This man feels he owns your vagina.
Thanks to Tristan for sending me this hysterical 11 minute segment from “The Dildo Diaries“. This section at least is about the ridiculous heights that are reached when politicians feel that controlling sex is a good vote-getting political football. Molly Ivins is hilariously interviewed, and the title is a quote from her.
Watch the whole thing; it’s hysterical. The sex toy store they go into is the neighborhood one for me and has been forever. It’s called Forbidden Fruit and if you’re in the Austin area, give them your business both for being good sports and also for being a female-owned, genuinely woman-positive company. They are on North Loop next to Monkey Wrench Books, which just happens to be the bookstore Kos hit on his book tour, which is totally a coincidence.
Anyway, on their visit to Forbidden Fruit, they get to deal with the bizarre array of regulations that just got upheld by the Supreme Court on what kind of dildoes one can buy and why. In case you think the visit to Forbidden Fruit in the movie is exaggerated for effect, I assure you that I happen to know for no reasons that you need to know that it’s not exaggerated at all. You really do have to sign a bunch of releases stating, basically, that you buy rabbit-shaped vibrating sex toys in order to learn how to put on condoms. Luckily, that’s an important skill to practice. Watch the whole thing. It captures a little of the paradox of living in Texas. On one hand, we have many very funny people. On the other hand, if it slips a little at the wrong point in time, you might be doing time.
34 Responses to ““It’s illegal for a prick to touch an asshole in this state””
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When I was looking at graduate schools for screenwriting, I briefly considered UT-Austin, but thanks to Ms. Ivins, I was clued in that it was probably illegal for me to bring my vibrator collection over the state line. Her phrase was something like, “If you have three [sex toys], you’re considered a hobbyist; four or more, and you’re a felon.”
Ha! Well, it’s actually 6 dildos. But if you’re not selling, you are actually probably quite cool. But I have to say, it pisses me off that our wingnuts run good people out of my lovely state. Especially Austin. We’re like your favorite blue state, except our music is better and we’ve got sexy accents.
Amanda, first, I heard you on the radio. No damn accent. I was very disappointed…
Second, you mean you can be busted for being a “dealer”, but in “toys”? I don’t know whether to laugh or cry…
This also reminds me (for some reason) of the old saying:
It’s okay to prick your finger, but not the other way around…
Guy-centric, sorry…
Texans have about 15 different accents. Mine’s a cross between West Texas and Central Texas. I drawl a little, but no, I don’t have a twang. That’s an East Texas thing.
It’s funny to me people are surprised I don’t have an accent. A lot of people in my real life make fun of me for having what you might politely call “regional phrases”.
Amanda, I’m not sure I’m buying your lame “accent excuse”.
Dammit! People from Texas have accents!
I’m thinking you’re some infiltrator from Chicago or something, and you claim Texas heritage to try and fit in…
(’Course, I’ll give you that regardless of the truth, you have 100x the right to claim Texas than the asshole-in-chief…)
:)
Ha! Ironically, my mother lives fairly close to where the Shrub grew up. Yeah, his accent is a ruse, sort of. I mean, it’s real enough, but he exaggerates it.
I’ve met Warren Chisum, and he’s the weirdest, most craven asshole I think I’ve ever met.
If we use the Mark Foley method of determining what conservatives are hiding about themselves, Warren Chisum is (A) one holy hell of an atheist and (B) very, very firmly closeted.
I don’t have much of a Texas accent, and I was born and raised here. My mother has a pretty thick accent, while my dad wasn’t born here, so doesn’t really have one.
I had a minor speech impediment when I was a child, and speech therapy ended up eliminating most of my accent at a young age. My siblings, both younger than I am, ended up emulating my speech patterns a bit, so their accents are also fairly low-key.
[…] I certainly have heard of the bizarre Texas rules for selling dildoes and whatnot, but I have never seen them put into practice. Luckily (or perhaps not), Amanda has some video (featuring Molly Ivins!) and a personal story about how exactly one goes about buying a vibrator in the Gret Stet of Texas. […]
I think Chisum is struggling with misguided subconcious anger against the people who called him “Jism” in middle school.
Dammit! People from Texas have accents!
I don’t have one, my parents being dirty brown immigrants, but my dad seems to have picked one up since he got here. It comes out at the strangest times and it’s very unsettling.
Doesn’t Texas have a strong “jury nullification” tradition, though?
How in hell would they screen 12 jurors without preventing one smart-ass from slipping in to which an “this law is so stupid, it’s puerile - don’t send my client to jail for having sex toys!” argument wouldn’t appeal?
so, if you have more than six devices, you can get busted for distribution?
i bet the cops just throw that shit in the dumpster behind KMart, no point just booking another sad clit head gettin’ her fix.
/so wait- when buying dildoes, how many fingers does it take to make a half O?
the humor potential of this insane law is endless.
Wally:
I’m not completely convinced that Chisum is even human.
There’s really a goa’uld in there, I think.
Why can I not load the movie? I’m supposed to be procrastinating, god damn it.
Doesn’t Texas have a strong “jury nullification� tradition, though?
It theory, yes, and that might explain why this law tends to get enforced in very religious areas. I mean, they’ve done busts here in Austin, but I’m not sure how well they stick.
I had the same problem with the movie. Clicking elsewhere in the movie box, however, spawns the actual YouTube site in another tab, which works properly.
Amanda,
I get the accent thing all the time. When people find out I’m from Minnesota it’s all about, “Talk like Fargo.” I still haven’t seen the bloody movie.
Funny you should say that, as it seems like Texas politicians go out of their way to fuck their constituents in the ass.
Metaphorically speaking, of course.
Maybe.
I’m from Brooklyn and very nearly do sound it.
Re the title: I guess this picture couldn’t have been taken in Texas…
That obviously doesn’t apply in Pennsylvania because I’ve seen video of Dick Cheney and Rick Santorum shaking hands.
The determination of which is which is left as an excersise for the reader…
I’m from Virginia, and when I’m around my home area my accent is a thick Virginny-Tarheel blend*, but everywhere else I go my diction is so clear people think I’m from Europe. Anyone else have a geographically-conditional accent, in that it changes based on where you are and/or who is around?
* sounds like a coffee, doesn’t it?
“Anyone else have a geographically-conditional accent, in that it changes based on where you are and/or who is around?”
I can’t “do” an accent to save my life, but I pick them up quickly - and not by choice - from people I’m talking to. My mother’s worse - she had a college roommate from the deep south and had to keep explaining that she wasn’t mocking her by talking like her…
Every time I go down to visit my relatives in Tegsus (Beaumont), I come back with a super-thick twang. After two days in New Jersey, a wonderful thing happens: Southeast-Texas mixes with Jersey and births one of the wierdest accents around.
Not that I have a Jersey accent, but I’m an accent chameleon, too.
Oh, and this is why the internet sites like goodvibes make good business–because of laws like this.
I have the Midwestern accent, and a lot of people here in New Jersey are shocked, like open mouth stare-type shock, that I sound the way I do, being from Arkansas. Then, they see that I’m wearing shoes, and they begin to think something fishy is going on here. Gah!
When I moved to Georgia from Virginia by way of Tennessee, people in Georgia thought I was English. Then, whenever I returned to Virginia to visit family, they laughed at my southernness, and when I did my college visits in the Boston area, I somehow turned into Scarlett O’Hara (which I think was just a reflex against the “pahk the cah” thing).
Interestingly enough, when I went to school in England, I was told that I was pretty much accent-free - until I got on the phone with someone back home, at which times I found myself surrounded by Englishfolk wanting to hear me say “y’all” and say “Oh, mah gawd” and call my mother “Mama.”
I had a coworker who grew up in north Georgia and ended up going to college in south Georgia. When she came home to visit at Christmastime, her mother just shook her head and clucked, “Will you just listen to her talk! Baby girl, your accent is plum rurnt.“
If you want to buy an anatomically correct condom demonstration model, you have to go to the Nueches location off 6th St. The North Loop location sells clothing and lingerie.
Well, at least he’s up front with his crazy. No studies, no white papers from a think tank, no fancy talk. He’d prefer to lynch the sodomites, but will settle for the more legally expedient fine.
I can understand that he thinks butt-fucking is filthy and icky and “a bad habit”, but how many people are so deeply concerned about the “bad habits” of others that it moves them to take up the time of a state legislature? It wasn’t even like there was a massive letter-writing or telephone campaign by his constituency to move him to do this-wholly on his own initiative.
The hilarious surreal conversation with the dildo saleslady is also something. If I wasn’t sure that Rep. Chisum et al. were deadly serious about that sort of thing, I would have at first assumed it was some kind of joke-a legislative nudge to put people into a situation where they can’t help but laugh. They could’ve passed it along with the statewide Silly Walks initiative.
The Dildo Diaries…
Check out this 11 minute segment of The Dildo Diaries, a documentary about Texas’ ban on dildos. It really gives you an appreciation for how ridiculous the Legislature can be…….
I pick up accents, too.
The only time I’ve ever had anyone laugh at my pronunciation, though, was when my best friend in high school thought it was hilarious that I pronounced the word “ambulaance” instead of “ambulehnce.”
My ex has worked at an adult video/magazine/toy store (not Forbidden Fruit) in Austin for years.
Their policy is to say that any dildo or vibrator is a “novelty item only,” and never to describe how it’s supposed to be used.
Undercover police officers will occasionally come in and start asking the clerk, “what is this? what’s it for?” and they have to just repeat, “it’s a novelty item, I can’t tell you what to do with it,” or they could be arrested and hauled off to jail. It’s crazy.
So much for freedom of speech.