Today’s irrelevant contribution to communal ignorance about sex can be found on MSNBC, in a “romp,” as it were, through history’s zany beliefs surrounding the perils of shagging. Like vagina dentata – Latin for “toothed vagina” – which refers to the common folk tales certain cultures would use to discourage young men from having sex with strange women or committing rape, just in case the argument that it’s wrong to force anyone to do anything against their will was going over their heads.

Wikipedia tells us, “The concept is also of importance in psychoanalysis, where it is held to relate to the unconscious fears associated with castration anxiety.”

I’ll say! As your average married man, I am intimately acquainted with castration anxiety, which for me has little to do with teeth other than the occassional if fleeting thought to knock a few out. No, for most modern men – i.e. born after Kafka – castration is a common activity not relegated to the bedroom but practiced in practically every field of endeavor, such as at work, in the arts and almost always at play. Government is a great castrating entity, as well, and of course the Great Castrator is The Catholic Church, which at one time even institutionalized the practice. Oh, for the old days!

Today, what remains of the old folk tales are relegated to the myth category, pulled out by reaching writers such as Brian Alexander, the author of America Unzipped and the “Sexploration” column on MSNBC, to make it seem as if humans are innately stupid when it comes to thinking about sex. In today’s column, Alexander runs through an assortment of idiotic urban myths about sex, including vaginas with teeth (actually used in the MSNBC headline), orgasms by sewing machine on the job, flat breasts from masturbating and other like absurdities.

Whether the column adds anything to anyone’s misunderstanding of anything is, I suppose, neither here nor there, but what I find disconcerting about the whole thing is the feigned shock and awe that runs through these columns and books about America’s sense of its own sexuality, which, though conflicted, is highly developed and profoundly acted upon.

“Brian Alexander was driven to understand Americans’ desire to get down and dirty—especially in an era where conservative family values dominate,” says the promotional material for America Unzipped. “To find out what people are really doing—and why a country that suffered a national freak- out over Janet Jackson’s breast was enthusiastically getting in touch with its inner perv—Alexander set out on a sexual safari in modern America.”

Oh, please. That helpless nod to conservative family values instigating a sexual safari not only commits a felony of confused metaphor but also is disingenuous in the extreme. Still, I guess MSNBC trying to be sexually aware a few decades after the fact is better than nothing. They might want to lose the “Oh, Gosh” attitude, though. It’s a loser with anyone under 80.