Diesel’s Girls Have The Balls

Diesel’s new ad campaign, “Be Stupid,” is plastered all over the West 4th street stop in NYC. I really like this campaign. I’m analyzing this campaign in two parts. The first is its perspective on gender, the second its perspective on human nature.

The first reason I love Diesel’s “Be Stupid” campaign is that it treats both genders surprisingly equally, especially for a trendy, sexed-up company like Diesel. Sociological Images, a site normally quite good at picking out the really offensive stuff from the mundane, somehow reversed this message to make the campaign out to be sexist. Before getting into what’s so great about the campaign, I wanted to defend it from charges of being “Men: Be Stupid.” The message I got was, in fact, the reverse. My rebuttal:

Above is the first image that shows up on Diesel’s website when you click “view the campaign.” On the site, the only reference to the campaign that is gendered before this image is the like “Smart has brain, stupid has balls” that occurs in the opening (all text) flash video. In the video, that line is written in pink, as it is in on the poster ad in the West 4th street station. Not exactly a stereotypically manly color. In the picture ad campaign, the line “stupid has balls” almost only occurs with women (there is one exception). In fact, the two most dangerous (thereby brave/manly) adds feature a lone woman and a big cat. In the picture above, a panther. Below, well, a picture that one-ups The Hangover.

This picture is actually in the West 4th street ad campaign. Notice, the girl isn’t scantily clad, she isn’t scared, and she doesn’t have a boy egging her on. In the narrative of both ads, these girls got to be just as stupid as the men and, in fact, in the narrative of the whole campaign, women have “the balls.” Through out the campaign, men and women are depicted being stupid together with other women, with men, independently, sexually, non-sexually, and in no way are the women seen as drags or ancillary to the fun. In fact, in several cases, the guys seem almost along for the ride, with the girl initiating and dominating the action. And finally, the ads are far from heteronormative, with two dudes goofing around? On a date?

And a few girls coming home? Taking each other home?

The guys are being silly and cozy, the girls coming back from a rager in the wee hours of the morning. Are they gay/lesbian? The story is mostly in your head, the pictures let you make it up. Straight and queer narratives work in both images and a ton of the pictures are actually desexualized, save the fact that everyone in the campaign is really, really, really, ridiculously good looking.

The result is a campaign that is shockingly not sexist. About the only argument one could make is that there are perhaps a few (and I mean a few, like three) more pictures of women in just swim suits/underwear than men. In several of the more sexually charged images the woman is either in charge or equal to the man: in one the woman is pulling a man half out of a bus, in another, she is pulling off his shorts while he goes for her top in the pool, and another she is leaping onto the bed while he half-cowers beneath her. Furthermore, the fact that the campaign centers on recklessness, danger, stories, adventure, humor, and breaking the mold, makes the generally equal involvement of women and men all the more important. The message is that both men and women get to be “stupid” as Diesel defines it and that stupidity isn’t shameful for men or women. And in Diesel’s world, being stupid, funny, and brave, even having the balls, doesn’t mean you don’t get to look like a fierce, hot, chick.

Misunderstanding Sex

Ben Goertzel talks about overcoming sex and sexuality at IEET:

As is now common knowledge, the power sex has over us is rooted in the power our DNA has over us. We are evolved to obsess over reproducing, over extending our DNA to future generations. Even though most humans in First World countries now use birth control for nearly all their sexual encounters, and many humans choose not to reproduce at all, we are still strikingly controlled by the mind-patterns ensuing from our DNA’s urge to persist itself.

But evolution has tangled sex up with all manner of other aspects of our psyches. As Freud, Reich and others pointed out so thoroughly, human motivation is deeply tied with our inner sexual energy. Eunuchs seem to generally lack aggressive, enthusiastic motivation even for things outside the realm of sex. But when my anti-sex futurist friend speaks of blotting out sexuality from his mind, he doesn’t want to blot out his passion and energy generically—he wants to focus it on things other than simulations or enactions of the reproductive act.

This mode of thinking remains one of the most infuriating and frustrating aspects of transhumanist thought: the atomization and compartmentalization of human behavior. Goertzel fallaciously uses eunuchs to equivocate biological sexual drive with general passion. Worse, he uses the sociobiological cliche, “all human innovation is a form of courtship display.” Paraphrasing his friend uncritically, Goertzel says:

When you really think about it, how much of modern human society is structured around sexuality. Marriage, kids, dating … buying nice clothes and making oneself up to impress the opposite sex … buying cars or houses or the latest cellphone to impress the opposite sex with one’s success … etc.

Ah yes. Thanks for that old trope. Goertzel’s portrayal of sex and sexuality is something along the lines of, “sex is fun, but it’s a distraction, and sexuality is necessary for passion, so we need to separate the passion from the distraction.” He couldn’t be more wrong.

My frustration here is not the categorization of sexuality as messy and imperfect (it is), but the reduction of it to mere biology. I have no doubt that Goertzel’s friend and his wife would take offense to my assumption that they got married because they viewed each other as the best reproductive option. Human bonds are complicated and sexuality is a small but important part of those bonds. Sex isn’t a distraction, it’s a form of human enjoyment and bonding. Goertzel describes sex, at its best, as equivalent to “self-melting and reality-changing as meditation or psychedelics or any other extreme of human experience.” But somehow psychedelics aren’t a distraction we need to eliminate to seek the Singularity? What about all the other distractions? Should we eliminate them too?

If sex is messy and imperfect, we need to improve it, not get rid of it. If sexual drive is a distraction, we need to be able to (better) control it, not nullify it. Technology can make sexuality even better while minimizing the problems associated, many of which are the result of social conventions, cultural taboos, and the biological variety among humans.

Furthermore, how dare Goertzel or his friend somehow assert that the goal of transhumanism or the Singularity are so worth while that we give up things that are fundamentally valuable. I don’t care what decision calculus one uses, that sort of assertion borders on religious zealotry. The hypocrisy of Goertzel’s friend (advocating asceticism while not practicing it) smacks of the worst priests and prophets of the past. Goertzel’s “asexual alien” experiment is just an externalization of his value system in a fictitious proxy, used to justify his view point, not a legitimate thought experiment.

Sex is a biological behavior that, through the hugely complex process of evolution (both biological and cultural) has become a way for humans to bond, experience pleasure, and to alter their consciousness independent of the need to procreate. To elaborate on Emma Goldman: If I can’t have sex, I don’t want to be part of your revolution.

Polyamory According to DeVore

I have a weird/frustrated/intriguing relationship with John DeVore’s “Mind of Man” column at The Frisky. Usually I just smack my forehead in annoyance and don’t finish the article. But his polyamory piece was unusually, well, honest. And his respect for polyamorists takes a lot of guts to write:

Here’s the truth: I actually have a lot of respect for polyamorists. They’re like sexual astronauts exploring the outer reaches of human intimacy. Polyamory directly confronts the great scourges of committed, contemporary relationships. The 800-pound gorilla being jealousy, which, I’ll remind you, is a vice for a reason. Jealousy inspires nothing positive; it’s a rot divorced from reason. A rapacious parasite. Jealousy is Othello worked into a murderous rage because of rumors and hearsay. Love is not possession. It does not seek to strangle or suffocate. Love lets it be. And then it’s up to he or she who has chosen to love to decide whether his or her heart can take it or not. Polyamory also addresses The Itch, that craving for fresh flesh, the thrill of the fox hunt. The solution offered is deceptively simple: out of sight, out of mind. If you’re happy, I’m happy, maybe don’t brag about it. This seems to fly in the face of human nature, but maybe human nature is overrated. After all, it’s responsible for warfare.

The rest of the piece is fun, but this little chunk was my favorite.

We Men Are To Dumb For The Pill

Or so says Ravi Somayia at Gawker, with a frighteningly stupid post about how the male pill is a bad idea because, uh, men are too dumb and libido driven to use it properly. Thankfully, Kate Harding, my hero, eviscerates Somayia’s crap:

Not having his partner’s consent, obviously, is a most excellent reason for a man to boldly disobey his own penis. But so is not wanting to cause a pregnancy or pick up a sexually transmitted infection — in fact, I’m no sexpert, but I’m pretty sure that already, even without a male pill on the market, some man, somewhere, at least once, has decided not to have sex because he had no contraception handy and was so concerned for his own health and/or future, let alone his potential partner’s, that he chose neither to lie nor ignore the dilemma, thereby proving that such conscious action is not a biological impossibility

A feminist defending MEN? My God, it’s like they aren’t all insane gender terrorists but may, in fact, be rational human beings trying to make things better for everybody. After completing her demolition of Somayia, Harding does something that is rare even for someone of her caliber: she points out the lunacy of presuming a new technology has to necessarily supplant the previous one. The male pill is not a replacement for any form of birth control, but in addition to those that already exist:

That’s the other bizarre thing about Somaiya’s argument, however tongue-in-cheek it may be: It’s like he thinks that a male pill hitting the market will render all other forms of contraception obsolete. It’s my understanding that the new pill would be an addition to, not a replacement for, the existing smorgasbord of options (of which I count 20 at Planned Parenthood’s website right now). So people concerned about STIs or suspicious that their male partners are lying could still opt to use condoms. Women worried that their male partners won’t remember to take a pill every day could still take the original version. Anyone looking to avoid pregnancy would still have at least 18 other options of varying effectiveness to choose from. But for people who want it — from players who want an extra bit of insurance against unwanted fatherhood to men whose girlfriends or wives can’t tolerate hormonal birth control to anyone who just thinks it’s about time — it would be one more.

I couldn’t agree more. The Pill isn’t 100% reliable, no method of birth control is, but when contraceptives are used in combination, the risk of unwanted pregnancy falls to essentially zero. In the case of a monogamous straight couple,  each person being on the Pill would allow barrier free sex with a vanishingly low possibility of accidental pregnancy. In the case of a one-night stand or casual straight relationship, condoms plus both people on the Pill offers protection against STIs and triple-protection against accidental pregnancy.

Even if the male pill is completely redundant, it is still a very good thing because 1) redundancy is important and 2) it has the psychological affect of forcing the male partner to be aware of a risk of pregnancy. It’s now as much in his power to prevent one as it is hers.

Oh, and if you haven’t been reading Kate Harding already, I recommend you start.

Avatar Sex

Meredith Woerner at io9 brings up the prickly situation of sex in Avatar. As most of us guessed, Na’vi sex happens, at least in part, with their mind-link cords:

If [no genitalia are involved], then we’d have to assume that Na’vi mating only includes the hair tail syncing system. Which puts us in a bit of a dirty little conundrum. If syncing up basically means “the most amazing orgasm” ever, um, what does it mean when the Na’vi are syncing up to the rest of the Pandorian wildlife? Can the animals really consent, or even understand what’s going on here?

Now that is a weird question. As I mentioned earlier, Cameron’s biosphere on Pandora is far more interesting than anything in the film’s plot. I must admit, when I initially read the headline about “Avatar” and “bestiality,” I thought Woerner was implying that having sex with the Na’vi was akin to having sex with an animal. That, thankfully, is not her point. Instead, what she is asking is: if Na’vi-Na’vi link equals sex, then Na’vi-Pandorean critter link would also, weirdly, equal sex, which, in turn, would equal bestiality. By Woerner’s logic, the movie should have been NC-17 because just watching Jake Sully learn to ride the horse would be way beyond MPAA standards of decency.

Of course, Woerner is just exploring the possibilities, so let’s take her lead and run with the idea of Na’vi sex. The question of consent is the most important one here, as that’s what makes a behavior unethical. Let’s assume that Na’vi sex is genital free and only involves the mind-link, so every animal-Na’vi interaction is potentially a sex act. A worrying set-up, since we see a lot of linkage throughout the film.

In a worst case scenario, the more mentally powerful (intelligent, advanced, evolved, etc.) creature controls the situation and every mental-link would be somehow sexual. Thus, every interaction that isn’t between two fully matured Na’vi adults, say, between a Na’vi adult and a Pandoran banshee, is rape. It is rape because consent is impossible, due to the imbalance of both power and intelligence. In this worst-case scenario, Jake Sully effectively raped most of the flora and fauna he encountered on Pandora via his avatar. Re-read that sentence, ladies and gentlemen, and remember this is what happens to your brain if you read too much Foucault.

That scenario, however, doesn’t quite make sense.Through Jake’s trials and tribulations, we see that learning to deal with the mind-link is not easy and, even with the plants of Pandora, requires significant effort to make effective. Furthermore, the link is shown to work in both directions, effectively uniting the two creatures. Jake can “feel” the emotions and sensations of the creature. It brings into question the whole idea of sex for the Na’vi. With a pure mental link, one that flows in both directions, the fundamental barrier between two entities is broken. By linking together, the two entities must, in a sense, decide to give the other pleasure. A bond can be made, but it need not be pleasurable, or pleasurable in the way sex is. When I pet my border collie, that isn’t sexual, but she seems to take pleasure in it. The mind-link, like physical contact, probably requires a lot more than just the basic connection for it to be a) pleasurable and b) sexual.

Based on my arbitrary, totally unverifiable speculation, it would seem that the way the Na’vi link to each other and to the wildlife of Pandora makes it possible for two different species that cannot communicate via language to have consensual sex.

The weirdest point is that, because the pleasure isn’t physical, one can presume that the intensity of the experience comes from a mutual desire to interact in a pleasurable  way (is it even sex?). By extension, the quality of the mind linked would determine the quality of the sex. Therefore, not only would rape be a technical impossibility due to the nature of the bond, there would be no point in having sex-like mind-linking with a non-humanoid entity.

So, I think, if I’m getting this right, Meredith Woerner does not have to worry about the alien bestiality that is ostensibly implicit in Avatar. Probably.

Tinkering With Libido Part II

Yesterday I talked about how our culture labels male erectile dysfunction and female low libido as pathological. The reverse, that men might have low libido or women might have trouble with physical arousal – both of which are real problems – goes totally unconsidered. Framing sexual problems (chronic or one-off) in this way is not just problematic because it is wrong, but because it causes a cascade of problems when pharma companies try to develop drugs to solve the problems.

Given our busy lives and our complicated relationships, it’s unsurprising that in the small window available for hanky-panky occasionally one person or the other has a physical or mental hang-up that prohibits sexy-time. But here’s the rub: if it isn’t a disease or disorder, it’s hard to argue for a reason to develop a drug to treat it. Not commercially, of course, but to the FDA. Our legal system and general culture has made it so that if a company wants to develop a product that enhances or enables a person’s physical sexual ability or libido, they have to find (or “discover”) a pathology to justify research and FDA approval. Companies cannot simply make a chemical that makes our life better: they have to find a disease to cure first. Low libido and physical problems associated with sex are problems, and we should be able to take drugs to control those if we choose without the need to describe either as a disease state requiring a doctor’s prescription.

The result of their being available only by prescription creates a frustrating cycle. One who wants a beneficial drug must either lie to their doctor or must begin to see his or her natural hiccups as pathological. This cycle is one of the core reasons we should begin to advocate a health system in which prevention and enhancement are as valued as therapeutic and restorative medicine. A child who has trouble focusing in a boring class is not pathological, she or he simply might lack the coping methods other students have – for example, I doodled to cope with calculus. Drugs like Ritalin or modanifil should be readily available along with simple instructions on how to use them for cognitive enhancement. Most people don’t take fistfuls of ibuprofen because they are aware if two pills don’t do the job, five more aren’t going to help. Overdoses are prevented by information and education, not prohibition. Furthermore, in many cases cognitive enhancing drugs can make a frustrating class more tolerable and survivable, which brings up the quality of life and of education for the student using the drugs. Voluntarily taking the drug makes the student an active part of their education (instead of being compelled to both go to school and take a drug).

The logic of inventing a pathology to facilitate a drug has spilled into modern sexuality. Our absurd condition, where in any sexual problem is either a personal failing or a chronic illness, leads to an irrational cultural and personal nervousness and silence around how we could improve our sex lives with drugs. I drink coffee when I want to be more awake, I take pain-killers when I have a headache, drink alcohol when I want to relax and/or have fun. And I don’t even do recreational drugs. That’s a-whole-nother category of mood alteration. People take drugs to control their emotions all the time.

The same logic can be applied to sexual function drugs. Why can’t I have access to a pill that makes me aroused and a pill that lets me not think about sex? If men are constantly thinking about sex, which is an obvious distraction, why don’t we have a pill to liberate us from our own annoying biology? There is no reason an advanced society should not have the ability to control base urges.

Knee-jerk reactionaries will, of course, say that this takes the “magic” out of romance because it chemicalizes and “controls” the situation. False. The first time you meet someone, that random spark or connection that draws two people together, a great night where everything clicks: those are where the “magic” comes from in a relationship. Sexual drugs like the one’s I’m talking about aren’t designed to create false highs, but to prevent unnecessary lows. A pill that encourages arousal when taken intentionally and with purpose is no more ruinous to sex than drinking coffee is to have the energy to read a favorite book after a hard day at work. People’s bodily cycles are weird.

An example: Tom might get horny right before the end of work, but Jane might be horny first thing in the morning. Sadly, the only time the two have for sex is after 7pm, when they’re both home from work, and neither is all that interested. Now imagine if they could reduce their arousal during the day and boost it at night. Sexual frustrations resulting both from being aroused with no outlet and from having an available partner with low desire, would be largely eliminated. No pill is going to make Tom and Jane more compatible intellectually or personality-wise, but the right pills could help make their love life a lot easier and a lot better.

There are lots and lots of other potential uses of libido altering drugs, but the example above is far and away the most common problem. Like most mood altering drugs, they in no way have a totalizing effect. They aren’t love potions or hypnotic devises. Drinking a cup of coffee does not make a person love making excel sheets, but it does give him or her enough concentration and energy to get them over with more quickly. Another concern with sex enhancing drugs is that people might feel compelled to take them to improve a relationship or to mask a current problem. This problem is a real one, but is in no way unique to or exacerbated by sex enhancing drugs.

There are so many benefits available, it is baffling and infuriating that our culture cannot simply allow us to work on making little problems in our lives go away so that we can have more of what we enjoy just because it needs the help of a little pill.

Tinkering With Libido Part I

Do you see it?

The human sex drive is complicated (duh). It is closely tied with mental processes, both biologically and by association within our culture, that we often forget how simple hormonal or physical “problems with the plumbing,” as it were, can mess things up. There are hundreds of reasons that one person might be sexually attracted to another person but not physically and/or mentally aroused. One of the most infuriating is timing. Simply put, one person might be horny and the other might not be. Despite mutual attraction and no chronic problems, two people might just not sync up due to their schedules. It is a problem.

Of course, given our culture’s weird mystification of sexuality and romance, we then proceed to make an already frustrating situation far worse. We pretend that things have to be passionate, instant, and awesome every time, so we force the situation, with neither person really all that happy. Ok, most of us have come to the conclusion that they don’t need to be and are actually very practical about the whole situation. Sometimes it’s just meh but that’s alright because hey, nobody’s perfect. Yet the idea of taking sex enhancing drugs that alter our mental state of emotional arousal are far more controversial than mere physically arousing drugs, despite our reasonable knowledge of how day-to-day life can go and that mental states are more often the real problem.

The shocking, or at least confusing, part of this mental-physical split is that we generally accept physically altering drugs (e.g. Viagra). Viagra’s chemically active ingredients do not do much for one’s mental state. Actually, its ingredients have the somewhat humorous effect of working regardless of one’s mental state, resulting in the dreaded four-hour situation in which it is recommended that one go and see a doctor. Because of the obviousness of male physical arousal – in addition to its propensity to malfunction even in healthy, young men and therefore cause tremendous angst in already insecure individuals – there is a significant amount of focus on how to make sure the penis works no matter what. The assumption, of course, is that men are always mentally aroused (the apocryphal “men think about sex every 12 seconds”), so that never needs to be addressed, but occasionally get over excited, nervous, and/or are old, therefore sometimes need a pill to make sure mind and body are in sync when the opportunity presents itself – such as when you have access to two claw-footed bathtubs on a bluff overlooking the ocean. That, my friends, is a perfect time to make sure everything is working, better take some sex enhancing pills.

While men are allegedly always mentally ready, there is a reverse cliche for women, which is that they are always physically ready for sex: a falsehood of serious magnitude. It is noteworthy that the female physical arousal process is actually more complex and involves more bits and pieces activating than the male body. The myth that women are always physically ready (because there is nothing to become erect) is a corollary to the other cliche: the myth that women are rarely in the mood for sex. Our culture paints female libido as lower than male by definition. There is no cliche about women thinking about sex every 12 seconds. There is a cliche about women getting headaches as excuses or needing bouquets and chocolates to get in the mood. Women who are seen as being as sexual as men are labeled deviant, slutty, unbalanced, etc. Obviously the centuries of describing female sexuality as dangerous, dirty, seductive, controlling, out-right sinful, and pathological being embedded within the most basic aspects of our culture has nothing to do with that perception – but I digress. My point is that it is even conceivable in our culture that a woman might not want sex, where as that condition (not wanting sex) is obviously alien to all men at all times.

As you can see, it is comical that we would ascribe men has having primarily physical arousal problems and women as having primarily mental arousal problems. It makes far more sense that both sexes would be afflicted by either problem about the same amount, despite the differences in biology and mentality. Yet here comes the interesting part – and I think it is an excellent example of the male world view affecting not just TV and movies but science as well – the “Viagra for women” is more appropriately a sexual anti-depressant than it is physical power boost.

There have been lots of articles about the new little blue pill for women, but my favorite reaction was actually over at Broadsheet, where each of their savvy writers added another wrinkle to a debate far too smoothed over. Most interesting are the links to articles about the medicalization of “female sexual dysfunction.” It is important to note that these articles are not implying that there is no medical form of female sexual dysfunction, but instead are arguing that the efforts by current studies and drug companies are pathologizing common and non-dysfunctional reasons for low libido. In short, when men want to have sex and their penis does not work, it is an obvious problem that Viagra fixes. When women don’t want sex, however, it isn’t just a question of what might be causing the lack of desire, but begs the question is it a problem with her or with her partner? Does her low libido even need correction or is it an appropriate reaction?

In summary, our culture generally sees male sexual dysfunction as a physical issue (unable to have sex) while female dysfunction is mental (unwilling to have sex). The reverse (men-mental, women-physical) goes not just unconsidered, but is treated as irrational/impossible. Men always want sex! Women don’t have to worry about “getting it up!” Basic biology! Science!

Wrong. It’s easy to blame the corporation for “inventing” a pathology (and they often are) but it is just as important to look at why they invent one pathology for men (erectile dysfunction) and one for women (low libido). Cultural framing guides their logic. Men can have low libido, women can have trouble becoming physically aroused. Let’s stop with the “Viagra for women” canard and recognize we all have issues now and then, shall we?

Reproduction Rights

On Saturday, the New York Times published an article about surrogate pregnancy including three cases in which problems arose due to the unregulated state of surrogacy. In one case, the surrogate mother discovered that the adoptive mother had a history of paranoid schizophrenia and sued to keep the children. In another situation, a single man arranged a pregnancy and his eccentricities have brought his ability to raise children into question. Finally, a woman is attempting to keep the child she surrogate mothered for her gay brother and his partner. In each case, we are shown the unprecedented legal and ethical quandaries interwoven into the very definition of words like mother, parent, family, and reproductive responsibility and rights.

The NYT article makes a clear case that raising a child is complex and emotional. Reducing pregnancy to a transaction only serves to amplify these complexities and emotions by trying to remove them from the equation. But wherein are the nuances of creating life lost?

George J. Annas, a bioethicist who is chairman of the health law program at Boston University, said, “This is the main problem with commercialization, seeing children as a consumer product.”

It is interesting that the article chose to use this quotation, as in two of the three example cases the pregnancy was not for profit. Furthermore, it is noteworthy that this quotation from Annas points out what happens to the child, but is largely unconcerned with how the process affects the mother. I suggest Carolyn McLeod’s “For Dignity or Money” which is the most evenhanded account of the multiple feminist perspectives on contract pregnancy, an issue far to complex to deal with in a single blog post.

The question that underpins contract pregnancy is always just beneath the surface of the NYT article and nearly every popular piece I read on the topic: has nature prevented these people from having children for a reason? Questions of ability, knowledge, and stability are logical to ask of any parent. Though I largely disagree with its method and position among social services, Child Protective Services makes sense in a major egalitarian society, because some people are not fit to be parents. What disturbs me is the double-standard for the reproductively impaired. I am not trying to create a new minority group or coin a new PC euphemism with the use of “reproductively impaired” but merely point out that these people in a state of nature cannot reproduce at all. They are, by choice or chance, effectively sterile. Therefore they seek the next best means by which to have children.

The disturbing trend here is that those who are able to have children “naturally” are innocent until proven guilty, while those who must use alternative means are subjected to the judgments of doctors, bureaucrats, and their peers. One must qualify to have IVF, adopt, and, as shown, use a surrogate mother. Unless one can prove one is able to have the financial, moral, legal and mental stability necessary to raise a child, one cannot have a child by any artificial means; however, there is no such condition for simply getting pregnant or impregnating someone. In short, if nature has already hindered your ability to reproduce, then the state and society have the right to control how and when you acquire children.

This double-standard is the passive equivalent of a far more insidious active, possibility. The specter of eugenics is often raised around issues of reproductive rights. The eugenicists of the earlier part of the 20th century are oft maligned for their support of sterilizing those deemed as problematic for society. If one was below the poverty line or shown to be “morally” or “mentally” unfit (more often euphemisms for bigotry than matters of ethics), the eugenicists argued for sterilization. While sterilizing for any one of those reasons is now considered patently offensive and wrong, it is seen as completely rational for those who meet those conditions and are born or become sterile to be forced to remain that way.

Let me provide an example. Let us assume that the only criterion one must meet to adopt a child are that one must make $50,000 a year, have no criminal record, be mentally and physically healthy, between the ages of 25 and 45, and be straight. Let us extend these criterion to receiving in-vitro fertilization, egg or sperm donation, and surrogate pregnancy. While grossly simplified, it is an analogous model to our current legal system’s requirements, designed to protect the welfare of the children. This set-up makes sense both on face and when analyzed in detail – the combination of standards provides a normative baseline for what a decent home for a child would be. While each standard might be debated (economic and sexual status in particular) the general idea of standards for adoption and assisted reproduction make sense because they are designed to protect the new child.

Now let us add a twist: in addition to being unable to adopt or receive reproductive assistance, if one does not meet one or more of the above criteria then one is legally and compulsively required to undergo temporary chemical sterilization. For the sake of the children, one might argue, it is the responsibility of a just society to only allow reproduction among those who are up to the task. Simply possessing the ability to reproduce unassisted is no justification for having the right to do so. In fact, getting pregnant is itself often used to exemplify a person’s irresponsibility. By this logic it would seem that we as a society have an obligation to prevent those who do not meet society’s standards from acquiring children, be it by natural birth, adoption, or assisted means.

Rightly we find such a suggestion abhorrent. Unlike Leon Kass’ repugnance theory, which relies on our instinctual fear of something new or misunderstood as a form of moral judgment, this abhorrence comes from our living in a liberal and free society. To suggest that the government is responsible for determining who may and who may not have children based on their class, sexual orientation, legal and medical history, and age is perhaps one of the most prima facia dystopic and offensive ideas one could articulate. Yet it is the real status quo for those who seek to adopt or use assisted reproduction. In every one of the cases described in the NYT piece, no one would have so much as thought to scrutinize their right to have children had they been able to do so naturally. Sterility due to nature or by situation is viewed as an exception, thus granting the state legal jurisdiction over one’s reproductive rights. Biopower exerts itself most grotesquely among those already outside the norm.

If forced to surmise as to why, I would guess that our society still maintains the deeply embedded, though irrational belief, that those who are sterile from birth or by accident or do not wish to reproduce in a normative fashion, such as asexual or homosexual people, are as such because some greater moral force – be it Nature, Fate, or God – has preordained them as deviant and unfit to parent. The NYT piece expresses this view perfectly, wherein there is no example of a successful surrogate pregnancy, only deviants – a mentally unstable mother, a strange, lonely man, and a homosexual couple. That a happy, normal, heterosexual couple with no other problems but biological inability would want a child via surrogacy goes unexplored. The underlying logic is that their normalcy is only ostensible and problems are likely lurking beneath the surface. If you can’t do it like everyone else, the argument goes, then perhaps you shouldn’t be doing it at all.

I do not have an immediate or even rough solution for the problem of our reproductive double-standard. What I do know is our society’s relationship with and perspective on reproduction is still grossly undermined by our continued attachment to decayed religious morays and their secular bioconservative descendants. There are people having children who do not want them and people who want children who cannot have them in substantial, depressing numbers. Compounding it is our legal system’s deranged obsession with genetic relationships creating de facto legal relationships. Adoption and foster care is stigmatized, contraceptives are restricted, the abortion debate has devolved into factious insanity, “natural” fertilization and birth is given mythic status and mystic veneration, and artificial methods are still portrayed as dehumanized scientific experiments; and the entirety of reproduction and sexuality is surrounded by a reactionary veil of ignorance, misinformation, and puritanical dogma crippling the very measures that would protect and help those that are most needful.

The state of law and ethics surrounding reproduction and sexuality in the West is in desperate need of a sea change, but the brave new world it would create is, for now, still to terrifying to even contemplate. It is a problem, however, that we must confront. We cannot, appropriately enough, leave it for future generations to handle.

A Kept Man

Ask yourself this question: What is the masculine form of the word “mistress?”

Can you think of an answer? I couldn’t.

Technically, there isn’t one. A male, extra-marital, long-term lover doesn’t have a specific term. There is, however, a kindred spirit to “mistress” that is more gender adaptable: the kept woman. The “kept” part of the kept woman is that she is largely provided for and supported by her lover, who is by definition of superior wealth. Until very recently the reverse situation was nearly impossible (Catherine the Great and Queen Elizabeth being notable exceptions). The closest male equivalent to a “mistress” would be a “pool boy.” The implicit social and age difference, as well as the extra-marital connotation, is about as close as I can get.

A pool boy, however, does not get much of a benefit besides sexual satisfaction. A kept woman, in addition, by definition receives more material favors, such as an apartment, clothes, an allowance, and/or trips. Not too shabby.*

So what we are confronted with are busy women with disposable income, frustrated with dating needy men, with errands and chores piling up, and no intention of settling down. Sounds like a perfect recipe for a kept man.

A kept man lives somewhere at the intersection of maid, mistress, and husband. The important thing, of course, is that he is supported by his woman (or women). The transition from simple lover to kept woman/man occurs at the moment the relationship moves from one of merely emotional and physical pleasure to one in which material gain and financial stability are added to the mix. For both people involved, the advantages are clear. In fact, the development of a culture in which a “kept man” is acceptable would help to remove the stigma around kept women and mistresses present in puritanical America. For the record, I would like to note that a “kept person” need not be extra-marital nor monogamous. Nor is it for everyone. I’m just saying it sounds like a good idea for some people.

As a final point, I’d like to say that this idea is not entirely my own. On at least three separate occasions I have had female friends – who are either currently or soon will be far more successful than me (they don’t have to list “blogger” on their resume) – have brought up the appeal of such a relationship. They have nice apartments with too much space and no one to clean them, nice kitchens with no one to cook in them, huge bank accounts with nothing to spend it on, and other more, ahem, personal needs that need to be met without the hassle of dating. A husband is too big a commitment, a boyfriend might have a job of his own, but a kept man is there to do your bidding – for a nominal cost.

Any takers?

*Before anyone gets in a huff, let me state for the record that I am aware that the whole construction of concubine/mistress/kept woman is a result of the severe power imbalance between men and women, be it a result of aristocratic or capitalist wealth. I am aware that it is not always  some sort of idealized situation where the woman gets everything she wants and is still treated well. I’m not babbling about how unfair it is that women get these opportunities and men don’t. That is the opposite of what I’m trying to get at. Also this is just a goofy thought experiment, so chill out on the feminist critique for a second.

**I’m aware I’m assuming the heterosexual (not heteronormative) perspective here. Cut me some slack. GLBT relationships are outside my realm of analysis, cause I have no idea on what the norms are.

Links: Gender & Sexuality

1. Deus Sex Machina. Just ignore that translation, please.
2. Misogynist chick flicks. Six examples. But we all know the very concept of a “chick flick” is part of the problem.
3. Lady Gaga is taking on the homophobic rappers. I guess that means Wale is cool with dudes lovin’ dudes?
4. Exploring masculinity…sort of. I expect this from Cambridge, but not you, Oxford. A better choice.
5. Jezebel’s summary of the Caster Semenya scandal.
6. The Women’s Bioethics Blog picks apart that video of “The Perfect Woman” IEET uncritically put up.
7. Babies with three parents? We need to come up with a new word, parent is becoming too broad.