98.

It often happens that I'm wrong. It happened with Shaha Ali Riza (not the man-baiting monetary policy minx I painted her to be), it happened recently with rape (turns out that does occur in the animal kingdom but that's not my point) and it happened even more recently when I wrote about men being more visual than women. I was obviously talking about sex, not fashion.

Turns out, there might be some truth to this theory. I use the word "truth" because what I mean is...

I had the chance today to hear a speech by transsexual researcher Anne Lawrence (not to be mistaken, as I first did, for Anne Summers, manufacturer of the infamous "rabbit" vibrator which I find, actually, somewhat intimidating but that's not relevant). In addition to being incredibly honest and personable, Lawrence painted her transsexuality as what it is: a disorienting form of mental illness. (I know people elsewhere might go apeshit over this, but let's not split hairs: when you pay a doctor the equivalent of a Gambian village's annual wages to slice open your genitals, you're not a happy camper. And there are different forms of transsexuality, not all of which constitute an illness). Not to be confused with transvestitism, which is a lifestyle choice.

Lawrence's description of being unable to achieve real intimacy with sexual partners was heartbreaking, and in a way rang strangely true. I think one symptom that is constant across mental disorders is this feeling of "separation" - of distance from and disappointment in other people, particularly intimate partners. I've seen this distance portrayed so well in Ernest Hemingway's short story "Up in Michigan" and I know that Hemingway was an alcoholic, severely depressed, and a lifelong cross-dresser. I saw this distance again in Lawrence.

It surprises me how many normal people have problems being close to other people. It doesn't matter how much you want it - your own chemistry/history can stop you. It's sad, and I wouldn't wish it on anyone. But all this is not my point.

My point is a little lighter, so I'm going to shift gears. Lawrence said that she misses only two things about being a man. The first is having effortless strength - she can't run a mile as fast, she can't lift heavy things, she can't do things that her body previously took for granted.

The second is her sex drive. As a natal man with no male organs, Lawrence has less testosterone than the average woman, and she said, "I didn't realize until my surgery how much testosterone is the hormone that drives lust." She said she missed her instinctive physical reactions when attractive women walked by (she's still attracted to women, although not as strongly) and what she referred to as her "constant, easy physical drive" and her "desperate need to have orgasms."

Ok. So. I'm not trying to generalize here. Obviously not everyone feels they have a "constant, easy physical drive": and if all sexuality were this angst-free, Portnoy would have had nothing to complain about. But I do think that being able to want other people - on a visceral level - is a marker of being alive.

Also, I think these two things that Lawrence named are things that women - whether we admit it or not - like about men, maybe because we realize that they're different.

95.

The problem with taking a class on human sexuality isn't that it's awkward. It's that sometimes, you will read things that, for whatever reason, seem intrinsically wrong.

For example, in the introduction to my textbook, the author cites a study that concludes, "By committing rape, men could have extra offspring at little cost, thus perpetuating more copies of their genes. Women, on the other hand, were limited in the total number of offspring they could have and could easily reach that number without engaging in rape. Therefore, the thinking goes, genes conferring the capacity for rape on men (and men only) spread throughout the human species."

How can someone apologize for rape on the basis of biology? But more importantly, how can they be so wrong? I feel that sometimes people refer to their "animal instincts" when they mean "my worse self." But in most species, females are the sexual decision-makers. I'm thinking about all those Animal Planet videos where a male lion tries to get it on with a female lion, and she doesn't dig it, so she claws him in the face and he skulks off. Something like that. The point is, rape does not exist in the animal kingdom.

This isn't a matter of opinion. It's a fact. And if rape were an evolutionary advantage, why wouldn't it be the norm? After all, many species are better at reproducing than humans (humans, in fact, reproduce poorly. What we do well is eliminate predators.) Why is this? Lots of theories might exist, but the most obvious is that it's not always advantageous for a female to be pregnant. The other might be that rape - overall, a violent act - is both physically and mentally damaging. Not only is it less likely to produce offspring, it's more likely to leave damages that will complicate pregnancy, etc, etc, etc.

And it's not as if most rapes progress like normal sex, anyway. In general, in fact, rape prevents pregnancy by damaging the woman. And I'm not just talking about the Congo, either. At the risk of being really indelicate, it seems that in most species males are conditioned to respond to signs of a female being "in heat" (not a charming expression) but, anyway, she'll enjoy it.

Why am I even bothering with all this, since the majority of people aren't rapists and the few who are can't be reasoned out of it? And why does any of it matter? I guess because rape is already such a loaded term on most college campuses, and I wonder sometimes if it doesn't do more harm than good to expose people to science based on faulty assumptions (women can have all the offspring they want without resorting to rape? Maybe some women can, just like some men, but how can someone make such a sensitive conclusion based on such a broad generalization?)

But, in the grander scheme of things, what is becoming far too clear is that most studies about human sexuality are "quack science" - hopelessly lopsided, poorly executed, and inconsistently robust in their conclusions. Not once have we come across results that, examined in the light of statistics, come up significant time after time.

What a raft of bullshit this class is turning out to be.

92. Who Wears Short Pants?

So Times writer Caitlin Moran wrote a very entertaining piece the other day about "pantorexia:" which she terms women's addiction to tiny and impractical underpants. (Imagine this entire post being read in a British accent, that will make the subject sound much less indelicate.)

Moran is a "woman of a certain age" which is the Edwardian way of saying "older than me." I find that despite their arguments in favor of practicality, safety, etc, women like Moran see the whole dental-floss-thong phenomenon as part of the Britnification of pop culture. In other words, as a cultural scourge. Victoria may once have had a secret, but she certainly doesn't anymore.

I've been doing my own laundry since I was 15, but not because I'm all that industrious. I started doing my own laundry around the time I started buying my own underwear, and the two were not unrelated. Even now, if for any reason (packing, unpacking, carrying laundry into the basement) my mother catches sight of some of the things I've bought lately, she makes a funny little face. The other day, when we were discussing how some of my laundry had ended up mixed with hers and my sisters, she deadpanned, "it's not like I'd get confused what belonged to whom. Anything smaller than 4 centimeters is yours."

She's wrong of course - it's more like 8 centimeters.

She cites the same argument as Moran, which is that "tiny knickers" are impractical. But I think it's more than that. In her steadfastly conservative heart (and it is conservative, in spite of all her attempts to appear very liberal) my mother thinks pretty underwear is morally wrong. Or at least, indicates a lax attitude towards morality.

Meanwhile, my philosophy was: take advantage of those golden years when your ass supports itself.

But as time goes by, I've changed my mind. My interest in nice underwear - and in general, in nice clothes - has waned a lot this year. If before I viewed shopping with fanatical, frothing-at-the-wallet enthusiasm, this year I'm a lot more restrained. I walk by stores and don't go in.

And the underwear is the same. Maybe my market is saturated. I have so many damn clothes that I no longer have space or energy to acquire something new. Or maybe it's something else. I wouldn't call it maturity, but maybe it's the passing of a phase.

In high school, I was content with two pairs of shoes, both of them sneakers, which I wore everyday in the belief that should terrorists/lunatics/dogs attack me, I'd better be ready to run. I also owned several skirts so short I can't look at them - much less wear them - ever again. And a whole lot of random T-shirts. One of my best friends once called me "fashion challenged," and she was being kind.

So for me, I figured this whole "buying cute crap" thing was a phase I'd eventually outgrow. I wonder if it's happening. Or maybe I'm just feeling more responsible, since a lingerie habit can leave a girl broke.