Most UU churches do not require you or your child become a member of the church to take the course.

There is also a lot of online information, with the most reputable information on the Planned Parenthood or the SIECUS web sites. In my humble opinion, these are a poor substitute for classroom teaching but it is better than nothing. If your children are not too squeamish, they probably would be helped hearing your experiences, how you dealt with them and how you felt about each sexual relationship.

Your child must absolutely know how to protect themselves from premature parenthood and social diseases. You must step up to the plate. You could bring home a sample of over the counter birth control products. You can show your son or daughter what a condom looks like and feels like and how it is used, using your fingers as an example.

If you have an excellent relationship with your child, they may even feel free enough to come to you when they feel close to being sexually active. If you have a daughter, you can take her to a gynecologist. Planned Parenthood clinics are in most communities of a certain size. You could show them where the local clinic is and make sure they know that they can get birth control products and STD information confidentially, cheaply and safely.

You may be aghast at some of my suggestions. Let me assure you though that after the initial shock wears off, your child will have a higher opinion of you. Many parents, including mine, skipped most of these steps. I like many ignorant young adults made many preventable mistakes in my journey toward being a sexually active adult. Providing comprehensive tools and information for your children to make the choices they will have to make is a sign of deep love. Your children deserve nothing less.

(Warning: This blog entry is rated R.)

We are told that if something is too good to be true, it is. There is no such thing as a calorie free brownie. We wanted to believe we could eat potato chips made with Olestra and never get fat. Even if the fat passes through you, you still absorb the carbohydrate calories. Moreover, this manufactured non-absorbent fat gives many people abdominal cramping and loose stools.

We court our spouses anticipating that they are our perfect mental, emotional and sexual match. Typically we do not discover until sometime after we are married that they have as many faults and foibles as we do. We men want to have sex on demand with them, but quickly learn that except for a freakish few of them and certainly no one you would happen to marry (although during courtship you may be misled), women don’t work that way. Moreover, women have this inconvenient time of the month when they are sexually out of commission. Should our wives or girlfriends turn into sexual ice cubes, we must weigh the potential consequences on being non-monogamous like sexually transmitted diseases and frying pans flying at us from across the kitchen. Use a condom and sex is suddenly 30% as pleasurable as it could be. Regardless of the pitch, we have learned through bitter experience that somewhere in the fine print is a gotcha. If we knew about it going in, we might have avoided the pleasurable activity altogether.

Not any more, I am happy to say, at least if you are a man. There is definitely at least one activity in life where you can truly have your cake and eat it too. This is absolutely true if I am to believe this article and since I found it on Yahoo News then it must be true. This activity that is both exquisitely fun and pleasurable. The more you do it, the healthier you are likely to be. It is not only completely harmless but also is good for your health. One small side effect is that it does have a tendency to be a bit messy. We are talking about that often lifetime habit of men married and single which can be as addictive as cocaine and just as fun: masturbation.

Frequent masturbation may help men cut their risk of contracting prostate cancer, Australian researchers have found. It is believed that carcinogens may build up in the prostate if men do not ejaculate regularly, BBC News reported on Wednesday. The researchers surveyed more than 1,000 men who had developed prostate cancer, and 1,250 men who had not. They found that men who had ejaculated the most between the ages of 20 and 50 were the least likely to get cancer. Men who ejaculated more than five times each week were a third less likely to develop prostate cancer.

This is exciting news for both men and pimply faced boys across the world. No longer do you need to feel that your secret vice is sinful. Now it is healthy. When I was growing up, if you could muster the courage, you would confess your masturbation habit to your local parish priest. I never did, of course, but I strongly suspect saying three Hail Marys would not absolve me of my sin. I am confident that my priest would have prayed to Jesus so that I would avoid the near occurrence of this dreadful sin. Perhaps times have changed in the last forty years. However, I also know that there are few things that the Catholic Church is more obsessed over that the sanctity of life. We are supposed to prolong our lives as much as humanly possible. Since prostate cancer is almost universal in men that reach a certain age, we now have a safe way to significantly lower our risks and it is completely drug free! Yes, it is time to get out the Penthouse, head to the bathroom five or more times a week and beat off. By doing so, we cut our risk of prostate cancer by up to a third.

Our wives might prefer that we make love to them five or more times a week rather than masturbate. That suits me fine, but I confess at age 51 I am not entirely sure I could partake in such an intimately pleasurable act five or more times a week for weeks on end. Actually, I am not sure even that with lots of glossy Playboys, Penthouses and even saucy Penthouse Forum Variations whether I could feel quite that sexual over the course of the week. Yet it sounds like I should try this therapy. If my wife is not in the mood, well, excuse me dear while I head to the bathroom or shut the bedroom door while I get off. Doctor’s orders.

I have no idea how much it costs to treat prostate cancer, but I bet it is expensive and scary as hell. I know prostate cancer is a very slow growing cancer. I know we all have to die of something. I also know one of the frequent side effects of removal of the prostate is impotence, although frequent loss of urinary control that also occurs does not sound appealing either. So why take the chance? Better to find some ready pornography and maybe prevent this cancer from occurring altogether.

There may even be some taxable benefits. If the dirty magazines weren’t cutting it, maybe my doctor would prescribe the Real Doll™. According to their web site, I can select from ten bodies, my choice of eye color and even select my doll’s preferred pubic hair style. Moreover, I can guarantee you that I never knew a woman in the biblical sense who came anywhere close to being attractive as these dolls. If I get sick of the same face, well apparently you can order extra faces with your Real Doll™. The standard female is only $6,499 plus shipping and handling, but at least it would be tax deductible. It has to be less costly than prostate surgery.

Somehow, I suspect the Catholic Church would find something sinful in my suggestions. By blogging about this I am probably sinning because I am inspiring lust. Perhaps if I saved my lust for marriage rather than masturbated during my teenage years like every other boy with hands was doing it would have made my wife that much hornier for my body. Consequently, we could procreate more children and bring more souls to God. Even my priest might have to concede the validity of this latest medical research.

No matter. While I was raised a Catholic, that was then. Now I am a free agent spiritually. I am generally cautious by nature but if my doctor tells me that masturbation is safe and news reports like this one tell me it is not only safe, but healthy, I’m in.

Now excuse me, I need a little privacy.