The Automatik

In a development reported in multiple Internet news sites and blogs, “a federal appeals court has struck down a Texas law that makes it a crime to promote or sell sex toys.” (1)

It’s difficult to get one’s head around the idea that any state would consider sex toys a threat, but apparently that is the case. According to Statesman.com:

The state also argued in a brief that Texas has legitimate “morality based” reasons for the laws, which include “discouraging prurient interests in autonomous sex and the pursuit of sexual gratification unrelated to procreation.” (2)

This implies that it is not merely the termination of a pregnancy—abortion—that is construed as murder in Texas. We should also include sperm and eggs as victims of the Great American Holocaust. After all, according to the U.S. Government, I am pre-pregnant, “regardless of whether [I] plan to get pregnant anytime soon.” (3)

Feasibly I could rack up one murder a month per annum; the unfortunate male members of my species will be charged as serial killers.

And the weapon of choice? “[A]n artificial penis or vagina [used] ‘primarily for the stimulation of human genital organs’.” (4) Thankfully, there is always an exception, in this case, “for instances in which the purchase meets a ‘medical, psychiatric, judicial, legislative, or law enforcement’ need.” (5)

I’m trying to imagine what police officers, lawyers, and judges, might need a sex toy for in the course of their chosen professions, None of the scenarios are anything less than horrifying and all involve the word “rape.”

As for doctors, I suppose they invoking the long-standing tradition of Dr. Freud’s favorite, hysteria, when the woman in question was herself under threat of strangulation by her own uterus (6) and needed the “manual stimulation of the [her] genitals by the doctor to ‘hysterical paroxysm’.” aka orgasm. (7) Now what exactly is a threat here? Oh right. . . sex toys.

It’s not bad enough that one would want to self-pleasure in the privacy of one’s own home; the statute also indicates that, “[a]nyone in possession of six or more sexual devices is considered to be promoting them.” (8) Let the War on Dildoes begin in earnest! (Kids, remember: JUST SAY NO. . . orgasm.)

However, thankfully, a brave soldier in this ongoing battle, Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott, has recently asked the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals to rehear the case, yoking masturbation to those old chestnuts, bigamy and incest, (9) the same nasty things that threaten to run rampant in a world where homosexuals are allowed to exist and engage in sexual interaction. (10)

Personally, I’m grateful that Mr. Abbott is so dedicated to this cause because without him, I might try to rise above my station and seek sexual pleasure for its own sake. I’m indebted to him and his brethren for instructing me on what to do with my sexual organs since I honestly had no idea what to use them for! With him around I am reminded that I am after all, a woman, nothing more than a baby-making machine, a vessel who willingly and gratefully accepts the tool of the state.

1. Stephen Kreytak, “Court overturns Texas ban on sex toys,” Statesman.com, February 14, 2008.
2. Ibid.
3. January W. Payne, “Forever Pregnant,” Washingtonpost.com, May 16, 2006.
4. Bonnie Goldstein, “The Texas Dildo Massacre (NSFW)”, Slate.com, March 3, 2008.
5. Ibid.
6. Wikipedia, “Female hysteria.”
7. Ibid.
8. Stephen Kreytak, “Court overturns Texas ban on sex toys,” Statesman.com, February 14, 2008.
9. Bonnie Goldstein, “The Texas Dildo Massacre (NSFW)”, Slate.com, March 3, 2008.
10. Sean Loughlin, “Santorum under fire for comments on homosexuality,” CNN.com, April 22, 2003.