OK, I lied. I'm not completely up to speed. Still typing from the dank basement, as the external USB wireless adapter was behaving very fussily; tried a PCI adapter, whose latest version, unlike the last, turns out not to be compatible with my OS. Spouse the über geek has the solution but it has not yet been implemented. In the meantime, may I pass on a household tip? Did you know that removing wallpaper is a serious pain in the butt? (But absolutely necessary - as the room that is now my office was a toddler's room, meticulously and thoroughly painted, papered, and fricaseed with dark kelly-green paint, pink plaid, and a central strip of carousel unicorns, capering and prancing unto madness. You have no idea how psychologically damaging sitting in such a room can be.) Next time I buy a house, the existence of unpleasing wallpaper will cause me to make its removal a condition of the sale.

So blogging moments for the last few days have been diverted to working in my living room (comfortable and unicorn free) on some K-Man related projects, which you'll be hearing more about. Though, to keep traffic up for the unicorn-exterminating duration, perhaps I should've posted something outrageous on the subject of gay marriage or pr0n and your sexual orientation. As for the latter, am I the only one who finds something mildly obtuse about the interpretations put on the data by our eminent sex researchers? To wit:

So were the women in the study bisexual? Only in terms of their sexual arousal, not in the decisions they make about their sexual relationships, Bailey says. "Women's sexual arousal pattern is not all that relevant to their sexual orientation," he says.

How 'bout we try it like this: "women's sexual arousal pattern as it is measured in this study is not all that relevant to their sexual orientation". To suggest that the average straight woman really has the same total physiological response to women as to men seems on the face of it wildly, wildly wrong. I do recognize this criticism may be unfair - the nuanced explanations of data given by a researcher don't always come out that way in a reporter's short article. Bailey's discussion of sexual arousal patterns may be perfectly sound in specific context. But this isn't the first time I've noticed people starting out by voicing the observation that "hey, women really aren't like men!", and ending by interpreting data as if the female subjects' reactions had to be explained in terms of male reactions. If women's response to the sex of porno actors is not analogous to men's, wouldn't the simplest explanation be that what they are responding to is not the sex of the actors (as in men), but a lot of other things? (Speaking as the average straight woman, I can think of lots of reasons why I'd nudge the needle of the arouse-o-meter* looking at just about anything - except ugly wallpaper - but "anything" is the beginning of an imaginative chain that always involves a man.) This possibility does seem to be recognized in the article, but never developed, and apparently dismissed in favor of "arousal, partner preference, no connection". Doesn't ring true.

*Metaphorically speaking. Doubtless the arouse-o-meter is dully digital and lacks that sci-fi-B-movie-measuring-device charm.

Posted by Moira Breen at June 23, 2003 08:33 AM