Gloria's Oversexed Mind

GLAD needs your help: tales of gender discrimination

From this morning's mail.

GLAD is collecting stories about people’s experiences with health insurance coverage related to gender transition, to help us determine how we can best address legal concerns in this area.

If you have a story to share, please complete our brief survey at:

http://www.glad.org/health

Please note: because GLAD's work is focused in New England, we are specifically interested in stories from people in the six New England states. If you know of others who may have a story to share, please feel free to forward this post.

All information will be kept confidential.

Fellating fruit bats

My buddy Mike finds the most interesting things. For example, this article about a study of the blowjob habits of the fruit bat.

It raises numerous sexological questions. Do they like it here or there? Do they like it anywhere? Do they like to make a sound? Do they like it upside down?

Read on, me batty ones.

Why do you think blow jobs happen?

This is not a trick question.

Most of us would probably go for the, "Hey, that feels nice," theory of oral sex. But researchers Min Tan, Gareth Jones, Guangjian Zhu, et. al., think there may be more to it than simple pleasure. As part of their attempt to prove a practical function for oral sex, the team conducted a study of the fellatio habits of fruit bats. The paper was published October 28 in the journal PLoS ONE.

via www.boingboing.net

Read the study @PLoS ONE

Patriarchy stinking up the liberal blogosphere

I often complain about the right wing, so I'm happy to report that I have a major problem with the adolescent attitudes towards sex that are just as popular on the left side of the blogosphere.

Yesterday, snickers were heard throughout liberal quarters with the news of a study which demonstrated that male voters on the losing side of the presidential elections experienced a drop in testosterone. "Oooooh!," squealed Wired,"Obama's win turned Republicans into girlie-men, haw haw haw." (Ok, I added the haw-haws.)

Soon every liberal blogger was jumping all over the story. It was such a great excuse to mock their political opponents, how could they not?

I'll tell you how: BY GROWING THE FUCK UP!

Twisting science to have your fantasy pissing contest with political opponents is inexcusable, no matter where it's coming from.  In fact, scientists are studying the correlation between mood and testosterone in an effort, of course, to improve the emotional and reproductive lives of men. They are gathering data (thus far inconclusive but very promising) to demonstrate that emotional reactions to events directly impact hormone production.

It was awfully clever for scientists to select voters in a national election for study because they knew, going in, they could count on an entire group reacting powerfully to a single event, and it would be a fabulous way to see what, if any, effect it had on testosterone levels. The results  showed that testosterone levels dip when men experience feelings of loss, defeat, grief.  This correlates to earlier studies showing spikes in testosterone related to feelings of victory and dominance, which are also in line with studies of other species.  It's a magnificent piece of data which will, in years to come, contribute to drugs and treatments to  assist men in maintaining better emotional and physical health.  It's endocrinology, baby.  It's the real shit.

Meanwhile, another fact: lowered testosterone doesn't make a man less of a man.    It doesn't make you a "girlie-man," which is patriarchal code for gay.  Lower testosterone can, however, make you a man with dampened energy and diminished appetite for life.  Getting fired could lower your testosterone.  Losing a ball game too.  And, after age 40, testosterone levels naturally begin to drop in a significant percent of men -- including, probably, some of the ones who were giggling over this yesterday.

It's the caring, stupid

Oh yeah. Yet another study was just published showing that husbands who do more housework get more sex from their wives. What distinguishes this study from previous studies on the same dull topic discovers it isn't because women are turned on by men mincing around in aprons (though, of course, some of us are...).

It's because (wait for the surprise...wait...wait a little longer)...EUREKA! Men who are genuinely committed to their marriages and who place an emphasis on prioritizing equality, respect, intimacy and communication with their wives get more sex.

Startling Revelation #1:

[One] husband...happily married for 20 years, says housework reflects a deeper bond. ...."Sharing chores reflects a willingness to hold my wife's needs and wants on a par with my own. For us, the key to intimacy is the sharing and minimization of selfishness." His wife, a nurse, agrees.

WOW! You mean men who are responsible, loving and consistently demonstrate that they care about their wives get laid more? WOW. Color me shocked. I'm sure we all figured it was the cold-hearted, lazy-ass, egotistical swine who treat their wives like automatons who got the hot sex.

Startling Revelation #2: men who spend a lot of time at home get more sex than men who are never home.

John Rogitz, a San Diego attorney who has been married for 30 years, says, "If you're both around doing housework, that also means you are alone together, and in a place where both are relaxed and comfortable." He adds, "It's pretty hard to have sex when you're not together in a place that permits it."

A little further down in the story you'll learn the startling downside of housework for men, i.e., Felix Unger doesn't get laid. Yeah, who woulda thunk it?

I can't bear to go on.   Read it and weep:

A new study shows that for husbands and wives alike, the more housework you do, the more often you are likely to have sex with your spouse.

Earlier studies have hinted at this connection for men; the sight of a husband mopping the floor or doing dishes sparks affection in the hearts of many wives. But the more-housework-equals-more-sex link for wives, documented in a study of 6,877 married couples published online recently in the Journal of Family Issues, is a surprise.

via online.wsj.com

Final comment: for me, the problem with the story is the way it's reported. None of the surprising revelations should be a surprise to a sane adult. I don't object to the study itself.  Quite the opposite. I'm relieved when studies prove something that people with common sense already knew, because, well... _(whispering) I think we are in the minority.

Brutality leads to stupidity: new study on spanking

My oh my Oh. I can just imagine the debates this new study will cause all over the known spank-o-verse. Scientists claim that spanking your kids dulls their ability to learn.

Spanking can get kids to behave in a hurry, but new research suggests it can do more harm than good to their noggins. The study, involving hundreds of U.S. children, showed the more a child was spanked the lower his or her IQ compared with others.

Straus and his colleague Mallie Paschall of the Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation in Maryland studied nationally representative samples of two age groups: 806 children ages 2 to 4, and 704 ages 5 to 9. The researchers tested the kids' IQs initially and then four years later.

Both groups of kids got smarter after four years. But the 2- to 4-year-olds who were spanked scored 5 points lower on the IQ test than those not spanked. For children ages 5 to 9, the spanked ones scored on average 2.8 points lower than their unspanked counterparts.

Spanking Leads to Lower IQs, Study Says

Couple of comments. First, I took the AOL poll that accompanied the story and was intrigued to see that while 80% + of people said they'd been spanked as children, over 40% were either ambivalent about it or against the practice. Which means that a good number of people who were spanked grew up with conflicted feelings about their own experiences.

Personally, I am 100% against spanking children. I don't believe that brutal force over a child (or adolescent, for that matter) is a good thing in the long run, even if it does intimidate a child into obedience in the moment. Now, in fairness, I'll say right up front I'm not a parent. However I once was a child, and was smacked and beaten a bit by my mother. Nothing so formal as a spanking, but lots and lots of hitting. What did physical discipline do for me?  For one, it made me feel like crap about myself.  Honestly, I think it kept me from being a sadomasochist and accepting my own sexual identity for years because it instilled in me a horror of hitting other people. I remembered how I felt when my parents raised their hands to me: if I wasn't shocked and stunned by the suddenness and unfairness of them using their superior size to hurt me, then I was completely PISSED OFF. Perhaps some people grow up in households where parents are able to manage to make you feel that you "deserved" a spanking but as far as I was concerned, the physical abuse I got at home only told me that my parents were sociopathic incompetents who should never have had me in the first place. Oops. I guess my emotions are showing. But there it is. See above: it pissed me off.

For me, the argument against using violence is a universal: it does no creature any "good" unless it is your intention to produce a fearful adult.  Violence may be an appropriate response to a direct threat to your life but violence-as-remedy-for-naughtiness is, IMHO, a pile of Victorian horseshit.

I've owned a lot of dogs. One of them was hell-on-a-biscuit and if ever a dog deserved to be thrashed it was him. None of us ever laid a hand on him. We worked the kindness angle. We punished with indifference, and sometimes we yelled (trust me, you couldn't refrain from yelling at this dog). But what would hitting teach him? To fear another human? To obey out of terror? To make him feel like a bad, unloved dog? He was a broken-down, miserable beast when we rescued him. As his guardians, it was our mission to show him a path to happiness and self-confidence, to teach him a new and better way to live, to let him know he was safe and protected in this cold world.

I think if the parents of human beings could maintain their focus on doing things that are REALLY in a child's best interest, if they could remember how much it upset them when their own parents expressed their disappointment or anger through violence, if they could stay PRESENT to their roles as teachers, guardians and protectors, not cops and prison guards, there might be a whole lot less spanking of children and a whole lot more functional a world.

As for spanking adults -- well, I hope everyone knows that I think any mutual consensual sex that makes you wetter or harder is a GREAT thing.

The Curious Case of the Trans Olympian

Olympic officials surprised the world earlier this summer when they announced they were going to test star woman athlete, Caster Semenya, to see if she was, indeed, a female. Her unusually muscular physique and athletic abilities raised questions, and doubt was cast on her sex.

The results are now in. Kind of. Australian newspapers have already rushed to report that she is transsexed and does not have the standard female (or male) equipment. Officials, however, are not ready to issue a statement on the test results, nor do they seem to know what they'll do with the information now that they have it. Caster was raised as a girl, and identifies as a female. She didn't take drugs or otherwise attempt to artificially improve her chances at the games. In other words, she didn't cheat. So why must she pay such a heavy price?

"Our legal advice is that, if she proves to have an advantage because of the male hormones, then it will be extremely difficult to strip the medal off her, since she has not cheated," Davies wrote to the AP. "She was naturally made that way, and she was entered in Berlin by her team and accepted by the IAAF. But let's wait and see once we have the final decision."

Caster Semenya Gender Test Results.

My first observation is a correction: whatever tests she took were taken to determine her sex, NOT her gender. A person's sex describes their reproductive organs; gender is a psycho-social identity. Clearly, Caster is a gender female. Whether she's a biological female is something officials have not yet confirmed or denied.

My next observation is that I feel this has been a nasty invasion of Ms. Semenya's privacy. There have been an incredible number of athletes over the years whose biological sex could have been questioned. There are plenty of trans people who look more like their gender identity than not, but who, biologically speaking, were members of the opposite sex. How do I know? I know simply because there are and have always been trans people among us (or people who science once called hermaphrodites, born with characteristics or the genetic structure of both sexes). For the most part, these are secrets most people take to the grave, or details which only their intimates and doctors will ever know about. Unless the Olympic committee is prepared to test every athlete, the singling out of Ms. Semenya strikes me as unjust. Anyone who's been around long enough to have watched a number of Olympic games knows that each competition brings us mannish girls and effeminate men.   And what about all the tiny little creatures who compete in the floor competitions: will we start testing their sex too to be sure the enchanting little acrobat who flies through the air has the right genetic structure to compete in her category?

I think differentiating between genders is fair but that actual biological sex should not be tested, questioned, or debated unless Olympic officials really believe they can arrive at a fair decision. Otherwise, it's a slippery slope towards banning athletes based on their genetic structure, and ultimately banning transsexed athletes from competing.  In other words: no good can come from this inquiry -- other than publicly humiliating Semanya and her family (her father, for example, is horrified by what's happening: perhaps he is in denial about his beautiful daughter, but so what?). I strongly believe each individual is entitled to privacy when it comes to sexual identity, and that each individual should have the right to decide for him or herself, who will know about any quirks or differentials in their underlying biology.

I support testing athletes for the illegal use of drugs to enhance their performance. I support testing athletes if they are LYING about their sex (e.g., live as one gender but pretend to be a different gender to compete). But my heart goes out to Ms. Semanya for getting caught in the middle of this weird political battle and hope that, with her winner's heart and spirit, she will not only survive this disturbing episode in her life but come out on the other side even stronger for it. At only 18 years old, she is still just a kid. Let her run free.

The sterile hoo-hoo

Thanks to Lisa G. for finding this ad telling women to Lysol their way to better sex lives. That is, assuming women were capable of having one after introducing this crap into their vaginas.

1939 Marital Test: rate your wife

Thanks to Topaz for this must-see sexist oddity from 1939, an actual wife assessment test for husbands to determine whether their spouses are up to snuff. Note that this was prepared by an M.D., reflecting so-called "scientific" attitudes of the day.

My score was so low it went into the minuses.

(patting self on back)

Holy F***ING ^%#(*&!!

All this time, I thought it was because I was from Brooklyn.

That muttered curse word that reflexively comes out when you stub your toe could actually make it easier to bear the throbbing pain, a new study suggests.

Swearing is a common response to pain, but no previous research has connected the uttering of an expletive to the actual physical experience of pain.

"Swearing has been around for centuries and is an almost universal human linguistic phenomenon," said Richard Stephens of Keele University in England and one of the authors of the new study. "It taps into emotional brain centers and appears to arise in the right brain, whereas most language production occurs in the left cerebral hemisphere of the brain."

Swearing Makes Pain More Tolerable

Wow, I never realized I was in so much pain so much of the time!

But surely cursing has been around for a lot LONGER than mere centuries. Who's to say if some of ancient cave-markings we've yet to decode said something along the lines of "Mongo can kiss my furry bollocks" ?

Call for Volunteers: study on menopause

Passing this along for my friends at CARAS:

CARAS-endorsed research study call for volunteers. Please feel free to forward and cross-post!

Seeking Volunteers for a Study Addressing Menopause and Sexuality

What are some of the issues that affect sexuality during menopause? African American and Caucasian women are needed for a study addressing questions about menopause. Participants must be women between the ages of 40 and 60, experiencing menopause, English speaking, currently not taking hormone replacement therapy (HRT) or on hormonal birth control, in a relationship with a sexual partner, and without major medical or mental health problems. Participation requires completing an online or paper survey. Some volunteers who live in the Washington, DC metropolitan area may also be eligible to participate in a substudy that involves a small blood draw. Participants in the blood draw substudy may be compensated.

For more information, please contact Robert Clark, MS, at 301-295-9666 or at menopausestudy1@gmail.com. This research study is sponsored by the Uniformed Services University, Department of Medical and Clinical Psychology, in Bethesda, Maryland. You can access the on-line survey here:

https://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=VcP8PJrCyVoqmjAp9o3BJw_3d_3d

This study was endorsed as a meritorious research project on January 30, 2009 by the CARAS Research Advisory Committee, a community advisory board hosted by the Community-Academic Consortium for Research on Alternative Sexualities (CARAS).

For more information on CARAS, please visit the CARAS website at
https://www.caras.ws .

Download the current CARAS Calendar at
https://www.caras.ws/downloads/CARAS_Calendar.pdf