Playboy Goes Public, Utah Wishes It Wouldn’t
In honor of Valentine’s Day, I was excited to bring you a survey by Durex about how much sex people were having around the world. The results suggested that Greeks were doing it the most with 89% of the adults saying they had sex more than once a week. They were followed closely by those in Brazil and Russia. And while respondents in those countries seemed satisfied with their sex lives, only 15% of those in Japan shared that satisfaction. The survey appeared in at least three articles that popped up in my clipping service this week and were dated 2/14/2021. But when I went in search of additional information—like where we here in the U.S. fell in terms of frequency and satisfaction—I had a hard time finding the original source. Ultimately, it turned out it was a survey of 30,000 people around the world, it was sponsored by the international condom company, and it did find Greece to be in the lead. But it wasn’t done this year or even last (hence no mention of the pandemic). This survey was conducted in 2012. Perhaps it’s a case of the reporters flipping some digits or perhaps they didn’t have a lot to write about this week (which seems strange, I had no trouble finding stories). Either way it is yet another cautionary tale about checking your sources because this was almost a decade ago and the stats may very well have changed. Russian may have moved from third place to first or Brazilians could have taken the lead. At the very least, I hope those in Japan have found a little more sexual happiness.
Utah Lawmakers Go After Porn Again, But Don’t Want Schools to Teach Consent
A Utah lawmaker is hoping that the third time is a charm; she has introduced legislation that would require manufacturers of cellphones and tablets to have porn-filtering software not only installed but automatically activated on all devices sold in the state. Two similar bills have failed, but this one made it out of committee last week and will now go to the full House.
The purported goal of this bill is to prevent children from accidentally being exposed to internet porn (“won’t somebody think of the children”), but lawmakers in Utah have been going after adult porn viewing for years. In 2016, then-Governor Gary Hubert signed a resolution declaring pornography to be a public health crisis. The resolution claimed that porn was responsible for low self-esteem and body image in adolescents, the hypersexualization of teens, the objectification of women, and the rewiring of young brains that results in “deviant sexual arousal” and difficulty forming relationships. It also blamed porn for a breakdown of the family unit and a “lessening desire in young men to marry.”
You can read what I wrote about it at the time for a detailed explanation of why these assertions run from partially true (sure, porn is one of many things in our society that objectify women, hypersexualize teens, and lead to poor body image, but so is Target advertising) to not supported by research (porn addiction is not a thing, people who have problems with porn are usually suffering from other mental illness) to the ridiculous (porn is not why young people are marrying later).
That resolution didn’t do much—it wasn’t a ban on porn, it didn’t create porn literacy classes, it didn’t suggest parents talk to their kids about porn, and it didn’t fund sex education. It just said, “we are Utahans and we think porn is bad.” Still, at least 16 other states followed suit and the GOP adopted similar language in its 2016 platform. I find it offensive that in a world with so many actual public health crises—like STIs, poverty, homelessness, racism, and gun violence, to name a few—legislators who have the power to make a real difference would waste their time with this nonsense.
The current anti-porn law in Utah also doesn’t do much. In order to get it passed this third time around, the authors reduced the fines on the manufacturers that don’t automatically turn on porn-blocking software from $2,500 to $10 with a cap on fines at $500. And, there’s a provision in the law that says it will only go into effect if five other states adopt similar measures.
The fact that this useless law got out of committee could just be silly if it wasn’t for the one that didn’t pass. You see, Utah lawmakers had a chance to make a real difference on some of the issues they like to blame porn for—like violence against women—by passing a bill that would have required schools to teach consent. A bill working its way through the House would have required sex education in grades 7 through 12 to provide instruction on “coercion, sexual violence behavior deterrence, and sexual assault mitigation.” That bill, however, failed to make it out of the Education Committee.
Playboy Goes Public
If you forgot Valentine’s Day last weekend, you could pillage the half-off candy bin at CVS or you could buy your honey some stock in the iconic sex brand, Playboy. The bunny-in-a-bow-tie company went public last week debuting at $13.10 a share, but Wall Street can’t quite decide if it’s a good investment. Without the magazine and its centerfolds, and without Heff (who died in 2017), what exactly is Playboy?
Though people who used to read the magazine for the articles can still get some of that in-depth journalism online, the company now bills itself as a luxury lifestyle brand focusing on apparel, beauty, gaming, and, of course, sexual wellness. I did see someone walking down the street in a Playboy sweatshirt the other day, but, apparently, most of its apparel business is in China where the company is one of the top fashion brands; it owns 2,500 brick-and-mortar stores across that country and is sold on over 1,000 e-commerce sites. Its beauty business sells perfumes, cosmetics, and other grooming essentials around the world. It runs a branded casino in London and has deals with online gaming sites. And, it’s still in the sex biz with condoms and sex aids and the recent purchase of Lovers, a chain of 41 “sexual wellness” stores across the United States.
But its CEO, Ben Kohn, will readily admit that what Playboy really has is its name and definitive brand recognition. Apparently, 97% of people around the globe recognize the rabbit logo. And, even though the magazine had its heyday in the 70’s, 90% of its customers are in the coveted under-40 demographic. He told Barron’s, “The product we sell at the end of the day, it's not our clothing, it's not our condoms, it's the brand itself.”
It’s not yet clear whether investors are buying that line of thinking, Playboy’s shares dipped slightly after its opening on Thursday. Still, at $12.32 a share, it could be cheaper than a box of chocolates.
Olympic Planning Committee Asks Athletes Not to Touch, but Order Lots of Condoms Anyhow
The Tokyo Olympics are still five months away, but organizers have released a 33-page plan of how to contain Covid when the world’s leading athletes come together in July. Athletes are not required to get the vaccine, though it is recommended. They will be tested approximately every four days and are not allowed to “visit gyms, tourist areas, shops, restaurants or bars” outside of official venues and the Olympic Village.
When in the village, athletes will be asked to limit their “… contact with other people as much as possible” and, specifically, to avoid “unnecessary physical contact.” This advice sure sounds like asking athletes not to have sex with each other as one way to limit the spread of coronavirus during the games, but the organizers seem to have hedged their bets as they still plan to hand out about 150,000 condoms.
That’s probably wise. Tanner Garrity of Business Insider reminds us that the elite athletes of Olympics past have proven themselves to be a pretty horny bunch. The organizers of the 2000 games needed to order an additional 20,000 condoms after the 70,000 they initially distributed ran out. And, Hope Solo told ESPN that the 2008 Olympic Village in Bejing was teeming with sex with people doing it in the grass between buildings.
No judgement, these are people who are at the peak of their physical fitness and have worked their whole lives to make it this far. If they want to romp in the grass between races or meets, Gay ga zinta hate, as my Bubbie would say (it’s Yiddish for “go in good health” but it’s used more like “you do you” or “knock yourself out”). But this year good health is a little different because organizers are trying to prevent a Covid outbreak inside the Olympic Village that could not only derail athletes but spread to the city of Tokyo and then beyond through travel back to home countries.
Asking athletes to keep their masks and their pants on is not unreasonable. Still, the boxes and boxes and boxes of condoms are probably a good idea.