Love and sex

An interesting talk [full transcript in PDF] by Lisa Wade, with title "Promise and peril of the hook-up culture", describes several changes in the last decades with respect to the hook-up culture in campus. On average, during the whole college a student will have 7 hook-ups, 2-3 of them with sexual intercourse. The distribution is obviously quite skewed, with 25% having ZERO hook-ups and 15% having more than 10.

This generation did not invent casual sex, but introduced changes in the way it is practiced. For instance, oral sex used to go after intercourse -- as in the song by Dr. Horrible about sleeping for the second time with someone. Now, the "sexual script" has changed and oral sex goes before intercourse.

Other findings are pretty negative, specially for women. According to their surveys, women are not enjoying much casual sex, and have the impression that the freedom to say yes implies almost an obligation to do so -- often they end up sleeping with people or in circumstances they would have rather avoided.

One of the major findings of the study is that there is little flexibility when choosing how do you want to have sex. The "sex with benefits" kind of relationships or long-term commitments are very difficult because even when there are many who would like to, everyone things the others are against it.

To some extent, the generation has become trapped in a unique way, a unique rule set, about how to have sex, which is generating levels of sexual frustrations that obviously contradicts the whole purpose of these experiences.

The Institute of Catalan Studies (Institut d'Estudis Catalans) has upgraded its definition of marriage. It is the first dictionary in the world to do so to include same-sex marriages, which are legal in Catalunya since 2005.

The old definition was "unió legítima entre un home i una dona", legitimate union of a man and a woman. The new definition is "unió legítima entre dues persones que es comprometen a portar una vida en comú establerta mitjançant ritus o formalitats legals": legitimate union between two persons that commit to having a life in common established by rites or legal formalities.

"We should not be slaves of etymologies or certain customs that may have been already left behind [superat]", indicated the president of the philology chapter studies of the Academy, Joan Martí i Castell.

Sources [in Catalan]: RAC1, Pagina26, 3cat24.

Hedwig and the Angry Inch is a musical from 1998 and a film that opened in 2001. Both were written, directed and starred by John Cameron Mitchell. The history is about a German transgender, Hedwig who tours the USA with his Glam Rock band The Angry Inch. The band plays a series of concerts in low-profile venues, trailing Tommy Gnosis, whom them accuse of stealing all their songs.

"¿How did some slip of a girlyboy from Communist East Berlin become the internationally ignored song stylist barely standing before you?" begins Hedwig. And then tells how during the Cold War he fell in love with an american soldier, and to be able to marry him, he underwent a sex change operation that didn't work as planned:

My sex operation got botched // my guardian angel fell sleep on the watch // now all I've got is a Barbie doll crotch // ¡I have an Angry Inch!

There are funny situations during the movie, mostly caused by the type of show of Hedwig's band, which is rock with very explicit lyrics that clash with the prosaic patrons of the ice cream shops and restaurants where they perform. There are also deeply touching moments, such as a history about the origin of love based on a tale by Aristophanes.

The music of the film is excellent and the songs are made right for the voice of the main character. If you liked "Transamerica", "Priscilla, queen of the desert", and in general gay and bizarre films, you can' t miss this art piece.

See also: Wikipedia: Hedwig and the Angry Inch

Estoy bastante sorprendido porque en España este año se aprobó una ley que permite a parejas del mismo sexo casarse y, si lo desean, adoptar hijos. Al parecer se trataba de una de las promesas que hizo el PSOE durante la campaña presidencial, y ahora la ha cumplido.

Obviamente, hubo una fuerte oposición de la derecha y de la iglesia. Este fin de semana habrá una marcha en protesta, organizada por los obispos españoles, los que además del llamado desde el púlpito pondrán los autobuses para que la gente vaya a Madrid a participar de las protestas. Hoy en la mañana, un periodista le preguntó a uno de los organizadores el por qué ellos protestaban contra la ley, si esta no afecta a las familias cristianas que decidan mantener sus principios.

El sacerdote contestó sin inmutarse "nosotros creemos que lo que dice el evangelio sobre cómo debe crearse una familia, es bueno para todos, no sólo para los cristianos". Estimado monseñor, está usted tan equivocado y de tantas maneras distintas que casi no sé por donde comenzar.

Las últimas propuestas difundidas por la prensa para combatir la pedofilia, reflejan la preocupación que sentimos quienes tenemos hijos, y al mismo tiempo un profundo desconocimiento de las nuevas tecnologías, en particular al tema de Internet.

La Web Chilena tiene dos millones de páginas, contra mucho más dos mil millones de páginas que existen en Internet. Por lo tanto aún poniendo todo de nuestra parte los Chilenos en este mundo digital sólo tenemos control sobre menos de 1/1000 (¡un milésimo!) del contenido en la Web.