Makes Me Want to Pull My Hair Out
I just finished a telephone interview with Missy Larsen, executive director of Planned Parenthood Action Council for Utah. PPAC is the political action committee for Planned Parenthood, and has the legal authority to lobby state legislatures and Congress on family planning and abortion rights measures.
Here in Utah, when the Legislature tries to roll back the clock on women’s reproductive rights to the Mesozoic Era, it’s typically PPAC workers who show up and try to gently talk them out of it. They’re already gearing up for another fight come January, when state legislators are expected to take another spin at overturning Roe vs. Wade.
Missy tipped me off to one of the latest Utah myths concerning sex she’s heard through her line of work (and in this state she hears plenty of them). It’s called “floating.” Apparently, more than a few teenagers and even some college students believe it — the idea being that if you put a penis inside a vagina and then hold very, very still — it doesn’t really count as sex.
“Floating” is such a popular notion in Utah culture it even got a mention in this year’s version of Saturday’s Voyeur, the annual spoof on Utah culture by the Salt Lake Acting Company. Now that’s some street cred for a stupid urban myth, eh?
Sometimes I just want to go plum insane.
August 6th, 2007 at 3:46 pm
It can’t not count because I’d have certainly told everyone I knew I had done it had I done it…
August 6th, 2007 at 5:42 pm
Too funny…
August 6th, 2007 at 9:56 pm
Floating penises, floating brains…….
August 6th, 2007 at 10:08 pm
My very best friend’s husband was a “virgin” when they married. Which I thought was great (he has strongly held beliefs about such things). Funnily enough a few years after the marriage, Mr. “I was a virgin and I am a religious Republican” could not argue with me when I pointed out to him…and I quote…”it depends on what your definition of is..is..” a la Bill Clinton (who he absolutely hated).
You see, I knew there was some hanky panky with him and my friend (i.e. Bill and Monica) that had went on prior to their marriage, and let me tell you - the look on his face was priceless.
And this, my friends, was a senior technical engineer with a Master’s Degree and a really intelligent, nice man (although he is Republican). It’s not just teenagers. Lack of knowledge is just about everywhere.
August 7th, 2007 at 6:32 am
What do you expect from people who believe in a for profit prophet who stuck his head in a hat filled w/rocks to “translate” hocus pocus mumbo jumbo?
August 7th, 2007 at 9:14 am
Have you heard this one:
Oral is moral.
??
Whiskey, Tango, Foxtrot.
August 7th, 2007 at 10:17 am
My favorite is the notion that if you get your hymen surgically repaired, you’re a virgin again. Granted, in some societies where a woman’s life might be at risk if she doesn’t get her hymen replaced, this is a viable procedure. But as for virginity, if you’ve done it, you’ve done it!
August 7th, 2007 at 11:15 am
I’m not so sure it’s ignorance — I believe that it’s denial. Mormon Republicans want to get randy just as much as the rest of us, but can’t live with that fact — so they make up some sexual stuff and say it’s not really sex so that they can feel okay about doing it.
August 7th, 2007 at 1:46 pm
Shocking, this topic has unsettled my morning prayers. Need a little Joan Baez to regain equanimity…”Love is just a four-letter word”……
August 7th, 2007 at 5:49 pm
My friends aren’t LDS. They’re like Calvary Chapel. Just goes to show you some things are the same no matter what!
August 7th, 2007 at 5:56 pm
When my sons were in high school they had many LDS friends. My youngest (at 16) even went to some kind of meetings to see if he would be willing to join the church to please his 17-year-old, long-time girlfriend (who married someone else six months after he said, “No can do.”) According to the boys, their Christian girl friends (not just LDS) believe that if they simply accept Jesus as their personal savior (again) they achieve virgin status again. Talk about La-La Land!
August 8th, 2007 at 11:56 am
Way to go nic at floating your mormophobia. Doesn’t seem to me this is a ‘mormon’ issue.
And as usual, we adults are way behind on this. I looked up floating in the Urban Dictionary and see that it was defined this way as early as May 2005. Also defined as meaning high, which you might have to be to believe you can ‘do it’ and still say you didn’t have sex.
August 8th, 2007 at 5:26 pm
I’ll take a look in the hat filled w/rocks to translate “mormophobia.” BRB.