I've often wondered how so many words that describe sexual behaviors also wind up being words of disrespect. Some would argue from an extreme feminist perspective that all heterosexual sex involves some form of disrespect to the woman. I am not satisfied with that explanation, nevertheless, here's the joke that involves this word play:

A preacher was explaining that he must move on to a larger congregation that will pay him more. There is a hush within the congregation. No one wants him to leave.

Joe Smith, who owns several car dealerships in the city stands up and proclaims, "If the preacher stays, I will provide him with a new Cadillac every year and his wife with a Honda mini-van to transport their children!" The congregation sighs in relief and applauds.

Sam Brown, a successful entrepreneur and investor, stands and says, "If the preacher will stay on here, I'll personally double his salary and also establish a foundation to guarantee the college education of all his children!" More sighs and loud applause.

Sadie Jones, age 88, stands and announces with a smile, "If the preacher stays, I will give him sex!" There is total silence.

The preacher, blushing, asks her, "Mrs. Jones, whatever possessed you to say that?"

Sadie's 90 year-old husband, Jake, is now trying to hide, holding his forehead with the palm of his hand and shaking his head from side to side, while his wife replies, "Well, I just asked my husband how we could help and he said, "Screw the preacher!"

I laugh at the Edith Bunker gullibility and affability that Sadie portrays, but also her implied enjoyment of sex. It's the same as baking a pie for the preacher - if that will help him decide to stay. And, there's that example of swapping the meaning for a sexual term into a derogatory one.
I particularly like this next joke about Harry and Joyce because I majored in English and initially trained to teach high school English.

Harry is getting along in years and finds that he is unable to get an erection. He finally goes to his doctor who tries a few things, but nothing seems to work. So, the doctor refers him to a Native American medicine man that says, "I can cure this."

That said, he throws a white powder in a flame, and there is a flash with billowing blue smoke. Then he says, "This is powerful medicine. You can only use it once a year. All you have to do is say '123,' and it shall rise for as long as you wish!"

Harry then asks, "What happens when it's over, and I don't want to continue?"
The medicine man replies: "All you or your partner has to say is ‘1234,' and it will go down. But, be warned - it will not work again for another year."

Harry rushes home, eager to try out his new ability. That night he is ready to surprise Joyce. He showers, shaves, and puts on his most exotic shaving lotion. He gets into bed, and lying next to her says, "123." He suddenly becomes more aroused than anytime in his life - just as the medicine man had promised.

Joyce, who had been facing away, turns over and asks, "What did you say 123 for?"

And now you know why you shouldn't end a sentence with a preposition.

I've been collecting jokes about sex for many years. I don't fancy myself a stand up comedian. I doubt that I'll have much opportunity to use them in any professional setting in my future.

When I was in graduate school and running my sexual accessories company, As You Like It, I used humor to help my gatherings of women release any tension they might be feeling. I enjoyed making plays on words and felt safe using that type of humor. I avoided jokes that might offend, so several in this series of posts were off the list. Yet, I wanted my listeners to understand that there can be much to gain from humor in a sexual context.

I do think that laughter and sex itself mix really well.

Sexual Humor - The Series
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Part 2
Part 3

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Some of my favorite jokes involve kids and their innocent portrayal of seemingly adult topics. At Back to School Night last fall, my son's kindergarten teacher told a few jokes. He, a former Marine teaching kindergarten (yes, really), peppered his presentation to the parents with four jokes. Of course, the one I remembered was:

Little Susie comes home from school one day and proudly says, "Mom, I learned how to make babies today!" Mom's eyebrows went up and she said, "You did??" "Yep," said Susie.

Mom, nervous about where this was going, ended the conversation and called up the teacher the next day. She said, "Susie tells me that she learned how to make babies yesterday. Is this true??" "Yes," replied her teacher, "it is." At this, Mom replied, "Do you think that's appropriate?" "Yes," said the teacher, "When she comes home today, why don't you ask her."

So, Mom anxiously waited for school to end and when she picked up Susie, she took a deep breath and said, "Susie, you said yesterday that you learned how to make babies. Would you tell me about that?"

"Oh sure, Mom. You change the "y" to "ie" and add an "s."

Many of you know that I support early childhood sex education and may have thought that this story was headed in that direction. I actually prefer that parents be the ones to talk about how to make babies to younger elementary age kids who inevitably ask, "But how did I get in there in the first place??" (That happens to be the title of a great sex education book by Deborah Roffman to help parents with such discussions.)

One of my other favorite stories about sexually related matters centers around the process of giving birth. This story, called "The Middle Wife," came to me from an attorney friend who was also once a nurse and a preschool teacher. (Yes, I know some folks with very interesting job histories.)

I've been teaching now for about fifteen years. I have two kids myself, but the best birth story I know is the one I saw in my own second-grade classroom a few years back.

When I was a kid, I loved show-and-tell. So I always have a few sessions with my students. It helps them get over shyness and usually show-and-tell is pretty tame. Kids bring in pet turtles, model airplanes, pictures of fish they catch, stuff like that.

And I never, ever place any boundaries or limitations on them. If they want to lug it in to school and talk about it, they're welcome.

Well, one day this little girl, Erica, a very bright, very outgoing kid, takes her turn and waddles up to the front of the class with a pillow stuffed under her sweater. She holds up a snapshot of an infant. "This is Luke, my baby brother, and I'm going to tell you about his birthday."

"First, Mom and Dad made him as a symbol of their love, and then Dad put a seed in my Mom's stomach, and Luke grew in there. He ate for nine months through an umbrella cord."

She's standing there with her hands on the pillow, and I'm trying not to laugh and wishing I had my camcorder with me. The kids are watching her in amazement.

"Then, about two Saturdays ago, my Mom starts saying and going, 'Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh!' Erica puts a hand behind her back and groans. "She walked around the house for, like an hour, 'Oh, oh, oh!'" Now this kid is doing a hysterical duck walk and groaning.

"My Dad called the middle wife. She delivers babies, but she doesn't have a sign on the car like the Domino's man. They got my Mom to lie down in bed like this." Then Erica lies down with her back against the wall.

"And then, pop! My Mom had this bag of water she kept in there in case he got thirsty. And it just blew up and spilled all over the bed, like psshhheew!" This kid has her legs spread with her little hands miming water flowing away. It was too much!

"Then the middle wife starts saying 'push, push,' and 'breathe, breathe.' They started counting, but never even got past ten. Then, all of a sudden, out comes my brother. He was covered in yucky stuff that they all said it was from Mom's play-center, so there must be a lot of toys inside there."

Then Erica stood up, took a big theatrical bow and returned to her seat. I'm sure I applauded the loudest. Ever since then, when it's show-and-tell day, I bring my camcorder, just in case another "Middle Wife" comes along.

I know that adults often get so nervous when children express their interpretation of "adult topics." If this story is told exactly as it occurred, then clearly this was a household with an acceptance of the natural events of life. And, even so, Erica's misunderstandings were many. Nevertheless, she had a healthy dose of child-sized optimism because even though there was a lot of "yucky stuff," her mom must have had a lot of toys inside there!

Some jokes are about senior-aged men and their desire to cling to their sense of virility. These jokes ignore the plight of possible or real victims and plow full speed ahead - just to make their point.

Two old guys, Rodger and Chuck, met in the park every day to feed the pigeons, watch the squirrels and discuss world problems. One day Rodger didn't show up. Chuck didn't think much about it and figured maybe he had a cold or something. But after Rodger hadn't shown up for a week or so, Chuck really got worried.

However, since the only time they ever got together was at the park Chuck didn't know where Rodger lived, so he was unable to find out what had happened to him. A month had passed, and Chuck figured he had seen the last of Rodger. But one day, Chuck approached the park and lo and behold there sat Rodger!

Chuck was very excited and happy to see him and told him so. Then he said, "For crying out loud, Rodger, what in the world happened to you?" Rodger replied, "I have been in jail." "Jail?" cried Chuck. "What in the world for?"

"Well," Rodger said, "You know Judy, that cute little waitress at the coffee shop?" "Yeah," said Chuck, "I remember her. What about her?"

"Well, one day she filed rape charges against me and, at 89 years old, I was so proud that when I got into court, I pleaded guilty. The judge gave me 30 days for perjury."

Of course, this joke takes senior sexual abilities (and the desire to have them) to a ridiculous level. And, the judge's ruling puts Rodger back in his place. You can almost hear the gavel bang deflating his sexual ambitions.

There are many jokes about lost sexual opportunities. I find that 20- and 30-somethings merely moan at this joke for its play on words, but older folks (particularly men) tend to wince and let out a sigh of resignation.

I've never been a fan of categorizing men and women when it comes to sex in that sort of Mars/Venus manner. It oversimplifies and attempts to tidy up that which is so complex. Yet, there are times when the male/female dichotomy is funny particularly when an off-the-wall spin is added.

A woman meets a man in a bar. They talk. They connect. They end up leaving together.

They get back to his place and as he shows her around his apartment, she notices that one wall of his bedroom is completely filled with soft, sweet, cuddly teddy bears. There are three shelves in the bedroom, with hundreds and hundreds of cute, cuddly teddy bears carefully placed in rows, covering the entire wall!

It was obvious that he had taken quite some time to lovingly arrange them and she was immediately touched by the amount of thought he had put into organizing the display. There were small bears all along the bottom shelf, medium-sized bears covering the length of the middle shelf, and huge, enormous bears running all the way along the top shelf.

She found it strange for an obviously masculine guy to have such a large collection of teddy bears. She is quite impressed by his sensitive side, but doesn't mention this to him.

They share a bottle of wine and continue talking and after awhile, she finds herself thinking, "Oh my God! Maybe, this guy could be the one! Maybe he could be the future father of my children?"

She turns to him and kisses him lightly on the lips. He responds warmly. They continue to kiss, the passion builds, and he romantically lifts her in his arms and carries her into his bedroom where they rip off each other's clothes and make hot, steamy love.

She is so overwhelmed that she responds with more passion, more creativity, more heat than she has ever known. After an intense, explosive night of raw passion with this sensitive guy, they are lying there together in the afterglow.

The woman rolls over, gently strokes his chest and asks coyly, "Well, how was it?"
The guy gently smiles at her, strokes her cheek, looks deeply into her eyes, and says: "Help yourself to any prize from the middle shelf."

Certainly I have met many a woman who (though she wasn't offered a teddy bear for her "performance at the arcade") found herself making inflated meaning of a sexual encounter relative to her partner's assessment of it. This joke hits my funny bone because it points out how differently two people can interpret the same experience.

Stay tuned for Part 3...

Sexual Humor - The Series
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

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Recently one of my clients was reading a book about jokes and philosophy. It was a book that taught the tenets of many of the great philosophers using jokes to get their ideas across. I briefly flipped through it to see if there happened to be anything about what jokes mean in terms of sex, but found nothing. My client was up to Kant and said he hadn't run across anything about sex yet.

What sprang to mind was a desire I've quietly had to write about sex jokes -- perhaps a book some day when my kids are older and wouldn't harass me with, "Mom, are you still writing that book about sex jokes?!?"

I began thinking in categories about jokes. Which ones make me laugh? Why is that? Which ones make me groan? (I know, it's dangerous to analyze humor.) I started remembering jokes that colleagues in the field of sexology have presented in their talks at conferences (often near the beginning or end to demonstrate that even though their presentation may involve a lot of dry number crunching, they personally still had a sense of humor about it.)

Many jokes get their laugh from clinging to long held myths about a sexual matter. One of the most cherished yet generally unhelpful notions concerns penis size. While some women have a strong preference for genitals of a certain length and/or girth, most women just don't care. Here's a joke that plays on that myth:

Three old ladies were sitting side by side on patio chairs at their Orlando retirement home reminiscing. The first lady recalled from years past shopping at the local Piggly Wiggly and demonstrated with her hands the length and thickness of a cucumber she could buy for a penny.

The second old lady nodded, adding that onions used to be much bigger and cheaper also, and demonstrated the size of two big onions she could buy for a penny a piece.

The third old lady remarked, "I can't hear a word you're saying, but I remember the guy you're talking about."

I remember as a young teen vacationing on the Jersey shore and sitting on the dunes swapping stories about all sorts of stuff with the other kids spending the summer there. After a while, the stories turned to jokes and ultimately the jokes turned to sex jokes. This was a form of peer sex education and, as is often the case, it lacked accuracy. One joke stuck with me. Though I don't remember the premise of the joke, it involved a woman having intercourse with a fireman and her exclamation about him needing to "reel out more hose or get closer to the fire."

And there are thousands (millions?) of other jokes about men needing "a big one." I have wondered how many men thought themselves the butt of these jokes and emotionally suffered because of it.

Some sex jokes are about an aspect of religion - often how religion got it wrong.

A young monk arrives at the monastery. He is assigned to help the other monks in copying the old canons and the laws of the church by hand. He notices, however, that all of the monks are copying from copies, not from the original manuscript.

So, the new monk goes to the head abbot to question this, pointing out that if someone made even a small error in the first copy, it would never be picked up! In fact, that error would be continued in all of the subsequent copies.

The head monk says, "We have been copying from the copies for centuries, but you make a good point, my son." He goes down into the dark caves underneath the monastery where the original manuscripts are held as archives in a locked vault that hasn't been open for hundreds of years.

Hours go by and nobody sees the old abbot. So, the young monk gets worried and goes down to look for him. He sees him banging his head against the wall and wailing, "We missed the "R"! We missed the "R"!

His forehead is all bloody and bruised and he is crying uncontrollably. The young monk asks the old abbot, "What's wrong, father?"

With a choking voice, the old abbot replies, "The word was CELEBRATE!!!"

No matter that "celebrate" minus the "R" does not spell "celibate," we all get the joke that Catholic priests have been "missing out" for centuries.

And, there are jokes about sex, religion and guidelines of "godly" behavior:

During these serious times people of all faiths should remember these four religious truths:

1. Muslims do not recognize Jews as God's chosen people.


2. Jews do not recognize Jesus as the Messiah.


3. Protestants do not recognize the Pope as the leader of the Christian world.


4. Baptists do not recognize each other at Hooters.

Nothing like the topic of sex to bring out the hypocrisy that can flourish among some religious folks.

To be continued...

Sexual Humor - The Series
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

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