The sad, lonely world of Ashley Madison

casper

Lately, I’ve been getting a fair amount of email from people who’ve been browsing the stolen Ashley Madison subscriber list, telling me what famous or semi-famous person had an account there. I haven’t been impressed. A lot of it seems to be men who were looking for dates, and the thing is…I really doubt that any of them found anything approximating love or sex there. It’s peculiar to accuse people of cheating on their spouses through Ashley Madison, when it’s highly unlikely that any man was making contact with any women there.

A detailed look at the Ashley Madison database reveals…

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Brevity is a virtue

I am very much enjoying the vicarious thrill of reading a Feminist on Tinder. Tinder seems to be ground zero for embarrassingly ignorant mansplaining, and this woman put up a profile that says “hello i am a feminist,” which prompts so much stupidity to be put down.

For example:

evotinder

I thoroughly despise anti-feminists, but it’s my male privilege that makes me just as angry at guys who abuse evolution.

How about if we just show this one video in all sex ed classes?

It would be such an improvement over what American schools teach now!

Although…it doesn’t really get around to teaching about sex much, does it? It’s mainly about how stupid and destructive sex ed policies are. We need a second video. It doesn’t need to be very long — when you get right down to it, the basics of sex are simple. Any suggestions?

Ugh

teague

That’s all I can say. The University of Minnesota athletic director has resigned. Why, you might wonder.

Since coming to the university, Teague had presented himself to the media as someone who was a good source and not afraid to get blunt. For a reporter, that was extremely valuable. After he arrived, and before Dec. 13, 2013, he and I had drinks five to seven times, all but one of those occasions in a group setting. I also attended several cocktail parties at his house. I was happy to have such a useful window into the program. We talked about basketball, coaches and his plans for the department.

So I agreed to have that drink. But this December night was different. Teague asked me about my longtime boyfriend, as he often did. My mistake was acknowledging that we had just broken up. The switch flipped. Suddenly, in a public and crowded bar, Teague tried to throw his arm around me. He poked my side. He pinched my hip. He grabbed at me. Stunned and mortified, I swatted his advances and firmly told him to stop. He didn’t.

“Don’t deny,” he said, “our chemistry.”

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It’s a mystery!

Magnus-Pyke-shouting-Science

I have a question for the partnered gay and lesbian couples out there. I know you get the question, Which one of you is the “man”, and which is the “woman” from ignoramuses who are unable to think beyond their narrow sexual biases, but I’m wondering about a subtler, messier question.

Do you ever get asked, Which one is the mysterious one with incomprehensible desires? I’m curious because the BBC aired one of those science of sex shows titled, The MYSTERY of the Female Orgasm, which seems to be the standard question. Woman is mysterious…must seek out a pick-up artist to explain the cheat code (it’s up-up-left-down-down-right).

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Katha Pollitt is on the mark

She has written an excellent post on abortion.

I cringed as I watched Planned Parenthood’s president, Cecile Richards, apologize in a YouTube video last month for the lack of “compassion” in two doctors’ language at supposed business lunches arranged and secretly recorded by the anti-abortion Center for Medical Progress.

Not because she wasn’t eloquent, but because of what her words said about the impossibly narrow path abortion providers now are forced to walk. After all, have you ever heard an apology from a crisis pregnancy center for masquerading as an abortion clinic? What about the women in Texas who lost access to gynecological care when the state defunded Planned Parenthood and did not, as promised, adequately replace its services? Has anyone said sorry about that?

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How does this get past an editor?

dustyspringfield

From a review by Roger Lewis of a biography of Dusty Springfield:

Call me a crazy old physiognomist, but my theory is that you can always spot a lesbian by her big thrusting chin. Celebrity Eskimo Sandi Toksvig, Ellen DeGeneres, Jodie Foster, Clare Balding, Vita Sackville-West, God love them: there’s a touch of Desperate Dan in the jaw-bone area, no doubt the better to go bobbing for apples.

It is thus a tragedy that Dusty Springfield’s whole existence was blighted by her orientation, which explains ‘the silence and secrecy she extended over much of her life, and her self-loathing’. One glance at her chin should have revealed all — but the Sixties was not a fraction as liberated and swinging as people now assume. ‘Being gay was either a pitiable affliction or an actual mental illness,’ Karen Bartlett reminds us in this sympathetic biography. Victims were treated with aversion therapy and electric shocks.

My theory is that you can always spot an asshole by the thoughtless bigotry they say.