Elf Sternberg

As an amateur futurologist (no, really!), it often falls to me to compare and contrast the news of the day in order to figure out if what's being said jibes with what I believe is coming in the next twenty years. I expect to live another twenty years, and I expect to be able to talk about whether or not my predictions will come true.

Most of the job of a futurologist isn't really to predict the future. It's to take other people's off-the-cuff comments and decide whether or not they're indicative of something more interesting. My favorite example: in 1982, Elaine Lee's Starstruck was published as a graphic novel. In one scene there's a background in which an advertisement is playing. Starstruck was absolutely prescient that video and holographic advertisements would be ubiquitous and annoying, but it was the content that got my attention.

Now, you have to understand that Starstruck was one of the seminal works of my own writing career. "Living Doll Cybernetics" and their production of non-sentient love robots, especially the way it dealt with emergent sentience and second-hand robotics, was super-significant to my own ideas about human/robot relations in a way C3PO could never be. But "Living Doll" specialized specifically in non-sentient toys because, as their slogan put it, Why fuck something with a mind of its own?

I read that and thought, "Welp, I know where the future is going."

I wasn't wrong. Here we are, 35 years after Starstruck, and Elaine Lee's prediction is spot-on. Widespread distribution of Internet pornography, in all its incarnations from the most feminist to the most abusively gonzo, has actually led to a reduction in sex assaults. The evidence is solid: pornography gives men who would commit sexual assault an alternative outlet that sometimes alleviates their criminal impulses. Violent men really would sometimes rather masturbate to images they can't even influence than go through the trouble of finding a victim.

At the same time, Men's Rights Activists predict that when apparently submissive, enthusiastic, lissome, docile and deferent sexbots appear on the market, women will be "sorry." No real men, MRAs argue, really wants to fuck a woman with a mind of her own. And they may be right.

Even more prominent: are you aware of the psychological phenomenon known as Presence?. When you read a book or watch a movie, you have to consciously be willing to suspend your disbelief. No such suspension is necessary in a sufficiently powerful virtual reality: in fact, it's hard to suspend disbelief. The Samsung Gear isn't good enough, but the Occulus Rift easily reaches this state.

Headsets will get lighter. Smaller. Not only will the sexbot you buy be physically fulfilling, but an augmented reality overlay will change her face and her body type so readily you won't need to buy more than two of them to literally have a harem of hundreds.

The fetishists of the future will be those who want to fuck their fellow flesh-and-bloods.

In order to protect public morals, the State has a valid exercise in police power when discouraging prurient interests in autonomous sex and the pursuit of sexual gratification unrelated to procreation, combating the commercial sale of sex, and protecting minors. Any alleged right associated with obscene devices is not deeply rooted in our Nation's traditions.

There is no substantive-due-process right to stimulate one's genitals for non-medical purposes unrelated to procreation or outside of an interpersonal relationship. There is no right to promote dildos, vibrators, and other obscene devices.

That quote comes from a brief filed before the Fifth Circuit Court on behalf of the state of Texas. The case is known as Reliable Consultants, Inc. v. Earle (2008). Now, the good news is that the Fifth Circuit took these words and applied the existing case law, and struck down all laws banning the sales of dildos, masturbation sleeves, and sex machines. Since the Supreme Court had already ruled in Lawrence v. Texas that gay people had a right to intimate conduct with each other in the privacy of their own homes, so to did the court rule that individuals had every right to "autonomous" sex. So everyone worried about "owning too many sex toys can get you arrested," you can all stop now.

Oh, by the way, do you know wrote that legal brief? GOP presidential hopeful Ted Cruz.

Just as every one of Scalia's ominous warnings about the framework of how we understand gays and lesbians has come true, how every ruling that furthered their dignity made Scalia more and more angry, Ted Cruz will now go down in history as the man who made-- and lost-- the argument about whether or not sexbots should be legal.

An acquaintance of mine commented over the media, while wringing its collective hands over Zootopia and the furry community:

One interesting thing I also noticed when media does decide to talk about furry porn: the gay stuff doesn't exist.

I had a very similar reaction to an (otherwise pretty good) Marie Claire article about porn, Porn is today's Sex-Ed, in which the author wrote, "Porn sanitizes sex. Nobody has hair. You never see lube, even though they go through gallons on set."

I wondered what porn she was talking about. Almost all of the porn I watch has gallons of lube in every scene. Most of the people have hair. And then I realized: I don't watch mainstream heterosexual porn. I watch kink porn. I watch amateur porn. I watch gay porn. In all of that porn, lube is critical. Sports bottles loaded with j-Lube; paper picnic bowls of Crisco. Even the much-vaunted for-lesbians, by-lesbians Crashpad series has megafrackloads of lube.

But for most people, the gay stuff doesn't exist. The amateur stuff doesn't exist. The most "realistic" porn, in the sense that ordinary people do their (extra-)ordinary kinky things, and don't edit out the details, on camera, is basically the porn that has no marketing budget.

I think that's sad for the obvious reason that, unlike other kinds of movies, we do have sex, and when we watch porn it's often for the kind of sex we want to have but, for some reason or other, we just aren't. And I don't think we want lube-free, laughter-free, sanitized sex.

I could be wrong. The coming twin forces of Presence and Sexbots will probably prove me wrong. I think I'll stick to people.

I was joking with one of my better friends and suggested that I should write a "This One Weird Trick Will Get You Laid" post. She agreed that I should do it, so I set about brainstorming and thinking of all the things and how I could boil it all down to one weird trick, but while I was doing research, I realized, fuck it, someone else has already done it better than I have, so go read this comic: Risky Date.

That comic accurately describes the insane amounts of mental calculus a woman has to do every time she goes out on a date. It's an understandable level of stark terror that is well supported by the statistics, as Louis CK recites in one of his stand-up routines¹. No wonder women look side-eyed at you when you ask for a date. Look at this way: you have a bowl of 500 M&M's. Five of them are poisoned; you're not likely to die, but you'll be vomiting sick for weeks, there's a chance you may never be able to eat again without feeling nausea, and you'll probably never want M&M's ever again.

Go ahead, have a sample. That's the whole risk/likelihood thing again.

There is a way to up the likelihood that a woman will start to believe you're not one of the dangerous ones. That you aren't a poison pill. It's actually very simple. It's that one weird trick that will get you laid:

Believe every woman is a real human being.

I said it was weird. It seems to be weird, and difficult, for a large group of men to believe that every woman is a real human being with all the personality, agency, and self-ness that you have².

Every woman is a real human being, made of the same stuff that makes up men, and in most cases with drives very similar to men. The first thing you learn when you accept that women are human beings is that women like sex. They like it a lot. They may like it much more than men do.

Here's the problem though: once you've performed the one weird trick, a ton of responsibilities fall on your head, and meeting these responsibilities is a challenge. Of course, if you're a real man, stepping up to the plate, meeting your responsibilities, and conquering challenges is your forte in life, it's what you were made to do.

Responsibility #1: Help her feel like her sex drive is welcome today, tomorrow, and forever. Remember that bowl of M&M's? Imagine if, instead of 5 dreadful poisoned candies, there were 100 that gave you the worst gas you'd ever experienced. Noisome, smelly farts that lasted for weeks, that made you feel bad and made others feel bad about being around you. That's what a lot of guys do: they have sex with a woman and then they badmouth her in public, they make her feel bad about having a sex drive. Men, we have to stop pissing in our own nests, creating a world where every woman hates her own sex drive because she fears we'll treat her badly for having one.

Responsibility #2: Get good at sex. Read up on it, figure out what works for you and for women. Before you get into bed, talk about your list of what you'd like to try and ask her for hers. It's no fair to surprise her after you're naked (see Responsibility #1). If you're not experienced, man up, confess your inexperience, and ask for permission to practice. Women are delighted to be part of the learning process, as long as they're aware that it is learning and you're not just some unperceptive jerk. Most porn is terrible at this, but if you find porn made by women, and books about sex written by women, you might glean a few hints about what those women want, and you'll have a much better chance at getting what you want.

The two prior responsibilities are what you do when you've managed to say "Yes" to sex. And it is "Yes!" that you have to get, not "Maybe," not silence, not drunken unconsciousness. As a man, your responsibility is to get to "Yes!"

And it's a pleasure to get to yes. It's a pleasure to hear her giggle, to make her laugh, to hear her moan, to get "Yes" over and over as your hands are straying places and you're asking, "How about this? And this? And this?" It's a pleasure to do your best. Those are the pleasures men are made for.

Women want two things out of a sexual encounter: she wants pleasure, and she wants tomorrow to be as good as today. Part of her pleasure is knowing you had a good time. Part of your pleasure ought to be knowing she had a good time. Don't ruin it by disrespecting her.

How do you get to exercise these responsibilities?

Responsibility #3: Go back to the comic. You believe she's a human being; you believe she deserves awesome sex as much as you do, and you're willing to take your first two responsibilities as a man and do your best with her to have fun in bed. You have to convince her that you're not going to assault her.

Small scale, that's hard. But there is one great technique: the safecall. Make sure she has a friend who knows where she is, and who she's with. This is a common technique in S&M to ensure mutual safety: Give her your phone number, and have her forward it to a friend. (If you're not into S&M, tell her so: "50 Shades of Grey isn't really my thing, but I read about the safecall idea while reading some article, and I thought it's a really good idea for more than just people into whips and chains and stuff.")  Let her know that you value her safety, and that you're willing to take those extra steps necessary so that she feels safe.

But also do the other things: meet on neutral ground. Until you're sure the relationship isn't going to take off, do everything you can to not make her feel penned in, threatened, in danger. Do the reassuring things. Have patience. Exercise the self-control a man ought to have.

Large scale, that's easy. Talk about sex. A lot. In public. Make talking about sex part of your whole persona. Be a lot of other things, too: talk about your professional life, the sports you love, the food you love, the people you love. But talk about the sex you love, and what you're good at, and what you'd like to be better at, and so forth.

Did that?

Good.

Because now your reputation is on the line if you screw it up.

And women know it.

But you're a man, right? Good at meeting your responsibilities. Braced with honor. The caretaker of your reputation.

Right?

Right.

One weird trick: Be good at being a man.

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¹One strain of rabid misogyny on the Internet is the so-called "red pill" brigade of men who have "taken the red pill" and "seen the truth about women." While looking for that Louis CK video, the very first hit was that video interspliced with images from The Matrix and overlaying text explaining how Louis CK was a "mangina," a "merging of self-hatred, hatred of other men, and masochism." So, there are some people who are never gonna get this, never understand what I'm talking about... and that's the problem.

²It has always been genuinely strange to me that the misogyny brigade, at least that segment of it that's still trying to get laid, loves two books: How To Win Friends and Influence People, and The Charisma Myth. Both books have techniques, good and solid techniques, for opening up to other people, and having them open up to you; techniques of vocabulary choice, body language, touch and so on. But both books have a profound truth: we human beings are wired to detect deception first, and we give ourselves away quickly and unconsciously. None of those techniques work unless we genuinely like people in the first place. And the misogyny brigade genuinely does not like women.

I have this thesis that I've been discussing with my friends both on-line and off, and most of them, to my surprise, actually agree with the basic premise:

Most men don't like sex

There's some evidence for this, but let's start with the two basic arguments.

First, for most men, who are heterosexual, the outlet for their sexual needs is primarily women. If that's so, then you'd think men would praise women who grant enthusiastic consent, but they don't. No, for women for whom enthusiastic consent is high on their list of priorities, the terms our culture assigns them are "slut," "slattern," and "whore." Our culture treats them like a used candy, a dead rose, a cup of warm spit. There are no equivalent terms among men. If men liked sex, they'd respect the women who would enjoy providing it. They don't like those women, therefore their motives for seeking sex must be something other than enjoyment of it.

Secondly, given that most men claim to "enjoy sex" "with women," you'd think they'd actually be good at it. A man would be willing to read up on it, figure out how to communicate with his partner, how to ask and tell, how to actually discover what his partner likes, and how to get back what he wants. You think he'd be willing to experiment. But most men aren't willing. Most men don't care enough.

At the extreme, let's argue that it's actually the men who want babies. They've controlled women's opportunities to have children throughout the ages, so it's clear our species-wide reproductive success is primarily mens' responsibility. If they wanted to enjoy sex, they would. But I theorize that what they really seek is relief from the reproductive drive. For men, sex is a biologically dominant need that exists only to encourage the reproductive act.

For women, the price of actually having children is high, but since childbirth is months separated from the act of intercourse, there's no reason to believe that evolution has exapted a woman's sexuality to be associated with having children. It just feels good for women, an exapted reward that exists only to discourage a woman from rejecting the man's dark, passionate need to make babies.

I don't think the extreme thesis is strong, but I think the original one deserves closer attention. Do men enjoy sex? Or do they enjoy the relief of having had sex, of having succeeded in their role, of having satisfied a biological urge?

To provide a strong analogy, it surprised me to discover that there are lots of people who don't like to eat. I know that barely a third of Americans like to cook, but it astonished me to learn how many people resent the time and effort it takes to acquire and eat even ready-made meals. There's an entire market dedicated converting the process of eating into "drinking something at your desk" that's meant to convince time-starved nerds they can spend more time programming and less eating.

The happiest countries on Earth are also those with extensive familial and communal food rituals. Sex isn't a daily need, but food is, and even in the ancient porneia, men still cared much more about where their next meal came from, because that was the difference between life and death. Yet here we are where this life-and-death matter, this engine of health and happiness, has become a nuisance, a burden, a timesink. Given that this is even possible for our species, the idea that sex would be even more easily dismissed or neglected by those with the power to dismiss it shouldn't be all that surprising.

The world is full of distractions. Not just in the pursuit of work, but also as substitutes for what men want: video games substitute for any sense of excellence, and porn substitutes for any sense of satisfaction. Compared to the actual struggle of seeing other people, namely women, as worthy companions, in the presence of whom men must be naked and vulnerable, caring and reflexive, in order to enjoy sex... well, I suspect a lot of men would rather not work that hard.

Between the effort of getting there and the payoff at the end, most men look at sex and conclude that, if it weren't for that damned drive, they wouldn't bother. They just don't like it that much.

I was reading an article the other day on a judge's ruling that Plan-B, the after-sex contraception, be made available to everyone, regardless of age. In his ruling, he stated that Katheryn Sebelius's almost un-heard of political overturning of the FDA's own recommendation that it be made available over the counter was political, uninformed, and contrary to the public good.

In the responses, one of the complaints was that "children should not have access to abortion drugs without their parents' knowledge." This dredged up memories of the recent case of Hobby Lobby, the toy retailer, which argued that it shouldn't be forced to provide contraception because it was the same thing as abortion. When the judge informed HL's lawyer that contraception and abortion were not the same, the laywer responded with a straight face, "It is my client's sincere belief that they are the same thing, your honor."

Have you ever read Ted Chiang's short story, Hell Is The Absence of God? In it, angels are real, show up at random, do random stuff that either heals or (more often) fucks up the lives of people in the area. The few times they've responded to questions, their response has been "He works in mysterious ways. You wouldn't understand why. Just love Him, and all will be well." And then they go on wrecking towns and lives.

The story presents a reified version of the fundamentalist mindset. Everything Happens for a Reason of God's, Even If You Don't Understand It.

And then it clicked: after every incident of intercourse, a woman is presumed pregnant until proven otherwise. Because she's presumed pregnant, every form of contraception is abortion. Since rape is the one thing fundamentalists can no longer call "intercourse," the accomodation made is that real rape can't lead to the consequence of intercourse, the presumption of pregnancy.

Another powerful fundamentalist mindset is that we must head for a godly world. It doesn't matter if people get hurt along the way; it doesn't matter if pro-sex, pro-contraception policies would alleviate teenage pregnancy by some amount; they lead away from the Godly world and the true aim, which is making unmarried pregnancy non-existent.

The whole anti-contraception, "legitimate rape" argument emerges from the synergistic effects of these thoughts in the fevered brains of fundamentalist men. The only way sex does not lead to pregnancy is if God doesn't want it to, or if someone does something criminal. In their perfect world, that would always be the case. Always.

I read a review of a fairly interesting book entitled How To Be A Woman by Caitlin Moran, a collection of post-feminist essays that sounds actually quite delightful. Reviewer Zoe Williams described it:

What makes this book important is something unique to Caitlin Moran; she and Greer have both attacked the elemental shame attached to being a woman, but where Greer was furious, Moran sloughs it off with exuberance. There is a courage in this book that is born, not made, and not borrowed, either. It is vital in both senses.

That sounds like a hell of a read, and I wanted to get a copy of it.

So I went to the King County Library System, and asked if they had one. They didn't, and the first "close match" they offered me was How To Be a Super Hot Woman : 339 Tips To Make Every Man Fall In Love With You and Every Woman Envy You. Gag me.

Even worse, the fifth book on the list was 101 Frequently Asked Questions About Homosexuality. That might also be an interesting book, if it weren't written by Focus On The Family's ex-gay ministry chairman Mike Healy. Fortunately, it's filed under Dewey 261, "Christian Theology and Society," but still. Gross.

There's a lot to like in this:

Bonobos like apples. They like them a lot. As a matter of fact, it’s difficult to do bonobo research without a supply of green apples to motivate them to do the experiments.

But they like group harmony most of all. And the sudden appearance of the apples in their midst immediately raises the threat of discord. Who will get to eat the apples?

If these were chimpanzees, the strongest males would immediately claim the fruit. There would be a fair amount of shoving, and possibly some bloodshed.

But bonobos are so communal that the tension produced by something so precious as an apple in their midst must be dispelled by a gesture of community. In this case, everyone gets to cool off with a little sexual comfort from their neighbor. Then, self-interest replaced by a certain yummy group feeling, they settle down to share the apple.

It's too bad that we come from the chimpanzee, and not bonobo, line of hominids.

It's often been said that if straight men could reliably get from the object of their attraction what gay men get, reliable, relentless, reciprocated, active desire with understood and appreciated feedback, they'd whine a lot less. (Of course, this assumes that women are exactly like men, and lesbian relationships would in general look much more like gay male relationships, which of course is not the real world.)

Recently, the press has been handwringing that we're trying to straitjacket women into a role like that of gay men, where they're expected to be all of the things I described above without bringing any feminine qualities to they're relationships whatsoever. The "Hook-up" culture, the pundits have warned, is all about having sex, and devastates any potential for a meaningful relationship among the participants. And several studies have shown that yes, people who hook up tend to break up at a statistically higher rate than those who wait to have sex.

And the evolutionary psychologists over in the corner have talked about "strategies" for our Darwinian success as a species, and pointed out that there are two standard foci around which reproductive strategies converge: high-investment and low-investment. "High investment" strategies emerge during periods of sufficient resource: because there's enough food, parents put much effort into fewer "high-quality children" while ensuring that those those resources are secured for the familial gene pool for future generations. "Low investment" strategies emerge during periods of strife and famine, when women bear the brunt of genetic scattering, having many "low-quality children" in the hopes that some will survive to adulthood and carry the selfish familial genes on.

What seems obvious is that some percentage of women will be optimized for one strategy over another, and find themselves mis-fit to the strategy indicated by resource availability. This is a long-winded way of getting around to saying: hey, some women are happy being promiscuous. Just like some men are happy being monogamous.

University of Iowa researcher David Paik asked a rather obvious question: if we take those women out of the studies about hook-ups, what do we see? The answer, unsurprisingly, is that people who hook-up are just as likely to have meaningful long-term relationships as those who delay sex.

It seems to me we're seeing an echo of the ancient "Madonna or Whore" story, only this time the echo is weaker. Maybe someday we'll be able to just let people enjoy themselves. The barriers to sexual satisfaction, such as disease or accidental pregnancy, can be mitigated, and hopefully eliminated someday.

The cynic in me believes that will probably be about the same time that sufficiently advanced sexual surrogates will exist such that "real sex," with another human being, with his or her sweat and bodily fluids, his or her own competing desires and agendas, will be another kink, an option taken only by the masochistic.

Every once in a while I stumble upon just the weirdest stuff when trying to keep up with the industry in which I find myself. Along the lines of contemplating weirdness, I found these three print/poster advertisements for The Fowin "Sexual Enhancement Ring." The theme of all three is the same: a woman finds herself in a sexually suggestive, half-dressed state of startlement as a man is seen walking into her room, and around the corner is a long, hard, large fruit or vegetable. This one is the "cucumber" ad, but if you follow the link you'll also see the eggplant and banana ads as well.

Who the hell puts this much money into an ad for a disposable cock ring? I'm especially entertained by the sales mark, "Get Her Back," suggesting that any man with erection problems is about to lose his hot, sexy wife to certain vegetables and fruits.

Still, fun in a twisted sort of way.