Prude Nation Meets Anthony’s Weiner
Am I the only person in this great country who has no problem with Anthony Weiner sexting his pals? Since when did sending a dick-pic become a deviant act? Yes, it is so commonplace that it has a name.
Here’s a “radical” idea, sex is not dirty – it’s delightful. Here’s another one, showing your junk to others is normal.
Responding like we have– with revulsion, disgust, and pop psychology – well that’s just sick. That kind of prudishness is disturbing and, I think, disturbed. Believing the guy should quit his job – is weirdly perverted. It’s a sign of how unevolved we are. Frankly, as a fellow American, it’s embarrassing.
By “we,” of course, I don’t mean me. I’m in favor of consensual sexting between buddies. Maybe it’s my upbringing – I was taught to mind my own values first. Maybe it’s because I’m a big booster for healthy attitudes about sex. After all, it’s how we got here. Then again, maybe it’s because I’ve known a lot of people who like to show off. Don’t we all secretly wish we had the cojones to pull out our penis and shake it at the world?
Or maybe I’m just fine with it because there is no hypocrisy involved. Congressman Weiner has never tried to legislate against your sexual morals or legislate away your sexual preferences.
“Sexting” is as old as phones with cameras. But that wasn’t when it started. I know for a fact that it goes back at least as far as 1968 and Greenbelt Junior High School. (To put that year in context, GJH was racially integrated while I was an inmate there.) Back then, girls would drop Polaroid’s of their upper torso into the vent slots of a cute boy’s locker. If you got one, you were uber-cool. Sadly, I never did – but I can still sing the school fight song. “On Greenbelt Junior High, we’ll win this game...” I’d bet many a young man who was just starting out used that song to delay his, well you know.
Sexting (the analog kind) may actually be much older. The first instant photo camera was sold in 1948. I’ll bet someone did it the next day. And taking nudie photos of yourself is surely even older than that. Back when photographs were developed by “photo technicians” (first at camera stores and later at drug stores) almost every tech had a huge collection of nudie-shot copies he’d kept for himself. My neighbor Mickey’s father had a bunch. Once in a while, while making prank phone calls, we’d project the slides on the side of his neighbor’s house. We also made “match bombs” a kind of pipe bomb that makes Weiner’s “pipe bomb” seem utterly harmless. Ahhh, those were the days…
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