He Comes Last: Ian Kerner Discovers Raunch Culture 5 Years Late

Kerner: I'll make you come first, OR ELSE

If you've read "She Comes First" and "He Comes Next" you're well aware of the cringeworthy, self-hating* tone of Dr. Kerner's creepy female-worshipping works. To be clear, I'm not opposed to his core idea that women should come first, but Kerner makes clear that he wants to prioritize female pleasure to compensate for that facet of masculinity that can be, shall we say, uncooperative. All the pussy-eating in the world won't distract her forever from the fact that your dick won't get hard, buddy. Sorry.

So in his phoned-it-in blog post for CNN's The Chart Kerner has apparently taken his face out of the vag long enough to notice American "raunch culture." Kerner is Very Concerned:

In the age of Snooki, "Girls Gone Wild," and Tila Tequila, where on Earth is a young woman supposed to find positive female role models? And how are our boys going to grow up to respect female sexuality when the girls themselves seem to be throwing all sexual caution to the wind? From sexting to the mainstreaming of amateur pornography, a new culture of raunchiness has emerged, one in which women aren’t just participating—they’re often taking the lead.

Hear that ladies? Don't expect respect when women who aren't you are captured on video doing things they probably didn't want to do anyway. Apparently the apex of raunch culture is creating a perpetually throbbing hard-on in our nation's young men rendering them completely incapable of respecting women. And you know what ladies? It's all your fault.

Except Kerner has kind of missed the boat: the peak of raunchy public female sexuality that Ariel Levy wrote about in "Female Chauvinist Pigs" in 2006 has actually kindof passed. Joe Francis got married, Tila Tequila is adopting a baby and Jenna Jameson isn't even doing porn anymore. JWOWW's decidedly raunch fashion line, "Filthy Couture," never even shipped.**

What Kerner doesn't seem to realize is that Snooki and the Jersey Shore team are parodies of a raunch culture now so passe the only place those so five minutes ago Ed Hardy fashions can be worn is in an imaginary, retrograde South Jersey fantasyland. Bad for MTV, good for the rest of us.

And Kerner might take notice that two women were this close to the Oval Office two years ago and are in awesome or terrifying positions of power right now. Obviously heralding feminist achievement doesn't get CNN pageviews but Kerner ought to take his face out of the muff long enough to take notice of Hillary, Sarah, Nancy, Tina Fey, and any number of the tons of awesome female role models out there. Are there enough women in positions of real power? Of course not. But there are more than enough to provide real alternatives to parents who feel overwhelmed by the Snookis and Tila Tequilas of the world.










*"He Comes Next" doesn't even appear on Kerner's own website listing of books he's written. This guy really, really doesn't think you deserve blow jobs, guys.





**the link http://filthycouture.com/ automatically redirects to http://jwoww.com/ now.

The Anti-Gift Guide: Tajazzle

Via Gawker.


Do you need a 3 step system (a $200 value) to make your vagina even remotely palatable to your greaseball boyfriend? Are you sure he isn't gay? Well, if you insist, I guess you could think about using Tajazzle, the knockoff, downscale, Jersey Shore version of LA "sensation" Vajazzling. It's the Ultimate in Personal Confidence!

But if you buy the Tajazzle sensational confidence-building system you won't have only a vagina with a cheap rhinestone tattoo, you'll also get some "powder" made with the "finest, all-natural ingredients" to "keep you dry when it gets hot." (I hate to be a curmudgeon here, but isn't being wet when things "get hot" sort of the point?) You also get Tajazzle Flavor roll-on, which I'm guessing are upcycled leftover roll-on lip glosses from the 1980s. If you order now you'll get raspberry and honey flavors to roll on all your...private areas. So...um...delicious sounding.

You can "live your fantasy as a Radiant Goddess" with Tajazzle and, I'm not making this up, "Put some bling in your fling." As they say, "It's totally empowering to be wearing so little and still have something very secret only someone special can see."

I think we clearly need to add "Tajazzle" to our lexicon. Anyone have suggestions for what the word should mean? Leave them in the comments.

Can't get enough of the horrible infomercial? Watch part 2!

Texas to Receive Millions in Federal Anti-Trafficking Funds?

Texas is widely considered a hub for human trafficking and by some estimates, 25% of all human trafficking victims wind up in the Lone Star State. Dallas Cowboys stadium will play host to the Superbowl in 2011 and in preparation the state Attorney General Greg Abbott is committing funds to fight the "influx of human trafficking" expected to take place around the event.

From the Star-Telegram:

Abbott cited a report from a Florida task force estimating that tens of thousands of women and minors were trafficked in the Miami area during the last Super Bowl. The game is considered "one of the biggest human-trafficking events in the United States," he said. "We know that the sex traffickers and the girls they enslave are going to be out in full force," Abbott said. "We are going to be helping out by putting boots on the ground."

The lege has made efforts to increase punishment for "traffickers" (read: pimps) to 25 years in prison, at least half of which must be served before parole, among other consequences. Change.org called last month for more support for shelters for victims of trafficking and, lo and behold, a $15 million per year bill to establish support services for victims of trafficking sponsored by Our Fair Senator John Cornyn (R-TX) has just passed the Senate unanimously.*

If the bill passes the House, the grant program would provide funding for 6 states to pilot services for victims and to increase prosecution of pimps and traffickers.

Speaking of which, Youthradio.org's recent story on human trafficking revealed one pimp's "business plan" which, suprisingly, did not include any mention whatsoever of the Big Game this February. The Pimp Author did talk about setting up an "international operation" and attending the Players Ball in Las Vegas, so perhaps the federal prosecutors should go there instead of trying to use government money to score tickets to the Superbowl.

Or get in touch with Big Al in Florida.




*How interesting that a press release heralding this bill's passage appears on the cosponsor's (Wyden, D-OR) Senate webpage but not Cornyn's.

The Panopticon of Slut Shaming

A panopticon prison at Presidio Modelo, Isla De la Juventud, Cuba.


Roy Baumeister, author of "Sexual Economics: Sex as Female Resource for Social Exchange in Heterosexual Interactions," which blew my mind when I read it on Mark Regnerus' recommendation a few years ago, has a new book out, Is There Anything Good About Men? I sure hope he answers that question, because I'm dying to know.

In a recent blog post on the Oxford University Press website, Baumeister writes that men incur more "costs" for sex, by which he means men "pay" more for it. Women suffer more "consequences" for sex, which can be measured in social "cost." Case in point: a woman's "value" goes down if she gets a reputation for "selling" at too low a price, i.e., being labeled a "slut."

Baumeister argues that by every available measure, men have a higher sex drive than women. While I agree that by the indicators currently available (including frequency of fantasy, sex, and masturbation) men do show a higher desire than women, he fails to note that we don't yet have a way of measuring how women are successfully curbed by our social system that promises punishment if they act out sexually and that they are collectively responsible for their own sexual regulation. He might want to check in with Cindy Meston about this question.

I can't imagine a more effective way of curbing sex drive than by the constant threat of disease, social ostracism, and possibly death(!!!). Patrick Carnes, the founder of the Gentle Path sex addiction treatment program, writes about the effectiveness of sex-negative culture at causing "sexual anorexia" in his book by the same name(p. 47). Sexual anorexia creates in its sufferers a fear of sexuality and its consequences so great that all desires are sublimated.

Baumeister (and Kathleen Vohs, with whom he has written about sexual economics) makes the clear case in his seminal article that women moderate their sexual behavior because they want (and need) to maintain their social and sexual "value" by selling at a high price to get men's "resources." Regnerus supports this finding in his new book on college student sexual behavior, Premarital Sex in America.

On college campuses, the fiercest guards of sexual behavior are women, not men. Women police eachother's sexual behavior and shame eachother for "selling" at too low a price: witness the number of girls who spread rumors about so-and-so's having sex under the wrong circumstances, with the wrong guy, or with too great a frequency. You see this shaming at its ugliest when women respond to another woman's sexual assault with questions about whether she was really raped at all.

The idea, of course, is that if a woman you associate with sells at a low price that affects your own value, so you can slut-shame her away from you and maintain your own high price. Men don't care--they'll take whatever sex they can get.

Foucault described the panopticon, a prison where the guard can see all inmates at once but they can't tell if they're really being watched, as the perfect way to create a system of self-enforcement to make naturally individualistic humans compliant for maximum profit. The panopticon of slut shaming puts women in a position of monitoring eachother while never being sure if the people in power--men--are really paying attention.

New CDC STD Surveillance: Texas Doin' Its Part for the Dirty South

In WWII we understood that condoms prevent STIs. Someone ought to tell Rick Perry.

Today is the day that public sexual health nerds like myself wait for all year: the new CDC STD Surveillance Report is out! In support of the "Most Sexually Active City in America" crown bestowed upon us by Men's Health earlier this fall, the CDC has confirmed again that the good men and women of Texas know how to get it on. Someone ought to tell Rick Perry, what with his embarassing video about the effectiveness of abstinence and all.

Take, if you will, Chlamydia. Of the 50 counties contributing most to the rate of chlamydia in the US, Texas has 5 counties* on the list, none lower than #31. Hook 'em, Gig 'em, and Guns up, y'all! Everyone in the state worked hard to contribute to this one.

For Gonorrhea, which fell to its lowest level nationally since 1941, Texas ranks #14, with more cases (29,295) than any other state. Harris, Dallas and Bexar counties are all in the national top 10 for gonorrhea. Don't mess with Texas!

The rate of my personal favorite, syphilis, puts Texas at #6, by far our most impressive showing. California does beat us on the raw number of cases but our rate is higher, so take that, Golden State! Texas represents more than 10% of the total number of cases in the US.

So, Texans, as much as we might want to win something (especially considering our absence from the national sports stage this year) let's all decide to use condoms and get tested, mmkay?




* #7: Harris County (Houston)
#9: Dallas County
#13: Bexar County (San Antonio)
#22: Tarrant County (Ft. Worth
#31: Travis County (Austin, WOOT!)

Norman, Oklahoma Location of Latest LGBT Suicide, Inferior Academic Institution

After all the jokes swirling around OU's rousting of UT at the Texas State Fair earlier this month, it looks like there's another reason Austin is better than Norman: A teenager in Norman committed suicide after hearing obnoxiously homophobic comments at a City Council meeting about whether the city should designate October as LGBT History Month.

I know some of us may argue with whether OU is a reputable academic institution, but college towns in general tend to be more liberal (indeed, the Council voted in favor of the resolution), and who knows out of what backwater some of these meeting attenders waded to show up and claim that teh gayz were taking over their town and whatthefuckever.

Hopefully this will inspire OU's students to come out in support of their LGBT classmates today.

Craigslist Claims Censorship in Blocking "Adult Services"

Austin's Craiglist homepage, 9/5/10

Score: Greg Abbott, 1; Prostitution, 1,000,000,000. According to today's New York Times, Craigslist has replaced the "Adult Services" link in every US site with a black box reading "Censored." Ouch.

Guess if you want to hire a sex worker you'll have to read the back pages of the Chronicle or the m4w, w4m, w4w, m4m or casual encounters of Craigslist. Man, what will sex workers and their customers DO now? You sure showed 'em, Abbott.

Texas AG Abbott Joins other AGs in Demanding Craigslist Remove Adult Services

Via the Houston Chronicle. Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott joined with his good pal Ken Cuccinelli (R-VA) and 15 other attorneys general in signing a letter to Craigslist demanding the site eliminate its "adult services" category. The letter said, among other things,

"No amount of money [referring to the revenue CL receives from AS ads], however, can justify the scourge of illegal prostitution and the suffering of the women and children who will continue to be victimized, in the market and trafficking provided by Craigslist," the letter said.

I couldn't agree more. Illegal prostitution is definitely the problem. But I would encourage these attorneys general to try digging around in the W4M sections of their local Craigslist and notice that a significant proportion of the ads in the "legit" personals sections are also subtly (or, in some cases, clearly) soliciting money for sex. So eliminating the Adult Services section, which has actual humans review the ads before publishing, would just open up the regular personals sections to an unregulated free-for-all for sex workers and those who may be exploiting illegally trafficked/enslaved women and girls.

But as the poster on my office wall says, "If the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem will look like a nail." If Craigslist's "legitimate" prostitution ads are eliminated, sex workers and those who exploit women will find other ways to drum up business. So maybe it's time to try something really novel and legalize prostitution so sex workers can be protected by the law in a real way.

Tonight: Air Sex Preliminaries!

Last sextravaganza's winner, Slut Truffle

Tonight is exciting for two reasons. First, tonight is the second night of the come one, come all Air Sex Preliminaries! Second, I'll be there as a guest judge! After tonight Air Sex goes on the road to New Orleans, Dallas, Atlanta, my hometown of DC and more on its nation-crossing tour. Tonight's show is sold out so if you haven't gotten your tickets, the sextravaganza comes back to Austin for two nights on September 22 and 29 before the big time championships later this fall.

FDA Approves ella, 5 Day Emergency Contraceptive

The New York Times reported this morning that the FDA approved ella, a 5-day post-sex emergency contraceptive long available in Europe, for use in the United States.

I love thinking about how they put together this research study:

In a head-to-head trial between the two drugs, women who took ella had a 1.8 percent chance of becoming pregnant, while women who took Plan B had a 2.6 percent chance. Experts tracked nearly 1,700 women who randomly received one of the two pills within three to five days of having unprotected sex.

What, did they use Facebook ads? Considering the 5 day window this is a pretty quick recruitment turnaround. Or did they just recruit women who reported that the chances they would have unprotected sex in the next 6 months were good, and gave them ella to have on hand?


Either way, the drug should be out in the 4th quarter of this year, just in time for New Years.

OMG ticket to Obama

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Texas Guv'nah Race In Play: Obama to Speak at UT Monday

OMG POTUS @ UT!! This must mean that the DNC believes Bill White actually has a shot at winning and that a well-timed visit from Teh Prez will help. Yours truly has RSVP'd for a press pass so keep your fingers crossed.

In other news, both of our dear senators voted nay on Elena Kagan's nomination to the Supreme Court.

Also, neither Rick Perry, who was in San Francisco yesterday, nor White has said anything about the Prop 8 ruling. Confidential to RP: going on vacay to San Fran will not help dispel rumors that you are really gay. Just sayin'.

Cornyn to Gay Republicans: "I will do anything you want for $500"

Via the Abilene Reporter News, 100% anti-gay Texas Senator John Cornyn has agreed to attend the Log Cabin Republicans fall fundraiser in Washington this September. From the Senator's own mouth:

“I don’t want people to misunderstand and think that I don’t respect the dignity of every human being regardless of sexual orientation,” Cornyn said.

As in, let's don't talk about the gay stuff and focus on the important things like how many checks y'all can write to the GOP campaign treasure chest, and we can all totally get along! But not like Larry Craig airport bathroom get along though, kay? I think I get what you mean here, Senator, but let's work on those double negatives.

Log Cabin Republians executive director R. Clarke Cooper defended thusly his self-flagellating willingness to engage with politicians who totally hate gay people:

“So our role within the party is to help educate current elected leaders and also educate candidates as to how they can be still true to themselves as far as issues, as far as core conservative, back-to-basics issues without using the gay and lesbian community as a target,” he said.

Yeah...good luck with that. But more importantly, Julie Sunday heartthrob Tucker Carlson is the actual headliner at the September fundraiser. I don't want any person, republican or otherwise, to misunderstand that I don't respect the dignity of and also totally want to bone TC.

Got Questions? Ask the Patriarchy!

Have you ever found yourself in a conversation where the amorphous concept of "the patriarchy" came up and you weren't quite sure you knew what it meant? Well wonder no more. Friend of Julie Sunday and former Austinite Marc of Pandagon has started a new video channel and Formspring feature called "Ask the Patriarchy" and it is hilarious.

He breaks it down thusly:

Are you white, straight, packing a baby cannon--that works--and of the firm belief that the Lord Jesus Christ delivered us the Second Amendment when he descended from Mount Testosterone? Then you are in the right place.

The first video is about whether caring about the BP oil spill makes a guy a pussy. Short answer: yes. Oh, and by the way: it's okay to masturbate on the subway. As long as she's hot.

Can Spider-Man Defeat Texas's Abstinence-Industrial Complex?

images via Andrew Farago

Thanks to my student J for tipping me off to this. Apparently in the late 60s or early 70s Planned Parenthood teamed up with Marvel to do a Spider-Man comic about an evil character trying to trick teenagers into having babies so he can use them for child labor on his planet. Sound familiar?

In the image above, the comic's alien villain, Prodigy, says this about his evil plot:

They'll have babies right and left from ignorance, just as I planned for my giant baby snatch. They're needed for child labor on Intellectia, so we superior ones can put our brain power to conquering other planets!

H.O.L.Y.S.H.I.T. If that doesn't remind you of abstinence-pushing family values neoconservativism I don't know what will.

Now that you know what they want, here's the why:



Spidey figures out what Prodigy is trying to do and hits the nail right on the head:

He wants them to be baby machines! Changing diapers, going nowhere in dead-end jobs...sitting home every night trying to find the time and money to go to a movie or buzz out to the burger stand. What kind of life can they have? No chance to develop, they'll never catch on to his crazy scheme, they'll just be his puppets. What a crafty creep!

Surely the 1970s-era Spider-Man didn't know that Prodigy's evil plan would be...a part of the Republican party's platform and still funded by the federal government in 2010 and a fundamental part of Texas's own educational and social policy.

Spidey's motto "With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility" couldn't be more appropriate to our contemporary sex ed panic and his approach in the comic is spot-on: provide information to people who need it and let them act accordingly. Spider-Man, please come to Texas and defeat our own evil Governor Good Hair!

Health Care Bill Protects Texas' Abstinence-Industrial Complex

this photo is unrelated. just hot.

Texas is home to many enduring mysteries: Tex Mex, straight men in cowboy boots, and abstinence-only programs. While our Attorney General Greg Abbott is busy suing the federal government to prevent the healthcare reform bill from taking effect I hope he realizes that, as reported in the Washington Post this weekend,

A little-noticed provision of the health legislation has rescued federal support for a controversial form of sex education: teaching youths to remain virgins until marriage.

Sigh. Texas receives more funding from the federal government for abstinence programs than any other state and has the dismal teen pregnancy and STI incidence data to show for it. Looks like we can expect continued success* from crazy Abbies like Austin Life Care, Worth the Wait, and the Medical Institute.








*and by "success" I mean "failure."

Randy Neugebauer, BABY KILLER!

Sadly, I was wrong about the "baby killer!" culprit. It was Randy Neugebauer from Lubbock (a crazy person from Lubbock? Weird!).

Texans Embarass Themselves In Congress (Again)

via Gawker. If you listen real close in this video, you can hear someone yell "baby killer!!!" over the din in the House chamber.


According to one (falsely) accused legislator who claims the fevered shouting didn't come from his section:

That is where the Texans sit. Californians are in one row, Teaxans sit behind us. I am being told t's a Texan. The people who know won't give it up. (Sic)

So who could it be? According to the National Right to Life Committee's CapWiz scorecard, 20 Texas representatives have perfect scores on "Life" legislation.


Joe Barton, who himself has a 100% score, told the Washington Post that

he heard the remark and said it did come from in the area of where the Texas and California delegations sit. He said he believes he knows who yelled it, but declined to say anymore.

"I can make a guess," Barton said.

Hmm. It could be Kenny Marchant, from Dallas, who cosponsored both the Sanctity of Human Life and Right to Life Acts. Louie Gohmert, who also has a 100% rating, claims: “I have no idea who yelled it because they were seated behind me and the House was packed,” he said. “Whoever said it was obviously upset, but it was inappropriate for them to yell that.”

My money is on John Culberson who engaged in some theatrical bill-throwing antics during the health care debate:


via Boston.com

And he posted a video yesterday in which he responds to Barney Frank's complaining about the bigoted nature of some of the anti-health care protests by saying "I haven't picked it up if they have. Anybody that's said anything that's bigoted or based on hatred, that's not acceptable." When Frank duh's him by saying, "The TV cameras have shown it on the TV news," Culberson says, "Well, I haven't picked it up if they have." Riiiight. Meet me at the state line, indeed.

Best Day Ever: Dan Savage Read My Blog!

Dan read and posted on my piece on Repent Amarillo. Hallelujah!

Annals of Obvious: Abstinence Programs Prevent Sex In Teens Too Young to Have Sex Anyway

File this under You've got to be fucking kidding me: This week's hulabaloo about a supposedly effective abstinence program demonstrates, yet again, how loath reporters are to read beyond an article abstract. I can't believe that after the Guttmacher data came out last week about the increase in teen pregnancy during the Bush years that anyone is even still fucking testing abstinence programs.

But I digress. Researchers at Penn and the University of Waterloo (Canada) this week published an article in the Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine demonstrating the middling effectiveness of a:

"theory-based abstinence-only intervention that would not meet federal criteria for abstinence programs and that is not vulnerable to many criticisms that have been leveled against interventions that meet federal criteria." (pg. 158)

What was so good about it that it wouldn't meet the brain-exploding federal guidelines? It didn't moralize about how sex will make God hate you and did not disparage the use of condoms (or, presumably, talk about how condoms don't protect your heart).

Perpetual fuddy duddy Sarah Brown, president of the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy, had this to say:

"This new study is game-changing. For the first time, there is strong evidence that an abstinence-only intervention can help very young teens delay sex."

Memo to Sarah Brown: All teens are "delaying" sex. Until they have it, that is.

The study randomized more than 600 African American 6th and 7th graders into 5 different intervention groups, two of which were "comprehensive" in their approach, one of which focused only on condom use, one which was abstinence-only, and a control group that focused on other, nonsexual health behaviors.

In short, teens who were in the abstinence-only group were the least likely to have initiated sex in the 24 month follow up period. Of the participants in the safer sex only group, 52% had initiated sex at the end; 33% of the abstinence-only had debuted. Forty two percent of those in the "comprehensive" groups initiated sex by the end. (p. 156) A heartening finding, though, is that roughly 75% of those who had had sex across all intervention groups used condoms consistently. So, that's good news. (ibid)

Since the study's design was a randomized, control trial, in theory it meets the "gold standard" of public health research. However, the length of the programs (4 hours on 2 or 3 Saturdays, for a total of 8 or 12 hours) raises questions about their longer term efficacy: the most effective prengancy prevention programs are years long, after school type interventions that really keep their hooks in teens for a long time.

Study participants were young--6th and 7th graders--and all African American, so the population isn't generalizable. Also, while participants were followed for 24 months following the intervention, the majority of teens don't initiate sex until after 9th grade, which would have been the latest participants would have been followed. The study authors say:

"Unlike many risk behaviors (eg, cigarette smoking, drug use), sexual intercourse is an age-graded behavior; the expectation is that people will eventually have sexual intercourse." (p. 153)

Or, as I am wont to say, teen virginity is like the Titanic: it's going down. Considering the inconsistency which teens may have access to sex, I think the best abstinence vs. comprehensive trial is going to incorporate educational interventions followed by guaranteed access to sex which study participants will either accept or abstain from. I'm not sure how else we could really measure the success of these interventions because some people are, you know, circumstantially abstinent and not avoiding sex by choice. Such teens inflate the success rate of abstinence programs by virtue of their social awkwardness, not because of any effectiveness of the program per se.

I also question the ethical nature of research that discusses STIs, particularly HIV, and fails to provide information to participants about how to prevent infection. That seems a clear violation of the ethical obligation of medical researchers to, at a minimum, provide the currently accepted standard treatment to all participants**.

The researchers say:

"The ideal abstinence intervention would incorporate principles of efficatious HIV/STI risk reduction behavioral interventions." (p. 153)

The only "efficatious HIV/STI risk reduction" method that I know of is USING FUCKING CONDOMS. Teaching teenagers about STIs/HIV and failing to teach them about condoms seems like a clear violation of ethics. Just sayin'.






**Remember Tuskeegee? That was another "study" that enrolled only African American participants and declined to offer them any treatment or prevention just to see what would happen in late stage, untreated syphilis. (Results: it eats your brain) At the time, penicillin was known to cure syphilis and was already in use. After the public outcry when the study came to light in 1972, the Tuskeegee Experiment was the impetus for Institutional Review Boards and ethical standards in human subjects research that mandate that the standard treatment be given to everyone.