Darwin’s theory of evolution relies on the fact that there is variation within a population that is too big to be sustained by available resources. Those who are best fit to obtain those resources will be the ones to reproduce, thus genes are filtered through each reproductive cycle. Cybernetic technology seeks to eliminate the chance in this economic equation, insofar as chance is equivocal to the phenomena we come to know as God’s intention. When Dr. Frankenstein electrifies his mosaic of corpses into one whole surreal being, he exclaims, “It’s alive… Oh, in the name of God! Now I know what it feels like to be God!” The monster is literally fabricated like the genetic material in a mosaic from two beings, a process that was discovered shortly before the film was produced. The question of such cyborgian beings, like the monster of Frankenstein, would be resurrected (pun intended) at moments where the margin between human and animal is transgressed, encroaching upon the space once occupied by God. In this discussion, God comes to verbally and conceptually umbrella “chance,” synonymous with natural fit, unfit and neutral aspects of genetic variation, as well as the chance of available resources. In the specific case of Frankenstein, God is granted the role of sole proprietor of the spark of life itself, so that the very word “God” embodies the miraculous process by which gametes come together and propagate, recombining and mutating to form a life.

If gender is thought to be positive in the development of the cyborg, its creation marks a transition into what feminist theorist Donna Haraway muses is “a post-gender world; it has no truck with sexuality, pre-oedipal symbiosis, unalienated labour, or other seductions to organic wholeness through a final appropriation of all the powers of the parts into a higher unity,” (Haraway 150). The fear of the cyborg in regards to gender is the possibility that gender itself will disappear if the necessity for creation becomes an asexual laboratory endeavor. A mother, for example, did not birth the monster of Frankenstein. His gender was definably male, with his large stature and deep grunt, but his childlike demeanor remained on par with the naiveté with which he approached that small girl. That type of innocence is in part defined by the lack of sexual identity within the subject.

This manner of thought resembles Marxist ideology in that it assumes that the technology curve will always pattern a similarly constructed politically guided trajectory, ultimately resulting in a utopian egalitarian society. The flaw with either side of the gendered discussion of technology is assuming that the gendered body inherits a sociopolitical value, which is threatened when the body becomes spliced and diced and divided between the natural and the synthetic. Doctor Frankenstein rants, “Have you never wanted to look beyond the clouds and the stars, or to know what causes the trees to bud? But if you talk like that, people call you crazy.” However the narrator at the beginning does not call him crazy but instead accuses him of being “a man of science who sought to create a man after his own image without reckoning upon God.” In this scenario, the role of God represents a sense of personal value embedded in the possibility of chance, which is threatened with every motion of the surgeon’s knife. Likewise, does this not sound like the conservative debate on abortion, where every life retains inherent worth and is rendered “valuable?”

When it comes to the cyborg, Haraway explains that it is “a creature of social reality as well as a creature of fiction. Social reality is lived social relations, our most important political construction, a world-changing fiction,” (Haraway 150). Yet fiction, scientific or not, is always a reinvention and extrapolation of culture (which is why I think it is dually ironic that theorists like Freud and Butler find their frameworks being restricted to literature and deemed unfit for social analysis). We seek to envelop the impossible within the boundaries of the possible, so that the boundaries of science fiction are not an “optical illusion,” but as amorphous and organic as the human consciousness itself. For feminists, the threat is that by smudging the lines of these boundaries, an already endangered value to the feminine will be further truncated as technology advances and political determinism follows suit. Already there is a historical pattern of failure in this thought, both socially and economically, with Socialist feminism critiquing Marxist feminism in its evident shortcomings exposed by literature in the post-Cold War era. Perhaps the issue is the very conception of intersectionality, in assuming that race, class and gender all have a common thread in a person’s identity. They do in the economic and political realms because each is a point of personal value, but is gender only a value?

Gender must be linked to biology, otherwise it would not be threatened by the marriage of man and machine, but it appears to also be culturally specific. To me, the situation with gender is an Einstein frustration, with his last years tormented by the fact that quantum theory and relativity seemed to oppose each other. He explained to a fellow physicist, “Our situation is the following. We are standing in front of a closed box which we cannot open, and we try hard to discover about what is and is not in it.” Thus, my ultimate goal is to devalue gender to a point where we discover what is in its “closed box” most essential state, stripping it of its biological constructs, its cultural coloring, and its economic implication. Instead of wondering how do we do gender, I am interested in what gender does. Only in this way does it become possible for us to reshape what it means to be a woman or a man in a socioeconomic context, more accurately re-appropriate value, and reclaim the spaces in which individuals have been restricted by a collective body of speech (cycles of stereotypical representations). It could even be said I am looking for the “string theory of gender.”

Or maybe it is just an idea of (social) science fiction.

An Inconvenient Truthiness

“Olivia Wilde is so sexy she makes me want to strangle a mountain ox with my bare hands,” Megan Fox pruriently expressed to Esquire earlier this month. “I have no question in my mind about being bisexual” she confirmed, causing men and women everywhere to swoon. Personally, I am slightly concerned about the role of high altitude bovids in her lust, but no matter. Fergie wanted a slice of that national heat and publically labeled herself “experimental” when it comes to Sapphic curiosity.  It seems that a string of hot young starlets have been dabbling on the pink side more publically as of late. Ever lovable/laughable Lindsay Lohan had that little jaunt with SaMan Ronson, and a more polished Lady Gaga admits to being a lady lover. In case you weren’t privy of it, ‘Poker Face’ is technically about getting it on with a guy but thinking about a girl during the act. Because you know, “Russian roulette is not the same without a gun.” Touche.

Drew Barrymore, Christina Aguilera, Bai Ling, and Mrs. Pitt have all admitted to fancying women at some point or another as well. Richard Lippa, a psychologist at California State University, Fullerton, reports that men with high sex drives experience a stronger level of attraction to women for heterosexuals and to men for homosexuals. On the contrary, women with higher sex drives have a higher propensity to desire both sexes indiscriminately. In the case of the celebrity trend, it seems to be laced with two very consistent themes- the women all talk about having indiscriminate appreciation for others, and/or holding a sense of wonder towards the beauty of women. This two-pronged response made me remember a study published earlier this year regarding female sexuality.

Meredith Chivers, a psychology professor at Queen’s University, estimates that female sexuality diverges between the physiological and the subjective. Desire, it seems, is subjective, while sexual response is auto-reflexive. She joked that if desire and sexual responsiveness were always tied together, “I would have to believe that women want to have sex with bonobos.” So she tested the theory by making test subjects watch ape porn.

She sat her participants down in a big cozy La-Z-Boy and made them watch a short series of pornographic film clips. Straight, gay, and lesbian porn were shown, male and female self-pleasuring as well. Then the subject was made to view a muscled man walk down a shoreline, then a woman working out. Finally, she had the subject watch a snippet of bonobo sex, enhanced with audio clips of chimps making a ruckus to make it seem like the actors were having a particularly exuberant romp. Blood flow to the genitals was monitored with plethysmographs, while the subjects were asked to rate how stimulating they found the images.

The men generally responded in what Chivers terms “category specific” ways. Self-professed straight men rated heterosexual porn, lesbian porn, and female masturbation, and even the girl working out all hot, and their physiological response corresponded in kind. Gay men seemed to be on target, too. Neither thought the ape sex arousing in either respect.

The response from the female subjects startled the researchers. Women, no matter their expressed orientation, gave all of the film clips lower ratings than the men, except for those that explicitly corresponded to their labeled sexuality. Straight women gave high ratings for heterosexual porn, while lesbians gave high ratings to lesbian porn, etc. However, all of the women in the study were completely turned on by almost all of the footage, with much less distinct category specificity than the men. Women were even into the gay sex clip, although not enough for us to assume they were completely into it. The most fascinating aspect of the study was that straight women claimed that they were not into the lesbian pornography, nor the masturbating women, or the woman exercising. However, their physiological response showed otherwise. If there was another woman on screen, they ladies became aroused, while the buff guy running on the beach did nothing for them.

It’s the old adage given legitimacy that women never say what they mean, or in this case, how they really feel.

This was further confirmed last year in a study conducted by British psychologist, David Moxon.  He measured testosterone levels, as an indicator of sexual responsiveness, before and after people listened to the purr of a Ferrari, a Maserati, a Lamborghini, and a Volkswagen. Men on the whole reported that they thought that sports cars were hot, while women claimed indifference. However, the highest ratings showed that 100% of women had their engines revved after hearing the Maserati while the highest statistic for men capped out at only 60% of men after hearing the Lamborghini. Ladies can listen to such pornographic audio by going to http://www.gqconnects.com/lowdown_maserati.asp and clicking on the video recording. Sexy, no?

The Volkswagon, funnily enough, actually caused both sexes to be sexually repulsed. Yet in the cases of the foreign sports cars, women did not accurately convey how their bodies felt.

Coincidence? Maybe not. Further investigation suggests that conflict is actually what gets a girl going.

Chivers colleague, Marta Meana, a professor of psychology at the University of Nevada at Las Vegas explains that her research suggests , “What women want is a real dilemma… to be thrown up against a wall but not truly endangered. Women want a caveman and caring. If I had to pick an actor who embodies all the qualities, all the contradictions, it would be Denzel Washington. He communicates that kind of power and that he is a good man.” She talks about how this idea supports the prevalence of the ‘rape fantasy,’ although she hates calling it that. “The ravisher is so overcome by a craving focused on this particular woman that he cannot contain himself; he transgresses societal codes in order to seize her, and she, feeling herself to be the unique object of his desire, is electrified by her own reactive charge and surrenders.”

Perhaps this is why we say no when we really mean yes, yes, yes! If we have the agency to create the conflict, we are going to do so for our own pleasure.

Doesn’t it sound selfish to do this at the whim of our men?  “Really,” she said, “women’s desire is not relational, it’s narcissistic” – guided by the need to be the object of “erotic admiration,” while sexual response is linked to ideas about getting pleasure, not giving it.

This may explain why comedian Margaret Cho commented on her supposed escapades with women, “I’m not bi, I’m I. There was a time when I had sex with everyone. I just want you to want me.” The narcissistic aspect also can help unravel Drew Barrymore’s  explanation of her flings with girls, when she said, “I have always considered myself bisexual. I love a woman’s body. I think a woman and a woman together are beautiful, just as a man and a woman together are beautiful. Being with a woman is like exploring your own body, but through someone else.”

Meana further analyzes the appeal of the female form, which seems very consistent amongst women and heterosexual men. “The female body,” she said, “looks the same whether aroused or not. The male, without an erection, is announcing a lack of arousal. The female body always holds the promise, the suggestion of sex” — which apparently resonates through both sexes.

So many female celebrities coming out about this phenomenon thus seems not so surprising, but is just complicated by the constraints of a culture focused explicitly on sexually repressing women. “So many cultures have quite strict codes governing female sexuality,” Meana said. “If that sexuality is relatively passive, then why so many rules to control it? Why is it so frightening?” Perhaps all of these pop star antics will help us come to terms with female sexuality in more accepting fashion. After all, I kissed a girl. And I liked it. Can you really blame me? Just keep me away from those mountain oxen…

With Angel’s and Demon’s debuting this past weekend, I took a moment to consider the American fascination with conspiracy theories. According to Rutgers sociology professor, Ted Goertzel, conspiracy theories act as our scapegoat to explain activity that might “otherwise seem too abstract and impersonal.” While eager moviegoers are mulling over possible political scheming, I became focused on another type of “conspiracy” this week that has been too personal us to further ignore. Forget about Free Masons. I am talking, of course, about the culture of gay men.

This piece is not about politics or anything else that goes on in the public sphere. If we were going to go down that road, I am a firm believer in your right to openly do whatever makes you a sunflower shade of happy, under the condition that it will not very likely hurt or disable others. Yet there is something particularly fishy going on lately that makes me feel like Perez Hilton has gone from harmlessly monitoring quantities of Microsoft Paint inflicted drool on LiLo, even exploiting Miss America for his political agenda (which I happen to agree with, so I am amusedly tolerating), to becoming so omnipresent that he has even been neatly placed on the sharp tongues of Fox News. So far, it’s been fun and fascinating to see the gays smartly gain such a remarkable presence. But now I have begun to see the reaches of gay men in places where he definitely is not welcome: girls everywhere are being haunted by the ghost of Perez in the privacy of their very own bedrooms.

Let me explain. As a senior, I have seen my closest friends deal with the unsettling event of graduation in numerous ways. Introducing routine champagne for breakfast, deciding to train for a marathon, and popping the question to their significant other seem to be the standard measures. One of the most extreme cases would be that of my very conservative, Tipper Gore-eqsue friend. She literally left her last class, came home, and proceeded to invite one gentlemen caller after the other back to her apartment in quick succession, forcing her to etch notches into her bedpost with rapid fire. Thirty-six hours and four boys later, she finally emerged from her binge and went out to Panera with me to try and gain some much-needed footing. I had anticipated helping her schedule a doctor’s appointment and teasing out the knots in her “bed hair,” but found myself too shocked to initially do either. She winced that two out of the four young men, all of whom she had never even kissed before, went without hesitation right for the back door.

Since when in the heck has that been on the menu for a one-night stand? Though the statistics of the situation were shocking, I concluded that it was some sort of (also graduation inspired?) fluke, and that maybe bachelor number one had written “Enter Here,” on her caboose while she wasn’t looking. A few days later, we were still curious and entertained the idea at a cozy dinner party. The other girls at the party revealed that they, too, have had close calls with this forbidden act and were similarly flabbergasted that boys have gotten the message that this is acceptable behavior. “That is NOT for a little randy-vous!” one girl exclaimed. “I am saving myself until marriage!”

I decided to do some further research on the matter, and it seems that the phenomenon is not isolated to Rutgers. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report that in 2002, 38% of men ages 18 to 59 had heterosexual anal sex. This compares to only 26% of men in 1992. In 2007, GQ’s brother magazine, Details, covered a story on the trend, blatantly acknowledging, “Backdoor entry is now so mainstream, some guys request it on the first date.” Ah-hah! But where was this all coming from? Perez Hilton? Not specifically, but perhaps the prevalence, power and glamour of gay culture was certainly influencing it. In the same July 2007 issue, Details explored the new “A-gays.”

“Moneyed, successful, educated, and comfortable in their own skin, they’re fast becoming the new archetype of cosmopolitan masculinity. The urban man’s man. They don’t own yappy miniature dogs or time-shares in Fort Lauderdale; they own Labradors and four-bedroom summer homes in Sag Harbor. Instead of cruising in gay clubs, they jet to Gstaad or the TED conference, and party at Sundance with Zooey Deschanel. They don’t want to be part of any kind of closeted group or velvet mafia. They drive to Krav Maga class in Lexus hybrids and read four newspapers a day, including the Wall Street Journal, because they’re bosses and entrepreneurs, not employees. Often athletic, they’re never steroid queens. Artists and photographers approach them with new works. Charity committees beg them to cohost their benefits and sit on their boards—and they have portfolios of philanthropic interests that aren’t just gay- or AIDS-related. Some, like one couple in New York City, a lawyer and a chef, aren’t just avid operagoers, they’re benefactors. They transcend gayness in much the same way that Barack Obama is said to have transcended race.”

Sounds to me like these A-gays are completely enviable fixtures in a time when the metrosexuals in finance are taking a status whooping. They are even something to be revered, proven by the incessant appeals to gay men made by Kathy Griffin and Lady Gaga. Even academia is completely twink obsessed, trying to construct a ‘who’s who’ of gay history. Tufts University recently re-examined the orientation of Shakespeare’s sonnet inspiration. “It appears that Shakespeare’s eyebrows are higher here than in others of his portraits,” says Nicholas Rule, at their Interpersonal Perception & Communication Lab. “Women have a greater distance between their eyes and brows than men do, which might be subconsciously perceived as ‘gay.’” Even within my own department of evolutionary anthropology at Rutgers, graduate students and professors alike continue to examine (on the low) genetic explanations for homosexuality in males, perhaps to find a cure for the financially disenfranchised straight? And we’re just as curious as those high-rolling, workaholics- Who is gayer? Ryan or Simon?

If, as a society, we are going to start to equate homosexuality with power, it is going to complicate heterosexuality a little. I am not going to imply that slews of straight men are going to try and invest in a little stint at a gay bar to try and raise the bar of their own successes, but I am going to suggest that maybe something is going on at the subconscious level. It has been a presumption since sodomy laws that such acts are strictly homosexual. So maybe, straight men are just trying to regain the position of being on top.

In conclusion, can I get a holler from the completely enviable gays? And now that this discussion has made me feel like a prudish Victorian, can I maybe just politely ask the young straight guys out there- If you must once again exploit us for your own insecurities ( because we’re pretty used to it by now), could you at least seek permission/propose to a girl before you tread on virgin ground?

An Inconvenient Truthiness

This piece is a response to the New York Times article, “End the University as We Know It,” by Mark C. Taylor, published April 26^th, 2009.

The product of a typical Jewish mother and an impressively under-achieving father, I came to college motivated to become an estate attorney. While I was content to think of my Diane von Furstenberg future, my heart was in Neanderthals. But really, what’s practical about studying brutish extinct hominids? Then one night my second semester at college, a dear friend and I laid in my tiny dorm twin bed talking about what it was we wanted out of college and the rest of our lives. I remember telling him that I thought it might be easy to do law and ask my clients, “So, you cute old couple, how are we divvying up the assets amongst your favorite son and your meth addicted daughter?” He had sympathized, wanting to be a lawyer himself. However, I’ll never forget the way he thoughtfully cocked his head to the side when I lit up telling him about how excited I was to maybe take evolutionary anthropology courses. He paused in thought, and then carefully replied, “Car, that is what you should be doing. You need to pursue what makes you happy.”

I don’t know why I listened to him, although maybe it was because I trusted his overwhelming air of certainty. Maybe I was just looking for someone, anyone, to give the green light for the desires of my heart. Whatever it was, the next day I dropped ‘20^th Century Europe’ and signed up for ‘Social Evolution.’ I called my mother to tell her about my switcheroo, and she set up a dinner appointment with my grandparents a week later. My Yale educated grandfather took me into his office after the meal, sat back into a big leather chair with his gin and tonic and proceeded to chastise me about my budgeting habits/life/any newfound sense of self-worth that may have sprouted since our last chitchat.

“Your mother tells me you’ve been spending about $200 a month on whatever it is you go out and do on weekends. You know, I don’t want details, but $200 is a lot of money.”

Note to self: Stop telling mother about buying handles of vodka from the senior in American Government.

My grandmother chimed in, “You know Milton, a hundred dollars just isn’t the same as it was for our children…”

Blatantly ignoring her, he pulled out a New York Times article on creating a realistic college budget and handed it to me from across the desk. “Plus I don’t know how you’re going to keep up this extravagant lifestyle now that you’ve switched aspirations to this ‘anthropology’ thing. I mean, as a well traveled individual, I do realize that other cultures are vastly interesting…”

“Yes grandpa, but I am not really interested in other cultures as much as I am interested in the way in which the evolution of our biological construct affects…” I attempted to explain before I was interrupted.

“What’s your major again?”

This would become a question that would haunt me for the rest of my college days. And this is why when earlier this week I read the New York Times Op-Ed article, “End the University as We Know It,” I may have taken it to heart a little more seriously than others. While the article focuses on specialization at the graduate level, those in my department (myself included), feel that the narrow nature and obscurity of our discipline is incredibly discouraging, particularly in the present economic climate. The article’s author, Mark C. Taylor, the chairman of religion at Columbia, criticizes the university system for creating a “product for which there is no market.” The root of the problem, he writes, is that the university was established as an idea, by philosopher Immanuel Kant, to support large quantities of students instructed by specialists, which resulted in deep apportionment, and far too restricted areas of expertise.

The solution? Taylor, writes, “It would be far more effective to bring together people working on questions of religion, politics, history, economics, anthropology, sociology, literature, art, religion and philosophy to engage in comparative analysis of common problems. It is possible to imagine a broad range of topics around which such zones of inquiry could be organized: Mind, Body, Law, Information, Networks, Language, Space, Time, Media, Money, Life and Water.” Well that, Professor Taylor, sounds uncannily like exactly what my major accomplishes.

I have spent my college career figuring out the parameters of gender. To do this, my major required me to be an expert in biology, genetics, chemistry, statistics, osteology and geology. I had to take courses about monkey fossils, archaeology, and cultural anthropology. I had to be well versed in economics, sociology, race, religion and politics. Then, of course, were my core requirements, which I fulfilled with fun classes in literature, art and philosophy. To top it off, at a whopping fifty five credit requirement, I was taking almost twice as many major classes as my friends. I’ve nearly wanted to cry some semesters in feeling so stretched out over multiple, unrelated subjects. Yet, I have found that each and every class I have taken, no matter how seemingly distant from discussions in gender, have actually enhanced my understanding of it more than I could have fathomed- even the two classes I took in religion. As for gender? By darn, I think I’ve finally got it right.

I realize that maybe the narrow nature of evolutionary anthropology actually isn’t narrow at all. Instead, I wonder if perhaps it’s just simply the allusion of a questionable field disguised under an eleven-syllable mouthful that makes it so deceptive to others.

It has certainly proved to be a trusty little asset, though. Taylor offers some specific advice on the reformation of the tenure system and how to improve inter-institution connections. “Let one college have a strong department in French, for example, and the other a strong department in German; through teleconferencing and the Internet both subjects can be taught at both places with half the staff,” he smartly suggests. As for the “curriculum structured like a web or complex adaptive network,” he leaves the nitty gritty up to us. For this issue, and the excessive administration at Rutgers, I looked to evolutionary anthropology and I have a suggestion. Put women in charge.

Why? Rutgers’ most noted evolutionary anthropologist, Helen Fisher, writes,

“Women’s ability to integrate myriad facts is nowhere more evident than in the office. Female executives, business analysts note, tend to approach business issues from a broader perspective than do their male colleagues. Women tend to gather more data that pertain to a topic and connect these details faster. As women make decisions, they weigh more variables, consider more options and outcomes, recall more points of view, and see more ways to proceed. They integrate, generalize, and synthesize. And women, on average, tolerate ambiguity better than men do—probably because they visualize more of the factors involved in any issue. In short, women tend to think in webs of interrelated factors, not straight lines. I call this female manner of thought ‘web thinking.’”

The clear solution? Get rid of Dick McCormick and all the other overpaid male bureaucrats and let the ladies have a crack of it. I’m sure that Taylor would agree that feminine web thinking on a large scale is the type of activity that should be the new framework for the university.

Still, we’re going to need specialization to help bring forth all the details of the larger picture. As for me and my gender focus, through all of my research on ancient human species, with my countless binders and notebooks brimming with sketches and notes and clippings, with the hundreds of dog-earred books taking up space on the shelves that once sheltered my jean collection (which now rests happily all over my floor), with the empty coffee mugs left unwashed in my sink from pulling all nighters and all too early mornings, and the thousands of dollars in debt I have incurred from my higher education, I have come to this single conclusion: Stop denying who you are and be yourself to the fullest extent. Do what makes you happy.

(As long as it entails letting a woman boss you around.)

Quantum foam (foam, haha) according to Wikipedia, is “a qualitative description of subatomic spacetime turbulence at extremely small scales of time and space,”-similar to the slim chance you will find willing females at a party in any given basement in New Brunswick on a Friday night, a phenomenon noted in a recent article. But the “uncertainty principle allows particles and energy to briefly come into existence, and then annihilate, without violating conservation laws.” Read: The uncertainty principle is what will allow you to get in some quality intimate time without having to retain the girl for lengthy stretches of time.

Men are thinking of the instant gratification of pleasure and release. Albert Einstein once wrote, “I never think of the future. It comes soon enough.” Maybe men should be more open to the possibility of working in a much broader dimension of space and time. According to my careful calculations, a man’s chances that any given drunk girl, on any given weekend, in any given month will be ovulating is .8%- not a very reassuring statistic for men trying to get did.

I was debating whether to ask this scruffy finance guy that I had been casually chatting to for a few months out for some equally casual cappuccino. I was armed and ready to do it one morning at one of our usual intersections, adorned in a cute outfit that took my roommate three days to convince me was simultaneously unassuming and appropriately hot. Just as I was heading out the door, my phone buzzed. He wanted to know if I thought I might be hungry for Japanese next Friday at 6. I was famished!

I ran into my roommate’s room to show her the text and squeal excitedly. Dinner on a Friday night? This was a date. My roommate took a breath from our high-pitched spasms to think.

“You know what the best part of it is, Car?”

“What’s that, baby girl?”

“Next Friday we’ll be ovulating.”

I knew what that meant. I would be markedly thinner, having had two weeks to run off my PMS-stimulated ice cream and fat sandwich swamped cry-fest. My skin would be clearer, and certainly my cheeks would glow with the effects of 24-hour pyrexia. I would be in prime date condition! Now, normally on dates I am a proper lady, having even been known to end a date with a firm and enthusiastic handshake. But just knowing I would be ovulating meant I was probably going to be rendered completely helpless against its most dramatic symptom: terrible and impossible and overwhelming lust.

One of the most influential moments of my academic pursuits was when I attended a lecture on the history of the burka. It seems that this representation of female oppression was actually rooted in the male fear of feminine sexuality. I remember the lecturer clearly explaining that there were accounts of a man being so stimulated by the luxurious length of a woman’s hair falling down her back that he felt he could not move until he had her. Women, the men felt, possessed a mode of sexual aggression that threatened the very fabric of their society. According to texts, the voluptuous splay of Middle Eastern women’s hips incited men into a disastrous economic latency, unable to function with what I imagine were salivating men cuckolding a Kim Kardashian display, each biting their lip in the promise of trouble. Men felt they needed to confine women to the inside of their homes or covered under layers of the most opaque fabric, far from the reaches of any man’s gaze, so that society could even function. How could this female image be juxtaposed with the chaste, passive virgin we have so ingrained in our culture? These poor men, I am sure of it, were probably just victims of ovulation.

I have seen women do some downright outrageous things during this time in their cycle. I have seen one go through her phone contact list and seriously consider calling up that guy from her bio lab with the questionable mole which before had so rigorously deterred her. “I’ll take a shot before I go,” she leveled. One girl I knew had actually had some success obtaining a date in her time of heat, but the terrified boy called it a night promptly after they finished their pitcher of Blue Moon. She called me in a drunken stupor begging me to drive her to upstate New York, where an unattractive boy from her sculpture class promised to give her what she needed on his weekend cabin excursion. My sympathy nearly led me to overcome my fear of bears, grab a set of keys and go, until I found her vomiting and passed out on the apartment floor. Yet another friend of mine and I were tempted to purchase Viagra at 10 am at a strip club about a month ago on a Tuesday, and considered combining it with Ecstasy so that we could eliminate any “uncertainty” in the situation. We voted it was too risky, even for us.

Lesser extremes are also taken, but these are all attempts to get men into bed within their twenty-four hour window. This is reflected in the female penchant for variety in clothing, with every woman’s closet filled with an armory of secret weapons. Its not that we don’t like the act of seduction at any other time, its just that ovulation marks when we are most completely irrational for it. Thank goodness for Victoria’s Secret, lip plumpers, Benefit blush and anything else that we can use to entrap men when we need them most.

Ovulating is just one of the numerous monthly effects of menstruation, guiding female behavior to a much greater extent than the infamous PMS that so terrifies the male species. Yet it is only the most apparent symptoms that men can identify. Perhaps this is why most religions have strict regulations on menstruation. Women, on the other hand, know that something greater might be going on.

According to evolutionary biologist Leonard Schlain, the mechanics of evolving upright bipedalism caused an increased narrowness in the pelvis while simultaneously resulting in the disappearance of estrus, or what we know as animals in “heat.” What women developed instead of a seasonal sexuality was the complex lunar monthly cycle we all deal with in some way or another today. The intriguing aspect of Schlain’s argument is that he offers the idea that monthly periodicity gave women a much more apparent link between sex and menstruation and pregnancy. This was the development, he contends, that allowed humans as a species to understand the concept of deep time.

A girl won’t sleep with you on your first try? Perhaps she is just not in a prime state! Of course I realize that there may be other factors. I have heard a slew of excuses, including the following:

-”I forgot to shave my legs this morning and the stubble was completely forbidding.”

-”He was an awful kisser. We’re talking about a lizard-esque Saint Bernard here.”

-”I was wearing Bridget Jones underwear.”

-” I wasn’t wearing any underwear.”

-”I was wearing mismatched socks.”

-”My friend wanted to do him.”

-”My friend said she’d never do him.”

-”I knew I had seen him before! I hooked up with his roommate last week, and that’s just bad form.”

-”After kissing, he started making Russian jokes in a Russian accent- which were very funny until it became apparent that he would not break character. I gave up and left after an hour.”

-”There was a picture of Audrey Hepburn next to his bed and I couldn’t perform.”

As a deep-time thinker, here is my suggestion forX and the rest of you. Stop wanting instant gratification. If you can wait it out, let us know that you’ll be there for us in our time of need, we will be far more willing to give you what you want (and then some) in return. Two weeks from any given first date and we’ll be sure to call you up wanting to give you all we got, probably in the form of an unmistakable drunk text. If you’re lucky enough to find a girl all aglow on the first try, just let us know you’re willing to be there if we need it again before you pull a move. We’ll make it worth the line. Need further assistance? Don’t hesitate to utilize this free online tool, http://www.americanpregnancy.org/gettingpregnant/ovulationcalendar.html, allowing you to simultaneously manage different sets of ovaries. And what will really seal the deal is if you let us know that there is ice cream involved. You know, for another part of a cycle when we are in need.

Thinking Through Magnificent African Cupcakes

I had two goals when I came to college: 1.) Define ‘gender.’ 2.) Attempt to more concisely synthesize ideas regarding the world’s most pressing conundrum- What is going on in Africa? It took me four years to finally understand gender; in fact, it was only about four weeks ago when I finally had my ‘ah-hah’ moment. Yet, I feel like when it comes to Africa, the more I research, the deeper into confusion I sink. I am presently taking my fifth class about the subject, my previous classes spanning the academic spectrum in the departments of History, Literature, and Anthropology. Fail, epic fail, and fail again.

The History Department, in conjunction with the African Studies Department, appear to maintain the stance that Africa is a continent of intellect (“There was a library, they did algebra!”), developmental growth, and full of non-diminishing natural resources. The Anthropology Department is in agreement with this, but stresses that Africa is caught between development and tribal culture, as well as between organized governments and overwhelming corruption. There are clear issues with health care, orphanages, and racial tension. Then there is the English Department, adherents of which clearly have one African issue on their minds- slavery. Through all of this, I am simply more confused by what seem to be opposing positions. How could a continent be called a “wealth of intellect”, yet not have tamed even the basics, like political organization? The truth is that I still do not have an answer for you, dear reader, but I think I am on my way towards clarity.

I feel weighed down by the problems in Africa much more intensely of late. There are the Red campaigns; books displayed prominently at the front of Barnes and Nobel; and for heaven’s sake, Madonna’s incessant obsession with Malawi children. I keep tabs on her latest antics via Perez Hilton, watching advocates in the news accuse her of human trafficking, and thus decided to watch her documentary, “I Am Because We Are.”

The first part of the documentary begins with the story of a young boy named Fanizo, orphaned by AIDS. He talks about how he is jealous of his friends with parents who encourage them to go to school. They film him washing his own clothes, waiting on soup kitchen lines for his once a day meal. He is filmed playing soccer with friends. Do you feel your heartstrings being tugged upon? Madonna narrates suggesting we help by building schools, orphanages, and raise awareness. Several medical experts are then interviewed; all insist that poverty can only be remedied by bettering healthcare. It is at this point that the documentary swivels back to the monologues of children and mothers battling the deadly AIDS virus.

I stopped half way through, deciding that this kind of attitude towards Africa was the problem.

The whole dampened scene of mothers, children, disease, hunger, repeated use of the word “suffering” and even “future” seek to draw us into a passive sadness regarding Africa as a whole. If you are anything like me, your heart is sorely affected again and again by this horrific imagery. After watching a similarly constructed documentary about poverty in Somalia when I was 15, I vowed to adopt African children instead of having my own. Clearly others were affected likewise, with Angelina adorning her home with adoptees, and Madonna hopping on the bandwagon soon after Rocco was conceived from her own supernatural body.

But thank you, Madge, because after watching that documentary, I no longer want to be fooled into submissive sympathy. We cannot just pluck up children from the worst of conditions, stick them in a Bugaboo and hope to rectify the complexities of an entire continent. I am not saying that she is in the wrong, nor should she be accused of human trafficking. I am happy to give parentless children all the best that they deserve. I am just insisting that perhaps this is not the best way to go about handling the larger problems at stake.

We also cannot allow ourselves to be persuaded by the African Studies Department that all of Africa is as well situated as Ghana, Kenya or South Africa. That “Magnificent African Cake,” as coined by the Belgian King in 1875, is now a well-identified compilation of independent countries, each with their own sense of identity, as well as their own set of problems. Africa is now a set of cupcakes, if you will. Can you imagine your own national identity being lumped together with Mexico and Canada? I would be infuriated if someone even thought I was from South Jersey.

Earlier this week, a friend of mine with a recently printed English degree from Rutgers invited me over to help clean out her bookshelves. I snatched up some gems from her pre-med attempts, but I also toted home roughly a dozen post-it crusted reads from her days of literary examination. All of them were about slavery or racism. This factor certainly fortifies the complexities in our relationship with Africa, as we must believe in their potential, empathize with their suffering, and what’s more give from the heart of guilt with which we are so burdened. In an institution seeking to help me think critically, I am finding it difficult to muddle through the sympathetic cries of my heart.

Being true to the anthropologist that I am, I attempted to investigate further the true condition of Africa by seeing an old friend who had been shipped off to Madagascar for two years by the Peace Corps. She allowed me to view a slide show of her stay and let me listen to the stories behind the grotesque creatures and groups of laughing people. I listened to her tell of how she traveled away from her hut for a weekend, only to find upon returning home that the stray cat she had adopted had been served as Friday night dinner for the locals. Grossed out but impatient, I kept waiting for skeletal bodies (hungry enough to eat a household pet myself) to emerge from behind a burst of giant leaves in each passing slide, but I saw no such thing. How could this be possible in a country ranked #26 of the poorest countries by the United Nations, with Malawi staying just a scratch ahead at #27? I asked my friend what she felt her greatest accomplishments were in the 24 long months she braved there. “Well, for instance,” she replied, “One morning we taught them how to make pancakes. Small steps like that I think were the biggest advancements.”

Not only did I not want to spirit away their orphans, I definitely did not consider pancake making a stellar accomplishment. I do not want their identity to have to be clouded with our ideas about who they should be, but rather, I want to see each African country ignited with independence and identity, to stand on their own two feet and move forward on their own. I want those children to think, “Who am I? What resources do I have? What can I do?”

And so I am asking you, as I am trying so hard to demand of myself, stop thinking with your heart when it comes to Africa. Try to silence the visions of distended bellies, muddied water, and aching bones in your mind, and instead think critically about identity, resources, and economies. Try and meditate on what makes a country a functioning machine that can sustain life on its own. I am not sure what the answer is yet, but I am hoping that changing our frame of mind will be a start.

I can withstand comfortable handholding, the sweetness of spooning, or even the kind of knee grazing accompanied with lingering eye contact that makes your spine shiver with wonderment.  Certain expressions of affection are even preferred when dating, no matter how casual the relationship- there is something tremendously tantalizing about the sweetness of (even feigned) intimacy. However, it has been now twice that a boy has encroached on a boundary that one should cross strictly under the direst of circumstances. I let the first instance slide, but this second encounter has me rattling to clarify to the masses:

Eskimo kisses are serious business.

You know what I am talking about. There is something so incredibly soul shattering about nuzzling noses with another human being, that it must never be taken lightly. Perhaps it is because it is an act so completely void of sexuality, unlike the promises vested in your run of the mill lip locking. I once even had an evolutionary anthropology professor explain that ear lobes had evolved simply as a sexual adornment, which is why ladies routinely wear glittering, dangling earrings to attract attention to this sexualized body part. Nibbling on a lover’s ear? That is just brimming with sexual potential.

It reminds me of this chain letter that had been superstitiously suffused through the whole of my fourth grade class that served as a kissing guide far before any of us would need it.  According to this sacred document, which surely has morphed into an email since, a kiss on the cheek means he just wants to be friends. A kiss on the mouth means he wants to go further, although my fourth grade mind was vacant on what this could possibly mean.  A kiss on the forehead means he adores you, and to this very day if I get kissed on the forehead, I literally decipher the hidden meaning in this act and mentally affirm ‘adoration.’ I think it is possible that the boys did get wind of this letter and its phenomenon, but the problem was that it left out a key kiss- the Eskimo kiss.  I am certain that if the author of the note had considered it, she would say, “A kiss sacred for only one you truly are considering for the long term. With all solemnity, quite the most sincere kiss of all.”

To be precise, the Eskimo kiss is not the adorable rubbing of two noses peaking out from the furred hood of a parka. The act is actually rather odd, technically called a kunik, and according to the ever trusted Wikiepedia, “Usually [enacted] between family members and loved ones, that involves pressing the nose and upper lip against the skin (commonly the cheeks or forehead) and breathing in, causing the loved one’s skin or hair to be suctioned against the nose and upper lip.” It further clarifies that the kiss was not merely a means of avoiding contact that could result in mouths freezing to skin in an arctic gust. Rather, the “kiss” evolved to serve as “a non-erotic form of greeting that serves as an intimate way of greeting one another for people who, when they meet, often have little except their nose and eyes exposed.” The rubbing of noses is also evident in a New Zealand culture of the Maori, as well as by Mongolian peoples that wander the Gobi desert.

Do not consider these exotic cases an American parallel. In America, the rubbing of noses is not casual under any circumstances. The first time I was Eskimo kissed outside of the reassurance of a committed relationship, I was so dumbfounded that I proceeded to ask even perfect strangers to help me interpret what it could possibly mean. The response was unanimous. My preferred Starbucks barista, the girl I chatted up on the Sig Ep bathroom line, and even my forty-year-old married boss all agreed that this meant that the boy I was seeing was harboring secret serious feelings for me. All agreed except for maybe my mother, who responded, “I thought we agreed that this boy was no good for you. And what about my podiatrist’s son, Lenny? I am sure Lenny would be plenty interested in this ‘Eskimo kissing’ of which you speak.” This time around I knew better than to ask my mother for specific advice, but rather called my favorite friends out for lunch dates. Just to make sure, I posed the question for a second round of debate. “What does it mean when a boy Eskimo kisses you?”

A male comrade explained that he reserves that sort of thing only for the hottest of hook-ups, for girls so beyond him that he has to take the necessary risks to lasso them into a steady keep. Another gorgeous girl friend of mine confessed, “I knew it was serious when one morning, after a exceedingly romantic night out, he rubbed my nose before he left, when he thought I was still asleep.” Those two lovebirds have been an item for two years now. I remain resolute on the matter. Eskimo kissing is not for the faint of heart.

So to be clear, if you’re kissing a pretty girl and you are not 100% positive that you want to be sharing pancake and mimosa brunches regularly, do not rub noses with her. Do not rub noses on the train; do not rub noses in the rain. Do not rub noses via text, and please, please, please, keep your nose far, far from the throes of sex. Unless, of course, your feelings are quite true, in which case, maybe, maybe, Eskimo kissing is just the thing to do.

New Jersey Peaches, Texas Cactus

Each morning, I wake up after only four hours of sleep in a pile of books, covered in the ink from my uncapped highlighter, drooling on my laptop, but I am still happier than a Georgia peach because I am a Jersey girl. And being a Jersey girl means that your state legislative bodies respect your rights to womanhood. New Jersey, being the only state in which women could vote until 1807, presently permits 80% easier access than other states to terminate a pregnancy, permits civil unions in case I legally want to follow through on that college lesbian fling…and lately this great state is ensuring I have the right to stay in prime tramp condition for my guido gentleman callers.

This past week the Board of Cosmology and Hairstyling drafted a ban on the Brazilian bikini wax after two women were injured during a procedure. I will give you a moment to wince and wonder how serious one could be wounded armed with only popsicle sticks and hot wax. Whatever the gruesome details, technically the women were actually taking part in prohibited waxing activity, as New Jersey only explicitly permits hair removal on the extremities, face, neck, and abdomen. Still, women clamor to get their precious parts stripped clean, no matter the physical and legal consequences. The Associated Press reported that one Spa in Cherry Hill performed nearly 2000 no holds barred waxes last year. The owner of the spa was afraid of losing such a valuable chunk of business, especially during the present economic climate, and warned, “Many customers would likely travel across state lines to get it and some might even try to wax themselves.” Not only are Jersey girls hairy, we’re apparently crafty, too.

The Division of Consumer Affairs vigilantly considered the thought of the orange-tanned, nubile, and scantily clad girls at Seaside this summer deprived of their rights to a full on wax. The Board of Cosmology had anticipated that the hairiness of bureaucracy would cause them to have to wait until mid-April to go through with the ban, which would be enacted sometime in May. Yet all of that thorough deliberation only took a mere twenty-four hours after the story was released to the press before the New Jersey Division of Consumer Affairs came to a decision.

The Director of the Division, David Szuchman, issued a March 20th press release explaining, “I cannot agree to the complete prohibition in N.J.A.C. 13:28-2.15 (b) (4), banning the removal of hair in the genital area. Many commenters have noted that the procedure can be safely performed. I, therefore, believe that there are alternate means to address any public health issues identified by the board. To that end, I encourage the New Jersey State Board of Cosmetology and Hairstyling to begin an immediate review of the training necessary to safely provide this service, and to establish appropriate protocols and safeguards, as N.J.S.A. 45:5B-37 allows.” He asked the Board of Cosmology to reconsider their proposal.

I wonder if the fact that New Jersey’s law making bodies are generally comprised of particularly sleazy lawyers had anything to do with keeping our peaches properly maintained. But perhaps you believe that the response was rather vested in serving public interest…Need further evidence?

A grossly entertaining website, www.hotchickswithdouchebags.com, was brought to public attention last month when two Jersey girls of the down the shore persuasion attempted to sue the author for defamation of character. The ladies were pictured post-clubbing; fawning over a well muscled, jerk in a polo.

“By the early 1990s,” the website explains, “Jersey was teaming with scrotey douchebags polluting hotties. Jersey Douches remain the most obvious of the mockable scumbuckets who continue to molest hotties on a daily basis, and they will always have a home here at HCwDB. But we also explore the secondary and tertiary douche. The tonguebags, the handbags, the cactus heads and yes even the Fratchoads.”

I can see the scene clearly: A group of men in suits and the token pant suited lady lawyer spending eight grueling months examining photographs of busty twenty something girls in their black, low cut tops making that “Woo spring break!” face. After passing around the photos, Dick would elbow Bob and chuckle, “I wonder if she has a Brazilian, heh heh.”

In a hilariously phrased response, the Bergen County Court refused to uphold the suit.

“The Court finds that the text and photographs do not constitute defamatory falsehood of or concerning any of the plaintiffs. Hot Chicks With Douchebags is intended to be satirical humor. While it may in some eyes be vulgar and tasteless, it definitely is not an assertion of fact that anyone would take seriously.”

Read: “Don’t be stupid, girls, you are definitely hotties and don’t let us tell you otherwise. The fact that you are into douchebags is very promising for us. Furthermore, we appreciate any opportunity that permits us to use the word ‘douchebag’ in a professional context. Keep doing what you’re doing Jersey girls, because this is what makes us love our job and state.”

The websites author explained that leaving New Jersey is an essential step in ‘the de-douchification process’, but I’ll take my douchebag and Brazilian, thank you very much. With legislators like this, why would I ever leave? Now if I could only figure out how to effectively remove this highlighter from my duvet…

On Jewish Democrats, Sylvester Stallone’s $27.5M Estate and Boston’s “Best” Cookie Recipe

Because American news outlets just haven’t been the same since this newfound competency in the White House, I now settle down happily with a Diet Coke and watch Fox News for their ‘American Idol’ recaps, smiling at Paula Abdul’s awkwardly phrased sentences and her s-s-sincere attempts to make out words. A few weeks ago, having had my pop culture fix, I was about to flip the channel when I saw a familiar name appear on the screen. “CEO Leonard Abess lavishes $60M on his employees,” the headline read. W-w-what?

Since the age of ten, I have had my eye on a particular piece of Floridian property that has had me smitten from its feature in a 1997 issue of Architectural Digest. I was discouraged when Sylvester Stallone sold it in 1999 to the bank mogul, Leonard Abess, for a little less than $17M- still an unprecedented price in that neighborhood at the time. I have hated Abess since, even though he moved out long ago and my jealousy has since been reallocated to the next banker that snatched it up. Yet seeing him in this sweeter context on Fox made my heart thaw a little.

Apparently, our little real estate hustler sold 83% of his $400 million City National Bank of Florida and opted to split a nice chunk of that to 399 of his current and previous employees. The gesture made Abess an honorary attendee of the congressional address this past month, in which he shyly acknowledged Obama’s praises. Recipients of his kindness were captured on camera glowing in the post-near-heart-attack effects of their (on average) $127,000 checks. Giving away money like this is so uncannily liberal for a Republican banker, I thought. Then I found out he was a Democrat, and Jewish. A Jewish Democrat with impeccable taste in real estate? I forgave him all his trespasses. Reconciled, I dusted off the phenomenon as a one-time heart warmer and promptly got back to Abdul Watch 2009.

But it was just a few weeks later that I stumbled across a Boston Globe piece entitled, “A head with a heart.” It seems that while under pressure to cut some fiscal corners, Beth Israel CEO (and Jewish Democrat!) Daniel Levy called a hospital wide meeting asking the employees for their input on ways to save the lower-income workers at the hospital from impending severance. This CEO kindness seems to be infectious. Supposedly, the entire floor conveyed they were willing to do whatever it takes to make sure the workers wouldn’t get laid off. The Boston Globe reported, “A nurse said her floor voted unanimously to forgo a 3 percent raise. A guy in finance who got laid off from his last job at a hospital in Rhode Island suggested working one less day a week. Another nurse said she was willing to give up some vacation and sick time. A respiratory therapist suggested eliminating bonuses.” This isn’t the first time Levy has asked his employees for their opinion. Five years ago, (while I watched Abess sell the Stallone estate to banker Harry H. Bassett for $27.5M), Levy created a personal blog to ask his employees to candidly respond on their benefits packages, their feelings on his salary, and even leaked the recipe for the cafeterias reportedly famous chocolate chip cookies (For your convenience: http://runningahospital.blogspot.com/2006/10/best-of-boston-cookies-secret-is-out.html).

Even in light of the Great Cookie Exposure of 2006, Levy’s greatest achievement thus far is his announcement this past week to seek alternatives to laying off his janitors, his dining services workers, his transporters. As Obama carefully continues to outline his overhaul for our nations economic crisis, I think that the timing couldn’t be better for us to follow suite and be inspired to give a little to one another.

One of my favorite evolutionary psychologists (and Passover loving liberal #3 here), Jonathan Haidt of UVA, explains, “A scientific consensus is emerging that human moral psychology was shaped by multiple evolutionary forces and that our minds therefore detect many—sometimes conflicting—properties of social situations.” There are five of these moral senses that people respond to: Harm, fairness, ingroup, authority and purity. According to studies, people who are politically left tend to focus much more intently on harm and fairness, meaning that they seek to avoid hurting the underdog and avoiding injustice. It seems that harm and fairness are the two most important senses to all cultures, which is perhaps why liberals focus on these instead of another combination of senses. However, conservatives tend to view morality as a balanced combination of all five senses, which can lead to conflict and sacrificing aspects of one in favor of another. In this way, it becomes apparent that each side has its virutues, but no one here is essentially wrong or right. We’re just trying to do our best.

This is where benevolence comes in. Those generous CEO actions may have made liberals and conservatives alike feel all warm and fuzzy- a side effect of the hormone oxytocin, which can directly increase interpersonal trust, even toward unfamiliar people. This can result in sentiments able to help people rise above their differences become more open minded to greater possibilities.

Maybe by swinging a little to the right by idealizing unity we can hope to swing a little more easily left to enact more reasonable policy. I think back to FDR’s New Deal during the Depression and all of the (arguably) progressive legislature produced during that time. Social Security was established in 1935 allowing employees and employers to contribute to retirement benefits for Americans over the age of 65. The Wagner Act empowered unions, minimum wage was established, and health insurance benefits were gained. I am optimistic that we are almost privileged to see through an economic climate that makes possible progress in healthcare, gay rights, and even environmental advancements.

We can hear the call for unity resonating through Obama’s politically integrated appointments, as well as in his pleas to Congress. “When you start seeing an economic crisis of this magnitude, everybody’s got to chip in, everybody’s got to pull together,” the president said last month. “Politics has to stop.”

Maybe we all need to give a little bit for this to work. Even if you aren’t a rich banker, you could at least give your political flexibility, your willingness to listen and your consideration. Cooperation, my loves, is always the best recipe for progress, no matter what.

Forget your nasty Jersey “Axe.” The yeasty warmth of beer is a favorite scent of mine, reminiscent of drunken droves of sweaty boys and their hot, watering mouths crisp with alcohol. My girlfriends and I will sometimes venture to distant urban hubs to get smashed on the best small brewery stuff, but mostly we are content drinking Miller Lite in local bars or Natty Ice on tap in a neighbor’s damp basement while shitty house music in the background tests our (limited) tolerances. Other than its erotic aroma, consuming several pints to get properly tipsy has an added benefit, the reason for the inevitable gaggle of giggling girls making their way to the nearest bathroom to “break the seal”–the blissful release I call the “pee-gasm.”

One night several weeks ago, a friend and I were stumbling home from College Avenue after another worthless night out. By Mine Street we were in desperate need of a potty, so we tried to pry into Scott Hall to no avail, but thanks to the third advantage of beer, we had enough inhibition to squat in some nearby shrubbery. While we vented over how there was not one decent boy at any of the parties we went through, a perfectly worthwhile specimen succeeded in picking up my friend as I stood guard of her business time. He was almost creepily intrigued by her public urination, but he was hot enough that we didn’t exactly care. Maybe it was the beer that night that convinced us to let him help finish our trek up Hamilton. Thankfully we didn’t mind, and now a few weeks later, my little lady is now enjoying “gasms” of a different persuasion.

Of course, now she has a little problem… You guessed it. She found an entire folder of golden shower porn on his laptop. How surprising.

I did what any normal twenty-something would do in this situation: I arrived at her apartment with a half gallon of Rocky Road and season three of ‘Sex and the City’ to watch the episode where a politician asks to urinate on Carrie. Carrie was open to negotiation and proposed her candidate could watch her in the ladies room. I looked at my friend imploringly, and she said, “No way! Well, maybe. Couldn’t he just keep watching porn?” Either way, she’s not giving up. A boy this hot at Rutgers is a rare gem we’re willing to work with, even if it means getting a little dirty.

Maybe the truth is that we kind of like getting dirty. It has been my experience that I tend to be highly attracted to men who keep these sorts of trinket fetishes to themselves. And so it has come to pass that I will always ask a boy I am seeing early on what kind of porn he is into; I find that the more enthusiastic men are about porn, the better they turn out to be as lovers. Although I usually don’t get them to express their true desires right away, it gives me something to work with. On a side note, if you are with friends at the time or the chap is too proper for this sort of early relationship chitchat, ask him how much he likes women on a scale of 4 to 197. Anything below a 200 and you’re wasting your time.

Back to the task at hand. Why on earth would I want a man to actively embrace an institution that blatantly promotes the subjugation and abuse of women? What comfort could be had from knowing that he is enjoying women with breasts four or seven cup sizes ahead of me? Most importantly, what is there to be had from a man who wants anal foursomes or wants to pee on implanted whores?

The thing we need to really understand here is the Freudian concept that sexuality usually does not exist on a single locus (i.e. those embarrassingly large breasts), but rather in the recognition of a power struggle as a whole (i.e. the urinator and peed upon as a power dynamic). So who the heck cares about those silly nuisances in the adult entertainment industry? Furthermore, if I am in a relationship, especially a marriage, I can rest assured that my partner is attracted to me. As Rutgers own evolutionary biologist Helen Fisher points out in her book “Anatomy of Love,” the chemical pathways for love in our brain make us believe our partner is the most wonderful, beautiful person in the whole world anyway. Perhaps all those dirty little film clips serve a purpose other than a suggested dissatisfaction with my B cup.

A man’s relationship with porn is kind of like our relationships with our liberal arts majors. He spends his youth having these vague ideas about it, but when he reaches a certain age of maturity he immerses himself. He explores this new domain, discovering he has a knack for certain subjects, and a thorough disgust for others. But the truth of the matter is that there is limited space in the real world for these academic indulgences and he finds eventual contentment in his little cubical job, or in our sexier case, a committed relationship. Sometimes he gives up the studies of his youth completely, but if he is lucky, he will be truly inspired by one particular venue and perhaps take a more vested interest in it, reading about in the privacy of his own home until old age, maintaining that adventurous spirit well alive for the rest of his life. I would never ask my partner to stop his pursuit of knowledge, especially of himself. So perhaps when I am asking a boy what kinds of porn he watches, I am measuring breadth of knowledge on the subject of sexuality, particularly his own identity. I am also under the supposition that he is realistic enough to know the difference between what is porn and what is real, and hope we can strike a balance in the bedroom.

Maybe you’re the kind of little lady who is reading this and thinking, very simply, “Slut.” Maybe you wish your guy would instead focus on his real homework, economics or politics or what have you. You may hope your partner never watches porn.

I am A-Ok with that!

Personally, I find men that do not watch porn at all are generally grade-A vanilla, a twinge misogynistic, and if they are forced to choose a favorite pornographic genre, it is ironically femdom. But if you are the type of girl who prohibits your husband from watching porn in the first place, I have a feeling you won’t mind keeping his balls in both a metaphorical and literal vice grip. Good for you, you two happy kids. It takes all types!

I would venture that you are also the kind of girl who would prefer flowers as an expression of affection and thinks of sex as this ultimate expression of love, in which there is no room for those buxom, fish-netted blondes. But have you ever actually watched porn? There is a category for every taste: Robot porn, alien porn, latex porn, amateur porn (which is one of the most commonly watched, for all you ladies thinking men only want ‘fake’ girls), amputee porn, and of course water works pornography, aka the pee porn we are so concerned about here. According to psychologists Richard Laws and William O’Donahue in their book “Sexual Deviances”, urophilia is characterized by the consistent desire to “possess the consciousness or spirit of the partner,” which can only be satisfied by urine or in which the act of urinating is a focus of sexual desire. Not that I (nor my friend) particularly want to get peed on, but as we get older, a man watching porn is either in want of a woman or a bit of a fetishist. And if that fetish translates as his desire to “possess my consciousness,” well, what is more intimate than that? Give me a man who wants to pee on me over a sappy bastard with tulips any day.

As for you and me, pretty lady, we are really looking for the same treasured closeness- we just have different methodologies and needs. I am still rooting for ya home girl!

But until I see the day when I can provide my husband with every single one of his sexual requests, I have only this to say: For my future husband, if you are reading this, know that I apologize in advance that my friends will not always be able to come over on Thursdays for Boggle and anal foursome night. This being the case, I promise to go out for drinks with them once in awhile to leave that sort of fun for you and yourself. Similarly, I hope you will reciprocate the same courtesy for me on Tuesdays. And come home smelling of beer Love always, C.