The Jeff Booth Show

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Show Transcripts

March 9th, 2008

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Jeff@eroticuniversity.com

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Welcome to the Jeff Booth Show for March 9th, 2008, brought to you by the Center for Sexual Expression and Education, and Erotic University. I’m Jeff Booth. This week we launch a new series with our Whacko of the Week, focusing on the people behind the McCain campaign. Spoiler alert- you won’t find many who are sex positive or whose attitudes about sex and women have progressed beyond the early 1950s.  Our sexvestigation looks at sexism, and the difference between sexism and sexuality. This is also a Sex Science Sunday, with all the latest scientific research on human sexuality. And of course, our roundup of politics and sex in the news As usual, just clock on the topic to the left that you want to listen to, and thanks for clicking in.

Politics

With the exception of rape that the U.S. government turns a blind eye to when it involves military contractors, we generally don’t cover rape in the news. Because sadly, unless it happens in your neighborhood, rape is not news. It is all too common. However, this case, which took place in Bellevue, Washington, is unique enough and heroic enough to merit mention. It involves a 16 year girl who used the Internet to identify and help capture her assailants. The 16 year old was raped by four 17 year olds. She did not know them, so she went to MySpace and found online profiles of two of the teens. She gave this information to police, who subpoenaed MySpace records, which revealed massages between the rapists. These messages included discussions of killing the girl if she went to police, concocting a cover story, as well as details of the assault and confirming that four teenagers were involved. Unfortunately, the teens will be tried as juveniles. You know, because gang rape and planned murder is such typical teenage behavior.

The mother of all bad ideas was proposed in Tennessee. They are discussing enacting legislation that would require paternity tests for all births, even to married couples. Western civilization is held together by the delusion that women are strictly monogamous and that all husbands are also the genetic parents of their children. Representative G. A. Hardaway is backing the legislation because, he says, “"The children need to know, and they need to know early enough, so it doesn't destroy their opportunity to have a happy childhood.” Their childhood will be so much happier after a paternity test destroys their parent’s marriage, and leaves them fatherless. Hardaway acknowledges that 27 percent of paternity cases in Tennessee find that the biological father is actually someone else. But paternity tests can only rule out who the father is, and can’t rule in who the father is. This is not a law to protect children, it’s a law to protect men and enforce the faithfulness of their women folk.

The Association of Physicians and Surgeons sounds like a legitimate organization representing doctors. Only it isn’t. They are an anti-vaccine, anti-fluoridation, anti-gay, anti-abortion, anti-stem cell research, anti-evolution, anti-regulation, anti-science, anti-women group of religious crackpots. And they just got their butt kicked in court.  This right wing organization sued the FDA to overturn the decision to allow the sale of Plan B, the pill for emergency contraception. Right wing groups the Family Research Council and Concerned Women for America also joined in the suit. Why? They claimed that the drug was not safe without a prescription, despite the fact that it is one of the most researched drugs for safety on the market. The court ruled that they had no standing to sue since no one had been harmed, and harm is key in a suit. There is absolutely no evidence that Plan B is potentially harmful, except to your control of women as baby making machines. You have to sue on behalf of someone, not just because you are insanely misogynistic.

What is as dangerous as heroin and LSD in the state of Missouri? If Representative Ray Salva has his way, the answer would be RU-486, the abortion drug. He is pushing a bill that would put RU-486 on the list of Schedule 1 Controlled Substances. A schedule 1 drug must have a high potential for abuse and have no accepted medical use or are unsafe. I am not familiar with anyone ever abusing RU-486. I think you could look long and hard for a pusher to satisfy your RU-486 fix. And how something with an accepted medical use can have no accepted medical use defies logic. But I don’t think logic is a big issue for Salva.  Salva’s amendent passed 113-36, so he is not alone in his idiocy. But this is Missouri, which sounds like misery and certainly feels like it.

I live not that far from South Pasadena. The city there just declared this past week No Cussing Week. It was initiated by a high school student, who wants everyone to control their language. Not surprising, since his parents are the author of Raising a G-Rated Kid in an X-Rated world.”  I’ve got no problem with banning cursing on high school campuses, or encouraging kids not to curse. I thinks it’s a good idea. But leave the adults the fuck alone. If we want to curse, or smoke, or drink, or watch porn, or have sex, we get to. Kids don’t, but having the mayor proclaim a No Cursing week is just juvenile.

Benedictine Monk Brother Niklaus has a dirty little habit. Literally. He has been going to porn shops in Germany and stuffing porn videos into his habit, then walking out with them.  A clerk caught him, he was chased through town, and apprehended. They found over 230 videos in his cell at the Abbey. SO what did they catch him with? You can’t make this stuff up: Nuns in Heat, and Ladyboys do Bangkok.

Imagine if the police came undercover into your business and discovered four joints on the premises. Now imagine that instead of one trial, the D.A. decides to go with four separate trials, one for each joint. Now imagine that your defense was that the joints were legal because you had a prescription and needed them for medical reasons. Even if this defense is valid, could you afford four trials to defend yourself? That is very similar to the bizarre and twisted reality that faces Rick Krial in Stanton Virgina. But in his case, its not drugs, its porn. Which is technically legal, unless a court decides it isn’t. Our porn laws are just as insane as our drug laws, with the exception that there are no porn kingpins killing people who come onto their turf, and porn doesn’t kill you if you overdose. You can go to jail for just as long though, and in some states, even longer. The prosecution argues that the videos they seized and are charging as obscene add up to 24 hours of porn- too much for a jury to watch. SO the prosecution wants to break it up into a series of trials. With enough seized videos, I suppose a prosecutor could keep a store owner in court for the rest of his life. In the first trial, the prosecutor wants to show the jury just two videos, with the claim that they are representative of 10. He fears that watching too many adult videos will desensitize the jury, and they will no longer be shocked and horrified by the sight of people having sex. The first two videos to go on trial are Sugar Britches and City Girls Extreme Gangbangs. Prosecutor Ray Robertson claims to have been horrified by the 24 hours of porn he had to watch, which included double penetration scenes that particularly offended him. This material is so damaging, he wants to spare the jury having to watch it. It is so damaging, that he is even working with federal prosecutors from the Obscenity Prosecution Task Force. The feds have no jurisdiction, but they are happy to help put away a porn kingpin- in this case, a guy in a small town who owns a small video store. The cost of prosecution will far exceed Krial’s yearly profit. He could be in court for years. Virginia is frequently in our news segments as one of the most anti-sex states, and they will be changing their official ironic slogan of Virginia is for Lovers to Virginia Sucks, but not in a good way because we’d put you in jail for that.

Science

Welcome to another edition of Sex Science Sunday, where we look at what is going on in the scientific world as it relates to sex.

In a study published in the Journal of Sexual Medicine, they interviewed Americans and Canadians to find out what they thought of as adequate sex. The study aimed to dispel unrealistic beliefs among couples that good sex should go on for a long time. The conclusion was that all you need is seven to thirteen minutes. Basically, two commercial breaks. Even three minutes was deemed adequate. But as this story is reported, it does not mention anything at all about the overall amount of sex, but strictly about penetrative sex. I know of few women who will find three minutes adequate. What was the difference between the reports of satisfaction between men and women? I suspect the guys were a lot more satisfied. And while clearly the men were achieving orgasm during the briefest of interludes, what about the women?  After penetrative sex lasting just three minutes where the guy clearly got his rocks off, did he then use manual stimulation to make sure she has an orgasm? Or did he just roll over and go to sleep? Studies do show that Americans expect between 15 to 20 minutes of penetrative sex, but the reality is that penetrative sex does not typically last this long. However, there is a lot more to sex than just penis in vagina sex. While their goals may have been laudable, the way the study is reported in the press makes it look more like an excuse for men to be lousy lays and inconsiderate of their partner. Hey, honey, science shows that three minutes should be enough for you. Now go to sleep.

Could oral cancer in men be good for women? Maybe, since the same vaccine that helps protect women from sexually transmitted cervical cancer risk would also protect men from oral cancer. The argument has been whether to give boys the vaccine against HPV, since the primary benefit would be to prevent them from giving it to women when they grow up. Now it looks like everyone should get the vaccine. And the social conservative argument that this would just encourage oral sex does not fly, as according to research published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, HPV can be spread to the mouth by the hands.  

Sagging libido in women can be just as devastating as the erectile dysfunction of men, but men have had erection pills for years now. I have known a number of women who have gone through this, often during menopause, and it is a very difficult situation. Soon there may be an answer. It is called LibiGel, and it is now undergoing safety trials. It’s a testosterone gel that is applied to the upper arm, with the hope that it can help menopausal women regain their sex drive. It’s not something a guy can covertly rub on his date’s arm and expect it to work like the mythical properties of Spanish Fly, but initial trials show that it could help women restore their sex drives to pre-menopausal levels. That will be a relief to both them and their partners.

And in the latest for men, Canadian drug stores now have a new low dose version of Cialis that you take once a day. It is expensive- over $100 a month, but for me who have sex several times a week, they wind up actually taking a lower dosage overall, and the lower dose may be easier to tolerate.  

My wife was spanked as a child, so much so that by today’s standards it would be considered child abuse, and she is into erotic spanking as an adult. Is there a connection? It seems logical that there would be, and a new study by Murray Straus of the University of New Hampshire-Durham found that children who were hit, spanked, slapped or had objects hurled at them were more likely to eroticize violent or abusive sex. Other researchers are not quite so sure. And the problem is that Straus finds this a problem, and it is unclear where he draws the line between abusive sex and eroticized pain or intense stimulation. My wife gets off on it, and while I might not share this particular disposition even though I was beaten as a child as well, I don’t see it as a problem for her. So, we still don’t know the connection, and until researchers have a little wider view of sexual diversity, we probably won’t.

One of the key teachings in abstinence education has been that boys want sex and girls want love. Anyone who has seen a heartbroken boy suffering over a lost romance can certainly call this into question. Researchers at the State University of New York at Oswego published a new study in the Journal of Adolescence that indicates that boys are in it for love just as much as girls. Only 14% of the boys in the study of 10th graders said they sought sex because they wanted to lose their virginity. For most, they were motivated by love and a desire for a real relationship- astonishingly, the same motivation women had. So where is the study that shows that sexually active teen women also enjoy the sex in a relationship and are not just using it to get love, which when you think about it, if the social conservatives are right, they won’t get, because boys are in it for the sex. But as usual, social conservatives are wrong.

Circumcision has been shown to be helpful in reducing the spread of AIDS, something quite useful in African nations devastated by the disease. In the testing of an HIV vaccine for Merck, they found that uncircumcised men were four times more likely to contract HIV. Many men avoid the procedure, though, because of a fear that it would reduce sexual pleasure. This has long been the rallying cry of the anti-circumcision crowd. A recent study, though, shows no indication that circumcision reduces sexual pleasure. Taking part in the study were 4, 400 sexually experienced Ugandan men aged from 15 to 49 who did not have the HIV virus. 2,200 of these men received circumcision while 2,200 had their circumcision delayed for 24 months. Researchers then checked for the levels of sexual desire, satisfaction and sexual performance for both groups of men over a period of six, 12 and 24 months. Said co-author Professor Ronald H Gray from the Bloomberg School of Health at Johns Hopkins University "Our study clearly shows that being circumcised did not have an adverse effect on the men who underwent the procedure when we compared them with the men who had not yet received surgery". Circumcision takes away a little skin, not sexual pleasure. Pinch your foreskin hard and then pinch a woman’s clitoris just as hard, then after you get up off the floor try and tell me that there is any thing even remotely the same between male and female circumcision. Female circumcision is brutal mutilation designed to destroy sexual pleasure, male circumcision can save lives, and now we know it has little impact on sexual pleasure or performance. While it is horrible for women, men are certainly not being cut short of sexual pleasure.

Whacko of the Week

We are starting a new series of Whacko of the Weeks, covering the men behind Republican candidate John McCain. Way back on June 10th, we reported on John McCain’s advisor on AIDs and other sexually related matters, Oklahoma Senator John Coburn. McCain managed to pick the craziest man in the Senate on sexual issues to be his advisor on sexual issues.

In this series, we will look at the other extremists that John McCain has either surrounded himself with as advisors or who have given them his enthusiastic support with his blessing. The perfect example of that is the recent endorsement by extremist pastor and well earned Whacko of the Week nominee, Pastor John Hagee.

When Barack Obama received the endorsement of militant extremist pastor Louis Farrakhan, he rightly rejected that endorsement. Hagey and Farrakhan have more in common than they have in opposition, but all McCain did, after enthusiastically accepting his endorsement, was to say that they did not agree on everything. I can’t imagine agreeing with much of any of the lunatic hate speech of John Hagee, but this is an endorsement that McCain has been courting for over a year. It’s a courtship made in hell. McCain said he was proud of the endorsement.

Hagey does not like Catholics much. He calls the Catholic Church the Great Whore. The great child molester I could see, but not the great whore. He calls them the anti-christ and a false cult system. He even linked the church to Hitler’s Nazi movement. He said “Most readers will be shocked by the clear record of history linking Adolf Hitler and the Roman Catholic Church in a conspiracy to exterminate the Jews.” Not hard to understand why Catholics are not thrilled about this endorsement. On Friday, McCain said that he radiated any comments if they are anti-Catholic or offend Catholics, But that is only the tip of the iceberg of Hagee’s hatefulness.

His hatred for Catholics is nothing compared to his hatred of gays. Hagee believes that God sent Hurricane Katrina to New Orleans to punish the city for hosting a gay pride parade. He said “All hurricanes are acts of God, because God controls the heavens. I believe that New Orleans had a level of sin that was offensive to God, and they are—were recipients of the judgment of God for that.” So it is amazing that God chose to spare the gay neighborhoods and the areas where the parade was scheduled to take place. God sure moves in mysterious ways. In his book on marriage, What Men Want in a Woman, he wrote that “"once let out of the closet, homosexuality becomes aggressive and wants to take control."

And apparently, despite endorsing him, he does not think that the divorced  McCain with his history of extramarital affairs is a Christian. Hagee said “"Christians don't steal or lie, they don't get divorced or have abortions. If the Ten Commandments were followed by everyone we would be able to fire half the police force and in six months the prisons would be all half empty." Maybe it was McCain’s lobbying to the FCC that would make Hagee’s Cornerstone Television $17.5 million dollars. Yes, this is the same lobbying McCain did as part of his oddly cozy relationship with lobbyist Vicki Iseman. The same lobbying that McCain was caught lying about. Since I guess Hagee forgave the divorce part, he also has no problem with the lying part. After all, multimillionaire Hagee is one of the highest paid of all televangelists, and sometimes you just have to keep your eye on the bottom line.

Of course he is strongly anti-abortion under any and all circumstances, He believes that God speaks to fetuses in the womb, and has a personal relationship with them. I guess he thinks the fetal position is the fetus huddled in prayer.

He is not a big supporter of women’s rights. In his book What Every Man Wants in a Woman (and the correct answer is actually his penis), but Hagee seems to think the right answer is actually submission. And his wife writes part of the book where she says that “Women have been trying to undermine male leadership since Eden, “ and that “women should submit to their husbands even if they feel strongly that it is wrong.” I’m sure she did not write that without his permission.  Thank God women don’t need to worry their pretty little heads over having a conscience or free will.

Like Farakhan, he blames the Jews for the Holocaust. He believes they will all perish, along with the Catholics, when the end of the world comes, which he believes will be triggered by a war with Iran, something he desperately wants to see happen to trigger Armagedden. He is a leading proponent of a preemptive military strike on Iran.

Hagee is a Prosperity Gospel con man. He preaches that if you give his church lots of money, you’ll get even more money back. God wants believers to be rich. If you don’t get rich, you just don’t believe strongly enough. Maybe you should give even more money. What a slimey scum sucking bastard.

He gets away with making claims that when proven wrong he can claim were only questions. Such as “What will happen on January 1st 2000? Will there be a germ warfare attack on the United States? “ The answer is no. And his endless non-predictions of the end of the world have just as much chance of coming true. So let me pose a hedged question: “What would happen if John Hagee was caught in a motel room having sex with an underage teen boy on a bed made out of the money that he bilked from his parishioners? Hey, its just a question. And it has a better chance of being right than pretty much anything that Hagee has to say.

Sexvestigation

Sexism and Sexuality

I considered myself a feminist in college. That was a few years ago. I no longer do, but not because my attitudes about women have changed. Feminism seemed to me to have been taken over by radicals, many of them lesbian, who confused sexism with sexuality, and found heterosexual relationships to be compromising and anti-woman. Then they joined forces with the religious right to go after pornography. That is when I and a lot of people who believe in the equality of women abandoned the term.

With a woman with a serious chance of becoming the nominee for president running for the very first time, I have become more aware of just how much sexism still exists in our society. Just the other day, a very good friend complained to me about her work, and about how the only way to get ahead there was to have testicles. She said, “I expected that in Iran, but not when I came here.”

I think part of the reason that sexism is still so prevalent is because the women’s movement veered sharply off course, and became led by anti-sex radicals. The Andrea Dworkins and Catherine McKinnon’s were not the exception, and their pushing the movement to focus on sexuality rather than real gender equality set things back. It essentially derailed the progress that was being made.

It is unfortunate that the terms sex and gender are so interchangeable, as apparently it has led to great confusion about what the problems really are. And they are deep and persistent. Sexism is not about the fact that men and many women find other women sexually appealing. It is about the attitudes that consider that the differences between men and women lead to the conclusion that women’s differences make them some how lesser, less qualified, less able.

We’ve talked a lot on this show about the incredible sexism directed at Hillary Clinton. But it appears everywhere. Take the March 2nd edition of the New York Post, with the headline- Miss-Leading- the truth about gals serial fibbing. The lead is “Deceit, thy name is woman.” Author Susan Edelman then goes on to make the argument that women lie more successfully and more cleverly than men do.  Her arguments are unscientific twaddle. It is an unbelievable article that attacks Hillary Clinton as a liar for claimning that the Monica Lewinsky scandal was a political attack against her husband (which it was, fueled by Ken Starr and lots of government money, and it mattered not whether Cinton actually had an affair or not).and even attacks Judith Guiliani for not speaking up about the fatc that she was married twice, without even mentioning that her husband, besides being an adulterer, is a serial liar.  

Here is an easy test for sexism. Just replace women with black men. Just try and get an article published that says that black men are better liars. I dare you. The headline was right but misspelled- the article was truly misleading.

Or look at the horrendous piece in the Washington Post by Charlotte Allen. The headline was “Women aren’t Very Bright”. She writes “I...wonder whether women -- I should say, "we women," of course -- aren't the weaker sex after all. Or even the stupid sex, our brains permanently occluded by random emotions, psychosomatic flailings and distraction by the superficial. Women "are only children of a larger growth," wrote the 18th-century Earl of Chesterfield. Could he have been right?” I’m not sure what she is saying, and neither is the Post, which later claimed it was a humor piece, despite not being funny and Charlotte’s history of anti-women writings, such as saying that women can solve their money problems just by getting married, or her support for anti-feminist hate sites.

And have you noticed that my first two examples were written by women? So sexism is not all about male misogyny. Women can be just as sexist as men. It is completely ingrained in our culture. In a society where women still proudly give up their names to take their husbands, you are not seeing real equality. When they so easily throw away their name and family heritage, we are not talking about a situation where men and women are equals.

I believe that women are just as qualified to do the same jobs as men. I believe that even though men and women are different, a difference I personally love, but that what we have much more in common than we have that is different. Sure, you can look at gender studies about what is average for men and women, but the truth is, gender is an extremely unscientific way to look at the difference between men and women. We all lie somewhere across a vast spectrum, a spectrum that has more overlap than not. We should all be appraised and held accountable for what we do, and not for the configuration of the genitals we were born with. Abilities vary dramatically from person to person, and gender scientists will tell you that gender is a poor predictor of ability.

Which brings me back to the sexuality part. So much has been focused on the objectification of women, of men seeing women as sex objects. That is one way to look at it. I see women as sexual beings. I enjoy looking at women’s bodies. But I also see them as equal partners, whether in sex or marriage or work. Some feminists seem to focus on telling women what they can’t do with their bodies. You shouldn’t perform in porn films. You shouldn’t enjoy watching porn films. You shouldn’t objectify yourself by dressing sexily. And that is different from telling women they shouldn’t have abortions how? Sexism is not about sexuality, and we really need to focus on the real problems of telling women what they can’t do or are not capable of doing simply because of their gender. And there is still way to damn much of that.