We All Need A Sky Penis Right About Now
Thanksgiving is going to look different this year. In this house, the menu will be the same because I lost the “hey, why don’t we have a chicken, it’s smaller and tastes better” battle. But it will just be the four of us around the table (and the poodle beneath it hoping we drop something or take pity on him). It will be only the second Thanksgiving of my whole life that I haven’t spent with my parents, despite the fact that they’re only 40 miles away. While this makes me sad, I think we all have something to be grateful for in the vaccine news that has come out over the last few weeks. Three companies now believe they have a safe and effective vaccine with reports that they may be up to 95% effective in preventing Covid-19. That’s amazing. I’ve been writing about vaccines for years because of Gardasil which came out in 2006 to prevent two types of HPV that cause most cervical cancer (the newest version prevents 9 high risk types of HPV). Though it was a miraculous scientific advance—the first vaccine to prevent cancer—it got caught in a vortex of debates over both vaccine safety and teen sexual behavior. I have worked hard to correct misinformation, explaining that vaccines do not cause autism and prevention efforts do not promote promiscuity. I have begged people to get their kids vaccinated and even posted a picture of my older daughter getting her first shot. But I might be proudest of this old article in which I argue that getting vaccines (for ourselves or our children) are a social responsibility. That has never been more true. There are more trials and approvals to get through, but once the vaccines are out, I hope everyone gets one quickly so we can all have a more crowded Thanksgiving table next year.
Texas Updates Sex Ed for the First Time in 23 Years
The Texas School Board voted this week to approve the first changes to the statewide sex education standards since 1997. While some are welcoming this progress, others are angry that the board refused to go farther when it voted down suggestions to add information about gender, sexual orientation, and affirmative consent.
Texas was one of the pioneers in the abstinence-only movement. Before he was President, Governor George W. Bush founded the Lone Star Leaders program which included $9 million of funding for local programs and a statewide media campaign designed “to encourage young people to save sex for marriage.” (As President he would go on to sink hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars into useless programs with this same goal.)
State law in Texas does not require sex education, but according to the 1997 standards schools that chose to teach the topic had to stress abstinence “as the preferred choice of behavior in relationship to all sexual activity for unmarried persons of school age.” A hard sentence to parse but we all get the meaning—tell them not to do it. High schools that chose sex ed were supposed to teach about contraception methods as well, but middle schools were not allowed to do so.
These standards translated into few students learning about anything but abstinence. According to the Texas Freedom Network, during the 2015–16 school year only 17% of schools in the state taught about contraception in addition to abstinence, 25% of schools taught no sex ed at all, and almost 60% taught only about abstinence.
When the new standards go into place, the requirement to emphasize abstinence will be gone and middle schools will be allowed to discuss other ways to prevent pregnancy and STDs. Schools will still have the option, however, of teaching abstinence-only or nothing at all and parents will still be allowed to “opt-out” of whatever sex education is offered.
Efforts to push the teaching of other topics into the 21st century failed. Advocates across the state, including students themselves, urged the board to recognize the lived experiences of LGBTQ+ students in the state. Democratic Board Member Ruben Cortez proposed adding language that would teach middle school students about "bullying and harassment because of sexual orientation and gender identity or expression." According to GLSEN’s 2019 National School Climate survey, 82% of LGBTQ+ students have been harassed or assaulted at school and 84% of trans students have felt unsafe at school because of their gender. But Republicans on the board voted down this language and replaced it with a vague suggestion that schools teach about “sexual bullying,” a term even many members of the board struggled to define. When pressed to explain it, one school board member used the old chestnut “you’ll know it when you see it.”
The board also shot down a proposal to teach students about affirmative consent rather than just explaining the law around sexual assault. The leader of an organization called Just Say Yes opposed the proposal, saying that teaching about consent: “… puts yes to sex as an option on the table for teenagers." About 40% of high school students in Texas have have had sex and 14% of high school girls in the state say they have been forced to have sexual intercourse, but sure, let’s pretend it’s teaching about consent that’s the problem.
The under-updated standards go into effect for the 2022–2023 school year and may have implications beyond the state as textbook publishers often take a cue from—or even bow to the pressure of—this large state when deciding what to include or deliberately exclude from textbooks sold nationwide.
Millennials May be Enjoying Lockdown More than Most
According to a survey by #lubelife, millennials are making the most of lockdown by experimenting sexually and having sex more often than older generations. The company—which sells all kinds of lube, including some that taste like watermelon, strawberry, or mint-chocolate chip—surveyed 1,000 millennials and 1,000 baby boomers about their pandemic sex habits.
It found that since the pandemic hit, 68% of millennials have tried out a new position, 58% have had sex during work-from-home hours, 52% have told their partners about a kink or fetish, and 43% have used a sex toy in the bedroom. (My guess is that that phrase is being used euphemistically and some of that sex toy use may have happened on the living room couch or the kitchen floor, but maybe millennials are traditionalists in this one regard.)
The survey also found that millennials, who were born between 1981 and 1996, are having twice as much sex during this pandemic as baby boomers, the generation born from 1946 to 1964. Not to perpetuate stereotypes, but I find it mostly unsurprising that 26-year-olds are having more sex than 66-year-olds (though I do find it surprising that the oldest millennials are pushing 40 since I still think of them as whippersnappers). Overall, I’m happy that millennials are having fun, I agree that daytime sex can be one of the great benefits of working from home, and I think that boomers should consider getting in on some of that action as well.
Of course, I am left wondering why the survey ignored Gen-X entirely. Perhaps they assumed that we of the sandwich generation were all too busy relearning 5th grade math, tech-supporting our parents’ attempts at Zoom, and doing the dishes for the 18th time a day to compete with millennials (fewer of whom live with children) for the most nooners per week?
Pilots Protest by Drawing Sky Penis
Anyone tracking air traffic over Russia last week may have noticed the strange flight path of one plane that added extra loops to its journey between Moscow and Ekaterinburg. On a map the path clearly draws a penis and balls. Though the story could end there and still be pretty funny, the sky penis had a purpose. A spokesperson for Russian airline Probeda explained that the pilots were likely expressing their support for professional footballer Artem Dzyuba who was caught in a masturbation scandal that has gripped the nation (pun intended).
Dzyuba is a household name in Russia after his performance in the 2018 World Cup and the emotional interviews he gave when the team lost. He is currently a striker for the FC Zenit Saint Petersburg and the captain of the Russian national team. Earlier this month, explicit video of the soccer player staring into a camera while masturbating was leaked to social media. The video appears to be over a year old based on a newscast that can be heard in the background. It is unclear who had the video, but news reports suggest his phone was hacked.
In what some commentators are calling proof of Russian repression, there were immediate calls for him to be removed from the teams or stripped of his role as captain. And, Dzyuba himself apologized to fans saying, “we’re all sinners” and that he had learned a harsh lesson. Ultimately, he was suspended from the national team for three games and removed as captain for at least one Zenit game.
Many fans (and at least one flight crew) felt this punishment was too harsh. In fact, a number of sports media outlets refused to discuss the incident. One explained: “Artem Dzyuba's video is not socially significant. Masturbation is a common, legal, not even publicly condemned action (unless performed in public). Such a video does not say anything about Dzyuba's career – in part because we do not have context (who and why published this video almost a year later).” It went on to put the blame where it actually should rest: “We do not support the publication of intimate videos by third parties.”
This sounds right to me. Masturbation is a near-universal experience for pretty obvious reasons; it feels good, it costs next-to-nothing, it has physical and mental benefits, and there are no risks of STDs or pregnancy. Recording yourself in the middle of masturbation is also fine in that it is consensual and non-exploitative. Questions may arise if the video is sent to an unwitting or unwilling partner or if, say, it turns out the video was made during a work zoom (it all comes back to Jeffrey Toobin’s penis these days), but thus far it seems like Dzyuba was merely the victim of an invasion of privacy.
I’d draw a sky penis in protest too, if I had a plane.