There seems to be no lengths to which humorless people will not go to analyze humor. It seems to worry them. – Robert Benchley
My old friend Philippa endured a terribly chaotic life, but she had a fantastic gift for catchy turns of phrase, many of which I use to this day (including my oft-repeated “good fantasy, bad reality”). And whenever she wanted to mock overly-serious people who seemed congenitally unable to get a joke, she would announce that “No fun shall be had!” Unfortunately, in the 15 years since I last saw her, the people who seem to truly believe this have become much more powerful and established “the right not to be offended” over such outmoded notions as “freedom of speech”. Whenever someone makes a joke that one of the tissue-paper-feelings crowd pronounces “offensive”, she and her sisters will begin the titular refrain, usually with the same effect (career-wise) for the joke-teller as a more famous hysterical outburst born of an overdeveloped sense of privilege, namely “Off with his head!”
Many of you probably heard about this absurd manufactured “controversy” in mid-April; apparently women who are strong and intelligent enough to make it through medical school, internship and residency still prefer to present themselves as delicate little flowers who have attacks of the vapors when a respected surgeon closes a Valentine’s Day editorial with a silly medical joke based on the study discussed in the column. These supposedly-rational women reacted by loudly announcing that they were not amused and demanding the professional head of a man who was known for being a “a longtime mentor and advocate of women in surgery”. And some of my readers wonder why I say a woman’s beauty and grace are more fit subjects for compliments than her intelligence.
But since the media is notoriously uninterested in “yesterday’s news”, I think it’s likely that few of you saw this response to the brouhaha from the scientists whose work the good doctor cited in his now-censored editorial:
…Lazar Greenfield, M.D. is no ordinary surgeon. Until last week, he was the president-elect of the American College of Surgeons. The man is the inventor of the Greenfield Filter, a device that has saved countless lives as a means of preventing blood clots during surgery. He’s a professor emeritus of surgery at the University of Michigan. He has written more than 360 scientific articles in peer-reviewed journals, 128 book chapters and two textbooks. He has served on the Editorial Board of 15 scientific journals and was also the lead editor of the Surgery News…In the February issue, he penned some thoughts on Valentine’s Day under the heading of “Gut Feelings.” (“But Valentine’s Day is about love, and if you remember a romantic gut feeling when you met your significant other, it might have a physiological basis.”)…He…noted the therapeutic effects of semen, citing research from the Archives of Sexual Behavior which found that female college students practicing unprotected sex were less likely to suffer from depression than those whose partners used condoms (as well as those who remained abstinent). Presumably it was the closing line that caused the controversy: “So there’s a deeper bond between men and women than St. Valentine would have suspected, and now we know there’s a better gift for that day than chocolates.”
The attempt at…humor apparently didn’t sit well in certain quarters. Dr. Greenfield resigned as editor of the Surgery News and gave up his stewardship of ACS after learning that his article had spurred threats of protests from outside women’s groups. In an interview with the Detroit Free Press last Wednesday, Dr. Greenfield explained: “The editorial was a review of what I thought was some fascinating new findings related to semen, and the way in which nature is trying to promote a stronger bond between men and women. It impressed me. It seemed as though it was a gift from nature. And so that was the reason for my lighthearted comments.”
The story has been big in the scientific community, but…there is one take I thought missing and noteworthy — that of the three psychologists who authored the peer-reviewed article cited by Dr. Greenfield. So I tracked down Steven M. Platek, Rebecca L. Burch, and Gordon G. Gallup, Jr. Speaking for the group, Dr…Platek…offered this analysis:
Frankly, we think people are over reacting to the comments made by Dr. Lazar Greenfield. There is growing evidence that human semen has the potential to produce profound effects on women. We have replicated the effects showing female college students having sex without condoms are less depressed as measured by objective scores on the Beck Depression Inventory. We’ve also examined the data as a function of whether the students were using hormonal contraceptives, whether they were in committed relationships, and how long these relationships have lasted. The anti-depressant properties of semen exposure do not vary as function of any of these conditions. It is not a question of whether females are sexually active, since students having sex with condoms show the same level of depression as those who are not having sex at all. We have also received numerous semen testimonials from other women who attest to the anti-depressant effects of semen exposure and these accounts often include the use of control trials (i.e., comparisons generated by switching from condoms to unprotected sex, or vice a versa). Only 5 percent of the ejaculate is sperm. What’s left is seminal plasma, which is a rich concoction of chemicals, including many that have the potential to produce mood-altering effects derived from hormones, neurotransmitters, and endorphins. There are even female sex hormones in male semen. Within a hour or two after insemination, you can detect heightened levels of many of these seminal chemicals in a woman’s bloodstream…How can someone be asked to resign for citing a peer-reviewed paper? Dr. Greenfield was forced to resign based on politics, not evidence. His resignation is more a reflection of the feminist and anti-scientific attitudes of some self-righteous and indignant members of the American College of Surgeons. Science is based on evidence, not politics. In science knowing is always preferable to not knowing.
Steven M. Platek
Rebecca L. Burch
Gordon G. Gallup, Jr.
Dr. Greenfield was of course subjected to the same process I wrote of in my column of April 26th: the subjugation of scientific fact to a political agenda. And considering that prostitutes are subject to the same persecution for the same “sin” (representing a reality which is abhorrent to neofeminist dogma), I deeply sympathize with him and hope that his experience at least serves to call attention to the pall of intellectual repression which has descended over American academia.
Well if you admit that sex can be good for a woman she might want more of it and then she’ll get sucked into the sex slavery of the patriarchy! Really, it’s in the interest of women to have these “facts” suppressed. They might even decide men aren’t all that bad. Then how will gender studies professors make a living?
Won’t someone think of the professors?!
LOL! 😀
I think the best way to piss off those kind of people is to refuse to take them seriously.
It gets even easier the shriller they get.
Semi-proven fact, this. When I bothered with internet boards, they were usually cutthroat affairs with much mocking of the stupid. It was unofficial policy that the truly batshit received absurd replies to their “OMG, srius bizns yalls” posts.
Watch someone post a diatribe about how all chicks ought to have forced abortions if the guys decides he doesn’t want a child, or whether slashfic should be a crime, get thirty responses about how hot Alan Rickman is (answer: really hot). The fireworks were tremendously amusing.
Okay, not exactly proven, but close enough for government work.
I remember this story from a just a few months back; very similar to the Larry Summers fiasco. There is probably a kernel of truth in semen being beneficial to women’s health. There have been times when after I’ve blown a huge load I’ve felt a sense of euphoria which lasted for a seemingly long time. I don’t mean the orgasm…I mean the beatific sense of calm afterwords.
Actually, there was some evidence from a British study back in the ’70s because I remember reading about it in high school around 1981. So Platek, et al didn’t really discover anything new, but I believe it’s the largest and best-designed study on the subject to date.
I think an honest discussion of sex is important and therefore it is important for people like Dr. Greenfield to publish their peer-reviewed scientific findings, and to be able to do so without the threat of professional decapitation. I am curious about and receptive toward these kinds of findings, but even if I weren’t I would still know that trying to silence someone who presents information you don’t like is not the proper way to get to truthful information about sex.
However, I have to say that while I would not try to take any action against Dr. Greenfield, if I had read his article I probably would have been bothered. Actually, I hope I would have read his closing line not as a flat out joke but rather as a genuine yet lighthearted appreciation of the things nature gives humans through sex (and I think this attitude is evident in his follow up comments). But there is a real possibility I would have felt disturbed by the fact that even a doctor cannot talk about sex without joking.
It is well known–at least to someone like me, a 21 year old female, and maybe to you too–that when you bring up the topic of semen being good for women, you’re moments away from the whole discussion deteriorating into a joke and maybe even becoming vulgar and harmful. My male peers seeming desire to push me into something that I say I don’t want because “if [I] just give it a chance [I’ll] actually like it” (or because it’s “good for [me],” and science says so, as demonstrated by these findings) is so pervasive and accepted that it has almost completely turned me off from my peers in general (and I’m no feminist). I’m totally against the silencing of this doctor, but I can understand how people might find it offensive that even a doctor presents these types of attitudes. But I guess we’ll never know whether he truly did consider it a joke or not.
I often find myself recoiling from things people say or write, but as I’ve said before vulgarity is one of my pet peeves. Therefore I think you and I are on the same page, M; though such things bother us personally we’re against people being attacked for saying them. Bad taste isn’t a crime, nor should it result in a professional death sentence.
As a lawyer, I’ve perceived an increasing sentiment that the law should protect people from being offended. (The Fred Phelps case is an extreme example, but many jurisdictions have expanded the tort of “intentional infliction of emotional distress” to compensate people because somebody upset them even where there was no physical injury). I think you have the same idea here, even if it wasn’t necessarily in the form of a lawsuit. In this specific case, I think any rational person, even if personally offended, would agree that it shouldn’t merit the guy’s resignation. But on a larger scale, it’s a very troubling trend. From Martin Luther to Martin Luther King, many (most? all?) of the people who changed history offended somebody in the process. At some point you have to realize that maintaining a robust marketplace of ideas means tolerating thoughts that might rub you the wrong way.
Taking off my lawyer hat, I would say more succinctly: grow some fucking skin and use some common sense.
In this particular instance Maggie, I do not see what he wrote as tasteless or vulgar. I mean, if he had given some lurid depiction of a graphic sexual act that ended with a specific delivery method of giving semen to a woman, ok, that would be vulgar.
All he said though, was, “now we know there’s a better gift for that day than chocolates.” That doesn’t even qualify as a off color joke in my humble opinion. Not even close. Would it have been better if he had said, “Spend time and attention with the person you love, and end the day with a roll in the hay. You will both feel better and won’t have to worry about the chocolate going straight to your thighs?”
As Sailor Barsoom correctly points out below, Tony, neofeminists get wrapped around the axle about ANYTHING involving semen, so they’re going to view ANY semen comment as being in bad taste. But even if that were an objective measure (which it certainly isn’t), that STILL wouldn’t justify their persecuting men for such comments/jokes.
Of course, everyone’s different; as a man you don’t “get” their reaction, and Kelly thought it was a clever statement. I found it a tad annoying for my personal preferences because men are constantly trying to pitch sex as something the man “gives” to the woman rather than (as every whore knows) vice-versa. The difference between me and the neofeminists, though, is that I consider the source (even a brilliant, educated man is still a man) and keep my irritation to myself because I recognize it as my PERSONAL reaction, in other words something already in me, rather than something he inflicted on me.
The modern “Catechism of Offense” to which neofeminists subscribe teaches that offensiveness is a property of the offending person or object rather than of the one who is offended; in other words, if a flower is yellow and you hate yellow, it’s the flower’s fault for “offending” you. And if a dog’s breath smells bad, that “badness” comes from the dog rather than your intolerance for biological odors. Given that absurd premise attacking the offender for “causing” offense is perfectly logical, but a sensible person recognizes that my aversion to spinach, gay male sex and “I’m gonna give it to you” comments derive from my personality, not from the things I’m offended by. And I therefore have no right to force cafeterias to stop cooking spinach, gay dudes to stop making porn or doctors to refrain from spooge jokes.
The problem is that feminists have few remaining problems.
They’re victims in search of a crime.
This sums up most radical feminism.
Reform movements invariably become solutions in search of a problem once the purpose for which they were organized is accomplished; this is true of labor unions, feminism, racial rights organizations and a number of others, and “gay” rights organizations are about halfway there. 🙁
I still say every American needs a drill sergeant for a therapist (ala GEICO). We can’t control what people say but we can control how we react to it.
Academic Freedom is a fairly recent notion, and one without much historical foundation. universities have traditionally been places where a self selected intellectual elite could send like-minded persons for pleasant employment. In 18th Century England (my Father’s specialty in the field of History of Science) many of the best minds of the era were ineligible to attend University because they were religious dissenters ….. and the Universities were hard line Anglican.
Our Universities, on the whole, were taken over by the Liberal Intellectual Radical Progressives some while back. They rigidly enforce ideological orthodoxy except where they are afraid of the Heretic (as they were of my Father). This often has embarrassing results, like the cluster-f*ck over the Duke “rape” case – or it would if these people were capable of being embarrassed.
Neofeminists have a real problem with semen. Semen is, well, very male. Ask them for examples of something degrading in pornography, and after a few shrieks about rape and objectification, you’ll start hearing about cum shots. It is very, terribly, utterly, horrendously degrading, you will hear, for a man to ejaculate onto any part of a woman. It’s like he’s branding her with an unerasable badge of degradation.
So any suggestion that semen might be GOOD for women is tantamount to saying that shitting on her face is good for her. Shitting on her face against her will. You and I know that there’s a big difference between shit and semen, but for neofeminists, semen is worse.
The good doctor couldn’t be expected to understand it (I don’t really), or even to know about it. He had no idea just how offensive it would be to certain weird people.
”So there’s a deeper bond between men and women than St. Valentine would have suspected, and now we know there’s a better gift for that day than chocolates.”
And?
I don’t think that is offensive, on the contrary I think it was well written.
People are such fucking idiots.
I agree 100% Kelly. Someone should buy that Dr. a beer. 😛
Word. While my mind immediately injected, “Hur, hur, hur…” it’s merely an unfortunate reflection of how Emily’s mind works. As crude jokes go, I can do better in my sleep.
Ye gods, I hope none of those poor fragile offended flowers have sons. They’re going to live in a state of perpetual horror from the toddler years on.
…which may explain why so many of them attempt to feminize their sons right from the get-go and then dope them up on Ritalin when they refuse to act like good little girls. What next, “therapeutic castration”? 🙁
Child sacrifice is still in vogue for fanatics, I see.
Most schools really are torture chambers for young boys.
Almost all mothers have no idea how to actually raise sons to be men. They end up being confused and seriously messed up. The mothers freak out about the slightest scrape; when one boy hits another, it’s a huge deal (teach your son how to hit back – or get used to not having any grandchildren). Then they get confused when pussy boy is withdrawn, narcissistic and a complete failure with women – he’s like some proverbial ball that gets kicked around. Now where, oh where, did I go wrong? she asks herself. Must be the other Men. Manliness caused the problem.
Neofeminists and their ilk are the least in touch with human instincts.
My son’s fifth birthday. We have an Urban Assault Theme. The kids walk in the house and I hand them a glock, a billy club and a shield. They also have headsets to communicate with each other and handcuffs. They go wild, stage a riot upstairs and take turns arresting each other and tossing water bombs out the windows.
The Dads thought it was cool and fun. The Moms were horrified. I mean HORRIFIED. And these are mostly good friends.
But the boys (and a few girls) had such a great time! It was unmistakable how much they loved beating the crap out of each other.
It was the best birthday party ever. Next year, we’re going to storm the beaches at Normandy.
My daughter, on the other hand, wants to go and get manicures at the nail salon. Such a girl.
What an awesome idea, Andrea! The fact that the mums were horrified just shows how disconnected they are from reality on this subject; if they’re even CLOSE to me in age their brothers used to play exactly like that, so how have they forgotten it?
oh lord…anyone who feeds their kid Ritalin or is considering it needs to try taking some themselves. hint – it’s a bunch of crap when they tell you “it affects hyper kids differently”
Especially since 90% or more of boys diagnosed as ADHD really aren’t; they’re just normal boys whose teachers punish them for not acting like girls, and whose parents lack the means to transfer them to private schools. Not that some private-school teachers aren’t just as misguided, but private school administrators are vastly less likely to demand that the boy be doped up as a condition of enrollment.
Jesus! A girl spends a couple days on a tequila bender and misses all the good stuff!
My husband is a prof and we spends lots of time with wimmin’s study types. It is downright frightening how much power they have to destroy a man’s career. I can say shit no man could ever say, because it’s harder for the feminazis to take down another woman.
I’m sorry his female colleagues didn’t defend him.
Is there a petition to get the doctor reinstated? If not one should be started. Fight politics with politics.
Unfortunately, Pahklivo, physicians being who they are such a petition would be ignored unless it came from within the professional community. 🙁
I am suspicious that there is something more to this story. Limited googling has not revealed just WHO is objecting to the obviously benign quote in question. There is a bit of a “methinks the doctor doth protest too much.”
I know many feminists and many radical feminists. While some might object to the sentence, I can’t imagine them actually acting on it – it just isn’t that big a deal.
Take a look at the first linked article, Cynic; it names names and links protest articles, and the author of that article clearly sympathizes with them.
Many petitions have worked over time no matter who started them. How about trying? There’s at least a few free petition sites online. I’d be glad to post links to them if there’s any interest. Yes, some don’t work. But, many do. If none are ever done, nothing will ever change. Thanks for listening.
On some level, though, this guy should have known better. Anyone who has spent more than a day on a college campus knows you can joke with feminists like you can teach a cat to play guitar.
I remember once trying to explain to a friend who the feminists in our college’s “women’s center” were. He looked blankly and then it finally hit him who I was talking about: “Oh, you mean those girls who always walk around with faces looking like they’re smelling something bad!”
@Days of Broken Arrows,
It’s true. They’re always looking for everything wrong and will tell all and sundry exactly what they’re not doing right.
Of all women, they’re the most judgmental and harsh when it comes to other women.
“Fun Nazis”. We’ve been calling “them” that for years.
That’s terrible….maybe you can send this doctor your comment wall so he knows he has some support.
I always say, “Sexual harassment will NOT be tolerated, but it will be graded!” =)
For the life of me, I cannot find anything “offensive” in the good Dr’s article. Perhaps my brain just doesn’t function in the same manner as those of the women who are up in arms over his slightly lame attempt at humor. What did he do wrong? Is it the fact that he presented semen as something beneficial to women? He was discussing the results of a scientific study, not making up facts to further some nebulous male-domination conspiracy. I just don’t get it. Poor guy.
Another possible source of outrage for the tissues-n-feelins crowd could be the fact that one of the semen study’s authors, Gordon Gallup, also authored the evo psych papers most like to get an evo biologist’s/feminist/queer activist’s dander up if discussed in anything other than a cursorily dismissive manner:
http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/post.cfm?id=homophobia-phobia-bad-science-or-ba-2011-03-22
even, of course, when discussed by a gay evo psychologist.
The treasured “intersectionality” you’ve seen at the usual Mumia-Palestine-Hunger–Iraq–Bunnies anti-something rallies seems to only increase the sense of outrage.
Dr. Greenfield should have asked a woman to publish his research.
Then the feminists would have only ignored it rather than pillory the author.
Actually, Jim, Dr. Greenfield was just commenting on the research; one of the authors of the actual study (see the second-to-last paragraph of the column) was a woman!
Another good example of politics invading science is Deborah L. Toman’s book on teenage girls describing their “sexual desire.” Despite the obvious reports of sexual dysfunction in many of the girls, the author insists they are merely the temporary victims of “socially constructed” dilemmas! http://sexhysteria.wordpress.com/2013/05/02/sexual-equality/
I’m gonna read it. Today. Already started.
I’ve never met Dr Greenfield, but I know of his filter; one of my colleagues did research with him on it. The colleague was the only person in our locality who could insert one—it’s a rather fiddly performance—but those in the centres of arrogance weren’t interested. But he did insert them for more broad-minded people out in the sticks.
Anyhow, when the colleague arrived he was to meet Dr Greenfield; and Dr G told him to come at 5 o’clock. Colleague asked what he was to do all day until 5 o’clock. But Dr G meant 5 am in the morning.
There’s no doubt that Greenfield was/is a very hard worker and researcher; not only very early starts, but he went to bed at 9pm. One evening he found himself at a party…where his “colleagues” proceeded to ply him with drink, and keep him up after midnight. Apparently, when he arrived for work the next day at around 7 am, he didn’t look so good.