Sex in the News: Two Articles & One Story Idea

[browngirl]

President Obama's budget would eliminate funding for abstinence-only sex ed. Well, good! No more funding for textbooks and programs that teach 'slut-shaming' and that victims of date rape are to blame for having been assaulted. Maybe some actual sex education can replace this stuff.

So, Why Is the Penis Shaped Like That? (via redaxe) was not only interesting but gave me an idea.

[This quotation contains a further quotation set off in bold.]

Gallup and Burch also leave us with a very intriguing hypothetical question. “Is it possible (short of artificial insemination),” they ask, “for a woman to become pregnant by a man she never had sex with? We think the answer is ‘yes.’” It’s a tricky run to wrap your head around, but basically Gallup and Birch say that semen displacement theory predicts that this is possible in the following way. I’ve taken the liberty of editing this for clarity. Also note that the scenario is especially relevant to uncircumcised men.

If “Josh” were to have sex with “Kate” who recently had sex with “Mike,” in the process of thrusting his penis back and forth in her vagina, some of Mike’s semen would be forced under Josh’s frenulum, collect behind his coronal ridge, and displaced from the area proximate to the cervix. After Josh ejaculates and substitutes his semen for that of the other male, as he withdraws from the vagina some of Mike’s semen will still be present on the shaft of his penis and behind his coronal ridge. As his erection subsides the glans will withdraw under the foreskin, raising the possibility that some of Mike’s semen could be captured underneath the foreskin and behind the coronal ridge in the process. Were Josh to then have sex with “Amy” several hours later, it is possible that some of the displaced semen from Mike would still be present under his foreskin and thus may be unwittingly transmitted to Amy who, in turn, could then be impregnated by Mike’s sperm.

So, you know how it is generally understood that a certain number of children are being raised by men who aren't their biological fathers but don't know it, hereafter referred to as 'misattributed paternity'? One common statistic is 10% in many Western countries. (Found in a quotation at the bottom of the linked article, and when finding a link for that statement I had to trawl through some awfully mucky misogyny before I landed on this sensible article. Urgh.) People generally explain this entirely by envisioning women as sleeping around (cue the amateur sociobiology!), but I find myself wondering about the quoted scenario. In a world of well over six billion people, maybe at least one was concieved thusly.

At any rate, it could be an interesting story...

Comments

[ceo]

This is reminding me of one of my favorite logic puzzles, which posits two men, two women and two condoms, and asks how both men can have PIV sex with both women without any sharing of bodily fluids.

[ailbhe]

Ew.

[ckd]

Isaac Asimov reformulated it as three doctors, one patient, and only two sets of gloves...with a contagious but asymptomatic disease possibly present in any of them.

Not so ew, but logically equivalent.

[ailbhe]

Does it involve one person wearing two sets at once?

[ckd]

Yeah; it has to, because you have 4 people and only 4 surfaces.

[ailbhe]

I can't figure it out.

[ckd]

Two sets of gloves, A and B. Each has an "inside" and an "outside", but they can be turned inside out. (There's an assumption here that you can put them on/take them off without really "touching" any possibly infected surfaces.)

Doctor 1 wears both sets, A on the inside and B on the outside. A-inside is now contaminated by Dr. 1, and B-outside by the patient. A-outside and B-inside are still clean.

Doctor 2 wears set B, contaminating B-inside. B-outside is still contaminated by the patient, but it's only touching the patient.

Doctor 3 turns set A inside out, putting them on first before putting on set B. He's only touching A-outside, which is clean; A-inside and B-inside are contaminating each other, but that doesn't matter. The patient is still only touching B-outside.

[ailbhe]

The bit I can't manage is turning them inside out without touching a touched surface. The rest is do-able.

[ckd]

Realistically, you can't. That's what makes it a logic puzzle and not a practical guide to limited-resource surgery logistics. (I suppose you could do something tricky with a long, disposable probe and some kind of gripping tool...you could use the probe to push the fingers inside-out perhaps.)

[hitchhiker.livejournal.com]

yep

[dan-ad-nauseam.livejournal.com]

I thought that was by Gardner, but published in Asimov's.

[hitchhiker.livejournal.com]

gardner in scientific american, though asimov's might have reprinted it.

[sethg]

You know how some high-tech employers, in their job interviews, ask these questions like "why are manhole covers round?" and "about how many toothbrushes are in Los Angeles?"

I think I'll ask this question the next time someone comes to my company for a job interview.

NOT.

[hitchhiker.livejournal.com]

and the generalisation to m and n

[bikergeek.livejournal.com]

Because. PENIS.

Blood-typing used to be a fairly common exercise in high school biology, or at least it was when I went to HS, back when dinosaurs roamed the earth. There's an urban legend that they had to stop because of the number of kids who were finding out that the man they had thought of as "Dad" wasn't their biological father. (I prefer to think it had more to do with the risks of high school students not obeying proper safety protocols for handling blood and for sharps disposal.)

[lferion]

Fascinating article -- and the logic-puzzle part is very thought-provoking.

There *is* a bunny in there somewhere....

[chillyrodent.livejournal.com]

Covering my ears until all talk of semen has ceased.

[dan-ad-nauseam.livejournal.com]

Somehow this reminds me of the old SNL sketch.

[anisosynchronic.livejournal.com]

There actually was a case of that happening in England. A woman gave birth to a child whose skin was much darker than hers or her husband's. He claimed his wife had committed adultery; she disputed it. What turned out apparently to have happened, was that the husband was an uncircumcised male, and shortly before engaging in sexual intercourse with his wife, had had (unprotected) intercourse with a prostitute, who had had immediately prior had (unprotected) intercourse with a dark-skinned customer. The child was biologically the offspring of the prostitute's client immediately before the husband

[achinhibitor.livejournal.com]

Or at least that's the explanation that gets the woman off the hook. I'd believe it if they brought in the customer and he tested positive for paternity.

I find all of this amusing -- only in the US (it seems to me) is the possibility of a significant adultery rate considered unspeakable. As an alternative, a semi-humorous book on the English class system had a chapter titled "Marriage" and within it a section titled "Adultery", as if it was the most natural thing.