Occam’s Razor

Taking pleasure in hand

(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.

April 23rd, 2008 at 08:49pm Posted by Mark | Sociology | no comments

What’s a horny politician to do?

Ack! Another politician is caught with his pants down! Just what we needed: a little jolt of scandalous cappuccino to wake us up. After all, the presidential campaign has gotten a bit boring of late. Even political junkies like me are beginning to nod off. What we needed was a distraction. Fortunately, New York Governor Elliot Spitzer provided just what we needed. We learned recently that on Valentines Day of all days he hoofed it down to the Mayflower Hotel in Washington D.C. and had an extremely expensive sexual experience with a very high priced 25-year-old prostitute with the doubtlessly assumed name of Kristen.

Sexual tourists of the nation’s capital will now have to add room 871 of the Mayflower Hotel to their list of destinations. It is about equidistant anyhow from the Tidal Basin (where stripper Fanne Fox and Arkansas Congressman Wilbur Mills were found drinking and driving in 1974) and the Capitol steps (where Rita Jenrette and Congressman husband reputedly made whoopee back in the 1980s). The Mayflower Hotel is also not that far from the Vista Hotel, where back in 1990 former D.C. Mayor Marion Barry, married at the time, was famously caught smoking crack cocaine while his “long time female friend” observed. Doubtless, if D.C. hotel rooms could talk, they would be deafening.

I had no inkling that Elliot Spitzer was dealing with a few personal demons. However, I am not surprised. Someone as popular and successful as Spitzer probably deserved a comeuppance of some sort. This man after all was such a phenomenal Attorney General of New York State that to many Americans he was a household name. Unlike some recent U.S. Attorney Generals, he was obsessed with ensuring that the law was vigorously enforced, especially against the powerful. He took on price fixers, securities firms, insurance companies, the record companies and even police corruption in the town of Watkill in upstate New York. If he appeared on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, he need not worry about the thunderous applause, just a chorus of boos. No wonder he was elected governor with almost 70% of the vote.

His record as governor thus far has been a disappointment. With these scandalous revelations, it is an open question whether he will remain in office. Still, Bill Clinton had a rocky start as president too. He eventually won a second term. In spite of his own moral failings, he retired with near record high approval ratings. Perhaps Spitzer’s hesitancy to leave office is that he hopes that some of Bill’s luck will rub off on him. Republicans in Albany who want to impeach him might want to review the political implications of Bill Clinton’s impeachment first. Most Americans feel that moral failings while in office that are not illegal are politically excusable. Thus far, Spitzer has not been charged with any crime.

Why did Spitzer do it? I cannot read his mind but as a man a few years older than he is, I think that I have a good idea. I believe that he did it because like many married men he was not quite satisfied with what he was getting at home. Obviously, I have no idea what his sex life is like. His wife is quite attractive. I think in Spitzer’s mind, once you have made the dubious decision to step out on your wife, having sex with a prostitute seemed the lesser of many evils.

Ironically, if Spitzer were a Shi’ite Muslim in Iraq, he could come to an agreement with a local woman to be his wife for a day, get his rocks off and the clerics would bless it. Alas, he lives in America where unless you are polyamorous or have an open marriage, such options are closed to married people. Having sex with a prostitute can have some advantages. First, you cannot be accused of having an emotional affair. Some women will overlook a sexual affair but will string you up by your heels for having an emotional one. If, like Elliot Spitzer, you spend $4300 for an encounter with a down payment on a second one, you can be accused of being a cheater and wasting a lot of money, but you can at least escape the emotional affair rap.

The sad reality is that if you are a horny married politician your options are very limited. You could come on to that buxom secretary or filing clerk but such dalliances usually turn into steamy emotional affairs that go toxic and then public. That will not do for an ambitious politician, particularly one that looked like presidential material in 2012 or 2016. Besides, you have an image to maintain in the workplace so showing this side of yourself is very risky. You can have an affair with your right hand but that feels like second-class sex. A high-class hooker may cost a ton of money, but they tend to be discrete. That is in part how they command such extraordinary fees.

I hope Elliot Spitzer at least had a trusted partner in crime. I hope he was not dialing for escort services on his cell phone or finding them on Craigslist. I hope he had a way of funneling the money through a third party. Even so, there are risks in these contractual affairs and for a change, he got stung.

I will probably draw the wrath of wives everywhere (and many husbands too) by wishing New Yorkers would cut him a little slack. I felt sorry for Hillary Clinton when her husband’s tawdry oral affair with Monica Lewinski made the light of day a decade ago. At the same time, I did not feel that it diminished Clinton’s competency as president. Like most Americans, I saw his impeachment as a manufactured hullabaloo. If Spitzer ends his political career over this scandal, New Yorkers and Americans will probably be the poorer. His hypocrisy is evident, but we are all hypocrites, just generally in different matters and in different degrees. All of us make mistakes. I think this is a forgivable political mistake. His wife will have to figure out whether it is a forgivable marital mistake.

As I once outlined, there are many reasons for infidelity. This transgression has the hallmark of being one of the more forgivable transgressions. It appears that Spitzer had powerful sexual needs that his wife would either not accommodate or he was too embarrassed to express. I remain skeptical that either sex is naturally inclined toward monogamy. Wives who expect monogamy from their husbands had best recognize that they are fighting Mother Nature. They can reduce the odds by exceeding expectations in the bedroom. If you are a once a week type and he is a once a day type, you might want to find a way to be a twice a week type. If you refuse to do X, Y and Z because you think they are kinky you might want to do your best to do X, Y and Z at least occasionally. Otherwise, particularly if he has a very high sex drive, he may go find X, Y and Z somewhere else. Sexual kinks can have this sort of power and if press reports are correct Spitzer had a few.

As for politicians and sex, while it seems that they go together like bread and butter, I am willing to bet they are no more inclined toward infidelity than the rest of us. Sexual sins seem to be non-discriminatory. If infidelity made people deathly ill, you could not get a room in a hospital due to the shortage of hospital beds. Men like Spitzer who avail themselves of a call girl are bucking the odds. The truth is that while prominent men caught with their pants down make the papers regularly, for a man to cheat, he generally needs a woman. Since most men avoid prostitutes, roughly as many women are having lapsed periods of virtue as men.

Spitzer deserves a political slap on the wrist, perhaps a censure by the State Assembly, and then, like with the Larry Craig scandal, everyone should move on. This is a matter between the Mr. and Mrs. Spitzer. Politicians who actually work for the benefit of the people they serve are rare enough creatures. Spitzer was one of these public servants. There is no point in making them an endangered species for these truly minor kafuffles.

March 11th, 2008 at 08:07pm Posted by Mark | Politics 2008, Sociology | 2 comments

You Porn: A Traveler’s New Best Friend?

A couple weeks back I read somewhere, probably on Craiglist, about a web site called youporn.com. Hmm, YouTube, YouPorn. I think I had a good idea what sort of content would be found on this site. Being of prurient mind, well over 18 as well as a blogger who is always looking for something novel to write about, I checked out the site.

As I expected, it was a site modeled somewhat after YouTube.com. Here you can upload your personal pornographic videos to share with others not offended by sexually explicit content. Moreover, just like on YouTube, you can rate the various videos. This may give you an idea of what’s hot and what’s not. Naturally, before you can get into this digital red light zone you first have to assert that you are at least 18 years old. This takes only a single mouse click.

The folks at YouTube go out of their way to ensure there is no sexually explicit content on its web site. However, on YouPorn, you expect the graphic and the lurid. Instead of YouTube’s white backgrounds, you get a dark black background. You feel like donning a raincoat when you enter the site. On its main screen, you can see what was recently uploaded, with the highest rated videos of the day appearing first. By placing your mouse over one of the preview images, you can see a number of snapshots from the video. You have to click on the image to bring up a page with the video on it. Once there you then click on the larger embedded image to start the movie. As best I can tell, there are no gay movies to be found on youporn.com. However, lesbian flicks, at least those where buffed up women pretend to be turned on by other women, are plentiful.

The video quality is often not that great. Like YouTube, it appears that uploaded videos are in a Flash video format. If you go to YouTube regularly, you know what that means: the videos load relatively quickly, but lack a little something in resolution. Some of the videos are so fuzzy and grainy that you will need to substitute imagination for explicitness. However, at least they load quickly and stream. (Stream means you do not have to wait for the whole thing to download before you can start watching it.)

Nor as best I can tell, are most of these videos actually amateur videos. Most of them appear to be blatant rip-offs of vignettes from “professional” or semiprofessional pornographic web sites. The videos appear primarily oriented toward horny men, although I imagine there are many women who also like their video sex raw. In short, expect more of what you would see elsewhere on the web or on Usenet in the alt.binaries.erotica newsgroups, just with less resolution.

There is another and perhaps crucial difference between YouPorn and most other adult oriented web sites. On YouPorn, you do not have to buy a pass in order to view its content. You do not even get annoying pop up ads. You do get advertising, of course, but the ads appear to the right of the embedded videos. The ads are what you would expect: generally adult sex personals and girls with web cams, all of whom presumably will want to start their meter running when you pay them a visit.

In short, YouPorn is free porn for the masses. The video quality may lack something. Given the hordes of horny Internet users out there, its servers may sometimes slow down. But it appears that YouPorn will always be there for you. It is your new trusty if somewhat dirty digital friend, always ready to transport you into a much hotter and more perverse world than you likely encounter in real life. But then, when has pornography ever modeled real life?

I am currently in a hotel in Tallahassee, Florida. It, like most hotels these days, comes complete with high-speed Internet service. I take this for granted now but until I learned about YouPorn, I had no idea exactly what this meant for the frequent traveler. It is now possible to have safe sex on the road, as long as you lug your laptop and do not mind having sex with yourself or your trusty battery powered device. I hope that though you will try to muffle your orgasmic screams rather than rouse the curiosity of your hotel neighbors.

It used to be that Leisure Suit Larrys would congregate in front of the hotel bar hoping to score there, but usually without much success. Those with deeper pockets could call an on-call massage service and hope they provided more than a massage. Given how hard it is for travelers to find sex on the road, and how dangerous it would be if it were found, YouPorn is providing a valuable service to the traveling public. You get much better, or at least much more explicit porn on YouPorn than you can get from the soft-core stuff on your hotel’s private TV channel. Nor will you acquire a social disease. Except for any friction generated by your fingers, hand or vibrator, your sex will be virtual rather than real. Perhaps you will have a new sin to whisper to your priest at your next confession, but otherwise there seems to be no downside.

Therefore, I predict a decline in hotel bars. Massage parlors and escort services may also be taking a financial hit. For better or worse, YouPorn will be changing the dynamics of both online pornography and local sex businesses. It is far from pornographic perfection. Yet it is the 80% pornographic solution that travelers can turn to in need. It is also a possible solution for the many millions of sexually frustrated people out there who would like to have sex but for whatever reason cannot acquire it.

I once wrote a very popular entry wherein I compared ex porn star Sharon Mitchell with sainthood, because of her tireless work within the adult industry to ensure that porn stars do not transmit STDs. YouPorn is also providing a public health service, by giving those who need it a safe outlet for their sexual urges. Sometimes truth is stranger than fiction.

October 17th, 2007 at 08:17pm Posted by Mark | Sociology, Travel | 4 comments

My Widened Stance

It is not often that I am bothered by the downfall of a Republican politician. Yet I am troubled by the on again, off again (currently on again) resignation of Republican Senator Larry Craig of Idaho. Craig pled guilty to a disorderly conduct charge that occurred in a men’s room at the Minneapolis airport on June 11th. Allegedly, he was making signals to an occupant of an adjacent stall that he was interested in engaging in homosexual conduct. For tapping his feet, moving his feet partly into an adjacent stall (the “widened stance”) and allegedly peaking into a neighboring stall, he pled guilty to a misdemeanor. (Craig is now trying to retract his plea.) For this minor transgression, he was arm-twisted by his fellow Republicans and asked to resign from the Senate.

If Craig is a closeted homosexual, of course he is also a hypocrite. He has plenty of company on Capitol Hill. It is virtually impossible not to be a hypocrite and be a politician. Even the most ideological Republican though is not stupid. They know murkiness exists in all human beings. The hastiness by which the Senate Republican leadership are hustling Craig out of the Senate is far more unseemly than any alleged conduct that Craig may have conducted in Minneapolis. Fairness dictates waiting for an impartial review of the facts at a Senate ethics committee hearing. Yet the Senate Republican leadership could not wait. The Republican brand may be a fading brand, but it is a brand nonetheless. Homophobia remains one of its key values, subsumed under their alleged commitment to “family values”. Such a hasty action merely reinforces the opinion of most Americans that Republicans have no sense of fair play.

I do know one thing from fifty years of living. Humans are complex and multifaceted creatures on all levels, including sexually. Kinsey documented half a century ago that virtually none of us are exclusively heterosexual or homosexual. We may have strong preferences in either direction. Many of us may choose not to act on these pulls but that does not mean they are wholly absent. Yet sexual preference is just one tiny aspect of our sexuality. Some of us have strong sex drives. Others have non-existent sex drives. Some of us are not attracted to any gender; we are effectively asexual. Some of us are dominant, others are submissive, and many of us like to switch roles. Some prefer anal sex and others do not. Some take erotic pleasure wearing diapers or dressing as the opposite sex. Some older men prefer younger women. Some older women prefer younger men. Some of us will probably always be attracted to illegal expressions of sexuality like pedophilia.

We are all sexually multihued. If our sexuality were a painting, most of us would have strange patterns consisting of many overlapping and mixed colors. Larry Craig’s failing was apparently for being exposed for not having a black and white canvas. If his alleged behavior actually describes his own sexual preferences, he likely finds some attraction to his own gender. On the Kinsey scale, he is utterly ordinary.

You would be very unusual if you never had even one incident where you did not find someone of your gender attractive. I know I have. Having an occasional tug does not mean I feel compelled to act on it. When it happens I acknowledge it and go on with life. Larry Craig may be wholly accurate when he says that he is not a gay. Like most of us, he is probably bisexual. We are all sexually expressive creatures. Most of us are content to dine at our favorite restaurants. Eating at a different restaurant on occasion does not necessarily make us food deviants. Neither does an occasional incident where we partner with someone of our non-preferred gender. Given the prevalence of infidelity in American, occasionally mating with someone other than our own spouse is more normal than not too. The issue is not the inclination, which is wholly natural, but dealing with the angst, guilt and dysfunction that results when our natural impulses move us in one direction but society requires us to choose a different direction.

So Larry Craig is probably just another multifaceted sexually complicated person. In other words, he is a lot like you and I. Please raise your hand if you have been completely faithful to your spouse, never even had a stray fantasy about another person during your marriage, are completely content with sexual intercourse only in the missionary position and, since marriage at least, have never masturbated. Also raise your hand if you never went beyond chaste kissing during your dating years. I am sure there are some of you out there and that is fine. It is either your preference or supposed societal norms overrode these impulses. However, you represent just a tiny portion of the public. Your values are fine for you but are not in the least bit mainstream. I hate to tell you this but if you are an ordinary human being you are likely a lot more like Larry Craig than not.

It is hard to put myself inside Larry Craig’s brain. However, I am completely certain that wherever it is at, it is consistent with the person he is as he has evolved. Personally, a restroom would be the last place I would go to solicit for sex, but I am not inclined to find someone of my own gender with whom to have sex. If I were a prominent person like Larry Craig and driven by such demons I would look for safer forms of behavior. (I doubt he is the only senator with such inclinations.) Rather than look for it in a Minneapolis men’s room, perhaps I would solicit it on Craigslist. Maybe part of Craig’s sexuality is to be turned on by anonymous sex. If so, he has plenty of company.

I do not want to be solicited for sex by men in men’s rooms or anywhere else. In restrooms, I simply want to do my business and leave. When I am solicited by my own gender, which does not happen very often, I simply say, “No thanks.” It should not be unlawful for one person to tell another person you want to get it on with them. It is certainly impolite in most contexts, but it should not be unlawful. I do care about being mugged or sexually abused in a men’s room. I hope that we prosecute these lawbreakers. I do think there is an expectation of privacy in a men’s room stall but it would astonish me if this were codified into law. If Craig, as alleged, actually was peeking through the cracks of men’s room stalls then he should be held to account. I would note though that two men urinating at adjacent stalls, even if one of the men checks out the other guy’s package, is not a crime. Having to pay a four-figure fine for such an “offense” seems excessive. It should not amount to more than a parking ticket and should never go to court.

The Craig incident simply illustrates to me that many of us cannot yet accept people for being the complex sexual creatures that we all are. Private conduct between two consenting adults is simply none of our business. I wish that Senator Craig had more spine. Bullies usually remain bullies until someone stands up to them. Senator Craig could do people everywhere a favor by standing up for himself. He should draw a clear distinction about official duties vs. private conduct. The voters can throw him out if they find his personal conduct offensive. His fellow senators should not.

Someone needs to tell the people who run our nanny state when they are out of bounds. As a final act of leadership and courage, Senator Craig could forever change the political dynamics. He could do it by boldly asserting his right to be judged solely based on his job as senator. He did not deserve this shabby treatment.

September 7th, 2007 at 11:28am Posted by Mark | Sociology | one comment

The Illusion of a FWB

So, do you have a FWB? If you are like me (i.e. married), you may not know what a FWB is. I had seen the acronym around though. A simple Wikipedia Search quickly satisfied my curiosity.

A FWB is a “Friend with Benefits”. He or she is a person of the gender you are attracted to whom, in addition to being a “friend” (a rather amorphous term) also puts out for you. I have to admit, at first blush having my own FWB sounded great to this old married dude. Providing my wife went along with it (”It’s just sex dear, it’s not like I am in love with her. We are just good friends.”), it could be very convenient. If my wife is having another one of her interminable migraines and I am feeling a bit randy, I could just call up Judy, or Ashley or Kim, and, good friends that they are, would say, “Sure come on over for a quick roll in the hay.” Afterwards (since I do not smoke) we could play cards or talk about Lindsay Lohan’s latest adventures in rehab. Oh, by the way, shall we pencil in going to the art show a week from Saturday?

I suspect the number of married people with FWBs is tiny. It seems to be the single folks out there, usually recovering from the complications of a failed relationship that are drawn to finding a FWB. After all, a FWB relationship has many of the positive sides of a relationship without any of its downsides, like the emotional wreckage. Just as having sex with a condom (hopefully) protects you from sexually transmitted diseases, having sex with a friend protects you from all those nasty relationship issues. At least that is how the FWB theory goes. It is not like having sex with a bunch of strangers at an orgy. You are having sex with your friend, and since he or she is your friend, well, they would not lie to you about anything like having herpes or AIDS would they? In addition, since they are your friend, and they care for you, well, they will be circumspect and avoid becoming intertwined into a deeper emotional relationship with you.

Meanwhile, while you recover from your latest failed relationship, you are not left high and dry. There is no need to resort to your vibrator, or your right hand or the love doll in the closet to respond to Mother Nature’s urgings. While your emotional wounds heal, you can get the sex you need with your FWB. Since you are just friends, when you do not need him or her anymore and find that next special someone then everything is cool. Their feelings will not be hurt when you drop them as your sexual partner. Moreover, in the event your next relationship implodes, your FWB will be there. Well, maybe.

That, as best I can decipher it, is the lure and logic of a FWB. A casual search of Washington Craiglist personals today shows that women in particularly are looking for FWBs. (Men often say they want a FWB, but from their postings it appears they just want a woman who will act like their whore.) Oddly enough though, they do not have one already, so they have to advertise for one of one. Just some guy or gal to “chill” with. This seems to involve have a few beers in a sports bar, maybe seeing a movie together and then going back to your pad for some harmless conjugal sex.

Even though I am married, one of the reasons a FWB appeals to me is because I think it would be great to have someone into casual sex who liked me as a person and who (here’s the amazing part) is not struggling with their own personal issues. I do not know about you but here I am, age 50, and I struggle with personal issues every day. So does my wife. So does every person I know beyond a surface level, i.e. my friends. We are all embroiled in a certain amount of toxic crap. But not my FWB. She would be special. She would have her head together. That is why, if I need a FWB, I expect that she will be a psychologist or social worker. In my mind, only psychologists and social workers truly have their stuff together. So I am thinking if I need a FWB I will go around town and leave my card at the office of each female social worker and psychologist in my area between, say, age 40 and 50. Do you want a FWB? Call Mark at 703-555-1212. Let’s meet for drinks at the local sports bar. According to my wife, I give great back scratches. Also, I like blogging, classical music and politics. We can have great sex when we both feel like it and no commitment! And we can keep meeting at a sports bar occasionally just to chat. That should intrigue them!

It is just that the more I think about it the more I suspect that psychologists and social workers are in some crucial aspect of their lives also messed up. In fact, the only human beings who (allegedly) were not messed up were messengers from God. Unfortunately, both Jesus and Mohammad are long dead. Moreover, I seem to be attracted to women. Finding my FWB is going to be tough.

I have not had much casual sex. It is probably just me, but I am not very successful divorcing sex from having human feelings for the person I am making love to. The couple of times I tried casual sex left me feeling empty and a bit dehumanized. For me it was like drinking soda that had gone flat. I was left to conclude that those people who tried casual sex had not gotten the real thing: sex within a caring relationship, which if you can get it is amazing. However, if you are having sex with your friend, isn’t that a caring relationship? Well, maybe. When I think of myself having sex with some of my female friends what I suspect would happen is: (a) even if I were single, there is no way I could convince them to have sex with me in the first place; (b) if we did have sex then our relationship would change fundamentally, and probably not for the better; (c) it would be significantly inferior compared with having sex with someone I love; and (d) both of us would likely end up more screwed up than we were before we became FWBs.

If you are in a FWB relationship feel free to leave me a comment telling me that I am all wet. I would particularly like to hear, not about the FWB you coupled with last week, but the one that you coupled with five years ago. Are you still friends? Or has your friendship been reduced to sending Christmas cards once a year? Do you still feel the same about your friend as you did before you made love with him or her? Overall, was your FWB relationship healthy or hurtful?

I will leap to a conclusion and suggest that for the vast majority of you the answers will be no, no and yes. And I will also bet that for about 10% of you, one of your “friends” left a calling card that, if it can be cured, required a trip to a doctor or health clinic. If they did not, I will bet that another 20% of you are or have worked through this issue with a therapist, or wish you had the money to do so.

I believe that sex and the relationship between two people cannot be divorced, as much as at times we might want to be. If they were, perhaps we could better deal with the wacky stuff life throws at us. We might be able to fool ourselves for a while, just as we can pretend that there are no dusty bunnies in our house even though we have not dusted in a year. I suspect if you have a FWB then you have merely sold yourself on its illusion, rather than acknowledge its less than perfect reality.

Perhaps rather than posting that ad on Craigslist for your FWB, maybe you should be finding a therapist instead and discover why you want a FWB in the first place.

July 27th, 2007 at 05:07pm Posted by Mark | Sociology | one comment

Idling our Male Engines

(Warning: adult content. Reader discretion is advised, whatever that means.)

When you read the Washington Post Style section, you learn to take what you read with a grain of salt. If I am to take the article Cupid’s Broken Arrow by Laura Sessions Stepp in Sunday’s Washington Post at face value, male impotence is an emerging problem on college campuses. I must say the article certainly got my attention, as well as the attention of I am sure every male Washington Post reader out there. It is almost enough to have us rush to our doctors for an emergency prescription of Viagra. After all, if young men cannot get their wood up, what does that mean to us middle age guys at age 49? Is it time to have a penile implant installed?

Okay, on closer examination the article discusses just a few brave men who are having this problem on campus. In other words, it is anecdotal, not a based on any scientific study. This is probably just as well. Still, I remember being nineteen and on a college campus. My hormone levels could not have been any higher. Even ugly women were looking good. Any available woman would have done. There were of course a few problems. I was shy. In addition, the women were not putting out. That is not to say that no women were putting out. However, those that were did not seem to want to have anything to do with me. I was not enough of an alpha male for their tastes. I still had pimples and even worse, braces. If I had a problem in that department at that tender age, it would have been premature ejaculation.

That was then. While I had hoped the women of my generation were all sexually liberated, the reality was quite different on my campus. The women I wanted in the worst way were of course the most inaccessible. There were two cute single and blondish foxes across the street from me who were getting education degrees. They went to their Methodists church on Sundays and stayed to teach Sunday school. Therefore, it was up to my roommate Howard to show me a good time. This meant taking me into Orlando to a placed called “The Booby Trap”. There attractive but nonetheless dispassionate topless dancers performed lap dances and rubbed their breasts on my chests while I tried to drink the world’s most watered down wine spritzers.

If I am to take Ms. Stepp at her word though, most women on campus today are sexually aggressive. They do not need a Sadie Hawkins Dance in order to take the initiative with a man. If they like you, they are not afraid to show it. If they want to make love to you, they will be doing the unbuttoning. This is apparently a problem for many college men these days. Maybe their resulting impotence comes from all those lectures in high school about the necessity of abstinence before marriage. On the other hand, maybe they are just not that into the women who are pursing them, but have not learned how to say no. For whatever reason, the erotic connection fails them and suddenly they are half the man they thought they were.

The article speculates that men may need to be the pursuers in order for the mind-body connection to manifest itself in an erection. For sex to work, it may be necessary for the woman to play hard to get. For men, the real turn on may not be sliding into that lubricated home plate, but running the bases. It may be that for men to function below the belt, sex has to be hard to get.

Now if you had told me that at age nineteen, I would have been on the floor laughing. However, as I am middle aged now, I am of a more accommodating frame of mind. Because one of the sad passages during middle age for most men are bouts of impotence. Few of us get through middle age without at least one experience with it. Billions have been made selling us erectile dysfunction drugs so that we can still perform with the stamina we felt in our pimply faced youth. (In truth though, just the idea of Bob Dole getting it on at his age leaves us feeling a bit nauseous. So we are thinking maybe at age eighty permanent impotence is a blessing, rather than a curse.)

Still, there is something deeply unnatural about a young man, his blood still pumped up with testosterone, being unable to make the grade in the bedroom for whatever reason. For at that age, as much as we might hesitate to admit it later, being a stud comes more naturally to us than being a human being with these, well, feelings. So naturally other culprits are suspected. Booze. Drugs. Too much late night partying. What else could it possibly be? At age nineteen, had I had the nerve, I would have been a big lady pleaser at Plato’s Retreat.

Now in my extremely late forties, I am finding that sexually I have more in common with young women of nineteen then young men of nineteen. It used to be that sex was like drinking water, and you could not live without water. Now I am more discriminating. Do I feel like having sex today? Maybe and maybe not. The latter can become a problem, since women tend to peak sexually in their early forties. It is likely that this role reversal that has us nervously running to our doctors for Viagra prescriptions. Yet, even erectile dysfunction drugs will not work if the man is not aroused. Increasingly, we men are asking what’s in it for me? Oh yeah, there is the sex part. Moreover, it sure feels good. However, it is not as if we have not slid into home plate many, many times before. It is not as if sex is necessarily a need anymore. It may be a want. We may want to watch Monday Night Football instead.

Maybe that is the part of the problem with older men and sexual dysfunction. If what turns us on is the chase, and we are in a long term, committed and monogamous marriage, there is not much chasing to do. Our wives might have a headache, or be going through an interminable change of life, or have other issues putting them out of commission. However, most of the time they are reasonably available. Since we are experts at pressing their buttons, it is easy for the chase to become perfunctory. Running around the bases is often not necessary and if we do, it can feel perfunctory too. Eventually, unless you and your spouse are quite creative, sex can become both enjoyable yet a bit boring.

Perhaps that is why at some point married couples just give sex up altogether. I would hope I would not do this, but the older I get the easier it is to imagine. Sex is, after all, both pleasurable and complicated at the same time. When you are nineteen, having sex is like being in a car with eight cylinders and an accelerator with a hair trigger. At 49, the car has a few dents, and the engine needs a tune up. If stepping on the accelerator eventually moves the car forward, you feel grateful. If from time to time the engine stalls, well, you have to expect that from an older car.

Therefore, more and more of us pass the Viagra. It is like slipping some STP into the gas tank. We often wonder though if what would really please our midlife engines would be to take our engine for a test drive on some different roads. We are not entirely sure though whether our engines would take us down that road even if we want them too. So maybe it is better to keep idling the engine. Or, since the needle is starting to point to E, maybe it makes sense to just turn off the engine until there is a need drive somewhere.

May 12th, 2006 at 03:50pm Posted by Mark | Best of Occam's Razor, Sociology | 2 comments

The Id Unleashed at Craigslist’s Casual Encounters

(Warning: adult content. Reader discretion is advised.)

I am on a two-week holiday. I go back to work on January 9th. Like last year, I try to make my vacations at home count. Since my scenery is not going to change, I find it helpful to change the scenery in my mind. One way is to venture to places on the internet that time does not usually allow me to visit, such as Craigslist. There I go trolling for the unusual and the bizarre. I do not know what it is about Craigslist, but bizarre people seem to be drawn to it like a moths to a flame.

Because it was one of the internet’s first successful bulletin boards (and because its owner Craig Newmark has persisted in keeping it around for about a decade), Craigslist has proven surreally popular. It is achingly low tech and unpretentious. It seems to be inhabited by contributors who cannot bothered to spell check or use mixed case. Sadly, it is often full of spam. It is also a zone in cyberspace absent virtually any of the constraints that come with real life. As best I can tell, the only thing that you cannot get away with on Craiglist is child pornography. You can buy or sell pretty much anything including apparently illegal drugs (using code words like 420). It is one massively low-tech free speech zone. Except for the cost of an internet connection, it is truly free.

If you want a taste of Craigslist at its most bizarre, you simply must check out its many Casual Encounters sections. (There is one for each major city and state). But beware: Casual Encounters is an ultimate smoke and mirrors place in cyberspace where kinky and desperate libidos (generally male) play war with endless numbers of con artists and massively dysfunctional people. In Casual Encounters, the id emerges into the limelight and hold us in its garish gaze. Reality becomes surreal and the surreal morphs into the real. No one is quite who they appear to be. Their many kinky needs suggest posters are dealing with larger issues. Perhaps just by reading them from time to time I too am one of the fallen. (Just because I suspect you will be wondering, no, I have never met anyone from Craigslist, except my wife, who found some work on the side through Craigslist when she was otherwise unemployed.) On the other hand, maybe I am just a human being. Just as most drivers cannot help but slow down and gawk when we pass by an accident, those of us straying through Craiglist’s Casual Encounters find it something of a 24/7 rubberneck zone. It is not pretty. It is not poetic. It is typically crass and obscene. Nevertheless, it is hard not to look.

Most of the posters are guys, of course. It is clear their hormone levels are critically high. It is also clear that most haven’t a clue how on to woo a woman. Perhaps this characterization is unfair. Perhaps it is more accurate to say they have many very kinky needs that they cannot whisper to a woman they know. They can only find safety in expressing it to someone whom they do not know. Many seem incredibly desperate. Here is a sample of some of today’s postings from men looking for women in Craigslist’s Washington D.C. Casual Encounters area:

• A 26 year old guy has his webcam ready and is willing to show his engorged nine inch long sexual organ to any willing woman.
• A 24 year old guy woos women with, “You be Dairy Queen and I’ll be burger king. You treat me right; and I’ll do it your way”. (You can bet women are swooning over these lines.)
• A 25 year old guy would like to orally do to a woman’s naked derriere what many dogs would do to yours if you let them
• Many, many married men want a woman on the side, preferably someone younger, with firm breasts, a very high libido and with a predilection toward secrecy. Some will pay for the privilege.

Yes, there are “women” out there looking for men. Many are looking to “hit the slopes”, but their definition of skiing may surprise you. The vast majority though are run of the mill cyberspace pornographers trolling for email addresses. Others appear to be prostitutes who prefer to stay indoors instead of hiking their skirts near Logan Circle. They will not say it explicitly but it is clear enough with posting titles like “Sugar Daddy $$$$ wanted”. Those with a modicum more discretion are looking for “generous” men. For most though, sex, in the unlikely event it is realized, appears to be tangential. I guess they need all that sugar so they can keep hitting the slopes. To which all I can say is “Eew!” But I often say that when I pass an accident too.

Of the few ads from women that might actually be looking for a non-monetary and consensual sexual relationship, most are from BBWs. BBW apparently means “Big Beautiful Woman” which I suspect really means, “I make Edna in Hairspray look petite”.

Curiously, there seem to be lots of married women, almost all 30 or 31, who happen to live on Capitol Hill or Georgetown looking for a fling. Many claim to be wives of congressmen. Don’t worry, they manage to work out regularly at the gym, don’t smoke and promise complete discretion.

Of course, there are guys looking for other guys, sometimes married guys. I am not a homosexual but if I were, why would I be looking for married men? It seems like it would be more efficient to visit the local bathhouse.

Yes, there are plenty of libidinous couples out there looking to expand their humdrum sex lives. More power to them. Nevertheless, guys, they don’t want you. They want another woman. The wife is apparently very bi-curious, and the husband is just plain curious to watch his wife have sex with another woman. He no doubt also hopes he will get into her pants while his wife participates. The few couples out there looking for a man for a triad have a husband who usually asserts that he is not even a tiny bit bisexual. Oh please!

There are more women looking for women ads than I expected. Sixteen advertised so far today, and I would assume these are legitimate. Some cannot seem to admit they want sex. They claim they are looking for make out sessions only. Maybe they just want to stick one toe into the water to see if it is cold. Others can be as clinical as any guy.

It does not take much reading before these sorts of ads no longer seem the least bit remarkable. However, we discerning Craigslist readers look for not the routinely bizarre, but the desperately and unusually bizarre ad. What am I supposed to think of this posting that I saw today?

I want to empty a can of WD-40 into your…. - 25

I will travel to do this. I have my own funnel, so you don’t need one. I would appreciate going dutch on the WD-40, but not required. I would use a can of Right Gaurd because it smells better, but that cost twice as much.

Hell, if all goes well, I will drop a duece in your grill. No charge. All I ask is that you be discreet, rich, white, skinny, pretty, left handed, scorpio, and have a dog. Not cat people (a.k.a. freaks) please.

If this sounds like your cup of tea, get ready to start living. I mean it, too. It’ll be nothing but apple juice wishes and sardine dreams from here on out!

This one is clearly a joke, but with some it is hard to tell. At 48, I think of myself as something of a man of the world. However, ads like this, even when they are a joke, can still leave me bug eyed.

December 27th, 2005 at 10:01pm Posted by Mark | Sociology | 2 comments

Needed: Better condoms

(Warning: Some adult content. Reader discretion is advised.)

Salon ran an interesting article yesterday about a legal brouhaha over a new type of condom. These condoms, all created by the enterprising Indian inventor Dr. Alla Venkata Krishna Reddy, claim to give the male a much more pleasurable experience than using ordinary condoms. They are marketed under the brand names Pleasure Plus, Twisted Pleasure and Inspiral. All, unfortunately, are subjects of tedious lawsuits that limit their availability.

As you can imagine as a married man I do not often need to use a condom. Pregnancy prevention is no longer a concern. However, like most men I went through times when I had to use condoms regularly. Ask any man who has used one and the verdict is unanimous: condoms suck compared to the real deal.

They suck so bad that by itself just knowing I would probably have to use a condom with another partner is powerful incentive to stay monogamous. Yeah, I know. Many condoms feature bumps and the like which are supposed to increase sensation for both the man and the woman. They lie. They do not do a darn thing for this man. Although the stable of women I have known in the biblical sense is fairly small, not one of them has demanded ribbed condoms for her increased sexual satisfaction.

The only advantage to condoms (to put it delicately) is that wearing one a man can feel like superman. Assuming he can maintain an erection with the darn thing on, he can probably satisfy a woman endlessly. So if your partner is the “keep pounding and don’t stop” type and you are normally the “five minutes or less and I’m ready to pop” type, a condom is definitely the way for a considerate male to go. Your partner will be very grateful. With luck, sweat and a lot of muscular tension you may actually have an orgasm with the condom on too. The male’s odds improve with the tightness of the woman and his current testosterone level. I wonder how many 50-something men who partner with someone their own age and who use a condom ever have an orgasm with it. For myself, I would hope the woman would consider oral sex to be safe sex because I would probably want to avoid intercourse altogether using a condom. If oral sex too were out of the question too, I would prefer to couple with my right hand.

The good news from condom manufacturers is that they have succeeded in creating a product that is very unlikely to break or come off during intercourse, when used as directed. There are exceptions of course. Fortunately, I have not personally had this misfortune. The bad news, as the makers of these new condoms understand, is that they dull male sensation markedly. When you wear condoms, it is as if your penis is vacuum locked in Saran Wrap. However, orgasm is only achieved through friction. A well-lubed condom will not create much friction if the condom is not designed to move across the surface of the penis during intercourse. Making the condom thinner marginally improves sensation. Ask any man who has tried unprotected sex vs. sex with a condom. Unprotected sex, providing you don’t get anyone pregnant or pick up a STD rates an A. At best, sex using a condom rates C. As a middle-aged man, I can say for us it is closer to a D or an F.

Condom manufacturers can and should do better for the male. We are no more anxious to catch or spread a sexually transmitted disease than our partner is. So help us out. We want condoms that really do improve sensation. So give us our Twisted Pleasures condoms!

According to the Salon article, there are some concerns that these new condoms are not safe enough. There are claims that they are easier to fall off or break. I say, if we can put men on the moon, we can solve these problem, that is if they are problems, which seems debatable. Latex is latex after all, and most condoms provide a death-like grip to the base of the penis. I am sure we can engineer a solution. I am confident manufacturers would find a ready set of male volunteers to, er, put these condoms through their paces.

It strikes me as win-win for everyone. Condom manufacturers can probably charge premium prices for these condoms. Men could take a lot more pleasure from intercourse with a condom. Partners will have the satisfaction that their sex is much safer. Of course, there will be fewer unplanned babies. In addition, society benefits because these condoms should reduce the transmission of STDs.

For the benefit of science, my wife and I will be glad to test them. Manufacturers: contact me.

October 25th, 2005 at 09:27pm Posted by Mark | Technology | 2 comments

The Futility of Porn Enforcement

Oh geez, the buffoons are at it again. I thought we were done with this foolish business of trying to stamp out pornography. As if we needed more ways to squander the taxpayer’s money. We build bridges to nowhere. We waste hundreds of billions of dollars in Iraq for a war based on lies. We give subsidies to oil companies, already enjoying record profits, so they maybe might find some new energy sources. We waste billions of dollars in largely futile attempts to interdict illegal drugs crossing our borders. The list is seemingly endless. Now we can add another item to this long list. Yes, the porn squad is back and it is going to (cough cough) keep us safe from pornography.

Okay, perhaps it is just a token effort meant to appease the tiny percentage of Americans affiliated with the so-called American “Family” Association. The Justice Department, as part of a top initiative by our new attorney general Alberto Gonzales, is hiring ten FBI agents to protect us consenting adults from the “evils” of pornography. That is perhaps a couple million or so dollars a year, just a tiny fraction of the money (a billion dollars, folks) that we, oops, let an Iraqi official steal from us. Therefore, perhaps in this case, money is not the issue. (I am old fashioned enough to think that a million dollars is still a heap of money.) The issue is more than the money; it is the futility of the endeavor and the rank hypocrisy of the whole thing that bugs me more.

If you think our guns are precious to Americans, try taking away our pornography. We are addicted to pornography, as we always have been. However, unlike alcoholism, drug addiction or some of society’s other addictions, this one is not one that cannot nor should be “cured”. We love pornography because it is natural for us to enjoy it. After all, pornography predates prostitution. Cavemen found ways to put pornographic images on cave walls. You can go back to the dawn of civilization and you will find pornography. Not convinced? Spend some time in the Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art in New York City, and you will find numerous examples, including ancient dildos. Or if you prefer, spend some time in New York’s Museum of Sex at Fifth Avenue and 27th Street. ($5 off admission if you visit their web site!)

Earth to the Justice Department: humans are sexual creatures. We have always been that way and we always will be that way. Sex creates new life and feels incredibly wonderful, so of course we are intensely interested in anything related to it, particularly words or images that enhance these feelings. Some of the pious among us might like to pretend otherwise, but we can no more stop being sexual creatures than we can give up breathing. Even children are sexual creatures. Many babies discover masturbation about the same time they learn to use their fingers. And why not? It feels good and they are too innocent to think anything that feels good must be bad. This is one of many behaviors that parents feel their children must unlearn. It just would not be right sending junior to day care and to have him seen playing with his penis.

Yet it is not just infants. It is all of us. Heck, it is even old folks. What are many people in the last stages of life doing in nursing homes? As long as they have fingers that work, many of them are masturbating. It brings pleasure and it brings relief in a place where it is in scant supply. I am a sexual creature. If, when I die, they find me dead with an erection, at least I was being true to my species. Heck, I hope if I make it to a nursing home and cannot care for my sexual needs, some nurse’s aide will remedy the situation. For me sexuality is like food and I am not quite a full human being when I am deprived of either.

When real life cannot or will not provide us with the sexual stimulation we need, pornography offers a convenient and safe means to help us scratch our natural itch. For some, fantasy alone is sufficient. However, most of us need something more concrete to latch onto. Pornography is preferred because it is more vivid than something we can make up ourselves. Typically, women prefer the written kind of pornography. It is unlikely though that this new porn squad will be going after erotic literature. So women like my wife, who writes slash, are likely safe. (She is hoping she will be arrested by the porn squad. So here’s your invitation, Alberto Gonzales. Just be careful. The female slash community is huge. Take it from me, you don’t want to mess with these women.)

Nope, the porn squad is likelier to go after the visual kind. Because apparently visually capturing explicit human sexuality must somehow be destroying America’s moral foundations. Put junior in front of the computer for five minutes and oh lordy, he might see a naked woman. Naturally, let us not think through the issue of why the picture of a naked woman is somehow unhealthy. If a parent is concerned, there are solutions, like supervision. We have laws that prosecute those who market pornography to children. However, pornographers are not marketing to children. If children are seeing pornography, it is because their parents are deliberately, tacitly or are inadvertently allowing them to. So okay FBI, go after any pornographers who are targeting children. Good luck in finding them though.

Clearly protecting families is not the FBI’s major focus. Rather, it is initially targeting “manufacturers and purveyors” of pornography, i.e. those who provide a product and market it for adults. They may find prosecuting such “crimes” difficult, given that the Supreme Court has repeatedly upheld that consenting adults have the right to possess pornography. They will have to convince jurors in backwater states that the material meets standards nearly over thirty years old. They will have to go back to 1973 when in Miller vs. California the Supreme Court last set obscenity standards:

The basic guidelines for the trier of fact must be: (a) whether the average person applying contemporary community standards would find that the work, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest; (b) whether the work depicts or describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct specifically defined by the applicable state law; and (c) whether the work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.

Of course, pornography has now become mostly electronic. Choosy consumers now prefer to consume pornography downloaded from the Internet. They have the perfectly reasonable expectation that in the privacy of their own homes, even in conservative communities, they can view all forms of pornography except the few that are specifically excluded by law, such as child pornography. The Internet has demonstrated, if nothing else, its resilience to regulation. Trying to regulate content on it is futile, and we are too dependent upon it now to do without it. (You would think though that we would at least be promoting the .xxx domain to help isolate pornography on the web, but we cannot seem to even do that. Perhaps this is because if we do, we are admitting that it is a problem that will never go away.)

Which means this effort is one that will simply spin its wheels until in 2008 when the next administration dumps it. It will have no effect on our consumption of pornography. It may put a few pornographers or distributors out of business, but the profits of pornography are even more alluring than its content. Others will doubtless pick up the slack. The good news for the FBI is that more and more Americans are becoming overweight. There are few things more effective at suppressing our sexual desires than adult diabetes. Because that is this is really about. It is not about pornography, it is about being a small minority that is currently in power being uptight that they are intensely sexual and sensual creatures too. It is about trying to make everyone conform to their misguided ideas of how human beings should behave. It is so pointless. We will never, ever be that way. It is counterproductive and harmful to even try.

No wonder FBI agents are not rushing to join the porn squad. No wonder they think it is a waste of their time and resources, particularly when we are supposed to be fighting a war on terrorism. I am not surprised then that an administration that has repeatedly proven itself wholly detached from reality will also waste our tax dollars on this pointless and quixotic exercise.

September 27th, 2005 at 09:13pm Posted by Mark | Politics 2005 | no comments

Review: Kinsey

Much of what I learned about sex I learned from reading Dr. Albert Kinsey. While my parents would have given me more detailed facts of life had I pressed them on it, I didn’t want to ask them and they didn’t want to answer them. The schools I attended in the 1960s and 70s did not offer any useful sex education. My formal sex education basically consisted of one morning spent with an embarrassed priest who tried unsuccessfully to talk to my 7th grade class about sex. It’s hard to imagine a worse source of sex information than a priest who thinks sex is generally sinful and sexual abstinence is a virtue. This left me and millions of other adolescents with a sex education that was often more erroneous than accurate.

Fortunately there was the public library. Stashed on its shelves were The Kinsey Reports. In the relative safety of the library I read excerpts that to this day surprise me. In a sense it was a very dry read, with crucial information buried deep within tables. Getting through the scientific acronyms like coitus was a bit challenging for a sixteen year old. But I gathered enough information to realize that a lot of what I thought I knew about sex was wrong. The world of human sexuality was full of a lot more variety than I had imagined. I learned that homosexual behavior in children and adolescents was so common it was almost not worth mentioning. Even bestiality, in the rural world that characterized much of 20th century America, was almost commonplace among males.

I frankly never expected that anyone would ever make an honest movie about Albert Kinsey. Fortunately, I was wrong. Kinsey is a movie that even in 21st century America remains a very brave movie to make. It stars Liam Neeson as Dr. Albert Kinsey. His real life wife, Laura Linney, plays his wife Mac. This is a movie full of fine and often gutsy performances by actors well and not so well known. We get actors like John Lithgow playing Kinsey’s deeply screwed up father and the Rocky Horror man himself (Tim Curry) playing a stuffy and somewhat repressed professor who tries to discredit Kinsey’s work.

Kinsey is an astonishing and moving work of cinema. It is not astonishing because of breathtaking special effects or fancy camera work. It is astonishing because it is so unblushingly frank and candid about Albert Kinsey and his crew of scientists. Their research gave lie to the pervasive sexual myths of the age. The movie does so in a way that actually draws us into the story rather than making us rush for the exit doors. The directing is top rate and the acting is uniformly superb. Even the minor characters are wholly believable.

Alfred Kinsey himself was an oddity. He grew up in a sexually repressed house ruled by a domineering father. This was par for the course for his generation. His calling turned out to be the study of nature. As a professor at Indiana University his expertise was the obscure study of gall wasps. According to the movie his attention turned to human sexuality when he and his wife bumbled badly on their wedding night. Both married as virgins. Had he not had the perspective of a scientist and saw their sexual problem as a medical issue he might have followed his parents into an unhappy adulthood full of sexual dysfunction and hurt feelings.

Eventually Kinsey was allowed to teach a course in human sexuality. It replaced a woefully inadequate course on hygiene offered by the university. His tell-it-the-way-it-is approach quickly won him full classrooms full of eager students. At the time the frank and honest information he provided was virtually unprecedented. Americans were apparently a deeply puritanical and sexually repressed. But mostly they were woefully ignorant about sex. As word of his course and research got around his approach attracted detractors as well as admirers. But thanks to a university president who empowered him and the Rockefeller Foundation that subsidized his research he spent the middle of the 20th century involved in groundbreaking research into human sexuality. The ripples of his research are still being felt and debated today.

This is a movie that surprises the viewer with its far reaching candor. For the most part it is not sexually explicit. There are some graphic slides that might still embarrass some and a couple brief nude scenes. But you would expect this in an R rated movie. The fine writing, acting and directing throughout the movie poignantly documents the crazed and confused world of humans trying to cope with their sexuality in the mid 20th century.

As Neeson’s acting makes clear, Kinsey himself was a flawed and conflicted human being. He was also fearless. His pervasive scientific outlook colored his every action. His determination to accurately document human sexual behavior was obsessive. He documented his own sexual inclinations with surprising detachment, along with those of his wife and researchers. What he seemed unable to grasp among all his scientific research was the spiritual aspects of sexuality. The word “love” was too abstract for him to get his mind around.

This is a movie that will probably make even the most liberated human being squirm a bit in their seats. Kinsey will touch a lot of your sensitive spots. It looks unflinchingly at human sexual behavior. We witness Kinsey’s own bisexuality and the havoc the encounter with one of his researchers inflicted on his marriage. We see his teenagers discuss their sex lives at the dinner table as if they were talking about a shopping at the mall. When his book Sexual Behavior in the Human Male is finally published we witness a public that at first that cannot get enough of his research. But by the end of the movie the forces of Puritanism have reasserted themselves. Kinsey is hassled by Senator Joe McCarthy for not providing him lists of known homosexuals from his research. And the Rockefeller Foundation, under pressure from Congress, withdraws its funding.

That this movie did not do better at the box office is due, I suspect, to how the subject matter still makes many of us cinema fans uncomfortable. We want sex in our movies in predictable formats. We expect unrealistic portrayals of sex in the cinema. What we get in Kinsey is honest human sexuality, which is at times appalling and at other times incredibly touching. But make no mistake - only modest success at the box office doesn’t mean this is not in many was a landmark movie. Kinsey manages to do what all of the best movies do: leave us better and more enlightened people than when we entered the theater. If that is your criteria for a great movie too then you must not flinch and see this movie.

Dr. Kinsey would appreciate my scientific scoring for this movie: 3.6 stars on my 4.0 scale.

June 5th, 2005 at 11:32pm Posted by Mark | The Arts | no comments