Minnesota had a rather active intellectual life with an international reputation early in the 20th century. It had the bad — Moody Bible College, for instance, which was one of the formative centers of fundamentalist and evangelical Christian thought — but it also had some progressive thinkers, like Charles Malchow, who I’d never heard of before. Malchow was a doctor at Hamline University who was inspired to write an open-minded textbook about human sexuality, and suffered the consequences.

The Sexual Life (dedicated to Malchow’s mother, Marie), appeared in 1904, the same year Maclhow married Lydia Gluek, a daughter of the Minneapolis Gluek Brewing enterprise. The Sexual Life, over 300 pages, described in straightforward language a wide range of sex practices and problems—contraception, youthful experimentation, same-sex attraction, the physiology and psychology of sexual excitement, sexual pleasure, and sexual frustration. The book took particular aim at encouraging equality of knowledge and enjoyment for women and men.

As we’ll see, that is a charitable summary. The book does talk a lot about equality of the sexes, though, and seems to have triggered some knee-jerk reactions in the establishment.

In 1873 Congress had enacted the Comstock Act, which made using the US mail to distribute obscenity (including specifically any information about abortion) a felony. Malchow and Burton knew about the law and inquired of Minneapolis post office officials whether their advertising pamphlet—which described the book in detail—could be sent through the mail. The unhelpful answer merely referred them to the Comstock Act. They took a chance, and mailed 25,000 copies of the pamphlet to doctors, ministers, and lawyers around the country. The book quickly sold 3,000 copies.

In August 1904, just two months after Malchow’s marriage, a Minneapolis federal grand jury indicted Malchow and Burton for violating the Comstock Act. Trial began in October before Judge William Lochren, an Irish immigrant, a Civil War hero (he survived the famous charge of the First Minnesota at Gettysburg), and Minnesota’s second federal district judge. Lochren disapproved of The Sexual Life and made his views known to the jury, who quickly convicted both men. The First Amendment played no part in Malchow’s defense—it had not occurred to anyone at the time that the Constitution might protect the publication of explicit sexuality. And under the law of the time, Malchow and Burton were guilty of the crime.

Lochren gave both Malchow and Burton eighteen months in prison, later reduced to twelve. While their appeal made its way to the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals, Malchow’s supporters appealed to President Theodore Roosevelt for a pardon. They failed: Roosevelt wrote that he found The Sexual Life “a hideous and loathsome book.” The Court of Appeals affirmed the conviction in April 1906; Roosevelt declined the pardon in April; Malchow and Burton reported to Stillwater State Prison in May. They were released in March 1907.

Teddy thought this was a loathsome book? Well then, I must read it. Fortunately, The Sexual Life is freely available on the internet archive. It disappoints. It’s tame stuff for the 21st century, no illustrations, and it hammers away on the importance of traditional sexual and gender roles. Women can be equal to men, as long as their sexual behavior is exactly as would be expected in the pages of a Victorian romance novel — and not the seedy novels you could find under the table at men’s clubs, but the kind a gentlelady could be seen reading in public.

The word “natural” sure does a lot of heavy lifting in the text. It was “encouraging equality of knowledge and enjoyment for women and men”, but only within the narrow bounds of acceptable social behavior. Women were supposed to act one way, men another, and Medicine and Science would discourage any deviation.

It also doesn’t say much at all about same-sex attraction, briefly mentioning only male homosexuality (unthinkable that passive, mild-mannered ladies would consider such a thing), and then only to call it a perversion and dismiss it from further consideration.

Uh, right. I’m certainly not going to praise Malchow as an open-minded, forward-thinking person — the book is a paean to customary gender roles, and is built on conservative assumptions throughout.

He did go to prison for it, though, which was not just. It’s weird to read it now and realize that, for its time, it was a wildly libertine, radical perspective on sexuality. Nowadays, though, I could imagine Ben Shapiro or any of those crimped, narrow minds on the Right praising it as a great prescription for how we all should live now.

Louis CK remains the king — wow, but that guy destroyed his reputation spectacularly — but it looks like Dave Chappelle is working hard to catch up. Where once I could respect him for the ol’ “speaking truth to power” routine and his sometimes exceedingly edgy comedy, I guess he found that work too taxing and has decided it’s easier to punch down and start mocking the trans community, while getting highly paid by Netflix.

Netflix, unfortunately, has so much money that quality doesn’t matter anymore — they’ll greenlight anything. I’ve learned that any science-fiction movie promoted by Netflix is going to be mostly garbage, so I’ve been skipping the service more and more. Comedy specials are even worse. They’re ridiculously cheap to make, so it seems that any bigot who wants to make other bigots laugh will get handed a platform. There are exceptions, of course. Netflix put on Hannah Gadsby, who was marvelous and thought-provoking, but that was a rare occasion in a sea of same ol’, same ol’ boring white men with grievances.

Now a Netflix executive, Ted Sarandos, is trying to rationalize hosting an ugly anti-trans comedian by claiming it’s all about “diversity”. I got news for you, Ted: diversity does not mean you should encourage hatred and ignorance. We don’t need stupid to counterbalance intelligence, and we don’t need to slather shit on a tasty sandwich to make it better. I don’t need to “teach the controversy” in the classroom and educate students about evolution by promoting creationist propaganda.

And then he cites Hannah Gadsby as an example of their rainbow of lovely entertainment choices. Gadsby has a few words for that.

Hey Ted Sarandos! Just a quick note to let you know that I would prefer if you didn’t drag my name into your mess. Now I have to deal with even more of the hate and anger that Dave Chapelle’s fans like to unleash on me every time Dave gets 20 million dollars to process his emotionally stunted partial world view. You didn’t pay me nearly enough to deal with the real world consequences of the hate speech dog whistling you refuse to acknowledge, Ted. Fuck you and your amoral algorithm cult…I do shits with more back bone than you. That’s just a joke! I definitely didn’t cross a line because you just told the world there isn’t one.

Gadsby just shot the cash cow, very good.

Sadly, Chappelle (and Louis CK) will only experience fleeting interruptions in their careers. They’ll bounce right back — in Chappelle’s case, there doesn’t seem to have been any significant pushback at all — and will see their fans rushing into the warm embrace of comfortable bigotry again.

Rosie DiManno is wondering why we can’t say ‘woman’ anymore, which is a rather self-contradictory thing to declare in a big bold headline that got published in a major metropolitan newspaper. It’s also counter to common sense and every day experience, since I don’t seem to know anyone who is actually opposed to calling women women, except maybe TERFs, who are generally extraordinarily confused about just about everything to do with sex and gender. It’s a really simple concept, though!

Here’s the rule: you should address people by the identities they prefer and declare themselves. Rosie DiManno bills herself as a woman, and I am perfectly comfortable with addressing her as a woman. If I were to call her a man, I would either be hopelessly addled about who she is, or I’d be trying to insult her with a gendered insult, which is bad. So, hi Rosie, Woman, Human, Bipedal Vetebrate, etc. Strive to be respectful and accurate, is all.

Most/all of my interactions with Ms DiManno, if I were to have them, would be genderless, and there are only a few circumstances when I would have to call her a woman. “The boat is sinking, Ms DiManno — women and children to the lifeboats, you first,” perhaps, or “The ladies room is to the left, ma’am”. There are occasions when sex and gender are relevant, and you do not want to mix them up, lest you seem addled, insulting, etc.

Then there are the situations where some nuance is required, because the world isn’t the simple binary she thinks it is. She seems a bit incensed about a scientific article.

“The Lancet,” the prestigious and highly influential British medical journal, put “Bodies with Vaginas” on the cover of its latest issue, referring to an article inside, entitled “Periods on Display,” a review of an exhibit about the history of menstruation at the Vagina Museum in London.
Maybe the editors, who tweeted the piece, were just looking for clickbait, with a pullquote on the cover teasing that “Historically, the anatomy and physiology of such bodies have been neglected” — this although the author had used the phrase “bodies with vaginas,” only once and “women” four times.

But…but…there are trans men who menstruate and have vaginas. There are trans women who do not have them, and do not belong in an article about menstruation. There are cis women who do not have vaginas, and large numbers of both cis and trans women who do not menstruate. Acknowledging their existence and medical relevance is not erasing cis women at all. But Ms DiManno seems determined to erase trans men (who we call “men”, to keep it simple) and trans women (called “women”, that forbidden word in the minds of TERFs), all by inventing a totally non-existent imaginary problem.

It seems to be a common disease among right-leaning people who need imagined persecution to help them keep up their own sense of identity, so they have to create grievances. Without them, their concerns do seem to be rather petty and indefensible.

A truly horrific case has rightfully caught the attention of the media in the UK, the murder of Sarah Everard. She was abducted by a police officer who raped and murdered her.

Yesterday, Sarah Everard’s killer – serving police officer Wayne Couzens – was sentenced to a whole life order. In kidnapping her, Couzens, who was a firearms officer at the time, showed Everard his warrant card and placed her in handcuffs, having ‘arrested’ her under Covid-19 powers. The 48-year-old then drove Everard 80 miles, before raping and murdering her.

It’s not just the personal horror of what happened to Everard, but the betrayal of a public trust, as we’ve witnessed over and over again here in the US. George Floyd was in terror of getting into a police car, and can you blame him? Imagine being a woman, expecting the police to protect you, but then they put handcuffs on you and lock you in the back of a police car, helpless.

That trust wasn’t violated by just one wretched awful person who deserves a long prison sentence, though — it’s the whole damn police culture.

But, this morning, it has emerged that five of Couzens’ colleagues are facing criminal investigation after sharing racist, misogynistic and homophobic material with him over WhatsApp. This follows earlier reports that Couzens had been nicknamed “the rapist” by former colleagues for making women feel uncomfortable. Numerous incidents of indecent exposure, including two at a McDonald’s, which should have been linked to his vehicle just 72 hours before the kidnap, rape and murder of Everard weren’t properly investigated. Couzens’ criminality was facilitated by the incompetence and blasé attitude to misogyny embedded within the institution that he worked for.

But wait. This is being reported in the UK media. You know what else the media over there is obsessed with, even more than the US news? You may have guessed it. Certain people are already, somehow, turning this from a “cops are bad” story into “let’s blame the transes”, which is rather remarkable given that neither the murderer nor his victim are trans. Would you believe that Catherine Bennett is using this crime as an excuse to deny trans women safety? Of course you would.

David Lammy, the shadow justice secretary, was among the prominent men tweeting their abhorrence: “Enough is enough. We need to treat violence against women and girls as seriously as terrorism.”

Sometimes, you gather, it’s acceptable to discuss endemic male violence against women and girls and sometimes it’s not. Just before the Everard verdict, Lammy had angrily dismissed women exercised by this very subject as “dinosaurs”. Women who value women-only spaces – where they feel safe from male violence – he characterised as “hoarding rights”.

Lammy, along with some Labour colleagues, simultaneously denounces male violence, then, taking victim-blaming to as yet unprecedented levels, is furious with any women concerned about losing the few places that individuals he depicts as terrorists can’t access.

These single-sex spaces – from refuges to hospital wards and rest rooms – historically protected women by excluding men where women were particularly vulnerable. #Notallmen, of course, but that’s safeguarding. “Preventative measures,” as Professor Kathleen Stock writes in Material Girls, “are usually by necessity broad-brush. They aren’t supposed to be a character reference for a group as a whole.”

She is quite wrong. Lammy called TERFs “dinosaurs”, not women who are exercised by misogynistic violence. Expecting the rights and safety of trans women to be respected is not synonymous with denying cis women any preventative measures.

Also, citing Kathleen Stock is an insta-nope from me.

I have to say I find it very disconcerting to read UK media and find such a wildly different focus with one conservative obsession that is somewhat different over here. Mainstream US news doesn’t usually turn every bad news story into an excuse to rail against trans women quite like a media culture saturated with transphobic mumsnet culture. There’s a difference there in our social media that’s probably worth serious study sometime down the road.

But not now. Now is the time to deal with the more pressing issue of police violence and corruption, and how some weird media figures try to place the blame on the blameless as a distraction, or how they play “blame the victim”.

But not you. I’ve long been a fan of Cassandra Peterson, AKA Elvira, Mistress of the Dark, because she’s goofy and kitschy and flamboyant and doesn’t take her persona at all seriously. Now she has come out, and revealed that she’s been in a same-sex relationship for almost 20 years, but was afraid to go public about it.

The two have been together for more than 19 years now, with Wierson taking on the role of Peterson’s assistant. They had to keep the relationship quiet because, as Peterson writes, the couple felt they had to protect the Elvira brand. “Would my fans hate me for not being what they expected me to be?” she shares in the book, adding, “I’m very aware that there will be some who will be disappointed and maybe even angry, but I have to live with myself, and at this point in my life, I’ve got to be truthful about who I am.”

And Peterson’s truth? She writes that she’s never been happier. “For the first time in my life,” she writes, “I’m with someone who makes me feel safe, blessed, and truly loved.”

Her fans would not hate her or be disappointed or angry with her for being her true self. The only disappointment is that we have to live in a culture that makes love something to be ashamed of.

Please do tear into Andrew Sullivan. This review of one of his books in The Baffler does a fine job of highlighting his shallow and contradictory thinking. Everything Sullivan does is a mess, and I have no idea how he continues to be published.

Three decades and four hundred pages later he’s still at it. “Transgenderist ideology,” he writes in “The Nature of Sex,” “is indeed a threat to homosexuality, because it is a threat to biological sex as a concept.” “Native Americans had been the first to discover this continent, and, with it, their own sort of American dream—thousands of years before Europeans imagined theirs,” he declares in an essay about the coronavirus pandemic, as if he actually believes the interpolation of a not particularly clever anachronism creates an equivalence between Stone Age nomads wandering into an unpopulated land and the gun-toting, disease-carrying invaders who stole that land from them ten thousand years later. Writing about Dan-el Padilla Peralta, a Dominican-born professor of classics who “came to see the white supremacists’ cooptation of the classics as inextricable from the classics themselves,” Sullivan tells readers that Padilla “refuses to ‘praise the architects of that trauma as having done right by you at the end.’”

This was one of a dozen times my margin note read “Physician, heal thyself.” But there can be no healing when there’s no ability to recognize one’s plight in others, and Sullivan remains resolutely uninterested in any losses but his own. In his mea culpa on the Iraq War, the final note isn’t “the lives lost, the families destroyed, the bodies tortured, the civilization trashed.” That was “bad enough,” sure, “but what was done to America—and the meaning of America—was unforgivable. And for that I will not and should not forgive myself.” That’s right, folks: as many as a million people were killed in a pointless war that Andrew Sullivan hawked like a fishwife for no other reason than his need to punish as many Muslims as possible for 9/11, but what’s important to remember is that he feels really bad about it. When I read this, I was reminded of Edmund Wilson’s reaction to Brideshead Revisited: “The last scenes are extravagantly absurd, with an absurdity that would be worthy of Waugh at his best if it were not—painful to say—meant quite seriously.”

But, the author of the review, a gay man, also constantly undercuts himself by sexualizing Sullivan, and the review keeps bring me up short.

The subsequent twenty-five years have proven Sullivan a dependable shill for reactionary causes célèbres, whether it’s defending racism and sexism in the name of “science” (“It may be no accident that testosterone-soaked ghettos foster both high levels of crime and high levels of illegitimacy”), opposing hate-crime laws on the grounds that calling someone a “gook” or “n*gg*r” “allows natural tensions to express themselves incrementally,” or undercutting radical LGBTQ activism by insisting that only a $35 marriage license provides “a sense of normality, of human potential, of self-worth—something that my generation never had and that previous generations would have found unimaginable.”

But that was still a few years off. At the time I was less interested in a bangers-and-mash Roy Cohn than in whether or not Maer and Andrew had fucked. I hope they did. No, really, I do. At least then there’d be something about Sullivan I could take pleasure in, if only vicariously.

If a book reviewer were a heterosexual man who kept bringing up his fantasies about the sex life of the female author of the book, would we be fine with that? Sullivan’s sexuality is an OK topic to discuss since Sullivan brings it up all the time, but please, don’t make it about your sexual interests, reviewer. Do discuss Sullivan’s hypocrisy on the subject. I do like that he quotes Sullivan’s own words at length, which is the best way to expose a fool.

I suspect that the way Sullivan continues to be published is by being such an obnoxious contrarian that his fellow obnoxious contrarians think they’re being clever by putting his ideas out there — not because they’re good, but because they are so wildly wrong. That’s why Maher continues to bring him on as a guest, because he’s not favoring ideas, he just wants noise.

Good try, but no, I don’t think this tactic by the Satanic Temple will work.

The Supreme Court on Wednesday night allowed the state to implement a ban on the procedures after six weeks, before most women know they are pregnant, with no carve-outs for rape or incest. Until it is blocked or overturned, the law effectively nullifies the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade decision — which established abortion as a constitutional right — in Texas.

Enter The Satanic Temple.

The “nontheistic” organization, which is headquartered in Salem, Massachusetts, joined the legal fray this week by sending a letter to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration demanding access to abortion pills for its members. The group has established an “abortion ritual,” and is attempting to use the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (which was created to allow Native Americans access to peyote for religious rituals) to argue that its members should be allowed access to abortion drugs like Misoprostol and Mifepristone for religious purposes.

The people who support anti-choice policies deeply and sincerely (and wrongly) believe that an abortion kills a human being. They’ll simply turn around and say we can’t allow the “abortion ritual” for the same reasons we don’t allow a “human sacrifice ritual”.

One side gaming the laws will just encourage the other side to game the laws right back. This approach also skips right over the crux of the argument: the autonomy of women. Do women have the right to control their own bodies or not? Falling back on the bogus sanctity of religious privileges does not address that at all, and further empowers the religious viewpoint that generates the problem in the first place.