Another season, another line up of fake “reality” shows.  The latest reality sham to hit the air is “A Shot of Love 2” with Tila Tequila, the MySpace chick who spent hours upon hours on the internet gathering the most “MySpace friends”, is taking another shot at finding love on reality TV after “breaking up” with the winner of Shot of Love 1, Bobby Banhart. The reason why I quoted the words breaking up is because you can’t really break up with someone you’ve never dated. According to Bobby’s MySpace page, as soon as the cameras were gone, so was Tila – she didn’t even leave so much as her phone number for Bobby. But of course Tila, not wanting to lose any of her fan-base, concocted up a different story, saying on her MySpace page that her “hectic schedule was really hard on him and we both were getting frustrated, but at the same time... I just wanted to find someone who would understand what a crazy lifestyle I have so it's too bad that things didn't work out between us”. And with that, Tila announced that she will be choosing another partner out of 16 men and 16 women to spend her life with.

Of course, like most reality shows, the star is not in it for love. Apparently Tila has been with the same boyfriend for almost 2 years and she may not even be bisexual – which I don’t find hard to believe as in the first season she acted straight as an arrow. For instance, throughout the show Tila is constantly saying "I'm a bisexual," rather than "I'm bisexual." That's like Lance Bass saying, "I'm a gay." Plus she’s always turning to the camera’s and saying things like, "This show's the perfect experience because it's really going to help me figure out -- do I really like a guy or do I really like a girl?" Not only does this “do I really like a guy or girl” contradict her previous statement of being bisexual (as being bisexual means you ALREADY KNOW you like both sexes), but it’s also as if she’s forgotten what the premise of her show is; it isn’t to determine whether or not she’s bisexual or straight, it’s to find a partner! Also, if Tila Tequila was this big Myspace celebrity, wouldn’t she, at some point, have hooked up with a girl while trolling the web for sex? 

 

Of course, whether it’s fake or not, I know I’ll end up watching season 2 obsessively.

 

 

Monogamy is defined by Merriam-Webster’s dictionary as “the practice of marrying only once during a lifetime, or the state or custom of being married to one person at a time or, the condition or practice of having a single mate during a period of time,” while the definition for ‘promiscuous’ is being “not restricted to one sexual partner”.

When it comes to monogamy and promiscuity, it is often said that women prefer to be monogamous, while men prefer to be promiscuous.  University of California, Los Angeles professor of Women’s Studies, Letitia Anne Peplau, suggests that men are more concerned about sex than women, and that this is because assertiveness and dominance are more associated with male sexuality than female sexuality.

In the largest study done on human sexual behaviours, known as the International Sexuality Description Project led by David Schmitt, an evolutionary psychologist from Bradley University, researchers surveyed 16,288 people (mostly college students) from 52 countries found that men tended to seek sexual variety, while women tended to seek long-term monogamous relationships. In the study males and females women were asked how many partners they would like to have in the next month, while the average response from the males was 1.87, the average response from the females was 0.78. Males and females were also asked how many sexual partners they desired in the next ten years and while the males were found on average to want 5.95 partners, females were found to want about 2.17 partners in the next ten years. David Schmitt, suggests that men are born to be promiscuous and says that,"the results are strong and conclusive -- the sexes differ, and these differences appear to be universal."  The reason for the differences between males and females, according to Schmitt, is found in ancient hunter-gatherer societies, when promiscuous males had a better chance of passing on their genes, and females who remained monogamous had a better chance of raising their children.

 Some evolutionary psychologists have hailed Schmitt’s study as definitive, indisputable evidence that these sex differences are indeed biological. David M. Buss, an evolutionary psychologist at the University of Texas in Austin, has said, “The evidence he [Schmitt] presents is irrefutable.” 

According to some feminist researchers, the responses in Schmitt’s study may have been skewed, suggesting that males may have exaggerated their responses to appear more “virile”, while females may have understated their responses so as not to appear “loose”, or like a “slut”.   For instance, feminist researchers, Michelle Alexander and Terri Fisher, conducted a study into how females self-report their sexual behaviours and attitudes, and found that females change their responses depending on whether or not they believe they will be caught out not telling the truth. In another study, researcher Deborah Tolman interviewed high school girls and found that all the girls reported feelings of sexual desire but, that the girls expressed fear over the potential negative consequences of expressing these desires, which included losing respect and reputation, as well as limiting their educational opportunities.

Another reason why David Schmitt’s study may be skewed is due to “volunteer bias”, which means that many people, especially those that tend to be more sexually promiscuous and have sexual attitudes that are more liberal, probably did not participate. 

Not only may the Schmitt study be skewed but, it also contradicts other evolutionary research which has found that females have historically been promiscuous.  In one study on the evolution of sperm, scientists found that the reason why the testicles of males are the size they are is due to the historical infidelity of females. The study examined the semen of 12 different species of primates (including humans) and found that in the species where the female is promiscuous (such as the chimpanzee) her male counterparts have large testicles, but that in species where the female tends to stay with only one partner (such as gorillas) the male has small testicles. The researchers claim that the reason for this is that in promiscuous species the sperm must often fight those of a rival to be the one that ends up fertilizing the females’ egg, so as a way to increase the chances of paternity these male species have evolved large testicles and sperm counts for their body size.  Since human males have rather large testicles and sperm count scientists concluded that females must have been historically promiscuous.

Female promiscuity has also been considered “good for the genes”. According to certain studies females who are promiscuous have a better chance of their offspring surviving because males that are successful in sperm competition also sire healthy offspring. 

The idea of women being less promiscuous than men is considered, by some researchers, to be a “sexist double standard” which was socially constructed to permit, as well as encourage, men to be promiscuous by engaging in casual sex but did not allow the same for women. Therefore research that suggests that men and women have different sexual desires, and that men are more promiscuous then women should be reconsidered in regards to the social construction of female sexual identity, and also in how male and females respond to survey’s on their sexual desires and sexual activities, before coming to any conclusions as the findings may be due to the function of gender roles, and not due to any specific evolved adaptations.

There are generally two stances that feminist and women’s groups usually take when it comes to prostitution, the first is the total abolishment of prostitution through the full criminalization of prostitution and its related activities. This point of view is supported by REAL Women of Canada, who recommend that,

“Since the act of prostitution itself is not an offense under the Criminal Code, the latter should be amended to prohibit prostitution itself, as well as prohibit the activities surrounding prostitution; i.e. keeping a common bawdy house, living off the avails of prostitution, etc.” (REAL Women, 2002)

As well, Relais femmes, a feminist organization that rejects decriminalization, stated that,

“Introducing provisions that remove barriers to the trade in women’s bodies and legitimize the fact that men have unlimited access to the bodies of a certain number of women, thus creating two classes of female citizens: so-called respectable citizens and those dedicated to the sexual comfort of men.” (Kurtzman, 2005)

“The principle behind the Swedish prostitution policies makes clear that prostitution is officially acknowledged as a form of male violence against women, a harmful practice and a serious threat to gender equality and a tangible expression of the belief that in one country, at least, women and children are not for sale”. (Raymond, 2004)

“Sex workers also report that the networks between sex workers that existed before on certain known streets for prostitution have disappeared or weakened as a result of the sex-purchase law. Earlier you could warn each other for dangerous customers, fake cars, etc. … The "normal" clients have almost disappeared from the streets. Those who remain are the ones with a twisted mindset and street prostitutes today are more exposed to robbery, assault and rape than before.” (Lund, 2007)

The result of the laws targeting adult prostitution is that we have more women in jail then men who have harmed them. To me, any law that prevents a woman from reporting rape or an assault is a law that needs to be removed. It is for this reason, among others, that I advocate for the complete decriminalization of the laws against adult prostitution, as well as support the Safe Haven Initiative.  I believe that by allowing women to have complete choice over what they do with their body and sexuality, and by ensuring that all women have the freedom to report an assault against them to the police (without risk of facing prostitution-related charges), the Canadian will have made a huge leap in both advancing women’s rights and decreasing violence against marginalized women.

In what other culture is it politically correct to go out and get completely bombed as a tribute to another ethnicity? In no other culture would it be acceptable to sell t-shirts that say “drink till your [name of ethnicity]”, but t-shirts that say ‘Happy St. Patrick’s Day: Get shit-faced and blame it on the Irish’ and “I’m not Irish but, I’m drunk like the Irish” are perfectly acceptable and bear no interference from anti- defamation organizations or committees. Could you imagine if there we’re t-shirts displayed in a window that said, “Be Jewish save your money”, the public would be outraged! But for some reason the public stays quiet when it comes to the Irish. It’s as if equating Irish with drunkenness is supposed to be a positive thing.

 

I mean, how the hell do t-shirt companies get away with using racist stereotyping at a time when related attacks against other ethnic groups would be condemned outright as infringements on human rights? The answer is problematical, and speaks to the manner in which Irishness in North America is interpreted as both a category of indifference, as well as a brand of white ethnicity that is considered acceptable to target in a way that other ethnicities, as well as the community at large, would not and, more importantly, should not tolerate.

Many North Americans of Irish descent (like myself whose father and mother came from Ireland) have been cut off from their ethnicity and heritage through assimilation (a process of forcing Irish North Americans to overlook who they are and where they came from) and colonization, and as a result have forgotten/not learned of their roots and have, as a consequence, accepted images of drunken Irish buffoonery. 

It wasn’t so long ago that it was acceptable to post signs around the U.K. (in fact it was merely 30 years ago) that read, “No Blacks, No Irish, No Dogs”, or “Irish Need Not Apply”.  Nor was it long ago that Irish people were considered to be “ethnically inferior”.

Many people also forget about the Irish slave trade, which happened from 1625 onward when the Irish were sold, pure and simple, as slaves. They were captured and originally turned over to English shippers to be sold for their profit. Because the profits were so great, generally 900 pounds of cotton for a slave, the Irish slave trade became an industry in which everyone involved (except the Irish) had a share of the profits.

And presently the Irish are fighting for the right to speak their own language – Irish Gaelic – (under the Language Act of 2003) which was turned down by the DUP’s Minister for Culture Edwin Poots, who believes that, although more than 80% of Northern Ireland is fluent in the language, that it is not an important enough language to make official. Not only that but the Commission for Racial Equality has urged employers to include the Irish as a category in their ethnic minority monitoring programs due to numerous reports over British employers discriminating against employee’s and potential employees over their Irish ethnicity. The CRE cite examples such as a factory worker who was “faced with derogatory comments about his Irish origin nearly every
day” and then sacked when he complained, and a potential employee who was refused an interview because she was “Irish and therefore unreliable”.

Due to our past and our present struggle, Irish people world wide need to stand up and be outraged about the continuing barrage of reductionist and dehumanizing representations of what it means to be Irish. This St. Patrick’s day we should pour out our green beer, take off that racist t-shirt and embrace our culture.

Thousands of babies and children have died in Iraq but America is more concerned about a puppy?

I seriously thought my buddy was joking when he told me about a YouTube clip in which a US Marine, David Motari, kills a puppy by tossing it off a cliff – okay it wasn’t the marine puppy tossing thing that made me think he was joking, it was the fact that newspapers, news outlets, and blogs the world over are chastising this soldier over this unnecessary act of violence and cruelty.

Now don’t get me wrong, it’s not that I’m in favour of tossing puppies off cliffs or anything, but I think that during a time when soldiers are being used as pawns in an illegal war, one in which babies, children and families are being slaughtered on a daily basis, that we should be concerned about one puppy. I mean, c’mon people! There is literally THOUSANDS of video’s on YouTube showing the heinous murder of Iraqi people and children, but THIS is the one that causes the outrage?!?!?! It’s really got to make you wonder what kind of a world we’re living in when most of society doesn’t think anything of spending billions of taxpayer money on troops and missles that have invaded a country and killed tens of thousands of it’s citizens (who by the way, had absolutely nothing to do with 9/11), but get all bent out of shape when these troops kill one puppy? It’s really time we got off our leather chairs, take the burger out of our mouths, and take a good look at ourselves and our priorities.

 And it’s not just the puppy incident either. It’s a sad day in a world where almost 40,000 children die A DAY from starvation and disease, and yet PETA earns more money than a charity like Doctors Without Borders.

On a side note, a  charity in Scotland that works with the disabled put out their own ad addressing this ‘animals over humans’ issue, by putting out a poster with a girl with down syndrome saying “Would you like me better if I ate out of a dog bowl?”

 Again, I am not in favour of killing animals for anything other than food, but why is it that they receive more of our help than humans?

We all have them (at least most of us), they are the underwear that we least care about, the ones with the rips, the loose elasticity, the granny panties, and the ones that already have –…get ready for the “EWWWWWWW” factor…— stains. These are most commonly used as our ‘period underwear’ – the ones we don’t mind if our maxi pad slips and we leak on them. My personal favorite are my yellow and red tie-dyed briefs (that way if my “wings” let me down no one will know).

Anyways, since period-underwear has been untapped in the fashion industry I thought it would be a high time it become stylish. Every month I have a “beautifully” large flow of blood – one that resembles the bloody mess of a crime scene, as well as  one in which you don’t want another to enter –  which is where the first design comes from. The second design (the “red alert” panties) are more practical for everyday period use, as they are not only period friendly – meaning that they are red and thus won’t show up blood stains – but they also alert your partner that, unless they want a crusty red goatee, they may not want to go down there. 

So to get to my point, I wanted to know what y’all thought. Should I market them?

I’m trying, I really am. If I understand this correctly, an organic compound is a large (…well as large as microscopic biology can be) group of chemical compounds whose molecules contain carbon, and an inorganic compound is any substance in which two or more chemical elements other than carbon are combined.  – Fuck, I’m reading this shit, I’m writing this shit, but I’m still not learning shit all.  It’s as if I’m immune to biology and all its components.

In what could become Canada’s first human trafficking conviction in history, four people (3 men and 1 woman) have been arrested for a variety of charges including human trafficking and forcible confinement after two women who were brought over here under the false pretences of working as models went to the Toronto police seeking help.  But contrary to what most of us would like to believe, that these women were rescued by police – there attackers going to jail – and that everyone lived happily ever after. Unfortunately, that is not the case, for if you read the newspaper article closely you’ll notice that the two victims are currently being held “protective custody”, which is a polite term for saying that they are in jail but, unlike the rest of the population in jail, these women are in private cells rather than with the other women.

I don’t know about any of you, but personally I feel really gross about victims going to jail for reporting a crime – especially since the offenders will be out in a few days due to bail. I just can’t wrap my head around putting “sex slaves” into jail – which treats them like slaves – and how that could possibly help an exploited woman. Jailing the victim confuses the fuck out of me, especially since the Canadian government poured millions of dollars into a human trafficking campaign to get victims to come forward.

There is absolutely no reason to hold a victim of human trafficking in jail, for it neither benefits the police (as holding a victim in jail, even for a short time, will more than likely deter her/him from cooperating with the investigation), nor the victim who is suffering from enough anguish (especially since many organizations have opened safe houses for trafficked women). What our anti-human trafficking laws essentially do is punish the victims – mostly women –as there have been numerous deportations of migrant women believed to have been trafficked in Canada over the years, yet no convictions of the perpetrators that brought them over here and forced them to work. Go figure. Once the sex worker is deported back to his/mostly her country she is branded as a prostitute and must face whatever punishment this act may merit (including a few years ago when police resuced “sex slaves” and deported them back to China where they were promptly paraded around there city naked and on a leash for there participation in prostitution.

With “rescue” options like these it’s no wonder more victims don’t come forward as you can’t feel freedom while wearing a pair of handcuffs.

What really gets me is that not too long ago a law firm specializing in divorce had to take down their billboard after complaints were made against their ad which said, “Life’s too short – get a divorce”. So why isn’t that same attitude being played out with the Niagara Region Right to ‘Hate’ group? I mean, come on! It’s 2008 it’s time to get your rosaries off my ovaries! As most of you know I’m a pro-choice advocate (not to be confused with a pro-abortion advocate – as I don’t stand outside the offices of obstetricians and bully mothers-to-be into having abortions), as well as an advocate for women’s rights so as you can hallucinate I don’t take these ads lightly.

What bothers me most about Pro-Life advocates is their willingness to perceive women who have abortions as “murderers”, putting them into the same category as Paul Bernardo, Robert Piketon, and Jeffery Dahlmer. To declare that a fetus whose is under 12 weeks as a full fledged human being is like saying that sperm are also human beings who are being murdered through the use of condoms, and to compare a woman who has had an abortion to a murderer is like comparing a man who gets a vasectomy to the act of genocide. Seriously, a fetus under 12 weeks is NOT a child (for it cannot breathe on its own).

People who use ignorant words like "murder" to describe abortion are saying that an embryo - something which has the potential to become a person - is the same as an actual person. Potential people are not the same as actual people. Ending the biological life of an embryo through abortion is morally very different from taking the life of a full human being.

Abortion isn’t even mentioned in the Bible, (even though even back then some women terminated their pregnancies)! In fact, Exodus 21:22 says that if men are fighting, and one of them injures a pregnant woman, causing her to miscarry, the one who injured her may be required to pay a fine to the woman's husband. The Bible views this occurrence as a property crime against the woman's husband, which should be financially compensated - not as a violent crime against a foetus. However, there are several passages that condemn the use of forced abortion as a weapon of war. There is no passage in the Bible that forbids women from choosing to terminate a pregnancy, or that condemns those who help them.

I’m not saying that I agree with women who use abortion as a birth control measure, but that isn’t the majority anyway, (some are rape victims, incest survivors, some HAVE to have an abortion for health issues i.e. ectopic pregnancy etc). I don’t think it is MY decision or anyone else but the TWO PEOPLE involved, in the case of what they do with the pregnancy. I think that a woman has the right to decide for herself when and whether to have a child. I believe that a woman can make that decision on her own, based on her own personal beliefs, health, and life-circumstances, without government or courts walking it. As the late Pierre Elliot Trudeau once said "the state has NO business in the bedrooms of its citizens". And I really don’t think we as the public have ANY business standing outside an abortion clinic waving signs and trying to persuade a young girl not to have an abortion unless you yourself are willing to raise that child on your own.

With that being said I think it’s about time the city of Toronto forced the Niagara Region Right to Life back to it’s city and get rid of that damn billboard.