Sex in Space (or in This Case, on Mars) Is Dangerous?

This is just the latest in a long legacy of sniggering stories about sex in space that posits getting your extraterrestrial freak on might be dangerous or even (as this story asserts yet again) "life threatening." The occasion for this latest volley is the first round of cuts — from over 200,000 applicants to 1,058 aspirants — in the Mars One screening process, leading to the eventual selection of a crew of 6 to make a one-way trip to Mars, but the topic of off-Earth coitus is titillating enough to have spawned a whole book, not to mention all of the giggling press pieces that bubble to the surface periodically, inevitably ranging from cautionary debunking ("it's not gonna be as hawt as you think") to outright fearmongering.

I find it depressing, and I think it's a symptom of the broad sex-negativity that still binds our culture, notwithstanding the ostensible sexual revolution of the last 50 years.

The most important ways in which life beyond the surface of the Earth will differ are high radiation and different (generally lower) gravity forces. The former is clearly a challenge, and potentially life threatening... but it is in no sense specific to sexual activity. Sex in space is no more dangerous, based on radiation exposure alone, than any other aspect of life in space. As as for low gravity, well, it might pose some challenges in terms of actually making the sex occur — as this soberer-than-usual article by Alan Boyle points out — but there's no reason to think it will make the sex risky.

No, when headlines breathlessly proclaim that outer-space sex is potentially "life threatening," what they really mean is that there's good reason to worry that pregnancy, childbirth, and early child development might not work well in low gravity. And we currently have no idea how much gravity is required to ensure that human procreation is safe, nor any real way to reliably find out.

This is a serious challenge; perhaps the single biggest obstacle to large-scale, long-term human settlement of space... but it doesn't mean sex in space will kill you!

Thought we lived in enlightened times, when sexual pleasure had been decoupled from procreation? Yeah, maybe not so much. You'd think that people writing about human spaceflight would be forward-looking out-of-the-box thinkers, but apparently even to many of them, sex begins and ends at babymaking.

Personally, I suspect the positional/logistical hassles of zero gravity will prove easy to overcome for creatures with, you know, hands and arms to grasp with and brains to direct them (and if you doubt it, consider that astronauts train for zero gee underwater, and then Google "underwater porn"1). And on Mars, whose gravity is 1/3 that of Earth, my guess is that the lightness of being will prove the polar opposite of unbearable.

Despite this story, later debunked as a hoax, and despite the fact that one married couple has flown in space together, nobody has yet tried sexual intercourse in space, and claims that portions of a porn movie, The Uranus Experiment, Part 2, were filmed on an aircraft performing zero-gee parabolas (similar to NASA's "Vomit Comet") are hard to confirm, but my guess is that once Virgin Galactic or one of its competitors starts regular operations, it won't be long before some adventurous couple books a whole flight for just the two of them and po
ps outer space's cherry.

My prediction is that, at least for space tourists, if not for later generations of permanent settlers, whatever practical challenges low/zero gravity poses will be overcome by the sense of novelty and adventure.

Certainly it's not going to kill anyone.

More Republican Slut-Shaming

Sorry if it seems like a theme in my postings, but this kind of stuff has really been chapping my ass lately. Let’s review the bidding, shall we? A presidential candidate’s wife’s blind trust invests in a fund that owns shares (oh, excuse me: used to own shares) in a media company that owns a sexually oriented website that might (but then again, might not, depending on who you talk to) be complicit in underage sex trafficking.

And this has something to do with the candidate himself… how, again?

Oh, I remember: OMG! Teh secks!!! Yeah, that’s how.

Let’s be perfectly clear: I’m not defending underage sex trafficking, nor anyone who’s responsible for it.

But that’s not why this story is a story. This story is a story so somebody can put “Romney” and “sex” in the same headline. Now, I’m the first to call out most Republicans (and all of the remaining Republican presidential candidates) as hypocrites and prigs when it comes to human sexuality, and I’m the first to say sex-negativity, and its attendant sexism and misogyny, is an incredibly serious problem, but I’ve got a couple problems with this item:

• Ann Romney’s “ownership” of anything sketchy is as diffuse as the interstellar medium, and Mitt Romney, the real target of this story, is yet one more step removed. As a comparison, my own 401k is partly invested in an S&P500 index fund: Am I therefore morally responsible for every act of every second-level subsidiary of every one of the 500 companies on that index? Is my wife? You might be able to make a logically consistent case that every owner, no matter how small the ownership interest, is responsible for every act of a company… but that’s not a very pragmatic position to take, socially, and it’s certainly not the standard we commonly apply.


• Do we imagine that none of the other companies the GS Capital Partners III fund has invested in have ever done anything questionable? Of course not, but Candidate’s Wife Has Distant Links to Company that Did Something Sketchy has no sizzle as a headline… unless, of course, the “something sketchy” is (you guessed it) OMG! Teh secks!!! This story is a scandal because we’re addicted to the notion that sex itself is a scandal; sex would’ve been the lede on this, I’m convinced, even without the actually scandalous aspect of trafficking. Bringing this up is just plain slut–shaming.


• Like the so-called sex scandals tried out against Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum, this is an attack on the candidate’s wife, which puts it in the category of misogyny (maybe that seems redundant to the slut-shaming point, but it feels worth mentioning separately). We progressives think it’s reprehensible when Democratic presidential candidates are attacked through their wives; why would we stoop to doing the same to Republican candidates’ wives?. Hillary Clinton was much more of a legitimate political partner when her husband was running for president than are Karen Santorum or either Mrs. Gingrich or Ann Romney; why would we tolerate attacks on the latter women any more than we did attacks on Hillary?

Look, I have many, many pressing reasons not to want Romney to be president, any more than I want Santorum or Gingrich to be president, but his wife’s gossamer-thin connection to illicit sex-work advertising isn’t one of them. These candidates pose a serious threat to the future of our republic… but calling “their women” sluts and whores (or, in this case, whoremongers) is entirely out of bounds. It’s exactly the sort of socially destructive sex-negativity and sexism that is one of the pressing reasons I don’t want any of them in the White House.

Another Cheap Shot Republican Sex "Scandal"

I don’t know much of anything about Neil Livingstone, and there are probably lots of perfectly good reasons the Republican counterterrorism expert and "international risk management" consultant shouldn’t become governor of Montana (Hell, according to me, there are plenty of good reasons most Republicans shouldn’t become governor of any state)… but the fact that an out-of-print book of his included safety tips for travelers who patronize prostitutes isn’t one of them.

Livingstone’s 1996 book Protect Yourself in an Uncertain World: A Comprehensive Handbook for Your Personal and Business Security reportedly includes a chapter on nightlife that deals with “adult entertainment districts.” The chapter begins with…

I do not recommend that you indulge in illicit pleasures such as gambling, drugs, or prostitution, but experience suggests that many people, despite the risks, do so. This chapter is designed to help you minimize the personal risks involved, especially when you are traveling in a foreign country.

…and there’s no reason not to take that preface at its face value: In the same way that many travel guides give cautionary advice about how to stay out of trouble over certain kinds of risky/illicit behavior (namely sex and drugs and, in some cases, even rock and roll) in foreign lands, it’s hardly surprising that a book like Livingstone’s would give advice on how to stay out of trouble while doing the kinds of things many travelers actually do, regardless of anyone’s moral attitudes about those activities. Especially considering that in many of the places Livingstone’s readers might find themselves, prostitution (along with other “adult nightlife” activities) is not actually illegal.

Because Republicans are generally sanctimonious and priggish about human sexuality, and have been increasingly intensely so recently, it’s tempting to leap on any whiff of a Republican sex scandal. Too tempting, I’m afraid: For us to indulge in kneejerk sexual shaming of Republicans actually reinforces the very sex-negative predisposition that’s at the heart of so much of what’s wrong with Republican ideology.

If there were evidence that Livingstone had promoted illegal prostitution, that would be a scandal; if there were evidence he’d merely patronized prostitutes himself, that might or might not be (I’d be inclined to say not, unless there’s a direct connection to his performance of a public trust); but on the “evidence” of a few excerpts from an old book, it’s not only not a scandal, I’m not sure why it’s even a story.

I've made a similar point previously in these pagespixels regarding attacks on Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich. For all I know this Livingstone character is as nasty and dangerous a piece of work as those two, but the point remains: When we engage in this kind of sniggering and shaming, we're validating the puritanical frame that's so much of what's wrong with our Republican opponents.

Let's not, shall we?

Fighting Idiocy With Humor?

In an effort to point out the patent absurdity of those who oppose same-sex marriage rights, a New Hampshire state representative has sponsored an amendment that would forbid left-handed people from marrying.

I literally laughed out loud when I saw this, but… is it too elitist and condescending of me to worry that these sorts of reductio ad absurdum acts of protest legislation will be lost on their target audience?

“I’m using humor to make a point,” the Concord Patch website quotes Canterbury Rep. Seth Cohn (a “liberty-minded Republican with a wry sense of humor”) as saying. “And when I get up there, believe me, there will be a point made. I’m trying to sway people’s opinions and using humor is one way to do it.”

Maybe so, but I fear that efforts like this, or the mandatory rectal prostate exam amendments that some have proposed as a flippant counterpart to the mandatory trans-vaginal ultrasound provisions abortion opponents have promoted in Virginia and elsewhere, will be lost on the sort of people who could propose the laws being protested with a straight face in the first place. Even though these proposals look like a biting satirical response to some of us, to how many others will they seem just silly… or, worse yet, a facile trivialization of an important issue?

Make no mistake: The underlying principle that unites all these fights over gay rights, contraception, abortion, and (if Rick Santorum gets his way) pornography — the right to personal sexual autonomy — is a matter of vital concern. I wish I thought we lived in a political culture in which it’s safe to joke about this topic; I’m worried that we do not.

[UPDATE: I should clarify that I don't mean to be dissing humor and satire, per se, as political tools; I only worry that this particular sort of satirical stunt can sometimes be counterproductive.]

A Bad Week for Sex in the News

So does it surprise anybody that the Republican presidential nomination contest is focused on sex? Beyond the "guilt-by-association," slut-shaming stories about Karen Santorum's youthful affair with an abortion-friendly obstetrician (which I've already addressed), we've heard Newt Gingrich's third (and current) wife attacked as a "mistress" while his second wife is quoted as claiming Newt asked her for an "open marriage."

The problem with all this is not that it gives Republican candidates a bad name — they're pushing hateful, evil policy ideas based on a hateful, evil ideology, and they deserve as bad a name as they can get — nor that they are false: AFAIK, Karen Santorum did shack up with a much older doctor for years, and Callista Gingrich manifestly was Newt's long-time mistress, and while characterizing what Newt was asking for as open marriage is deeply problematical (just ask Dan Savage or JT Eberhard's co-blogger Christina), I have no doubt that conversation took place, no matter how vigorously Newt whines at being asked about it.

No, the problem is that all this Republican sex obsession is that it gives sex a bad name... and that really is undeserved. It's also indicative of something deeply troubled about our politics: The fact that they choose sexuality as the weapon with which they shame and attack each other reflects the sense — false, IMHO, but woven deeply into the fabric of our culture — that pleasure, and sexual pleasure in particular, is corrupt and immoral. This ultimately religious commitment to the idea of the innate depravity of the flesh contributes to the right's attacks on gay rights, women's reproductive right, and general freedom of sexual expression. More indirectly, I think it contributes to the broad meanness of right-wing policies.

But it's not just politics: Yesterday I read a sad little story about a woman who offered sex in return for a McDonalds drive-thru customer's order of Chicken McNuggets. The woman, Khadijah Baseer, described in reports as being "known as a local panhandler [emphasis added]," apparently was opening customers' car doors, I assume seeking food or cash. One man called the police and complained that she'd offered him sex (some sources say oral sex) in return for his chicken bits.

So the most parsimonious interpretation of a woman offering sex in return for a couple dollars worth of food is that she's desperately poor, right? Or starving, or mentally ill, or strung out on drugs, or perhaps some combination of all of the above? Certainly she requires some sort of assistance, right?

So what did the cops do? They arrested her on suspicion of prostitution. Because it seems so likely that an actual prostitute would take payment in processed chicken. And because this woman is so much more likely to be a threat to society than someone who needs society's help.

Or maybe it's just because any story that has sex in it has to have a slut. It makes me sad that we think this way.

The Fact That I Despise Rick Santorum Doesn't Justify This

I think Rick Santorum is wrong — dangerously wrong — about almost everything. I think his ideas are authoritarian, reactionary, and deeply inhumane (to the point of being hateful), and I’m tempted to cheer anything that harms his ability to assert political or social power… but even so, I can’t help thinking this story, from Newsweek by way of The Daily Beast, is unfair, on several levels.

First, as eager as I am to catch Santorum out as a hypocrite, that he was (according to the details embedded in the text) less devout, and less committed to Catholic social doctrine, as a young man than he is now doesn’t automatically make him one, anymore than the fact that I voted for Reagan as a callow youth makes my current commitment to liberalism hypocritical. People change their minds, particularly over the span of decades, and there’s nothing wrong with, nor intellectually dishonest about, that. In general, the ability to modify one’s ideas and beliefs over time is a good thing… though it’s unfortunate (to put it mildly) that Santorum has apparently been busily changing his mind in the wrong direction.

But this story goes much further, into the realm of guilthypocrisy by association… by double association, actually: It seems that when Santorum’s wife Karen was a young, single woman, she dated a doctor who, among other things, provided abortions. Really? The fact that a politician’s wife’s ex-boyfriend from decades past had an occupation the politician now vehemently opposes is supposed to add something to the current debate? It’s sufficient that Santorum’s positions on reproductive rights are dangerous and hateful; who his wife used to sleep with is immaterial to the debate.

Ahh, who she used to sleep with; there’s the rub. Because even beyond the issue of hypocrisy by association, this story is troubling on a much deeper level: It’s red-letter slut shaming.

Even if you thought the old boyfriend’s abortion history was relevant to current politics, why would we need to know that this was a case of a young nursing student not just dating, but living with a much older doctor? Why add the vague whiff of symbolic incest by mentioning that he had actually delivered her as a baby? Why repeat his (likely self-congratulatory) memory that she came on to him, inventing (as he imagined it) a fear of the dark in order to move herself from a chaste basement apartment to his bedroom? Would any of this have been a story worth telling if it were the much-less-titillating tale of going on a couple dates with an obstetrician near her own age whom she met at school?

None of these details has a single thing to do with evaluating or criticizing Santorum’s stand on abortion; they have everything to do with the smug glee of tagging a sanctimonious moralist with a “slutty” wife. Much as I like to see sanctimonious moralists tagged as sexual hypocrites, this is unfair to him, and viciously unfair to his wife. Worse, shaming Karen Santorum for her past sexual activity partakes of the very same obsessive sexism and sex-negativity that is at the root of what’s hateful and awful about her husband’s politics, and that haunts our society.

We can’t fight this shit — and we must fight it — by indulging in it ourselves.

Rollercoaster News Reading

My first reaction to this Huffington Post story, the front-page headline of which referenced only sex-shop purchases and not the issue of misspent taxpayer funds (at least it did when I first saw it; it's apparently not linked from the front page at all anymoree), was “so what if he bought something at a sex shop? People have sex, and there’s nothing wrong with that.” Then I saw that the story was about a mayor improperly taking about $154 thousand in improper expense payments (he owes the town about $170 thousand, but that includes interest and investigative costs), and I thought, “well, there’s certainly something wrong with that.” Then I noticed that the sex-shop complaint only accounted for a relatively trivial $67 of the total (about 0.04 percent, if my cypherin’ is correct), but… OMG! It was at a gay sex shop, and, setting aside the misappropriation of public funds, there’s nothing wrong with shopping at a gay sex shop, per se.

Now, my own town is in the midst of a controversy regarding a former mayor who paid himself — improperly, many of us believe — a big chunk of self-determined extra compensation, so I’m far from sympathetic to mayors who dip into the public till. And while Jackson, Miss., mayor Greg Davis doesn’t need to apologize to anyone for being gay, he does need to apologize for hypocritically hiding behind the façade of a straight (married) “conservative” lifestyle for purposes of getting elected (and, in 2008, running for Congress). He probably should resign, as it appears Jackson’s Board of Aldermen may ask him to do today. All that said, though, highlighting a $67 purchase at Priape (even briefly) as the headline, instead of the tiny, relatively unimportant detail is actually is, strikes me as pandering to both sex-negative and homophobic impulses.

Shame on you, HuffPo!

Who Knew Matt Lauer Was So Shockable?

I'm a bit bemused at Matt Lauer's reaction to this story about private "suites" in First Class on Singapore Air's A380 jumbo jets. If the compartments are truly private, as both the headline and the story describes them, why shouldn't couples do what couples do? And why would they need "chaperones"?

Geez, Matt, you have "don' it wif' a lady" haven't you?

Love on the 50 Yard Line?

Amid the resignation of a married Republican congressman who got caught trolling Craigslist for dates and tabloid rumors about House Speaker John Boehner, the media "sex scandal" I'm most fascinated with is the story of New York Jets quarterback Mark Sanchez and the 17 year old woman he may have wooed and (if only temporarily) won.

Here's the thing: I was surprised to be reminded it, but Sanchez is only 24 himself, and 17 is over the age of consent in both New York and New Jersey. It's hard to be sure what the actual facts here are, but assuming the story reported by Deadspin is accurate, it's not a sordid tale of illicit hookups, and certainly not a case of child abuse; instead, it's an arguably sweet, if peculiarly modern, story of young love. The NBC Sports ProFootballTalk website, even as it's pointing out that Sanchez has broken no law (nor, it seems, NFL or team policy), opines that Sanchez displayed "bad judgment," but why? The young woman's own story, as she originally told it to Deadspin, doesn't make him out as a creepy predator; quite the contrary, he seems to have backed off initially when she told him her age, and only resumed courting her when she assured him she was of legal age. After which he appears to have treated her decently and impressed her as a "genuine" person.

Apparently the main reason PFT thinks Sanchez showed bad judgment is that he should have known that bad behavior and media hogging by other members of the Jets family would put this story in the spotlight. Huh? Say that again? Mrs. Rex Ryan's (possible) foot fetish video ought to constrain Sanchez's love life? Sal Alosi's sideline cheating means the quarterback has to sit home alone? Seriously?

By all accounts, Mark Sanchez is a decent, well-spoken young man. And while we may wish that young women would wait 'til they're older than 17 to become sexually active, we know many do not. If this girl were having a romance with a 24 year old waiter at the local TGIFriday's, it wouldn't be a scandal in anybody's book; why does it become scandalous when her boyfriend is a college-educated millionaire instead? Because he's famous? Because other famous people have behaved badly? That doesn't seem quite right to me.

Of course, it's almost impossible to know the whole, unvarnished truth in a situation like this, and it's possible that details are yet to come that will put this story in a darker light. But the idea of a young woman in her late teens dating a young man in his early twenties does not, on its face, horrify me. I've just been listening to Joseph Ellis' First Family: Abigail & John Adams, a chronicle of one of history's most successful marriages, and I note that John began courting Abigail when she was only 17 and he more than 9 years older, and they were married when she was still shy of 20. That was then and this is now, of course, and I'm certainly not suggesting Mark Sanchez and "E.K." are any John and Abigail Adams. But don't we all know longstanding, happy couples with an age difference on the order of 7 to 9 years? Don't we all know old married folk who met the love of their life while still teens? Is his fame (and the infamy of some of his colleagues) really a good reason to deny a young man (or, for that matter, his young companion) a chance at romance?

First Drugs, Now Sex; Can Rock and Roll Be Far Behind?

After yesterday's revelation that federal agents would no longer raid medical marijuana distributors that are operating legally under state law, now comes word that talks have begun on ending the Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy regarding gays in the military.

It's like I said: Quietly, without fanfare, we're seeing the basic attitudes of our government change for the better. Republicans may fear an activist government; I cheer one that increasingly treats me like an adult.

I Won't Be Doing Field Research... I Promise!

I'm getting ready for my trip to Washington, DC, to party like it's 2009, so imagine my bemusement when I saw this story in the Huffington Post!

Establishing a Prostitution-Free Zone (PFZ) strikes me as somewhat strange in a city (and nation) where prostitution is already illegal. Are they saying that in the Zone it's "not only merely illegal; it's really most sincerely illegal"? Will they set up Prostitution Benignly Neglected Zones (PBNZs) in other parts of the city, far from the tremulous gaze of the gathered multitude?

Enquiring minds want to know!

Ahh, but this enquiring mind intends to stay out of trouble. I expect to post plenty of interesting tales and pictures when I return, but none of them will be about this topic. Honest. ;^)

How Many Years Does This Teacher Get?

Well, middle school was never like this when I was a student! (h/t to the Education Wonks via Pharyngula)

My mind immediately flashed to the Julie Amero case when I read this story of 10 Indiana sixth-graders watching as two of their classmates performed a live sex show ("completed the act of intercourse," in the quaint language of a "disturbed resident" who reported the case to a local TV station) while their teacher was in the room!

If Amero's students were so terrifyingly endangered by a mere glimpse of digital porn that their unfortunate teacher is guilty of multiple felony counts, surely this teacher is ticketed for lethal injection, right? Well, not so much: Apparently "Warren Township School Police were not aware of the incident and say no report was made even though the children were recommended for expulsion." Hmmm... expel the preteens, but as for the teacher... no harm, no foul, I suppose. No need to even bother the cops with a report. Move along, folks; nothing to see here.

Mind you, I'm not after the teacher's scalp: Apparently the students conspired to hide this illicit activity, and the teacher took action as soon as he (or she; the news story studiously avoids "outing" the teacher's identity in any way) discovered something inappropriate was going on. But what kind of upside-down, inside-out world is it when Amero sits branded a sex offender and waiting to learn how much time she'll spend in prison while this teacher is happily making up next week's lesson plans?