Tucker's Testicle Tanning

Because Real Men Bake Their Balls

I don’t care what anybody says, the Easter Bunny is creepy AF. Still, those worried that a particular Easter Bunny—who was handing out condom-filled eggs in front of an Austin, TX, elementary school—had extra-creepy intentions can put their minds at ease. It was just a mix up.

A story picked up by a number of media outlets last week explained that a parent in a bunny suit stood outside Gullet Elementary handing out eggs. Many of the eggs had candy in them but some contained condoms (in their wrappers). The original round of articles gave no additional details about who the parent was or why they did it. So, my imagination took flight.

I wondered if this was some kind of pro-sex ed protest gone awry. The Austin Independent School District made the news a few weeks ago when Texas’s attorney general said a school’s Pride Week activities went against state law. I thought this parent might be protesting the AG’s decision and trying to show support for good sex education by handing out condoms (something the AG would undoubtedly also object to). This idea left me thinking “with friends like these….”

Then the conspiracy theorist in me took over and started to think maybe the parent was actually supportive of the AG and did this to “prove” that we liberal sex educators just want to give condoms to 3rd graders.

It also occurred to me that it might not be about sex education at all. Easter is supposedly a holiday about fertility. Was the bunny suggesting that we all cool it on procreation for a while? 

Alas, none of my theories was correct.

Some sleuthing by local parents found out that the person inside the bunny suit was a pharmacist who came to pick up her child right after a safe-sex presentation at a nearby clinic. She was mobbed by students and handed out the eggs with candy in them. When she ran out, she asked her husband to grab more and he got the wrong basket.

The school district took a hard line about how inappropriate this was (and it is, even I don’t give condoms to 3rd graders). It turned out, however, to be an honest mistake that I hope the family and community can laugh about for years to come.

Brief Tizzy about Sex Ed in New Jersey

Last week, when grilled about parental rights and New Jersey’s new learning standards for health and physical education, Governor Phil Murphy said: “If folks think that they need to be adjusted or altered, and there's a reasonable argument for that, count me as somebody who's willing to entertain that.”

This gave the anti-trans, pro-parents-as-dictators, kids-shouldn’t-learn-anything-remotely-sexual-in-school crowd all the fodder they needed to rile up their base and grab Fox News’s attention. It also forced sex education advocates in the state to revisit what should have been a settled issue.

Murphy later acknowledged that the whole issue was being driven by “partisan actors attempting to divide parents” but nonetheless asked the Department of Education to review the new standards which were passed by the state’s bipartisan Board of Education in 2020 and are set to go into effect next school year.

Not surprisingly, the issue the partisan actors in the state have with the standards focused in large part on teaching kids about gender.

The new standards say that:

• By 2nd grade students will discuss the range of ways people express their gender and how gender-role stereotypes may limit behavior.

• By 5th grade students will demonstrate ways to promote dignity and respect for all people (e.g., sexual orientation, gender identity and expression, race, ethnicity, socio-economic status, differing ability, immigration status, family configuration).

• By 8th grade students should be able to differentiate between gender identity, gender expression, and sexual orientation.

As a sex educator, I can tell you how important these conversations are to help students understand the world around them, their own feelings, and the experiences of their friends. As a recent 5th grade parent in New Jersey, I can also tell you that these conversations are already happening among the students and will continue to go on with or without qualified adults helping them comprehend the issues. (I’d prefer it to be with.)

State Sen. Holly Schepisi (R) led the charge against the standards arguing that kids were being indoctrinated to the point that they’d all demand puberty blockers from their parents one day. Her supporting evidence included a lesson for elementary students called “Pink, Blue and Purple,” which says: “You might feel like you are a boy, you might feel like you are a girl. You might feel like you’re a boy even if you have body parts that some people might tell you are ‘girl’ parts.” First, this is a great lesson by my colleagues at Advocates for Youth which offers exactly the age-appropriate information that young kids need. Second, it is in no way associated with the New Jersey standards, has not been “approved” by the Department of Education, and is certainly not mandated anywhere in the state.

Fox also had a field day with the story and also relied on sample materials that are not actually part of the standards. The network invited former NJ Governor Chris Christie to comment. Host Brian Kilmeade explained: “According to standards in New Jersey on education now, second-graders will have performance expectations naming four body parts relating to their gender so they can get through stereotypes.” (Is it just me or did he purposefully phrase this in a way that almost makes it sound like kids are going to be required to show their own genitalia to the class as part of this lesson?)

He went on to ask: “Here’s one objective: that children will be able to identify at least four body parts from female or male genitalia, and for students to describe why it is important for them to know the correct names for genitals. Are you happy that that’s going on from K through third in New Jersey?” (Spoiler alert: the Bridgegate Governor was not happy.)

In some ways, this was all much ado about nothing. The standards were written with the help of numerous experts who have a deep understanding of what kids need to know at what ages and they were passed by the bipartisan Board. By the end of last week, the Department of Education had reiterated its support of these standards, pointed out that actual curricula decisions have always been up to local school boards, and reminded everyone that parents in NJ have the right to opt-out of any/all sexuality education classes.

Thankfully, the DOE’s defense also included important commentary like this:

“Gendered stereotypes are real and can have negative consequences for children’s academic growth, self-worth, and mental health as they get older. These standards are designed to ensure that children understand that everyone has the ability to live their life in the way that suits them, no matter their gender. They should also help children to understand that every person deserves respect, no matter their identity or expression.”

Let none of us forget the risk of suicide among transgender young people, especially those who do not get support from family and community.

A battle like this in my blue state is proof that the war on education and, more upsettingly, the war on transgender kids is spreading throughout the country. It’s not just Florida. (Though the Sunshine State may be the first to extend the war to math books. A committee just rejected 54 math textbooks submitted for approval because they supposedly taught critical race theory and/or something else objectionable. Was it all in the word problems?) 

Tucker’s Testicle Tanning

Tucker Carlson has a new special entitled “The End of Man.” If we were to watch it (and I don’t recommend anyone does), it would remind us that manly, White, American men who wrestle each other, flip tires, cut wood with axes, shoot bottles with guns, and do shirtless push-ups are under attack. If they don’t fight back and fight back hard, they will be turned into effete intellectual Democrats of indeterminate racial backgrounds who read books, use computers, sip lattes, and are probably gay. This, Tucker will tell us, is worse than the war on Christmas—it’s a war on testosterone.

How should the Hungry-Man-Dinner-set respond, you ask? Well, according to Tucker, they might want to start by tanning their testicles. One of Tucker’s experts claims “lots of science” behind the idea that you can increase testosterone levels by exposing your testicles to sun or a $1,650 array of red lights.

Lifehacker explains that the theory behind this is squishy at best. It might be about getting more Vitamin D since people with low levels of testosterone often also have low levels of Vitamin D. Or it might be about stimulating mitochondria to produce ATP which could help cells in the testicles produce more testosterone. (It should be telling that the only sites that even attempt to explain ATP and mitochondria further are those trying to sell one kind of testosterone-boosting supplement or another.)

Either way, that’s not how it f**king works. Lifehacker tells us there is some evidence that light therapy treatments work on mitochondria on skin, but the skin on your scrotum is not actually your testicles (something people seem to keep forgetting). Similarly, you can’t get sun/vitamin-D right to your testicles so there’s no need to light them up directly.  

Also, and this seems obvious, heat is not a friend of sperm count. This is why the testicles sit outside the body in the first place, and why people trying to knock up their wives and girlfriends are told to wear loose fitting underwear and avoid hot tubs.

Still, Tucker thinks it might be worth a try. In the special, he tells a skeptical Kid Rock (let that sink in, Kid Rock isn’t buying it): “Don’t you think at this point, when so many of the therapies, the paths they’ve told us to take, have turned out to be dead ends that really hurt people, why wouldn’t open-minded people seek new solutions?”

Tucker’s target audience seems primed to spend money on supplements especially those that make you manlier; it’s how his buddy Alex Jones of Infowars made oh so much money. Could Tucker be gearing up to sell his own red-light array?  Could Tucker’s Testicle Tonic be on its way to a GNC near you? I’m not sure I care. To anyone who wants to give this a try, I say “gei gezunterheit” (“go in good health” or at least in questionable health but probably not harmful health).

As many pundits pointed out this week, it’s no worse than Goop’s yonni eggs and we’re all likely better off if Carlson spends his time spewing misinformation about testicles (see what I did there) rather than January 6th, Russia, or vaccines.

What I want to focus on, instead, is the trailer for this new special which shows manly, White, American men wrestling each other, flipping tires, cutting wood with axes, shooting bottles with guns, and doing push-ups. All of them cute and all of them shirtless. It culminates in a naked man standing on a rock tanning his testicles behind a glowing red light as he raises his massively toned arms in a victory salute. A soundtrack that Vanity Fair identified as Richard Strauss’s Also sprach Zarathustra (extra-recognizable to fans of 2001: A Space Odyssey) drums ominously in the background.

Watch it and then answer me this: Does Tucker Carlson know that he just made an amazing and surprisingly artistic piece of gay masturbation fodder?