11.02.07
Posted in arrrrgh, law, outrage, patriotism, politics, sexuality, women at 9:55 am by Hanne Blank
From today’s Kaiser Family Foundation’s daily Women’s Health Report:
Exhibit A:
A House-Senate conference committee on Thursday approved a fiscal year 2008 appropriations measure that would include a $27.8 million increase in funding of abstinence education programs, CQ Today reports. The legislation combines a Labor-HHS-Education spending bill (HR 3043) with a spending bill for the Department of Veterans Affairs and military construction (HR 2642) (Wayne, CQ Today, 11/1).
Exhibit B:
Sixty-seven percent of U.S. adults favor allowing public schools to provide contraceptives to students, including 37% who favor providing them only to children whose parents have consented and 30% who favor providing them to all students who ask, according to a recently released Associated Press-Ipsos poll, the AP/Columbus Dispatch reports.
The poll, taken from Oct. 23 to Oct. 25, found that minorities, older and lower-income people are most likely to prefer requiring parental consent, while those who support no restrictions primarily are younger and from urban or suburban areas. People who oppose providing birth control at school are more likely to be white and higher-income earners. The majority of respondents said young people should have access to birth control either beginning at age 16 or age 18, compared with one-third who chose age 15 or younger.
The poll also showed that 51% of people believe sex education and birth control are more effective ways to reduce teen pregnancies than emphasizing abstinence and morality, compared with 46% who prefer moral and abstinence messages. About 64% of minorities and 47% of whites consider sex education and birth control the most effective method. Nearly seven in 10 white evangelicals said they prefer abstinence, as well as about 50% of Catholics and Protestants. About 62% of all people surveyed believe providing birth control reduces the number of teen pregnancies.
… The survey involved telephone interviews with 1,004 adults.
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10.31.07
Posted in politics, sexuality at 9:38 am by Hanne Blank
Dear Closeted Conservatives,
I’ve been holding back from saying anything because really, I have better things to do, but clearly, you need some help. Yes, I mean you, and you and you and you and you.
You need some help because you keep getting yourselves into trouble when really, all you’re trying to do is get your knobs shined. And I agree with you, it’s a free country, and assuming everyone is of legal age and consents, there is nothing at all the matter with wanting to bust a nut.
Nevertheless, this is something that thousands, even millions of people succeed in doing at every hour of the day, every day of the year, without falling on their faces in some egregious stupid way and getting to enjoy a steaming helping of public humiliation in the newspapers.
If they can do it, so can you. Here are some tips to help you get the lovin’ you crave without all the blackmail, arrests, career damage, and public shaming you don’t.
Tip #1: Come out, come out, whatever you are!
Seriously, this is why a lot of people come out of the closet. It’s not because there is some inbuilt queer mandate to share the details of one’s sex life. Coming out, more than anything else, simply makes for accurate perceptions. When folks know you’re queer, they’re not shocked, surprised, offended, or prone to run hooting to the paparrazzi when you turn out to be… queer. All you have to do is belly up to the adult responsibility bar and say “hey, I’m gay” or “hey, I’m bisexual” or even “hey, I’m a horndog and an opportunist and I say any port in a storm.” Really it’s just a matter of honesty. You know, being straightforward and truthful about the things you do and will do, the things you care about, the things you stand for. Or behind, as the case may be, I’m not judgmental. Practice in front of a mirror until you can say “I am queer” without twitching. Then try it at a press conference.
Tip #2: If you can’t be bothered to come out, at least try not to look like you’re an utter jackass and an idiot to boot when you get caught.
Let’s face it, gentlemen. People who suddenly can’t remember that they fucked someone whom they just fucked look like tramps. Stupid tramps. And no, no one is going to buy a roofie sob story when you’re still wearing the trashy polyester lingerie under your suit, li’l buckaroo, so you might as well stand up straight and wear your trashy lingerie with pride. (It worked for Tim Curry.)
People who change their tune when confronted with the fact that they were having, or even merely seeking, sex with someone not their lawfully wedded heterosexual wife look like furtive schoolboys trying to hide the Playboy they shoplifted before the teacher finds out.
People who inexpertly cruise public tearooms expecting not to get busted, then wave their title and office around thinking that it’s going to get them off the hook, look like they have a gigantic entitlement problem, and believe that a title or an office makes them above the law.
People who claim they weren’t behaving in an inappropriately sexual manner when they clearly were, or who claim that they weren’t lying about their sexual lives when they clearly were, just look like lying liars who lie badly. This goes double, maybe quadruple, for anyone who is gonna stand up and say with a straight face that they thought offering someone a blowjob was a good way to avoid getting jumped. Seriously, guys, if you’re gonna lie, learn how to lie like Nixon did. Have some style.
Tip #3: Don’t hold up your wives and children as proof that you’re not queer.
As the unfortunate example of Brit and K-Fed attested, any two people can get married in this country, as long as they are not both of the same biological sex. Hell, you DOMA-sucklers are all about that. But there isn’t a marriage license in the world that’ll spontaneously combust if a queer person puts a signature on it. Furthermore there is no Wasserman test to sniff out any of that evil queerness before the Justice of the Peace will let you say “I do.”
Say it with me, gentlemen: Marriage is not proof of heterosexuality, it is a legal contract.
Similarly, queer people have kids. All the time. They even did it before artificial insemination. Many of them, in fact, did it through the expedient venue of actual legal marriage (see above). Queerness does not in fact create reproductive malfunction. It just means that you may be less likely to procreate by accident.
Repeat after me: Heterosexuals don’t make people. People make people.
For those of us who already know these things, it doesn’t make you look any better when you stand there next to your thin-lipped, grimly present wives, your children beside you barely able to keep themselves from rolling their eyes at being dragged into yet another idiotic photo op on behalf of Daddy’s career. It makes you look like you’re an asshole who disrespects and lies to his family and then shamelessly uses them to bolster his own sagging ratings in the public opinion polls. Remember Tip #1? Yeah. Your family doesn’t like it when you don’t have the cojones to be honest up front, either.
That’s it! Be honest up front, don’t lie and cheat and squirm if you get caught, and stop disrespecting your families. That’s all it takes! See, it really is all about good old fashioned American values after all.
Good luck!
Your friend,
Hanne
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11.27.06
Posted in administrative, advertisement, making book, sexuality at 3:33 pm by Hanne Blank
I’m in the teeny baby-steps early stages of work on the next nonfiction book, whose working title is Straight: A History of Men, Women, and ‘Sex’. Having been through this before with Virgin, I have a bit better idea of what this first stage should look like now than I did a few years ago, and am attempting, therefore, to correct for the errors of the past by not making the same mistakes twice.
Hence I am looking for a couple of good research interns, one for spring and one for summer 2007. If this interests you, let me know! If you know someone who might be interested, please feel free to pass this along.
Independent Scholar/Writer Seeking Research Interns
Writer and historian Hanne Blank, author of several books including the unprecedented new history Virgin: The Untouched History (Bloomsbury, March 2007), is looking for two research interns, one for Spring 2007 and one for Summer 2007. Interns will be working with Blank on research for her next nonfiction book, a history of heterosexuality and heteronormativity in the West. Past research interns have worked an average of 5-10 hours per week. Hours are generally flexible.
Applicants should have: excellent research skills (library and Internet), understanding of bibliographic form, regular (at least daily) computer/Internet access, available access to at least one research library, and excellent written and verbal skills. Candidates also should be good at working unsupervised, making judgment calls about information quality, comfortable working on issues of human sexuality, and reliable communicators. Foreign language skills are a big plus, particularly German, French, and Latin.
These internships are unpaid, but I happily extend ongoing support (including letters of recommendation) to my interns and former interns. Some former research interns who have worked for me are now employed by Elsevier, NYU Press, National Public Radio, and other prestigious businesses in the information and publishing sector; others are excelling in graduate school.
Applicants may be either local (Baltimore, MD) or long-distance, with a slight preference for local applicants.
To apply, please send a letter indicating your interest to hanne at-sign hanneblank dot com. Please describe your skills and background, the reasons you are interested in this internship, and be sure to indicate whether you are applying for the Spring or Summer internships.
I promise there’ll be substantive and entertaining content in this blog again someday soon. Between trying to recover from the health stuff I’ve been dealing with, and trying to get going with this new project, I fear I haven’t had a whole lot of entertaining stuff to relate, nor have I been feeling terribly chatty.
A handful of recommendations, though: Roald Dahl’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory read by Eric Idle, available unabridged on CD from Harper Children’s Audio; Patrick Leigh Fermor’s A Time of Gifts; the album Guest Host by Stew; and the ultra-sexxay new open-source research tool Zotero (Firefox 2.0 and up only, sorry, IE-heads…).
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11.20.06
Posted in good things, links, sexuality, squeeeee!, women at 8:53 am by Hanne Blank
Now it may be that you’ve seen one of these before. Perhaps you’ve seen both of them before.
But if you have, then you know that there is nothing at all wrong with seeing them again. And again and again, if you like.
Lo-Rider, “Skinny” (uncensored and very likely not safe for workplaces)
Anthony Hamilton, “Sista Big Bones” (more worksafe yet still ooohbaby)
I noted to my spouse this morning that had the “Skinny” video been made in 2000, I probably wouldn’t have had to write Big Big Love, I could’ve just told people to go watch.
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11.16.06
Posted in Virgin book, advertisement, helping, making book, public speaking, publishing, sexuality, women at 4:09 pm by Hanne Blank
PUBLIC TALKS AND CLASSROOM LECTURES, 2007
The fascinating, misunderstood, controversial topic of virginity is the subject of Hanne Blank’s groundbreaking new book Virgin: The Untouched History. Aspects of this history—a history chronicled for the first time in this sweeping new survey—are also the subject of four vibrant, information-packed, surprising, and entertaining talks that Hanne is offering for 2007.
Reviews have raved that Blank’s work is “a huge helping of stereotype busting, old-fashioned feminist consciousness raising” that “does for sex what feminism does for women: gives us context.” Conference and event organizers say “fantastic speaker… and a huge part of why the conference went so well!” and describe her as “at once learned and accessible, informative and provocative.”
To bring Hanne Blank and Virgin: The Untouched History to your campus, conference, or other organization, contact her at hanne at hanneblank dot com or contact Jennifer Baumgardner or Amy Richards at Soapbox, Inc. at (646) 486-1414.
TOPICS AND THEMES
Gypsy Flowers and Piss-Prophets: A Historical Tour of Virginity Testing
Human beings have been inventing virginity tests for as long as we have recognized the status of virginity itself—since before written history began. Some of the earliest documents of Western culture discuss the problem of how to verify virginity. Across the centuries, women and girls have had their genitals inspected, endured having their breasts and buttocks groped, drunk bizarre concoctions, and literally had smoke blown up their vaginas, all in the name of determining whether they were virginal. No virginity test has ever done better than chance at determining anyone’s sexual status. Even modern medicine cannot offer us anything more conclusive than conjecture. But the methods that we have tried over the centuries, whether seemingly abstract (astrological forecasts), bizarre (sniffing lettuce), or seemingly scientific and modern (gynecologists’ exams), reveal volumes about what we have believed to be true about the body, about sexuality, and about the elusive quality of virginity itself.
(Includes audience participation. Approximately 50 minutes, plus Q&A.)
Hymen Wars: The Two Thousand Year Search For Anatomical Proof of Virginity
Ask most people how you can tell whether or not a woman is a virgin, and it is likely that they’ll mention the hymen. The condition of this storied membrane has, in recent history, been considered so definitive of virginity that reports of its condition have been admitted as evidence in courts of law, and we often assume that this is not only warranted but that the hymen has been known and understood this way throughout human history. Nothing could be further from the truth: the hymen’s physical reality wasn’t even confirmed by dissection until 1546, after twelve centuries of medical debate about whether it existed at all. Even then, some physicians dismissed it as nothing more than a minor birth defect. The startling history of the hymen, stretching from ancient Greece to the pages of modern medical journals, is a saga of controversy, projection, paranoia, and medical mystery that continues to infuriate and amaze.
(Visual component includes graphic clinical photographs. May not be suitable for all audiences. Approximately 50 minutes, plus Q&A.)
True Love Legislates: “Abstinence,” Education, and the Politics of Virginity in America
Since 1996, the United States has been the only nation in the developed world—and one of only a few worldwide—with national legislation regarding the virginity of its citizens. Why, and what does this mean in the larger context of American history and culture? With hundreds of millions of dollars in funding and the staunch support of powerful political and religious conservatives, the legislation that created “abstinence”-only sexuality education was never subject to public referendum, yet it neatly encapsulates nearly a century’s paranoia about the sexuality of young women and men. Devoid of oversight requirements or even proof that “abstinence” programs work (and indeed with increasing evidence to the contrary), “abstinence” education policy is creating a chilling effect on freedom of information and expression not just in America’s public schools and youth programs but in the halls of public research institutions like the Centers for Disease Control. Public figures, including several former Surgeons General of the United States, have called for an end to this controversial Federal program, but economics, social history, and politics alike make repeal a difficult task. A hard-hitting and layered look at the big picture of “abstinence” in the context of American history and culture.
(Approximately 50 minutes, plus Q&A.)
Virgins, Veils, and Eunuchs For The Sake of Heaven: Virginity in the World of Early Christianity
In the fifth century BCE, the Greek poet Bacchylides wrote that “as a skillful painter gives a face beauty, just so chastity gives charm to a life of high aims.” But what Bacchylides meant by “chastity” was light-years away from what Saint Augustine, writing at an equal distance into the Common Era, meant by the same term. The development and spread of Christianity brought with it a startling new philosophy of sexuality and of virginity in particular: to a world in which the married household was the cornerstone of the social and political order, it introduced the notion that “…he who gives in marriage does well, he who does not does better.” (I Cor. 7:38) In order for this radical reprioritization of virginity to succeed, the virginity culture of the pre-Christian world had to be encompassed and transformed, and the results aggressively promoted in doctrine, ritual, organizational structure, and the rapid generation of a vast and fascinating literature. The result was nothing less than a paradigm shift in the Western culture of virginity, one which continues to shape our thoughts, emotions, and experiences of virginity a millennium and a half later.
(Approximately 50 minutes, plus Q&A.)
FOR ACADEMICS ONLY — HANNE BLANK IN THE CLASSROOM
While visiting your campus as a featured speaker, Hanne Blank may be available (pending scheduling) to enrich student experience by speaking in undergraduate and graduate classrooms on general subjects relating to her work as a feminist writer, activist, and historian. With abundant classroom experience and guest-teaching credits at institutions including Johns Hopkins University, Tufts University, Brandeis University, University of Delaware, Virginia Commonwealth University, and many others, she is happy to speak to many topics related to her past and current work.
For educators who would prefer more structured and topical guest-teaching on subjects relating specifically to virginity and the book Virgin: The Untouched History, Ms. Blank is also offering
topic-based classroom teaching on the following subjects:
Virginity as a Problem in Contemporary Medical Ethics
Suitable for women’s and gender studies, applied philosophy, and ethics classrooms, this topic requires students to read two articles from major medical journals (four for graduate classes) in preparation for a wide-ranging discussion about issues of institutional and cultural misogyny, issues regarding medical definition of anatomical “normality,” patient consent and confidentiality, legal and forensic issues regarding physician interpretation of anatomical evidence, and physician liability for patients’ social and cultural safety. (Bibliography for this class will be provided to the professor upon confirmation of booking. Study questions for students will be provided.)
Under Wraps: Gender, Appearance, and Power in Tertullian’s De virginibus velandis
Suitable for women’s history, history of Christianity, ancient literature, and Classical history classrooms, this class centers around close historical reading of Tertullian, De virginibus velandis (On the Veiling of Virgins), with the goal of better understanding the role that gender, sexuality, biological sex, appearance, and women’s agency played within the intersecting cultures of Tertullian’s world and within the developing theology of third-century Christianity. (The core text may, depending on the nature of the class, be read either in Latin or in English translation. Study questions for students will be provided.)
Virgin Sexy: Sex, Power, and the Eroticization of Virginity
Suitable for women’s and gender studies, cultural studies, human sexuality, and modern social history classrooms, this class considers the complicated issue of how virginity is eroticized in Western culture and what ramifications this has for the personal well-being, cultural and legal agency, and sexual self-image and experience of women. Discussion centers around 3 readings (graduate classes may have more) from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. (Bibliography for this class will be provided to the professor upon confirmation of booking. Study questions for students will be provided.)
To bring Hanne Blank and Virgin: The Untouched History to your campus, conference, or organization, contact her at hanne at hanneblank dot com or contact Jennifer Baumgardner or Amy Richards at Soapbox, Inc. at (646) 486-1414.
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