Monkeys Spanking the Monkey

With Sex Toys

A lot happened while I was away but sadly nothing really changed.

More States Doubled Down on Abortion Restrictions

Indiana earned the distinction of becoming the first state to pass a new law banning the procedure since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June. (Other states had already passed trigger laws that went into effect with the SCOTUS ruling.) Indiana’s law includes some narrow exceptions. Abortion would be permitted if the mother’s life was in danger and in cases of severe fetal anomalies. Victims of rape or incest can also seek abortion but only up to 10 weeks post-fertilization (which means the 10-year-old Ohio girl who travelled to Indiana for an abortion would likely have been too late). A proposed measure to make rape and incest survivors sign an affidavit attesting to their assault failed to make it into the final bill.

Under the new law, which goes into effect in September, all abortions (those that meet the narrow exception rules) have to be performed at hospitals or hospital-owned outpatient clinics, and any doctor found to perform an abortion under other conditions would lose their license. This effectively closes all abortion clinics in the state.

More Women Got Caught in the Post-Roe Confusion

A pregnant woman in Louisiana become yet another victim of confusion about when abortion is and isn’t allowed. Nancy Davis, a 36-year-old mom from Baton Rouge, worried that she had Covid when she started feeling nauseated a few weeks ago. She was pleased to find it wasn’t a virus but a pregnancy.

Unfortunately, at the first ultrasound, Davis and her partner learned that the fetus was developing without a skull. The doctor described the condition—known as acrania—as unsurvivable. As one fetal development expert told Nola.com, “Babies can be born alive, they just won't function. Their heart might be beating, they can breathe, but they have no brain tissue to actually develop as far as comprehending what's happening or reacting to anything."

Despite this, acrania is not on the list of conditions that qualify for a medical exception under Louisiana’s strict abortion laws. Davis’s doctor assumed she would qualify under broad language in the law that talks of “profound and irremediable congenital or chromosomal anomaly existing in the unborn child that is incompatible with sustaining life after birth in reasonable medical judgment.” The hospital, however, disagreed and refused to allow the procedure.

Davis is not sure what will happen to her. She may have run out of time to get an abortion in neighboring Florida where it is only legal until 15 weeks and has no way to get to North Carolina, the next closest state. Without other options, she went to a crisis pregnancy center which offered her thoughts and prayers and information on how to bury the baby (presumably once she has carried it to term and gone through the pain of labor and delivery). Davis told local media, “It makes me feel horrible, like I’m alone in this. It makes me feel like they just threw me to the wolves.”

More Parents Worked to Ban Books

The stories of book banning are so ubiquitous at this point that they can almost best be summed up by the Onion headline “Texas Schools Require Clear Bags To Prevent Students From Bringing In Books.”

One mom in Granbury, Texas has gone on a crusade against over 80 books that she feels should be banned from the school district’s libraries. Monica Brown—who home schooled all nine of her children—has been vocal about her objections to any book that includes sexually explicit content, normalizes lesbianism, focuses on sexual orientation, or “promotes alternate gender ideologies.” Brown served on a committee that reviewed books for the district but was not satisfied with its decision to ban just a few titles.

At the end of last school year, Brown filed a police report accusing school employees of providing pornography to children which triggered a criminal investigation by Hood County. Though she claims she is not specifically targeting LGBTQ books, three out of every five books on her list have LGBTQ content according to a review by NBC News.

After a video of her speaking to the school board went viral, her estranged son Weston, took to twitter:

“This is my mom. Seeing her advocate for the erasure of queer representation is crushing. Coming up on the 5 year anniversary of being effectively cut off from my family and siblings after coming out in 2018. Much love to those standing up and pushing back for representation.”  

On the plus side of this issue, Amanda Jones, a middle school librarian in Louisiana, is suing two men for defamation after they accused her of advocating to keep “pornographic” materials in the children’s section of the local library. The suit says a website run by the two men falsely labeled her a pedophile who wants to teach 11-year-olds about anal sex. One of the men also petitioned the school Jones works at for access to her personnel records and some commenters on the website suggested she should be physically assaulted. 

Jones said in an interview, “I’ve had enough for everybody. Nobody stands up to these people. They just say what they want and there are no repercussions, and they ruin people’s reputations and there’s no consequences.” Librarians may save us all.

More Viruses Tried to Kill Us  

Science fiction tells us that the end of humanity is either going to be caused by robots, asteroids, or viruses (or, in rare cases, a giant squid). Anyone reading the news in the past few weeks would likely put their money on viruses. We’re still dealing with Covid-19 (though most mitigation measures seem to have been abandoned). Experts are struggling to contain the monkeypox outbreak. And now we know that there’s polio in New York City.

Polio is an ancient virus that we managed to eliminate in the United States through an aggressive vaccination campaign that began in 1954. Back then parents—who had lived in fear of their child becoming paralyzed by the virus—were eager to get the new vaccine. (In contrast, only 30% of kids 5-11 are fully vaccinated against Covid-19 and vaccination uptake for those under five has been very slow. As of the beginning of August only 3% of these young children had received even one dose.) The confirmed case of polio in New York is in an unvaccinated, 20-year-old man. Wastewater studies suggest there are more cases in the city and surrounding areas.

Most people in the U.S. are vaccinated against polio as children. The CDC is urging anyone (adults and children) who has not been vaccinated to do so now. Adults will need a series of three shots, children get four.

In the movies, the scrappy team of scientists that was initially dismissed by the powers-that-be is ultimately called upon to come up with a plan to save the world. Sometimes it involves inventing new technology (say to travel into the Earth’s core), and sometimes it involves training oil drillers to be astronauts (which is clearly easier than training astronauts to be oil drillers). In the case of viruses, however, we already have the science. (Look at how fast we made the MRNA vaccines that have prevented so many deaths from Covid-19.) We just need people to use it.

More Republican Politicians Proved They Don’t Understand Pregnancy

In addition to Senator Tim Scott suggesting that pregnancy lasts a whole year, we’ve had one Republican politician argue that pregnancy is healing for rape victims and another who believes women play very little role in fetal development.

Tudor Dixon, the Trump-backed Republican nominee for Governor of Michigan, came under fire last month when she said she would not support an abortion exception for a hypothetical 14-year-old girl who was raped by an uncle. In an interview with the local Fox channel, Dixon doubled down and said that having the baby could actually be a good thing:

“I’ve talked to those people who were the child of a rape victim, and the bond that those two people made, and the fact that out of that tragedy there was healing through that baby — it’s something that we don’t think about.”

I didn’t think this needed to be said, but there is no scenario in which forcing a child who has been through trauma of rape to go through the trauma of pregnancy and childbirth is healing.

And then there was this gem from the David Alvord, the former mayor of South Jordan City, Utah. Replying to Vice President Kamala Harris’s tweet in which she said we should trust women to make decisions about their own bodies, Alvord mansplained:

“The baby is not part of the body of a woman. The umbilical chord [sic] and placenta do not directly connect to the woman. The baby floats inside the woman. It is not about the woman’s body, it’s to kill then remove the baby’s body. It is done in greater proportion to black babies.”

Oh Dave, that’s not how it f**king works. The placenta develops early in pregnancy and attaches to the wall of the uterus. The umbilical cord (no h, this is not music) connects to the placenta. Together they provide the developing fetus with oxygen and nutrients, remove harmful waste and carbon dioxide, and produce the hormones the fetus needs to grow. While it is true that fetuses float around in amniotic fluid, they are both attached to and completely dependent on person whose uterus they’re in.

For a running list of stupid things Republicans say about abortion and some important feminist commentary, check out writer Jessica Valenti’s substack newsletter, All in Her Head.

More Monkeys Masturbated with Sex Toys

Okay, this one might be new, but I do feel like we’ve talked about monkeys and masturbation before. Scientists studying long-tailed macaques in Bali’s Sacred Monkey Forest found that both males and females used stones as sex toys. In a paper published earlier this month, the scientists note hundreds of observed incidences in which the monkeys rub or tap their genitals with the stones.

Male monkeys were more likely to do this when they had an erection though it seems that this behavior never brought them all the way to ejaculation. While it was harder to tell whether female monkeys were aroused when doing this or climaxed from it, the researchers do know that adult females preferred stones with sharp edges and a grainy texture.

The researchers explained: “There is some sort of tactile stimulation from the contact of those stones with their genitals and it feels good. And there is no reason to stop.” Yep, that’s masturbation in a nutshell. It feels good and there’s no reason to stop.

Is this a case of monkeys spanking the monkey or are they, say, romancing the stone?

Can I go back to the beach now? Maybe if I promise to bring you all with me?