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Sex

I\’m fascinated by this

Children are to be taught about homosexuality in maths, geography and science lessons as part of a Government-backed drive to \”celebrate the gay community\”.

Notably this one:

Maths – teaching statistics through census findings about the number of homosexuals in the population,

Because that could be an extremely interesting set of lessons in how careful you\’ve got to be with statistics and definitions.

For there is very definitely a tendency for some to rather over estimate the number of gays in the population: Peter Tatchell has been known to insist upon 10% of the population for example. His definition seems to be anyone who has ever had a same sex sexual experience: a slightly odd definition, given that defining anyone who has ever had an opposite sex (or perhaps these days we\’re supposed to say other sex) experience as heterosexual would probably define Mr. Thatchell as such.

Then there\’s attempts to actually count the people who are what we might call \”really\” homosexual, people who are exclusively pursuing same sex relationships. More like 1-2% of the male population and a little less of the female.

Our statistics lessons could explore these problems of definition, explore how even using the same definitions we find that different methods of counting give us diferent numbers and even, if we were to be trying to actually teach children something useful, why certain sets of numbers are touted by those with one or another political axe to grind, others by others.

Sadly, the lesson plans aren\’t ready for download as yet so we can\’t check and see whether they\’re doing this.

Or, as I suspect, just telling the kiddies that there\’s \”lots\” of gays you know.

Oh how true

A surrogate mother is said to exercise \”choice\”. Of course, she is entitled to rent out her womb to whomsoever she likes. However, choice presupposes that we live in a society in which there are no serious differences in power, income and authority between individuals. And we don\’t.

But I\’m not sure that that is the worry at the heart of all of this. That some people can make choices that others are not able to, the inequality of choices.

I have a sneaking suspicion that it\’s actually the greater equality of choices which worries.

What surrogacy does is allow a man (of sufficient wealth, to be sure) to have a child without having to woo and nuture a relationship with a woman. And that has been one of the great powers that women have had over men over the centuries, that it\’s been necessary to do this in order to get both sex and children.

Surrogacy is thus a loss of power of the sisterhood: as, for example, Ronaldo\’s recent case shows. No need for him to committ to marriage, alimony, a relationaship, in order to have a child.

Devadasi

So, there\’s a new film out about the devadasi: temple prostitution in India in effect.

The devadasis have a multilayered story, a story in which poverty, deprivation and injustice against women is central – but what has happened to them is absolutely an outcome of imperialism and the impact of British rule in India.

Gosh, that\’s interesting.

The first legal initiative to outlaw the devadasi system dates back to the 1934 Bombay Devadasi Protection Act. This act pertained to the Bombay province as it existed in the British Raj. The Bombay Devadasi Protection Act made dedication of women illegal, whether consensual or not. According to this act, marriage by a devadasi was to be considered lawful and valid, and the children from such wedlock were to be treated as legitimate. The Act also laid down grounds for punitive action that could be taken against any person or persons found to be involved in dedications, except the woman who was being dedicated. Those found guilty of such acts could face a year’s imprisonment, a fine, or both. The 1934 Act also provided rules, which were aimed at protecting the interests of the devadasis. Whenever there was a dispute over ownership of land involving a devadasi, the local Collector was expected to intervene.

In 1947, the year of independence, the Madras Devadasi Prevention of Dedication Act outlawed dedication in the southern Madras Presidency.

So imperialism and British rule are responsible for trying but not succeeding in wiping it out then? Amazing what we can still get blamed for isn\’t it?

Eljibiti

Yes, quite right on the substance of the case.

And of course, Eljibiti is a word that we will all now have to use.

This is an order and yes, we must indeed remember Ms. Pisani as our source.

The good old days are now

Just a little reminder:

Her marriage to Dennis Prouse floundered and it was while working as a secretary at the Daily Mirror that she began an affair with Woods, then a swashbuckling star reporter. Crocombe was sacked for becoming pregnant and moved to be near her family in Southsea, Hants, before her son’s birth in 1961.

Sacked for becoming pregnant eh?

So damn what?

This type of donation makes up 40 per cent of contributions. The revised level of cash compensation could be raised to be in line with this – although some experts fear that raising the level too high could attract donors purely for financial reasons rather than for the public good.

The HFEA is starting the public consultation process, which is being carried out online, today.

The findings will be presented to the HFEA board, which will draw up new regulations, in July,

Tony Rutherford, the chairman of the British Fertility Society, warned against setting the level of compensation for women too high.

Paying them the cash equivalent of the value of fertility treatment given to \”egg-sharers\” would be too much, he said. \”That clearly becomes a financial incentive. If that happens, I think there\’s a real danger that we would lose the altruistic reasons for donation.\”

So damn what you encourager of wankers (for that is an apt description of what Mr. Rutherford does). Why do we given even one, let alone two shits about why women donate eggs (or men wank to order)?

We want, and you are tasked with, ensuring sufficient gametes for those who desire fertility treatment to be able to have it.

And as we all know, there is no such thing as a shortage of supply: there is only a shortage of supply at a price. We have too few gametes on offer therefore the price must be too low. So raise it.

In which I disagree with Bidisha

When contemplating marriage, I always take tips from small studies by universities in America\’s conservative heartland. A survey by Brigham Young University in Utah has shown that couples who abstain from sex before marriage rate their marriages as more rewarding than those who don\’t.

What a stupid idea. What if, on the wedding night, the other party turns out to be selfish, clueless, oafish and lazy?

Well, if sex with the person you\’ve just married is the only experience of sex you\’ve ever had how do you know whether they\’re selfish, clueless, oafish or lazy about matters sexual?

But more to the point, if the only way you\’re going to get sex is to get married, then of course you\’ll think that marriage is rewarding. Sex is, after all, (even bad sex) fun.

Best line yet on the Elton John baby

I wonder if the baby in question will ever have to be nervous about his parents finding out that he’s straight?

mister choos.

Which leads me to an interesting question. We\’re near, perhaps not now but getting close to, the first generation of children born by surrogacy/artifical insemination/ in vitro techniques to same sex couples reaching some form of sexual maturity.

At which point we can go looking to see whether there is a higher level of same sex attraction among those children from same sex couples than there is among the children of the heterosexual couples.

This will, at least I assume it will, enable us to answer the age old question of whether it\’s nature or nurture which leads to same sex or opposite sex attraction.

(Leaving aside of course the well known availability effect. Same sex action is of course much more prevalent in situations where opposite sex action is impossible simply due to the complete absence of the opposite sex).

And we might well be able to go even further in the future as well. For there are now (in the lab only so far I believe) which allow the genetic material to be taken from the same sex parents, using an egg purely as the development mechanism rather than a contributor of genetic material.

And when that generation grows up we will be able to observe whether same sex attraction is genetically inheritable.

Only thing is, are we sure that anyone will be able to get a grant to study such subjects?

Oh dear Tommy

Tommy Sheridan, the former leader of the Scottish Socialist Party, was facing a lengthy jail sentence last night after being convicted of perjury at the end of a 12-week trial.

Cue protests that he wuz robbed by the bastard capitalists….

I have to admit that I\’ve no problem with a politician that enjoys group sex or even just enjoys lots of sex. Or even sex with lots of different people. A smattering of sexual libertinism hasn\’t made any difference to the performance in office of the last two Mayors of London.

But lying in a libel trial, committing perjury, no, that\’s not on at all.

On the murder rate for prostitutes

Hmm.

No comprehensive figure is available, but based on informal reporting through her own networks, Kinnell suggests that 134 sex workers, including a small number of transsexuals, are known or believed to have been killed since 1990.

And there are thought to be about 80,000 in the trade.

Total adult population is something like 50 million (close enough for this sort of thing) and annual murder rate is about 800 isn\’t it?

So we\’ve 16,000 murders over that same 20 year period.

320 murders per million over a 20 year times span. That gives us 1.6 per 100,000 per year which isn\’t far off the 1.7 actually recorded. Hurrah, Timmy can remember rough magnitudes of the murder rate!

If we\’ve 134 murders of sex workers over 20 years and a population of 80,000, so, multiply by 1.25 and divide by 20 to give us the annual rate per 100,000…..8.4 per hundred thousand. That makes sex work about as dangerous (looking solely at the murder rate) as Lithuania. Indeed, a girl coming in from Russia or Brazil (both not unusual sources) is lowering her chance of being murdered by moving from the general population in those countries to the sex trade in the UK.

I\’ve been looking for tables of the annual death rate for other occupations (trawlermen, forestry workers etc) and cannot seem to find them. If anyone knows where they are so we can compare them then do let us all know. I can find PMRs but that\’s not the same thing at all, or at least we can\’t directly compare them to the rate per 100,000 per year.

BTW, this isn\’t to try and say that the life of a prostitute is worth less, nor to say that they deserved it or anything. Just, rather, to try and put these reported rates into some sort of proportion. Four to five times the rate in the general population, lower than the rate in many other countries.

And no, of course, comparing the murder rate with the crude death rate of other occupations isn\’t right either (for there are many other things one might die of that are occupationally related than murder) but again, it would be interesting to see what the death rate, by, say, accident, is for those known to be high risk male occupations like deep sea fishing, fireman, etc. Anyone got them?

Aha!

A 2009 study by the School of Medicine at Swansea University claimed commercial fishing is Britain\’s most hazardous occupation. The study reported a fatal accident rate of 102 per 100,000 fishermen, which is more than 100 times riskier than the average British worker. By comparison the next most hazardous rate was for dockers at 28 per 100,000, with roofers and scaffolders at about 12 per 100,000.

Prostitution, over ten times safer than commercial fishing, three times safer than being a docker and safer even than roofing or scaffolding.

But then as the late, great Douglas Adams pointed out, the one thing a human being cannot afford to have is a sense of proportion.