An academic conference about sex at academic conferences.

Yeah, I know it sounds like the the theme of novel that should have been written in the 1980s if it was going to be written at all, but there really was this conference. This week, in San Francisco, Modern Language Association.

Jennifer Drouin, an assistant professor of English and women’s studies at Allegheny College, argued that there are eight forms of conference sex...:

1. “Conference quickies” for gay male scholars to meet gay men at local bars.
2. “Down low” sex by closeted academics....
3. “Bi-curious” experimentation by “nerdy academics trying to be more hip” (at least at the MLA, where queer studies is hip)....
   
4. The “conference sex get out of jail free” card that attendees (figuratively) trade with academic partners, permitting each to be free at their respective meetings....
5. “Ongoing flirtations over a series of conferences, possibly over several years” that turn into conference sex....
6. “Conference sex as social networking”...
7. “Career building sex,” which generally crosses lines of academic rank....
8. And last but not least — and this was the surprise of the list: “monogamous sex among academic couples.” Drouin noted that the academic job market is so tight these days that many academics can’t live in the same cities with their partners. While many colleges try to help dual career couples, this isn’t always possible, and is particularly difficult for gay and lesbian couples, since not every college will even take their couple status seriously enough to try to find jobs for partners. So these long distance academic couples, gay and straight, tenured and adjuncts, must take the best academic positions they can, and unite at academic conferences. “The very fucked-upness of the profession leads to conference fucking,” Drouin said.

Okay, so we are doing lists. Here's mine:

1. Sex at conferences. Do you have sex at conferences?

2. The AALS — Association of American Law Schools Conference — is next week. Are you going? To have sex?

3. Have you ever had "career-building sex"? Why wasn't there a category for career-destroying sex?

4. Why all this positivity about sex, especially from English professors? In novels, sex — more than the fucked-upness of any profession — is always destroying characters. Don't these jokers think the world owes them a living for reading novels? Why don't they sound like people who've plunged deeply into the lives of fictional characters? (I used to want to write a novel called "My Life as a Fictional Character" — based on being married to a novelist.)

5. Doesn't it seem as though the MLA is trying too hard to be hip? An academic conference about sex at academic conferences? It's like a coffee table book about coffee tables. Hip or hipster doofus? I know I don't want it! I don't need you to tell me what I don't want, you stupid hipster doofus!

6. Now, go, go, go have sex at your sex at conferences conference, and when you come home, I won't be here anymore....

Karl Rove... "The wounds I received I got in a job I love."

I see that quote in the WSJ's email teaser for a Karl Rove column and click over thinking maybe this will be Karl's musings on all the hate that's been aimed at him over the years. It's not:

During my White House years, I came to know of the heroic actions of the Seals and other special operators in the global war on terror. These men willingly follow evil into dark and perilous places. They volunteered to be on the front edge of the conflict whose outcome will shape this century....

I met [a Seal who had] been shot eight times in Iraq and had undergone nearly two-dozen operations. One bullet had taken off part of his cheek and nose. He was destined for reconstructive surgery in a few days.

Yet he didn't feel sorry for himself. He was full of charisma, confidence, cockiness and joy. After all, he confided, when you're a wounded Seal, the world's best doctors want to operate on you so they can brag about it. Besides, he explained, he was just showing that a Seal really could catch bullets with his teeth....

The next day, I got an email from the retired Navy Seal buddy who'd talked me into speaking at NSWF. He shared a picture of the sign the wounded Seal put on his Baghdad hospital door.

On it, the Seal had scrawled that visitors shouldn't "feel sorry" for him. "The wounds I received," he wrote, "I got in a job I love, doing it for people I love, supporting the freedom of a country I deeply love. I am incredibly tough." And on his sign he promised "a full recovery" and wrote that his hospital room was a place of "fun, optimism, and intense rapid regrowth. If you are not prepared for that, GO ELSEWHERE." He signed it "The Management."

IN THE COMMENTS: knox said:

There's a wealth of material in the stories of our special forces. Too bad Hollywood ignores them all... there's got to be hundreds of great action/war movies just begging to be made.

Pogo said:

Well, at least we have a good movie about gay rights and other one about/not about pederasty, plus a Hitler movie and a Nixon movie (not the same film, BTW).

Larry J said:

My SEAL story is from October 1975 when I was in Jump School. SEALs go to Jump School after their much tougher UDT training. To them, Jump School is a vacation.

I heard a lot of commotion when falling out for noon formation one day. From what I was told, one of our SEAL students had just jumped from a 3rd story window, did a parachute landing fall, and entered formation saying, "This shit bores me."

I didn't see it happen so I can't swear it's true but it would be typical of SEALs. They're genuine bad-asses not to be messed with.

Why aren't we talking about how Caroline Kennedy looks?

Noticing the absence of the usual catty talk.

What with all the time spent this year by women and journalists and everyone else obsessing over Sarah Palin's looks and lipsticks and wardrobe, it's hard to believe the absolute dearth of women journalists obsessing over Caroline Kennedy's physical appearance, makeup choices, and hairstyles. Why are her highlights not front-page news?...

.... Caroline was routinely compared to her famously svelte mother, and as a result her self-esteem plummeted. In a fit of pique that bordered on the bizarre, she shaved off one eyebrow. "My face," she offered by way of explanation, "is too symmetrical."

Bordered?

UPDATE: I have 6 answers to the question why we aren't talking about how Caroline Kennedy looks.

"Look seans an old friend of mine and i didnt buy his performance at all..."

“... thought he did an average pretend acting like he was gay besides hes one of the most homophobic people i kno"

Mickey Rourke, lusting for the Oscar, texts about Sean Penn.

ADDED: You know, if I wanted to argue that the movie "Milk" is homophobic, I could think of a good 6 points.

Roland Burris's monument...

... to himself.

AND: For comparison, check out the Howard Stern headstone. They had a "Secret Santa" thing on the radio show, and the guy that got Stern's name gave him that headstone with his picture on it. Hilarious! Howard did not like the gift at all and kept saying that he did not want to contemplate his own mortality.

"Typical Althouse blog thread."

As conceived by Michael H.

Funny, but I'm sure funnier ones could be written.

Things we drank.