Tito Brasolin

Link: Men should be allowed sex slaves and female prisoners could do the job - and all this from a WOMAN politician from Kuwait | Mail Online

Bonus link: YouTube - Christopher Hitchens Goes After Rabbi Harold Kushner re: Circumcision.

Hani Miletski

Oggi mi sono imbattuto in un paio di citazioni da Hani Miletski, un'importante sessuologa che non conoscevo. I suoi lavori più famosi sono uno studio sull'incesto madre-figlio e una monumentale opera sulla zoofilia:

• Understanding Bestiality and Zoophilia (2002)
• Mother-Son Incest: The Unthinkable Broken Taboo (1999)

Secondo la Miletski i rapporti incestuosi tra madre e figlio sono più frequenti di quanto comunemente si ritenga, e l'argomento è stato trascurato a causa del senso di taboo, della diffusa negazione di tutte le forme di aggressione sessuale da parte femminile e dei doppi standard sociali che impediscono il riconoscimento dei crimini sessuali femminili.

Il suo considerevole lavoro sulla zoofilia è forse il primo a trattare in modo organico e scientifico l'argomento, stabilendo che può esistere un orientamento sessuale vero e proprio oltre al semplice “feticismo”.

Sul tema della zoofilia è stato girato il bel documentario Zoo, comprensiblimente controverso (secondo alcuni presenta una versione distorta dei fatti) ma sicuramente da vedere.

ZOO - The Movie

Link: Have women evolved to protect themselves from rapists? - By Jesse Bering - Slate Magazine

1. When threatened by sexual assault, ovulating women display a measurable increase in physical strength
2. Ovulating women overestimate strange males' probability of being rapists.
3. Ovulating women play it safe by avoiding situations that place them at increased risk of being raped.
4. Women become more racist when they're ovulating.

Link: Persuasion: The Sleeper Effect — PsyBlog

There are all kinds of everyday situations where the sleeper effect occurs. Like when the travel supplement recommends a great resort, then we read at the bottom the trip's cost was covered by the resort. Or there's an article telling us about the health benefits of milk and then we read at the bottom that the author is the head of the Milk Marketing Board. Any time we receive a persuasive message before we find out who the source is, the sleeper effect can come into play.

Link: You are a conformist (that is, you are human) | Psychology Today

In my class I sometimes do the following demonstration: I ask two student volunteers to step outside. I tell the remaining students in the class that their task is to avoid all contact and interaction with the volunteers. I promise them points on the next test if they succeed. I then instruct the two waiting outside that their task is to do all they can to engage the class members in any sort of interaction. I then usher them back inside. After they spend several painful minutes failing to elicit any response from their peers, I declare the demonstration over. I ask the two volunteers how they felt. Terrible, they say. Embarrassed, rejected. Then I ask the remaining students to guess the demonstration's purpose. They usually guess it was designed to show the difficulties of being an outsider, a social reject. But the point is actually the opposite: to show how easy and automatic it is to conform.

"None of you refused to follow my instructions," I say. "You just spent 10 minutes treating two innocent fellow students miserably and none of you stood up and said: ‘Shove your quiz points. I'm not going to treat my peers badly for no reason.'"

Astuto. E illuminante.

Milgram Experiment

Milgram Experiment from Natalie Hill on Vimeo.

Roma: Il lancio della campagna

One in Five è la nuova campagna del Consiglio d'Europa per fermare la violenza sessuale contro i bambini.

Available data suggest that about 1 in 5 children in Europe are victims of some form of sexual violence.

A conferma dell'impegno dell'Italia nella lotta alla violenza il nostro Ministero delle Pari Opportunità ha ospitato il lancio della campagna il 29 e 30 novembre a Roma.

Tra parentesi, nello studio Overview of the nature and extent of child sexual abuse in Europe (pdf) prelevabile dal sito ufficiale l'Italia è citata solo due volte: la prima in relazione al progetto CAPCAE, 1997 e la seconda riguardo uno studio UNICRI del 2003 sul traffico di giovani donne dalla Nigeria all'Italia.

The CAPCAE project. May-Chahal et al. (2006) outline the results of the CAPCAE project, a two-year, nine-country child welfare study in Belgium, England, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway and Spain. A total of 2 356 cases, reported to a selection of child protection services between October 1996 and 1997, were collected. This is one of the few studies where comparisons across European countries are made. Overall, child sexual abuse accounted for 34% of the cases reported to this sample of child protection serv- ices across nine countries. “Rape/penetration” accounted for 6% of all cases in this study (from lows of 0% in Ireland, Spain and Italy, to a high of 28% of cases in Belgium). “Sexual: contact” accounted for 24% of all cases (from a low of 2% in Ireland to 53% of all cases reported in Belgium). “Sexual: non-contact” accounted for 4% of all cases (with a range of 0% in England and Ireland, to 9% in the Netherlands).

Il titolo della campagna suona un po' strano in mancanza di dati certi… Diciamo che fortunatamente sembra che l'emergenza non riguardi i nostri bambini dell'asilo, e che anzi il concetto di “bambino” sia stato usato in modo un po' “elastico.”

Bonus link: Insegna al tuo bambino la regola del quinonsitocca!.