orichalcum

Ezra Klein blogs here about an interesting experiment in which men (Berkeley undergrads) were asked the same set of questions about sexual preferences when aroused and unaroused. When aroused, they were 420% more likely to answer "yes" to the question "would you slip a woman a drug to increase the chance that she'd have sex with you?," twenty percent more likely to "enjoy sex with someone they hated," twice as likely to "be attracted to twelve-year-olds," and more than twice as likely to "keep trying to have sex after your date had said no," or, in other words, potentially attempt rape.

Now, don't get me wrong, this study hasn't been done on women yet, and I'm perfectly willing to admit that there are times when my hormones help guide my behavior. Still, it's really the hypocrisy here that gets me; we hear so much rhetoric about how women in power can't be trusted because Wacky PMS might cause them to push the red button in a moment of crankiness (but maybe, perhaps, post-menopausal women can be trusted.) But seriously, I suspect that, given his proclivities, Bill Clinton made plenty of policy decisions while sexually aroused. We never hear that men aren't reliable until they're mostly impotent; indeed, the 1996 Republican presidential candidate became a spokesman for Viagra to demonstrate _how important he thought it was_ that, with medical assistance, he could still reliably become aroused.

Eunuchs have run some pretty effective governments, you know...