Is this real?

A pre-election game to help start conversations

Oct 31, 2024

Hey horny readers! The newsletter is going out very late today (I was on a plane), but it’s a fun one! This week’s newsletter features a game that I played with a bus filled with volunteers headed to Philadelphia last weekend.

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Adult Sex Ed comedically challenges why we think what we think about sex. In case you’re new, I’m Dani Faith Leonard, a comedy writer, film producer, and performer. In 2018, I started a comedy show called Adult Sex Ed and launched this newsletter last year. Each week, I take a fun deep dive into a topic that I’ve been researching. Want to know more? Read the whole description on substack here.

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This past weekend, I partnered with some great folks and brought a bus of volunteers to Philadelphia to speak with voters. It was a meaningful day with the Birds and the Bees PAC and my main takeaway was something that I know on an intellectual level, but always need to be reminded of—most people care about the issues that affect them on a day-to-day level and less about the overwhelming or existential ones (like fascism). Overall, it was a fun, important time.

A bus load of folks, the Birds and the Bees PAC

Founders Sarah Rowen, Jenna Bimbi, and me after we made it back to NYC with no casualties.

I hosted a comedy show on the bus ride down with Sarah Harsthorne, Calvin Cato, Katie Haller, and Kylie Holloway, and let me tell you…bus comedy at 10am is hard. And really, really fun. Thank you to everyone who made it possible.

I had to figure out how to get people excited to see a comedy show at 10am on a bus. I also wanted to provide some information that might come in handy later, or at least spark a conversation. Here’s a game that I played with the crowd called, “Is this Real?”

QUESTIONS (scroll down for the answers):

Let’s start with things that women may have been diagnosed with:
1. Bicycle Face. Is it real?
2. Blue Waffle. Is it real?
3. Wandering Womb. Is it real?
In the election of 1800, did Thomas Jefferson spread a rumor that John Adams had a deformed penis?
When did quack doctors convince some wealthy men to implant a second set of testicles to try to be more manly? Was it the 1920s or the 2020s?
When did Donald Trump’s father Fred get arrested? Was it in 1927 during a Ku Klux Klan riot, or in 1976 over code violations at a building he owned?

ANSWERS:

Two out of three of these medical conditions are real.
1. Bicycle Face is REAL (kind-of). In the late 1800s, women could receive a devastating medical diagnosis called Bicycle Face, "characterized by a hard, clenched jaw and bulging eyes." It may have been because bicycles were a seen as a symbol of feminism—if women could ride, they could leave. There was also a fear that women might pleasure themselves on the seat, which doesn’t happen to me on a Peloton! Women who had other jobs were just as susceptible to acquiring landmine faces. Circus face was the condition that female performers might get if they accepted jobs at the circus. If it sounds like a pre-cursor to resting bitch face, that’s because it is.
2. Blue Waffle is NOT REAL. “Blue waffle” is an internet hoax about a sexually transmitted infection that will turn a vulva blue, supposedly brought on by too much sex. Here’s the problem: the other listed symptoms of blue waffle are itching, irritation of the vaginal area, and unusual discharge. These can be symptoms of a real, and probably treatable, STI. Turns out, blue waffle was a joke started in 2008, but it spread rampantly, due to a lack of sex ed. The blue waffle hoax spread around schools all over the US, accompanied by “photographic evidence.” You can still find these photos online, but you don’t need to. In 2013, a councilwoman from Trenton, New Jersey fell for the hoax and publicly announced that blue waffle disease had claimed the lives of 85 women.
3. Wandering Womb is something that women actually got diagnosed with. Hippocrates, the father of medicine, explained at length a condition where a woman’s uterus would wander around her body. The movement of the uterus was believed to cause symptoms depending on where it went, putting pressure on the organs and even causing suffocation. So what was the prescription for a womb that won’t stand still? Put a baby in it, naturally! Frequent pregnancy was the recommendation, so that the womb wouldn’t get bored. Wandering Womb eventually morphed into a different medical diagnosis—Hysteria, which translates to “womb disease.” Hysteria was a formally recognized psychological disorder until 1980.
  Why all of this matters: A lot of it shows up today. There is, of course a pre-occupation with how female presidential candidates hold their faces. We’re still also vastly uninformed about women’s bodies, not only due to a lack of sex education. As of 2020, only 10.8% of NIH funding was allocated towards women’s health. All of this combined with the loss of reproductive freedoms is devastating.
THIS WAS REAL. In the election of 1800, Thomas Jefferson DID spread a rumor that John Adams had a deformed penis. Back then, it was still inappropriate to campaign on your own behalf, so Jefferson and Adams had their friends do their dirty work. Jefferson’s friend James Callendar, an influential journalist at the time, accused John Adams of having a “hideous hermaphroditical character, which has neither the force and firmness of a man, nor the gentleness and sensibility of a woman.” In turn, the Adams camp spread the rumor that Thomas Jefferson was dead. A Connecticut newspaper also warned that electing Jefferson would create a nation where “murder, robbery, rape, adultery and incest will openly be taught and practiced.” Thomas Jefferson was definitely a shit, and all of this kind of sounds familiar, right? Attacking someone’s manhood (or womanhood) is as old as the United States of America.
THIS REAL PHENOMENON HAPPENED IN THE 1920S. In the 1920s, there was a concept floating around that men may be able to rejuvenate their health by getting a new set of balls. But these ballin’ bollocks had to come from somewhere, right? Doctors used testicles from goats for a while, and then switched to cadavers. Then, something crazy started happening. Men were getting kidnapped by “gland pirates” in Chicago, drugged with chloroform, and waking up with empty scrota. Newspapers went wild with the story, eager to report on the “Gland Larceny.” So what can we learn from this history? For every problematic guru who tells women that they suffer from hysteria/a fallen womb/some other random ailment, there was a snake-oil-salesman nearby willing to convince a man to steal a goat’s stones. For every Gwyneth, there’s a, RFK Jr.
THE ANSWER TO THIS ONE IS BOTH. Fred C. Trump was arrested in 1927 during a Ku Klux Klan riot, AND in 1976 over code violations at a building he owned. Should you care? Well, recently Donald Trump claimed that immigrants commit crimes because it’s in their genes. “And we got a lot of bad genes in our country right now,” he added in an interview earlier this month. Eugenics hasn’t been at the center of a presidential campaign in a minute! It’s been debunked as false science and has also been considered repugnant for decades. But if eugenics was real and people could be judged by their genes, get a load of Fred!