"

Regarding the trend’s potential background, McKay quotes educational leadership expert Dr Janet Rose Wojtalik: “Possibly our state of affairs, which includes an overabundance of themes of submissiveness, promiscuity and misplaced values, has created an insecurity in our society,” she said. “When this happens we begin to feel out of control. These themes are a way for us to regain power, or at least a feeling of power.”

Well, Dr Wojtalik, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar: when it comes to film and TV, sex sells, and its lack is just another way to investigate a character’s personal narrative.

See, nobody is here to accuse Hollywood (and its television relatives) of being original. As this list of “copycat films” (never forget the great Armageddon versus Deep Impact battle of 1998) should demonstrate, there’s nothing Hollywood likes more than mining the collective unconscious and filling the multiplexes with eerily similar movies. So, in that sense, critic Dan Hetching is more or less on the money when he notes that Hollywood likes to employ a “revolving door” of sex-related themes: “First it was prostitutes, then MILFs, now it’s back to virgins.”

But what’s different about this current run of televisual deflowerings is that they mostly step outside the tired traditional model of on-screen virginity. That is, the “most precious gift” (thanks, Mr Abbott) treatment for female virgins, who lack even basic agency (not to mention the inevitable gruesome end for any horror movie female who dares to slip between the covers), and for their male equivalents, the “hilarious” race to the finish line (American Pie, Losin’ It) and crushing horror of virginity (The 40 Year Old Virgin).

"

Getting real deep about how Fox reckons sexual inexperience is now a trend

"See, despite the unease with which the dialogue has begun, the upside to fake money shots entering the general discourse is that we might start to think about the ways in which we’re conditioned to believe sex between a man and a woman is “supposed” to happen. As you might have gathered from women either faking or piking, and men ploughing on regardless, few of the expectations about P-in-V sex are particularly healthy for us, emotionally speaking.

It’s what Behrle refers to in his GQ piece as “the most basic problem with sex—the entire act is built around the dude’s orgasm. If a woman doesn’t come, the man’s no good in bed. If a man doesn’t come, it hardly seems like sex was had at all, which, when you think about it, is pretty unfair to both genders. Women, bless them, feel like they have to bring men to the finish line. And men are expected to come at the drop of a hat. Literally any hat. Put boobs on a hat. Bam. Whoo!”

That stance is reflected in Dr. Morgentaler’s findings, too: “A guy’s sense of his masculinity, especially in the sexual realm, is not about what he experienced himself; he gets his sense of masculinity through the eyes of his partner.”

In other words, if the man can’t keep it up and bring it home for both partners, then everything is rooted, as it were."

Can’t wait to see what Bob of Newcastle types think of today’s piece, Do men fake orgasms?

"Now, I’m not interested in getting high and mighty here: criticisms of products like Summer’s Eve are too often less about attacking the retrograde marketing strategies that invent the “need” for the products in the first place, and more about attacking the sorts of silly women who think their vaginas are unclean. I don’t need to trot out the same old “the vagina is self-cleaning” line (even though it’s true) that we’ve been spinning since Germaine Greer had a crack at feminine hygiene way back in Oz in 1970 in her essay, The politics of female sexuality.

(And gee, I wonder why - bombarded as they are by fragranced tampons and nonsense like Fresh ‘N’ Sexy - women might start to wonder if their vaginas are unclean?)

The use of the things is up to personal choice; I’ve been known to pack a few off-brand vag wipes for a long-distance plane trip, or a comic convention where I’ll be spending over eight hours in spandex. Plenty of people will stow a package of vag wipes’ less politically charged relatives, Wet Ones, for a camping or road trip.

No, the marketing is the bad guy here. At its core, it’s insidious shame-based nonsense; it follows that the thought process in the consumer is “Wait, if there’s a cleaning product available for this body part, it must be dirty”."

Today I’m real mad about Fresh ‘n’ Sexy wipes and “dirty” vagina marketing!

Re: the Gumtree cheese ad, it’s obviously a food play thing, and I guess I always felt like food play/wet and messy of the Splosh! Magazine variety always just seemed really… non-threatening and fun? Like, at least the models were nearly always smiling? 

(The - seemingly sole - alternative is where the models are pouting like “I can’t believe you just threw this pie at me”.)

"Convinced your body would look better captured for all eternity in its writhing, sweating glory? Okay then, go for it, provided you soundtrack the whole thing with New Order’s World In Motion or Ted Nugent’s Wang Dang Sweet Poontang. Especially Ted Nugent’s Wang Dang Sweet Poontang."

Is it ever a good idea to make a sex tape?

I did some serious journalisms this week. 

"You like David Cronenberg movies, right?"

Sometimes I like to revisit The Greatest Thing I Have Ever Said™, which was said while climbing aboard someone who’d never had sex with a currently-menstruating woman before.