Having a Pop at the Red-Tops

So, all my wonderful women friends, semen is good for you.

That’s what this latest article finds.

OK then.

The husband and I laughed over this for several reasons, not least because I have been depressed. I have been in this state for a while now. You all know about this, because I talk about it freely. Fortunately, I’m sensible enough to know that sex is good for me, and I also remember that I like it and that I adore the husband, so we’re doing OK.

Modern journalism sometimes, dare I say, often leaves a great deal to be desired. Some of us rail against it, particularly the worst of it, examples of which are easy enough to find in the red-tops. We rail against the half-arsed, slapdash way that opinions are reported as facts, and we rail against sloppy fact-checking and political bias.

The husband recently appeared at our local comic convention. It’s a lovely event, held twice a year in a small shopping complex. It’s well attended and a lot of fun. A photographer for the local paper was in attendance and photographed lots of fans who’d turned up in costume, and he took the husband’s photograph, too, once prompted. He didn’t take pictures of any of the other guests, who included the incomparable Clint Langley. There was a double page spread report in the paper the following Friday. All good, you might think. 

Not so much. Despite having given the photographer details, and despite the Kent Messenger having run stories on the husband before, the text reported him  as a comic book legend (OK then), who was doing drawings for his fans. Well, obviously he wasn’t, because the husband is a writer, not an artist! Anyone can type Dan Abnett into google, and someone should have. Of course they could have checked their own archive, because, did I mention that the people at the KM have written stories about the husband before?

Right, back to semen.

Someone, somewhere worked out that semen is full of chemicals, some of which are known to elevate mood and some of which are also components of some antidepressants. This information was the basis of a study to discover whether women who are exposed to semen are happier than women who aren’t.

Obviously my first thought was ‘Oh good grief!’

When I discovered that the study was conducted using college students, presumably most of whom were under twenty-two years old, my next thought was, ‘What the hell are kids doing having unprotected sex, for crying out loud?”

Let’s put that on one side and look at the study. It comprised of 293 women all from one campus. Now forgive me for thinking that this probably isn’t a representative cross-section of womanhood, or a useful number for a significant study. This is someone playing, having a bit of fun and hoping to get a headline out of it. 

OK, let’s think about the kind of 18 to 22 year old women who might always (because that was the condition of the survey) have unprotected sex. I’m not judging anyone. Heaven forfend. But I’m guessing they might be at the carefree, happy-go-lucky end of the spectrum when it comes to personality types. They might also be most likely to be in the most fulfilling longterm relationships, something else that might factor in their happy quotient. Of course, I could be wrong.

This survey said that those women exposed to semen were happier than those who always (the criterion again) used condoms. This survey said that their results showed that semen makes women happy. Because post hoc ergo proctor hoc... Not.

Here's the original article, should you want to read it

This piece of nonsense was reported by the Daily Mail, and you and I know that what it’s really about is telling women that what we’re mostly good for is performing more oral sex. Go on, love, it’ll cheer you up!

I read somewhere else that the happiest women in the World are nuns.

Go figure.