X Why? - Why are men pigs*?

This week, we are looking at that age old question, why are men pigs?  That question has so many layers and avenues.  It is like asking,"How do you perceive time?"  It is very personal, deep, multi-themed, and sometimes, contradictory.

This convoluted question needs to be clarified with another question, what type of "piggish" behavior are you asking about?  Do you mean living in a pigsty?  Are you asking about man's desire to be piggish and wanting everything?  Are you wondering about men's gross behaviors like farting on each other and pull-my-finger jokes?  Do you question why men crave certain deviant sexual needs?  Is your question going into a completely different way?


Men have so many piggish behaviors that I can't answer them simply.  It would be to easy to recite the fable of the scorpion and the frog and blame man's nasty ways on human nature. 

A scorpion was at the bank of a mighty river and wanted to cross it, but couldn't since he was unable to swim.  He saw a frog who is about to swim across and asked, "Frog, may I ride across the river on your back?"


The frog filled with shock and fear said, "No, you are a scorpion and you will sting me while we cross.


The scorpion replied, "That would be suicide since if I stung you while crossing we would be both drown."


The frog thought about that and then reluctantly agreed to carry the scorpion across.  While in the middle the deepest and fastest flowing part of the river, the scorpion delivered a fatal sting to the frog.   As the they start to sink, the stricken frog asked, "Scorpion, why did you sting me for now we both will die."

The scorpion sadly replied "Because, it is my nature to sting.  I am sorry."

That fable is too simple to answer all the questions about man's bad behaviors yet maybe there is a kernel of truth in it.  It is in our nature to do these things.  The important thing to acknowledge though is that while all men have some form of piggish behavior, we don't all have the same piggish behaviors.

In the future, X-Why? will try to answer the why men exhibit various types of bad behavior.  For today, let us focus on one bad behavior that is still too complicated to simply answer, but hopefully can illuminate - Why do men sexually harass unknown women on the road?

This question came from Ann.  Ann is a professor at a local university.  She commutes forty miles per day to get to work.  In her five years since starting there, she has had three uncomfortable vehicular encounters with men while driving down I -80.

During her first encounter, she was driving along when a guy pulled even with her car, matching her speed, and kept staring at her.  She tried speeding up, but he matched her speed again.  She slowed down and so did he.  She changed lanes and he dropped in behind her.  Finally, she quickly took an exit at the last second and he was not able to follow her.

On her second encounter, a guy pulled along side her and holds a sign in his window.  It read, "Call me!  My number is XXX-XXX-XXXX"  He followed along for a bit then took an early exit.

The third encounter happened just last week.  She was driving along and this guy pulls along side of her and holds  up a sign, "Excuse me, just looking...".  He then took down the first sign and put up a second one, "... for an exhibitionist."  At this time, he lifted up his bare leg way high and smiled at her.

All three stories are creepy and the men were pigs.  As stated earlier, this is not a piggish behavior of all men and can't be attributed to all of us, but it was still wrong.  The exhibitionist/stalking nature of these acts are obviously wrong, but that is not the sole reason for their badness.  It is also their intimidation and forceful ways while doing it in a way that they have a quick escape. 

The third guy had a silver pickup, but had removed all badges and brand names from it.  It had no front license plate.  The only way to identify it was the rear plate, which he made sure she never saw.  The second guy, while the least offensive, sped away when she sneered and flipped him off.  (Kind of dumb to give a number to track you by).  The first guy was especially scary since he stalked to intimidate her.  He had a fast car and she was in a slow Toyota.  He knew he could use that as a tool in his perversion as well.

This need to be able to remain anonymous while boldly stating what they want shows these men had desires they could not fulfill through healthy avenues.  These desires may have been based out of  sexual, power-based, and/or fear motivations.  All three wanted to use surprise and intimidation as their shock tool and then wanted to see the reaction of the victim. 

Many social scientists state that rape and sexual intimidation are not sex based.  These behaviors are based in power, domination and control issues.  The sexual aspects are purely the ends to the mean, not the purpose it self.  I disagree.  I think it has a strong sexual component where this is the way they get their sexual kink satisfied.  They can't feel arousal through other means and this is their avenue to sexual satisfaction.  I don't discount the other motivations of domination and power projection.  All of these things combine into a complex and sick concoction of a hateful crime. (On a side note, I wonder why social scientists try to remove the sexual motivations of rape.  Is it to protect the identity of sex?)

So, why do men stalk women on the road?  It is their unhealthy sexual need that mixes surprise, intimidation, and shock to scratch their primal itch.  It is a deep-seeded instinct that needs attention and they are genetically programmed and culturally encouraged to use this method to get their needs met.  I am guessing they have some basic belief that this system of approach will work and the woman will eventually acquiesce to their desires.  At the very least, the fear and shock of the victim is stimulation enough to give them the sexual and physical satisfaction they need.   I am disgusted by these type of men since they reward their problems and inflict fear through cowardly and indirect ways (No.  I am not condoning active/direct sexual harm and violence.  I am stating they are cowards for not approaching their sexual needs in a positive and healthy way or getting help for their issues.).  Sadly, that level of involvement will not be enough in the future and they will probably escalate to darker methods.

This progression of sexual behaviors is a common part of male identity**.  At first, we dream of our first kiss.  After that, our first touch fills our desires.  We continually want more and deeper experiences as our sexuality matures.  In healthy men this continued desire for new and deeper sexual enjoyment is healthy and good for all involved.  In sexual predators, it is a disease and needs to be confronted and treated.  I have no problem with life-long incarceration if the treatment does not work.

I highly recommend to anyone who has been the victim of any type of intimidation to report the incident to the police.   These men are dangerous and you deserve your legal protection from them. 

*My first question wonders why we have to implicate the poor pig in this?  Pigs are intelligent and much less complex and disgusting than men.  I guess humans love assigning relationships to all behaviors, so the pig must suffer for it.

** ... and will be written about here, ad nauseum.

Interesting Twists in Statistics.

Aren't we all the standard deviation?

INTRODUCTION
I work in a scientific field.  Statistics are the text that make up the scientific bible.  It tells us in numbers, shared definitions, charts, and other agreed methods, the meaning (if any) of the questions we asked.  The data is the data.  It is as good as the planning and set up of collecting, processing and interpreting it.  If the study design is faulty, the data will be too.  If the study design is robust, the data will be too.  The key point to remember with stats, don't believe the numbers until you fully understand them.


In the hands of statisticians, scientists, mathematicians and other experienced statistics users, the data can be used and explored with the hope of truth and accuracy.  Once that data escapes to people with agendas, it can be spun and give stories that are exaggerations or lies.  My interest in this comes from two recent interactions with "stats."  The first is in relationship to violent crime and the second to the amount of orgasms women have during anal sex (the two stats were not presented as related and are from completely different discussions.) 


PART 1

I was talking to someone from the old country, Montana.  They had heard some statistic stating more rapes and murders occur in California and New York than all other states.  I instantly felt my statistical shenanigans hackles rise.  I asked where they got this number.  From a conservative talk show host implicating that the blue states have more crime.  I then asked how did they report the numbers.  Did they give specific data?  The shared data was total numbers of murders and rapes for each state.   That right there triggered the full stat shenanigans alarm.

I asked the Montanan:
How many people live in the US?  It is estimated around 310,000,000.
How many people live in California and New York? ~37,000,000 and ~19,500,000 = 56,500,000
After doing some math  56.5M / 310M X 100 = 18.2% of all Americans live in California or New York.  That means almost 1 in 5 Americans live in one of those two states.  For California alone, 1 in 8 Americans are Californian.
I then had to ask, wouldn't that mean about 1/5 of all murders and rapes in the USA occur in either of those states?  That one stumped the Montanan for a moment and they reluctantly agreed.

After the chat ended I had to look up some data.  I went to the FBI crime statistics website that breaks down crime types for each state.  I looked at the 2009 numbers for both Montana and California.

California - 1,972 murders, 8713 forcible rapes reported
Montana - 28 murders, 294 forcible rapes reported. Total Montana Population ~975,000

I ran the numbers and determined the incidence rates for both states per 100,000 people.

In California there were 5.3 murders and 240 reported rapes per 100,000 citizens in 2009.
In Montana there were 2.8 murders and 300 reported rapes per 100,000 citizens in 2009.   

If you look at that data, California had almost twice as many murders as Montana per 100,000 people.  Montana had 20% more reported rapes than California per 100,000 people.  Even with that data, it is hard to make assumptions as to why the crime rates varied between the two states so much.  We can theorize on it and do more studies to test the theories, but those numbers alone only tell us the totals, not the causes.  We can also argue about the validity of the totals reported.  The number of murders is a pretty objective number since it is based on the total number of bodies found that were the result of murder.  Ever since rape statistics have been collected, statisticians have known the actual number of rapes compared to the number reported are way off.  That nugget right there can throw speculations out the window.  We could look into estimates of under reporting of rape for each state and ask why so few rape victims file reports.  There are so many questions for criminologists, psychologists, and sociologists to explore.

PART 2

I was visiting one of my favorite websites, Slate.com.  I read the following headline, The Ass Man Cometh: Experimentation, orgasms, and the rise of anal sex. written by William Saletan and was drawn into the article.  The article reports results from a recent national survey published in the latest issue of the Journal of Sexual Medicine.


As the Slate article states, the survey ...

... clarifies the prevalence of gay sex, teenage intercourse, and oral gratification. But the big story is the increase in anal sex reported by women—and its possible connection to female orgasms.

In the article, the survey found a increases in the number of women in all age groups who report having anal sex ever and in the past year over the numbers reported in 1992.  The shocking news came from comparing the amount of women who achieved orgasm through various methods.

Among women who had vaginal sex in their last encounter, the percentage who said they reached orgasm was 65. Among those who received oral sex, it was 81. But among those who had anal sex, it was 94. Anal sex outscored cunnilingus.

Is there some new erogenous zone being discovered through anal sex with women?  How can this be?  What would Freud think since he believed clitoral stimulated orgasms were "immature" and inferior to vaginal stimulated orgasms?


Saletan postulated on this and suggested an interesting possibility.

Here's my guess. Look carefully at Table 4, Pages 355-6. Only 6 percent of women who had anal sex in their last encounter did so in isolation. Eighty-six percent also had vaginal sex. Seventy-two percent also received oral sex. Thirty-one percent also had partnered masturbation. And the more sex acts a woman engaged in during the encounter, the more likely she was to report orgasm. These other activities are what gave the women their orgasms. The anal sex just came along for the ride.

So why did the inclusion of anal sex bump the orgasm figure up to 94 percent? It didn't. The causality runs the other way. Women who were getting what they wanted were more likely to indulge their partners' wishes. It wasn't the anal sex that caused the orgasms. It was the orgasms that caused the anal sex.

CONCLUSION

Both of these statistical examples illustrate the power and dangers of statistics.  Like drugs, porn, and other things that are used for various purposes, they are neither good or bad.  It is the use, purpose, and end results that can make them good or bad.  Whether we use overly simplified crime stats for political gain or over-generalized sex stats to try and convince someone into trying anal sex, the temptation to corrupt the data through message manipulation and selected number sampling is great.  Do not believe statistics until you fully understand what and how they measured the desired questions.


POSTLUDE
What does this have to do with masculinity?  As with all statistics, the temptation to create sweeping generalizations are great.  When it deals with details on sex, sexual practices, and other sexual points of interest, it affects us all.  We need to know the truth about data before we take the interpretations from them as truth.  Sometimes the interpretations are lies and need to be debated and debunked.  Other times, they are a pleasant or painful truth we need to face.  Either way, don't swallow the kool-aid until you have read all the ingredients.


On a lighter second note - As a sexual male, it is titillating to read this stuff and figure out where I fit into the data. I am ahead of the curve for some parts and behind on others.  Time to have fun.

*X Why? - The Money Shot

Big Money  - Photo of video from Behind the Green Door - 1972

A money shot (also called a "money-making" shot) is a provocative, sensational, or memorable sequence in a film, on which the film's commercial performance is perceived to depend. [emphasis mine]

In Pornography:
A money shot has also been used as another name for a cum shot in pornographic films. The shot was so named because if a male actor could not provide this shot he would not be paid.  It has also been argued that this is the filmed moment the audience has paid to see.  According to Stephen Zitlow, author of The Film Maker's Guide to Pornography , "...the cum shot, or, as some refer to it, 'the money shot', is the most important element in the movie and that everything else (if necessary) should be sacrificed at its expense."
The degree of acceptance that the term has acquired in pop culture is problematic to estimate.[emphasis mine] - Wikipedia

Why is the culmination, the ultimate moment, the money shot the absolute must have in porn?  There is the physical obvious.  When a many cums, he needs to go through a full cycle before he is ready again, and that is assuming he can get ready again.  While that is the obvious, the allure and importance of the money shot goes beyond that.

To try to find reasons why the money shot has achieved its status, let us explore the actual event.  I've watched enough porn to be able to break down the money shot ending three ways (can be straight or gay):

1. The man pulls out of her vagina (or anus) and finishes near the location (backside or front).  The partner (male or female) still moves his/her hips in the sexual rhythm prior to the pull out.  The physical remnants of his orgasm are either played with by the partner or the scene fades away and the mess is forgotten.  
2. The man is getting a blow job or mammary stimulation (titty fuck in porn parlance) and releases on her/his mouth, face, neck, breasts, chest, etc.  
3. The man pulls out of the vagina or anus and both quickly move around so he can finish on her/his mouth, face, neck, breasts, chest, etc.

Within each of these three areas are many variations.  These variations are due to theme, attitude, and feel of the video.  In recent years, the themes of dominance, misogyny, and demeaning the woman are becoming more prevalent.  I believe that domination and abuse while finishing the money shot goes beyond the usual motivation and appreciation of the money shot.  It is more of a fetish, a dominance and power projection issue and less of a sexual one (which may be worth another post in the future).

According to a University of Sydney study, 70% of men and 30% of women admit to viewing online pornography.  With that in mind, the producers of porn are obviously going to create their products for the male gaze (although there are a number of porn and erotica producers, like Candida Royalle, that create material for female audiences.)  It then is easy to assume the money shot is intended for guys.  In femme-focused adult movies, they rarely, if ever, show a money shot.

So, what is the need of the money shot?  As stated above, it is the omega to the scene, but that doesn't answer why it has to be external.  I would guess it is because men are such visual consumers of erotic content, they have to see it to believe.  If they don't see the man ejaculate all over, it didn't happen.  In the past twenty years, more porn showing female ejaculation (squirting in porn parlance) has also grown popular.  This may be attributed to the same basic reason, by seeing it, we can believe she actually had an orgasm.  On a side note, the woman's ejaculation is rarely the money shot.  It usually is just a build up to the male money shot that ends the scene.

Another reason for the absolute importance of the money shot may be that many men can not handle the moments after orgasm, both in porn and in reality.  They want the end to be... the end.  Many men do not like dealing with life after the orgasm.  This is the time when the intimacy after post-intimacy begins.  This is the time when true emotions either are shared or hurried out the door.   Some men can't handle that post-moment moment.  There is an old saying, "Men don't pay prostitutes for sex, they pay them to leave afterward."  The same may also be true about the money shot.  Many men want the orgasm and not the afterward.


One reason that many men would not admit to about enjoying the money shot is its homoerotic nature.  In most porno movies the guy has a well hung cock that is swollen, sexy and perfect.  By watching the ejaculate flying out, it is a primal rush.  We are watching an alpha male with a big one and we admire it, envy it, and for some - desire it.  I think the comedian Ron White states it perfectly.



What about real life?  Yes, it can be sexy.  We have to remember though the reason for a money shot can be very different than why we may do it in our own sexual relations.  (That may be worth another entire post, but maybe not.)

Why is the money shot crucial?  To be honest, I think every male (and maybe female) viewer of porn has a different view and appreciation of it.  It may be just another way to say "The End" without words.  On the other hand, it could be a much deeper need for closure, arousal, fear, power, and other needs and emotions that make male sexuality a lot more complex than many think it is.


Photo note- During my recent trip to Las Vegas, I visited The Erotic Heritage Museum.  It is a great sex-positive museum with a pretty decent academic/artistic push in it.  It will have something to arouse everyone and a few things that will disgust anyone.  I highly recommend taking the side trip to it.  One of the best treats is they let patrons take photos of the exhibits.  You will see more of my photos in future posts.

They have an oval shaped room that shows pornographic movies from all the decades, including one from the beginning of the last century.  You sit on these overstuffed,plush benches in the middle and are surrounded by moving porn of the ages.  I started taking photos of the various movies and got the one above.  It is from the San Francisco cult classic, Behind the Green Door.  I knew as soon as I started this post I wanted this image at the top.


*The title comes from the genetic chromosomes that determine male physical gender, XY.  (Women have XX chromosomes to identify physical gender.)  The chromosomes got their name by their shapes.