Down in The Gutter

American politics may have hit a new low with accusations that Ted Cruz engaged in extra-marital affairs. This comes after a nude picture of Donald Trump’s wife was used in an attack ad by a pro-Cruz SuperPAC. Never have such tactics appeared in American politics. Well, if you don’t count the outing of John Edwards and Gary Hart, the vicious attacks on serial monogamist Newt Gingrich, efforts to impeach Clinton over a blowjob, the various Senators and congressmen caught doing the dirty in public washrooms or the various rumours spread about Presidential infidelities going right back to the founding fathers.

Sex and politics have always been mixed up in the United States – not surprising for a country founded by Puritans and other fundamentalist Christians. Of course, this is also the country that gave us Mormonism, the religion that solved the problem of philandering males by letting them “marry” as many young girls as they like.

Of course, everyone says that it is not the sex that matters but the hypocrisy. I’m sure that if Cruz hadn’t been so rigid, I mean, firm, or rather, determined in his sexual purity, none of this would have come up. In any case, after a brief spurt of outrage, I’m sure we’ll soon return to more usual discourse – idiot, snivelling coward, jerk, liar – to which we’ve become accustomed.

All this is being driven by the on-going uncertainty about who will get the Republican nomination. Analysis of the latest polls suggest that Donald Trump will win just enough delegates for victory before the convention is held. Or he will be a few dozen short. Neither result will ensure he gets the nomination if the organizers adjust the rules to let delegates become unbound before the first vote. It’s all very complicated but you can read about it here. Trump has threatened lawsuits and predicted riots if such shenanigans occur. I think I’ll avoid Cleveland this July (or, well, forever. I mean, Cleveland!)

On the Democratic side, Sanders supporters have begun a ‘we was robbed’ narrative, starting some time ago but reaching a crescendo with the total mess that came down in Arizona. No one questions that it was a voting disaster but it was run by the state of Arizona and its hard-right Republican government. The gutting of the Fair Voting Act – which was implemented precisely because of states like Arizona with a history of depriving minorities with the vote – coupled by the archaic rules used by the state for registering voters was the source of the problem. It’s notable that voters were particularly impeded from voting in counties with high black and Hispanic populations, hardly fertile ground for Sanders based on past performance.

Of course, a few Sanders supporters probably think the clearly liberal, Ms. Clinton, is in cahoots with the Republicans to keep their guy out of the White House – highly plausible given the warm and cozy relationship the GOP has had with the Clintons over the years. Of course, Clinton hasn’t been exactly nice to Mr. Sanders either – though so far she hasn’t suggested he’s a closet communist. But as June approaches and if the race stays close – I wouldn’t be surprised if photographs of baby Bernie in the arms of Joseph Stalin appear.

And that’s ten minutes.

Keep It in Your Pants

Crudity and political incorrectness ahead. Don’t blame me; blame the Republicans. They started it.

So it comes to this. Four guys standing in a row – like men at the urinal – talking about the size of their dicks. Do you think it’s a coincidence that they waited until the black guy dropped out before ‘raising’ the subject?

True, it was only a single reference but, let’s be clear – the Republican race has always been about who had the largest cojones. Even Carly Fiorina was trying to show she could out-muscle the guys. All this talk about who was going to drop the bigger bombs on ISIL, who would be tougher on immigrants, who could stand up like a stand-up guy to Russia and China.

Not surprisingly they mostly sounded like bad stand-up comedians.

But hey, if they want to go there, let’s go there.

I can’t tell you who has the biggest prick and about that I am eternally grateful. But as they say, it isn’t the size of the engine, it’s the skill of the driver and based on past performance, that has to be Donald Trump. This guy has been successfully screwing people his entire life. Whether it’s the students at Trump University (Donald is being investigated for fraud on that one) or the investors in the four companies that Trump drove into bankruptcy – while walking away with billions in his own pockets – or the workers he cheated out of jobs by moving his factories to Mexico and China. And let’s not even start on his ex-wives or poor Hillary, to whom he gave so much money, but whom he now reviles. No, Donald definitely has the moves – pretty good for an old guy.

Ted Cruz on the other hand often gives the impression that he was the body model for the Ken doll. Poor old Ken, as sexless and plastic as, well, Ted Cruz. Although perhaps we shouldn’t be so quick to judge – after all his wife swears he is the second coming of Jesus and I guess she would know. Imagine for a moment what holy prayers issue from their bedroom in the middle of the night. Now imagine if you’ll ever be able to have sex again. In any case, I doubt if Ted ever let his little head think for his big head. Unless the two are one and the same. Might explain why he has no friends among his colleagues.

Then there is Marco Rubio, who sometimes reminds me of the over anxious teenager reciting baseball stats over and over again so he can get through his first date. Rubio is Hispanic and I always thought they were more self-assured but a lot of the times he seems insecure to me. As as the young guy, maybe his run is a little premature.

As for Kasich? Well, who can say? He seems like a nice balanced guy though that may only be because of the company he keeps. Even a sociopath looks normal when he’s hanging with a bunch of psychopaths.

Still, it was nice to see them all swear to support whoever wins, to promise to be buddies in the end. Because that’s what men do in the locker room when they let it all hang out. The alternative – for guys like that – is too frightening to think about. In fact, for macho, misogynistic, homophobic, racist men like that, the alternative is as dick-shrivelling as an ice bucket over the head.

And that’s ten cruder than normal minutes.

 

Hackers

The recent dumping of millions of e-mails and other information from Ashley Madison clearly demonstrates one of the central concerns I’ve always had about hackers revealing confidential information. While we might enjoy the discomfiture of people like Josh Duggar or other moralizers and even applaud the work of Edward Snowden for revealing surveillance carried out by government agencies in the name of freedom, one should still recognize that individuals like Snowden and groups like Anonymous have still made a fundamentally egocentric (perhaps even egomaniacal) decision to place their own personal values at the pinnacle of moral standards.

The motivation of the group that revealed the Ashley Madison data is clear. They do not believe that people should ever have sex outside of marriage. While they claim to think that cheating is bad, they have indiscriminately decided to embarrass many people who were essentially using the site to get dates. Some of these people were single; at least one (who launched a class action suit) was widowed. I may not believe ‘life is short, have an affair’ is good advice but so what?

Is cheating on your spouse a good thing? Probably not. Does it damage marriages? In some cases, yes, but in others it may well preserve them. In any case, there is no one size fits all set of rules for human relationships. I wouldn’t impose my values on you – so don’t try to impose yours on me.

The larger issue in any case is not the revelation of people’s sex lives but rather the issue of how far should anyone go to pit their own moral standards against those of the majority or of the state. Was the use of surveillance and other extra-legal measures excessive in the wake of the passage of the Patriot Act in the USA and will it be excessive under the new legislation (Bill C-51) in Canada? Almost certainly.

Should the entire system be torn down by individuals who are offended by any sense that the state has a right to protect itself and its citizens? I’m not convinced.

The biggest issue is that governments have used fears of terrorism to extend the power of the state in unacceptable and, most importantly, unnecessary ways. They have refused to develop sufficient rigorous oversight mechanisms to ensure agencies don’t abuse these powers. Oversight in the USA is weak; in Canada it is virtually non-existent.

It is little wonder that individuals might feel the need and the necessity to speak out. The over-reaction of governments against those who reveal the secrets that should never have existed in the first place hardly discourages others.

So where does the answer lie? Well, not in anonymous cyber-attacks. Anonymity cuts both ways; it may protect the hackers but it also makes it easier to suggest that the hacks don’t come from moral warriors but from rogue states.

Greater transparency, more accountability, better oversight, and punishment of officials who break the rules are all good starts. But that requires people to demand that governments change. Democracy, as always, is up to us.

And that’s ten minutes

Trophy Wives

My father was 14 years older than my mother and I certainly know lots of people who have connections with those much younger than themselves. I’ve never really understood it – all my relationships have been with women a couple of years younger or older than me. It was funny a few years ago when someone asked Liz, my wife, if she was my trophy bride (given she is two years my elder). Very complimentary to her, I guess; to me, not so much.

Still, I sometimes wonder when age differences move beyond the understandable and move into the creepy. The heart wants what it wants, according to Woody Allen – and I fully recognize the irony of quoting him in this context. But what exactly is it that it does want in these cases?

Some might think it is a desire on the part of the man to cling to youth – his youth by proxy – and, more importantly, potency. Yesterday I saw a picture of retired Senator Rod Zimmer coming from court with his twenty six year old wife (he is in his 70s). It wasn’t his legal problems that were at issue though he has plenty of those – she was being charged with weapons possession as part of a drunken incident. I was struck by how angry she looked and how tired and stooped he appeared. And what was she seeking – financial security or a father figure? I wondered if the two things – his youthful wife and his legal troubles – were linked to a common cause, a desire to still feel in control of the world.

Of course, none of it is simple. The pattern of older men and younger women is common place even when the man isn’t rich or the woman isn’t alluring. It may be a cultural thing, part of the infantilization of women that some men need to feel like men. And according to Kate Fillion who wrote extensively on the subject in a book called Lip Service, the same phenomena occurs with older women and younger men. It is less often commented on and perhaps less common but the dynamic seems remarkably the same.

I’m sure that in the end it all comes down to our selfish genes and the desire to find the right mate even if child rearing isn’t what we have in mind. Or it could be someone was too busy to fall in love (again) until the candle was almost burnt down to the base. Tony Randall married for the second time late in life (his first wife was deceased). He sired children and seemed enormously happy – though I often felt there was a deep sadness inherent in that family. He would never see (and didn’t see) his children graduate primary school let alone have children of their own.

For me, I’ve always needed to have a deep relationship – based on shared values and experiences, shared tastes and shared times together. Liz and I spend hours every day just talking and while I’m quite capable of carrying on an endless monologue it is in dialogue that I find my joy.

And that’s ten minutes.

Fallen Angels

New revelations have proven what many of us had already concluded: that Bill Cosby is a serial sexual abuser. The revelations do not come from more victims coming forward but from Cosby himself – contained within a sworn deposition from a civil suit settled nearly a decade ago. In it Cosby admits to obtaining Quaaludes – a potent tranquilizer – in order to drug young women and have sex with them. Many people are calling for criminal prosecutions and jail time – though that seems unlikely. Most of the cases are too old – past the statute of limitations – to be prosecuted. And for a criminal charge to stick, a general statement has to be shown to be a specific act, that is, in this particular case, it has to be proven that he used drugs to overcome a specific woman and have non-consensual sex. Not impossible but not certain either.

Certainly, there will be consequences for Mr. Cosby. His income will drop as people stop going to his shows or as promoters stop booking him. He may also wind up in more civil suits that will eat into his considerable fortune. Certainly his position as a moral leader in America will be radically reduced or eliminated.

That elevated position was the reason the judge unlocked the sealed files in this case. You can’t go around preaching to others how to live their lives – especially when it comes to sexual or family morality – and expect your own indiscretions to remain private. Think of the cases of Jim Bakker and other failed evangelicals or of homophobic politicians caught picking up men in bathrooms. They were outed and many of us took delight in their downfall. Everyone likes a fallen angel.

However painful the revelations are for Cosby’s family and his many fans, there may be some positive outcomes for society if not for his individual victims. Perhaps the next time a celebrity or the guy down the block is accused of sexual crimes, the public and the media will be less likely to shame the victim and more likely to look closely at the behavior of the accused.

Not every accusation is true but no crime is treated as ‘untrue’ as often as that of rape or sexual assault. People accused of break and enter are seriously investigated – no one suggests the homeowner deserved what happened or encouraged it. There is no guarantee that things will improve – similar high profile incidents haven’t destroyed rape culture and I expect we will continue to hear stories of men in positions of authority using their power to abuse women (or men) they come in contact with and control.

And that is what it is in so many cases: the desire to control. After all, a man with Cosby’s wealth, profile and sense of humour probably could have found many willing partners. Yet, it seems, he preferred his women unconscious and unable to express any part of their own personality. If that’s not a symptom of something darker I can’t think what is.

And that’s ten minutes.

Biological Wiring

According to the Canadian Chief of Defence Staff, sexual misconduct in the military occurs because of biological wiring. Apparently, the same rationale might apply in the Canadian Senate. The Chief has since apologized amid calls for his resignation. No word from the Senator yet.

Well, what are we to make of this? Is the general right? Are men (and he didn’t rule out women) wired to behave badly? Are we nothing more than dogs?

Of course, there is a biological basis in human behavior – several of them – including the drive to procreate. Similarly we have a drive to eat and to sleep. We have lots of biological heritage from millions of years of evolution. Yet, we know that people who can’t control their urge to eat constantly or to sleep their lives away have problems. Why wouldn’t we think that people who can’t keep it in their pants, can’t respect other people’s imperative not to have sex (not necessarily never have sex, just not have sex with YOU), why wouldn’t we think they have a problem? A problem that needs to be dealt with in the most appropriate way – whether that is treatment, punishment or dismissal.

There are those who seem to believe that we are nothing but a series of instinctual twitches, driven by our chemistry and our genes to behave like automatons. I always wonder what motivates people to think that.

However, humans long ago transcended their biology. We have liberated ourselves from the vagaries of nature. While people may go hungry in the world, there is actually no biological or natural reason why that should be so. We, in fact produce enough nutrition to feed everyone. We just do a lousy job at distribution – another biological imperative presumably is to horde food and wealth and deprive ‘the other’ from what we enjoy.

So these are all choices we make. Perhaps that is the greatest biological imperative of all, to use our collective intelligence, our constructed rationality (made of language and law and civil practice) to overcome those remnants of biology that seem to drive some people.

The military of all places should understand that ‘wiring’ does not determine human behavior. The whole purpose of ‘boot camp’ and strict discipline is precisely to manage our fight, flight or freeze response, to overcome our natural reluctance to kill other humans, to make soldiers agree to follow orders of people they don’t necessarily think have superior qualities.

Perhaps the general needs to start thinking about how to overcome biological wiring so that he can be in command of human beings instead of mindless animals.

But that’s ten minutes.

Gender

CBC is having a lively discussion about gendered robots. Of course all they are really talking about is the representation of gender in films or perhaps in some prototype robotic devices. Real robots don’t worry about gender. But people do. Much of the last half century has been about the representation of gender in public life. Gender matters.

One of the first things I wrote was a play called “The Prisoner of Zelda,” in which Zelda was a foul-mouthed, beer swilling, hockey watching woman and the prisoner (who had been caught burglarizing the apartment) was a sensitive, artistic, tidy man with great kitchen skills but low self-esteem. It was a comedy. And it was wildly successful — the most watched play that year at Lunchbox Theatre in Calgary.

But it was still about surface things. About image. We all know what a real man looks like. Tall, broad shouldered — essentially with a triangular body shape — with lots of facial hair. Real hair optional. Women are curvaceous with a 2:3 waist/hip ratio. Of course not many people actually look like that. Ironically one way that men use to achieve that form — steroids — actually reduces their masculinity.

Gender has a genetic component with men generally having a XY chromosome and women with XX. But plenty of variations exist even here with XXX, XXY or XYY and several others all appearing in small percentages of the population. These genetic differences do result in small variations of appearance though in many cases they aren’t particularly marked and many people do not even know they have this slightly different gender make-up.

A big part of gender determination has to do with hormones both the mother’s hormones during pregnancy (which can vary considerably because of internal and external environmental factors), as well as by the hormonal balances in individual bodies. The body is a messy machine and hormonal shifts can occur for a lot of reasons. More importantly, hormonal variations can be considerable without causing any difficulty for survival or success — in other words they are perfectly normal.

And of course a huge part of gender is cultural — what is allowed or disallowed or encouraged or discouraged. Not surprisingly the way in which gender is displayed varies from culture to culture — such as the use of makeup at the trivial end to the way friendships are expressed and what they consist of at the more significant end.

Culture also impacts how openly people can express their gender characteristics. Repressive cultures force certain gender characteristics behind closed doors (though they never succeed in eliminating them) which may include both homosexuality but also masculine women and feminine men. As society becomes more open, individuals have greater latitude to express their true gender feelings.

Gender diversity is therefore a direct expression of increasing freedom in society. Individuals — including libertarians and conservatives — who believe in freedom should therefore embrace gender diversity both in sexual orientation but also in the breakdown of gender stereotypes. In a truly free world there is no such thing as a man’s place or a woman’s place. Every place can be occupied by those who are comfortable being there.

And that’s ten minutes.

Horny

There is a huge market around the world for things that will increase — what’s the word? – potency. Male potency. Okay, let’s call it what it is — things that help otherwise limp fellows get hard.

We’ve all seen the ads — people dancing for joy while sprinklers flood lawns. TVs abandoned to empty living rooms while the action movies play out off stage.

Who am I to question such desires? After all I’m sure it has restored happiness to many sexual relations. It has apparently also lead to an increase in both divorce rates among the elderly and new health issues — STDs — in senior’s residences. But they are consenting adults — even if not really smart ones — and if they want to experiment with some enhancing prescriptions, let them, as they say, go at it.

Unfortunately, not everyone likes the idea of helping big pharma ‘inflate’ their profits. Some object to the idea of artificial stimulants of any kind. Others argue that there are more natural ways to boost that all important organ.

Ginseng is often promoted as natural alternative to Viagra. There have even been some studies that show that much of the Ginseng sold in health food stores do the job just fine. The same studies reveal that the samples taken off the shelves are laced with — you guessed it — Viagra.

A more insidious remedy is rhino horn. In certain traditional or alternative “medical” practices, it is considered the most effective way of increasing male sexual desire (and cure cancer and hangovers, too). It’s a form of sympathetic magic. The rhino is big and aggressive. Its horn is firm and upstanding. You get the picture.

It doesn’t work, of course, but that doesn’t slow down the demand. As a result, rhinos are slaughtered by poachers at an alarming rate. Rhinos may soon be extinct as a result. Then what will those limp-dicked bastards do?

The saddest thing about all this is that the rhino horn is nothing but keratin — the same substance found in hair and finger nails. That’s right; maybe you could grind up your neighbour’s dreadlocks and put it instead of a little rhino horn in your oatmeal. And as such, it grows back. It should be possible to simply tranq the rhino and harvest the horn.

A renewable erectile resource. But that would be logical. And people who think that eating the hairy extrusion of an herbivore’s face will make them horny are probably not high on the logic chart.

But that’s ten minutes.

Virginity

There is nothing special about virginity. Everyone was a virgin once. Some people, apparently, more than once. Rob Anders, the doltish soon-to-be former MP, always claimed he was saving himself for marriage. Frankly, looking at Mr. Anders, he should have made wiser investments.

Still, some people seem to put inordinate value in the state of virginity. Suicide bombers and other terrorist martyrs are promised a specified number of virgins when they get to heaven. 72 seems like a lot but really a young vigorous fellow could go through those in a month or two. And then what do you have? Frankly I’d rather be promised a half dozen experienced older women who might appreciate an eager young man romping around paradise. An argument for quality over quantity, perhaps, though I might make a stronger argument for skipping it altogether. Particularly since I don’t think forcing women to do anything – even under God’s orders — is particularly attractive.

In any case what do female martyrs get? Seventy two pimple faced boys? Really who could possibly want that? Male virginity, Mr, Anders aside, is pretty much an unproveable quality or perhaps indefinable (does it include masturbation?). All you really have is the guy’s word for it. So yeah, it doesn’t exist (unless other people have made the decision for him).

Of course it is not much more provable in young women, despite the claims of some who are prepared to examine them medically to prove it. The hymen is a delicate flower that is easily plucked — isn’t that the expression? But it can be as readily plucked from vigorous athletics, bicycle riding, or quite often simply by day to day living. Methinks the doctors often tell little white lies to make their clients’ families happy.

Because they often know the consequences of a false negative. In some cultures it can be devastating or even deadly to be accused as a girl of not being a virgin. Surely, only an evil person would bring that punishment down on someone. Unless the loss of virginity leads to pregnancy or disease, what difference does it make anyway? And even those results are not a matter of punishment but of care.

Still it seems to matter plenty to some, if we are to believe those fathers who take their daughters to purity dances and require them to pledge their virginity to dear old dad. I mean, even for a non-Freudian like me, that just seems wrong and unnatural. Yet they — the Dads — defend it as the most natural thing in the world. And why is that?

Because like everything else that calls on men to pronounce on the value of women’s bodies it comes from the desire to own them, objectify them, enslave them.

Yeah, virginity, yet another tool of the patriarchy to reduce women to possessions and to keep them children all their lives.

Not sure where to go from there but fortunately,

That’s ten minutes.