Who sins what?

Here’s a worrying trend. A Vatican study, quoted in the Telegraph, has concluded: "pride is the most common sin committed by women... but ranks only at number five for men, who are most prone to lust, followed by gluttony.
The results of the survey, which was based on an analysis of confessional data carried out by 95-year-old Jesuit priest and scholar Roberto Busa, have been echoed by the Vatican.
Monsignor Wojciech Giertych, personal theologian to Pope Benedict XVI and the papal household told the Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano: "Men and women sin in different ways. When you look at vices from the point of view of the difficulties they create you find that men experiment in a different way from women."
After lust and gluttony, the third most common sin by men is sloth followed by anger, pride and envy with avarice at the bottom. For women, envy was the second most common sin after pride, followed by anger, while sloth was the least likely."
That the priest should have been recording the content of the confessional is perhaps unethical? Can we really hold the saying "as safe as the confessional" now true?
"Last year the Vatican added seven new sins to the existing list: genetic modification; human experimentations: polluting the environment; social injustice; causing poverty; financial gluttony; and taking or selling drugs."
One wonders what the gender differences over the forthcoming years (presumably by someone younger than the 95 year old) will reveal. Will women catch up in the job market thus making it possible to indulge in financial gluttony as much as men? Which sex pollutes the environment more?
Surely the survey proves only not who sins what but who confesses to it?

More squeeze, less please

Scientists have attempted to explore the biological importance of the ring finger/index finger ratio, technically known as 2D:4D. If the ring finger is longer than the index it is taken to mean that one has had more exposure to testosterone in the womb. The ratio has been associated with generosity, sporting ability, propensity to heart attacks, exam success, arthritis and sexuality. Men tend to have a relatively long ring finger compared to their index fingers. Women's 2D:4D ratio tends to be even. It has been suggested that there is a higher percentage of longer ring fingers working as city stockbrokers.
What does this prove? That finger scientists like to tell us where we are in job market prospects. Gender and sexuality seem prone to the Protestant Work Ethic. Yet I am trying to escape the credit crunch. I’m looking for research that might be a little more raunchy. That might give me an injection of scientific umph. The best I can find is: ‘psychologists believe that to signal loyalty women orgasm more frequently if their man is rich.’ Wealth has now been added to body symmetry and attractiveness as criteria for copulatory satisfaction. That must mean fewer female orgasms as credit continues to crunch. It adds a whole new dimension to ‘interest rate.’

Painful, ridiculous and ignorant

One of the most traumatic yet contributory TV documentaries to be screened this year, Chosen, portrayed in close-up the agonies of three adult men who had been abused when very young public school boys. Their pain was palpable years after the event and totally typical for those suffering post traumatic shock. It is so tempting after watching this to become a conspiracy theorist. The police, courts and current school owners could not have been more unhelpful. We seem to be more comfortable with sexual issues as long as they are impersonal, scientific: a fatherhood gene or the incalculable consequences of the disappearing male. With perhaps a little more discomfort our difficulties with gender become somewhat farcical. The politically correct Christmas carols which edit “king,” “son” and “virgin.” The consequences of fear and repression are serious. The official statistics show teenage pregnancies rose again last year. Perhaps we have to come down to earth this Christmas time. And educate.

He's a Celebrity Get Him Out of There

This year’s I’m a celebrity Get Me Out of Here sees the contestant celebrities divided into two camps. One camp has been named somewhat predictably ‘camp Camp’ by its inhabitants because three of its members are homosexuals. There was a discussion about what it was like for them to come out - albeit of the kind you might have encountered over drinks at an Islington cocktail party. More potentially controversial is the conversation in the ‘away’ camp where the sexist Robert Kilroy-Silk (who is perhaps best known for his BBC show Kilroy having been cancelled by the BBC in 2004 after a racist remark) seems to believe it is politically jungle correct to keep up a sort of running you this you that commentary on the The Women. We might be a more sexually tolerant society but we’re not free of Old Bloke Misogynists yet.

Credit crunch

This surely must be a time of reflection - or panic. And much cutting: cut costs, cut corners perhaps, cur prices. For anyone considering therapy or counselling right now it really works to be able to sit down completely free of charge - and expectations - and talk through possibilities and goals.
Email: somasexual@gmail.com for a free Sex, Love and Intimacy Questionnaire which can help to bring clarity and achieveability to relationships.

Sir Cliff, the tube, the meadow vole and his lover

If I were made to choose a binary distinction it would be fluid or fixed. Some people find happiness as a journey. Last week Sir Cliff Richard disclosed that the typical 2 point 4 marriage didn’t do it for him but rather the companionship of a male partner. In the eyes of the fundamentalists this might make him less of a Christian and yet how can he be free to love others unless he has found love himself? The nuances of loving within a less rigidly defined matrix will be fluid, on-going and non-formulaic. In stark contrast there is the search for the answer to everything with the big bang big switch on of the Large Hadron Collider taking place in CERN. Will it be 42 as in Douglas Adam’s Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy? This has not a jot to do with a fluid search for love so much as a desire to find the one true beginning. What will we do when we find it? It’s not as if these forces are easy to harness. Likewise the search for a gene for everything including holding down a happy marriage. If you can’t you may have something more in common with the meadow vole then you thought. It seems that happiness for a prairie vole is monogamy but for its meadow cousin promiscuity rules the roost or nest. The culprit is the genetic predisposition for a receptor for the hormone vasopressin which plays an important role in social behaviour, pair-bonding and sexual attachment. And if you have that I suppose you’re doomed. I would make a bad geneticist or particle scientist. There is a certain inherent pessimism in finding a gene for failure. And the fear that we might not only genetically engineer crops but moral obligation too. I am much more interested in where we might be going rather than where we have come from. Perhaps it would be more useful to put all the politicians in a nine mile tube and bang their heads together. They might discover the answer to global warming or ending poverty. Meanwhile let bosons be bosons and the world a better place for gay Christians and meadow voles.

Marmite, ménages and Big Brother

Big Brother is like Marmite. You either love it or hate it. The programme works out a matrix of three players: housemates, TV audience and the programme’s production team. It is a media ménage à trois. Each of us tries to stay one step ahead of ‘the game’. For some of the housemates this means the mistaken belief that there is no game or at least that they are not playing one. Anyone who cannot be all things to all people is quickly nominated by fellow housemates. Insincerity (aka gossiping) is unforgivable in the eyes of the public. Eviction ensues. Those who manage to survive guarantee themselves further time in which their public persona will be gradually eroded. Just like a good game of cricket the shine gets knocked off. In this case it is not by willow on leather but by constant multiple camera attention on any and all residual practised polish. As viewers we bray for sincerity. If we don’t get it then the many suggestion boxes littered around the back of set of Big Brother will ensure that the various tasks push the housemates further and further into a seemingly endless combination of hunger and drunken exhaustion. The shine wears off. You are more than the three seconds it takes to make instant attraction in a nanosecond's first impression. Love it or hate it we are reminded we are real. Ruthless manipulation it may be but it is also an antidote to celebrity gloss – no matter how much store the participants put by hair straighteners.