Roofies can be used to facilitate rape! This is apparently news to Double X

Robin Abrahams (a.k.a Miss Conduct) calls attention to a maelstrom of woman-hating insanity over on Double X. A woman wrote in to their friendship advice columnist wanting to know if she should forgive her friends, who, after she’d been roofied, half-assed a response when she called them from outside the club they were at asking for help, and then blew her off later when she called to ask them to keep her company in the ER. The columnist, Lucinda Rosenfeld, tells the letter writer that her friends weren’t obligated to get out of bed at 4 a.m. to come hold her hand, which, whatever. I might not agree, but it’s not clear what the friends knew when, so how they reacted when they got the whole story from her later might be more revealing than their actions that night, and the letter doesn’t mention that. So I’m not going to condemn her for the advice itself.

But the way she gave it! Holy fuck am I going to condemn her for that! Here’s a few choice quotes:

For one thing, it’s not even necessarily safe—depending on where you live and how far you live from the hospital—for a woman to head out alone at that hour. [...]

Here’s a little secret. BFFs are great when you’re upset about a boy/sick cat/whatnot. But there are limits to friendship—limits that don’t apply to our romantic partners or close family members. [...] I also wish they’d been a less critical of what was, by your account, a freak incident. Why were they so unforgiving? I’d wager a guess that they think you’re lying about the mickey, tales of which are sometimes used as a cover for irresponsible behavior. (Only you know the truth.)

Shockingly, at least to Rosenfeld, the comment section erupted with people disagreeing with both the substance and delivery of her response. Many pointed out that people who ignore pleas for help from someone who may just have been raped are not that person’s friend*. Others pointed out the massive vortex of victim-blaming and slut-shaming that is rapidly sucking away my ability to form complete sentences. So she apologized! Wow!

Except, not really at all! Fuck!

I was struck by how many readers seemed to be hearing echoes of date rape or sexual abuse in “Drugged’s” story. I have to admit, I did not think of that at the time. There is no evidence in her letter that she was a victim of a sex crime. And I believe that if she had been, or thought she had been, she would have alluded to it in the letter. All we know is that something she drank caused her to pass out. Moreover, had I believed for a second that she’d been assaulted, I would have responded in an entirely different manner.

A woman was roofied in a crowded bar and woke up hours later lying in the middle the sidewalk with no recollection of where that time had gone AND RAPE NEVER OCCURRED TO YOU? Well Jesus Fucking Christ, if that’s actually true you should really just resign right this fucking second, because you have the insight and perspicacity of a particularly slow-witted carp, which makes you spectacularly unqualified to give advice on interpersonal relationships.

And, you know, it seems to me that when someone helpfully points out that the number one cause of getting an incapacitating drug slipped into your drink in a public place is that a RAPIST is trying to RAPE you, the correct response is not to act say, “Even though I never thought of that possibility, I also carefully weighed the evidence and concluded that didn’t happen.” Even if she wasn’t raped or otherwise assaulted—and I fervently hope she was not—it seems pretty fucking clear that someone wanted to have access to her when she was in such a state that she could neither consent nor resist, and that’s pretty fucking scary in my book, whether that person succeeded or not.

She also seems to have a lot of rape on the brain for someone who never even considered the possibility that the LW had been sexually assaulted. That stuff about how it may not be safe for a woman to go out alone at night means she is thinking about gendered violence in general and probably of stranger rape in particular. And then there’s that charming little bit about how maybe the LW is lying about the drugging to cover “irresponsible behavior,” which MAKES ME BARF MY FACE OFF, but which also implicitly acknowledges that there are women who are drugged in the exact same way that the LW describes expressly so that some rapist will have an easier time raping them. So if the possibility that someone raped or attempted to rape the LW never crossed her waterlogged fish brain, why is she so afraid that the LW’s friends will get raped by a stranger jumping out of the bushes and into their moving cars somehow? What makes her so concerned that the LW might be one of those slutty-slut-sluts who makes up a story about drugs and rape to cover up for her shameful sluttitude? What mysterious external force that had not one fucking thing to do with the letter she was reading caused her thoughts to turn repeatedly to rape? WHATEVER COULD IT BE WE WILL NEVER SOLVE THIS UNSOLVABLE RIDDLE OF MYSTERY I AM SURE.

There is more extremely stupid shit that really deserves a takedown, but I don’t have the time or the patience. I will say that this kind of shit is exactly why I go out of my way to never, ever click on a Double X story, even if it’s by a blogger I really like. Pageviews make them bigger and stronger, and imply that people accept them as a feminist, or at least woman-friendly, website. The bigger they are, the more weight it carries when they reinforce stereotypes and repeat anti-feminist arguments, because they’re spreading this tripe from a position of authority. I’m not going to fight for social justice here and out in the world only to undermine myself with my clicks.

*In reality, many rape victims find that their friends and family refuse to believe them, blame them, and even become angry them when they share their experience. Anecdotally, it seems women are especially prone to this kind of reaction because many of us want to believe that if we follow the rules, it can’t happen to us, and being confronted by evidence that this is nothing more than a lie we tell ourselves so we can feel safe is extremely frightening.

Gay marriage is a threat to my long-term, monogamous relationship!

Because when I saw this sign I laughed so hard I had an asthma attack. Do you gays want to make my boyfriend a widow?

Jesus had 2 Daddies

Taken from this gallery of images of Sunday’s protest.

Saturday afternoon miscellany

Because I am lazy, here are some internet things I have liked recently.

This Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal comic:

For those who can't see/read the image, it's titled "Logic: The Domain of Men," and it's a man saying to a woman, "It's not misogynist! I paid that stripper with Susan B. Anthony dollars!"

This Dinosaur Comic:

For people who can't see the image, it's, as always with this comic, T-Rex stomping things and talking to other dinosaurs. Full transcript below.

T-Rex: Some words are special, reserved for only the worst situations, and as such carry weight when we dare to use them! Some words have MEANING, cats and kittens! And because of all this I cringe when someone says a test RAPED them, or that a movie was so terrible it RAPED the excellent book it was based on. Being raped is totally way worse than failing a test!
Dromiceiomimus: “Being raped is totally way worse than failing a test.
T-Rex: What? It’s FACTUAL! People need to know!
Utahraptor: You’re walking on dangerous land, T-Rex!
T-Rex: I know that folks got opinions about rape! I’m one of ‘em! But MY opinions are about usage. Let us eschew all this metaphorical rape and only talk about LITERAL rape, okay??
Utahraptor: So, um, when you look back on this, I hope you realize that the reason I left is your phrase “let us…talk about LITERAL rape, okay??”.
God: SOMETIMES LIFE IS HARD FOR YOU ISN’T IT T-REX
T-Rex: Only when my friends quote me in a misleading fashion!! …oh wait nevermind it’s hard at other times too

OK, I’m not totally sure what’s up with that last panel, but then I don’t read the comic regularly.

This guest post at Shapely Prose: “Schrödinger’s Rapist: or a guy’s guide to approaching strange women without being maced.” It’s a clear, unapologetic breakdown of why women are unlikely to trust strange men, however friendly, who approach them, and what kind of warning signals certain behaviors set off. It’s great in a million ways, but one the things I really love is how it makes so clear what offense I felt was committed in certain uncomfortable situations which, when I relate them to friends, garner not the sympathy and validation I hoped for but rather blank stares. “He sat directly across from me on an otherwise completely empty subway car,” I tell them. Or, “He insisted on helping me find the item I needed even after I said I was fine on my own.” Or, “He kept trying to chat with me about the game even though I was engaged in a conversation with someone else.” “Seems harmless enough,” people say. “What are you so worked up about?” “Never mind,” I mumble, and change the subject. Maybe none of those men had evil in their hearts, but they all knew that there’s a big space between “totally respectful” and “clearly dangerous,” and they took advantage of it. They sidled into my consciousness uninvited, being careful to do nothing to cross the line that would label them an active/obvious threat and therefore drive me to stop being polite and leave, or a spur an onlooker to intervene, or inspire friends to offer the support I was looking for on retelling. But it’s still a way of forcing yourself on someone, and in a world where women have to be painfully, perpetually aware that most men aren’t rapists but any man could be, little violations like that tend to put us on high alert.

Finally, here’s something sweet for you:

I went to the last game of the regular season on Sunday, and afterwards kids were allowed to run the bases. A few of them immediately broke for the pitcher's mound and started playing catch—or, as my brother more accurately termed it, "throw," since there was no catching involved—with the rosin bag. Very cute.

Sorry about the quality—I have a pretty nice camera, but it’s just not equipped for taking closeups of the mound from the right-field roof.

Here’s a pretty picture of the whole park, though:

Saturday Morning Sweets: Oatmeal Honey Bread

Multiple photos this week since they came out so pretty.

I have recently begun what I think of as Experiments In Yeast, all title-case like that. I’ve made just about every kind of quick bread I know of, but before last week, I’d never made anything that involved yeast. As the air cools and the leaves start to turn, it seemed like the perfect time to finally start working through some of the recipes in the Bread and Soup Cookbook my housemate gave me for Christmas.

The instructions in this book are awesome—very clear and detailed, and cover all the basics that some books assume you know, like how to knead and how to make stock. But I was remarkably short on ingredients that day, and anyway for my first attempt I wanted a recipe with as few variables as possible so it would easy to pinpoint the culprit if something went wrong. So I googled around a bit and found the Homesick Texan’s recipe for Oatmeal Honey Bread. It’s a no-knead recipe, though I kneaded it anyway to get a feel for how to do it, but I figured that if it didn’t rise properly or something, my technique would probably not be to blame.

This is going immediately into the favorites file. It’s dense and moist, with the rich mildness of oatmeal and a hint of sweetness. I made it on a Friday night and both loaves were gone by Saturday afternoon.

It’s sweet and flavorful enough to have as a snack on its own, with a bit of butter or peanut butter, but hearty enough to stand up to the fabulous Portuguese soup we were having for dinner that night. Though I wouldn’t recommend dunking, which I did completely by accident and did not enjoy. (My boyfriend does almost all the cooking at our house and I forgot to ask him what he was planning on making before setting my heart on this bread, thus the poorly conceived pairing.)

This is the perfect way to warm up your kitchen on a chilly afternoon: it’s easy, it smells good and tastes great, and it’s homey and comforting.

Must… resist… “birdwatching” pun!

Blogging requires a lot of mental and emotional resources, and lately I’ve been devoting most of what I have to job-searching and paperwork-completing and angry-phone-call-making. I want to blog more, I hope to blog more, but “I’m sorry I haven’t been writing!” posts are boring to read and just make me feel bad, so I’m going to try not to do that. I do promise to post if I’m planning on abandoning blogging, so assume that any future incidents of radio silence will be only temporary. For my part, I’m going to try to make myself post more of the quickies that cross my mind most days, even if it means forgoing in-depth analysis on some posts. I don’t think I really have any Feminism 101 readers anyway, and besides, there’s already a blog for that. We’ll see how this resolution goes.

So! Here’s what got the ol’ noodle noodling today: A Girl’s Guide to Respectful Girlwatching on Jezebel. Sadie gives some anecdotes about creepy oglers and some reasons for why she likes people-watching women more than men. Both she and some of the commenters seem to feel that the curvalicious ladies are more pleasing to the eye than dudes. I’m actually somewhat sympathetic to this—I am a big fan of female beauty, and although I enjoy looking at naked dudes as much as the next straight woman, I see where people are coming from (…hee) when they make cracks about guys looking goofy naked.

But of course, this ignores that millions of ways that people, regardless of gender or sexual orientation, are trained to seek out, recognize, and appreciate female beauty. Ads, TV, movies, modeling, magazines, whatever, they’re all trying to associate their product with beauty, and beauty, they pretty universally tell us, resides in women. We have been taught to find beauty in women. Men, we are left to assume, are just sort of… there. They are not for display because they give us nothing worth displaying. But imagine the many varieties of male beauty we might suddenly discover if only we were trained to look.

We have no problem acknowledging that trained photographers are more likely to be able to find the beauty in a moment or vista than those of us who have not been taught to look at the world that way. Yet when it comes to our preferences in human appearances, we believe our sense of what is and is not beautiful, of where to find beauty, is innate, objective, and universal.

And that’s without even getting into the ways in which the things that are most valued in female beauty are themselves often a construction—clear skin and big eyes aped with makeup, slim waists honed through dieting and exercise and faked by “support garments” and tailored clothing, long legs an illusion created by stilettos, and boobs! Forget padding and implants, even all-natural, unembellished boobs, as we most often think of them, are a construction. Breasts don’t stay high and round and small-nippled well into middle age if they are left to their own devices. They sag and flatten and stretch. And I bet neither the Jezebel commenters nor Isaac Mizrahi, whom Sadie quotes as saying, “I mean, breasts! They’re beautiful! All breasts!” were thinking of “National Geographic boobs” when they sang the praises of those luscious curves.

I’m meandering, so in case it’s not clear, let me state outright: I’m not criticizing Sadie, who wrote a short piece on a topic tangentially related to this post, for not shoehorning in some analysis on why so many of us seem to feel that women are more aesthetically pleasing than men. She doesn’t even make the mistake of saying women are objectively or obviously more beautiful than men. But her post touches on an argument I’ve had more than once, where someone says, “Women are just more fun to look at!” and I’m forced to say, “I kind of agree, but I think we need to look at what makes us say that.” And then it gets awkward and shouty.

But it’s an argument worth making over and over, because letting the presumption that women are inherently better-looking than men stand feeds into and provides an excuse for treating women as decorative objects, for expecting them to be on display all the time, for equating them with sex.

This blog is not dead

Just napping. In case anyone was worried.

In happier news

Yesterday a girl drove in the winning runs in a Little League World Series game for possibly the first time ever.

Katie Reyes hit a two-run single in the top of the sixth to help Vancouver, British Columbia, rally for a wild 14-13 victory Tuesday over Ramstein Air Force Base, Germany, in the Little League World Series. [...]

“I was excited. I was shaking,” Reyes, 13, said about going to the plate for her big hit. She finished with three hits and three runs batted in.

Playing first, Reyes also caught the last out. She joined her happy teammates jumping on the mound after Canada won its last game of the series.

Canada has already been eliminated, so Ms. Reyes won’t be going on to further glory in the tournament this year, but I think she’s already earned plenty. You go, girl.

Goodbye, Teddy

I hope to have coherent thoughts on the death of Senator Kennedy in a few days, but I’m having trouble pulling them together right now.

I will miss him. And although our standard-bearer may have fallen, the best way to heal ourselves and pay tribute to him is to keep fighting. Not in his name, but for his causes. As my boyfriend said, Teddy would probably rather the health care bill be called the “Ted Kennedy Was A Drunken Schmuck Health Care Act” and include a robust public option than have it lionize him but be toothless itself.

Those interested in paying tribute to the late senior Senator from Massachusetts should head to the memorial website his family has set up, TedKennedy.org, and those in the area who are thinking of attending one of the public mourning events in his honor can find information about the arrangements here.

Ask Google

This is the second post in my very occasional series where I answer questions that Googlers found me by asking. Today’s topic: sexual etiquette!

Q: where and how do u touch a womans breasts

A: Where and how she asks you to.

Dear everyone: Being an asshole is not a crime

God, I thought I had said all I had to say about this, but the unending dipshittery of the American public in general and my fellow Bostonians in particular forces me to post on the arrest of Professor Gates once again.

Allow me to enumerate some of the asshattery:

• Last night, the president gave a long national address about healthcare. Today’s main headline on the Boston Globe? “Obama scolds Cambridge police.”
• The cop, Sgt. Crowley, went on a local conservative talk radio show to give his version of events (Summary: Gates just would not shut up!), and said he thinks it’s “regrettable” that the president or anyone else would comment on the story without knowing all the facts. A Globe blogger basically calls Crowley a hero for not voicing full-throated agreement with the hosts’ bilious criticism of Obama, instead just demurely refusing to disagree. (So much more, after the jump.)

Fucking despicable

Ben Roethlisberger: He must be innocent, because otherwise how could he have gotten away with it for so long?

Super-famous quarterback Ben Roethlisberger is the subject of a civil lawsuit that alleges he raped a woman employed at a hotel where he stayed last summer. (Anyone clicking that link, be warned: The story includes a detailed description of the alleged rape.) If he did what he’s accused of, that’s pretty fucking despicable, if soul-crushingly predictable, all by itself.

But the plague-rat topping on this shit-and-thumbtacks pie is Roethlisberger’s lawyer’s statement defending his client:

“Ben has never sexually assaulted anyone. The timing of the lawsuit and the absence of a criminal complaint and a criminal investigation are the most compelling evidence of the absence of any criminal conduct,” David Cornwell said in a statement. “If an investigation is commenced, Ben will cooperate fully and Ben will be fully exonerated.” [Emphasis mine]

OK, Ben’s lawyer, let’s clear something up here. Around 60% percent of rapes are never reported at all, and even those people who do work up the strength to go to the police don’t always do so immediately. You, a fucking lawyer, who practices law for a living, and who felt qualified to give a detailed opinion on another high-profile athlete rape case, you have surely at least heard a rumor that rape is hugely underreported, even if you were not aware of the exact numbers. Look, you even said this relatively decent thing a while back, when it wasn’t your client who was making headlines:

“Most of those times, it’s mixed signals, or someone changes their mind before they complete the act,” Cornwell says. “And that means you have to stop — no means no, anytime.”

OK, that “mixed signal” bit is gross, but that thing at the end! Where no means no even if you’re already in the middle of things! That’s fucking great! That’s perfect! Way to go!

But now you’re screwed, because now I know you have at least a cursory grounding in rape law. You must, because anyone who tells athletes, “A one-night stand is a ticking time bomb,” but also knows that consent can be withdrawn at any time, no matter what must be getting it from places like this recent Maryland case, because you’re sure not getting it from our culture, and you’re clearly not getting it from feminists or people working with or for victims of sexual assault.

So! You know something about rape and the justice system! So you must also know that that thing you said? About how if someone doesn’t go to the cops soon enough he or she is clearly making it up? That’s a filthy fucking lie. And it’s a filthy fucking lie that damages not only the woman involved in this case, but every other person who does report being sexually assaulted—that would put them in the minority, remember—because every time that lie is repeated, especially by lawyers and cops and judges, it makes it harder for dozens, hundreds of other people to get a conviction. And since only about 6% of rapists ever see a day of prison, I’d say it’s hard enough as it is.

I know the “I swear it was consensual” defense isn’t particularly original, but you really ought to consider it. It has the enormous advantage of helping only one (accused) rapist walk free.

Being angry and black is a crime in Cambridge

I mean, it’s a crime most everywhere, but Professor Henry Louis “Skip” Gates, Jr., is certainly the most high-profile person to get arrested for it in a while.

For those who haven’t yet heard the story, Professor Gates, director of Harvard’s W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research, was returning home from a week-long trip to China and discovered that his front door was stuck. He and the driver from the car service he was using attempted to force it open, and the sight of two black men trying to break open a door prompted a neighbor to call the Cambridge police. A cop showed up after Gates had gotten in through the back door, asked that Gates prove he lived there, and then, after some kind of unfriendly exchange, arrested Gates for “tumultuous” behavior.

The cop’s report, which the Boston Globe had made available but then took down without explanation, said that Gates accused him of racism, told him he didn’t know who he was messing with, and made some kind of incoherent “your mama” remark. Gates says he simply requested, repeatedly, the cop’s name and badge number, and when the cop left his house without replying, he followed the officer to his front porch, where he was arrested.

I think this is one of those instances where the truth actually does, in all likelihood, lie somewhere between the two versions. I think that Gates—tired, jetlagged, understandably outraged—probably said something not-nice to the cop, although it probably did not contain the phrase “your mama.” And I believe the cop did refuse to give Gates information, an explanation, or at least a cursory apology for inconveniencing him.

But even if we try to cast this in a light that is as friendly as possible to the police—for example, if Gates were belligerent and loud from the second they showed up, if he swore at them and refused to cooperate, if he threatened them with lawsuits and ignored protestations that they were just doing their jobs (none of which I believe to be true)—the Cambridge PD is still clearly guilty of, at the very least, abusing its power. Cops really, really don’t like it when they think people don’t respect them, and Gates probably was guilty of insufficient asskissery. But we have laws against throwing people in jail for saying shit that the authorities don’t like, so it was the cop’s duty to swallow his anger, bid Gates a polite goodbye, and leave. But he didn’t do that; he decided to teach Gates a lesson about how you talk to cops.

And, realistically, his decision was almost certainly affected by Gates’ race. I can’t read the dude’s mind, obviously, but even if he weren’t thinking anything so blatantly racist as “I’ll put this uppity black dude in his place,” he probably would have been a little more willing to believe Gates’ statement that he lived there if Gates were white. He probably would have found it a little easier to ignore his anger and wounded pride at not being deferentially sucked up to. He probably would have been less inclined to see Gates’ heated remarks as disturbing the peace rather than justifiable anger that will pass when its cause is removed. He probably would have been less likely to think he could get away with arresting a Harvard professor if that professor’s wealth and powerful connections were written all over his pale skin.

That’s the kind of racism many people face and many of us perpetuate today. There are still people in white hoods, yes, and people willing to say out loud and without apology that Mexicans are lazy and black people are thieves and Asians are emotionless mathbots, but there are also a lot more people whose opinions have been shaded by these stereotypes in ways that can be hard for their holders to detect. All of us have received these messages from our culture, and all of our thinking has been, in varying degrees, shaped by these messages. Even those of us who fight against discrimination and work to eliminate our own prejudices whenever we can identify them.

The Cambridge police and prosecutor’s office have announced they will drop all charges against Gates. In a few days they will probably release a statement about how they don’t engage in racial profiling, and some of that officer’s best friends are black. But even if no one involved in the situation thought they were treating Gates any differently than they would treat a white man, their actions still seem racist, and they need to be called on it.

Charges against Professor Gates dropped

I just saw a breaking news report on TV announcing that the Cambridge PD was dropping all charges against Professor Henry Louis Gates, who was arrested yesterday for trying to get into his own house.

Update: Finally! A linkable source. This post will be updated when I have a source to link, and I’ll put up a real post later today.

Saturday Afternoon Sweets

Two weeks ago a massive Thunderstorm of Doomly Doom rolled through my neighborhood and lightning struck about three inches from my bedroom window. (OK, a slight exaggeration, as I’ve found no evidence of lightning strike on our property, but I was awakened from a dead sleep thinking a bomb had gone off because the thunder was so loud and sharp, and my housemate who’d been looking out the window at the time was temporarily blinded. So it was very nearby.) This knocked out our internet completely for over a week, and after that access was still spotty as our ISP had to diagnose and fix what were apparently many and diverse problems caused by the storm. So that is why I have not been posting! Is my excuse sufficient? Do you all forgive me? What about if I give you cookies?

Chocolate Chip Cookies Cockaigne, from The Joy of Cooking
Recipe recreated here.

Those of you who can remember aaallll the way back to the previous two Saturday Morning Sweets may be surprised to see a baked good that most decidedly does not involve strawberries, as there were still two more weeks in June for me to make strawberry-based confections. Sadly, the near-constant rain all month kept most of our berries from ever ripening, and the few season-bearing plants we have don’t produce enough for recipes like strawberry bread. (NB: Use very juicy, very fresh berries. Also, swap out cinnamon for the nutmeg, add a splash of OJ, and bake in a loaf pan. This is gone before it cools at my house.)

These cookies include some finely ground rolled oats—added with the chocolate chips, not whisked into the dry ingredients—for extra chewiness. They were definitely chewy, but the chewiness was, unsurprisingly, more reminiscent of that of oatmeal cookies than that soft-in-the-middle,-crisp-on-the-edges texture of ideal chocolate chip cookies. Still, I may make this recipe again, because these had the delightful heft and thickness of oversized cookies while avoiding their dangers: underbaked centers, drop-of-a-hat crumbling, looking better than they taste. Plus, I bet these would travel better than regular chocolate chip cookies.

Bonus fun fact! As I was posting this I was wondering why certain recipes in the Joy have “cockaigne” in the title, since Cockaigne is a Medieval conception of the Land of Plenty—Utopia, Arcadia, Big Rock Candy Mountain, you get the idea. At first I thought it might just be a let’s-not-mention-calories code for “particularly decadent and/or chocolaty,” but eventually I accidentally saw a recipe that wasn’t in a dessert section and discovered that that’s not the case. But through Wikipedia, I learn:

In the popular cookbook The Joy of Cooking, the author’s favorite recipes include “Cockaigne” in the name, (e.g., “Fruit Cake Cockaigne”), explained in the foreword to the 1975 edition as after the name of the Becker country home in Anderson Township, near Cincinnati, Ohio.

So now I know! And you do, too.

Sex: It’s all about ejaculate

So a recent study found that daily ejaculation improves the quality of men’s sperm. This isn’t really surprising, since emptying out the built-up stores causes the body to make a fresh batch, and fresher means it’s had less opportunity to become damaged. That part’s all well and good, and may be helpful to couples trying to conceive.

But look how it’s being reported:

Daily sex makes for healthier sperm

Having sex every day improves the quality of men’s sperm and is recommended for couples trying to conceive, according to new research. [...]

Frequent sex does decrease semen volume but for most men this is not a problem.

“It seems safe to conclude that couples with relatively normal semen parameters should have sex daily for up to a week before the ovulation date,” [head researcher Dr. David Greening of Sydney IVF] said in a statement.

That’s weird, right? I mean, the study specifically states that daily ejaculation produces better sperm, not daily sex. I have it on reliable authority that in most men, ejaculation can be achieved without sex, even if you have a pretty broad definition of “sex.” Unless you take a completely dude-centric view of sex, in which case I guess it makes total sense. Every erection is entitled to a woman-hole to stick it in, so if a dude ejaculates, there must have been sex. What the holes think doesn’t count, so it’s not sex unless a dude ejaculates.

But I find this advice disturbing not just because it exposes a rather narrowminded chauvinistic leering and misogynistic unenlightened take on ejaculation and its relationship to sex, but also because it’s directed at infertile couples.

I have no personal experience with infertility. I am not trying and never have tried to conceive; my close friends either have not had or have chosen not to tell me about any problems with infertility; and I have not, unlike Dr. Dude here, worked with any infertile couples. And yet I am somehow aware that sex might not always be superawesome happyfuntimes for infertile couples who are stressed out, undergoing treatments that mess with their reproductive systems, and feel required to have sex on a schedule whether they feel like it or not.

Says one infertile woman, who is writing an article trying to convince readers that infertile couples can have hott sexxx while trying to conceive:

[Y]our libido hits as far as the queasy notch on the love-O-meter, and every time you think of sex, you think of the once fun, carefree thing you and your husband used to do, but now is a reminder of the life you cannot create, and the rigidness, calendars, Dr. appointments and finances that goes a long with trying to.

Julie of A Little Pregnant describes one of her and her husband’s infertility-occasioned rolls in the hay as the “Worst sex ever“:

Sad and freaked out to begin with, I felt no desire whatsoever. [...]

But to accomplish the goal, the well-placed deposit of a copious spermy payload, I willingly played along. What else could I do but pretend to enjoy it? The goal was indeed accomplished, with heroic effort and no small relief.

I lay awake for a long time afterward. Not only did my body feel misused, not only did I feel angry and sad about the likely failure of this cycle, but I also felt small and dishonest to boot.

I don’t know about you, but that description hit me like a punch to the gut when I first read it because it sounds so much like how some people talk about sexual assaults they’ve survived, particularly rapes in the context of abusive relationships. And that is clearly not the case here. Julie makes it clear that both she and her husband were consenting, if not enthusiastic, and that he enjoyed it as little as she did. But the playing along to get it over with, the pain, the used feeling, the self-hatred, they’re all part of a familiar refrain for those of who’ve read victims’ accounts of sexual assaults.

And this doctor is saying to infertile couples desperate to conceive, desperate enough to snatch at long shots and eke a glimmer of hope out of as-yet-unverified studies, “Hey, if you really want a kid, just inflict this sickening pain on each other every single day.” And media outlets around the world are repeating this assvice with prurient, winking, lascivious glee. Way to go, guys.

Thought for the day

Sorry to have gone silent for a bit there. I forgot to mention that I was venturing south of the Mason-Dixon for a relative’s wedding, and I was way too busy to post. But I’m back in good ol’ Massachusetts now, where people aren’t completely taken aback by self-deprecating humor, and I’ll probably start posting regularly again this weekend/next week.

For now, I give you a quick thought for the day: Why is that with so many Congresspeople using federally administered healthcare, a large number of whom are vehemently opposed to single-payer healthcare and all of whom have ready access to a national audience, we have not heard one horror story of the evils of government-run healthcare? To be sure, anyone in Congress is probably wealthy enough not to have to delay or forgo care—if the health insurance plans they get through their elected offices fail them, they can buy supplemental insurance or pay extra costs out of pocket. But if they had to resort to that, why haven’t they said anything? How far would a little anecdata go? Imagine a Representative on the Sunday morning talk shows saying, “I was told I’d have to wait three months to see a cardiac specialist, so I bought supplemental insurance so I could get taken care of sooner. What about all those Americans who aren’t as fortunate as I am? How long will they have to wait to see a specialist?” Or a Senator complaining, “My federal health insurance wouldn’t allow me to see the family doctor I’ve been going to for 20 years. Luckily for me, I can afford to pay her out of pocket, but what happens to working-class Americans? Do they have to give up their trusted medical practitioner?” Middle class people who don’t realize how much cheaper government-run healthcare would be would eat that shit up. (Of course, the 46 million Americans who have no health insurance probably won’t be much bothered by these complaints, since they people who can’t go to the doctor don’t have preferred practitioners and may have been delaying much-needed medical care for years, but the anti-single-payer folk don’t seem too concerned about them anyway.) The fact that not one Congresscritter has come out with such a woeful tale of how big government ruins everything makes me suspect they don’t exist. Which means, of course, that those opposing the government option are even more despicable, because they know themselves to be lying.

Sub-thought for the day: Why do anti-single-payer pro-lifers think it’s evil to “put a bureaucrat between you and your doctor” when they’re talking about providing healthcare to the poor but think it’s great, awesome, super-duper necessary when they’re talking about pregnant women? I’ve been chewing on that one for weeks and somehow the only answer I can come up with is “misogyny.” But that can’t be right…

Maxim: We are prevented from acting professionally by our proximity to BOOOOOOBS

My housemate Alexx, whose unexpected receipt of Maxim first alerted me to the whole all-gamers-must-love-tits crapfest, tried to opt out of Maxim and get his refund online so that things might process sometime this century. But when he submitted his form, all he got was this lousy ultra-charming error message:

OOPS?

You know, we could try and say this was part of the plan…

But guess what? We’re too busy trying to act like we’re working and not just looking at hot chicks to care.

<3 the Maxim Dev Team

Ha! Check out this hilarious and edgy error message, you guys! No one could be mad that we are preventing them from getting their money back when we are such lovably cheeky little scamps!

Because guys are incapable of not staring at tits. It’s in their DNA! Because “I was too busy sexually harassing that model” is an awesome excuse for not doing your job. Because only straight dudes would be doing anything at all on the Maxim website, and all straight dudes would be totally sympathetic to this “problem” that Maxim employees have of being unable to tear their eyes away from some hot chick’s cleavage. And because Maxim employees are all straight dudes, so this serious and totally real medical condition afflicts everyone in the office.

It might not seem worth spending any time or energy on breaking down the logic of such a minor and poorly executed joke, but you know what? Encouraging the objectification of women in order to excuse your shitty customer service is doubly offensive, and I’m not going to let it pass without comment.

Do you like video games? Then you must LOVE tits!

Video games and treating women as mindless objects to be used solely for straight male entertainment: They go together like chocolate and cat piss.

I’ve been thinking a lot about assumptions lately, so I couldn’t ignore this little news item: Anyone who has an ongoing subscription to the recently defunct Electronic Gaming Monthly magazine will have all remaining issues substituted with Maxim. Boobies, everybody! Hooray!

Or, you know, not. Not if you’re a straight woman or a gay man or a feminist/ally who isn’t turned on by the unapologetic objectification of women or anyone who dislikes hideously overdone airbrushing.

Subscribers do have the option of writing the publishing company a letter asking for a pro-rated refund of the remaining time on their subscriptions, but they learned about this option through a note attached to the issue of Maxim that was mailed to them in lieu of the copy of EGM they would otherwise have received this month. Thaaat’s right, the ownership just sent people a lad mag without first giving them a chance to opt out, and made opting out as much of a pain in the ass as possible. Clearly it’s cheaper for them to send out a few more copies of a magazine they were already printing than it would be to issue refunds, so they’re trying to keep as many people as possible satisfied with what they’re getting, thereby discouraging as many people as possible from asking for their money back. And the magazine that the publishers assumed would appeal to the great possible number of gamers? Tits R Us.

Because all gamers are dudes, don’tcha know! Straight dudes! Straight dudes who can’t see—let alone touch—an actual set of boobs in real life! Which is why they will positively fucking salivate over soft-core porn! This plan is genius!

And just in case any of you are thinking, “Well, maybe the only other magazines the company publishes are Maxim and Equestrians & Miniature Model-Making Enthusiasts Monthly. Maybe Maxim really was the best option,” let me disabuse you of that notion. For do you know what company now owns and has ceased publishing EGM? It is motherfucking HEARST. Which, I don’t know if you’re aware, is only like the biggest publishing house in the entire goddamn world. According to the ever-reliable Wikipedia, Hearst owns about 200 magazines. They couldn’t have found one in there that people other than straight teenage boys might enjoy? Popular Mechanics? SmartMoney? ESPN The Magazine? For fuck’s sake, even Esquire would be better if you’re convinced that everyone who reads gaming magazine must love titties, because there are at least a few articles and some respectable new fiction in there. But no, it was Maxim that Hearst felt sure would keep the refund requests at bay.

And yet! Even most dudes (who appear to be straight, judging by their near-universal rush to note that they’re totally into boobs! Never fear! No queers here!) who are so into video games that they write about them for a living and would therefore seem to be precisely the group that Hearst was targeting with the Maxim replacement seem to think the idea is pretty fucking stupid. Crazy, right? Even these dudes—who are totally excited about tits! they are eager to remind you!—can conceive of other gamers who might not be. So why couldn’t Hearst?

Saturday morning sweets

Strawberry shortcake might not be the most inventive thing you can do with strawberries, but it is both easy and super delicious.

Strawberry shortcake. Recipe from The Joy of Cooking.

I used what the Joy calls “Fluffy biscuits”—basically, regular biscuits with some sugar added and substituting half-n-half for milk—instead of sponge cake. The biscuits are porous enough to absorb some of the strawberry juice, but dense enough to avoid becoming completely sodden, as sponge cake does.

I’m pretty sure that one of the first rules of macro photography is “Turn your flash off, dummy!” but I like the effect it has here. You lose the texture of the whipped cream, but against the dark background the whole dessert looks a bit like it’s glowing. Like it’s strawberry shortcake from heaven. It tasted pretty divine to me.

Another tragic day

This afternoon a white supremacist walked into the Holocaust Memorial in D.C. and shot and killed a guard before either being shot by another guard or shooting himself, it’s not yet clear.

After two shooting deaths in two weeks committed by conservative extremists and intended to reassert control over traditionally oppressed groups, can we finally, finally agree that maybe there are a few too many people with guns in this country, and it’s OK to at least consider the possibility of terrorist attacks by members of the right-wing fringe?