Is Chocolate Better Than Sex for Women?
Joan Sewell says so. Science disagrees.
Cure for 'lust envy'
- I'd Rather Eat Chocolate: Learning to Love My Low Libido
- Broadway (2007)
Joan Sewell would rather eat chocolate than have sex according to her new book I'd Rather Eat Chocolate: Learning to Love My Low Libido. The book, hailed as revolutionary and groundbreaking, brave and even brilliant, is an autobiographical cruise through Sewell's attempts to fix her sexual ennui and come to a compromise with Kip, her much hornier hubby who wants sex at least three times a month.
Sewell tries therapy, sexy lingerie and chocolate-based lubes. She tunes into Oprah and reads glossy magazine tutorials and books that support the notion that men and women are from different planets. All to no avail. Eventually Joan and Kip reach a resolution of sorts: sex is a "slog" for her, so Kip will have to make do with the occasional strip show or hand job. She says her much lower libido is "within the normal curve for a woman" due largely to biological gender differences. Yet Sewell ignores a fascinating, growing pile of modern scientific studies disputing the often-repeated stats about a gender libido gap, and the traditional theory that biology drives sexuality, which some researchers claim pathologizes women's sexuality.
The media binge over this slim work of 1950s-style confection is similarly biased towards the superficial sugar-spice model. The Atlantic Monthly dedicated a lot of ink to the topic in its February issue, including an interview with Sewell sporting the headline: "the politically incorrect reality that most married women just aren't that into sex." The National Post also interviewed Sewell, who continued to flog the notion that when women are compared to women, "our libidos are not that low, they are pretty much in a normal range. But are they much lower than men's? Yes."
Writer Dan Savage jumped into the fray with a recent syndicated column, repeating Sewell's claim that women have "naturally lower sex drives" thanks to hormonal and biological differences. "There's no such thing as a woman who wants sex constantly. They don't exist -- never did," writes Savage who cheekily relinquishes heterosexual men from the tyranny of housework, childcare and talking to their partners because "she still won't want to fuck you." The column generated so many letters from women who like sex that he continued the discussion the following week and started a "lusty ladies" link.
Sex on the brain
The debate about how to define healthy or "normal" libido has been heating up over the past decade as doctors, neuroscientists, sociologists, pollsters and pharmaceutical companies gather data, study brains and genitals during orgasm and poll citizens about their lives between the sheets. One often-repeated statistic, based on a 1999 U.S. study, found that approximately 40 per cent of women experience sexual problems. Yet, as some researchers have pointed out, the lead author of the study was a consultant for Pfizer, the makers of Viagra. A more recent Yale study found that almost half of the 56 women studied who had experienced "female sexual dysfunction," (FSD) "had decreased sensation in the clitoris." The researchers underlined "the possibility of a neurological cause for the dysfunction."
It might seem like a no-brainer that decreased genital sensations will adversely affect sexual functioning, but sexuality is a very complex and nuanced thing indeed. Might it not be a huge (profit-driven) leap to say the cause is primarily neurologically based? A group of scientists, doctors and health advocates think so, and have banded together to publish an educational website with a manifesto calling FSD "a new medical myth" and challenging sexual "disease-mongering" promoted in the Diagnostic Statistical Manual of Disorders (DSM), known as the psychiatric bible.
The current DSM (DSM-IV) is an ever-expanding doorstopper of a clinical book used to diagnose and codify psychiatric "disorders" ranging from childhood "oppositional defiant disorder" to "anxiety disorder not otherwise specified." "Female sexual disorders" include "hypoactive sexual desire disorder," defined by a "persistently or recurrently deficient (or absent) sexual fantasies and desire for sexual activity"; and "female sexual arousal disorder": a "persistent or recurrent inability to attain, or to maintain until completion of the sexual activity, an adequate lubrication-swelling response of sexual excitement."
DSM critics think that the manual pathologizes a wide range of human behaviours and allows a select group of clinicians (mostly men, a number with ties to pharmacorps) to subjectively standardize behaviour. A 2003 Kinsey Institute study found that over 34 per cent of women polled "reported marked distress about their sexual relationship," but the authors added that, "the predictors of distress about sex did not fit well with the DSM-IV criteria."
"Women's sexual motivation is far more complex than simply the presence or absence of sexual desire," writes Dr. Rosemary Basson of the B.C. Centre for Sexual Medicine in an intriguing 2005 Canadian Medical Association Journal paper. Diagnostic categories reflect a genitally focused model of sexual function, she says, while in the real world, "women describe overlapping phases of sexual response that blend the responses of mind and body." So, many facets of women's sexual function don't jive with the diagnostic model.
Basson and other researchers have found that women who consider themselves sexually healthy (known in clinical studies as the control group) don't necessarily tend to have "spontaneous" desires or fantasies before they engage in sex. And women who report sexual dysfunction have been found to experience "significant" physiological genital responses when they're hooked up to a photoplethysmograph to watch erotic videos, yet only control volunteers reported feeling sexual aroused.
Basson also notes studies with findings that when the emotional intimacy with the partner is stronger, women have "less distress" around sex. And findings that "women with desire disorder had self-esteem that was weak or even fragile, emotional instability, anxiety and neuroticism." She adds that sexual arousal and orgasm, especially in a partner's presence, require a certain degree of vulnerability, which is impossible for some women who "cannot tolerate feelings of loss of control generally, and loss of control specifically of their body's reactions."
Take a pill
Basson also mentions the off-label use of antidepressants to treat sexual disorders, and the fact that these drugs commonly cause sexual problems in women and men. Hormones, like testosterone, can also increase a woman's sexual arousal, but studies have also found that "environmental changes" also do the trick, including a new partner.
Basson contends that the reported prevalence of "hypoactive sexual disorder" in women of around 30 to 40 per cent may be wrong and misleading. She expects the numbers of women diagnosed to decline "when (or if) it becomes widely known that lack of spontaneous or initial desire" does not by itself mean there's a sexual disorder.
Sewell herself briefly argues against the medicalization of women's sexuality and comes to reject the notion that she's abnormal. This is where her story could get interesting and educational for others, particularly considering the controversies in the medical field. But Sewell prefers the sugar-coated quick-fix Cosmo-friendly stuff, and when these tactics fail to rev up her libido, she falls back on the biology argument.
Even with chocolate sprinklers, it's hard for me to swallow the idea that Sewell is actually chucking the baggage around perceptions of normalcy when she spends so much time critiquing the behaviours of other women, from Pamela Anderson to fictional characters in Sex and the City. In Atlantic Monthly she admits feeling "envy for genuinely lusty women," yet dismisses sexually expressive women as "pandering to men"; in Sewell's books they're merely dressing up a burning desire for "security" which she believes "overrides" women's "sexual urge."
Eat or be eaten
It's also hard to believe Sewell really dedicated herself to the difficult task of dissecting the potential multitude of reasons for her low sex drive when she proudly dismisses the idea that sex can be "spiritual" or loving as a "sexpert" devised joke. Then there's her view on cunnilingus, expressed to Atlantic Monthly: "I just don't like to see someone's head between my legs. Now some people would say that's because I think it's dirty down there, or something like that...I actually think a person's mouth is a lot germier than my vagina. And they're lapping around. I think of all the effort my husband is putting into it, and that just kills me."
Perhaps Sewell's league of talk therapists dared not go into this below-the-belt territory. Sewell is brave for trotting out her neuroticisms, but it starts to smell of narcissistic navel-gazing when she prefers not to dwell too long on the deeper meanings and instead buys into the idea that women who have sex regularly are fakers merely "simulating lust," "taking it and faking it," and buying into Girls Gone Wild pubescent male fantasies, and even pro-sex feminist dogma about sexual empowerment. Sewell says her so-called relationship-compromise-happy-ending is empowering: Kip gets a taste of porn here and there (as if that makes up for a real relationship; will she foot the bill if he becomes cyberporn addicted?), the occasional blowjob and even sex once in a blue moon, but only on "her terms." Yet sexual intimacy requires vulnerability, trust and a bit of a give and take on control. Perhaps reaching such a point is to Sewell, like sex, too much of a "slog."
Chocolate, on the other hand, doesn't talk back, fart like blue-balled Kip or necessitate much hand-to-mouth exertion. It's also highly addictive, contains a range of powerful chemicals including cannabinoid-like fatty acids and phenylethylamine (known as the "love drug"), and stimulates the brain's reward system in much the same way as cocaine, heroin, sex and even the anticipation of revenge.
The thrill of chocolate is so bittersweet, according to one 2003 study, that 14 per cent of U.S. college women feel embarrassed when they purchase a chocolate bar. Another chocolate versus apple study found that women who eat chocolate experience a more intense joy, followed by guilt, making cocoa the new forbidden fruit. Yesterday's horny male teens with their brown-bagged porn mags have been trumped on the shame-o-metre by girls packing Mars Bars home to the bedside table.
Men can now get their porn fix on the Net anyway. A study found U.S. college students are more likely to be addicted to the Net (and alcohol, cigs, gambling and TV) while young women troll for -- you guessed it, a chocolate fix.
Numerous studies have found that women are more likely to seek out sweet foods for comfort. (Men typically crave a savoury hot meal according to one study.) Yet cultural gender divides exist, according to a study comparing American and Spanish chocoholics. Researchers discovered a large gender difference among Americans but not Spaniards, suggesting "that American culture encourages disproportionately more chocolate cravings among females than males."
Feast or famine
Eating disorders research has also implicated higher opioid-like responses, particularly with chocolate, in bulimics and obese women than healthy controls, solidifying the neurochemically addictive quality of chocolate.
"We now talk about being bad on the weekend as a ménage à trois with a bucket of Ben and Jerry's," says Dr. Ellen Domm, repeating a quote by Jean Kilbourne, an outspoken critic of the effects of advertising and media on women. "Food is sinful in the way sex used to be," adds Domm, a teacher at Capilano College and a clinical psychologist specializing in eating disorders.
"Body image and sexuality are all tied up together and there's a strong correlation between sexual and eating disorders," Domm says, adding that multiple causes come into play with both disorders, including mixed media messages.
"Young women especially are being told they have to be physically perfect, sexy and also comfortable with sex. Most of the women I see don't even try to have intimate relationships. Food, in some ways, is a better lover. It's comforting, pleasurable and distracting. Until the inevitable guilt. It's a very complicated cycle," Domm says, adding that the gender gap in eating disorders is shrinking since "more and more men are sold this idea of perfection and feeling just as insecure."
Let's eat chocolate and have sex
I live with a lover of chocolate who likes a fix at least twice a week. But he'd pick sex over chocolate, no question, even if tempted with a melting hot fudge brownie sundae. He thought the question was a bit stupid anyway: "Why can't I have a bit of both?" Given the skyrocketing obesity rates (not to mention the war on drugs, cigarettes, fatty foods and sex), this everything-in-moderation argument seems increasingly unpopular in North America. A global study on attitudes to food found that Americans were both the least likely to associate food with pleasure and the least likely to think their diets were healthy. The authors warned that women from all other countries were more likely to adapt to American patterns than their male counterparts.
Global surveys on sexuality show interesting correlations between these cultural dietary patterns and sexual satisfaction. The Global Sex Satisfaction Study found that in the U.S. only 28 per cent of women and 37 per cent of men said "sex is important"; only New Zealanders ranked lower among gender-egalitarian cultures. Durex's Global Sex Survey 2006 found that Americans and Canadians were at least twice as likely to say "my sex life is monotonous" and "I do not have a high sex drive" as Spaniards and Portuguese. Yet we North Americans also topped the list for wishing we had more sex. Stranger still, Americans were the most likely to contend, "I'm happy with my sex life."
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Gary
4 years ago
The only thing...
Better than sex is a good day fishing.
James Burns
4 years ago
Culture, culture, culture
A big problem in the (as the neocons like to call it) anglosphere is that there continues to be strong strains of disgust in the cultural attitudes toward sex. Those attitudes aren't nearly as prevalent in many other cultures.
To take but one example, I recently came back from a month in Cuba (where I've traveled before), and again I was struck by how much colder people are here on my return. There isn't anywhere close to the same level of friendliness or even simple comfort during social interactions here, particularly between friends. And intimacy in Cuba just doesn't seem to carry all the baggage that so many people here, women in particular, seem to trundle around with them. The best way I can characterize it is that culturally on average Cubans simply seem to be more comfortable with their sexuality.
So, I have no doubt the cultural attitudes we have in much of North America leads to a higher incidence of what is termed sexual dysfunction. The mind and the body are not separate things. What you think and feel is going to influence you physiologically.
What's more, in order to encourage consumption our society works to come up with things to sell. For women in particular the focus is on selling them products and services that are marketed as helping them attain an ideal of physical beauty, which is always closely tied to sexuality. Many women (even the beautiful ones) who believe they don't conform to that ideal suffer stress, shame and in many cases active disgust at a variety of targets, but most commonly at their sense of body image.
In my experience, the more comfortable a woman is with her body, the more comfortable she is with her sexuality. I suspect they simply feel safe with it. They seem to trust themselves, and by extension their partners, and they can enjoy intimacy without sabotaging it with negative thoughts.
seth
4 years ago
northeastern university
Wired up a bunch of ladies and had them watch porn flicks gay/bi/les/str8.
Virtually 100% experienced measured arousal at all forms of porn and virtually 100% stated that it was all disgusting and didn't do a thing for them.
I think it is their mothers telling them from birth that good girls don't.
Funny thing - same study showed 25% of str8 men and 100% of male homophobes experienced arousal at gay porn.
G West
4 years ago
chocolate
Most women also like candlelight, soft music, flowers and a decent wine.
Most men get the picture and kind of get off on the same things too - given the proper company.
Not such a mystery.
My view....not much takes the place of real communication.
vicki
4 years ago
Sex over candy any day
I think that todays women generally ignore their mothers' advice... all the good girls I know, certainly 'do' and I'm no spring chicken.
As for the porn experiments: while our bodies may betray us in the arousal department, our contempt for the ethics driving the sex trade and porn industry quickly engages our brain: which often overides the primal unedited stimulus and can quickly morph into revulsion. It's probably that mental switch being thrown, not Catholic guilt, that accounts for the most of the negative responses from women.
In that same vein, I'd venture to guess that what we are now learning about cocoa production may cause some of us sugar addicts to also stop lusting after chocolate.
Finally, from a purely personal point of view, I'd say the euphoria following great sex lasts a whole lot longer than a few squares of candy. It also isn't generally accompanied by the guilt and angst that we've been socialized to feel on the heels of a chocolate binge. Of course this assumes the the sex in question was better than satisfactory. If I was having bad sex, maybe I'd prefer to eat chocolate: which would certainly skew any survey results. I think we're asking the wrong question here.
Yammer
4 years ago
Kip, LOL
The porn he looks at must involve castration fantasies. Jesus, what a nightmare.
snert
4 years ago
So you're into oral sex.
G West
Talk, Talk, Talk, Talk, Talk
Yammer
4 years ago
You mean "aural"
Talk Talk -- very good 80s band.
Back to the topic -- Sewell's book has given me an idea for a country song. The protagonist will confess to being a cheatin' heartbreakin' cad, BUT in the saddle of his horse (or, to be modern, the crew cab of his 4X4 pickup) he will bring an enormous suitcase packed with bricks of Callebaut, which gets him off the hook.
lynn
4 years ago
Falling....
mmmmm...mmmm..good...who could resist Callebaut chocolate? Such a devious.... but delicious plan. ;-)
Back to topic-
If good sex is all about an intimate vulnerability and a letting go, this commercially "pushed" view of ideal perfection is its nemesis as it is all about narcissism and putting on defences.... a kind of armouring.
Much agree with James Burns about the ties and parallels between culture and sex.
A genuine reverence for and enjoyment of sex comes from a reverence for and enjoyment of life itself. Sadly, our commercialized world promotes everything but authenticity.
It's really not about the sexy perfume or the abs...ya gotta fall in love with life.
bob the cat
4 years ago
Big sex guy
Its hard for me to comment on this piece..Chicks really dig me..however a few years back heart surgery and resulting complications have left me completely impotent.
I have been celibate for..oh.. on three years now.
My wife and I have found a terrific substitute for our former active and if I may say.. positively wild sexual activity.
That substitute?....junk food! Yes..junk food. We sit across from one another at any number of junk food stores and watch each other slowly consume large helpings of salt, fat, sugar and other varying goops...extremely erotic!..and fulfilling!
We sometimes will call the other at home from the junk food store.. on the telephone
..and have the partner guess (very slowly) what we are about to slowly deposit (minimal chewing) ..down the feed hole. The partner doesn`t know which junk food palace we are calling from..this is so ..so erotic and so...bloody satisfying .
lynn
4 years ago
snack appeal
lol, bob the cat... gives a whole new meaning to "the munchies". ;-)
nightbloom
4 years ago
James Burns - Re. sexual
James Burns - Re. sexual attitudes in the Anglosphere versus some other cultures...
Yes, generally speaking, I agree. But there are a couple important caveats I'd like the append.
The Latin American and Meditarranean cultures are more expressive of male and female heterosexuality.
Take, for example, the elaborate unwritten etiquette in virtually all latin cultures surrounding the respectable man of affairs, his wife, and his mistress. Such accepted facts of life are scandalous tabloid-fodder in America, the UK and Germany. In Venezuela however, if your political candidate doesn't have a mistress, you'd better find him one quick because no one is going to vote for the incompetent boob. How can he run a city or country if the poor man can't even manage a mistress?? There's lots of chauvinism in that, but the chauvinism cuts both ways. It's an oblique way of policing male behaviour.
However, in terms of modern attitudes, the younger generation of maligned North American Anglo Whitie is actually doing much, much better than their 'warmer' ethnic cousins (although I notice a huge class and urban/rural differentiation among both men and women).
Attitudes towards women, and homosexuality (indeed, any non-traditional role or domestic arrangement) are actually far, far better among the 'colder' Anglo-Germanic cultures than they are among the timocratic "warm blooded" latins and Greeks. In fact, once you get past the romantic cultural aura, the latter groupings are (in my admittedly prolific personal observation) surprisingly parochial (and not infrequently rabidly intolerant) in their attitudes and appetities when it comes to gender, sex and sexuality.
I guess there are nuances to the concept of "liberation". Someone can be pretty open in personal attitude and outlook, but culturally indisposed towards letting it "all hang out there." Conversely, once can be "all out there" in all the culturally accepted ways, but manifest the most unenlightened and parochial worldview on these matters.
But to address the ideological dimension (you combine "anglosphere" and "neocon" in your critique), few are more vitriolic in their anti-sex (and anti-gay) attitudes as the fundamentalist Christian Right. Orthodox Judaism and Roman Catholicism (latin), while hardly supportive, just doesn't get poisonous in that whole debate the way the hard-core protestant (i.e. Anglo-Germanic) fundamentalist evangelicals often do. That could have something to do with the class & urban/rural divide I mentioned earlier. All those factors are probably mutually reinforcing.
BC Mary
4 years ago
Wild life anecdotes
bob the cat,
is this another chapter in "The bear ate my plums" book?
bob the cat
4 years ago
snack appeal
snack appeal..LOL
snax appeal...too good lynn!
bob the cat
4 years ago
bcMary
The Bear kept on coming back..I finally just rolled the freezer on its side and let him take the remaining stuff.
Tonight we had an R.C.M.P. Dog commando at the same door...all dressed in black...he was searching for evidence from a murder last night in Squamish..apparently the suspect..may have come through my yard last night and he wanted to search the wooded area out back. He said he wanted to let us know as he didn`t want to maybe get shot...said an officer was shot not long ago by a hunter who thought he was a deer.
My commando was dressed all in black though he was a lot thinner than Bruno..spoke with a French accent as well.
bob the cat
4 years ago
BcMary
I`m kind of hoping my wife doesn`t browse Tyee tonight :-0
G West
4 years ago
Was his name Bruno
I was following the story and wondering if it'd be near your place...they cought the poor kid didn't they?
zounds!
If I hadn't started this damn diet I'd have suggested fast food for dinner tonight.
bob the cat
4 years ago
yes..he`s been nabbed
Yes they caught him..helicopters flying back and forth this morning for about two hours..a real manhunt. It happened nearby and he fled through the brush.
Very tragic..for the lad who died and for him...
the great thing about fast food..there is such a variety..If lynn were more entrepreneurial she would follow up on that "snax appeal"
market some kind of brightly colored potato thing..or a twisty colored sugery corn thing..call em "Snax Appeal!" Put the Olympic Rings on the package...Sell like...well.. like HOTCAKES!
G West
4 years ago
my god bob
You've missed your calling. That's marketing genius, for god's sake register the copyright before someone steals it.
I can see the packages now, subtle tones of gold on a grey ground with stylized letters and fancy dan interlocked ring devices, spelling:
Bruno's: Snacks with Snax Appeal. An Olympic quarter in every pack - collect all 6, or 10 or whatever.
Let's do lunch and barnstorm this one dude - it's a winnah.
We'll have a picture of the Gordo on each package - you know the one from his Hawaii holiday tour.
With the Olympics coming we can't miss. Do you think we can get Lynn to sign the thing over - Or will we have to cut her in too?
Maybe she'll take a few hundred bucks in Canadian Tire money.
James Burns
4 years ago
Latin sexuality
"The Latin American and Meditarranean cultures are more expressive of male and female heterosexuality."
I would agree, although Cuba is a unique case amongst Latin American cultures. Their attitudes towards women, and even in the last few years towards homosexuals is significantly more liberal than every other Latin American country. There is currently a movement to legalize gay marriage in Cuba, for example, and it will likely become a reality there within a few years. What's more sexual violence against adults is far, far rarer in Cuba than it is in Canada or the US. And against children it is practically unheard of. But yes, in some ways they still lag the more liberal of North American political attitudes toward sexuality. Being straight myself my experience with the gay community in Cuba is negligible, but I will say that gay men in Cuba certainly aren't shy.
However, there is also a huge difference between theory and practice. Liberal political attitudes towards sexuality don't necessarily translate into personal behavior that displays comfort with intimacy. Accepting that a person's sexual orientation is their own business, and should be something they are allowed to celebrate is one thing. Being comfortable with and able to unself-consciously enjoy intimacy is something very different. In my, experience people raised in Canada have far more difficulty with the latter than the former. Of course, the more socially conservative have rather intense problems with both.
nightbloom
4 years ago
I've heard that about Cuba,
I've heard that about Cuba, but I've also heard a few other things from a number of friends that have been there for holidays.
The resorts are marginally accepting, because of the weight of the gay tourist dollar. But you can't make cultural assumptions based on experiences within artificial tourist preserves.
Gay people still need to be careful everywhere else in Cuba, and the indigenous gay community is routinely harassed by the authorities, with unsanctioned police raids on gay clubs, etc. The latter could be as much a function of the black market economy as a it is of cultural issues. You get a "soft core" version of the same phenomenon here. The only time law enforcement bothers to exert a presence in gay space is when someone at City Hall didn't get their plain brown envelope.
Case in point: http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2002/12/20/bathhouse_raid021220.html
I've seen this drill many times. It's the same in T.O., Vancouver, Edmonton, everywhere. The faux outrage from the gay press can be dismissed out of hand; the real issue here is that someone wasn't getting their cut of the drug-money. But crying "discrimination" is such a convenient cover, and local "community activists" are so effective at kicking up the smoke screen of victimology whenever something like this hits the fan.
Same old, same old.
clubofrome
4 years ago
Shaping up....
This had been shaping up as a fun thread...
...I remember growing up poor, and chocolate was only someting we saw in exotic magazine ads. Junk food would have been a luxury! We had to catch ants and rob bee hives for honey just to get our sweet treats. Those were the days, young love, newlyweds rolling around in the honey picking up what ever bugs, seeds and twigs were laying around. Now that was a snack!
nightbloom
4 years ago
Quote:This had been shaping
Yeah, sorry 'bout that. Some of us get off easier than others (ba-boom ching).
clubofrome
4 years ago
Zinger!
...that's better!
lynn
4 years ago
Snaxy stuff
jeez, this could be my fifteen minutes of entrepreneurial fame. I'd better use it wisely. Although bob the cat did "officially" add the "x" to the end of snax....ya think he noticed? ;-)
I'm all for a three way partnership...a purely business menage a trois - in keeping with the theme of the article, of course..... as long as it's not a P3. ;-)
(Any Canadian dollars donated can be re-directed to Frank's own (and highly worthy)investigative "award" on another thread. ;-) )
...good to see you back, clubofrome ;-)...those were the days, indeed...when we still had old growth forest to roll around in.
clubofrome
4 years ago
The only worry...
Watching out for the thistles...
James Burns
4 years ago
hmmm... moving more off topic
This isn't really relevant to the article or my initial points above but...
Well I've never been to an "artificial tourist preserve" in Cuba or anywhere else. When I travel I avoid tourist havens like the plague. I don't see the point of traveling to another country if all you're going to do is hangout with other tourists. I have friends in Cuba, who I am in regular contact with, who I stay with and spend most of my time with when I am in Havana. According to those friends, attitudes toward homosexuals are vastly more accepting than they were even a few years ago.
I should also clarify my earlier gay men reference. I was referring to Cuban gay men. In my experience, while they aren't as forward as some Cuban women, they certainly aren't shy about showing their interest. As for gay male tourists, I haven't met any while in Cuba that I know of.
The only tourists who tend to get themselves in trouble in Cuba are those who troll for sex. The only stories of violence against tourists there that I've heard of have been against male sex tourists. There are apparently a fair number of female sex tourists that go to Cuba, but I haven't heard any stories or news reports about violence directed at them.
nightbloom
4 years ago
Yeah, entrapping gay men for
Yeah, entrapping gay men for cash is an old trick. I only works if being gay is something that people need to hide.
Your friends would know better than I, as my information is second hand (granted, from a number of people reporting pretty much the same thing). But a naturalized cuban person living there, and a couple of gringos visiting, might perceive the same scenarios very differently.
A couple (gay) friends of mine just returned from Las Vegas. They stayed at a 'gay friendly' resort hotel, but were warned by the cab driver in no uncertain terms on their first evening there that they had to keep it all under wraps when they were out on the town. And this is in a major North American tourist mecca.
lynn
4 years ago
yikes
yikes... I just read over my last comment, (remind me never to do that again) and realized my mixed metaphors and attempt to be funny could leave the wrong impression...
If there was a delete button, I would delete my own comment.... my gawd, I may even ban myself. :-0
Right to Bear
4 years ago
You guyz are hilarious Lol
You guyz are hilarious Lol :-D ... Keep it up. I'm rotfalmao.
Your too funny lynn, but I do love this comment of yours.
Lynn said:
So true my friend... Love attracts LLLLLove... ;-)
Cheers,
Bear (not Bruno):-)
bob the cat
4 years ago
roll around
I`ll admit the forest floor roll around did raise a few eyebrows..we could maybe incorporate the image somehow with the rings into the snax appeal packaging.
" With Snax Appeal your performance will be positively Olympian!"
I see a window of opportunity here..viability..clearly moving forward and pushing the envelope..leading edge! Damn!
Lets just hope they don`t move the goalposts!
G West
4 years ago
Geez Bob forgot to mention
The list of words we're not allowed to use in conjunction with product marketing for the next few years.
Read about 'em here: http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/news/story.html?id=9ed1e9e5-4e53-413f-b038-e507b502ba9c&k=84635
We may have to rethink those five circles eh - unless John Furlong likes the ‘snax’ I guess.
Tough times to be an entrepreneur 'eh? But then Bush is reported to have said the French didn’t even have a word for the phenomenon.
bob the cat
4 years ago
freedom fries
The French? I had absolutely zilch in the way of entrepreneurial skill until Gord came into my life.
The Gord is my shepherd
I shall not want....
Gord was on Shaw cable here the other day..a brief blurb showing his Gordness opening and drawing out a book...he then speaks to us about the book or reads his favourite bits from the book for us.
His choice this particular time was " Shoeless Joe" by Kinsella...Gord talked to us about growing up in Canada and how baseball was so much a part of us...playing catch with your dad (I wonder if Gord ever played catch with his dad? umm don`t wanna go there)
I would have thought we play a little ball here but Hockey is the Canadian thing..baseball is the `murrican thing.
These are real gems..do you get them where you are?
bob the cat
4 years ago
a real book
It looked like a real book ..pages, cover..everything!
bob the cat
4 years ago
Libraries
I have heard so many times from so many of Gord acolytes..how much he (Gord) likes reading. Reads voraciously does Gord. Likes to show us too...I always call my wife to the T.V. when Gord is on LOOK he`s reading A BOOK!
I would kind of have to question how a person who professes such a love for books and reading could even consider closing say...a legislative
library...or say...cutbacks to school librarys..layoffs of librarians..
Am I being unfair here?
G West
4 years ago
Can the truth
Ever be unfair?
A "real" book you say.
Curious.
BLONDE PITBULL
4 years ago
Is chocolate better?
Well now, that would depend on your partner doncha think?
bob the cat
4 years ago
Blonde Pitbull
you may be onto something here.
Fii
4 years ago
You've GOT to be kidding...
What a silly topic... I eat chocolate every day (and NEVER feel guilty- who are these women who feel guilty??) but to compare even the best chocolate to sex is idiotic.
As far as the libido gap- don't even get me started on that one. What are we talking here? 24 yr old women? 34 yr old women? I've been both, and trust me the difference in how I feel about my body, my life, love and sex... at these two stages is immensely different.
Bytesmiths
4 years ago
It's True...
Without intending to seem boastful, I must say that I have never met my match in the libido departement. And I don't think I'm too unusual.
The love of my life is as spirited as they (ahem) come, in my experience, and it's still not enough for me. When I was 20, once a night wasn't enough, and in my fifties, once a week is not enough.
There are generally enough other perks that I put up with a lack in that department as "just the way things are."
My love once was on testosterone as a treatment for endometriousis, and so she sympathizes with me. "Pull over NOW, I want sex!" she remembers saying at the time. "How can you put up with it, 24/7/365, you poor thing?"
I've heard that men, on average, think about sex about once every few minutes or so. I'm average here, I guess -- walk into a store, see a pretty woman, wonder what it would be like, without any intention of pursuing or even of following through if pursued. See an unattractive woman and wonder if she's getting any -- these are all the perfectly normal, idle thoughts of testosterone poisining, and not the anti-social perversions of some warped mind!
And yet I've heard that women think about it every day or so. There's the comic strip that shows a man's brain as divided up like a pie chart, with 85% sex, 10% sports, 5% fishing, with the female mind divided up as 30% new shoes, 30% chocolate and rich food, 30% children and small furry animals, and on down the line until 1% is left, like an afterthought, to sex. Such a cruel joke nature has played on us!
So I find Sewel's platitudes and arguments as disingenuous. It's real, just accept it, and try to make the best of a cruel joke.
bob the cat
4 years ago
Slave to my dick
In my 60`s...the fading of testosterone..
Free at Last! God Almighty Free at Last!
nightbloom
4 years ago
Sounds like you could write
Sounds like you could write something really interesting on the subject, Bob the Cat.
That's a sentiment I've heard before - I'm sure you know that testosterone supplementing is all the rage right now (patch, pills, injection). It hasn't gone thru the demystification (and de-glorification) yet that female hormone replacement therapy has. The is quite apart from the non-prescription use of steroids that has been quietly going on in every commercial gym in the developed world.
Testosterone, along with "performance enhancing" viagra, workout supplements, anti-hair loss meds, botox...you name it, is marketed pretty heavily. The healthcare sector has even invented a complimentary disease to help the hard sell along: "andropause".
bob the cat
4 years ago
viagra
An acquaintance told me of his viagra "experience"
Said he hadn`t had a boner like that since he was fifteen years old.
Think I`ll give it a pass..couldn`t imagine walking about with a big boner at my age, not really knowing what the hell to do with it.
Latarnik
4 years ago
Chocolate better than sex for women
Excellent article. I feel sorry for husbands who do not get oral sex after engagement and no sex at all after first pregnancy.
My opinion is that women are unfeeling, lazy and egotistic. Man would kiss and caress woman for hours, to make her happy, even if it is caressing her soiled feet. Man would bring her another male partner to increase her libido. Women would not do it if their life depended on it. That is very cruel and leads to adultery, alcohol, drugs and impotence
clubofrome
4 years ago
Whoa!
Just when you thought this thread had gone to bed...
I'm not sure how to tell you this Latarnik, but your comments are not reflective of a healthy mind.
lynn
4 years ago
Who knew?
Latarnik wrote:
...not to mention nuclear proliferation, global warming, shoes that don't fit.... and the recent mysterious disappearance of bees. ;-)
clubofrome
4 years ago
Beehave
Bee's behaving badly... Bee's gone wild... To bee or not to bee... Bee bee come back! Sorry we took you for granted. Won't happen again, still friends?
bob the cat
4 years ago
So whats with the bees
I`m seeing lots of "bumblebees" lately
I don`t get the fruit I once did since my friend up the hill moved away with his hives.
I used to see his worker bees on the blossoms before he left.
Is it just me or does everything out there seem different..the light..the insects..
the plants..
lynn
4 years ago
Party Hardy Bees
I've seen a lot of bees this spring, too, btc, but according to the news they are mysteriously vanishing in parts of the world.... and there is a lot of concern about pollination of fruit and flowers etc.
The bees I have seen seem quite sleepy and dopey, even a little... (yes I'll say it), "chubby". Maybe confused by global warming they decided to stay over for the winter season here.... booked a few extra rooms.... and stayed on a little too long.... and partied a little too much.
Of course, that's just my purely scientific assessment of this strange mystery. Here's hoping that Truman doesn't read this. ;-)
bob the cat
4 years ago
beehaves
Thats it..Chubby...I thought they looked kind of fuzzy wuzzy but they are definitely chubby and flying a little erratically.
Check this out
http://mny.ca/
Michael Nicoll Yahgulanaas
He had an excellent post on the Reconciliation
thread.
Novel..definitely the booker would cause problems..
Writing a novel..how terrifying
I don`t think writers become as solitary as painters..retreating into a private world..they do..but they come out again..come and go..painters tend to stay there.
Did you hear Eleanor Wachtel interviewing a poet last Sunday..I can`t remember his name..should have written it down..he had been a painter but couldn`t really communicate what he felt through painting and moved to writing.
He said his parents were card carrying Communists...they needed that certainty about things..he chose poetry where you`re guaranteed uncertainty. Good interview.
Hopefully Truman is away for the long weekend...we`d be toast.
Who is James Burns? Can he ever cut to the
nub..mind like a steel trap..Nightbloom tries to argue with him but is obviously no match.
You know I might take a stab at the writing...it was the only thing I was any good at in school...trying to keep it from becoming too dark will be a challenge or overwhelming it with my diabolical and often goofy sense of humour.
lynn
4 years ago
Of shoes and ships and sealing wax....Of cabbages and kings
thanks so much for the link...he's quite wonderful isn't he?...a lightness and humour in (some of) his work as well.
(...I also like his wide smile from his blog photo.... and absolutely love his red sneakers as they remind me of my son who wore a pair of red sneakers for years....even with his tux to grad.)
I hope you do decide to write...your writing engages people... you're much like Coyote in that regard. Your piece on curling just rang so true and was so quirkily Canadian you just wanted to read more.
James Burns? He is good but I don't know who he is. Mr. Burns, reveal yourself. ;-) (Why do I feel like Reveen when I say that?) Remember him? ...coming soon to an arena near you.
Eleanor Wachtel...yup, she's a great interviewer...unfortunately I missed that one. It's always my favourite part of a long drive home, when I happen to catch her on the radio.
bob the cat
4 years ago
Reveen red shoes
I loved the red shoes too..wonderful bearded laughing face.
Your son must be an artist...not just anyone can wear red shoes ;)
Saw Reveen twice at the Orpheum way back when (early sixties?... like "Jim" in "Taxi" I sometimes have problems with dates)...found it fascinating.
My wife (almost used her real name):-0
saw Reveen at the P.R. ice rink in the mid sixties. Living where we do C.B.C. and Eleanor have eased many a long drive home.