The JackB

"When you're in jail, a good friend will be trying to bail you out. A best friend will be in the cell next to you saying, 'Damn, that was fun'." Groucho Marx

Sex

Where Babies Come From

One of the joys of being a parent is fielding the many different questions that our children throw at us. It is probably fair to say that there are a few standards such as what happens when you die and where do babies come from.

Until recently the big kid and I hadn’t spent any time discussing babies other than the moments when he told me that he no longer liked certain shows/toys because they are for babies. That changed this weekend as he decided that he really wanted to know. To quote him, “tell me the real story.”

I paused for a moment and considered the best way to explain it. I wasn’t embarrassed or afraid of the discussion, but to be honest hadn’t really thought about how to answer it. So here is approximately what I said.

“To make a baby you need a man and a woman. Men make something called sperm. Women have eggs. When you combine the sperm and the egg a baby is made.”

Of course he asked how do you combine the two.

“A man sticks his penis inside a woman’s vagina and shoots the sperm inside her.”

There was a momentary look of horror on his face.

“Dad, that is disgusting!”

“You might feel differently about that one day. In fact you might even want to do it,” I replied.

Now here is a crucial piece of information that you need to appreciate the story. I told my son about sperm and where it goes while standing alongside him at a urinal. Little did I know that this activity was going to influence his opinion about the whole topic.

As we washed our hands he started to laugh and told me that he had changed his mind. He wanted to have sex. I looked at him and asked him why he had suddenly changed his mind. He laughed and said that he wanted to pee on girl’s crotches.

I tried to explain that they were two different activities, but he was laughing too hard. Later on I got to witness his telling his grandfather that “dad peed on mom’s crotch.” I have to admit that for a moment I was tempted not to explain to my father how his grandson had come up with this idea as the look my father’s face was priceless.

Later this evening he and I are going to revisit the topic so that I can clear up any misconceptions. I think that I’d like to try and stave off the possibility that he’ll run around school/public telling people that his dad pees on mom. It might have a detrimental affect upon his ability to get a play date.

Study Debunks Myth That Women Want Sex Less

Bachelors might have sex on their minds more than their single female counterparts, but once in a committed relationship, men and women have similar attitudes toward the act, a new study finds.

The results, published in the April issue of the journal Sex Roles, reveal how sexual stereotypes, in which guys want to go for it and gals tend to resist, don’t hold when romantic feelings come into play.

“Men experience a lot of pressure in our society to have sex with a number of different partners,” said one of the study’s researchers, Paul Perrin, a graduate student in psychology at the University of Florida, “the opposite of what women experience as kind of the gatekeepers of sexuality.”

Past studies, the scientists point out, have shown that compared with women, men are more sexually permissive, endorse casual sex at higher rates and masturbate more often.

And even in dreamland, men are from Mars and women from Venus. A recent study showed men were more than twice as likely as women to report dreams about multiple sex partners.

Jewish Sex- Between The Sheets

WestbankMama made a comment on Shira’s blog that irked me. However, I want to make something clear. I have no personal issue with WBM just a disagreement on some ideological points.

One more remark. This post is not meant to be a scholarly essay citing chapter and verse. It is just five minutes of my thoughts. And now the comment:

As far as we frummies and the “racy stuff” – I think that Orthodox Jews have a much more realistic idea of the power of sexuality than other streams of Judaism, and that is why we follow a stricter set of rules about the separation of the sexes (yichud, modest dress, etc.)

There is a stream of thought that ties into this that suggests that the sexual urge is so strong that people cannot control it. The problem that I have with this idea is that it infantilizes people, men in particular. There is an abdication of responsibility for our own actions that goes with it.

Instead of accepting responsibility for our own actions we resort to extreme measures to prevent impure thoughts and forbidden behavior.

Conceptually there are aspects of kol isha, negiah and tznius dress that make sense to me, but in practice they go too far and do us a disservice.

Your imagination can take you any place you want to go. A long skirt that hides shapely legs is no match for a persons imagination. Separation of sexes minimizes some distractions but does not teach us how to handle distraction. Instead it teaches that we cannot handle it. I find that to be offensive.

Men are capable of choosing to control our urges. We don’t have to live in a monastery to do so.

And that is my five minute rambling on this topic.

Caught My Eye- Hookers, Robots & More

Robot Parking Garage to Open in New York

Would you trust a robot to park your car? The question will confront New Yorkers in February as the city’s first robotic parking opens in Chinatown. The technology has had a good track record overseas, but the only other public robotic garage in the United States has been troublesome, dropping vehicles and trapping cars because of technical glitches.

Related: Volkswagen Storage Facility


Woman MP demands hookers for the troops

A top female politician ín Holland wants Dutch prostitutes sent abroad with the troops to help them relax.

Annemarie Jorritsma, a politician for the centre-right People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD) and the mayor of the town of Almere, went on national Dutch TV to demand the ‘extra benefits’ for soldiers.

She added: “The army must think about how their soldiers can let off some steam.”

How about some PandaMonium.

Is Sex Necessary? Can you Have Too Much?

I have to give credit to this to Scott who has a different take on many things than I, but that is what makes the world more interesting.

Forbes has an interesting article titled Is Sex Necessary.

“NEW YORK – Fans of abstinence had better be sitting down. “Saving yourself” before the big game, the big business deal, the big hoedown or the big bake-off may indeed confer some moral benefit. But corporeally it does absolutely zip. There’s no evidence it sharpens your competitive edge.

The best that modern science can say for sexual abstinence is that it’s harmless when practiced in moderation. Having regular and enthusiastic sex, by contrast, confers a host of measurable physiological advantages, whether you’re male or female. (This assumes that you are engaging in sex without contracting a sexually transmitted disease.)

In one of the most credible studies correlating overall health with sexual frequency, Queens University in Belfast, Ireland, tracked the mortality of about 1,000 middle-aged men over the course of a decade. The study was designed to compare persons of comparable circumstances, age and health. Its findings, published in 1997 in the British Medical Journal, were that men who reported the highest frequency of orgasm enjoyed a death rate half that of the laggards.”

So what we see is that sex is good for both men and women. No shock or surprise there. On to the next question of can you have too much. According to the Forbes article:

“The answer, in purely physiological terms, is this: If you’re female, probably not. If you’re male? You betcha.

Dr. Claire Bailey of England’s University of Bristol says there is little or no risk of a woman’s overdosing on sex. In fact, she says, regular sessions will not only firm a woman’s tummy and buttocks but also improve her posture.

Dr. George Winch Jr., an obstetrician/gynecologist in Elko, Nev., concurs. If a woman is premenopausal and otherwise healthy, says Winch, having an extraordinary amount of intercourse ought not to pose a problem. “I don’t think women can have too much intercourse,” he says, “so long as no sexually transmitted disease is introduced and there’s not an inadvertent pregnancy. Sometimes you can have a lubrication problem. If you have that, there can be vaginal excoriation–vaginal scrape.”

Women who abstain from sex run some risks. In postmenopausal women, these include vaginal atrophy. Winch has a middle-aged patient of whom he says, “She hasn’t had intercourse in three years. Just isn’t interested. The opening of her vagina is narrowing from disuse. It’s a condition that can lead to dysparenia, or pain associated with intercourse. I told her, ‘Look, you’d better buy a vibrator or you’re going to lose function there.’ ”

As for men, Eid says it’s definitely possible to get too much of a good thing, now that drugs such as Viagra and Levitra have given men far more staying power than may actually be good for them.

The penis, says Eid, is wonderfully resilient. But everything has its limits. Penile tissues, if given too roistering or prolonged a pummeling, can sustain damage. Or, in cases you’d just as soon not hear about, permanent damage.”

Now I have to admit that I am the guy who wants to know how much is too much. I am very curious. How much is too much, when do you know? I am willing to bet that like all things relating to people there is no one standard answer.

Men do have trouble hearing women, scientists find

I think that I am in love.

“LONDON (AFP) – Men who are accused of never listening by women now have an excuse — women’s voices are more difficult for men to listen to than other men’s, a report said.

The Daily Mail, quoting findings published in the specialist magazine

NeuroImage, said researchers at Sheffield university in northern England discovered startling differences in the way the brain responds to male and female sounds.

Men deciphered female voices using the auditory part of the brain that processes music, while male voices engaged a simpler mechanism, it said.

The Mail quoted researcher Michael Hunter as saying, “The female voice is actually more complex than the male voice, due to differences in the size and shape of the vocal cords and larynx between men and women, and also due to women having greater natural ‘melody’ in their voices.

“This causes a more complex range of sound frequencies than in a male voice.”

The findings may help explain why people suffering hallucinations usually hear male voices, the

report added, as the brain may find it much harder to conjure up a false female voice accurately than a false male voice.”