Via Feministing, I found this SuperBowl ad for Bridgestone tires, wherein Mrs. Potatohead shouts driving advice to Mr. Potatohead until her mouth flies off and he looks relieved. Silencing women is hilarious apparently.
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tQkKP-VPUJM[/youtube]
In early American history, male circumcision was very uncommon. In the 1950s, however, about 90% of newborn boys were circumcised in the U.S. Today, the number is just over 50%.
The International Coalition for Genital Integrity has put together a slideshow that traces developments in research and argumentation about male circumcision alongside rising and falling rates of the practice in the U.S., the U.K., and the world from 1832 till today.
It’s interesting how rates of circumcision change drastically over time in the U.S., but stay relatively stable (low) in the U.K.
It is also neat to see some of the arguments about circumcision that were made over time. For example, the long-standing belief that circumcision cured sexual excess (like wet dreams and masturbation), the explicit support for circumcision on the basis that it reduced sexual sensitivity (and that was good), and the belief that circumcision could cure paralysis, bedwetting, crossed eyes, deafness, tuburculosis, cancer of the tongue, and more. Dovetailing with American racism, in 1894 an article argued that circumcising the “Negro” would reduce the rape of white women by black men.
D. Cho sent in these t-shirts, which make fun of Asians who speak accented English:
Found here. The buck teeth, squinty eyes, and hat are a nice touch.
Found here.
The face on this one is supposed to be Kim Jong Il, and I believe the “Oh Reary?” references the movie “Team America, World Police,” though I bet a lot of people won’t get the reference and will think it just makes fun of how Asians supposedly speak:
This one (found here) might appeal to the man in your life you enjoys sex tourism to Thailand, if you’re looking for gift ideas:
This photo is interesting because they put the t-shirt that has a camel on it (and that plays on the derogatory term “camel jockey” often used for Middle Easterners) on a model who I think we are supposed to view as Middle Eastern–not quite the ethnic diversity in models that I’ve hoped for:
Why he is wearing four shirts, I do not know.
You might use them to talk about stereotypes and racial humor, or why people never tire of t-shirts with tired puns on them.
Two readers, Muriel M. M. and Lauren D., sent in this advertisement for the Oslo Gay Festival.
Three thoughts:
First, notice how the narrative reproduces the idea of the goal-oriented sentient sperm. (We’ve got a fun post on that idea here, and here’s another good one.) Remember, sperm do not have goals; they do not have ideas; they do not think. It’s just chemistry.
Second, I think it’s interesting how this video associates anal sex with gay men. How do gay men have sex? Well, they must copy straight people as closely as possible. Therefore, they must put the penis in an opening “down there.” Ah ha! I bet they all have anal sex all the time! I’m sure some gay men do have anal sex, but some surely don’t, and lots of straight couples do! I bet a lot of lesbian couples find a way to do it, too. I’m just sayin’.
Third, for what it’s worth: It also occurred to me that, in that this commercial celebrates the infertile sex act, we’ve come a long way from the Christian ethic against wasting your seed.
On Feb. 13th, 2008, a Texas federal appeals court ruled that the prohibition against selling dildos and fake vaginas violated the 14th Amendment.
That’s right. Such sex toys were illegal in Texas until early last year. According to a Slate article, they are still illegal in three other states: Virginia, Mississippi, and Alabama.
But don’t congratulate or castigate Texas just yet. The state Attorney General wants the court to reconsider.
Here is an entertaining 11-minute discussion of the dildo debates in Texas (it’s a must watch):
Fabian D. S. sent us this screenshot from a men’s health email he gets:
Along the bottom it reads: “Get the sex you deserve.”
The phrase could be read: “Get the SEX you deserve.” That is, get sex. Or it could be read: “Get THE SEX you deserve.” That is, get awesome mindblowing sex. The context reveals that it’s the latter meaning and I’ve seen this sentiment (but not the former) in material aimed at women, too. I wonder when, in American history, we decided we were entitled to awesome sex. I can’t imagine that pioneer husbands and wives, after spending all day trying to not to die (whether it be that day or that winter), and laying lying on a straw mattress next to their six children in their freezing/sweaty one-room home, felt pouty if their sex wasn’t mindblowing. The entitlement to great sex, then, must have come later (at least to the regular folk). I would bet it had something to do with capitalism and the commodification of pleasure, generally, and sex, specifically. After all, how do you get the sex you deserve? Well, you buy the right products: whether that be, for example, diet- and exercise-related products, cosmetic surgery, or sex toys. Ariel Levy said it very well (watch the 2nd video down here especially starting at 1:22… but all the clips are great).
Christoph B. sent in these Goldstar Beer ads, found at BuzzFeed, that show the differences between men and women:
I know that I, for one, immediately start thinking about marriage every time I meet a guy. My new male neighbor waved at me the other day, and I ran out and bought a wedding dress, just in case.
The other thing here is the assumption that a) the viewer is definitely a man and b) of the two options, the “man’s” life is always preferable. I suppose in the second two ads that might be reasonable–although I never experience all that many problems using public restrooms, but whatever–but why is it automatically better to have sex with no emotional attachments or expectations of ever interacting again? I doubt that all men enjoy such encounters, any more than all women are thinking of marriage every time they have sex with someone.
Gwen Sharp is an associate professor of sociology at Nevada State College. You can follow her on Twitter at @gwensharpnv.
Freud distinguished between a “mature” (vaginal) and “immature” (clitoral) orgasm, telling women that to require clitoral stimulation for orgasm was a psychological problem. Contesting this, in 1970 Anne Koedt wrote The Myth of the Vaginal Orgasm. She explains:
Frigidity has generally been defined by men as the failure of women to have vaginal orgasms. Actually the vagina is not a highly sensitive area and is not constructed to achieve orgasm. It is the clitoris which is the center of sexual sensitivity and which is the female equivalent of the penis… Rather than tracing female frigidity to the false assumptions about female anatomy, our “experts” have declared frigidity a psychological problem of women.
Indeed, studies show that about 1/3rd of women regularly reach orgasm during penile-vaginal sex. The rest (that is, the majority) require more direct clitoral stimulation. Koedt goes on (my emphasis):
All this leads to some interesting questions about conventional sex and our role in it. Men have orgasms essentially by friction with the vagina, not the clitoral area, which is external and not able to cause friction the way penetration does. Women have thus been defined sexually in terms of what pleases men; our own biology has not been properly analyzed. Instead, we are fed the myth of the liberated woman and her vaginal orgasm – an orgasm which in fact does not exist.
Koedt’s article was highly influential and rejecting the notion of the “vaginal orgasm” (both anatomically and functionally) was part of second wave feminism.
Still, the vaginal orgasm keeps coming back. During the ’90s, it came back in the form of the G-spot. You, too, can have a vaginal orgasm if you can just find that totally-orgasmic-pleasure-spot-rich-in-blood-vessels-and-nerve-endings-that-makes-for-wildly-amazing-orgasms-with-ejaculation that you, strangely, never knew was there! (See what Betty Dodson has to say about the g-spot here.)
Most recently, the vaginal orgasm has come back in the form of orgasmic birth. The idea is that women can, if they really want to, have an orgasm (or orgasms) during childbirth.
Now, I don’t want to argue that women never have orgasms from penile-vaginal intercourse. They do. I also don’t care to debate whether a g-spot exists. And I am certainly not going to look a mother in the face and tell her she did not have an orgasm during childbirth. I am sure some women do. (And, anyway, I get a kick out of thinking about such a mother telling her teenager the story of his birth, so I’m going to keep believing it is true).
Anyway, what I do want to do is discuss how the video below uses the idea of orgasmic birth to reinscribe the myth of the vaginal orgasm. The reporter says that orgasmic birth is just “basic science” and then turns to interview an M.D. The M.D. uses the vaginal orgasm as scientific evidence for the possibility of orgasmic birth. She says: obviously a baby would cause an orgasm when it comes out the vagina, since a penis causes an orgasm when it goes into the vagina. But, of course, it usually doesn’t. That last part isn’t “basic science,” it’s ideology (as Koedt so nicely points out).
I wonder how many women now feel doubly bad. Not only can they not have orgasms from penile-vaginal intercourse, they also experienced pain during childbirth! Bad ladies! Watch the whole 8-minute clip or start at 3:28 to see the interview with the M.D.:
Via Jezebel.
