* Dan Savage weighs in on vajazzling:

So I have to know, Dan: What is your opinion on vajazzling? – Vajazzle Azzle Gadazzle

Asking for my opinion on vajazzling, VAG, is like asking a vegan for her opinion on the wallpaper in a steak house. I’m simply too revolted by what’s on the menu to take much notice of the décor.

Vaginas: Revolting no matter what, so why bother with the appliqué?

* Via Feminine Things, the argument for why schools should not alert students to acquaintance rapes on campus.

* Old, but good: I Blame the Patriarchy on men in wedding dresses:

When I got a spam for “men in wedding dresses” this morning I thought, hell yeah! I sure do wanna see some men in wedding dresses. I bet men look even more asinine in wedding dresses than women do. And who doesn’t want to look at something asinine first thing on Sunday morning?

Men universally look asinine in women’s clothes, yeah? The reason for this, and for mild funniness in other low forms of humor, is incongruity. Nothing says “I submit to my species’ disdain and surrender forthwith any claims to my own humanity” quite like a wedding dress. Women’s clothes are designed, according to a rigorous standard of misogyny, to communicate that the wearer is totally up for self-abasement. Men, on the other hand, are required by law not to be totally up for self-abasement. Therefore, in accordance with the laws of patriarchy, comedy and gender, a dude in a wedding dress is improbable and unnatural, thus causing the observer to laugh or retch or curl a cynical lip.

*  s.e. smith writes a Dear Dear Abby: Please do not explain away sexual assault by calling it "hitting on another woman."

* John DeVore of the Frisky advises women to ask men out on dates, then insists (thrice!) that the woman need not foot the bill:

If a woman asks a man out on a date, she is not obligated to buy dinner. I just wanted to clear that up. . . . don’t worry about the bill. I’ve actually been asked this question. The dude will take care of it because that’s what dudes do. There are some things the male species will always be in charge of, like bear defense. You know what else? Buying dinner on the first date. (Dear Testicles: She’s going to spend time and money getting her hot on anyway.) . . . Now make sure you look gorgeous. And don’t worry: He’ll get the check. If he doesn’t, he’s a donkey pizzle.

I love that DeVore's imaginary female reader is so afeared of being expected to pay for anything ever that she avoids social situations because of it.  You figured us out, man! We're so nervous about the possibility of whittling away our petty women's salaries on the beers of our suitors that we have instead spent centuries waiting for men to initiate all romantic contact. Also, we refer to men who have earned our disdain as "donkey pizzles."

Image via freeparking, Creative Commons Attribution License 2.0

In an episode of Isabella Rossellini's new animal sex series, "Seduce Me," Rossellini acts out a scene of "forced copulation" between ducks (fair warning: video depiction of anthropomorphized duck rape ahoy). While costumed as a female duck, Rossellini exclaims, "Ouch! Ouch! One of them is raping me! I don’t care." The line prompts sex educator Emily Nagoski to pose the question: "Is there such a thing as duck 'rape'? Or is rape a strictly human concept?" Are animals capable of consenting to sex? And if so, why can't we have sex with them?

Forced copulation is a regular feature of sexual activity among ducks. In the phenomenon known as "rape flight," several mallards will aggressively peck at a female duck until she submits to sex (or dies). There's reason to believe that female ducks very much do not enjoy this; the duck vagina has developed in a "rape-specific way" which allows female ducks to prevent pregnancy from this forced sexual contact. But can we compare this animal behavior to the human conception of rape? Nagoski argues that there's no such thing as "duck rape" for the same reason that meat isn't murder—animals are incapable of consenting (or not consenting) to sex:

Rape has a deep moral, as well as legal, meaning. Rape is (briefly) penetration without consent. Can a duck give consent? Can an orangutan? You may say I’m an arrogant human, but as far as I’m concerned, NO, a duck can’t give consent. (If a duck could give consent, I’d feel like a terrible, cruel, and, what’s more, cannibalistic person when I ate one. Personally, I can’t eat something to which I apply the same moral standards as humans.)

It’s not so easy to avoid imposing human moral standards on orangutans and chimps; they’re so like us, they’re so close to human. But we must avoid it. It’s not appropriate to overlay moral meaning on animal behavior; chimps commit infanticide, but that’s just part of being a chimp. It’s not immoral or wrong, it’s just . . . chimpanzeedom. There’s something in us, some apparently innate tendency, to find lessons and moral standards in nature. This is, in part, the naturalistic fallacy—the conclusion that if something is natural it must be right or good. Just as mistaken is the conclusion that something in natural is bad or wrong because it violates a human moral standard.

Nagoski's point is well-taken. Human rape can't be justified through the claim that it's just "natural animal behavior," and animal "rape" can't be condemned through our human moral codes. But if animals are totally removed from the concept of consent—and if that provides justification for humans killing and eating them—then why can't that same argument be used to justify humans fucking animals? Dan Savage turns the meat-is-murder argument on its head when discussing the moral argument against bestiality:

The standard bestiality-is-always-wrong argument—one I've deployed for years—is that animals can't consent, so . . . you know . . . fucking animals is wrong. We are not, however, at all concerned with consent when we want to have an animal for dinner or skinning one for a pair of assless chaps. So our sudden concern with consent when it comes to human/animal sex—which most animals survive (and some humans do not)—seems a little convenient and a lot hypocritical. We would all be vegans in canvas shoes if we gave a shit about an animal's consent. (And our chaps would all be made out of rubber.) And where does the consent argument go if the science shows that some animals are orientated towards humans?

The logical conclusion of this argument leads me one of two places: It's either morally inexcusable to both eat and have sex with animals, or both activities are A-OK.  Unfortunately, I'm really jonesing for a hamburger right now, but I'm not totally prepared to sign on to the idea of moral bestiality. Has anybody got a loophole for me?

City Lights Editor Mike Riggs, a born, bred, and lapsed Florida Christian, explains whether the definition rings true for evangelicals and fundies "looking to skirt rules about sex." [Hint: they're more into oral].