I’d be remiss in not jumping on the dogpile after the absolute nut that BushCo just appointed as the deputy assistant secretary for population affairs who oversees the Office of Family Planning, who goes by the name Dr. Eric Keroack. This article from Alternet covers all the major bases, including the fact that this quack runs a series of crisis pregnancy centers, which means that he’s basically sold out his medical license in order to shill for the Wingnutteria. Unsurprisingly, he’s associated with Leslee Unruh, who is the anti-choice movement’s godfather. But what’s really awesome is he’s running around promoting a thoroughly unscientific notion that women who have sex basically deplete their ability to fall in love. No, I kid you not. His theory, which has no evidence, is that people (well, let’s be honest, he means women) who have sex with multiple partners somehow blow out their oxytocin receptors, and, in sum, if your lady’s not got a hymen when you fuck her, then she can’t ever really love you. It’s a pseudo-scientific way to disguise the idea that sluts are used up.
And he’s got a slideshow he uses to promote this lie! Because if you take a lie and put it in PowerPoint, that makes it true.
Sample slide:
His theory is that if a woman gets her oxytocin surges through more than one man in her life, she blows them out and becomes a sex addict, always seek the cock but never getting the love. However, he admits that women have oxytocin surges when they give birth, which means that by his very own measure, a woman uses up all her love on her first child and all subsequent children are addictive attempts to seek out that initial rush. Which means that women should only have one child, because they don’t really love the rest, due to those blown out receptors. However, since he’s an anti-choice nut, I don’t think he’s prepared to take his non-theory to the correct level.
Really, I felt his slideshow was a little off-base and I thought I’d help him out with a pseudo-scientific improvement on it that got to the heart of what he’s trying to get at with his anxiety about the idea of women having more than one sex partner in a lifetime. So I made my own slideshow.
Rest of my slideshow below the fold.
I think it’s good enough to get me a cushy government job with BushCo, don’t you think?
71 Responses to “PowerPoint, the next word in spreading anti-sex hysteria”
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And that’s where Auguste comes in. Ahhhh yeah.
Hopefully his PowerPoint slide will only work on people who function at the mental level of the Flintstones and also don’t know how to spell “chronically.” Y’know, before the recent elections, I woulda said “Well that covers the majority of Americans” and gotten deeply depressed, but now I’m thinking, “Maybe it’s slightly less than HALF of all Americans!” and feel moderately hopeful that an eyeroll and a snicker will be the majority response.
I love your slideshow, the New Wife has such a *winsome* expression on his face.
Hmmm… looks like some numbskull (and aren’t they all numbskulls in Wingnuttia?) read a bit about insulin resistance and type 2 diabetes and decided that it would be clever to claim that the same exact thing happens with sex and love instead of refined carbs. And lots of religious people seem to believe it, thinking that love and sexuality are limited in individuals (possibly true, for them) and that any love you give to someone unworthy is that much less for future partners. It’s really sad and depressing.
Wait, that Bugs Bunny/Flinstones slide isn’t a joke?
Are you fucking kidding me?
That thing about using up your oxytocin sounds like what they used to tell men to discourage masturbation-that you use up your finite supply of semen, or that it draws off cerebrospinal fluid and you become senile or mentally ill.
Then what causes lesbianism?
Hahahaha! Thank you. This needed a good Marcotting.
You’ll notice, though, that on the first slide he credits two people for helping him with powerpoint. So, if you did yours all by yourself you’re way overqualified.
(I like how he says “intact oxytocin response” too. Can you break your oxytocin response by using tampons?)
Well, yknow, lesbianism is a “lifestyle choice,” not biologically determined.
God. “What” is “up” with all “the quotation” marks? My eyes “bleed.”
My own observations tend in the opposite direction:
The more times I have sex with a woman, the more closely we become bonded, even if it was just a casual arrangement to begin with.
And the more time I have sex over my lifetime, the more loving and gentle I become, with a growing benevolence towards people in general.
And of course, immediately after any instance of sexual intercourse, I have a starry-eyed adoration for the whole world.
My conclusion: sex is good for the soul.
Apparently he was basing all this crap about oxytocin on a study that shows oxytocin to play an important role in monogamous pair-bonding…in voles.
That’s right, Mister SCIENCE! here thinks that something that works in voles must also work in humans, and not only that, but humans have exactly the same sort of mating patterns as small, shrew-like prairie animals.
That’s even more messed up than it looks.
Has PZ Myers done a complete take-down of the “biology” involved yet? I wish he would, because I’m itching to read it.
Wait, that Bugs Bunny/Flinstones slide isn’t a joke?
Are you fucking kidding me?
Yes, please clarify for me. The line between satire and reality no longer exists in my world.
Apparently he was basing all this crap about oxytocin on a study that shows oxytocin to play an important role in monogamous pair-bonding…in voles.
So, just to be clear, it is okay to admit that humans are animals when referencing monogamous animals, but not okay when referencing species that display homosexual behavior.
Please provide a link to the Flintstones/Bugs/Energizer Bunny slide. It is unbelievably, criminally stupid; I must see it for myself.
Thanks, great post!
I think someone should notify the intellectual property holders he is using those images in his presentation. Its illegal and he needs as much crap as we can throw his way.
It’s real. It’s in the Alternet article that’s linked.
Wait a minute… you mean the male essence doesn’t form into a homonculus within the woman’s womb? I mean, I can see how male essence sticks around if the woman is using some form of barrier contraception or something, like a diaphragm, but women obviously shouldn’t be doing that anyway, so it seems to me that there is no male essence residue left over in a woman’s vagina, since it all turns into a homonculus.
Also, maybe this implies that if a man does have a lot of monogamous sex with a woman, he keeps encountering his own sex hormones, which might make him become increasingly sexually attracted to himself, egotistical, and narcissistic? If so, is this a good or bad thing?
Interrobang - yes, here: PZ hits Keroack with science hammer
You know, if I had tried to present with slides that poor I would have been flunked and laughed out of undergrad.
So. Being a doctor and all, of course he understands that all of this is easily proved by surveying the self-reported number of sexual partners of pregnant woman, then assessing their birth outcomes and nursing experiences. Right?
But that would mean having some understanding of the role of oxytocin in labor, delivery, and breastfeeding, now wouldn’t it. Far beyond the basic understandings of an OB/GYN.
Is this guy basing his half-baked ideas on evolution? I love how they will (selectively) avail themselves of the theory they so abhor. How can you possibly base anything on observations of animals when we were created in His image and have no biological connection to the animal world? Confusing.
I do find the concept that a woman can “blow out” oxytocin receptors and become slutty intriguing. One thing that the proponents of biological essentialism in sexuality can never explain is why so many women are NOT the sweet little monogamous things who just want to cuddle and have babies for our providers. I mean, why the historically ever-present need for vigilance, i.e. chastity belts, FGM, shaming, etc, to contain the female libido since we don’t like sex that much to begin with? Kerouac explains it! We messed up our oxytocin receptors.
Someone tell the evo-psychers, quickly!
Gosh, and I was stuck on the part where you have to erase the bad memories to maintain a good relationship.
“…there was a strange man here, and he hit me hard. I heard the sound of it, Mother, but it didn’t hurt. It didn’t hurt at all. It was just as if he kissed my hand.”
This person’s presentation style, with all that overuse of shifting colors, “quotes”, CAPS AHOY, and funky arcane diagrams like that popeye thing, just reminded me of the Time Cube guy. At least he hasn’t been appointed for anything.
Will somebody please hand Edward Tufte a marked map and a gun?
Anyone who would defile Bugs Bunny in such a manner doesn’t deserve any oxytocin-charged lovin’.
I think you need to point out that when a man can only lose his sex hormones once; after that he’s faking it, trying to prove that he’s something he isn’t, and it’s in his best interest if those who care about him force him to accept the reality that once he’s shoved a load of them li’l critters out, he can’t ever honestly do it again. Ever.
So the message here for the ladyfriends is clear: if your best friend is addicted to behavior that’s hurting himself or other people, you must do whatever you can to make him stop doing that, right? So ladies, if he’s EVER had a climax before, with you or anyone else or his hand, or even just a dream lover, it’s CRUCIAL that you not let him do it again. He doesn’t have the wisdom or willpower to stop himself; he’s an addict. It’s Up To You.
Never again. It’s for his own good. He’ll thank you some day.
I think we need a Dawn Eden analysis on this immediately.
Then what causes lesbianism?
Education. Good god-fearin’ women should never go to college lest they… experiment…
I agree with paul. The bit about the bad memories going away looked to me like: “make sure you’ve got a virgin because she won’t mind being abused”. Sick fuck that that so-called doctor is.
Uh…I think that Warner Brothers and Hanna Barabara will be very interested to find out how this idiot is using their characters. And if they licensed them to him for this, they should be slammed. Hard.
These PPs are so awful (aesthetically as well as factually) that they deserve the bad PowerPoint line of all time, “And a miracle happens here.”
However, the wingers probably believe in miracles, such as that these PPs will persuade kids rather than causing them to roll on the floor laughing their asses off.
[…] has a slideshow. Permalink| […]
No, see, there’s a solution - every time you have sex, you just have to not hug or talk to anyone for a week or so to compensate. Hopefully they can make some sort of table to convert minutes of smalltalk to orgasms to hugs so we can keep our ocytocin levels nice and steady.
I’m getting a fucking oxytocin surge just reading this. Thank God every woman I ever slept with was a virgin, or else that nasty oxytocin would be melting my brain away right now.
Wait… I just realized… maybe one of those floozies wasn’t a virgin after all!!!
Finally I understand. That excess oxytocin is why I keep hearing voices, and lusting after men, and pissing my pants.
Thank you, Dr. Keroack. You have opened my eyes, and now I realize that you and I are meant for each other. Let us live together, and pray together, and you can have my babies. Or vice versa.
Amen.
No, see, there’s a solution - every time you have sex, you just have to not hug or talk to anyone for a week or so to compensate.
So… become a Episcopalian WASP?
I think the new wife guy is hot.
Wait, so what happens if in one of my slutty addictive behaviors I get pregnant and give birth? Is it like getting an oxytocin power-up?
[i]Unfaithful men and promiscuous women are created by misuse of the “emotional glue” of attraction, an abuse leading to a “perpetual cycle of misery.”[/i]
Because men are never promiscuous. Just unfaithful.
I can’t even make sense of the second PowerPoint slide posted in the Alternet article. Unbelievable.
Unfaithful men and promiscuous women are created by misuse of the “emotional glue” of attraction, an abuse leading to a “perpetual cycle of misery.”
Because men are never promiscuous. Just unfaithful.
I can’t even make sense of the second PowerPoint slide posted in the Alternet article. Unbelievable.
Dammit. Sorry.
Ah, Dr. Keroquack, the gift that keeps on giving. Every new blog post I see about this guy reveals something new and horrible.
Jill–me too! he can be MY wife ANYTIME!
Is there anybody we can be writing/calling to get this idiot removed and pronto?
[…] PZ Myers explains the “science” behind the “presentation” and “Amanda” cooks up a powerpoint of her “own”. […]
But doesn’t this point to a regime of oxytocin hormone replacement as a simple substitute for chastity and monogamy?
Take a little RU-666 pill and it’s like you’re a 16 (or in the casse of John Derbyshire, 14) year old virgin?
Sounds like it’s got possibilities!
Mmmmyeah, liking that wife-guy. And thank you for that, Andrea, ‘cause associating sex and Fred Flinstone dried me up like a raisin.
Wait–if we can measure oxytocin depeletion, does this mean that womens’ sluttitude is scientifically quantifiable? Surely, this will lead to a precise scale of a woman’s promiscuity (virgin–floozy–harlot–jezebel–whore–madonna) and, therefore, value as a human being. After all, a woman’s character is all in her pants, and it must be, er, examined thoroughly. How can we judge them and treat them accordingly if we don’t know how many men they’ve slept with?
I’ve got a nasal spray container full with lovely oxytocin from when I had trouble getting the breastfeeding to work. I wonder what will happen if I go for a sniff?
(20 minutes later) No, not much. I have a slight headache, which I’ve always gotten from this. No high, no desire to have lots of promiscous sex, no bonding to the spray bottle. Not even particularly full breasts.
Seriously, if oxytocin was a miracle feel good chemical, there’d be a black market for these spray bottles.
“Do you want THIS to be your new wife?”
YES!!!!!!!!!!!!
I think my favorite bit - that is, the bit that made me scratch my head and go “huh?” - was the blacked-out silhouette of fucking mice, followed by mice smoking cigarettes. Can’t have explicit mouse sex going on, ‘cause it might make the viewers want to have sex with mice or something.
What I got out of it–if you don’t marry a virgin, she will quickly figure out you suck in bed and will dump your sorry fundie ass.
There’s something fundamentally wrong with using pictures of rabbits to promote an anti-sex argument.
Well, the Energizer bunny is obviously the non-humping, save-it-for-marriage bunny who succumbed to the urge to touch itself on its naughty rabbit bits, resulting in blindness (see the dark glasses?) and forcing the poor screwed-up bunny to resort to radical surgery (having drumsticks welded to its paws) to prevent further deterioration.
The above makes exactly as much sense as the rest of this horrifically-bad PowerPoint piece of poop.
I do find the concept that a woman can “blow out” oxytocin receptors and become slutty intriguing.
Oh, I assure you, you’re not the only one who finds it “intriguing.”
Will somebody please hand Edward Tufte a marked map and a gun?
You’ll have to wait until he gets back from the Pentagon.
So… become a Episcopalian WASP?
What part of “have sex” did you not understand, PiaToR?
Let the appointment of this crank remind us what a monumental task awaits us. If, FSM willing, a Democratic President takes office in 2009, he or she will not merely be confronted with a budget catatrophe, a wrecked military, and a foreign policy landscape littered with diplomatic burned bridges. He or she will have to spend time rooting out all of the vicious theocrats that this administration has packed executive agencies with. I don’t envy this hypothetical Democratic President at all. Imagine, even if you do fix all of the above, Jeb! just gallops in in 2012 and takes it away from you (Yes, I’m willing to believe that the electorate will be that fucking stupid. The midterm season actually included influential Republicans caught with live boys, and it was still close.).
Was I the only one who read Oxytocin as Oxycontin and got horrible, horrible images of Rush Limbaugh in my brain?
And a big word up to everyone who suggested contacting Warner Bros., Hanna-Barbera, and Energizer to let them know how their intellectual property is being used. That slide is a crime against many things, not limited to graphic design.
So what happens if after the Purity Ball daddy uses his “covered” property a few times before he sells it off to some snot nosed fundie guy for marriage. I suppose that’s OK since he was just keeping it warm before he passed it off to the next guy for marriage/breeding purposes. Does that use up all the ocytocin or is that spared since the whole thing is ordained by god?
“Eric Keroack, medical director of A Woman’s Concern Health Centers, a pro-life counseling organization, said sexual activity today is comparable to warfare.
“Sexual activity is a war zone,” he said. “What we have is this ongoing war. So we’re constantly coming up with better equipment,” he said, referring to contraceptive strategies and abortions.
“And the truth is that somewhere along the way people die in war,” Keroack added. He acknowledged that deaths from abortion-related complications are rare, but that “they die emotionally.” http://www.alternet.org/rights/44411/
Now I get it!
Leslee Unruh had an abortion years ago. Therefore, as Keroack-ack-ack explains, she is emotionally dead! That’s why she is able to advocate such anti-women positions.
RED ON CYAN! RED ON CYAN! *bleeds from eyes*
Well, the Energizer bunny is obviously the non-humping, save-it-for-marriage bunny who succumbed to the urge to touch itself on its naughty rabbit bits, resulting in blindness (see the dark glasses?) and forcing the poor screwed-up bunny to resort to radical surgery (having drumsticks welded to its paws) to prevent further deterioration.
Don’t be an idiot - he was a drummer before the drumsticks got welded to his paws. Why do you think he wasn’t getting any sex like the other bunnies in the band?
“So… become a Episcopalian WASP?”
What part of “have sex� did you not understand, PiaToR?
*sigh* Yet again I have to explain the facts of life to people. Where exactly do you think little Episcopalian WASPs come from?
When a Mommy E-WASP and a Daddy E-WASP really really love each other, they send each other exquisitly subtle signals. Memos from trust funds. Messages left in the glove compartment of the Beemer. That sort of thing. God knows, they can’t talk about it.
After a decade or so of this mating dance, their hormones are in a frenzy and they abandon all reason in a tide of sexual frenzy. After exchanging notes from their lawyers, they attend the same charity ball together. The man actually helps the woman into her own car before they are driven seperately back to the mansion. There, they dismiss the servants before negotiating the delicate matter of which bedroom to share. Usually this involves a conversation about stocks, with the best provider getting their way.
After the event, ashamed and disgusted, the man books a golf tour in Scotland and the woman goes to San Tropez. And that’s where she meets Claude the pool boy, who tends to be the father most of the time anyhow.
That PPP has to be the most condescending thing ever. The elementary school “where babies come from” presentation I endured in the fourth grade assumed more sophistication and maturity from its target audience! I hate to think about the intelligence level of anyone in the audience who was impressed by that. And for those of you without iron cast stomachs who didn’t get through the whole presentation, we can add all the Gary Larson Farside cartoons he ripped off for his presentation.
Where exactly do you think little Episcopalian WASPs come from?
[Hilarity ensues.]
Okay, I think I might have to abandon the Mouse and Disco Ball for the worship of PiatoR. Wait, would that mean I’d also have to worship Ba’al Hammon? ‘Cause Ba’al Hammon and I have a history.
Compare this world view, promoted by this doctor, to the world view which might be honestly held by a truly attractive heterosexual male. I don’t mean “attractive” in the merely physical sense, I mean “attractive” in every sense - sane, a good sense of humor, good taste in music and clothes, reasonably secure both emotionally and financially, etc. Imagine the things that a very attractive male might be able to assert as observed facts about female sexuality.
It’s an interesting comparison to make, because when you make it, you begin to realize how much these Christian fundamentalists are expressing the world view of unattractive men. Yes, they try to disguise that with religious rhetoric, but I think many of these men are simply unattractive, and have been unattractive all their lives, and their unattractiveness has shaped their view of women. Again, I don’t mean “unattractive” simply in the physical sense, I mean it in the broadest possible sense - no sense of humor, poor taste in music and clothes, rigid, domineering, insecure, etc.
An authentically attractive male, if he were to make honest assertions about female behavior that he’d observed, might state things like this:
women have strong sex drives
women often initiate romantic adventures
women love to flirt
women sometimes want to have sex with no strings attached
These aren’t political statements, these are simply statements that an authentically attractive male might make based on his own experiences with women. Compare these statements with the ideas being pushed by the fundamentalists/right-wingers and you get a sense of how much their own unattractiveness have shaped the world-views of men such as Dr. Eric Keroack.
Can we please not be so (ugh) “lookist”, Lawrence? I’m a moderately unattractive male, and I don’t share any of Dr Keroack’s mental problems (I have bright shiny ones of my own, mind).
“Can we please not be so (ugh) “lookistâ€?, Lawrence? ”
I wasn’t defining attractiveness in physical terms. Sorry if that wasn’t clear. I did repeat that point twice though.
So the essence of his hormone glue theory is that the more sexual stimuation a woman has had before you, the less likely that she will be satisfied with fucking only you? So if you can’t prove that your girlfreind is a vergin then you better not trust/love/or respect her. But think, what if my church approved vergin has been secretly stimulating herself?!
Oh no, now she will never be able to love me because of painfull huanting memories of all the times she vainly sought love and approval from her showerhead!
i think you need to shrink your slides down enough so you can make a t-shirt. i was laughing so hard i almost fell out of my chair. and then i went and sent this email, though i’m sure no one will read it.
This idea seems about as well thought out as when a male friend of mine stated that he didn’t “approve” of women getting clitoral hood piercings, because apparently women only have a finite number of orgasms so they would be used up quickly. I stared at him, and said, “no. just…no” He had the smallest of excuses in that he was an ex-crackhead stoner with no kind of education regarding physiology whatsoever. We’re not exactly friends anymore.
This guy has nothing, absolutly nothing to excuse his statements of OBVIOUS lies. But it’s good to know that he views us “wimins” to be so stupid as to believe his drivel. Please, please put him in charge of my uterus!
“Then what causes lesbianism?”
Dr. Eric Keroack.
Thank you…thank you very much…
[…] Remember the anti-reproduction-rights hack the Bush administration appointed to the “population affairs” in the Office of Family Planning? Dr. Eric Keroack. Well, the dude has a nutty powerpoint presentation aimed at children to show that women who have a lot of sex can’t fall in love. […]
An excellent question, since as we discover in the PZ Meyers post:
You just KNEW there had to be a connection, didn’t you?
I think the thing that really & deeply offends me is that is one of the worst Powerpoint slides I have ever seen. Way too much writing on it. Title and three bullet points with six words or less! He should have concise statements & then use his talk to explain the rest of his mysoginistic psuedo-scientific BS. Geeze, it’s wordy even as a poster…
Who knew!? I guess I’ll have to expect my husband to turn gay sometime in the future. Women should NEVER be made to feel ashamed for taking control of their own sexuality.
Way to set women’s reproductive freedoms/health back another century.