December 2006 – Page 4

Newsflash: Americans Fuck

NEW YORK (AP) — More than nine out of 10 Americans, men and women alike, have had premarital sex, according to a new study. The high rates extend even to women born in the 1940s, challenging perceptions that people were more chaste in the past.

“This is reality-check research,” said the study’s author, Lawrence Finer. “Premarital sex is normal behavior for the vast majority of Americans, and has been for decades.”

Finer is a research director at the Guttmacher Institute, a private New York-based think tank that studies sexual and reproductive issues and which disagrees with government-funded programs that rely primarily on abstinence-only teachings. The study, released Tuesday, appears in the new issue of Public Health Reports.

The study, examining how sexual behavior before marriage has changed over time, was based on interviews conducted with more than 38,000 people — about 33,000 of them women — in 1982, 1988, 1995 and 2002 for the federal National Survey of Family Growth. According to Finer’s analysis, 99 percent of the respondents had had sex by age 44, and 95 percent had done so before marriage.

Even among a subgroup of those who abstained from sex until at least age 20, four-fifths had had premarital sex by age 44, the study found.

And what about those wholesome 1950s?

Finer said the likelihood of Americans having sex before marriage has remained stable since the 1950s, though people now wait longer to get married and thus are sexually active as singles for extensive periods.

Even your mom fucked before marriage:

The study found women virtually as likely as men to engage in premarital sex, even those born decades ago. Among women born between 1950 and 1978, at least 91 percent had had premarital sex by age 30, he said, while among those born in the 1940s, 88 percent had done so by age 44.

Oh, and marijuana is the biggest cash crop in the US. That’s right: bigger than soybeans, bigger than alfalfa, bigger than corn. And with no subsidies.

Unfortunately, all this fucking goes unacknowledged, so that the pearl-clutchers can purse their lips and wag their fingers at girls who dare get caught fucking and toking:

Donald Trump gave Miss USA a reprieve Tuesday, allowing the boozing beauty queen to retain her title after she agreed to enter rehab and undergo drug testing.

In a moment of television drama filled with redemptive tears and longing looks, a tough-talking Trump, co-owner of the pageant, turned soft and decided to forgive Tara Conner for her debauched behavior. . .

Conner won the title in April and moved to New York. Since then, she has partied hard, admitting she frequented clubs, where she threw drinks back — despite being underage. She turned 21 on Monday.

Miss USA is considered a role model, and her conduct must reflect that, and behavior such as underage drinking is prohibited, a Miss Universe Organization spokeswoman said.

At the news conference, in a tear-choked voice, Conner said, “In no way did I think it would be possible for a second chance to be given to me.”

Turning to Trump, she said, “You’ll never know what this means to me, and I swear I will not let you down.” . . .

Trump said Conner would be able to move back into her swank pad at the Trump Palace. But he also cautioned that if she screwed up again she would be jettisoned.

“She knows that if she even makes the slightest mistake from here on she will be immediately replaced,” he said.

Awwww, isn’t that sweet? She got to keep her crown (you know, the one that she got because she paraded around in a bikini so she could display her wholesomeness and purity), but she had to grovel at the feet of Donald Trump to do it, and promise to go to rehab, and tell some sob story about how it was The Big City that had corrupted her. I suppose the pearl-clutchers back home in Kentucky get to keep their illusions that way: New Yorkers may fuck before marriage, and drink when they’re just shy of 21, but that’s Not What Good People In The Heartland Do.

Except for the part where it is, in fact, What Good People In The Heartland Do. Frequently.

Yes, despite abstinence-only sex education, despite hellfire-and-brimstone from their preachers, despite True Love Waits and the Silver Ring Thing, despite Purity Balls and Purity Pledges and creepy covering by daddy, 95% of Americans — male and female — will fuck before their wedding day.

Not that everyone can believe it, or wants to (there’s no federal funding to be had for your abstinence-only program if you admit, despite overwhelming evidence, that it just doesn’t work). And, without the specter of those naughty, nasty girls having sex when they shouldn’t, what would the Concerned Women of America have to be Concerned about?

However, Janice Crouse of Concerned Women for America, a conservative group which strongly supports abstinence-only education, said she was skeptical of the findings.

“Any time I see numbers that high, I’m a little suspicious,” she said. “The numbers are too pat.”

Yes, I trust the “suspicions” that the numbers are “too pat” from a woman whose entire livelihood is wrapped up in being a panty-sniffing moral scold. What’s that quote — the one that says that a person whose job depends on not understanding something will never understand it?

There’s big money to be had in the War on Sex, just as there is in the War on Drugs. Not just federal funds for abstinence and drug-prevention programs, but cushy think-tank gigs, political funds, propaganda funds a la Maggie Gallagher, grants for studies, honoraria for presenting bullshit theories to eager audiences, consultant fees, slush funds, wingnut-welfare publishing deals, all manner of Scaife-funded initiatives, pundit jobs, ministries, pamphlets, and government jobs. And that’s just money — there’s power and influence to be had as well, as the old “family values” and “restoring morality” and “tough on crime” stances win elections. (And it always makes for a great sex=death narrative on teevee.))

But none of that stuff works. And I don’t think they really want it to, either. But they don’t want what does work to take hold here — stuff like comprehensive, nonjudgmental sex education and birth control, abortion on demand, comprehensive social support networks, the medicalization of drug addiction, working on reducing demand rather than supply, education and opportunity for all.

They don’t want that not just because there’s no percentage in treating people like sane adults, but also because doing so would mean that their particular obsessions with Everyone Else’s Behavior (and concomitant failure to Look In A Damn Mirror Occasionally) would be pushed to the margin and returned to the domain of tinfoil-hatted cranks, where they belong.

Miscarriage of Justice

This is just horrible: the Georgia Supreme Court has upheld (pdf) a 10-year sentence meted out to a 17-year-old because a 15-year-old girl performed consensual oral sex on him.

Apparently, the statutory rape laws have changed since the defendant was convicted, but he’s not getting the benefit of that. The new laws would exempt consensual relations between teenagers close in age — since the whole point of statutory rape laws is to protect children and teens from adult predators, not from consensual sex with their peers.

I’m having a bit of trouble untangling all the details, but it appears that the sexual contact was public and videotaped, and the reason the tape came to the attention of authorities was that one of the girls participating, a 17-year-old, had been impaired during the filming, didn’t feel that she gave meaningful consent, and informed her mother (from what I gather, statutory rape wasn’t an issue with her because of her age). But the 15-year-old was clear that she consented, and the conviction was for the 15-year-old.

Another bit of weirdness is that the defendant would have been better off having sex with the 15-year-old rather than getting a blow job from her, since the law treats PIV sex as less serious than sodomy. Meaning, I suppose, that men who have sex with teenage boys are treated more harshly than men who have sex with teenage girls.

The fact that this defendant’s sentence has been upheld even though what he has been charged with is no longer a crime because of his age relative to the girl involved is an outrage. And I definitely agree with Jessica — the idea that teenage girls who have sex with their peers are automatically victims is really damned insulting. There’s protection, and there’s paternalism — and trying to criminalize consensual sexual contact between peers is paternalism (as is treating consensual gay sex as more of a crime than consensual het sex).

UPDATE: Egalia at Tennesee Guerilla Women has more on the case, including this explanation of why he wouldn’t take the deal that was offered to him:

The prosecutor, David McDade, the district attorney in Douglas County, west of Atlanta, says he has repeatedly offered Mr. Wilson the opportunity to resolve the case with a plea deal, adding that he would have to be treated similarly to the other defendants in the case, who are serving five- to seven-year prison sentences with a chance at parole. They, too, will have to register as sex offenders.

Mr. Wilson is adamant that he will not plead.

“Even after serving time in prison, I would have to register as a sex offender wherever I lived and if I applied for a job for the rest of my life, all for participating in a consensual sex act with a girl just two years younger than me,” he told a reporter for Atlanta magazine last year, adding that he would not even be able to move back in with his mother because he has an 8-year-old sister. “It’s a lifelong sentence in itself. I am not a child molester.”

The Times article clears up some details: The state had a Romeo and Juliet exception in place for PIV intercourse, but not for oral sex; the Georgia Legislature changed the laws in response to Genarlow Wilson’s conviction, but the Georgia Supreme Court upheld the sentence because it was issued under the old law; it also gives a description of what happened on the tape:

On New Year’s Eve in 2003, Mr. Wilson and several friends rented a hotel room for a party at which they planned to have plenty of alcohol, marijuana and sex. One friend, goofing around with a video camera, captured much of the action on videotape. A 17-year-old girl reported after leaving the party that she had been gang raped. The tape showed that she was severely intoxicated.

A second girl, 15, also attended the party, but did not drink or smoke. She had what she later said was consensual oral sex with Mr. Wilson. But according to the law, a 15-year-old is below the age of consent. Mr. Wilson went to trial on charges of rape and aggravated child molesting.

After watching parts of the tape, the jury decided that Mr. Wilson had not raped the older girl. But it was bound by law to find him guilty of molesting the 15-year-old. Jurors said afterward they did not know that the charge carried a minimum sentence of 11 years, including 10 without parole.

The prosecutor, it should be noted, is white and both Genarlow Wilson and the 15-year-old are black. Scott has more on why that’s particularly relevant in light of many of the civil rights decisions of the Warren Court.

Housegutting in New Orleans

This week’s Dirty Jobs focuses on jobs in the New Orleans area, cleaning up after Hurricane Katrina. The first segment is housegutters in St. Bernard Parish.

Ever wonder what I was doing down there earlier this year? Check it out on Discovery. It repeats throughout the week.

“A woman with a husband is in much more danger than a girl in a brothel.”

In many countries across the globe, marriage is a significant risk factor for women contracting HIV. Married women are often unable to negotiate condom use with their husbands; marriage is assumed to give men unlimited sexual access to their wives’ bodies; and the stigma of male infidelity isn’t nearly as strong as the stigma of female infidelity — to the point where in may countries (especially those which use Sharia law), virtually all prosecutions for infidelity are leveled against women, as pregnancy is used as “evidence.”

Which is why the Bush administration’s policy of promoting abstinence and marriage, and de-emphasizing condom use, is deadly.

This is an impoverished, authoritarian, war-ravaged country, but it offers an important lesson for President Bush and American school boards: Don’t fear those lifesaving bits of latex known as condoms.

Cambodia has become one of the world’s few success stories in the struggle against AIDS, and it has achieved that success partly by vigorously promoting condoms. This strategy has saved thousands of lives.

Cambodia has cut the prevalence of H.I.V. in adults from 3 percent in 1997 to about 1.8 percent today. In rural Cambodian towns like this one, billboards and posters promote condoms, and clinics and brothels have buckets of them. Health centers don’t have X-ray machines or oxygen tanks, but they have phalluses to show visitors how to put on condoms.

Nearly having the HIV infection rate is incredible progress. And while pushing abstience and marriage is certainly admirable, it ignores the social realities that many women live:

Here in Poipet, I met a 27-year-old woman with AIDS, Tem Phok. She had been a prostitute in a brothel, so I assumed that that was how she contracted AIDS. “Oh, no,” she said. “I got AIDS later, from my husband,” who has already died.

“In the brothel, I always used condoms,” she said. “But when I was married, I didn’t use a condom. … A woman with a husband is in much more danger than a girl in a brothel.”

That’s an exaggeration, but she has a point: It doesn’t do much good for American officials to preach abstinence and fidelity in places where the big risk of contracting H.I.V. comes with marriage. In countries with a high prevalence of AIDS, just about the most dangerous thing a woman can do is to marry.

Problem Solved

Are you ten years old and just really sick of the whiney, nagging fifth-grade girls trying to break into your kickball game at recess? Tired of those smarty-pants brats lecturing you on long division? Uppity bitches got you down?

Don’t worry, kids, Kmart’s got your back.

kmart

An Augusta-area District Attorney, who sees domestic violence cases regularly, didn’t think it was very funny. Kmart insists that it’s “light-hearted.”

Yeah, it’s hilarious. (VAW trigger warning).

Thanks to Shirley for the link.

And I Am Telling You

Jennifer Holliday’s performance of the showstopper during the 1982 Tonys.

Salon has a nice piece here about Holliday’s performance during the original Broadway run of “Dreamgirls” and how That Song worked its way into the culture. Particularly into gay culture. I like what Michael Musto and Billy Zavelson have to say about why it resonated:

“That type of song has always resonated with gay audiences. It tapped into everyone’s fears of abandonment,” says Michael Musto, longtime Village Voice gossip columnist, and who used to lip-sync to Holliday’s version of the song as the finale to the sets he played with his band the Musts. “[Holliday] was acting out every degrading humiliation and every uncouth reaction we all want to do when we’re dumped but don’t — because we have to face people the next day.”

Holliday’s performance, shepherded along by Bennett’s innovative direction, also struck a chord with gay listeners because it showed the singer doing what many of them could not do: Holliday was unabashedly expressing herself. “If you were ever afraid of who you were, or were never able to fit in, you’re going to respond to that type of commitment,” says Zavelson. “Putting yourself out there 100 percent — it’s not easy to do.”

Jennifer Holliday rode that song into stardom (even recording it for an R&B album which my first college roommate played incessantly — that, and “Another Night” by Aretha Franklin. She had Guy Issues). But despite the accolades she got, she — like her character, Effie — never really crossed over into the kind of fame that her talent should have brought her.

While Holliday had a busy career after Dreamgirls, charting with the occasional R&B song, making guest appearances on TV shows like “Touched by an Angel” and “Ally McBeal,” and performing regularly at gay-themed events and fundraisers, she never again reached the heights of “And I Am Telling You.”

The first letter in response to the Salon article criticizes Holliday for being temperamental and being pigeonholed and thinking she owns the role — all that by way of saying that it was Holliday’s own fault she’s not famous, and that the only reason she got notice was because of Michael Bennett, who directed the show on Broadway.

Yeah, like we’ve never heard of a temperamental Broadway diva before. Did our letter writer not see Valley of the Dolls before? As for “owning” a role — as if anyone criticizes Merman for “owning” Mama Rose or LuPone for “owning” Eva Peron or Brando for “owning” Stanley Kowalski. Please!

The problem with Jennifer Holliday’s career is most likely the problem with Effie’s career. Namely, she’s big, she’s black, and she’s a diva. You can have some of those qualities and make it big in show business, but it’s damned difficult to do it with all three. From Frank Rich’s 1981 review of the show, in which he identifies the theme of assimilation and selling out as the dramatic engine of the play:

Perhaps inevitably the cast’s two standouts are those who play characters who do not sell out and who suffer a more redemptive form of anguish: Miss Holliday’s Effie and Cleavant Derricks, as a James Brown-like star whose career collapses as new musical fashions pass him by. Like Miss Holliday, Mr. Derricks is a charismatic singer, who conveys wounding, heartfelt innocence. When, in Act II, he rebels against his slick new Johnny Mathis-esque image by reverting to his old, untamed Apollo shenanigans during a fancy engagement, he gives ”Dreamgirls” one of its most crushing and yet heroic solo turns.

Interestingly, in the film version of Dreamgirls, the character of Effie is played by Jennifer Hudson, who I keep hearing was “famously” booted off American Idol, but I’m not entirely sure why since I don’t really watch the show (anyone?). I do, however, know enough about the show to know that Simon Cowell is intensely critical of any woman who carries the slightest bit of extra weight (regardless of talent), but doesn’t say a thing about the male contestants’ weight.

From what I’ve been hearing, Hudson sings the hell out of the song and acts the hell out of the role — which, being on film, requires a lighter touch than Broadway. What’s somewhat jarring is the idea that Hudson, who’s a great deal thinner than Holliday was in the play, would be deemed too fat for crossover success. But then, this was a film for which Beyonce Knowles, who’s refreshingly curvy, had to lose a great deal of weight. I guess what plays in the music industry doesn’t play in Hollywood (and there goes that theme of assimilation again).

The question, then, is whether Hudson will be able to parlay the critical buzz she’s getting for her performance into a sustainable career or whether she’ll be a novelty act unworthy of inclusion with the “regular” performers.

We’ve secretly replaced Cary Tennis with Folger’s Crystals

Seriously. What’s gotten into Cary Tennis? He’s given some good advice for once:

One night, after talking about a friend of ours who met his girlfriend in a threesome, he asked me if I had ever been in one. It didn’t occur to me to lie, particularly about something I consider so minor, so I answered honestly and told him yes.

After that, everything changed. The night I told him I’d had a threesome, he cried and said he felt sick. He became so angry with me that he began to pick at me, and it seems like everything I do is wrong. Overnight, I went from being in a relationship that made me even more confident and happy with myself to being in a relationship that brings me down and constantly reminds me of my shortcomings. . .

I can’t keep feeling so ashamed of a past I had come to terms with, but I also can’t bring myself to give up on someone that I love so much. Before the threesome fiasco, we’d been talking about marriage and our future, and now I wonder how he could have meant any of that. If he loved me so much, how could his love and respect for me be so conditional? Is there anything he can do to get over this, or am I going to have to forget about how good things used to be and move on?

Regretting Telling

Dear Regretting,

This guy is nuts. What’s wrong with having a threesome?

No, don’t marry him. Get away from him. He sounds crazy. Not to be too judgmental, but really. . . .

I don’t know how you deal with the hurt of this ending, but obviously you cannot be with someone the rest of your life who can’t deal with something from your past like that.

OK, so maybe it was dumb to tell him. But you found out something. You found out he’s nuts.

Color me stunned. Go on with your bad self, Cary! You almost sound like Dan Savage.

I’ve written before on how and why I believe that it’s not really anyone’s business what I got up to sexually before I met them unless there was some kind of aftereffect — disease, unexplained short people running around, what have you — that might affect my partner; and while that’s the kind of information I might very well share with a partner voluntarily, I don’t consider it something to be demanded of me. This guy clearly has issues, clearly has insecurities, and clearly wants to have something to hold over his girlfriend’s head (or else he might, you know, actually have gone to therapy and done something there).

But the thing that really got me was the part of the letter where the girlfriend was saying that they’d been discussing marriage. They were discussing marriage, and yet she didn’t know about this sacredness, this insecurity, and all his rules about sex. Probably because they’d never discussed that. It never fails to surprise me how many people get married without asking some pretty damn basic questions and raising some pretty damn basic points of discussion (like, say, whether there will be a TV in the bedroom). Or, say, whether to have kids.

Forced Pregnancy and the Holy See

The things you learn when reviewing your International Law notes. I won’t get into too much background, but the International Criminal Court was set up to deal with the most serious of crimes, including “crimes against humanity.” Crimes against humanity incldes things like murder, genocide, ensalvement, torture, etc. The definition of “crimes against humanity” also includes this:

Rape, sexual slavery, enforced prostitution, forced pregnancy and enforced sterilization or any other form of sexual violance of comparable gravity.

Guess who opposed it. Hint: They’re as “pro-life” as this cartoon would imply:
aids

Friday Random Ten – the 48 Hours ’till Freedom edition – also, Cat Blogging

Ok, I know it’s Sunday, but I had a final exam on Friday so I couldn’t Random Ten it then. And yesterday I spent the bulk of my day first trying to roll myself out of bed without crying from pain, and then in the health center getting a giant shot of painkillers and muscle relaxers in my ass because I have done something terrible to my neck and back. Now I’m jacked up on more painkillers and muscle relaxers, and preparing to take a 24-hour International Law exam. Tomorrow I fly home, where I will finish my last exam hopefully by Tuesday. Wish me luck.

1. Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds – New Morning
2. Elvis Costello & the Attractions – Beyond Belief
3. Nirvana – About a Girl
4. Talking Heads – Same as it Ever Was
5. Janet Jackson – Control
6. Sufjan Stevens – Chicago
7. Rolling Stones – Dancing in the Street
8. Van Morrison – Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child
9. Bjork – Army of Me
10. Magnetic Fields – You’re My Only Home

Now, Friday Cat Blogging. It’s well-known that I do not have a cat, and I don’t even like cats all that much. So, in lieu of real cats, I give you this (potty-language warning if there are small chidren around):

via Dave, who promises that this song will change your life. And it’s not the Shins.

Well, that’s one way of looking at it.

One could argue that Judith Regan was fired because she was a “more or less powerful woman who deserved [her] comeuppance for having achieved unnatural success.”

Or one could argue that Judith Regan was fired because she pushed a how-to book about the violent murder of a woman by her estranged husband despite the fact that it was in consummate bad taste.

We won’t even mention what she got up to with Bernie Friggin’ Kerik overlooking a gravesite.