Cosmo Sex Tips will end in tears and splinters in your ass.
I can guarantee you, this is not going where you think it is……
When I was a kid my mother religiously bought the Femina and Cosmopolitan magazines. She never missed an issue.
I, of course, read these magazines.
Cover to cover.
I was a little 14 year old trans girl who didn’t quite get the whole trans thing but definitely understood I was unhappy about the whole puberty deal. Somehow those “women’s” magazines offered just enough feminine escapism to keep me hooked.
Anyone who read Femina and Cosmo in the nineties can tell you that Femina was aimed at a somewhat more mature audience than Cosmo. One of the places this stood out was in the sex advice columns. Femina had a small one or two page sex advice section that was surprisingly good even though it was written by a man. Cosmo, on the other hand, published some rabidly batshit insane sex advice.
Some of their highlights were:
“Put a bunch of (clean!) loose change in the freezer for an hour. Tell him to slick your vulva with warming lube, then cover it with coins (outside only!). The cold against the warm? Incredible.”
And:
“Have someone hide in the closet but don’t tell your partner. Next time you have a friend over and your partner comes home, shove the friend in the nearest room/closet/any space that is out of sight but also close enough that it’s weird. Then get it on. It’ll be just like every other time except for the fact that someone is secretly there watching you/covering their ears.”
And:
“Text This: Was that your hand rubbing my leg under the table or your dad’s? Here’s Why: Meeting the parents is always a biggie — it’s good to lighten the mood with a little flirty humor.”
Look, I am trans and I have a dick, so no one can get carried away and stuff one of those grimy coins in there. However if you even dream of bringing loose change near my junk, your junk-touching privileges will be revoked quicker than the poor sod, you stuffed in the closet, can hurl from thinking about involving your father in your sexual fantasy.
Did I grow up with an overly naive yet enthusiastic appreciation for kink? Yes.
Did I learn some stuff from Cosmo that’s useful? Debatable, let’s delve into one of those articles.
One article of a sexual advice nature that stands out in my memory was an article about sex in public places. Having not so long before learnt about the mechanics of sex. I was quite surprised that anyone could do this on any surface except a bed, let alone standing up. So there was that “Ah Ha” moment but the idea of public places was mind blowing. You could have sex on a park bench at night, holy crap!! That’s Wild!!
The article delved into the ins and outs of public area sex, the potential risks and rewards. In hindsight it was way more pragmatic than the infinite majority of anything else that Cosmo had to say about sex. The closing paragraph stood out to me and has remained with me for quite some time.
The author closed by saying “don’t replace the steak with the sizzle”. What they meant, and explained as well, was that sex is an intimate act between two (or more, I am not judging, not negatively anyways) people, and while adding some thrill is fun, don’t forget it’s an intimate act. Don’t let your thrill seeking, the threat of being caught, overshadow the thrill of good sex with your partner (or partners).
It’s profound when you think about it, and it extrapolates far beyond the borders of sex advice really.
At this point I need to come clean about something. I am an information hungry bitch. I read wikipedia articles for no other reason than it’s more information to know. I watch documentaries for the sheer joy of learning something new about anything. If there is an upper limit to the volume of information a person can absorb via books and other media, it’s highly likely I am going to be the person that finds that limit.
When I was a kid, I read Encyclopedia Britannica, not one volume, the whole set including the dictionary. I skipped the index at the back because I read everything else.
To me there is no poorer state than that of being uninformed. The idea that someone can mention a topic and I do not have at minimum a rudimentary understanding of the concept is disconcerting. Consequently, I tend to view people who are uninterested in their environments and societies with some disdain.
Sorry dullards, your “whatevers” make you look dense.
I don’t like morons and to me there is no bigger moron than someone who says “I am not interested in….”.
To me, the steak of life is information, facts, data and how they can be processed. In this paradigm, opinions only become valuable when they are founded on rock solid information. Opinions are in fact the sizzle in the metaphor posed by Cosmo in an article related to public sex.
and some sizzle isn’t worth dick….
It is with this in mind that I am sad to report that society has indeed replaced the steak with the sizzle in “the marketplace of ideas”.
Joe Rogan releases three to four episodes of his mind numbing trash per week. Each episode runs, on average, a dash over two and a half hours. He is as popular as he is uninformed and stupid. I have seen clips of him uncritically hosting Abigail Shrier and her debunked theories, advising people that Ivermectin is a viable treatment for covid, vaccines are a bad idea and now HIV denialism.
And dudes listen to this crap.
On average eleven million people listen to each episode. That means there are eleven million idiots uncritically guzzling this tripe down three to four times per week.
Dudes who had no idea what myocarditis is, but who listened to Joe Rogan suddenly “knew” the covid vaccine made young men’s hearts swell up. Suddenly vaccine hesitancy went from the sole purview of nutter conspiracy idiots to an acceptable position in society.
Ivermectin as a treatment for a viral infection
Graham Hancock and his batshit ancient aliens schtick
Transphobia
Debunked theories
Political misinformation
Hormone enhancement by diet and supplement
HIV denialism
The Moon landing conspiracies
The Fucking N word
There are no limits to the stupidity this guy promotes and men are eating this crap up. Spotify keeps renewing his contract and selling this crap to an uncritical audience. This is a problem because that uncritical audience lives, votes and walks amongst us. When this meathead spouts that Joe Biden is in cognitive decline and Trump is the man, his audience listens and the world suffers another four years of American climate change denial. When this asshole expresses an uninformed opinion on puberty blockers, trans kids suffer because the world is now infested with morons who think they now possess profound knowledge. After he hosted Bret Weisntein’s HIV denialism a few days ago, are we going to see a rise in new HIV infections and a reluctance to use PreP amongst men? This, because Bret Weinstein thinks poppers tank your immune system.
We have replaced the steak of knowledge with the sizzle of an idiot’s lackluster opinions and the world suffers as a result.
All the while Spotify makes money hand over fist off the dumbing down of humanity.
