One Hand Jerking (33 page)

At a Radical Humor Festival: “The Hyde Amendment, which was upheld by the Supreme Court, means that poor women can't get an abortion paid for by Medicaid. Fortunately, there's the Big Sister Abortion Clinic. They introduced a teenage girl who was pregnant and unmarried, but couldn't afford an abortion, to her Big Sister, a wealthy woman who was married, had a successful career, did social work, had three kids of her own, but had never undergone an abortion and felt unfulfilled as an emancipated woman because the issue was
choice
, and she just wanted to exercise her choice. The Clinic arranged for a fetal transplant, where the fetus was transplanted from the womb of the poor teenage girl to the womb of the wealthy woman. This was a perfectly safe operation, it was legal, and it was paid for by Medicaid. The teenage girl didn't have to bear an unwanted baby, and the wealthy woman got an abortion as soon as the scar from the fetal transplant healed.”

The next day, my performance was analyzed by an unofficial women's caucus. One critic complained, “In sniping at the Hyde Amendment, Krassner was taking potshots at middle class women—they became his victims, his real target—and we all laughed. For me, that's one of the scariest aspects of comedy.”

But, what caused the biggest stir was my reference to the use of turkey basters by single mothers-to-be who were attempting to impregnate themselves via artificial insemination. A lesbian comic explained, “You have to understand, some women still have a hang-up about penetration.”

I must have been suffering from Delayed Punchline Syndrome, because it wasn't until I was flying back home, meditating on the notion that freedom of absurdity transcends gender difference, that I finally responded to her, in absentia: “Yeah, but
you
have to understand, some men still feel threatened by turkey basters.”

Now, two decades later, we return to Dolly Parton, performing at a 4th of July
celebration, televised from the nation's capital. She is wearing red-white-and-blue, starred-and-striped shorts and halter, with an Uncle Sam top hat. After singing “Nine to Five” with patriotic fervor, she has a few words for the soldiers in Iraq. “I have a couple of secret weapons myself,” she says, cupping the air surrounding her watermelon-sized breasts. “I call them Shock and Awe.” Then she added, “And if there are any goodie-goodies who are offended by that, I don't give a Shiite.”

A friend of mine who had recently been released from prison told me what had changed the most in Washington, D.C. during his ten-year absence: “The amount of inspections and clearances are incredible. It applies to every building I go into. Yesterday I attended the Dolly Parton concert on the Capitol Lawn and saw cops with machine guns standing nearby. Unbelievable.”

That's funny, I didn't notice
them
on my TV screen.

There are those spiritual gurus who claim that an individual soul chooses the specific parents of the fetus it will occupy. I have no such recollection, but even if I did decide to be born, I was circumcised against my will. I used to joke about having my foreskin reattached, but there's actually a book,
The Joy of Uncircumcising
, and an organization with just such a purpose, the National Organization of Restoring Men (NORM), with 21 chapters in the United States, and five in other countries.

Virtually all of the disembodied cocks busily fucking and getting blown on Web porn sites these days appear to be circumcised, but that may be changing. Although the United States is the only country that continues to circumcise the majority of its newborns for non-religious reasons, as parents have become more educated about the surgery, the circumcision rate has fallen to 57 percent.

Paul Fleiss has been publicly identified as Heidi's father and Madonna's pediatrician, but he also supports a controversial cause perhaps less well known than his daughter or his client. He has been a militant campaigner against circumcision for 26 of the 36 years that he has been practicing, and he's written a treatise,
The Function of the Foreskin
.

In a talk at the (now gone) Midnight Special Bookstore in Santa Monica, Dr.
Fleiss said, “The foreskin is there to keep the end of the penis warm and clean and moist. There are thousands of nerve endings in that little bit of foreskin you're cutting off. Those of us who have been circumcised were mutilated. We've lost a very important function of our body.”

Marilyn Milos, a registered nurse who opposes circumcision as a violation of human rights, was fired from Marin General Hospital after showing parents a video of circumcision. She now heads the National Organization of Circumcision Information Resource Centers, headquartered in San Anselmo, California.

Milos recalls with horror: “To see a part of this baby's penis being cut off—without an anesthetic—was devastating. But even more shocking was the doctor's comment, barely audible several octaves below the piercing screams of the baby, ‘There's no medical reason for doing this.'”

Ten states have dropped Medicaid funding for circumcision, and other states are considering such action. The American Academy of Pediatrics first acknowledged that there was no medical justification for routine circumcision in 1971, and reaffirmed in 1999 that it does not recommend routine circumcision. The American Medical Association concurred in 2000, calling routine circumcision “non-therapeutic.”

Doctors were not very happy about North Dakota District Judge Cynthia Rothe-Seeger, who ruled that a baby who is circumcised can sue his doctor when he is an adult. Suing parents is the next logical step. Meanwhile, the same decision that made doctors unhappy made lawyers very happy. J. Steven Svoboda, executive director of Attorneys for the Rights of the Child, stated:

“This is the latest in a series of warnings to doctors who still circumcise. Proceed at your peril, because even if you get parental consent and do a standard job of the circumcision, the child can still grow up and sue you for taking away part of his penis. Doctors ignore a lot of medical literature, and they ignore the screams of the babies, but they listen when they hear the word ‘malpractice.' As a lawyer willing to sue, I've never had a doctor not listen to me.”

Take the case of Josiah Flatt, who was circumcised soon after he was born in 1997. Two years later, his parents sued the doctor and the hospital. They didn't claim that the circumcision was botched. Nor did they deny that Josiah's mother had consented to the surgery in writing. Rather, their complaint was that the doctor had failed to tell them about the pain, complications and consequences of circumcision. The main harm they sought compensation for was “diminished sexual sensation injury.”

The hospital's lawyers insisted, “This lawsuit is an attempt to abolish circumcision in North Dakota of newborn males with healthy foreskin. Plaintiffs want to change public policy so that only a competent male once he reaches adulthood, and not his parent, should be able to consent to circumcision.” Only three in 1,000 men who were not circumcised at birth choose to have the procedure as an adult.

In February 2003, the case finally went to trial. A jury of nine decided against the plaintiff because the mother signed the consent form.

Circumcision is quite a profitable business. About 1.2 million newborns are circumcised in the United States every year, at a cost of $150-$270 million. Moreover, human foreskins are in great demand for a number of commercial enterprises, and the marketing of purloined baby foreskins is a multi-million-dollar-a-year industry. But that's another whole story, and there's no more space, so I'm going to have to cut this off right here.

This country was founded by pioneers with a lust for freedom and by puritans with a disdain for pleasure. These opposing characteristics have evolved along with everything else, and the problem is those individuals who are still burdened by that certain streak of anti-pleasure keep trying to impose laws upon the pro-pleasure individuals.

Take, for example, the attempt in Mississippi that would have made it a crime for a man who is sexually aroused, although fully clothed, to appear in public. Violators could face up to a year in prison and a $2,000 fine. Public indecency would have been redefined to include “the showing of covered male genitals in a discernibly turgid state.” In other words, if hard-ons are outlawed, only outlaws will have hard-ons.

“Talk about hitting below the belt,” complained the press secretary of the Libertarian Party. “Are phallic felonies really so frequent in Mississippi that the state needs a Private Parts Police to patrol men's underwear?”

The bill was intended to regulate the behavior of patrons at strip clubs. But
recently, in Las Vegas, county commissioners—eager to
prevent
men from getting erections—adopted an ordinance that strictly limits which parts of a dancer's body can touch a patron, and that outlaws putting tip money behind a dancer's G-string.

Commissioner Yvonne Atkinson Gates originally wanted to require a 6-foot separation between patron and dancer, but she supported the final draft, which allows the dancer to slide down a patron's leg as long as she doesn't touch his groin or his feet. What about the big toe, though?

Then there was the law passed in Alabama that banned the sale of vibrators and other sex toys. The punishment for violating that statute in the privacy of your own home was a $10,000 fine and one year of hard labor. A lawsuit to overturn it was unsuccessful. It had been filed by a group of women, including the owner of an adult shop, a salesperson for the Saucy Ladies line of sexual aids and novelties, and a woman who used a doctor-recommended vibrator to overcome sexual dysfunction.

In July 2004, Sherri Williams of the Pleasures store chain had her acquittal for the sale of non-prescribed vibrators overturned by the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, though two Alabama juries had found in her favor.

According to historian Rachel Maines in her book,
The Technology of Orgasm: “Hysteria,” the Vibrator, and Women's Sexual Satisfaction
, the vibrator was originally developed to perfect and automate a function that doctors had long performed for their female patients—the relief of physical, emotional and sexual tension through external pelvic massage, culminating in orgasm.

“Most of them did it because they felt it was their duty,” said Dr. Maines. “It wasn't sexual at all.”

Just as Mattel's Nimbus 2000 broomstick, as seen in the movie
Harry Potter
, wasn't sexual, even though it has a vibrating feature (powered by three AA batteries). Remember, kids are supposed to ride this toy broomstick by putting it between their legs. And so, making the rounds of the Internet was
Amazon.com
's Web page, including these customer comments:

“This toy was #1 on my daughter's Christmas list. So what the heck, I figured it would be good for imaginative play. It wasn't until after she opened her gift and started playing with it that I realized the toy
vibrates
when they put it between their legs to fly. Come on—what were the creators of this toy thinking? She'll keep playing with the Nimbus 2000, but with the batteries removed.”

And, “My 12-year-old daughter is a big Harry Potter fan, and loved the part
with the Nimbus 2000, so I decided to buy her this toy. I was afraid she would think it was too babyish, but she
loves
this toy. Even my daughter's friends enjoy playing with this fun toy. I was surprised at how long they can just sit in her room and play with this magic broomstick!”

Anyway, the Alabama law prohibited “any device designed or marketed as useful primarily for the stimulation of human genital organs.” In the Court of Appeals, the state's attorney general defended the statute, arguing that “a ban on the sale of sexual devices and related orgasm-stimulating paraphernalia is rationally related to a legitimate interest in discouraging prurient interests in autonomous sex,” and that “there is no constitutional right to purchase a product to use in pursuit of having an orgasm.”

Ironically, five months earlier, the FDA had approved a device specifically designed to help women achieve sexual satisfaction, marking the first time that the federal government has licensed an aid for women with sexual dysfunction. The Eros, which uses the same basic principle as Viagra to promote sexual arousal—stimulating blood flow to the genital area—is a battery-operated vacuum attached to a suction cup that fits over the clitoris. The device, available only by prescription, costs $359. However, fingers, tongues and dicks are all free—and still legal.

The anti-pleasure syndrome applies to the desire to get stoned as well as the urge to relieve horniness. Thus, it was considered a form of progress when scientists announced that by chemically blocking the brain's cannabinoid receptors, which respond to a key compound in marijauna, the high caused by the weed is squelched. Dr. Marilyn Huestis, the lead government researcher, said that the findings help point the way toward a possible treatment for people addicted to marijuana.

“It's certainly an issue that is still a little controversial,” she admitted, “of whether marijuana can cause addiction.”

And the battle goes on. As in a chess game, the opponents try to outwit each other. What's coming, a pill that makes every flavor of ice cream taste like wallpaper paste? But, while George Carlin rhetorically asks—“Why are there no recreational drugs in suppository form?”—teenage girls are
actually
experimenting with tampons dipped in vodka as a way of getting intoxicated without their parents detecting booze on their breath.

Score one for the forces of pro-pleasure.

In September 1968, I covered the protest at the Miss America Pageant in Atlantic City. There were a few hundred women there. On the boardwalk, demonstrators were holding a special ceremony. Icons of male oppression were being thrown into a trash barrel—cosmetics, a girdle, a copy of
Playboy
, a pair of high-heeled shoes, a pink brassiere—all with the intent of setting the whole mix on fire. But there was an ordinance forbidding you to burn
anything
on the boadwalk, and the police were standing right there to enforce it. So there was no fire, but that didn't matter. The image of a burning bra became a symbol inextricably associated with women's liberation.