Just a Few Simple Questions...

1. How many times have you had sex (including oral) in the last three months?

2. With how many different people have you had sex (including oral) in the last three months?

3. If you had sex (including oral) in the last three months, how many times had you been drinking alcohol?

4. If you had sex (including oral) in the last three months, how many times had you used a condom?

Find these questions a bit over the top?  These are questions being asked USC students in a mandatory Title IX course, Title IX being the federal law that prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex in any federally funded educational activity.

5. How many of you think the answer to all these questions should be "none of your effing business"?

Here's a good question based on the article by Campus Reform

6. Given that a drunk person cannot consent to sex, if a drunk man and a drunk woman have sex... who's at fault?  

The interactive training video associated with the course automatically blames the man as being guilty of a sexual assault. 

Welcome to the 21st Century! If you respect your own privacy and think that this entire subject is none of the schools business, well then you're not deserving of an education and will have a registration hold placed on you until you wise up and comply.

7. How many of you think USC is so far out of line that it's not even funny anymore? 

UPDATE: Since I wrote this post 24 hours ago the USC senior vice president for administration has apologized for the questions and has said they will be removed.

Uh, NEVERMIND!

“Rates of military sexual trauma among men who served in the military may be as much as 15 times higher than has been previously reported, largely because of barriers associated with stigma, beliefs in myths about male rape, and feelings of helplessness,”

November 2nd, American Psychological Association

Retracted due due to flawed data analysis.

“Although the article went through our standard peer-review process, other scholars have since examined the data and raised valid concerns regarding the design and statistical analysis, which compromise the findings,”

 November 8th, American Psychological Association

A Rand spokesman confirmed Monday that its researchers told the APA that its published study methodology was flawed.

To extrapolate the APA article, it would mean as many as 180,000 military men were sexually assaulted, and of those, 57,750 were raped in one year.

Apparently as a soft science, math is not a prerequisite for Psychologists.

Washington Times

APA

GAY TV

Sappho & Erinna by Simeon Solomon 1864

Billy Crystal recently found himself in hot water with the following comment to the Television Critics Association regarding gay sex:

"Sometimes, it’s just pushing it a little too far for my taste and I’m not going to reveal to you which ones they are. I hope people don't abuse it and shove it in our face to the point where it feels like an every-day kind of thing,"

So the question is, is Hollywood pushing gay sex on TV and in the movies? According to the Washington Post the National Center for Health Statistics puts the number of gay and bisexual Americans at less than 3%. More specifically, 1.8% of men and 1.5% of women self-identify as homosexual.

So where is Hollywood at?

Curiously that liberal bastion of "thought" Thinkprogress completely ignores homosexuality in their analysis of TV character demographics although helpfully provides that 9.6% of us would be doctors if reality mirrored TV. 

GLAAD reports that among 109 scripted prime-time shows featuring 796 regular characters, 26 are gay and 771 a ratio that works out to 3.3% for the 2013-2014 broadcast year, the previous years ration was 4.1%.

So it is possible that there are slightly more homosexuals on TV as you would find in real life, but those are just characters, not characters having sex.  Demographic numbers on TV sex scenes were a little harder to come by.  

A study by the National Institute of Health for the 2001-2002 and 2002-2003 seasons found that sexual content associated with non-heterosexuals was found in 15% of content, although the overall occurrence was low. Curious to note that gay sex content increased almost 15% while heterosexual content increased only 7%.

One thing is for sure, Americans massively overestimate the number of homosexuals among us.  Overall US adults, on average, estimate that 25% of Americans are gay or lesbian, only 4% correctly identify that the true number is less than 5%.

In another GLAAD study of 138 shows, 86% had at least one gay character... how many do you think had an overtly self-identified Christian (76% of the population) character?

So what do you think? Is gay sex overrepresented on television?  

When Caliban Met Ariel: Tales of the Ugly Gringo

"Latin America:  Where single men come back married, and married men come back single"  -- Kurt Silverfiddle quote

Latin America is a sexy, exotic place, from Mexico all the way to the southern tip.

In a drunken stretch of the imagination (or a Picasso-esque one), Latin America even looks like a sexy woman, twisting perhaps to a samba or merengue beat. From busty Mexico down through her slender waist of Central America, where moving south her hips blossom and enclose the steamy, verdant tropicalia before tapering down to a sexy pair of legs terminating at the tip of the Southern Cone.

I've seen many a man dash himself upon the rocks of lust in Latin America. It's never a pretty site. You have the best of intentions, but the devil lurks around every corner. The young woman cheated by the dumb and cheap Secret Service agent (never a good combination, especially in a strange place) is a saucy little firecracker. I've known a few like her, and it always ended badly...

Every now and then, something will hit the news and it will transport me back to another time and place. It's part of the curse of having lived many lives.

Mark Sanford's Argentinian Adventure

South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford's slow, sad human car wreck over his Argentinian lover was gut-wrenching. Some held out hope he would snap out of it, but I knew he was a goner. Done. I had been there, mentally and physically, and I thank God I came back to reality and didn't wreck my marriage.  Prior training as a young bachelor living for years in Central America is probably all that steeled me against falling into a snare.

Sanford had been transported half a world away, in a swirl of exotic mystery and romance. He may have been standing in the harsh reality of South Carolina, complete with the blinding TV lights, clicking cameras and shouting reporters, but his heart and mind were captured and held prisoner at the other end of the world, a completely different world of sultry, sexy exotica.

A famous actress, can't remember who, talked about filming in Brazil, I think, and how the tropical atmosphere amped up your libido. She made some reference about it going straight to your groin, or something like that. All of Latin America is not tropical--in the crisp Andean air of Quito or La Paz, women wearing luxuriously feminine capes and tall leather boots is also very sexy--so it's not just the hot, moist climate.

Not So Secret Service

I've never been to Cartagena, but I was a young single man temporarily assigned just up the coast in Maracaibo, Venezuela, back before the Chavez regime.  I imagine it's about the same, complete with the humidity sinking into your loins and clouding your brain...

... A steamy tropical beach, stripped down to swimwear, sweatily dancing to salsa and merengue, afternoon "naps" when the rain comes, dancing and dining, air conditioned rooms and crisp cold sheets a luxuriant night refuge from the heat of the day, until the unforgiving sun starts it all over again...

I wasn't there, but I can describe that morning in Cartagena, when the Secret Service sex party came to a crashing end. It was dead still as only a Caribbean party town can be at that early hour of breaking dawn. An indignant female voice pierced the silence, echoing down the cool marble hall scrubbed pristine with that peculiarly-scented cleaning agent you only smell in northern South America. The crowd in the hallway grows, curious faces, hotel staff, later policia. The other gringo partiers, still dreamily in the arms of their paramours, feel their guts drop.  One guy just blew it for everybody, and the jig is up. A sharp descent from heaven to hell. Bad stuff happens fast down there.

Ugly Americans

So I wasn't really surprised by any of the news, but I was struck by the stupid, stunning arrogance of the agents. If just one of them had understood the culture and displayed more than a passing facility with the local language, it would not have blown up in their faces. If you're going to be venal and break the rules, at least be smart about it. Some prearrangements with the bar and with the hotel staff, some exchanged cash, so nothing shows up on the bill you have to submit with your travel voucher, and none of that gringo arrogance, inflated to pompous proportions by official diplomatic credentials and badges.

This did not do any damage to our country or our image. It just reinforced the stereotype. Everyone down there is laughing their asses off at us, and some marriages here in the states are probably in peril.

End Note:
* - Caliban and Ariel are two metaphorical characters in Jose Enrique Rodo's classic essay, Ariel.  If a Latin American "expert" hasn't heard of it, then beware, he is not an expert and probably got his Latin American Studies degree at the University of Taco Bell.

Have Women Lost Their Civilizing Influence?

I stumbled across a provocative article entitled, Why Polygamy is Good for Women. I enjoy a good counterintuitive argument, so I dove in…

A lot of the knee-jerk reactions against polygyny are from people who can't add up. In a society with equal numbers of men and women, each man with four wives gives women the additional pick of three men […]

In the Sahel region of Africa, half of all women live in polygynous households. The other half have a good choice of men and a lot more bargaining power. (Tim Harford - Slate)

Could the same logic apply in the US? 

Large numbers of incarcerated males decrease the prospects for women. Add in that women as a cohort are more educated than men, and the disparity grows.

Most importantly, given shifting societal norms, does any of this even matter?

Women tightly guarding the gateway to carnal paradise has been the traditional means of putting respectable men in the marrying mood, but girl power has wrecked that.

In many circles, the girls compete with the guys to see who can be more promiscuous, to the detriment of themselves and their sisters, I think. It’s too easy to get free milk now, so only a fool buys the cow…

And with more and more girls willing to engage in public drunkenness, farting contests, and licentious vulgarities, crass behavior is no longer the exclusive domain of the male species.

Add to this the overall pornification of our society, and the female of the species has lost her mystique. Counterintuitively, psychologists believe this may explain why more men have retreated into internet porn and lap dances. Reality makes no sense so you gotta go hide somewhere, I guess.

What happens when your internal wiring is incompatible with the culture? 

I don’t know myself. I’ve been happily married for quite awhile, and God has blessed us with a pretty uncomplicated relationship. We simply and unselfishly try to make one another happy, and that’s important for a healthy marriage.

Driving home last week, I heard Dennis Prager discuss with callers what made their marriage a happy one. Almost every caller mentioned some variant of “doing something for or with my spouse that I really don’t want to do,” and much of it revolved around sex, with the man as the one wanting it when the wife was not particularly in the mood. It was a tie in with the question of why men cheat on their wives. 

Love as a Two-Sided Coin

Prager then presented a two-sided coin that sparked a lot of conversation:

For the women: Is it really so horrible to contribute 15 minutes to an activity that makes your spouse so happy and that may prevent him from sinning against you, your God, and your marriage?

For the Men: Is a few moments of adulterous pleasure really worth defiling your marriage, disrespecting your spouse, and offending your God?

Of course, the answer to both is, No. But we are irrational beings much of the time; and the whirling vortex of id, ego, emotions and sex leads to dark psychological chasms.

Let’s face it, were it not for sex, men would have no interest in women, and subsequently children. We men would abandon our towns and cities to roam the woods and mountains in armed bands, killing game, fighting, and brewing beer.

Idealizing women is not a condescension, and it is a shame that a small dedicated band of insurgents has succeeded in knocking themselves and their sisters from their pedestals.

Big Ed has been Screwing Us for Years

College officials 'appalled' as fratboy and his girl are caught having sex on the roof of USC building... in front of hundreds of people

 

What a joke.  Higher education has been screwing Americans for years. Collecting the money of hard working parents, and extorting more filthy lucre from the rest of the taxpayers via government grants and student loan schemes.

"the nation's total student loan debt now sits at about $830 billion - for the first time surpassing the nation's credit card debt."  (Atlantic - An Anti-College Backlash?)

... And for what?

So government indoctrinators can churn out hordes of self-important youngsters who don’t know how to think or write, offended that they cannot start out on top. We are subjected to stories of graduates with degrees in cultural dancing and lesbian studies suing their alma mater because they couldn’t get a job. Imagine that! Meanwhile, we must import scientists, doctors and engineers because our vaunted education system cannot produce enough.

Our university system is a joke

If you can stagger through it drunk, spending more time partying than studying, it can’t be that hard, and obviously is not a valuable educational experience. If you come out stupid on the other end, unable to think critically or write a coherent paragraph, and still get a diploma, that's not an achievement--it's an expensive waste of time.

Parents: Four years in any branch of the military will do your young adult more good than four years at an “elite” American college.

Daily Mail – Trojan Sex