Gloria's Oversexed Mind

I'm ending our two-week adventure in SM/fetish 50s nostalgia with a bonus: some work by mainstream, vanilla pin-up artist Art Frahm. Frahm drew for straight magazines. Then one day he stumbled upon a schtick : a beautiful young lady suddenly loses her panties in a public setting, and stands helpless and embarrassed while a male on-looker's observes her plight. It was an instant hit with his audience and Frahm stuck to it with a vengeance, producing scads of variations on the theme.

But a funny thing happened to the perception of his work. The girl's humiliation, which was as much the subject as the girl herself, stopped being a crowd-pleaser. As the 50s mentality petered out in the 60s, and feminism petered in, the misogynistic ads and art that festooned magazines everywhere began to change. Women being humiliated or degraded stopped being playful themes in male erotic art and became...well, insultingly humiliating and degrading to women. Fucking male chauvinists! (*waving tiny fist at you all*)

Which is where we BDSMers come in. According to Wiki, Frahm's work was

...considered too camp to be art, and too juvenile to be erotica. However this genre (which Frahm seems to have created) was in demand in the 1950s, and was later imitated by some other pin-up artists. The falling-panties art has a small cult following as mid-20th century kitsch, or even as fetish art....

AHA. There are indeed fetish groups out there who love nothing better than catching the accidental upskirt or the fallen panty embarrassment of a pretty young woman.

Meanwhile, the public humiliation of a nice but very naughty girl whose panties won't stay on...ummm...did it suddenly get warm in here?

So while Frahm probably never meant for perverts like us to pore over his work, I think he deserves to be included, if only as a footnote, to this nostalgic look at 20th century fetish art.

James Lileks offers a fantastically fun analysis of Art Frahm, which I strongly recommend for those equipped with a sense of humor.

I'll start with a couple of Frahm's non-panty-o-centric illustrations.

And now, sit back and enjoy the humiliation:

August 31, 2007 in Sex and Arts | Permalink | Comments (0)

I'm delighted to be running a show devoted to the work of Irving Klaw. Perhaps the best-known fetish entrepreneur of his generation, Klaw introduced adult male readers to a vast assortment of sex-workers, strip-tease artists, and fetish models. Some of the women (the burlesque queens in particular) were already known entities but in one particular model, Klaw found eternal BDSM fame: Bettie Page.

Page was the most stunning and the most versatile of Klaw's stable of femme fatales. Whether it was pure 1950s cheesecake, hair-pulling and wrestling, or hardcore lesbian SM, the raven-haired super-siren's charisma has cast a sexy spell that's lasted almost 60 years.

The place to find the single largest catalogue of Klaw-ophilia is on IrvingKlaw.com, where his work is organized by genre into numerous categories. (You will also find some photos by other fetish photogs there, mixed in -- something I found slightly confusing.)

Before I show you the work (and I do hope you like it), I have to make a confession. As I was gathering these up from a range of sites, one thought kept whirling through my head. These aren't very good photos. They are good pictures of sexy girls, but as photos, they kind of suck. It's obvious that when Klaw shot, the ONLY thing he focused on was the girl and the pose and getting her to look as hot as possible. Looking through his lens you can see his profit motive. The term "money shot" comes to mind.

The style is perfectly suited to the genre (i.e., sleazy porn rag, printed on cheap paper with grainy images, ca. 1950s). Did the men who devoured these bound and naked beauties care that the composition, the use of light and shadow, and the background basically sucked ass? NO. And who can blame them. They weren't going to a museum; they were using these rags to jerk off. Still to my mind, even though some of his images aren't half as hardcore as other works of art I've shown here, Klaw's work strikes me as more porn than eros, more objectifying than artistic. It's obvious he loved, perhaps was even obsessed, with his subjects. He got more out of Betty Page than she probably ever realized she had to give, or would have been able to give to a less skilled camera man. (Interviews with her in recent years certainly suggest it.) But the lack of consideration to the artistry involved in good photography makes even his best pix look kind of tacky and sleazy.

Of course, some of us wouldn't have it any other way.

They say a picture speaks a thousand words. I'll start with this picture of Klaw and Page. I think it speaks two thousand.

August 31, 2007 in Sex and Arts | Permalink | Comments (0)

Our fabulous flashback to the 50s continues and ooh, what a treat this show will be. I was able to find a ton of illustrations by 1950s fetish cartoonist Gene Bilbrew. Apparently copyright control over the body of his work is not being strictly enforced.

From Wikipedia:

Gene Bilbrew (1923 - 1974) was a fetish artist notably employed at Irving Klaw's Movie Star News/Nutrix company....

Bilbrew used a range of pseudonyms, including Eneg (Gene spelled backwards), Van Rod, J. Bondy and GB Bondy and his output was prolific, to put it mildly!

Recommended Bilbrew Links

- Gene Bilbrew, named after the artist, features the largest collection of his work I could find. It's actually a frame inside the parent site, Bizarre comix. After looking at Bilbrew's work, come back and explore Bizarre's wonderful galleries of SM and fetish illustrations from the 1940s to 1960s. By the way, wherever you see "The Art of Gene Bilbrew" label below, it's something I snagged from Gene Bilbrew

-- Also highly recommended is the Bilbrew selection on this Italian site. A very straightforward collection of clear, intact images makes this one fast and simple to browse.

And now on to Bilbrew's art, beginning with some of the magazine covers he created.

August 31, 2007 in Sex and Arts | Permalink | Comments (0)

Mirror, mirror, in my hand
Will the Erotic Art Show go as planned?

August 30, 2007 in Sex and Arts | Permalink | Comments (2)

Not available on YouTube yet, so you'll need to click this link, then click "PSA Materials" (from the "remote" on the left), then wait for the ads to start rotating.

You will notice a dominatrix with a whip in one of those rotating boxes.

Click on the dominatrix with a whip. If you like that sort of thing, I mean.

And please note the interesting reaction from the wife.

August 30, 2007 in Sexual Humor | Permalink | Comments (4)

Thanks to Mitch for pointing me to this.

August 30, 2007 in Sexual Humor | Permalink | Comments (2)

Fresh from the steamy crap-holes of Atlanta, some cool blogging by Andisheh Nouraee about the risks of using public toilets now that cops are aggressively cruising for gay Republicans potential sex offenders.

In Bathroom Humor, Andy tries -- without much success, since neither a cop nor a County solicitor seemed to know -- to figure out what will and will not get you busted. Is it possible that just removing your pants to poop, and thus exposing your genitals in a lewd manner, is enough to get you sent to the pokey in Georgia? No one seems to have a definite answer.

August 30, 2007 in Sex Laws and Crimes | Permalink | Comments (0)

In light of these frightening court findings, all I can say is that I'm glad that the Scouts won't let gay boys in, thus sparing them molestation by all the heterosexual pedophiles the Scouts draw. Hopefully in the future the Scouts won't let anyone in.

It is time for this group to shut down. Is there any other organization in the world that could have such rampant molestation of children and still be allowed to exist?

Boy Scouts' secret "degenerate" files revealed

The Washington state supreme court has forced the Boy Scouts of America to turn over "ineligible volunteer" files that revealed a sexual abuse problem among Scout leaders far greater than the organization previously admitted.

Although justices ruled that the files themselves would not be made public, attorneys said the Boy Scouts "have ejected at least 5,100 adult leaders nationwide for sexual abuse allegations since 1946," according to the Seattle Times.

In the past 15 years, the organization has kicked out leaders for abuse allegations at a rate of one every other day.....

August 30, 2007 in Sex Laws and Crimes | Permalink | Comments (1)

A few months ago, a public defender in another state called for an appointment to get some expert advice in hopes of hearing something from me that would help them defend their client.

The accused was someone who'd met another someone on-line, set up a date, then traveled to said date with a bag full of BDSM and other sex toys, ready for play. When the accused arrived for the date...yep, you guessed it, it was a sting. The kinky playmate who lured him into town was a cop who'd set up a false identity on-line, claiming to be under-age. The client's defense was that it was all a tragic misunderstanding. Even though the cop's "profile" sounded young, the client assumed she was an adult who got off on pretending to be young and had proceded on that basis. There was only one problem: the accused made no effort to ascertain the correct age of the person he planned to meet. He claimed he would have taken his toys and gone home if she turned out to be underage. His lawyers believed him. This sex expert did not.

I wasn't very useful to the PD, I fear. There is no excuse for not establishing the age of someone you're planning to tie up and boink -- and when you travel to another town with a bag of toys, it's safe to assume you are planning to use them. BDSMers, in particular, are supposed to adhere to SSC, and know that "C" is not legally obtainable from a minor. Only adults of legal age can give legal consent to consensual BDSM. And all BDSMers who are ethical and honest don't fuck around with that limit.

The other day, in a similar case in Ohio, a judge has issued a ruling that makes on-line hooker-uppers adhere to a careful standard: bottom-line, don't believe what you read in profiles. Or, rather, do not rely on what someone puts in a profile or treat their claim of being legal age to be a "Get Out of Jail Free" card. If you do, you might just end up like this guy. He tried to defend himself by blaming a site which allowed an underage girl to pretend to be 18 in her profile. Citing a piece of the Communications Decency Act, the judge in Ohio's Federal Court ruled that you can't hold websites accountable for the lies people may tell on them. Obviously, this puts the guy's defense in a world of trouble.

So how can men avoid ending up like these guys?

RULE NUMBER ONE: Your penis may be hard but the law will not forgive you if you let your mind go to mush.

Some tips:

1. If there is any reason to believe the person you're talking to is a minor, run away. The same laws that got Mark Foley can get you: sexual conversation between yourself and a minor on the Internet is (thanks to Foley) a crime for which you can be severely punished.

2. If they won't tell you their age, run away. They are probably a minor.

3. If they tell you their age is under 18, run away. It could be a crime for you to continue saying anything erotic/sexual/graphic or even suggestive to someone who has identified as underage on the Internet.

4. If you can't get a clear answer on age, something's wrong. Run away. Even if you get a clear answer, pay attention to the details. If "hotbabe27" indicates she's living at home, gets an allowance, goes to school every morning, and so on, how likely is it she's legal? A talented cop can trick you into believing anything, especially when you're hard. The chances of a court taking your side are still slim and nil.

5. Don't try to be the "understanding older man" in any young girl's life on the Internet. In the eyes of the law, it just makes you a dirty old man vulnerable to prosecution. If you really want to help troubled kids, volunteer in real life, don't appoint yourself a white knight on the Internet

Finally, remember this important point: once a sex criminal, always a sex criminal. For the rest of your life, you will be turned down for jobs and apartments for your record, you will have to register with police wherever you move, all your travels will be monitored, you won't be able to live or work near schools or other places where children congregate, your neighbors will be alerted to your legal status and, more often than not, they will do whatever they can to drive you out of their neighborhood.

As I've often blogged, I think our laws are disgusting and should be changed. But until they do, you ignore them at your own peril. IMHO, nothing in the world is worth the time you will do for the crime of sexual stupidity on line.

And an important afterwards: this doesn't just apply to avoiding minors. Never ever trust what profiles say. Remain skeptical about people until they prove they're who and what they claim to be. Remember this New Yorker cartoon?

There are plenty of dogs out there pretending to be Masters, Mistresses and slaves too.

August 30, 2007 in Sex Laws and Crimes | Permalink | Comments (0)

If I lived anywhere near Montreal, Project Latex Land is where I'd be this weekend! This brand new conceptual "living erotic art" event sounds fantastic. It will be the kickoff to a weekend-long annual fetish event in this beautiful Canadian city.

This Friday, for one night only, you can enter the fantasy world of a latex enthusiast, somebody who likes (as in really likes) to wear rubber. Project Latex Land is a first-time collaboration by Montreal fetish and glamour photographers Gil Perron and Martin Perreault. In the eight oversize mise-en-scène photographs, friends have a barbeque in the backyard, construction workers jackhammer downtown, and grocery shoppers buy hamburger buns... but all in second-skin pants, thigh-high boots and rubber masks. There's also a lot more tits and ass than at your regular weekday 5 à 7.....

Visit PROJECT Latex Land, for detailed information on the event, and lots of cool behind-the-scenes photos. Like this one:

August 30, 2007 in Sex and Arts, Sex and Sadomasochism | Permalink | Comments (0)

via Ananova

A museum in Iceland wants to talk to you

The world's only penis museum has appealed for a human specimen.

Curator Sigurdur Hjartarson opened the museum in 1974 in Husavik, Iceland, and has collected 195 penises from various animals.

His collection includes penises from hamsters, horses and whales.

But now he is appealing again for a human organ.

He said people from the UK, Germany and the US had contacted him offering their penises in the past but that none of the offers had ever been serious.....

I wonder if he's planning to bequeath his own "specimen" to the museum after he's done using it....

August 29, 2007 in Sexual Strangeness | Permalink | Comments (0)

By Mithras Invicti

I get home from work early this afternoon, and find that the mailman brought me something:

That's the Masterlock 8200DPRO Street Cuff, designed to tether your motorcycle or bike to a secure point.

3" cuffs allow locking to parking meter and fence posts. ... Hardened laminated steel construction with hardened pivot link - virtually impossible to cut.  ... 12" long for convenient locking.

They'll make great ankle shackles and above-the-elbow arm binders (if the bindee is flexible enough). At 3" interior diameter, they are just too big to be handcuffs, unless you know someone with very big hands:

I had been thinking about buying ankle shackles for some time, but was deterred by the price. Then I saw this post from Sam at Sugarbank and ordered right away, as I have guests coming for the weekend. And while the Street Cuff retails for $70, I found these on Ebay for $40. They're actually superior to most BDSM-specific shackles, in my opinion, for three reasons. They're covered in rubber, which reduces the risk of unintentionally marring the surface of a sub. Being manufactured for an actual security application, I am more confident they won't break or malfunction (!). And as Sam says:

If you do choose to invest in properly made equipment you face paying hundreds of dollars and the design is often hard to bear if you’re not a fan of the ‘retro dungeon’ look.

I know it's childish, but I think these are more badass looking than plain metal cuffs (although I find the "Master" cheesy and wonder if the people at the lock company know what uses their products are put to.) And I love pervertables - I should blog about the impact toy I made from coax sometime - because it's fun both to twist something to kinky use and to be able to carry your implement around in public without squicking people. No one would look twice at someone carrying a motorcycle lock - until they find out I don't own a motorcycle.

-Mithras

August 29, 2007 in Mithras Invicti, Sex and Sadomasochism | Permalink | Comments (3)

The lusciously intellectual silent porn star sent these links my way a few months ago and FINALLY I've had time to check 'em out. "Hilda" is an all-new character for me, though once I saw the images they stirred some vague distant memories...of I don't know what, probably some grainy old men's magazine some perverted older boy showed me in my frighteningly precocious youth. (I'm the only girl I know who not only got laid at 14 but actually made it a mission, from age 13 on, to talk a boy into doing the dirty devirginizing deed.)

But enough of my sordid life.

HILDA is quite the coquette! Bouncy, flirty, emanating good cheer and good health, voluptuously ripe with natural contours, she's the all-American plus-size girl, the kind of creature born for sex yet so wholesome looking that all those dirty thoughts you have about her seem somehow cleansed by her pink and glowing skin. Unless, of course, you're the kind of pervert who hungers to defile her. Or who gets off (as the artist clearly did) on seeing her in humiliating situations. Or maybe you'd like to pinch those plump cheeks and buxom breasts until she squeals....ummmmm.... *fluttering eyelashes*

OK, you'd probably like to see some Hilda, wouldn't you? Here's a half dozen of the little darling.

Images snagged from the following excellent resources (courtesy of SPS):

Vintage Hilda Prints

Vintage Hilda Calendars

Hilda Fan Site

August 29, 2007 in Sex and Arts | Permalink | Comments (1)

An interesting case of reverse discrimination is going to court in California. Did they really fire him for being straight? Being the kind of civil rights supporter I am, there's no part of me that condones firing a person based on their sexual orientation. But being the kind of pervert I am, I'd love to be a fly on the wall during this trial. "Well, your honor, we knew he didn't fit into the culture because he was the only one in the office who didn't stop what he was doing to watch Ellen."

Lawsuit: I was fired for being straight

The former director of California's AIDS/LifeCycle fundraiser has sued two HIV/AIDS nonprofits that put on the ride, claiming they fired him because he is not gay.....

August 29, 2007 in Sex and Culture | Permalink | Comments (0)

From 1982:

Remember, folks: this guy has been a loud opponent of gay human and civil rights.

August 28, 2007 in Sexual Politics | Permalink | Comments (0)

Looks like some media sources are having quite the field day over the Larry Craig case.

Check out this CBS affiliate's recreation of Sen. Craig's cruising habits

August 28, 2007 in Sexual Politics | Permalink | Comments (0)

File this under "sex news too weird not to share."

What does a man do when he's afraid this his cock is too small to please his woman?

This one indulged in a game of musical cock with what one can only assume was the enthusiastic cooperation of his brother.

And speaking of strange vanilla perversions, this tasty confession from PostSecret.

August 28, 2007 in Sex and Culture | Permalink | Comments (0)

Isn't this cute? It's like a big pink mushroom has sprouted in the garden of her feet.

August 28, 2007 in Sex and Sadomasochism | Permalink | Comments (0)

from Richard Roeper, in the Chicago Sun-Times:

Facing a draft, Nugent bravely wet his pants

So Ted Nugent roams a concert stage while toting automatic weapons, calls Barack Obama "a piece of -----" and says he told Obama to suck on one of his machine-guns. He also calls Hillary Clinton a "worthless bitch" and Dianne Feinstein a "worthless whore."

That Nugent, he's a man's man. He talks the talk and walks the walk, right?

Except when it was time to register for the draft during the Vietnam era. By his own admission, Nugent stopped all forms of personal hygiene for a month and showed up for his draft board physical in pants caked with his own urine and feces, winning a deferment. Creative!

Ah, but that was a long time ago. Nugent isn't just a washed-up rocker -- he's a right-wing madman who's not afraid to call out some of the leading Democrats in language so vile it makes the Dixie Chick Natalie Maines' comments about President Bush sound like a love poem.....

Question: isn't it a crime to dodge the draft? If he's admitted this in public, shouldn't he have to pay for it?

Or is there a statue of limitation on being an asshole?

Meanwhile, Nugent now denies the story, and offers some other revelations in the Independent (UK):

His father Warren was a drill sergeant..... "As a boy," he adds, "I was inundated with discipline."

"What does that mean - the strap?"

"I saw the riding crop. A lot. I felt it, I think, just once. But corporal punishment is real good. It teaches dogs not to shit on the couch."

"It didn't stop you urinating on that nun."

"These are legends."

"You've described that incident for publication."

"I was in Jesuit School. When we peed, the nuns would stand behind, checking on us. I had an erection one time and I peed all over the wall. I was inclined to turn round and tell the nun 'I'm just peeing here.' I didn't. I gave some hippy the interview. He got it wrong. Neither did I poke my erect penis through a map of West Virginia - did you read that?"

.....He has the rage, but he doesn't have the war record. At 18, he was called up to serve in Vietnam. "In 1977 you gave an interview to High Times [the cannabis user's journal of record] where you claimed you defecated in your clothes to avoid the draft."

("I got 30 days' notice of the physical," Nugent told them. "I ceased cleansing my body. Two weeks before the test I stopped eating food with nutritional value. A week before, I stopped going to the bathroom. I did it in my pants. My pants got crusted up.")

"I never shit my pants to get out of the draft," says Nugent, good-naturedly....

"But you did dodge the draft." "I had a 1Y [student deferment]. I enrolled at Oakland Community College...."

"So basically," - I admit that I have, unaccountably, started to speak Nugent - "you didn't want to get your Michigan ass blown off in Vietnam." "Correct. I did not want to get my ass blown off in Vietnam."

August 28, 2007 in Post-Modern Pop Culture | Permalink | Comments (0)

De deck is done! De deck is done!

That would be the deck out back that has been a source of: contention ("Does the contractor know what the hell he's doing?"), aggravation ("But you said you'd be finished three months ago!"), irritation ("Could you at least clean up the insane mess you've made of the surrounding landscape?"), procrastination ("Didn't he say that would take 15 minutes to finish like 15 days ago??"), humiliation ("OMG, he lost ANOTHER worker to a macho ego fight?"), rationalization ("Of course he's blaming the carpenter for all his own mistakes!"), trepidation ("Are those skanky crackwhore-looking girls he keeps bringing here supposed to work...on his penis?").

During the course of this nightmare three different workers threatened to kill the contractor or at least hunt him down; a carpenter put an axe through his foot (fortunately NOT while working here but at his own home), a carpenter went to jail (not once, but twice, both times for breaking a restraining order his ex-wife took out on him--we never saw him again after the second bust), and three -- or was it four? --different crews quit on him in despair. Then, for most of the month of July, a complete nervous breakdown on the part of the contractor. (Very loose paraphrase of his voicemail during the Dark Days of July: "I can't talk. I just can't now. My world's gone to shit. Everything I planned for, all my hopes and dreams have died. DIED ON THE ROCKS OF FALSE HOPE! I don't want to live anymore. But if I do, I'll call you back. BEEEEEEEEEEEEEP.")

However all those memories faded away when we had our first big BBQ this past Sunday with a bunch of delightful friends who admired and praised the deck and reminded us that we are ever so lucky to have this retreat.

This is a shot of the back deck when we bought the house. It was a narrow walkway out the back door. What made us hire these contractors is that while everyone else who bid thought it'd be a quick job to simply replace the floorplanks, this contractor immediately noticed that the support system was in trouble and warned us not to go out there until it was repaired. We thought perhaps he was exaggerating to get the job -- until his men tore up one of the planks and the support beam beneath it collapsed. Apparently everything was so rotted, the only thing holding up the support beam was the rotting plank it was supposed to be supporting.

And here's the brand-new deck shot from the same POV. Room for partying, and a gorgeous gazebo with screens and an indoor fan to make balmy evenings a beautiful and bug-free experience. We LOVE our new deck! We love our new grill too.

Pix snagged from ketzl: home improvement.

August 28, 2007 in Autobiographical Urges | Permalink | Comments (2)

No idea where I found it, but it would seem to be made of porcelain. English? German? The self-nipple-tweaking is an interesting touch. Don't think I've ever seen anything quite like it in Victoriana. I guess we can assume she was a lady of the evening. And that she knew how to have a good time. :)

Anyone know better or more?

August 28, 2007 in Sex and Arts | Permalink | Comments (0)

The party of family values has, thanks to Senator Larry Craig (R-Idaho), shown its true face once again. Apparently, Craig confused family values for family jewels and got busted for cruising in a men's room.

According to Crooks and Liars:

A very quick check of Craig's record on gay issues turns up the fact that he voted in favor of an Idaho Constitutional amendment defining marriage as between a man and a woman, and also voted in favor of last year's Federal Marriage Amendment doing the same thing....

Tsk, tsk, tsk.

(Thanks to Mike for the link!)

August 27, 2007 in Sexual Politics | Permalink | Comments (0)

For months now, there's been a file on my drive labeled "muffinman." The file extension was missing so it didn't show up as an image. I very vaguely recalled once snagging a photo of a baker who made a dress out of cupcakes, and I thought of him as 'the muffin man." (Have you seen the muffin man?)

So was that it? Or just some random text glurb? Whatever. Ho hum. I ignored it. But while tidying up the directory it was in today, I decided to add "jpg" to it and see what it was before sending it to the recycling bin. Sure enough an image popped up. But it wasn't the muffin man. It was this.

WTF was I thinking??

(And WhereTF did I find it?)

August 27, 2007 in Autobiographical Urges | Permalink | Comments (0)

And, really, who doesn't? Especially when you see a photo like this. OMG. Check out Mommy panda's soft muzzle squooshed around teeny panda baby. OMG. If my poodle was tiny enough, I'd carry her like that.

August 27, 2007 in Pets and Animal Love | Permalink | Comments (0)

It's been a delightful surprise in recent months to discover the on-line English version of the progressive Jewish newspaper, The Forward. My Yiddish-speaking and reading father bought this Jewish weekly as an alternative to mainstream papers, eschewing those with a Zionist or religious bent. It was unreadable to me, published in thick Hebrew letters on cheap newsprint, but he devoured it. I'd forgotten all about the paper until stumbling across something they'd published on Jewish sexuality last year. Continuing its tradition of careful, and mostly liberal/secular thinking, the paper has become my favorite source for original, thoughtful discussions of modern Jewish life. I set up a subscription and I'm glad I did.

In their last issue, they ran a thought piece that raises a provocative ethical question:

Is it Still Adultery if the Spouse Has Alzheimer’s?

Obviously, it's highly recommended for anyone coping with Alzheimer's. But the ethical issue itself -- whether the health of a partner alters the nature of your original marriage contract -- is relevant to many other diseases and conditions.

For example, what if your partner experiences a significant brain injury? Even if you decide to continue caring for your partner, are your conjugal duties the same? If your partner undergoes a personality change, either because of a serious mental illness, a car accident, or an illness which affects brain function, are you still bound by your vow to remain monogamous?

We all know stories of people who--when faced with an intensely challenging or terminal disease--have granted their partners consent to pursue an outside relationship. But what if your partner is not mentally capable of giving clear consent? Are you still bound by duty to honor your original commitments until the bitter end? Then there are extreme cases, such as Terry Schiavo's, where she lingered in a vegetative state for years. Personally, I could not judge her husband if he took comfort in another woman's arms during those years. On the other hand, I can easily understand loving someone so much that adultery during such a time is unthinkable.

These are issues people deal with all the time yet we see so little dialogue about it. For SMers, I think there's a certain critical urgency in exploring such ethical questions because (a) everything we do relies so heavily on consent and (b) mental incapacity or illness can be a fatal combination in SM. People do change over time, for the better and for the worse. Sometimes people you thought you knew turn into liars or frauds. Sometimes their "demons" -- such as addictions, compulsions, or unresolved anger -- catch up with them and turn them into monsters. Sometimes a physical injury or illness changes them in ways you never even imagined possible.

Some examples. A submissive girl I once counseled had sworn devotion to a Master who, at first, seemed fabulous. It took about a year before she realized that he was a rapidly spiraling alcoholic in denial about his drinking problem. Some of the wildly impulsive behaviors that once charmed her now struck her as drunken excesses. His recklessness frightened her. She didn't feel safe with him. She second-guessed all his punishments, wondering if he was really in control of himself. Yet she struggled with leaving because she had promised him permanent slavery. Even though he wasn't living up to his promises, she felt she was morally obliged to live up to hers. Ultimately, she left him.

A malesub I counseled was living in a lifestyle relationship with his Mistress, a professional dominatrix. She'd always been a little flighty and unstable. Her unpredictability was part of what excited him. For the past year, though, she had taken to flying into sudden, violent rages. She would get furious for little or no reason, and once beat him so harshly she cracked one of his ribs. He lived in fear of her. Yet as scared as he was for his own safety, he didn't want to leave. He knew she was mentally ill and he felt horribly sorry for her. He couldn't abandon her. Someone had to take care of her. She would completely unravel without him. Last I spoke with him, he was determined to stay.

I've always felt that certain things are, and should always be, "deal breakers," even in the most by-the-contract, protocol-based lifestyle SM relationships. One such case is when a partner fails to honor promises made in their contract. Breach of contract in SM is as serious as breach of contract in Law. Another, is when a partner's personality significantly changes, either by choice or by tragic circumstance. If your partner is, in effect, no longer the person you made the contract with, that contract is void.

Or is it? It's a moral question that frequently arises in my practice. It's a hell of a moral line to try and draw.

Kudos to the Forward for creating dialogue on an issue of relevance to all adults.

August 27, 2007 in Sex and Relationships | Permalink | Comments (1)

I love this. I love the mind -- and the writing -- of the man who wrote it. It reminds me, in a strange way, of a haiku. A very long haiku. And a very romantic one.

Equality

August 27, 2007 in Sex and Sadomasochism | Permalink | Comments (0)

via Boing Boing:

Massive walrus penis bone sold for $8000

This marvel of nature, some 4.5 feet long, was purchased by the holding company that owns the Rilpey's Believe it or Not! Museums....

August 27, 2007 in Sexual Strangeness | Permalink | Comments (0)

By Mithras Invicti

You know, I guess it's true that there is someone for everyone:

A 100% free SciFi personals & social networking community site for science fiction lovers, including but not limited to lovers of Star Trek and Star Wars. Find others who share your passion for Sci Fi. Meet people who read Isaac Asimov, Ben Bova, Robert A. Heinlein, Douglas Adams, Arthur C. Clarke & more. Grok!? Whether you are just looking for like-minded friends, someone fun to attend a Sci Fi convention with, or maybe something more, Trek Passions is here for you.

So, of course, I am thinking roleplaying Riker and Troi. Wait, am I mocking myself now? I'm .. I'm not sure.

The semi-serious point here is that what are called white-label dating services now allow people to set up a niche dating site like this right out of the box. The dirty secret of startup dating sites is seed profiles, which are fake profiles provided by the white label service to get your site started. No one would join a brand-new site with zero members, which leads to a vicious circle. The seed profiles give you a virtual membership base so that people will join. So when some guy on Trek Passions tries to contact "farpointgurl" in Tucson, he isn't getting a reply. Of course, emailing a fake woman is still more action than he's used to getting.

(Via Boinkology.)

-Mithras

August 27, 2007 in Sex On-Line | Permalink | Comments (0)

He came for the voyeurism, stayed for the bondage. Guess this could be called Cowboy and Indian justice....

August 27, 2007 in Sex Laws and Crimes | Permalink | Comments (0)

Even if you don't join, it's absolutely worth the time to check out Libido Films.com. Adults (only) can see free trailers of their progressive, woman-positive erotic movies, courtesy of Jack Hafferkamp and Marianna Beck, the fantastic publishers of the fantastic former publication, Libido magazine.

August 26, 2007 in Sex On-Line | Permalink | Comments (0)

Anyone who can quote poet John Keats to support a case for the delights of teasing and denial gets my attention. And that's exactly what Secondhand Rose did in this blog.

August 26, 2007 in Sex and Culture, Sex On-Line | Permalink | Comments (0)

By Mithras Invicti

If you were wondering, kink.com has broken down what they pay performers for specific sex acts. It's divided into women-only scenes (G/G, for girl/girl), and those with male and female performers (B/G, for boy/girl):

G/G
$500 - vaginal play with no g/g [meaning, I guess, auto-masturbation only -M]
$600 - vaginal and anal play with no g/g
$700 - vaginal play with g/g or double penetration with no g/g
$800 - vaginal and anal play with g/g

B/G
$700 vaginal dildo play and finger penetration
$800 vaginal/anal dildo play and/or finger penetration and/or handjob
$900 vaginal and/or oral sex
$1000 vaginal and/or oral sex plus anal dildos
$1100 vaginal and anal sex
$1300 double penetration

They they show how it varies from that basic list for each of their websites. For example, at sexandsubmission.com - one of my favorites - each shoot requires 3-4 hours of "work":

Sex between male dominant and female submissive with role play  

And you make:

Female Subs
     Standard B/G rates
Male Tops
     Starting at $600 - SM scene with sex

My first thought was, "They pay male tops???"

You know, I could use a part-time job.

(Via Xeni Jardin at Boing Boing.)

-Mithras

August 26, 2007 in Mithras Invicti, Sex and Sadomasochism, Sex On-Line | Permalink | Comments (0)

from the German site, Fetish Model Pupett - Keuschheitsguertel.

(Thanks to my chaste shepsl for the link.)

August 25, 2007 in Sex and Sadomasochism | Permalink | Comments (1)

By Mithras Invicti

Juno Henry had some trepidation:

“Euw,” I thought to myself on more than one occasion.

“A whole fist? Inside my poor little pussy? What if it goes too far in, and I feel his watch in me– and it snags on one of the leftover pubic hairs goddamn-them that evaded the all-pervading destruction of my depilatory efforts? What then? Aiieee!!!”

When i imagine the bad of a situation, I tend to go straight to worst-possible-case scenario, and wallow there for a while. It’s one of the joys of being neurotic. Of which there are many.

But then someone just did it before she realized what was up:

“You mean you’re….”

“Yeah. I’m fisting you. How does it feel?”

It felt fabulous, if the truth be told. I felt filled up, but it was different than the thick-cock-filling-me-feeling. And it was lovely, because the movements made by his fist inside me were so different to a cock. So sensual, yet so raw and so powerful. I could liken the smooth, fullness of the moments to how it felt immediately after my anal passage relaxes and allows a cock that is fucking it full access.

It was wonderful. ...

The sweetest and most intense pressure as his pace increased and my grip on reality started to unhinge. The build-up inside me of pre-orgasmic excitement and an almost-but-not-quite unbearable tension in my bladder or thereabouts spiralled me higher and higher to orgasmic bliss until i came and gushed out rivers of fluid all over his hand, and I heard his contented sigh of satisfaction.

“That’s it, come for me baby. Yesss….”

I exhaled, and lay back, exhausted. I felt his hand slide out of me, caressing me as it slid. I heard his satisfied breathing complementing my own jagged coming-down gasps and i felt blissed-out and dazed.

For me, finding a woman who is into being fisted is a wonderful but rare thing. I have average-sized hands for a man, but still, that's 4 inches across the knuckles, which is understandably scary.  But when I have found a woman who enjoys it, it's as fabulous and different for me as Juno reports it is for her. To have your whole hand in a pussy, to feel yourself making contact with every inch of her, makes it feel like your fucking her whole body instead of just a portion of her.

Juno's story is instructive to me because it's clear she was able to overcome her fear because her partner paid careful attention. Obviously, he had worked on her for a while before getting his hand into her, not just glopped on the lubed and drilled. And the way he reacted, "his contented sigh of satisfaction" shows why he was so persistent and patient: He really, truly wanted her pleasure. I think what makes someone good in bed is being interested in both their own pleasure and the pleasure of their partner, equally. In fact, you really can't have one without the other. If you're out just to please yourself, you'll fail because you're partner won't respond in the right way. If you're just out to get the other person off, they'll sense that too, and won't enjoy it as much as if you were really into it. We feed off of each other, which requires that you both give and take at the same time.

-Mithras

My friend C. getting her beautiful cunt stuffed:

August 25, 2007 in Mithras Invicti, Sex and Relationships, Sexual Health | Permalink | Comments (0)

My mailbox filled up this week with newsclips of stories announcing, with breathless excitement, that people never stop enjoying sex, even when dodderingly old. I won't bother linking to the stories -- it'll take you 2 seconds on google to find a dozen of 'em -- because, of course, this is hardly news, particularly not to regular readers of this blog. With baby boomers -- who grew up during the eras of free love and 70s swinging -- now old enough to do whatever they please, obviously it's going to please them to savor the sweetness of passion, romance, kink, and good old-fashioned fucking and sucking as long as they possibly can.

Though he's gone now, the story of Bernie Barker, aka "the world's oldest stripper," may inspire a few of you beautifully aging gentlemen to rethink your own career options in retirement. If you're interested, NPR has a "sound portrait" of Bernie.

Here's a pic of Mr. Barker hard at work.

August 25, 2007 in Sexual Beauty, Sexual Health | Permalink | Comments (0)

By Mithras Invicti

Mitdasein, after a session with his slaves:

All in all I feel that much closer to the two of them than I felt yesterday. We play hard, and we play rough, and it isn't for everyone. But it works for us.

This captures a certain feeling that I like: The play is hard, in a couple of senses of the word: Not just rough but also requiring effort and concentration. And you realize you're in a minority, but to each their own, including yourself. And however hard it is and how much of an outsider it makes you, in the end it's more than worth it because it's fun as hell and it brings you together emotionally with your partner(s) in a way nothing else can.

-Mithras

August 25, 2007 in Mithras Invicti, Sex and Relationships, Sex and Sadomasochism | Permalink | Comments (0)

If you like men -- like them witty and smart, sarcastic yet sweet, hairy and handsome yet still humble and self-deprecating and just totally HOT -- then you probably already have a crush on Mike Rowe, the Ur-Masculine He-Man of Dirty Jobs. Watching that man crawl through muck is so weirdly erotic that he's got cults of female fans just begging to get dirty with him. I would join their ranks if I wasn't such a snooty bitch. BUT...wait, he's an opera singer too!! OMFG. I'm his!

Found this old tv spot via IMDB. Give it a few: it's worth the wait.

Pity they kept censoring his ass. I'm sure his ass is as cute every other part of this man.

August 25, 2007 in Sexual Beauty | Permalink | Comments (2)

Another classic BDSM illustrator is the wondrous ERIC STANTON. Depending on your point of view, we have him either to thank or to blame for fueling many of today's femdom fantasies. BDSM did not start with Stanton or Willie: but people have long accepted their art as real-life depictions of how BDSM is or should be.

Personally, I think it's a wonderful fantasy. Stanton is my favorite of all the mid-20th century fetish artists. For one, because of his emphasis on femdom power; for another because I simply find him the most sexually creative; and perhaps, most interestingly to me, because he speaks directly to people in committed relationships. One of his best tomes is devoted to femdom wives. Most artists focus on prodommes or ambiguously connected partners. So I'm especially fond of work that depicts female-led relationships and dominant wives as figures of worship and adoration. Meanwhile, his characters act out a huge range of roles and scenarios, from erotic combat to hardcore SM. He doesn't just understand the power of bondage or whippings or fetish clothes; he also totally understands the psychology of mind-fucks, especially coersion, humiliation and terror. The unmerciful bitches of Stanton's world know how to coolly gut a man's ego like few other femdom fictional characters in the world.

May I say...YUM!!

Happily for Internet surfers, Stanton's work is not as fiercely protected as Willie's, so you can find a fair bit of his work through google. If you're looking for a book to pore over, I personally recommend this huge collection of drawings by Stanton. I have a copy and LOVE going back to look at it again and again.

STAY TUNED FOR NEXT WEEK'S SHOW: I'll be continuing my theme of BDSM nostalgia with work from Irwin Klaw, Gene Bilbrew and others. If there's someone from that era who you'd like to see again, drop me a line and I'll see what I can dig up.

August 24, 2007 in Sex and Arts | Permalink | Comments (2)

As you might've read, my birthday was last Monday. After morbidly throwing myself a pity-party for a few days, I've made a big birthday resolution: from now until the end of my life, when people ask my age, I'm just going to refer to myself as over forty. Well, it's true, dammit! I AM over 40. So what if I got over it longer ago than people who are in their 40s? I'm over it and good riddance to bad rubbish. Ha.

And whilst floating along in such fanciful bubbles of denial, it occurred to me that I've never honored some of the fetish artists who we of the over-40 set essentially grew up on. I say "we" but some of these artists were producing for an almost exclusively male audience. Women, for the most part, served as models, with little or no creative or financial control over their images or, for that matter, their careers. The images -- some photographic, some drawn -- were dictated by male fantasies and marketed to other men. The collective body of their works have had a powerful hold on our beliefs and attitudes about kinky women to this day. When you look at some of these images, you will see the same fetish clothes, fetish objects, bondage gear, attitudes and acts that you can see in nearly every professional dungeon in this country. The fantasy worlds that these visual artists created for consumption by the guilty, closeted male doms and subs of the mid-20th century have, in essence, become a social template for SM encounters, at least in its most choreographed and artificial form: the professional dungeon scene.

I'll begin with one of the great icons of mid-20th century fetish art, JOHN WILLIE.

Willie's publisher, Belier holds the rights to most of his work, and has a record of suing people for copyright infringements and winning (or at least getting a settlement, as they did from Taschen Press in 1999). So copies are hard to find on-line, and I may be treading on thin ice even using the small handful I was able to find. (If Belier requests it, I'll yank the images pronto.)

While it's understandable that a publisher would take such an aggressive posture on the Willie copyright, it's sad that their protectiveness makes him almost inaccessible unless you buy their books. Because, let's face it: with everything that's available on the Internet, it's unlikely that books by artists from 50-60 years ago are going to meet with mass commercial success. If they don't see it on-line, generations of younger BDSMers will likely never get to know the work of someone who has, without doubt, shaped the modern BDSM imagination.

If you crave more Willie, check out this French site which offers a huge array of his illustrations. Though it's in the French language, it should be easy for English-speakers to navigate.

August 24, 2007 in Sex and Arts | Permalink | Comments (2)

Tomorrow's erotic art show will be even more magical, Schatzi.

August 23, 2007 in Sex and Arts | Permalink | Comments (0)

I had this idea earlier this week. What if I pulled together a jolly little romp through some of the strange and strangely disturbing sex news of the week -- and maybe make it a regular feature on this blog. I try to get some of the tastier tales of sexual strangenes on the blog but don't have time to comment on them all, so I thought this was a good way to snappily deliver sex stories in media.

I thought that until I started collecting them. Then my head exploded. I could write an Encyclopedia Brittanica and it would still barely begin to scrape the surface of dysfunctionality spewing at us from every direction. So...instead of a snappy news round-up, it raised a question in my mind: how and why do some stories get reported? What kind of biases does sex reporting betray?

For example. Almost every week in the news, there is bound to be a story or two about some vicious sexual assault. Such as Woman sets husband's penis on fire Unless you watch forensic shows (one of my personal addictions), you rarely learn the explicit details about assaults on women, possibly because they are so common, but also because injuries to the vagina are too personal and horrible for family publications. But if a penis injury is involved, the perpetrator might just get a photo spread in Vanity Fair. Did you ever consider how dysfunctional it is for society to treat women's genitals as sacred and men's genitals as acceptable punching bags? Have you ever laughed when a character got kicked in the balls in a movie or on tv? Would you laugh if someone got kicked in the vagina?

And, of course, everyone really loves a story in which a penis is not permanently injured - but which causes the penis-holder some unthinkable level of public humiliation. We all get a snicker out of that, right?

British dwarf's penis gets stuck to hoover

A dwarf performer at the Edinburgh fringe festival had to be rushed to hospital after his penis got stuck to a vacuum cleaner during an act that went horribly awry.

Daniel Blackner, or "Captain Dan the Demon Dwarf", was due to perform at the Circus of Horrors....

The main part of his act saw him appear on stage with a vacuum cleaner attached to his member through a special attachment.

The attachment broke before the performance and Blackner tried to fix it using extra-strong glue, but unfortunately only let it dry for 20 seconds instead of the 20 minutes required.

He then joined it directly to his organ. The end result? A solid attachment, laughter, mortification and ... hospitalisation.

"It was the most embarrassing moment of my life when I got wheeled into a packed AE with a vacuum attached to me," Blackner said....

And we all want to watch it on YouTube.

Sex and religion -- and the conflict between them --frequently make the news. But it's almost always when people get angry. Like this story: Melee breaks out over queer Jesus. I realize that negative stories interest people more than positive ones; and that extreme human emotions (such as violence and hatred) make better news than stories about love and kindness. But...why? Focusing the news on the rifts between sexual minorities and religious denomination reminds us that the battles for tolerance are still raging. But if half as much press was being devoted to ways that religious people were working towards acceptance of sexual minorities, wouldn't we have a richer and more meaningful picture of the reality of American life?

Meaningful pictures of sex in foreign lands similarly focus on the horror stories about sex and sexual orientation. Such as this thoroughly depressing news from Nigera, Court tries 18 for cross-dressing. What can one say to such madness? To such an ugly over-