Look,
Guyspeak is a pretty cool site. There's half a dozen dudes on the panel, each with their own theme, but thye poor guys have to deal with some pretty outrageous questions from chicks who are trying desperately to comprehend something as retarded as the male psyche. As usual, the trouble is that girls tend to over-think how we operate, which in turn forces the advice columnists over-think the issue too in order to not look like dicks.
The Sex Detective, on the other hand, simply has no shame, and considers himself the ultimate Dick. Yes, that's both a self-effacing remark and a refrence to a 1940's colloquial term for 'detective'. Look it up, idiots.
1. Spot the flaw in this manhood
My friend has a girlfriend. Friday night they had "problems." He came over. We cooked. We got drunk. We kissed. We confessed how attracted we are to each other, then he called himself an asshole and cried in my closet. Then we fell asleep together. Now he acts like it never happened. What is going on? Should I ask?
Guys do stupid things like this all the time: well, at least the 'have problems we can't deal with so let's run away where we can create more problems' part. Blah blah blah, boo-hoo. I call myself an asshole all the time, if only to beat others to the punch, but did you spot the phrase that should not ever exist in the realm of man-like behaviour?
"...and he cried in my closet."
At first I was hoping this was some kind of obscure oral sex metaphor, but that's not how it reads. I've got no problem with men crying. There's nothing unhealthy about a good, hard bawling in the right place and at the right time, preferably alone in a burning forest or during a war or something. Even the following 3 scenarios are more excusable:
'He cried during
Toy Story 3.'
'He cried because they were out of strawberry-flavoured milk.'
'He cried in the middle of Home Economics class.'
Anything, anywhere, anytime would be preferable to "he cried in my closet." He didn't even cry in his own closet, people, he went over to some chick's place, cooked a meal with her (which should have been the first fucking warning sign), got drunk, had a pash, agreed with her that there was some mutual attraction (possibly out of politeness), told himself off
and then climbed into her closet and started sobbing. Oh, and here's a surprise: "Now he acts like it never happened." No fucking shit, lady. To you he's denying the mutual attraction thing, but I'm pretty damn sure the true cause of his repression is more likely the whole 'mewling like a little bitch in some girl's wardrobe' thing. The only way this pussy is going to repeat that fact is as the final line of his suicide note.
2. No! Just no, okay?
Guyspeak doesn't even try to answer this one, instead throwing it out to the audience.
The guy I'm dating recently told me he's had sexual fantasies about his sister. Is this normal or am I dating a total psychopath?
Hey, I fantasize about sisters all the time. However, I don't have any of my own, so I'm forced to fantasize about other people's.
What I am curious about is the start of her second sentence: "Is this normal..." No, lady, some guy masturbating to thoughts of his sister (and make no mistake, the guy definition of 'fantasize' is 'things I wank to') is diametrically opposed to the concept of normal. The good news is that he's not a psychopath, because even psychos don't do this.
In fact, the only thing less normal than his sicko, incestuous fantasises is that
he decided to share this fucked up information with anyone, let alone the girl he's meant to be dating. Sure, every relationship has a 'getting to know each other' phase, but even that needs to be filtered for the sake of decency. That's why I don't text my dates every time I cry in their closet. But let's just assume that you were still in shock when you wrote this question and didn't have immediate access to a gun. Here's what you need to do:
1. Tell his sister.
2. Tell everyone else.
3. By 'everyone else' I'm including Facebook, Myspace, Twitter and the local media.
If you think I'm being overreactionary about this, fuck you. Some things require full disclosure in order for society to reinforce its norms. Be it by therapy or a public beating, this guy needs to resolve his issues before he's allowed to rejoin the general population.
The problem: Sex Addiction!
I read a random article in Cosmopolitan Magazine online the other day. It was all about the trials and tribulations of people affected by or suffering from
sex addiction. By the end of the article, during which I conducted cross-referential research and punched a few more dents in my fridge door, I was pretty miffed. I had just read a bunch of anecdotes backed up by painfully uncited statistics, all on a topic that isn't even a real thing.
This is the link to the article:
Living with a sex addict.
On top of the appalling spelling and grammar, what most shits me about this tripe is that it tries to go for the 'you may be cynical due to recent celebrity claims, but...' angle. Counter-cynicism? From Cosmo? Sure, plenty of folk will say "But, SD, it's only Cosmo, what does it matter?" Well, thousands of people read these pages every day, pages filled with a story that basically evokes "Oh no, it's true, sex addiction is ruining relationships across the world!" No, it isn't. It really isn't. Serial cheating by high profile cheaters is simply cheating, not a medicalised, therapy-treatable disease.
So, what's the problem with the problem?
Article quote 1
The condition is set to be listed for the first time in the next edition of America Psychiatrists’ bible, Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), under the term ‘hypersexual disorder’.
The technical term for this claim is 'woeful, unchecked bullshit'. See, the panel that decides what disorders get included in the latest DSM formally rejected sex addiction as a mental illness. Its proponents simply could not produce enough testable evidence. As for hypersexuality (not 'hypersexual disorder' - that also doesn't exist), that is a medical term to describe behaviours of excessive sex drive which in turn is indicative of actual disorders such as hypomania and bi-polar mood affective disorder.
But aside from the technical misinformation, the real problem about the concept of people being addicted to sex is that it really doesn't compare to the more legtimately recognised forms of addiction - alcohol, drugs and gambling. One of the constant themes about sex addiction is that it isn't necessarily about how much sex one has, it's about the amount they have outside of their current relationship. No real addiction on the planet is conditional upon your marital status, and sex addiction is only ever a problem for people if they are meant to be in a committed, exclusive relationship.
Article Quote 2
When it was reported Tiger had checked into Pine Grove rehabilitation centre in Mississippi for sexual compulsion, we collectively rolled our eyes, thinking ‘what a convenient excuse for his roving eye.." But sex Psychotherapist Pula Hall says "I’ve yet to meet a man who prefers the label of sex addict to cheat."
"sex Psychotherapist"? You can't just take the adjectival lead in your headline and add it to every professional you meet to turn them into an expert! What's next, "sex Detective"? And who has the first name "Pula"? Or maybe, seeing as how for the rest of the piece you refer to her as "Paula" your attention to editing is as concise as that to fact checking.
And now you're throwing in the term 'sexual compulsion'. But Tiger's behaviour, no matter how excessive, didn't reflect a compulsive disorder - he wasn't arbitrarily fucking women in public places or or during a tournament or any other highly inappropriate settings where your standard compulsive disorder sufferer wouldn't give a fuck. For example, people suffering compulsive masturbation issues tend to reach for their junk regardless of where they are or what they're doing - that's your sign of an involuntary behavioural disorder.
No, Tiger and all those other high profile sex addicts were simply opportunistic, exhibiting the classic sign of all spoilt brats with a inflated sense of entitlement: temporal discounting. That's when you decide that the immediate gratification of doing something stupid is preferable to the long-term benefit of not doing something stupid. And celebrities live highly magnified lives. Their successes are monumental, but so are their fuck ups.
