Fox & CBS Think Condoms Are About Death, Not Pleasure

You’ve probably heard about the new ad for Trojan condoms. It’s actually pretty clever, showing young guys in a dance club coming on to women. The guys are depicted as actual pigs (the special effects are cool), and the women are understandably turned off.

Then a guy/pig goes to the men’s room, gets a condom from a vending machine, and is transformed into a good-looking Mr. Right (or at least Mr. Right for Tonight), who gets plenty of smiles from the ladies.

The good news: the ad will run on ABC, NBC, MTV, Comedy Central, and seven other cable networks. Companion print ads will appear in 11 magazines, including Cosmopolitan and Glamour.

The bad news: The Fox and CBS TV networks rejected the commercial. Both had run Trojan’s previous campaign, which urged condom use because a partner might be HIV-positive and not even know it.

Fox refused the new ad, saying, “Contraceptive advertising must stress health-related uses rather than the prevention of pregnancy, even with late-night-only restrictions.” And CBS “did not find it appropriate” for the network.

The good news: the bad news is all over the internet, where even more people are watching the commercial.

Apparently, Fox and CBS will help sell a condom to prevent disease and death, but not to enhance quality of life. They say you can sell a condom to diminish the deadly effects of sex, but you can’t sell a condom to help make sex an enjoyable part of life. What a perfect example of how sick America is.

By any measure, America has the poorest sexual health of any industrial nation. We have more STDs, use less contraception, have the highest rate of unintended pregnancy (49% of all U.S. pregnancies), spend more money prosecuting victimless erotic behavior like prostitution and lap dancing, have among the most restrictions around abortion, and spend more money indoctrinating kids to not have sex.

America now leads the industrialized world in sexual hypocrisy. With Fox and CBS promoting sex, sex, sex on both its shows and its ads (CBS’s Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show scored a double hit), it is astonishing that they can refuse a commercial acknowledging that sex has consequences—and encouraging young people to address them. No, better to run ads for the movie Knocked Up, in which people get drunk, have unprotected sex, and—how’s this for hilarious?—get accidentally pregnant and have a baby! Now that’s American!

I can’t wait for Fox messiah Bill O’Reilly to blast his bosses’ hypocrisy. Yeah, the same day that pigs will fly.

The American media have long been criticized for using sex to sell everything from toothpaste to cars. Apparently, you can use sex to sell everything—except condoms.

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Technorati: sexual freedom, sexual repression, censorship, sexual intelligence, sexual censorship, sexual politics, war on sex, America’s war on sex, sexual rights, sex education, pornography

“Knocked Up?” No Thanks

So this fabulous woman—gorgeous, intelligent, great job, great future—gets drunk, sleeps with this loser without contraception, gets pregnant, drags the no-job, no-future stranger into a relationship, and has the baby.

Everyone says the movie is funny. ‘Scuse me, I don’t care.

I know that comedies are by nature ridiculous—think Duck Soup, Airplane, and anything Adam Sandler touches. But Knocked Up validates the dangerous idea that unintended pregnancy is a matter of bad luck. Worse, it describes a world in which abortion literally does not exist—it’s called “the A word,” which “rhymes with smashmortion.” You’d never know that 1.3 million Americans get abortions every year, that most are glad that they do, and that complications are rare.

And of course it has the requisite absurd happy ending—he magically gets a job, she magically desires a guy who can barely tie his shoes, and they’re magically glad they had this baby.

In real life this is almost always a disaster.

And in a country that’s trying to discourage teens from using condoms, promoting the illusion that love and faith are more important than knowledge, and suffering with the worst sexual health and unwanted pregnancy rate in the industrial world, we really don’t need Knocked Up.

Predictably, the Religious Right loves the movie. Columnist and radio host Michael Medved, for example, praises the movie as containing an “unexpectedly potent pro-life and pro-family message.” What is pro-life about compounding a mistake? Or pro-family about forcing people together who will almost certainly hate each other?

Of course, anti-choice critics are complaining about the film’s “coarse language.” Ooh, now there’s something to get upset about. Sexual reality—seems like any amount is too much for many Americans.

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Technorati: sexual freedom, sexual repression, censorship, sexual intelligence, sexual censorship, sexual politics, war on sex, America’s war on sex, sexual rights, sex education, pornography

Obituary: Stan Dale, Sexual Pioneer

Stan Dale, founder of the Human Awareness Institute and leader of hundreds of sexuality/intimacy workshops, died last week at age 78.

I didn’t take to Stan when we first met 17 years ago. He was just too damned happy. And way too loving, considering we barely knew each other. But he was relentless. He had decided we were going to be friends, not just colleagues. Eventually, he melted my heart.

That was the first thing I learned about Stan: the guy was dangerous. And fierce.

Stan sometimes said we were like two sides of a coin—me, educating people out there with ideas, he, moving people in their hearts. I think that’s true. But what a difference in our projects. He was constantly falling in love with the majesty of human intimacy. I was continually angry about some repressive public policy, or cultural hypocrisy. When he saw sexual negativity, he saw an injured person doing their best. When I saw an exploitive Church, a cynical media, a corrupt government, I saw, um, exploitation, cynicism, and corruption.

And I was never satisfied with my work. Stan tried to fix that. He’d point out my accomplishments, reframing them ‘til they sounded grand. I tried to correct him. He’d refuse.

Ultimately, what Stan offered the world was not his ideas, but himself. He treated everyone magnificently. He was infinitely patient. He designed a workshop program that healed people and connected them to each other. He created a little international cultural island on which people could be sexual together, transcending arbitrary limits like age, gender, the meaning of fidelity, the definition of “sex.”

And Stan lived authentically, letting people know of his multiple marriage and unconventional sexual commitments. He answered the same questions over and over and over—from the media, from acolytes, from negative outsiders eager to be titillated or judgmental (typically both). People who didn’t know him personally were often surprised to meet him—a regular-looking guy (except for those exquisite, dancing eyes) with two regular-looking women (ditto the eyes!), talking like regular people—unusually happy, peaceful people. Stan’s life was the best advertisement for his workshops. Everyone who knew him thought some version of, “I’d take any workshop (or medicine or ritual) this guy recommended to be as happy as he is.”

With his worldwide travel, lectures, media appearances, and writing, Stan influenced millions of people. We’re all better off for him having been here. I didn’t always agree with Stan about ideas, meaning, philosophy, or public policy, but I never felt more loved than when I was sitting with him, usually having breakfast at the Sofitel. And as Stan understood, making self-critical people feel loved is pure revolution.

Teens As A Sexually-Repressed Minority

What do you call it when the government singles out a group and denies them:

* information
* health care services
* the right to consensual sexual activity

Sounds like discrimination, doesn’t it?

In fact, American teenagers are a sexually repressed minority. In half of America’s schools, teachers are not allowed to answer simple questions about the clitoris or anal sex. Teens are discouraged from using condoms through a combination of government lies and government-funded lies (see faith-based funding of socials services). In many states, teens are prevented from getting healthcare, including abortions. And worst of all, teens are jailed for consensual sex with each other.

I’ve previously written about Kansas Attorney General Phill Kline, who demanded the medical records of all minors seeking abortions, pregnancy tests, birth control, or STD treatment. I’ve also written about Nebraska jailing teens for videotaping themselves having sex—at 17 she was old enough to consent to the sex, but she’s still a minor, so her boyfriend was convicted of manufacturing child porn.

Two years ago Georgia locked up 17-year-old Genarlow Wilson for having consensual oral sex with a 15-year-old. The former honor student and star athlete was sentenced to 10 years in prison and life as a registered sex offender. When a judge reviewed the case and ordered Wilson released, Georgia Attorney General Thurbert Baker appealed the order, blocking Wilson’s freedom.

Baker is a sick man. Kline is a sick man. This country is full of sick men and women who are more frightened of teen sexuality than of anything else—including the destruction of our Constitutional right to be left alone.

The abstinence movement continues to sell America the fantasy that teen sex is so dangerous that anything that discourages it is justified: lying to teens, terrifying teens, withholding information and services from teens, jailing teens. Why not go all the way and execute teens who have sex with each other?

When will people understand that damaging people in order to save them from (perhaps) damaging themselves is disrespectful, anti-American, and just plain cruel? And when will the abstinence crowd be brave enough to admit that the primary engine of their commitment is not their concern for kids, but the desire to reduce their own anxiety?

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Technorati: sexual freedom, sexual repression, censorship, sexual intelligence, sexual censorship, sexual politics, war on sex, America’s war on sex, sexual rights, sex education, pornography

“F-Word” Indecency

“F-word.”
“F— you.”

Do you know what these expressions mean? Of course you do. Everyone over the age of 10 does.

And yet the American mass media continue to use these infantile symbols when they want to refer to someone using the word fuck.

U.S. News & World Report is the latest grownup magazine to coyly play it both ways.

In this week’s article on how John McCain’s “sharp tongue could affect the [presidential] race,” they noted he was reported telling Senator John Cornyn “F— you.” Later in the story, they reminded us that three years ago, Vice-President Cheney “famously used the “F-word”” while quarrelling with Senator Pat Leahy.

This is just too puerile for words. First they imply that using the word fuck is a gauge of a person’s temperament or even his fitness for public office. Then they pretend the word is so powerful that reproducing it on the page is dangerous. But for some reason readers need to know that the dreaded syllable was uttered, and so it is, literally, spelled out for us.

What exactly is the difference between fuck and “the F-word”? The same as the difference between pasties and real nipples—the pretense of morality. The insistence that something harmless is dangerous, but that simply covering it makes us safer. The illusion that blushing makes everything OK.

If the magic word is that treacherous, we shouldn’t be invited to hear it in our mind’s ear. Magazines shouldn’t use “fruit you” either. They should say “he said a really awful word that’s too horrible to print.” That would make people think, another thing from which magazines seem eager to protect us.

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Technorati: sexual freedom, sexual repression, censorship, sexual intelligence, sexual censorship, sexual politics, war on sex, America’s war on sex, sexual rights, sex education, pornography

“Morality in Media” Gets Airsick

Ever been on an airplane and felt the movie was too sexy?

Me neither.

And yet Morality in Media, those sex-obsessed people who want to limit your choices so that they feel more comfortable, are championing the cause of a single individual who complained about this. A guy on a Delta flight complained that “Rome” wasn’t edited enough for him or anyone else, and now MiM has found their shock-du-jour.

Delta has promised to edit any sexy scenes down to three seconds or less, but this merely inflames MiM even more. Says MiM president Robert Peters,

“To put that in perspective, Janet Jackson’s breast was exposed for only 19/32 of a second on CBS-TV during the 2004 Super Bowl halftime show.”

Yes, and we know how much that half-second damaged the Republic.

You’re exactly right, Mr. Peters. You led the way in demanding that our government exert more control over television because a nipple was exposed for a half-second. It was such a damaging half-second that every news show in the country then replayed it countless times, and the public made it the most downloaded moment in internet history.

Peters complains that if someone else in the plane is watching “Rome” he can’t help but catch glimpses of it. And once his gaze lands on flesh, he can’t stop, and he claims his brain is “structurally changed.” Don’t laugh—Dr. Judith Reisman’s bizarre warning that “we literally ‘grow new brain’ with each new visual experience” was central to the Senate’s 2004 hearings on the dangers of pornography.

We sympathize with anyone who can’t stand anyone else seeing a few seconds of flesh, and who are unable to avert their eyes when they desire. We urge that such people take yoga, meditation, or other training so that they don’t focus on what they don’t want to see.

It would improve their driving, too.

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