The role of feminism isn’t to turn patriarchy into matriarchy. Feminism seeks to abolish the things that make women unequal, so anything that supports woman as the object, the passive actor in the stage of life, runs contrary to its tenets. Unfortunately, separating the celebration of love into a day for women and one for men has the unintended effect of turning both men and women into passive objects at different times.
People may write about desires which are distasteful and even illegal but, as we all know, there is a big difference between fantasizing about things and actually doing them. Failure on the part of prosecution to convince the jury that the accused had both intended to commit a crime and engaged in an overt act of preparation to do so, would essentially put everyone who has ever fantasized and communicated about anything outside of legal boundaries in hot water. This shouldn’t hold: crime is something we commit, after all, not something we think.
Not all of us attended a progressive school that felt knowing our genitals was a logical part of learning about the human body. While we can figure out how these aspects of ourselves work with some experimentation, there are some things the school of hard knocks isn’t so ready to impart. To this end, here’s your guide to the proper names of our genderbits and, perhaps most importantly, their plurals.
The message surrounding “panty gate” is clear: if you let your nine-year-old near “adult” undergarments, you’re going to turn her into an unrepentant sext-fiend, a modern (if digital) version of the town slut. It doesn’t even matter what kind of underwear Jenny Erikson buys her daughter — the mere fact that she is taking her into a Victoria’s Secret store is sufficient to turn her into a total nympho. Really?
The other day, we discovered a bizarre bit of American trivia that we just can’t leave alone: the candle salad. This “salad” consists of stacking some pineapple slices, putting a banana through them and topping it with a cherry. We thought it was a joke at first — until we found it in the 1957 edition of Betty Crocker’s Cookbook for Boys and Girls. “It’s better than a candle, because you can eat it!”
So basically, according to Rush Limbaugh, seminars that are meant to educate people about how to lead informed, healthy and sexually satisfying lives are a secret ploy devised by a national conspiracy of liberal universities who are in cahoots with Big Tobacco. First orgies, then smokes! We couldn’t make this up even if we wanted to.
Valentine’s Day. You think it is the height of commercial treachery. You’re not entirely wrong, but every once in a while, something comes along that makes shelling out the cash totally worth it. This, dear reader, is one such time. Come and take a look, we have it all.
The best part of knowing Dave Levine is the access. Specifically, access to information regarding what people want in the bedroom. A few days ago, I chased him down and badgered him with questions about what people were buying at his toy emporium, Sextoy.com. I wasn’t surprised to see a Rabbit among the top sellers, given its iconic status, but I wasn’t expecting the American Whopper to be number one. The Whopper is a 6.5-inch dildo. A very realistic looking dildo.
You would think that given how much advertising seems to depend on sex to sell things that it would be in the industry’s interest to try to get sex right, or at least be sensitive to sex-related issues that have powerfully impacted the national consciousness. Is the inability to create ads that portray sex and desire decently the result of an industry in dire need of fresh blood, or is it that advertisers are showing an increased interest in exploiting hot topics to get more “engagement” out of their ads?
Instagram has been “securing” (i.e., suspending) accounts, giving users a deadline to upload a form of valid identification. Many initially suspected this was a phishing scam, but a Facebook spokesperson told CNET, “Instagram occasionally removes accounts due to violation of terms and, depending on the violation, may ask people to upload IDs for verification purposes.” This is another failure on Facebook’s part to handle issues within the photo-sharing site in a way that helps users feel secure.
