Month: October 2003

Wambui Otieno Mbugua Sets Kenya Abuzz

Former-Mau Mau activist and politician Wambui Otieno Mbugua certainly knows how to create a controversy. When she made an appearance at a conference dedicated to creating a new constitution for Kenya, tempers flared and the conference had to be recessed for 30 minutes.

Why all the fuss? Because Wambui, 67, was married in July to a stonemason 42 years her junior.

The marriage itself drew hundreds of onlookers and created something of a schism among churches in Kenya. Although clergyman with the Presbyterian Church of East Africa opined that the marriage was perfectly appropriate, Catholic priest Father Emanuel Ngugi characterized the marriage of Wambui to a much younger man as “uncouth” and criticized her for not consulting her local community before going ahead with the marriage.

When Wambui showed up at the constitutional conference, Member of Parliament Bonny Khalwale was the leader of a faction of male MPs who demanded that she be ejected from the conference. Khalwale was quoted by the BBC as saying, “We are discussing African culture and what she did [by marrying a much-younger man] negated the very concept of our culture.”

Not everyone in Kenya thought this was the major issue facing delegates. According to the BBC, conference delegate Hubbie Hussein noted that, “there are land grabbers, looters, murderers and other criminals among the delegates, but no one has questioned their presence in the conference.”

Sources:

Kenya split by wedding row. Kariuki wa Mureithi, BBC News, July 22, 2003.

Kenyan woman slams ‘disgusting’ MPs. BBC, August 21, 2003.

Mike Adams’ Viagra Monologues

University of North Carolina-Wilmington associate professor Mike Adams wrote one of the most amusing looks at The Vagina Monologues in July. In his op-ed, The Viagra Monologues, he describes his experiencing reading the feminist play.

Adams uses humor to puncture much of The Vagina Monologues,

In the very first chapter of TVM, author Eve Ensler tells the reader that she wrote the controversial play because she ?was worried about what we think about vaginas . . .? and because she ?was worried about (her) own vagina. It needed a context of other vaginas-a community, a culture of vaginas.? I suppose it takes a village to raise a vagina.

But his conclusion about one of the more bizarre (and that’s saying a lot for this play) parts of The Vagina Monologues really drives home mindset of the people who wrote, produce and laud this play,

Perhaps the highlight (or lowlight) of TVM is an interview with a six-year-old girl, which asks (among others) the following questions: ?If your vagina got dressed, what would it wear?? ?If it could speak, what would it say??, and ?What does your vagina smell like?? Of course I wondered why Ensler would ask these questions of a six-year-old girl. Maybe she got the idea from Michael Jackson. Well, maybe not.

After nearly 120 pages of this obscenity, the author does ponder the possible ill effects of her research by asking whether ?talking about vaginas ruin(s) the mystery.? But then she dismisses that conclusion as ?another myth that keeps vaginas in the dark, keeps them unknowing and unsatisfied.? Finally she admits, ?I realize I don?t know what?s appropriate. I don?t even know what that word means. Who decides??

Of course, many people would like to see TVM banned from college campuses. I disagree with that approach. Instead, I?m going to write my own play called The Viagra Monologues. That way, I won?t be accused of censoring campus feminists. And I won?t have to interview six-year-old boys.

Source:

The Viagra Monologues. Mike S. Adams, TownHall.Com, July 24, 2003.

Is Male Promiscuity All In the Genes?

There was a great hue and cry in August over a study purporting to offer further evidence for the claim that men are more promiscuous than women due to evolutionary reasons.

Evolutionary psychologist David Schmitt presented the results of a study of 16,000 individuals from around the world. Schmitt surveyed the study participants about their sexual preferences, including how many sexual partners they would like to have in the next month and over the next 10 years.

Men, on average, wanted 1.87 sexual partners in the next month and 5.95 over the next 10 years. Women, on average, said they wanted 0.78 sexual partners in the next month and 2.17 in the next 10 years.

Schmitt, with his evolutionary psychologist hat on, argues that this is proof that men’s preference for more sexual partners is therefore universal across cultures and reinforces the evolutionary psychology explanation of male promiscuity as a behavior that maximizes male reproductive fitness. Schmitt told the Washington Post,

This study provides the largest and most comprehensive test yet conducted on whether the sexes differ in the desire for sexual variety. The results are strong and conclusive — the sexes differ, and these differences appear to be universal.

Not so fast say those who believe that this preference may have more to do with differing social and cultural norms for men and women.

In the other corner is Ohio State University psychologist Terri Fisher who has done some fascinating studies of how men and women respond to surveys about sexual behavior differently based on the conditions and type of survey being administered. Here’s how the Washington Post summarizes some of her work,

Because of society’s double standard, Fisher said, women are hesitant to report their true sexual desires. In one study, she asked men and women to report whether they masturbated, watch soft-core pornography or hard-core pornography. Each “yes” got a point. She found, on average, that men scored 2.32 and women 0.89.

BUt she also found that women’s scores changed depending on how confident they were of remaining anonymous. In the study, both men and women had been told to hand their questionnaires to a researcher. But when women were told to deposit their answers in a locked box supervised by a researcher, their average score jumped to 1.53. And when the women took the test alone in a locked room and then deposited their answers in a locked box — ensuring privacy and anonymity — their score shot up further, to 2.04. The men’s answers did not change significantly, indicating they were less concerned about their opinions being discovered.

In an article for Reason magazine, Cathy Young noted that Fisher did, in fact, find anonymity affected men somewhat, but in a slightly different way. Young writes,

For men, the results were virtually the same regardless of the setting in which they answered the questionnaire — except that men reported losing their virginity at an earlier age hen they were not assured of anonymity. In other words, men’s and women’s reports of their sexual behavior are influenced by stereotypical social expectations. Surprise, surprise.

I think Young is correct that there is likely some genetic-based variation between men and women as far as the number of sexual partners that they desire to have, but that, as she puts it, “there is no reason to believe that this legacy is impervious to social change.”

Sources:

Desire and DNA: Is Promiscuity Innate? Shankar Vedantam, Washington Post, August 1, 2003.

Look Who’s Cheating. Cathy Young, Reason, August 12, 2003.