the weekend has landed!

No, not really. But I love me some YouTube. It allows me to share with you all screamingly funny scenes from Human Traffic, from which my new music icon (thanks, geekchick!) is stolen.

"This could turn Hare Krishna into a bad boy":

"Star Wars is definitely about drug culture..." (yanno, I think I had something similar to this conversation at least once in my raving career):

belated book review

I finished Virgin: The Untouched History, a while ago but haven't commented on it until now due to procrastination.

I'd been waiting eagerly for it to come out ever since I found out Blank was writing it, because the importance of virginity (or lack thereof) had been hammered into me from an early age, but my own experiences didn't agree with what I'd been told. I thought it would be interesting to read about the subject minus all the assumptions, by someone who's actually done the research and has something new to say. On these grounds this book delivers, and how!

I enjoyed this book thoroughly because it preached to my particular choir: there's no universally agreed upon means of physically identifying virgins or virginity (the hymen wasn't even noted by medical science until the Middle Ages), and the definition of what does or doesn't constitute "sex" varies widely by culture, time, and place and even individual, but most of the the modern West still perceives hetero PIV intercourse as the "sex act of record".

This further feeds my suspicion that too much is made of virginity, often as a means of controlling women and/or the young. Virginity loss (whatever form that takes - IMHO there are multiple virginities) IS a big deal, but it doesn't separate the adults from the kids or the prudes from the pervs, nor does it change the world :P

In short, I recommend. More at the link above, and Hanne Blank is interviewed about the book on the latest RH Reality Check podcast.