I’ve been watching the cartoon Bigmouth on Netflix with my daughter the last few days. It’s a ribald look at life between childhood and becoming a teenager. That means its full of what many would consider profane references to sex and body issues. The last episode we watched had several hilarious moments where young boys learn that girls get horny too. Their heads explode at the thought.

The show demonstrate that sex and the anatomy of the opposite gender can be quite a mystery to most of us. For me it was a serious vexation until taking a life drawing class in college. That removed some of the sexual mystery from the female anatomy. Learning to draw women with sensitivity and accuracy took a lot of work. It also built in me a respect for the female body that continues to this day.

Ready access

That said, it’s hard to imagine growing up in the age of ready-access pornography. I can’t say I know how I’d react to absolute availability of nude females and more in the Internet. Growing up, my buddies and I studied Penthouse and Playboy for all the information we could find about women’s bodies. But here’s what I actually feel about the subject now. I think it’s better to know the workings of human anatomy than it is to walk around ignorant on the subject and perhaps gripped by taboos about what constitutes normality and what doesn’t. So while porn is considered an evil by many, it also provides an interesting solution to a common problem.

This is not to say that pornography is not a vexation for many people. it has been known to ruin relationships and take over lives. That’s true even in the Christian community that loves to rail against its dangers. And just like alcohol, tobacco, guns and explosives, wherever there’s a dash of thrill to the habit, there’s a risk of addiction. One might justly add exercise, especially endurance training to that list of potentially addictive habits. And while we’re at it, eating can be addictive too. The list of human temptations toward the seven deadly sins is pretty much never-ending.

Yet the most potent aspect of conflicted personality is between genders. For millennia, men dominated the “man and woman” issue with patriarchal control. Over the last fifty years, women began to speak out and take control of their own lives on many fronts. That threatened the ever living hell out of some men.

Women’s choice over sexual and reproductive rights has gone all the way to the highest courts in the land. Between the repressive aims of religion and politics, women face a constant battle just to hold the ground they’ve already won in terms of gender independence.

Heads exploding

Which is why that moment in Bigmouth is so damned funny. For centuries men have looked at sex as fulfillment of their own needs. Now that Cosmo and other portals have liberated women’s bodies from the sole ownership of men, even women’s masturbation has come out of the shadows.

The world is better for all this despite what repressive geeks like VP Mike Pence have to say about it. The idea that he refuses to meet with a woman alone is a massive confession of personal weakness and a flagrantly flawed religious worldview to boot. It’s also arrogant as hell that he must think all woman are attracted to him, thus he’s at risk of being seduced?

It might be good for Pence to get out on a road bike in the company of some strong, athletic women who could not give a rat’s ass what he looks like in lycra In that context, I know plenty of women who care not what’s between a man’s legs. It’s what’s in his legs that is the real test of character out there. The rest is just man junk.

And lady junk is just as irrelevant when it’s perched on a bike seat. So are boobs, or an ass of any size. It’s how you carry it that counts. Then it’s how you carry yourself that determines what kind of man or woman or something else entirely you are.

We should embrace them all in all their glory.