Hey Woody,
In a previous column you wrote about a study that hooked up the peckers of homophobes to a machine that measured blood flow when they watched gay porn. Really fascinating stuff. But I have another use for that machine. See, I have a lot of friends who claim they’re bisexual. I’d love to hook them up to that machine, show them hetero porn and see what the peter meter says. Is it possible to buy one of those things?
– Buy-curious
Hey Woody,
In a previous column you wrote about a study that hooked up the peckers of homophobes to a machine that measured blood flow when they watched gay porn. Really fascinating stuff. But I have another use for that machine. See, I have a lot of friends who claim they’re bisexual. I’d love to hook them up to that machine, show them hetero porn and see what the peter meter says. Is it possible to buy one of those things?
– Buy-curious
Dear Buy-Curious,
Of course you can. For $8,000. The penile plethysmograph determines if there’s sexual arousal by measuring the circumference of the penis. A stretchable mercury-filled band is fitted around the penis and connected to a machine with a video screen and data recorder. Any changes in penis size, even those not felt by the man, are recorded while he watches porn. Computer software shows graphs detailing the degree of arousal.
Now wait’ll you hear what the machine was originally invented for: To prevent draft dodgers from claiming they were gay to avoid military duty! God only knows how many false gay positives it uncovered.
It started in Czechoslovakia but they don’t use it anymore on account of how the country fell apart.
Currently the device is used in sex-offender treatment centers and often as a condition of parole for child molesters. Submission to the machine is often a condition of parole for certain sex offenders and it’s been used in child-custody cases if molestation is suspected.
But the most valuable contribution of the device? Sorting out physiological from psychological impotence. They hook you up while you sleep to see if you get an erection during REM sleep (all healthy men do). If you don’t get one it means there’s something physically wrong. If you get one, congratulations, you have emotional baggage. The kind you need to check in before boarding Air Therapy.
Hey Woody,
Do you think there’s such a thing as “Lesbian Bed Death” syndrome or is it an urban myth? And do you think there’s a gay male version of it?
– Ain’t Sure
Dear Ain’t,
About 20 years ago a major sex study showed that women in lesbian relationships had significantly less sex than women in heterosexual ones. Since then, lesbians have been the victims of drive-by “lesbian bed death” jokes.
The study’s findings may have been true 20 years ago but I doubt it holds any juices today. That’s because the forces in society that discouraged women from having sex are waning.
Then there’s the “urge to merge” theory of lesbian bed death. Since women are far more likely to emphasize intimacy over sexuality and nurturing over scoring, they can inadvertently create as one psychologist studying lesbian relationships put it, “a relational greenhouse effect which suffocates passion.”
There have been no scientifically sound surveys done on lesbian bed death in the past few years. My guess is that lesbians have less sex than their hetero counterparts but not enough to justify the “bed death” label. You can’t escape the fact that the top two female sexual disorders are Hypoactive Sexual disorder and Sexual Arousal Disorder. So it makes sense that lesbian couples are likely to have less sex than mixed-gender couples.
As far as gay bed death, PUH-LEASE. We can’t stay in one bed long enough to take a survey.
