The Tyee recently ran a hysterical (pun intended) book excerpt on how the evil pharmaceutical companies are trying to help women have more fun in bed. The authors’ concern is that the way licensing in the US works, a drug cannot be sold and insured unless it’s treating a formal disorder. So if a pharmaceutical company discovers a drug that fixes a problem people have, they need to get scientists to explicitly define that problem as a disorder before people are allowed to have the drug.

Rather than discovering “natural” classifications of disorders, scientists invent disorders and test their definitions for internal consistency with a treatment. I guess this sounds really horrible if you’re an alarmist modernist, but I’m not sure who else in society would be better qualified to invent disorders? As the article warns, “drug companies are sometimes involved in…giving a little known condition renewed attention”!! And sometimes the companies are so insidious, that they give attention to widespread but ignored conditions like women’s sexual function.

Because after all, heaven forbid we have a way to solve common problems: “to what extent are women’s problems of desire and arousal really the signs of dysfunctions, or rather common sexual difficulties being portrayed as diseases in order to sell drugs?” Instead, the article advocates a movement in psychiatry called the New View, which says that patients’ disorders are mostly caused by “the broader context of her life, her relationships, and the wider society and culture in which she lives.”

I wonder what New View psychiatrists tell their patients? “Your disorder is caused by society; I’ll try to have it fixed by our next session.” If society is broken, why is it unreasonable to take something to cope? Men clearly appreciate having sexual dysfunction treatments (because men are capable of separating psychological and physical desire for sex), who are we to tell women that they shouldn’t want them too?

The BBC sez men who dance all awesome (click through for tutorial video) are more attractive to women — because they come across as healthier (better able to move)!

Grind that axis of multidimensional rotation, boy!

The school I’m going to was built on the former grounds of The London Asylum for the Insane. The buildings are still standing, and it might be a good place to film.

First, from Heritage London’s whitepaper, as a reason to preserve: “Impressive scale and architecture of Victorian period public buildings and landscape.”

Next, here are some notes from an MA thesis on the asylum:

“[Dr. Burke prescribed] opium, not alcohol, although it was found to be addictive, [lowered] appetite, and caused nausea. He prescribed cannabis for sleep.”

“Masturbation was seen as the cause of insanity. The theory was that during sex blood rushed to the head causing damage to nerves in the brain. Masturbation [at a young age] was worse.”

From an urban exploration site (warning: has music), this tidbit:

“A more contraversial [sic] treatment method that [Dr. Burke] used was his gynecological surgeries, performed on over 200 women between 1895 and 1901. The theory at the time was that a women’s [sic] mental health was intimately linked to her reproductive system.”

Last, here’s a photoset from an urban explorer who was resourceful enough to get inside. There are some great, eerie shots there.

There’s definitely a scenario hiding there. Weird surgeries and patient gardens — they even built a chapel — all under the haze of opiates, cannabis, and insanity in Victorian Upper Canada.

The Supreme Court of Canada is hearing a case involving a woman who consented to sex while unconscious, was then rendered unconscious, had a domestic dispute the next day later, reported her partner to the police for rape, and then withdrew her accusation.

The arguments in the case are neat, with one side claiming that consent ends with consciousness so rapists can’t happen upon sleeping victims and claim prior consent, and the other claiming that the government has no place infantilizing women’s choices in the bedroom and criminalizing partners who consent to sleep-sex (not to mention all the sexsomniacs wandering around).

(Via Savage)

There’s a summary article in The Stranger, photos included, by someone who actually knew her and seems to have closely followed the trial — more horse’s mouth, perhaps, than the drug-fueled media portrayals.

A woman with condoms, weed, and a vibrator does not a psychopath make — and thank God!

Here’s the CBS story on the case (via Friends of Amanda):

Jared Facebooked me the following, a Globe story about the Canadian government going after an FLDS elder for polygamy and tax evasion.

In adding up Mr. Blackmore’s income and benefits, the federal government identifies numerous expenses that tax officials say were for personal benefit or the benefit of his polygamous community, and not for business reasons. The list of items include payments for rental housing and for hockey game tickets, expenses related to the use of a Cessna aircraft and paying off personal credit cards.

Expenses which aren’t undertaken to earn business income are allocated to an account, usually called something like “Loans to Shareholders”. At the end of the fiscal period this account is closed against shareholder compensation to minimize taxes.

Pretend you put a personal-use G6 on your corporate black card. Here are the journal entries:

dr. Shareholder Loan (jet) $60 million
cr. Account Payable (Amex) $60 million

Then at tax prep time:

dr. Shareholder Compensation $60 million
cr. Shareholder Loan (jet) $60 million

Simplifying the entries (canceling the loan cr/dr):

dr. Shareholder Compensation $60 million
cr. Account Payable (Amex) $60 million

You’re essentially appropriating value from the company. The problem is when the government asks you to pay taxes on that $60 million — you can’t remit 50% of a private jet.

This also applies to family members of shareholders, which leads to an odd situation. Blackmore is accused of polygamy, and has asked the government to pay for his defense. The CRA audit of his accounts apparently included Blackmore corporate disbursements to his poly-wives and poly-kids in Blackmore’s income, as above.

The tax department also challenges the payment of $40,953.87 in 2003 to Ruth Lane, who is identified in the court document as Mr. Blackmore’s spouse. A woman named Ruth Ann Lane is one of 19 woman allegedly in a polygamous relationship with Mr. Blackmore. “Lane did not perform any work for the company during the 2003 taxation year,” the federal government states. The amount paid to Ms. Lane was “unreported employment remuneration” for Mr. Blackmore, the government says.

Because they’ve deemed his non-cash income to be so high, they’re saying he should pay for his own defense.

Canada assumed Blackmore’s guilt, and is using that assumption to financially short-circuit his defense against the accusation. This doesn’t seem very fair. I know there’s a privacy firewall between the CRA and law enforcement — you’re supposed to report and pay taxes on income from illegal activities — but surely if the tax court says he’s a polygamist for tax purposes that will bias the criminal court’s decision on whether he’s a polygamist for jail purposes? Any IANALs in da house?

A quick note on polygamy: It shouldn’t be illegal — government out of the bedroom! Remember that result in sociology, that people lump “sexual deviants” together? It’s why people used to be paranoid that gay men shouldn’t teach children, because they’re “obviously” paedophiles. Same thing here.

“Polygamy” is, let’s be honest, another cultural shorthand for paedophilia. Rather than confusing the issue with moralizing and religion we should enforce existing age of consent and human trafficking rules. There is no good reason that consenting adults blah blah blah, you can take it from here.

Evolutionary psychologists believe that differences in optimal mating strategies between men and women lead to widespread differences in behavior. These theories have been widely popularized and have a huge impact on folk psychology.

The most cited difference is the energy investment in growing an immature ovum to a baby. This is said to explain, for example, why women are choosier with their sexual partners.

Another difference that might be far more deeply ingrained in our culture, is the reproductive window: babies are optimally produced by young women. This is said to explain, for example, why almost all heterosexual men are ephebophiles.

My entire life plan relies on the fact that I can continue to date women I find attractive: greater than 50% of such women are younger than me at any future point in time. But the NY Times has reviewed a number of studies that find a correlation between father age and child malfunction. The article briefly considers the question: what if these science facts become integrated into our culture and the reproductive window is applied to men?