Sex Ed

Heh! Got to you to stop browsing didn’t I? I had Sexual Harassment Training today from the county. I know how to do it real good now! Okay, bad jokes. I went today to put in my time for the next two years before I get called into the next round of county CYA. Normally my stratergery is to sit down, shut up, and stay out of trouble in official county classes. Some years ago, the anti-discrimination class was taught by a guy who didn’t like classroom debate. One fella who had had enough of the usual “white people suck” shtick told this guy so and was told he had “no future” in the county organization by a former administrator. The anti-discrimination instructor ain’t there no mo either.

However, today piqued my interest in an unintended way. A graphic (that would a chart, Gary!!! Jeeez.) depicted the cultural and workplace changes that have occurred in the past 50 years. On the y-axis was simply the word “Sex.” The x-axis was a time scale from 1950 to 2005. There were two curves. Curve 1, decreasing with time, was named “Workplace.” It decreased from 1950 and “No Regulation” to 2005 and “No Tolerance.” Curve 2 was named “Media.” It increased from 1950 (“I Love Lucy”) to 2005 (“Desperate Housewives”). The sheer irony of that change would be laughable if it wasn’t so pathetic. This isn’t a cultural paradox, this is an outright contradiction. No doubt one of those public service announcements (NBC’s “The More You Know,” CBS’ “CBS Cares!” and whatever goofball title ABC has for those) will have some preachy, moralizing actor telling us that sexual harassment is wrong, “And now for another provocative, ground breaking episode of Desperate Housewives.” Our liberal cultural leaders will be the first to hang me for making a misunderstood comment at work but will fight to the last drop of my or your blood (not theirs) to allow pornographic images on broadcast television using a First Amendment argument. No I haven’t watched DW on Sunday nights of all times, nor do I intend to. It’s worthless crap and my time is more valuable than that.

At first I was willing to just chuckle over the irony of that graphic until I saw the courseware say this about culture:

“We have changed in favor of tolerating sexual conduct in the society at large
(influenced by the law’s increasing recognition of freedom of expression)”

Freedom of expression?!?!? Are they kidding me? Displaying explicit sexual scenes on broadcast television has nothing to do with First Amendment rights my friends. First of all there’s nothing being expressed in those scenes except titillation. I was dumbfounded to channel surf onto a network cop show and see two of the actors (woman and man) in the middle of a sexual act that could have in no way been mistaken for anything else but intercourse from his slow methodic movements and her facial expressions. Their cell phones kept ringing off the hook eventually committing the culturally unpardonable sin of coitus interruptus was the point of the scene in a weak cinematic demonstration of how-their-dedicated-commitment-to-their-work-invaded-their-personal-lives to make us all identify, sympathize and care about them right? Cinematically, it was a grossly sophomoric display (probably written by high skrool interns) and absolutely shocking to find on prime time for Chrissake! No cultural or societal redeeming value at all in that scene.

Freedom of Expression?!?! Give me a break! Anyone who believes that claim is a fool and here’s why: The male (the natural target of TV advertisers) sexual trigger is visual images. The female sexual trigger is the sharing and caring that go with building and maintaining relationships. This I’m learning from “Everyman’s Battle,” a great book for those confused by today’s cultural contradictions on sex. How much easier and cheaper to entice males to tune into a show with teasers of a 10-second explicit bedroom scene focused on a beautiful blonde hardbody making faces like she’s about to supernova versus an in-depth character relationship development stretching over the entire hour, maybe even a “…to be Continued” letdown at the end of the episode? What scenario do you think advertisers think their commercials will get the most exposure to their target audience?

If these lawyers teaching this class think that’s Freedom of Expression, then they’re not as smart as I thought they were. This is gross manipulation by debased commercial entities appealing to the basest nature of the male of the specie and nothing more. The “Law” per Paul of Tarsus was given to men because their hearts were hardened to God and intended to bring wrath to wrongdoers and not to encourage nor protect wrongdoing. Call me square, but that opening scene of that cop show was just wrong. I knew why they put it in right as it was happening and I was offended by it. It was not and is not defendable by the First Amendment. Our Constitution has more class than that. Try to sue anyone on that however. The ACLU will be the first to kick your … well.. ya’know.