Politicians and Privileged Prostitution

Ain't no party like a politician-prostitute party (image via Sugar Daddy Blog)

In a tabloided media world, few things hit harder than a sex scandal. Mistresses, gay escorts, faux-lesbian bondage clubs and high-class call girls rock and sometimes sink political careers.  Men in power apologize to constituents, often flanked by their dutiful wives, while pundits wag fingers over the increasing moral decay of our prostitute populated nation.

But is moral depravity endemic to cultures accepting prostitution?

Not at all.

Attitudes towards prostitution (like attitudes towards all sexual variations) swing with the changing tides of culture. Sometimes tolerated, sometimes weaved centrally into social fabric, prostitution has always existed in some form.

The forms prostitution takes reflect the social structures of the society in which they exist. In contemporary culture high-priced escorts sit atop the hierarchy relatively untouched by the law, while women working on the streets (particularly women of color) bear an inordinate burden of arrests. Ancient Greeks had their own structure with hetairai (courtesans, much like modern day escorts) and concubines for privileged male citizens. The Roman Empire had a similar structure, though prostitution was less accepted in Roman culture than in Greek.

In our culture that condemns and outlaws prostitution, the level of public ire raised by dalliances between men of power and prostitutes depends on the type of prostitute. White, educated women found through private escort services (such as the women hired by David Vitter through the DC Madame) generate a relatively low level of interest (unless the prostitute involved goes public, as in the case with Eliot Spitzer) while male escorts or women working in the street cause moral outrage and media calamity. (For more on social sexual hierarchies, read Gayle Rubin’s seminal essay “Thinking Sex”).

Social privilege in the sex-for-hire industry mirrors the social structure of privilege. Media glamorizes the heterosexual encounters between white, educated women and men of power while denigrating homosexual affairs and relationships with women on the street. When the public reproaches a politician’s sexual indiscretions, the righteous indignation is just as much over the affair as the type of sex sought.

This post is dedicated to my friend Andy W. for his financial contribution towards running this blog. Thanks Andykins!

5 Tips for Having an Orgasm

Angelina Jolie photographed by David LaChapelle

Oh, oh, oh: Orgasm. A tasty, potent hypothalamic chemical cocktail released through nerve ending stimulation. When many people think about sexual pleasure, orgasm is the ultimate goal.

But some people have a hard time getting on the orgasm bus, which the medical community calls “anorgasmia.” Among men, the prevalence is between 8%-14%. The rates for women are wildly divergent: anywhere from 5% to 75% depending on the literature. I would put the estimate of actual anorgasmia (different from “dysfunction” estimates, where we lump “low sexual” desire in with everything else) somewhere around 10-20% of females, not far off from male prevalence estimates.

Maybe you’re in that anorgasmic category. Or maybe your mojo is flagging and you can’t quite trigger that neuro-chemical delivery. Our sex drives fluctuate and vary throughout our lives. Many, many factors contribute to orgasm blockage. So how to get around orgasm barriers like sex-negative cultural messages or physiological blocks?

1. Relax. You know that saying: “It’s all in your head?” This is especially true for orgasms and arousal. When we tense up or become anxious our bodies route blood to our heart and lungs instead of exposed skin like the lips and genitals. Tantric breathing practices are really helpful here. Sit with yourself or your partner and take slow deep breaths. You will start to feel high and relaxed.
2. Enjoy sensation. Once you start to feel zen-like and anxieties subside, start exploring the vast expanse of skin. If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a million times. And I’ll say it a million more: Brain and skin. Largest sex organs. Focus on those first. Feel your whole body starting with your feet and moving all the way up. Forget the genitals for now, just concentrate on finding the most responsive non-genital areas on your body. Ironically, having an orgasm is best served by not trying to have one. The more you focus and make it the end goal, the more anxious you’ll feel about having one. Saturate yourself with sensation for the sake of sensation.
3. Check your medicine cabinet. Sometimes the issue is not anxiety but medications to deal with anxieties or depression. SSRIs (Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors) are a class of antidepressants that boost serotonin levels. While serotonin helps alleviate depression it also acts as a hand brake on orgasms so sexual activity can feel like driving a car with the hand brake on. If you’re on SSRIs, talk to your healthcare provider about newer SSRI options that have fewer side effects. Or see tip #2 above.
4. Diet and Exercise. I recently hooked up with a past lover after three years. He went from hot-bodied sexy mofo to an aging alcoholic and the sexual side effects were not fun. Your circulatory system is important in sexual arousal and pleasure. Excessive smoking, drinking, drugs, bad diet and no exercise inhibit sexual arousal and orgasm by dulling nerve endings and messing with blood flow. This doesn’t mean that smoking or drinking or eating cheetos on the couch will absolutely prevent pleasurable sexual experiences. But if you’re having a hard time and you do any of those to excess, try stopping for a bit. (I quit smoking after 10 years, started exercising regularly and my sexual response capacity/level of sensation/orgasm intensity shot up like a rocket.)
5. Love your body. Remember the whole “sex is in your head” rhetoric? Self-perception is all in your head as well. Sexiness is not limited to lithe, caucasian, photoshopped and surgically enhanced bodies. Turn off the TV, ignore the glossy mags, and realize that you have a perfectly touchable, huggable, kissable, masturbatable, fuckable body. The beauty is in difference. Dont believe me? For the next two weeks avoid mass produced media. Look at people around you instead. Find photographs in National Geographic or any media outlet that depicts lots of regular people. Marvel at the diversity and how so many different body shapes can look so attractive. Enjoy where your body fits in with that spectrum. Once you realize that sexiness comes from within, letting go and experiencing sex will be so much easier.

Sex and Evolutionary Theory: Ur Doin It Wrong

http://www.scheissprojekt.de/evolution.htm

New communications technologies and media have blown the doors off of information propriety. On one hand, this is awesome because knowledge is power. On the other hand, this blows because factoids without understanding create false assumptions of the world.

The term “pop psychology” comes to mind. Example: I date those women/men because my mother/father was that way!

Here’s another term: “Pop Darwinism.”

Few things are more seductive than biological explanations of behavior. No moral assessment needed because it’s in your genes. Don’t bother with social analysis: we can’t help our human nature.

Let me disabuse you of any evolutionary misinterpretations.

When it comes to sexual behaviors, experts love to claim we get down how we do because of sexual selection favoring a hunter gatherer society, where females nurtured the babies and males hunted the food. Somehow, these behaviors are etched deep into our genes and any resulting behavior is an attempt to recreate this world.

An easy to digest concept package.

Problem is, organisms are complex. Reproductive strategies are diverse in the animal kingdom, from fishes to humans. Many like to assert that our ancestors favored only one type of male-female relation but this flies in the face of multiple adaptive reproductive strategies found among animals. Forget all this selection favoring only the dominant males and fecund, nurturing females nonsense. If species survival favors adaptive ability, then organisms adopting multiple strategies would fare better. Diversity and complexity beat out simplistic single-strategy approaches.

Organisms relying on social groups (like humans) are even more complex. Claiming that our sole purpose is sexual reproduction ignores life in social groups. If we want to pass on our genes, if we want our species to survive, cooperation (on some scale) increases our chances of survival. Cutthroat competition would only be beneficial in situations of absolute scarcity. United we stand, divided we devolve.

Our biology is one of many factors when we talk about behavior in humans . Genetics are not behaviorally deterministic, only influential among mammals. We learn most of our behavior from traditions and mores passed down through culture and adapt to contemporary contexts. Behavior and culture are not absolutely predicated on some genetic competition. Influence is possible but, again, we would be influenced by a multitude of genetic reproductive behaviors and strategies.

Joan Roughgarden from Stanford wrote a book called Evolution’s Rainbow: Diversity, Gender and Sexuality in Nature and People. (Go buy that book! Complex ideas, but she’s an excellent writer.) One of her chapters challenges concepts of sexual selection. Here’s a passage about how we actually misinterpret Darwin’s texts, even in the academic world:

“The universal claims of sexual selection theory are inaccurate. Males are not universally passionate, nor females universally coy. The social dynamic between males is not universally combat to control females. Diversity among males and females does not universally fit a hierarchy of genetic quality. Females do not universally select males for their genetic quality. Moreover, sexual selection theory is inadequate to address the diversity in bodies, behaviors, and life histories that actually exists. Darwin didn’t bother to explain the exceptions he recognized, and as data on diversity in gender and sex continue to accumulate, sexual selection theory, which addressed only a subset of facts to begin with, becomes increasingly inadequate.” -page 169.

So the next time you hear, read or encounter any Pop Evolution, think back on this article and realize that well-packaged, comforting explanations of human behavior are often false.

Kindness and Hot Sex are Not Mutually Exclusive

Yesterday, WordPress caught me with my pants down. I posted some partially formed thoughts on nice guys vs. bad boys in the bedroom. Namely, the pervasive idea that nice guys are duds in the bedroom. Or that any nice person will not be good in bed because sex is naughty and only bad people can be good at naughty things.

Today I’m going further down the rabbit hole.

Good Guys Make Bad Lovers and Other Stupid Stereotypes

Sometime ago, I found myself in a bar, engaging in a verbal struggle with a soon-to-be ex-lover. He stirred his Mai Tai and told me why I liked him. “I’m an asshole. Women like assholes. Why do you think the sex is so good?”

Yes. Because all 3 billion plus men on the planet fit into two categories: nice guys and bad boys. No complexity to their personalities, no context to their actions, no mistakes leading to growth. Just wusses and studs.

Why do we deem nice behavior as incompatible with sexual skills? A friend of mine sent me a link to a PUA (Pick-Up Artist) blog where the author asserted that men were either good boyfriends or good lovers. Never both.

The ex-lover I mentioned based his sexuality on the false good guy/bad boy sex norms. In his mind, being highly sexed meant he was secretly an asshole, despite any acts of kindness: Bringing me a bottle of wine and chocolate when I was dying from cramps. Mixing me drinks. Making me dinner.

What a blatant jerk.

Underlying the alpha and beta male mindset is that hot sex is incompatible with kindness. We think nice girls can’t be sexual or that sexual girls are bad and bitchy. Is this just a logical fallacy rooted in demonizing sex? If sex is bad then all sexual people are bad people?

Let’s drop this sexual construction like the bad habit it is. Sure, some jerks are good in bed. But lots of perfectly nice people can fuck like madmen. There is no real correlation between social kindness and sexual satisfaction. The only sure thing we can say about bad boys is that they have more sex partners, but a high number of sex partners does not equal sexual skills.

In fact, it might mean the opposite. Jerks could be so self-obsessed that they are awful in bed and so flip through partners quickly. Just because you get someone into bed does not mean that you will get them off.

Edit: If you think this post is a little underdeveloped in the idea department you’re right. Want to read an expansion of these concepts? A follow up post can be found here or by clicking the “Kindness and Hot Sex are Not Mutually Exclusive” link at the top.

Vibrators Are Not the Devil

I Rub My Devil Duckie

“I’m gon’ say something that I know you gon’ disagree with. Vibrators are the fucking devil.” (via late night phone conversation)

I give the guy points for his honesty. Many, many people think that vibrators are not-so-great or potentially damaging to relationships. I also give the guy points for his perspicacity. I completely disagree with the passé notion that vibrators are bad.

A vibrator is an inanimate object. Any evilness that we see is our own intention manifested in the object. Want to avoid a human relationship but still get off? Vibrator to the rescue. Want to make your lover feel inadequate and replaceable? Bring on the Battery Operated Boyfriend. Have issues getting off with another person and want to avoid dealing with it completely? Replace the human romance with a Rechargeable Romeo.

Beyond that, a vibrator is a sex toy. A TOY. Not a partner, not a device, not an appliance. A toy. For fun. If someone uses a sex toy to avoid human contact or replace it, they do so because of a preexisting desire. Vibrators, or any sex toy, will not create sexual recluses.

I laugh when people say that they prefer “natural” sex, as if anything unnatural is abhorrent and suspect. Do you drive a car? Enjoy that fridge in your kitchen? Perhaps you’re a fan of indoor plumbing? Humans like technology. We like creating objects that speed up our jobs or enhance our lives in some way.

Vibrators are no exception. Maybe I should make a sex toy gift basket for my sex toy hatin’ friend. Or give him a good rundown of vibrator history.

Reason vs. Libido

Sexademics have weird arguments on Facebook. In my opinion, our reason creates the very idea of libido. This does not mean that we are without sexual desire. It means the idea that we have a sex drive that controls us (especially XY genes aka Men) is in part a cultural construction.

In the academic world we call this Biological Essentialism. Our bodies drive us, all that we are is natural and our actions are driven by biology. Many cultures use biological essentialism to justify social norms. In the Victorian Era, women stayed in the home and made babies. Doctors said that this was the natural drive of women: child-bearing but not sexual pleasure.

Norms change. We now argue that a sex drive exists in women, separate from their biological clock, but men are puppets to their sex drive. Libido controls all. I’ve argued against this sexist thinking before.

We justify our choices between desire and reason. One does not battle the other. There is no “fundamental” nature to males or females.

Californication Sex

Boring Bad Boy Cliché

Every Sunday night I settle into my friend’s oversized couch to watch Dexter and Californication. We started the ritual Showtime meetings after discovering both series on DVD. Dexter continues to be amazing but Californication fell off the deep end. I accept the possibility that it may never resurface.

I knew of the show when it first hit the scene but without cable or motivation to internet hunt I never watched. My breaking point came after 4 people in one week exclaimed, “You study sex but you haven’t seen Californication!?” So I hit the video store to fulfill my obligation.

I LOVED the first season. Complex issues of sex, fidelity, taboos and relationships dominated the first season. Hank Moody (main character, bad boy asshat extraordinaire) served fine as a lens to explore these topics. I was enchanted.

But something happened. They wrote themselves into a corner by focusing on Hank’s chosen depravity instead of humanity’s potential depravity in lands with access to excess. Every female character became a mere prop for Hank Moody, two-dimensional figures with breasts and limited sexual desires trained on Mr. Moody.

There was potential there to talk about sex in broader terms. Becca, Hank’s eerily wise young daughter, has only passing observations on his sexual proclivities and accepts him unconditionally. Mia, the teenage sociopathic fame-whore that knowingly slept with Hank in the pilot episode, was an excellent character that writers ignored. What was her motivation? How did the rest of her sex life play out? Karen, Hank’s long-suffering partner and baby-momma, swung between tempered frustration and sweet adoration. Where were her emotions? What logic inside her mind kept her with Hank? What were her sexual desires for Bill (Mia’s father and the man she nearly married)? Then there was Marcy, the loud-mouth waxer married to Hank’s best bro, but we only saw minor character development and once she separated from her husband she faded into the background. I loved Marcy. I want to be her when I grow up.

The closest we came to character expansion was Marcy’s husband Charlie Runkle, Hank Moody’s best home-bro. We saw his sexually charged hubristic decline from high-power agent to BMW sales guy but nothing deeper. He still served as a prop man to Hank Moody.

If that series is to survive, the plotline needs to expand to talk about fornication in hedonistic southern California. In shorter parlance, they need to make the Californication show not the Hank Moody cliché  disaster show.

Sex and Aging

Old people don’t have sex, right? Wrong, wrong, wrong. The topic of sex and aging isn’t my area of expertise but I am interested in the ways we privilege and punish certain age ranges for their sexuality. I write often about issues facing teens, especially females, but aging and sex was never my focus.

Part of the reason is that we ignore and silence the topic of sex and aging. We pair sexuality with youth and shudder at the thought of anyone older than us having sex. But we conveniently forget the fact that we are getting older. Every. Single. Day.

So what happens when you’re 70 years old living in a nursing home and want some sexytime? Not going to be easy. Professionals in the medical field are trying to lift this taboo and give seniors their rights back, but it’s hard to do in a culture so squeamish about old people getting freaky.

You think you’re not biased? Watch this Science World ad then tell me how you feel.

Girl on Girl Slut Blame

Yesterday, someone tagged me in a Facebook note about women and sex. The post was a babbling brook of consciousness focused on slut-shaming. I get that she was working her views out in a public forum, but I disagreed with everything she said. Why women gotta hate on each other so much?

The following quote sums up her argument pretty well: