Why I Wouldn’t Want My Son to Get Off on Watching Women Eat Feces

Last week, I wrote a blog post called “Two Girls, One Cup, and Your Kids”. In that post, I had the audacity to suggest that the Two Girls, One Cup video (and others like it) might not be the best possible material for our middle-schoolers to be viewing. I’d learned, quite by accident, that a lot of young kids in my area had been viewing this video, and was pretty sure that their parents had no idea. My primary concern was that these kids—some of them as young as 11—were as-yet unformed in their sexuality and just exploring and beginning to understand their own interests and inclinations.

The varied response was very interesting: a clinical psychologist talked about how early exposure to this kind of thing could have a lifelong impact on how a girl viewed her own sexuality and what she thought was expected of her; parents talked about the internet protections they had in place; and a surprising number of people suggested that I was a totalitarian right-wing lunatic who wanted to repress everyone’s sexuality and possibly kill them. One gentleman, whose knowledge of history is apparently a bit shaky, suggested that I probably thought homosexuals should be “gassed like the Jews”—I guess he wasn’t aware that homosexuals were also on Hitler’s hit list.

The general gist of the outraged comments I received was that a person’s sexuality was his own business and it said something negative about me if I didn’t think it was just fine if our kids were influenced by things like Two Girls, One Cup and grew up thinking that women eating feces and vomit was hot. Let me cop right off to the fact that I don’t think those particular “tastes” are “normal”. In no way shape or form am I going to try to tell you that I think that’s a choice that’s “just as valid as any other” or any such thing. I do, however, believe that what consenting adults do in private—assuming that it’s truly consensual—is their own business.

Apparently, some folks felt that my desire not to have our children’s sexual development influenced by this sort of material was inconsistent with the idea that what adults do in private is their business.

Children. Adults.

Get the difference?

Seems like not, so here’s the thing: you may find it hard to understand why, if I wouldn’t condemn an adult for doing something, I’d want to help a child avoid going down that same path. Frankly, that’s just stupid. It’s every adult’s own business, for instance, whether or not he smokes—but we don’t encourage our children to start smoking. And while those of you in the “you probably want to burn people with sex lives at stake” camp are probably fairly popping out of your chairs right now yelling that we ALL KNOW that smoking is bad for you, and you can’t compare that to someone’s sexual choices…

Nonsense.

Here are just a few of the reasons that I wouldn’t want my son (or anyone else’s) to be influenced by something like Two Girls, One Cup and decide that it was really hot when chicks ate feces and vomited:

1. Eating feces is a serious health hazard. I’d hate for my son (or anyone’s) to be in the position of needing to jeopardize someone else’s health and well-being to satisfy his sexual desires.

2. This kind of activity can be damaging to a woman’s self-esteem and even mental health. Argue away, but it’s a well-documented fact, and I would hate to see someone I loved responsible for that.

3. Most of the population doesn’t participate in this sort of activity; I’ve had at least one comment that suggested I should speak for myself and this was a puritanical view, but it’s a simple fact. Most people don’t eat shit for sexual gratification. That means that a boy who does develop these proclivities is limiting his relationship possibilities or setting himself up for conflict in his relationships, perhaps for the rest of his life.

The other argument I received was that kids just weren’t going to see this as sexual. Right. An adolescent boy watching two naked chicks make out—possibly seeing such a thing for the first time—would never associate that with sex, right? And the vulgarity of the feces consumption would ensure that he was far too grossed out to have any kind of physiological response to those naked chicks making out. Right. And sexuality isn’t influenced by our early sexual reactions AT ALL. Right?

Come on.

But What are You Going to DO With My Fingerprints?

There's been a lot of concern floating around the internet this morning about the new requirement that home sellers in Cook County, Illinois provide a thumbprint. There are, of course, the obvious concerns that always arise when some governmental agency or other starts collecting even more personal data about citizens. We all know about that comprehensive database the FBI is building, and some of us get a little nervous when we notice some new data collection method.

But that's not what bothers me about the thumbprint requirement. What bothers me about the thumbprint requirement is the extreme unlikelihood that it's going to serve any purpose whatsoever. You see, fingerprints are only useful when we have something to compare them with. In a criminal case, fingerprints help in two ways. If you have a suspect, you can match the fingerprints from the evidence to find out whether or not they match your suspect. And if you don't have a suspect, you can run the fingerprints through various databases to find out whether they match anyone whose fingerprints are already on file.

The latter can be a slow process, and it doesn't always bear fruit. After all, most of us don't have our fingerprints on file anywhere. If you've been arrested, applied for certain professional licenses, been in the military, etc., your fingerprints are in some database somewhere. Even finding those is dicey without a full-scale effort, because most searches don't include all of these databases. There's a hierarchy of priorities, and in some cases a backlog.

So, let's imagine that every home seller in Cook County provides a thumbprint. The vast majority of those thumbprints serve no immediate purpose, because there's nothing to match them against. If a problem arises--if it turns out that a home has been sold fraudulently--they may serve a couple of purposes. First, they could help the actual homeowner prove that he wasn't the one who sold the house. That's good...except that when a home has been fraudulently transferred by a third party, this usually isn't much of an issue. The second way it could help is that IF the actual seller's fingerprints were in some database somewhere, and IF the appropriate law enforcement agency ran the thumbprint against the right database, the perpetrator could be identified and prosecuted. The FBI currently has fingerprints on file for about 20% of the U.S. population.

So, the big question in my mind isn't "Is this too much of a burden?" or "Is this a civil rights issue?" or "What kind of liability issues does this raise?" or "Is it really fair to charge homeowners for this?", though those are all valid questions. My big question is this: What's the point?

I haven't seen any reporting thus far that sets forth any practical way in which this measure will help reduce fraudulent transfers.

Two Girls, One Cup, and Your Kids

Last week, I took a trip across the country with a great bunch of middle-class suburban kids ages 11-14. Over the course of four days, Two Girls, One Cup was mentioned more than once. There were, mercifully, some kids who didn’t know what it was—but there were others willing to fill them in. A troubling number seemed to have actually watched the video. (If you have the good fortune not to know what I’m talking about, follow the link above—or suffice to say that the video sexualizes both the consumption of solid human waste and vomit.)

If I’d overheard one of these conversations in a public place, I think I would have engaged in that kind of wishful distancing that many of us employ instinctively when a child disappears—blame the parents, and that will mean that as long as I do everything right, my child is safe. The thing is, I know these kids and I know their parents, and while none of us are perfect these aren’t disaffected rich kids raised by nannies or latchkey kids whose single moms are working two jobs and forced to leave them alone too much. This is the heartland: family vacations, volunteering at the schools, homework before dinner.

And somewhere in the mix, a little Internet porn.

Two Girls, One Cup (and its ilk), it seems, has become the new millennium equivalent of sneaking a peek at dad’s Playboy…except it isn’t equivalent at all. Playboy sexualized pretty women in various stages of undress—something we might not have wanted shared with our sons too early, but that largely represented what they would eventually discover and experience. Not so Two Girls, One Cup and the like, which sexualize things most people never do—or never did, in the era when getting risqué meant sneaking a peek at Playboy.

The associations formed in the early days of sexuality are powerful and lasting, and there is no question that our kids are getting very different messages about what is sexy and sexual than the ones we were exposed to in our youth. Adolescent boys are going to react to naked women kissing one another—and if those women happen to be incorporating feces and vomit into their make-out session, those images and associations are going to get confused. Sexual triggers will develop where they don’t for most people (or didn’t in the past).

I suspect that we can’t avoid this entirely, any more than parents 50 years ago could prevent their adolescents from spying on the neighbor lady when she bathed or looking at the pictures their older brothers hid under the mattress. But the risk is something entirely different today, and access is a thousand times easier than it was even ten or fifteen years ago.

We all need internet filters, no matter how good our kids are. They’re also curious and subject to the buzz that gets going about something like this. We all need to be aware; parents of today’s adolescents cover a large age-range and have different degrees of familiarity with the Internet. Know what’s out there, and how readily available it is. You can read all about Two Girls, One Cup on Wikipedia, for instance. And we need to talk to our kids about more than how to avoid pregnancy and STDs. Uncomfortable as it might be for everyone involved, they need to know that there’s a wide range of healthy, loving sexual activity that doesn’t involve the sorts of images they’re seeing: images that may, for some, be the first exposure to explicitly sexual material.

NOTE: For those in the "you're a neo-fascist totalitarian" camp, please see my follow-up post: Why I Wouldn't Want My Son to Get Off on Watching Women Eat Feces

Apparently, Barbie Isn't Our Biggest Problem

State Representative Jeff Eldridge has reportedly introduced legislation to ban Barbie dolls in West Virginia. The idea of zeroing in on Barbie in a time of economic distress, war, and rampant medical coverage issues is a bit absurd to begin with, but Eldridge's explanation as to why he's pushing for this measure is pure gold:

"Basically, I introduced legislation because the Barbie doll, I think, gives emphasis on if you're beautiful, you don't have to be smart."

I'm guessing Eldridge might have played with a few too many Barbie dolls in his youth.

"Don't Ask, Don't Tell" Bearing Unexpected Fruit - Clinton's Questionable Order Deserves a New Look

Sixteen years ago, Bill Clinton changed the policy on homosexuals in the military and angered virtually everyone in America. Conservatives who didn't think our boys should be forced to share barracks with gays were outraged that Clinton was letting them into the military at all; gay-rights supporters were equally upset by what they perceived as a cop-out that allowed homosexuals to serve in the military but still said it wasn't quite okay and that they'd better keep quiet about it.

But cultural change doesn't happen overnight: it usually happens in baby steps. A representative said earlier this week that President Barack Obama would change that policy. He said it unequivocally.

But more interesting than the announcement itself was the context in which I saw it announced. This brief introduction on Opposing Views reveals that President Obama is operating in a very different cultural context from that in which the Clinton order took effect.

That introduction says in part:

"Don't ask, don't tell" prohibits anyone who "demonstrate(s) a propensity or intent to engage in homosexual acts" from serving in the armed forces of the United States, as it "would create an unacceptable risk to the high standards of morale, good order and discipline, and unit cohesion that are the essence of military capability." This policy of forbidding homosexuals to disclose their sexual orientation has proven extremely controversial over the years, and now it looks as though its days might be numbered.

Of course, if you were politically aware in the 90s, you know that's not entirely true--"don't ask, don't tell" scaled back a previous military policy that simply didn't allow homosexuals to serve, period. And a lot of Americans thought that was outrageous. In less than two decades, the debate has changed radically--the idea that homosexuals shouldn't be serving in the military has given way to a debate over how that should occur. That's a big change for a relatively short period in history.

Maybe it's time for everyone--including the Clinton camp, which has long acknowledged "don't ask, don't tell" as a misstep--needs to re-evaluate the order in its historical context and think of it as a foundation.

Litigation in America

Today's Washington Post features an op-ed piece from George Will on litigation in America, and many of Will's points are well-taken. The examples he cites to show how frivolous litigation can grind normal human behavior to a halt are apt: teachers who are afraid to touch students even under urgent or the most innocent of circumstances; playgrounds stripped of the equipment that made them fun after inadequate supervision suits; a ban on running at recess.

But Will overlooks--whether innocently or intentionally--the real culprit in these cases. It's not parents who sue the schools when their children get hurt in ordinary accidents. It's not schools acting to protect themselves from litigation. It's insurance companies. And, unfortunately, the role that insurance companies play in such cases is generally invisible to the public. "Litigation happy" citizens take the blame. The court system takes the blame. But let's consider the anatomy of these cases:

A child is injured on the playground. The parents take the child to the doctor, and the doctor's office submits the bill to the child's medical insurance carrier. A week or two later, the parents receive a letter from the insurance company saying that they can't make a determination as to whether or not they should pay it, because it appears that there might be third-party liability. In other words, the insurance company isn't going to pay the medical bill if they might be able to pin it on the school. The parents then have to complete a form describing exactly what happened, so that the medical insurance company can decide whether or not someone else should be responsible.

Ironic, isn't it? The same medical insurance companies that tell us every day--that spend hundreds of millions of dollars telling us--that litigation is driving their costs up and making them overcharge us and our physicians have to put the brakes on to determine whether there might be someone else to sue.

If and when a lawsuit is filed, the actual defendant has little power over what happens next. For example, Will cites a case in which a teacher placed a restraining hand on the back of an unruly 7th grader and the school district was sued for $17 million and settled for $90,000.

If, in fact, all the teacher did was place his hand on the student's back, why did the school district settle? Of course, I'm not privy to the details of this particular case, but I can tell you how it goes in most cases. The school district has an insurance carrier. It's really the insurance carrier who is on the hook for the payout, and the insurance carrier's attorneys handle the case.

Now, if you were an individual--say, a teacher accused of abusing a student--you'd probably fight tooth and nail to clear your name, to keep that cloud from tainting the rest of your career. But the insurance company needn't concern itself with that sort of thing, and doesn't. The insurance company crunches the numbers and determines that it's less expensive to settle the case for $90,000 than it would be to go to trial and win--and so it pays up. The accused teacher has no say in the matter; the school district itself has very little.

And then the insurance companies come back out to the public with sad stories of how much these silly lawsuits are costing them, and how they're forced to raise prices. Because it's more cost-effective for them in the moment to hand out the cash, they create the precedent that invites lawsuits like this to move forward--as Will said himself, the case settled. SETTLED. Not the result of a rogue judge or a runaway jury, not the result of a slick lawyer playing the sympathies of the good people in the jury box--a conscious decision by the insurance company to maximize profits this quarter and the future be damned.

More on why access to litigation is critical to your safety as an American here: Corporate America Doesn't Care if You Die

Blogs that Appall Me, # 2

It's been almost a year since I wrote my first Blogs that Appall Me post. As I said then, I had mixed feelings about the whole thing. I was hesitant to provide links and publicity to a blog I found appalling, and pointing out the negative is generally only useful if it leads to some kind of productive action--this didn't seem like it would. So, after that initial post, I let the idea languish. But I've once again run across a blog that so horrifies me that I just can't keep my mouth shut.

Today's nominee is called "WTF Are We Going to Do Now?" It's about having a baby, and it's NOT tongue-in-cheek.

Before I go on, let me remind you that the Internet is forever. Our kids are stuck with what we've written, whether that means someone Googling their names and turning up information they'd rather have kept private or it means making ugly discoveries themselves. We've all seen movies in which some adolescent child hears a story or stumbles across an old letter or journal entry and discovers that the circumstances of his birth weren't what he thought. But tomorrow's kids won't even have to work that hard.

Brad's child, for instance, will only have to visit the "about Brad" page (or the version of it that's archived on the Wayback Machine or some other archiving site) to learn that his father was "not excited about this baby" but had decided to "do his best" to love it since that's "a father's job". Just what every kid wants to hear, don't you think?

I want to give him the benefit of the doubt on referring to his upcoming child as "the new pet". I'm hoping that's just a matter of concealing the news from their older child until he's ready to share.

Brad's wife, Katy, is a little softer. She only refers to this new child as her biggest "life interruption". And she gives her husband props for "giving up most of what he wanted to do with his life" in order to support her and their existing child. My first reaction to that was just a wave of pity for her and that child, to feel that they were an onerous obligation that kept this man from the life he wanted instead of...you know...BEING the life he wanted. But then I thought a little further, and I couldn't even make sense out of it.

You see, in another post, Brad shares that he's been a stay-at-home dad for almost ten years. Apparently at the moment both parents are at home, but he's hoping the wife will go back to work soon. Based on his ten years of experience, he offers all kinds of sage advice about how it's our responsibility as parents to suck it up and pretend that we're enjoying time with our kids when we'd rather be playing xbox.

I have to admit that I feel a little sorry for Brad and Katy. When my daughter came tumbling into my life (also unexpected, and at a very bad time for both medical and financial reasons) it was like a little piece of the sun had unexpectedly landed in my house and just stayed around lighting the place up and spreading warmth. It's painful to think that there are parents who are so focused on what they're giving up that they can't take that kind of joy from their children. But it's all the more troubling that they choose to share it with the world and, ultimately, probably with their children.

For once in my life, I'm glad to see a deluge of full-page pop-up ads. Maybe people will give up before they get to the actual text, and the bots won't be able to wade through the crap and archive these atrocities.