Coming soon: invasion of the marauding nymphomaniacs

Thanks to 'female Viagra' and government regulation, we women can enjoy sex again – just hopefully not too much

• 
• • Naomi McAuliffe
  • guardian.co.uk, Monday 27 May 2013 17.18 BST

'People like sex. Sex is sexy.' Photograph: Jennifer Szymaszek/AP

We are standing on the brink of the breakdown of society. A world in which the economy grinds to a halt. Schools stand empty; there are no teachers left and the dinner ladies have found something better to do. Hospitals career towards crisis point as nurses become the uniformed sex-crazed bunnies that porn has long suspected them to be. This is the land of the marauding nymphomaniacs – hypersexed women who are hardly able to walk straight, never mind function as citizens.

This is the risk potentially posed by Lybrido, the female arousal drug (or "female Viagra"), according to some "experts" who are worried that this drug won't get past the regulators unless there are assurances that it won't lead to women becoming raptorial sex beasts. Women should like more sex, but not too much.

Of course this is another pharmaceutical attempt to cure social ills with a pill. A lower libido in both men and women may well have more to do with that screaming baby in the next room or the pending redundancy at work than anything physiological. But dealing with individuals' psychology or social circumstances is boring and hard and complex while pharmaceutical marketing is fun and easy and quick.

And this involves SEX. People like sex. Sex is sexy. Diarrhoea isn't sexy, lung disease isn't sexy and things that aren't sexy get less of our attention and investment. Female sexuality is even more dark and mysterious and feeds those odd social constructs that say women don't like sex as much as men do and therefore have to be "fixed", unless they do like sex as much as men do and so must be broken and are either mad, bad or wanton. Maybe women need a recommended daily fornication allowance.

Interestingly, the inspiration for the lady-horn enhancer was not a desire to create a louche legion of loose women, but came from one tragic man's way of getting over a broken heart. Dr Adrian Tuiten, head of the Dutch firm Emotional Brain, which developed the drug, was trying to understand why his long-term girlfriend dumped him in his 20s. Apparently "the breakup inspired a lifelong quest to comprehend female emotion through biochemistry and led to his career as a psychopharmacologist." (I'd suggest the desire to comprehend female emotion through biochemistry might actually be part of the reason for the break-up). The developers of this drug actually want it to promote monogamy, not instigate indiscriminate sex mania.

The trials completed so far on this drug have been exclusively with women in long-term, monogamous relationships where simply the spark has gone. However, increasingly evidence shows that for many women the cause of their sexual malaise appears to be monogamy itself. Evolutionary psychologists (or as I like to call them, Just So Story tellers) claim that it is innate biology that gives men a naturally higher sex drive. But ameta-analysis of studies by psychologists in 2010 shows little sex differences in the sexuality of men and women and where there were differences – such as rates of masturbation or pornography use – they were heavily influenced by culture and the gender equity of the social group studied.

It is almost impossible to separate female sexuality from culture. Depending on a variety of factors from the number of sexual partners you have had, how much flesh you show, whether you use contraception, how much you masturbate (because women do masturbate!), whether or not you "use" pornography (read it, watch it, look at it) and what kind of pornography it is ("it's a book, therefore erotica!") all variously determine whether you are a slut, whore, slag, prude, lesbian, harlot, prig or the veritable Mrs Grundy.

Society is as concerned by women who like sex as those who don't. Nymphomania was a form of mental illness or disease in the Victorian era with seemingly endless symptoms; masturbation, homosexuality, sexual dreams, or in one case the "lascivious leer of her eye and lips, the contortions of her mouth and tongue, the insanity of lust which disfigured [her]". This disease was variously "cured" with abstinence, vegetarianism, cold douches or more viciously with confinement to an asylum or even a form of female genital mutilation where the clitoris was removed.

The modern version is seemingly to attain that perfect balance between women enjoying sex more in their long-term, increasingly loveless, monogamous relationship through some kind of love potion and also resisting the ever-present lure of the strumpet within us. Only a heady combination of drugs, government regulation (through marriage, adultery laws, access to contraception) and overwhelming social pressures seem to be able to regulate female sexuality around the world. Who knows what would happen if we could discover and develop our own sexuality and properly understand how that changes and fluctuates over time and circumstance? Who knows what might have been achieved had people spent their energy on things other than regulating female sexuality? Perhaps everyone might be happier and hornier.

Three reasons why a vagina is not like a laptop

Former Crimewatch presenter Nick Ross seems to think there are parallels between rape and property theft

• 
• • Sarah Ditum
  • guardian.co.uk, Sunday 26 May 2013 14.04 BST

‘This is an idea that belongs to the dark ages when women were permitted to own nothing apart from their "honour".' Photograph: LJSphotography / Alamy/Alamy

"Don't have nightmares!" Nick Ross used to say, when he hosted Crimewatch, but little did we guess at the Hellraiser-esque horrors haunting our plucky watcher of crime until this weekend. In an extract from his book, Crime, published in the Mail today, Ross reveals that he has been afflicted with a terrible case of visual agnosia which has left him unable to tell the difference between vaginas and laptops.

He writes: "We have come to acknowledge it is foolish to leave laptops on the back seat of a car […] Our forebears might be astonished at how safe women are today given what throughout history would have been regarded as incitement […] Equally they would be baffled that girls are mostly unescorted, stay out late, often get profoundly drunk and sometimes openly kiss, grope or go to bed with one-night stands."

Obviously, writing a manuscript in a state of perpetual confusion between portable computers and female genitals is a distressing condition – is that a return key or a clitoris? – and Ross is to be applauded for battling through to the end of his wordcount. And so, in a spirit of compassion for the baffled, I would like to offer Ross a brief guide to the ways in which women and their vaginas are not like cars and laptops.

1. Not every car contains a vagina

When you carefully tuck your high-value portable property under the passenger seat (just kidding, smash-and-grabbers! That's definitely not where my iPad is!), it's because you don't want potential thieves to know it's there. But draping your vagina in a floor-length modesty frock is unlikely to persuade anyone that don't have one, and therefore might not be worth violating. This is not a quantum mechanics problem. Schrödinger's fanny is not a thing.

2. A laptop is a portable electronic device, a vagina is a body part

Does it whir? Does it make small clicking sounds? Can it be placed in a briefcase and carried around separately to its owner? That is a laptop. Is it a fibromuscular tubular tract located between a woman's thighs? Vagina. Taking the former from a car would be an act of theft. Penetrating the latter without the woman's consent would be a physical assault – and that's true even if the woman has behaved in a way that makes it obvious that she has a vagina and sometimes uses it for fun! No one says to the victim of a beating: "Well, anyone could see you had teeth. You were just asking to have them broken with all the eating you do."

3. You can't insure a vagina

Having your car broken into and your valuables taken sucks. But, understanding that this is a world where some people might be driven to desperate acts for small rewards, you might make a heavy sigh and sweep up the glass (secretly hoping that the drugs your laptop has paid for turn out to be mostly cornflour), and then go and put in your insurance claim. Being raped is – and I know this is going to surprise you, Nick Ross, so prepare yourself – worse than that. There is no insurance that lets you claim back the state of being not-raped. There's no cloud backup to restore your pre-rape internal data. You've been raped, and that is profoundly horrible.

When Ross compares rape to theft, he presents it as a crime of property, not a crime of violence. It's an idea that belongs to the dark ages when women were permitted to own nothing apart from that abstract quality called "honour". Now – oh, fortunate modern females! – we are understood to have to rights to all sorts of things, including the right to decide who we do or don't want in our own orifices. And that's a right we cannot forfeit. Whatever we've drunk, however we're dressed and whoever we've kissed, a vagina is never a laptop.

Three idiots and a scam that won’t die

Pritish Nandy

Always watch out for 'The Big Obsessive Scam' the media goes after. It often covers up a great deal more than it reveals. It also draws away our immediate attention from issues where we were about to get close to a dangerous truth or two. Poirot famously described it as a red herring, a cunning device to draw people’s attention away from real issues to focus on a non sequitur MacGuffin.


Also read - Sreesanth a modern day Valmiki

Like the MacGuffin, which Hitchcock made cult, The Big Obsessive Scam vanishes or becomes irrelevant once its purpose is over. This is what the spot fixing scam could be: Too much outrage chasing what matters so little to most of us. The evidence in hand is flimsy, so flimsy that it’s unlikely to get past the smallest court but the noise around it is so much one would think World War III has broken out.

The day news channels were chasing Gurunath Meiyappan all the way from Kodaikanal to Madurai to Mumbai to the Crime Branch at midnight, millions were happily sitting in front of their TVs watching Mumbai Indians battling Rajasthan Royals at the Eden Gardens, proving yet again that there are two Indias with their own sets of concerns and priorities. I confess I was among those watching the game, rooting for Rahul Dravid whose team lost with a ball to spare.

But this column is not about two Indias. What bothers me is the carpet bombing scam coverage that ensured there were no goodbyes for the man who with evangelical zeal exposed the sleazy underbelly of Indian politics over the past 5 years, and did his best to set it right. Worse, there was no debate over who his successor ought to be. So the Government sneaked in its own nominee, clearly to undo some of the outstanding work Vinod Rai, India’s bravest Comptroller and Auditor General did in his own low key style.

That may not be so easy though. Rai made the 153-year-old office of CAG a powerful weapon in his fight against corruption by the mightiest in the land. Till Rai came, CAG saw its job as writing long winding reports, more often than not hugely delayed, on the inefficiencies in government systems. None of those reports had the kind of impact that Rai’s reports created, especially those on 2G (revealing $38.9 billion gifted away by the Government to its cronies),  coal mining licences (involving another $34 billion loss of revenue) and the infamous Commonwealth Games that brought us so much shame. Courts intervened, including the highest court in the land; ministers landed up in jail or got shamed and sacked; investigations landed up at the Prime Minister’s door.  

Amidst all this outrage over spot fixing, Rai quietly demitted office last week. He was even more quietly replaced by someone less likely to expose the Government’s lapses.  Several other crucial issues that were being debated in the public space, like China’s incursions in Ladakh, the Vadera land deals, Muslim youth arrested and held for years on trumped up terrorist charges and now being released and, above all, the Supreme Court demanding the freeing of the CBI from the Government’s unholy clutches are now on the backburner. Even the Ranbaxy issue, where intrepid whistle blower Dinesh Thakur exposed the grave misdemeanours of one of India’s leading pharma companies and the dangers implicit in those for millions of us who buy its products, have been largely ignored. All we are left discussing are 3 idiots, a C-grade TV star, a lecherous umpire and a boastful son-in-law of the BCCI chairman, all of whom may well be crooks and fixers but must not be allowed to hijack the nation’s attention and agenda.

A father-in-law is the last person to know what his son-in-law is up to. Allowing him to stay in his holiday home in Kodaikanal is not the same as endorsing his petty vices or (as yet unsubstantiated) attempts to fix IPL matches. I may be a lone voice saying this. But I really think we are all playing into the hands of those who have much more to hide than these dolts. Srinivasan’s enemies (and heaven knows, he has far too many of them) are having a field day. But ask yourself, do you really care whether he heads the BCCI or Sharad Pawar. Or Rajiv Shukla. Frankly, my dear I don’t give a damn.

Cricket - Playing on a rotten wicket

by Bishan Singh Bedi

The Indian Premier League is rotten to the core. But let’s be clear that the rot did not set in yesterday. It has been this way since its inception. The first, almost self-anointed, chairman of the governing council of the IPL, Lalit Modi, has been on the run for reasons best known to the present BCCI president. And the less said about his successor, the better.

Whoever thought these two gentlemen were fit to head IPL ought to be hauled up for all its ills. Equally, anybody associated with IPL, in whatever capacity, is party to the malaise that wraps itself around it.

My life’s experience also tells me that all undeserving holders of high profile offices often meet the end they deserve. But who has been the biggest loser all along? Cricket, of course. And is anybody bothered really? I could have died a million deaths the other day when my wife asked me: “Aren't you ashamed of yourself as a cricketer?” Mind you she’s not a cricket buff at all, but her observation was piercing enough. My misfortune is that I am still alive to face the barrage of questions from others, but there is little I can do to prevent them.

I’m not ashamed to have been a cricketer; but I am ashamed to have my background linked to the present in which cricket has been turned into a religion without any spiritual ethics.

“No punishment would be big enough for ‘dirty/greedy’ cricketers,” the BCCI boss thundered from Kodaikanal. My humble query is this: who created the ‘dirt’ and ‘greed’ in the first place? Surely, the cricketers could not have discovered the ‘dirt’ and the ‘greed’ on their own. So if the cricketers fell prey to an organised brand of avarice, do we really blame them or the IPL and its widespread net of sleaze money?

Not for a moment do I wish to condone the action of the cricketers who have been nabbed. But is this the first instance of crime in cricket IPL-style, and will it be the last?

IPL bares the soullessness of some of the giants of Indian cricket who cannot stop raving about it. It is nauseating to observe, day in day out, India’s former greats competing with each other to outsmart the cricketing dictionary.

“Do you watch IPL?” I've been asked this question often enough. Yes, I do, on TV. Not because I want to, but mustn’t I know what the hell is going on around me in the name of cricket? Sadly, what I see makes for a revolting spectacle that begs a question: why do we not say “this is not cricket?” We never use any other sport to describe the ‘dignity, honesty, uprightness and integrity’ of a human activity better than cricket. But what is provided by the IPL, and highlighted brazenly by the Indian giants, is nothing but a crass cacophony of sycophancy — each trying to outdo the other to impress the bosses who obviously seem to enjoy it no end.

Yes, we see huge crowds in stadia, but I am convinced only a few come to see the cricket. For the rest, it’s just a chance to be part of the din and, and perhaps be caught by television cameras, even if only for a split second.

Am I surprised that the most influential, arrogant and haughty sports official in the history of Indian sport — its present President — has been reduced to an object of mockery?  Here is a man blinded by his own monumental craving for insatiable authority. He is not prone to tolerating any opposition and the entire BCCI is shamelessly familiar with his clout. And now, all these cronies are dumbfounded. They are buying time so that the sixth edition of the IPL can be confined to the corrupted cupboards.

Finally, BCCI is not IPL, but IPL is BCCI.  Youngsters jumping on the IPL bandwagon may do so, at their own peril. I am up to my neck listening to ‘experts’ about how IPL has helped youngsters gain cricket knowledge by sharing dressing rooms with the crème de la crème of the cricketing world.

I am also constrained to remark that the Indian media is sadly running with the hare and hunting with the hounds. It doesn’t quite add up, if you ask me.

Where's the Big Idea?

by M J Akbar

Ever since ideology committed suicide in the early 1990s, those in power have sought to fill the vacuum with ideas. Most ideas were perceptive and prescriptive; some were even brilliant. The flexibility was exhilarating after too many decades of doctrine born in an open mind but killed by a closed one.

Pragmatism became politically correct. But a serious problem was soon evident: it was difficult to make ideas work without a framework. The patterns of democracy encouraged spasmodic birth but hindered growth. Politics eroded the time necessary for nurture. A five-year term in office began with loads of self-congratulation. Then eager eggheads sat down to set policy into language that could buy advocacy from media and support from the legislature. But if the process entered the third, or worse fourth, it was overtaken by uncertainty, spluttered and shuffled before the withdrawal symptoms arrived.

Some ideas, of course, do get through. The first UPA government can take legitimate credit for the nuclear deal with the United States, and the employment programme code named NREGA. The trouble was that both promised more than they delivered.

The nuclear deal was sold to voters as the launching pad for India’s rise into superpower zone. Objective reality argued against hyperbole, but through some heavy winking by powerful politicians, illusion acquired the strength of hope. Enough young voters thought that the door to an Indo-American dream had been flung open. Today, UPA dare not talk about this mirage. The pact of the century has disappeared into some mysterious rabbit hole of amnesia.

NREGA, similarly, was meant to be the first great stride in a transformative journey towards poverty eradication. Instead, its bulk was eaten away by the familiar demons of indifference and corruption. Since 2009, the poor have received lectures on how to live on Rs 32 a day rather than a carefully structured and realistic route map out of the poverty line. They watched while a cabal of politicians and cronies fattened themselves on an unprecedented scale. It is not easy to boggle the Indian voter’s mind, but corruption in the last few years has thoroughly boggled it. In the twilight of its second term, UPA is trying to fight off the gathering darkness with a Food Security Bill, but it is never easy to do in the last six months what could so easily have been done in the first six.

It is usual practice to highlight achievement in any obituary. What is memorable about UPA2 is not positive; the little that is positive is not memorable. The average of scams was at least two a season. All we recall is a repeated sequence of exposure, denial, street anger and authoritarian response until some minister promises legislation that will cure every malaise.

When the glow disappears from bright sparks, even their ideas get dim. Whatever the disease, the medicine is the same. Law minister Kapil Sibal, who plunges into every crisis with the dexterity of Don Quixote, is pushing the brilliant thought of a new law that will cure cricket of sleaze forever and ever. Excuse me: but is match-fixing legal just now?

Every law can be strengthened, but that is not the urgent problem. The present law is good enough for the existing crooks. This is not the first instance of the game being sold. BCCI has banned cricketers for match-fixing but never handed them over for prosecution. Why? To muffle the sound of skeletons rattling from cashstacked cupboards? 

Adulation and sensational levels of money are a heady cocktail, and if some young men get inebriated, it is only a temptation waiting to explode. But the dirt is controlled by older men wearing the heavy make-up of lies. When Delhi police broke the story, they sought to limit the scandal to three idiots from the Rajasthan team. One assumes they were naive since one cannot presume they were complicit. Some very clever men are involved. You can see frightened faces from Chennai to Delhi. 

For the people, sleaze has become a blur, with politicians visible in every crime, from coal to cricket. There is no ideology yet which cleanses the stables, and there will be none until the dregs of current thought have become irrelevant. Nevertheless, another 1990 moment has arrived. Things cannot continue with just a bit of tinkering along the way. 

The next government needs a radical and rational platform of ideas that recognizes how dysfunctional this system has become, and finds the courage to sweep below the carpet. The nerve points of the nation have shifted to the young. They do not want merely a different government; they want a new course that will take India out of this jungle of greed in which governance has become synonymous with greed, and the street a playground for lechery. If nothing is done, their patience will turn into rage.

Austerity has hardened the nation's heart

by Yasmin Alibhai Brown

Under the arches in Waterloo, a man sits, his head bowed. A scarf is wound tightly around his neck, as if he wants to strangle himself. His hands are grimy and covered in cuts, one suppurating. As I give him some coins and antiseptic plasters, I ask him why he is out there. He doesn’t look at me, and seems unwilling to talk.

I am with a friend. We are going to the screening of a forthcoming BBC TV drama. My friend is impatient and then cross that I have stopped and wasted time (it is barely three minutes)  on “these people” – yet after a trip to India my friend told me how awful it was that well-off Indians simply ignored beggars all around them. I remind her of that and she told me: “It’s completely different. They have no welfare there. Here we do. People don’t have to be poor here. It’s a choice.”

I can’t be her friend any more. She is not a bad person but somewhere along this road we are travelling during the recession, she decided that the real enemies within were those who depend on the state or the goodwill of others, “charity pests” as she calls them.

According to the British Social Attitudes Survey (2011), 56 per cent of the British population think benefits are too high and stop people looking for work. In 1983, at the height of Thatcherism, the figure was 35 per cent. Today 63 per cent also believe that children are poor because their parents are feckless and lazy.

As life gets hard for the middle classes, they turn harder and the same is happening to those who define themselves as working class. Most of our people, it seems, approve of the benefits cuts, the bedroom tax, substantially reduced disability allowances and a drastic cull of local services. They are now persuaded that the needy are greedy and are a parasitic hoard responsible for our shrinking GDP and economic woes.

Look around you. Listen to the doctors, church leaders, local councillors and workers, homeless and children’s charities, those who run shelters and refuges, and others. They speak to our consciences, tell us what is happening and are not being heard.

A few days back, Stephanie Bottrill, only 53, killed herself because she could not afford to pay an extra £20 per week for her extra bedroom in a home she had lived in all her life. Did her death cause people to rethink their hostile attitudes to such people? I don’t think so. Their eyes are shut, ears deaf and hearts locked up to stop such emotional intrusions.

Here are some of the truths assiduously avoided. David Stuckler, senior researcher at Oxford University warns “austerity kills”. Suicides rise during times of high unemployment. Since 2011, they have risen dramatically, most of all in the areas where there are no jobs and among people badly affected by the Coalition policies. Stuckler is also concerned about the disabled, those who can’t afford homes, and the sick.

A new report by the British Medical Association (who are not a gang of lefties) warns that government policies are hitting the most vulnerable. A quarter of a million children are already failing to meet the basic standards of normal development. The GP Greg Wood, who worked for Atos, the company charged by the Government with assessing disability claimants, has just resigned because he thinks that the system is biased against the disabled. Food bank suppliers can’t cope with demand; Salford council, one of many, is closing shelters because it is unable to get state money to house the homeless.

The Centre for Global Education confirms, with some apprehension, that the debate on poverty has been redirected away from structural and political causes to opprobrium towards the unemployed and welfare dependents. The national sport of baiting and hating of the poor has been damned in The Lies We Tell Ourselves (Jan 2013) and The Blame Game Must Stop (March 2013), both commissioned by church groups.

In the foreword of the latter report the Liberal Democrat MP Sarah Teather writes: “Stigmatising people on benefits is politically popular, but it isn’t fair or right... it will make Britain less generous, sympathetic and willing to co-operate... It will make it more difficult for campaigners coming after us to argue for an option for those in poverty, because public opinion will simply not tolerate it.” How true that is, and too late already. Compassion is now a minority hobby in this great country where, remember, the welfare state was created during years of unimaginable  hardship and post-war devastation.

Paul Krugman, the Nobel Prize-winning economist, describes austerity programmes as an “unethical experiment” on human beings. Public opinion can scare or encourage politicians. Today millions are backing this human experiment. They, more than the ruthless Government, are responsible for the blood and tears flowing among the unfortunate and disenfranchised. The savage tyranny of the majority, as history shows, destroys nations, social and human bonds. It is happening here. One day we will all miss the nation we once were, but there will be no way back.

Palakkad: A quiet Kerala town where elephants symbolize social status

By PK Krishnakumar, ET Bureau | 25 May, 2013, 04.01AM IST 

The 14 elephants of Angadiyil House have become household names in north & central Kerala. More than profit, it is the sheer passion for these animals that has driven Haridas and Parameswaran to own so many elephants.

Palakkad is quiet and sleepy. A border district between Kerala and Tamil Nadu, it has a few engineering, polytechnic institutions, a popular dam or two, a number of renowned temples; in 2010, Palakkad was scheduled to become India's first "fully electrified district". The town does not boast of its humble offerings, for the concept of 'wealth' here is not determined by currency alone. And as brothers MA Haridas and MA Parameswaran will tell you, sometimes wealth is 10 feet tall, sociable and rather fond of palm leaves.

The brothers own the largest number of elephants in the state, 14 in all, creating a personal asset base of Rs10-12 crore. The Angadiyil House in Mangalamkunnu, rural Palakkad, is witness to 14 pachyderms on parade — but only when they aren't busy handling crucial matters for temples in the area. "There is a good demand for the elephants from various temple managements," says Haridas. Two of their elephants, Karnan and Ayyappan, are over 10 feet tall and preferred by temple management committees to carry the deity during the festival seasons.

Elephants are an essential element of temple festivals in Kerala. In fact, during the festival season, temple managements compete with each other to get the best elephants (ones with well-proportioned growth in terms of height, head posture, length of the tusk, etc) for the festival days, paying a hefty fee to the owner. The elephants have an important role — they carry the idols during the festivals, and temple managements are careful to publicise the event by printing and exhibiting posters with the names and photographs of elephants on temple duty.

Some elephants have superstar status in the state — when they reach a particular temple, thousands of elephant lovers assemble to see them. Stories of elephants and their attachments to a few temples and their owners are told and retold, forming urban legends such as the one about Guruvayoor Kesavan. The most popular elephant of the Guruvayoor temple, Kesavan remains a household name in Kerala; he was even the subject of a biopic after his demise in the mid-1970s. Guruvayoor Padmanabhan, the tallest and most 'good looking' elephant in Guruvayoor temple at present, has acquired the status of a legend.

The 14 elephants of Angadiyil House have also become household names in north and central Kerala. "Our elephants are taken for temple festivals for about 130 days in a year," says Haridas. When they're not busy with the festival season, Haridas and Parameswaran's elephants spend some time in front of the camera. "Once the festival season is over, the demand is usually from film shooting units and event managers for inauguration of shops or other such events," says Parameswaran. "We get enquiries for marriages also, but mostly from Coimbatore or Bangalore," he adds. In the past, elephants were used in timber depots to load trucks with logs.