Gloria's Oversexed Mind

Classic Newton

Two by the divine Helmut Newton.

Acrux: Roll on a better libido (men)

A new testosterone treatment to restore libido in the aging male population may be coming to a pharmacy near you in the next year or two.  Australian company Acrux has announced trial results of its new drug, Axiron, which offers both a great delivery system (you apply it like roll-on deodorant in your armpits) and very promising results.  Currently, transdermal testosterone delivery is a bit of a mess, discouraging many potential users from trying it.

It's good news for baby boomers.  According to Bloomberg news, "More than a third of American men over 45 years suffer testosterone deficiency, U.S. researchers found in a 2006 study. It can sap sex drive and cause impotence, osteoporosis and memory loss, according to the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota.

Bloomberg estimates that Axiron could be BIG (as in VERY profitable to its manufacturer): "The global market for testosterone treatments was worth $1 billion in the year ended March and grew more than 20 percent in the U.S."   Not surprisingly, while Acrux has yet to make a profit, their shares have tripled in anticipation of this drug's market potential.

Here's the scientific scoop:

Acrux has developed a delivery mechanism for its testosterone treatment that is applied to the armpit using a device that is similar to a roll-on deodorant. Clothes can be put on immediately after application and there is little chance of transferring it to another person.

Patients in the Axiron trial reported improved mood, a fall in negative mood, increased sexual desire and increased sexual performance.

The FDA has agreed to Acrux submitting a new drug application in America with Acrux targeting submission by the end of 2009.

Hopes Rise for Acrux Testosterone Treatment.

Five by Stanton

I love Eric Stanton's femdom art. His fantasies push my femdom buttons.

Bananas in Pajamas are coming in their pants tra la la

First, to my little AB friends: did the big bad psychos scare you? Here's something to calm you back down: Bananas in Pajamas.

Wow. Who can blame the teddy bears for running?

Does anyone else remember these metrosexual singing phalli? More importantly, does anyone agree it's too freakin' Freudian for words?

Psycho Cyborgian Insanity

I thought I'd look around to see what some of today's kinky young folk are up to and OH MY WORD. Sex-changing, gender-bending, extreme body-modifying robotics, power tools and gore. Good gravy. Why, when I was a little dominatrix, we sadomasochists didn't need such foolishness. Just give us a brutal whipping, a mummification suit, a coffee enema, and say good night, Gracie.

Seriously, if this doesn't wake you up, you are undead.

Samppa von Cyborg and the Psycho Cyborgs

Read more about the UK-based performance group, Psycho Cyborgs.

Topping off the day: naughty vintage postcard

World War I era French postcard.

Seems that Lucette fought the heat and lost her shirt in the process, to the delight of a voyeur who stops to tickle her awake.

Women beat men, laughter erupts: vintage postcards

Wives beating up their disobedient or wayward husbands was once perceived as downright hilarious. Whether it was the shock of the role reversal (wife-battering was a commonplace) or that men who submitted to female authority were, by nature, ridiculous fools, such attitudes towards husband-battering still prevail. The abuse of men by their domestic partners is still ignored or swept under the carpet. When I look at humorous postcards like this, I don't see the humor. I imagine, instead, how deeply distasteful it would be if the roles were reversed. OBVIOUSLY, ymmv.

These are all ca. 1910-1920.

Ladies with whips, circus style

I wonder if some of the excitement of seeing female lady tamers in days of yore was really about seeing a powerful woman with a whip? Found these lovely bits of circus memorabilia that make a femdom wonder. After all, if she can tame a lion with her whip...imagine what she could do to you.

Gee, I wonder why this costume fell out of fashion for male lion tamers? I know I'd pay good money to see men prancing around in tutus.

Something contortionist, perhaps?

I'm sorry but I've been spending a little too much time on Craigslist (shopping for furniture, I mean!)....and keep finding delightful little gems.

In the category of "I've got a phd in sex and still can't visualize how this would work in reality...."

2 guys here, both good looking, seeking a female to help with a fantacy:

Although we're both straight, both of us love anal with toys, so we want to get a double headed dildo & lay on our backs facing away from each other...slide the dildo into both our butts until our balls touch, our cocks rock hard & pointing up...then you come over & squat down on them, taking one in each hole...

I've never seen or heard of this being done, so its experimental & need an open minded woman to make it happen....would be cool too if you wanted to fuck us both with a strap-on.

Link.

(Errr...should someone tell them they're not really straight if they're playing with anal toys together or should we wait until they finally come out to themselves?)

EROTOGRAPHICA presents Anders Zorn

Yep, I'm pretty pleased about this new series. So much so I can't resist debuting the show by closing the day with the second (and final) video for the week. A virtual double feature! OOOOO!

Selected erotic works by Swedish artist, Anders Zorn.

Polanski's past bites him in Zurich

By now, you've probably heard that Roman Polanski was arrested by Swiss authorities on the conviction he evaded for over 30 years.

For 31 years he lived as the world's most celebrated fugitive, feted by his peers in the film industry while on the run from American police after admitting having sex with a child.

But, it was revealed today, the past has finally caught up with Roman Polanski. The film director was arrested in Switzerland on Saturday on a decades-old warrant relating to the rape of a 13-year-old girl in 1977.

The director had travelled to Switzerland to accept a lifetime achievement award at the Zurich film festival, the organisers of which expressed "great consternation and shock" at his detention.

Roman Polanski arrested in Switzerland 31 years after fleeing trial

It's been tough for me to figure out what to say about this. On one hand, I was surprised by the story because, after all, it's been 31 years, the victim has long since forgiven him, and you'd think international police would have bigger fish to fry. Why the LAPD pressure Swiss authorities to bust Polanski now, when they could've busted him other times in other places, still puzzles me.  I began to assume that, like Charlie Chaplin before him, Polanski's affair with an underage girl would ultimately be forgiven and he would come home, perhaps as Chaplin did in his old age, to a lifetime achievement award at the Oscars.

The big difference, though, is that Polanski was convicted of a crime, and that crime was rape.  The law does not care if his victim grew up to forgive him: there are plenty of people who have forgiven those who murdered their relatives too, but that doesn't mean the murderers get to walk free.

I hope the law will show Polanski leniency, and if his victim is willing to make a statement at his sentencing, she may convince the court to keep his sentence as light as possible. But here's the indisputable fact: Polanski raped a 13 year old girl.   He didn't take responsibility for it.  He fled his plea agreement.  He hasn't expressed remorse, only excuses.  He fled and went on to enjoy all the privileges and rewards of fame.  Being a celebrity, a famous director, an artist whose works have made a huge impact on the film industry, and all the other wonderful things one may say about Polanski still don't change the fact that he molested a child and was convicted of that crime.

Gloria Brames of yore

Found this couplet of pretty vintage postcards.  At first glance I knew that if I'd lived a hundred years ago, I'd be frolicking in the water in a  saucy bathing suit and scandalously smoking cigarettes with the girls.

O yes. That'd be me, kicking up my leg and laughing, acting as free as I wanted to be.

And I'm seeking a sexy sub to help drive the Jag he will buy for me after we bond

Craigslist is the gift that keeps on giving. Here's an ad from a wanna be dom. I love his optimism.

Dom seeks sexy switch to help dom a jointly owned slavegirl - m4w.

I am a white 26 year old Dom who is intelligent, outoing, and attractive. I'm looking for a sexy female switch who is submissive to me, but will be Dominant to our live-in slave/house girl. She will live with us and provide sexual and domestic service.

Finding a slave girl is something that I feel we should do together, the dom and switch should find someone they both agree on after they have bonded and had a chance to get to know one another.

Brutality leads to stupidity: new study on spanking

My oh my Oh. I can just imagine the debates this new study will cause all over the known spank-o-verse. Scientists claim that spanking your kids dulls their ability to learn.

Spanking can get kids to behave in a hurry, but new research suggests it can do more harm than good to their noggins. The study, involving hundreds of U.S. children, showed the more a child was spanked the lower his or her IQ compared with others.

Straus and his colleague Mallie Paschall of the Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation in Maryland studied nationally representative samples of two age groups: 806 children ages 2 to 4, and 704 ages 5 to 9. The researchers tested the kids' IQs initially and then four years later.

Both groups of kids got smarter after four years. But the 2- to 4-year-olds who were spanked scored 5 points lower on the IQ test than those not spanked. For children ages 5 to 9, the spanked ones scored on average 2.8 points lower than their unspanked counterparts.

Spanking Leads to Lower IQs, Study Says

Couple of comments. First, I took the AOL poll that accompanied the story and was intrigued to see that while 80% + of people said they'd been spanked as children, over 40% were either ambivalent about it or against the practice. Which means that a good number of people who were spanked grew up with conflicted feelings about their own experiences.

Personally, I am 100% against spanking children. I don't believe that brutal force over a child (or adolescent, for that matter) is a good thing in the long run, even if it does intimidate a child into obedience in the moment. Now, in fairness, I'll say right up front I'm not a parent. However I once was a child, and was smacked and beaten a bit by my mother. Nothing so formal as a spanking, but lots and lots of hitting. What did physical discipline do for me?  For one, it made me feel like crap about myself.  Honestly, I think it kept me from being a sadomasochist and accepting my own sexual identity for years because it instilled in me a horror of hitting other people. I remembered how I felt when my parents raised their hands to me: if I wasn't shocked and stunned by the suddenness and unfairness of them using their superior size to hurt me, then I was completely PISSED OFF. Perhaps some people grow up in households where parents are able to manage to make you feel that you "deserved" a spanking but as far as I was concerned, the physical abuse I got at home only told me that my parents were sociopathic incompetents who should never have had me in the first place. Oops. I guess my emotions are showing. But there it is. See above: it pissed me off.

For me, the argument against using violence is a universal: it does no creature any "good" unless it is your intention to produce a fearful adult.  Violence may be an appropriate response to a direct threat to your life but violence-as-remedy-for-naughtiness is, IMHO, a pile of Victorian horseshit.

I've owned a lot of dogs. One of them was hell-on-a-biscuit and if ever a dog deserved to be thrashed it was him. None of us ever laid a hand on him. We worked the kindness angle. We punished with indifference, and sometimes we yelled (trust me, you couldn't refrain from yelling at this dog). But what would hitting teach him? To fear another human? To obey out of terror? To make him feel like a bad, unloved dog? He was a broken-down, miserable beast when we rescued him. As his guardians, it was our mission to show him a path to happiness and self-confidence, to teach him a new and better way to live, to let him know he was safe and protected in this cold world.

I think if the parents of human beings could maintain their focus on doing things that are REALLY in a child's best interest, if they could remember how much it upset them when their own parents expressed their disappointment or anger through violence, if they could stay PRESENT to their roles as teachers, guardians and protectors, not cops and prison guards, there might be a whole lot less spanking of children and a whole lot more functional a world.

As for spanking adults -- well, I hope everyone knows that I think any mutual consensual sex that makes you wetter or harder is a GREAT thing.

Introducing EROTOGRAPHICA: George Tooker

For those of you who have sorely missed my old Erotic Art Shows -- and for those of you who were not reading this blog when I featured them, I am very happy to announce my new EROTOGRAPHICA collection on youtube.

EROTOGRAPHICA is a video compilation of the erotic art shows that ordinarily remain buried deep within my archives. Little by little, we hope to get most of the special shows -- by artist and by theme -- onto video, with some sweet music to make the experience even more relaxing.

If you'd like to see the original show, and the commentaries I made at the time, just type the artist's name into the search engine for this blog (upper right).

I couldn't have done this without Leigh, who is painstakingly piecing these things together. Here is the first fruit of our labor: erotic paintings by George Tooker.

Sleazy goodness, part 2

Device of pain? *perk* Hello, boys!

Guess she liked a little bondage with her gang-bangs.

Hmm...I've asked myself this very question.

Look, everybody! Our favorite child rapist is back! Isn't he dreamy?

...when killing the cheating, pedophilic bitch is not an option....

A ten-pack of sleazy vintage goodness, part 1

This one's for Leigh.

Life was so much simpler in sexist ads

I'm speechless. An entire day of the week reserved for thinking about nothing but pot roast. As long as my husband's cooking it, I can totally get behind that one.

Best footwear ad ever

French ad for Eram shoes. Translated: "No woman's body was exploited in this ad."

SM Vocabulary Builder: Nipple Drinker

A new entry in an old category, in which obscure words and terms discover new meanings in the world of BDSM.

Nipple Drinker: a tube to distribute water from a tank to chickens.

Possible SM/fetish usages

Adult Baby: "Mommy! Baby needs num num."

Mommy: "Aw. Who's Mommy's little nipple drinker?"

Dominant running two-girl scene: "Both of you take off your bras, and kneel facing each other. Go on!"

Burbling subbies: "O! Why? What are you going to do to us?"

Dominant: "We're going to play a little game and see which one of you is the better nipple drinker."

BDSM filmmaker fights charges

Anyone familiar with Barry Goldman and the Feds' case against him for running "Torture Portal"? Apparently the FBI set him up for arrest for two years. Glad to know the Feds think BDSM movies are so grievous a threat to America's safety that they dedicated their resources to fighting the war against consensual spanking and bondage. WTF? Now, Goldman's lawyers are saying that the government is trying to manipulate the outcome by moving the trial to Montana. MONTANA. Goldman is from Joisey. I don't think Joisey will play too well in MONTANA. Jeez.

Goldman’s attorneys said that despite the fact that the movies were allegedly mailed from New Jersey and only from New Jersey and despite the fact that Goldman lived in New Jersey during the entire period covered in the indictment, the government wanted to keep from the jury that it initially opted for a Montana jury to apply its community standards.

“The government’s attempt to avoid New Jersey despite the many and obvious links to New Jersey is telling,” the defense’s motion on evidence said. “It strongly suggests that the government did not believe that these movies violated New Jersey community standards.

Goldman’s Attorneys Want Obscenity Charges Dropped

The defense goes on to claim that prosecutors went "forum shopping" to find a conservative jury who would find against their client. What's really grim are the pennalties Goldman faces for his BDSM biz.

If convicted, Goldman faces a maximum penalty of five years in prison and a fine of $250,000 on each of the eight counts charged in the indictment.

The Justice Department also is seeking forfeitures of all copies of the movies, as well as proceeds from the sale of the movies. In addition, they are seeking the forfeitures of domain names MastersOfPain.com and TorturePortal.com, as well as an email address, SirBNY@aol.com.

Forfeiture of email? What? Is this now a common prosecutorial request when trying to shut down an Internet porn person or is it something new and ugly directed at Goldman?

Coffee, tea or BDSM?

Thanks to Mike for sending me the link to San Francisco's latest greatest BDSM venue, Wicked Grounds: San Francisco’s First and Only Kink Café and Boutique.

What a fun place for coffee it must be.

from "About Us" Theme Nights and Regular Events

We have so many exciting events happening, including tea service (swapping between Chinese, Japanese and English), monthly 'bring your human pet' night (the only place in SF to get coffee served in a dog bowl), books signings, weekly chair massage by a fellow kinkster, steam powered vibrator demos and weekly bootblacking. Keep an eye on our calendar to keep up to date with what’s going on!

Women in Prison with a Junglian Twist

The second movie we watched last night was not nearly as intelligent or entertaining as Teeth, but if you love campy, politically deranged sexploitation, this should be on your must-see list.

Titled "Amazon Jail" in English, "Femmes en cage" en francais and Curral de Mulheres (1982) in the original, this is NOT your average women-in-prison film. The plot is not terribly original -- beautiful young women are kidnapped by Satanists who want to sell them as sex slaves. Ho hum. Their victims are humiliated, degraded, caged, and frequently raped. Yeah, okay, we've seen it before. But wait! This has just a little bit more for you jaded, jaded people: this one actually has sex. Sex sex and more sex, and more naked young women than a nudist camp.

Don't misunderstand: it's a horrible movie. Bad acting. Worse dialogue. Pitiful production values. Clumsy lighting. Redonkulous dubbing. Even the costumes were cheesy. And then there's all the violence and victimization of women by brutish hairy men. *sigh* Yeah. It's pretty great.

I downloaded this off Netflix on a lark and was surprised by the amount of sexual content. If you dig grungy strictly B sexploitation, this is a hoot. NOTE: the Netflix version left all the X-rated sex scenes in. The DVD selling on Amazon seems to be an edited version. Since the nudity's the only thing that really redeems this movie, be careful you get the right version.

Watch a French-language clip on youtube or suffer through it right here. You really don't need to understand the dialogue to grasp the sublime sleaziness that is "Amazon Jail."

Bite Me

I was trying to figure out exactly how to blog about the two movies we watched late last night. Both are pretty strong stuff, and probably best reserved for horror and sexploitation fans like us.

I'll start with Teeth (2007/I), a well-made indie with some fine performances. It's a charming tale about an adorable little girl who grows up to be a chastity-pledging, God-fearing, Christian young lady. She's beautiful and pure and hard-working, and life would be pretty good if not for the pesky little fact that she has shark-like teeth in her vagina that can sheer off anything she doesn't want inside her -- including fingers and penises, as the film so amply and graphically demonstrates. Of the three adults here (KEEP THE CHILDREN AWAY FROM THIS ONE!), two couldn't stop laughing at the gore and one couldn't bear to look at the screen.

Don't watch it with your parents. Don't watch it with your kids. But right around 4:20, you might want to watch it yourself.

You can catch the trailer on youtube, or here:

A glimmer of an AIDS vaccine

MUCH too soon to celebrate but an exciting new step towards prevention and ultimately a cure.

A new experimental AIDS vaccine was tested on 16,000 volunteers in Thailand and the results are that the vaccine was able to lower the risk of infection by about a third, according to Reuters.

U.S. and Thai government researchers said that the volunteers were all heterosexual, and they did not have any special risks of AIDS infection. Dr. Jerome Kim, an Army doctor who helped lead the trials, said that the placebo group had 74 infections, while the vaccine group only had 51.

New AIDS vaccine shows successful results

Bottom of the stack: vintage lingerie ads

My last of the day. Hope you enjoyed all the funky old ads.

Starting with bloomers, once sold as the perfect gift for your dainty sweetheart.

Hard to believe, girdles were once an absolute fashion necessity for the modern woman. Girls were indoctrinated into wearing them in their teens.

Women were led to believe it would transform their bodies.

Never mind that wearing a tight girdle is TORTURE. Or at least it was for me when my mom made me wear the awful things under fancy dresses. Just remembering the burning biting red welts of my adolescence gives me the heebie-jeebies.

Fashion magazines made women feel they couldn't be beautiful without restrictive garments.

Of course, some independent souls opted for comfort over beauty. Especially when they caught whiff of that new-fangled trend so popular with the young folk: comfortable underpants.

A brief evolution of bra ads: 1900-1970

A very brief glimpse into radical shifts in advertising (and cultural thinking) about brassieres in the 20th century.   I'm arranging them chronologically (from 1902 up to the 1970s) so you can see trends in attitudes about what bras do and how they do it.

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Although women have worn one form of breast support or another for well over 2000 years, Victorians seized on the contemporary health crazes by advertising brassieres as medical devices.

Sometime in the 20s and 30s, bra ads stressed their value as beauty enhancers.

By the 1940s, it was all about the sexy busty sweater girl.

In the 1950s, the bra came out of the closet. Women were allowed to be overtly sexual.

Those old bras were uncomfortable as hell.

In the 60s, manufacturers found an exciting new marketing angle: preying on the insecurities of small-breasted women.

And in the 1970s, well, what can I say? Everyone was doing a lot of drugs.

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Visit All about vintage bras for basic information on the history of brassieres, along with super-helpful information on how to get the all-important right fit for your body (whether buying a vintage bra or a new one).

Women, did you know that cancer is slimming?

Oh men, poor men

As bad as the old sexism was for women, it was no picnic for men either. What kinds of standards were they expected to live up to? And, in the same vein, what insecurities did advertisers prey on?

Let's see...

Your dad was a hard-drinking, male-chauvinist poon-hound so man up and follow in his footsteps. Join the club. It's like Promise-Keepers but you get laid more. Damn right.

But first, build a little muscle. You've got no meat on your bones, you sissy.

And remember: clothes make the man. The right pants will make horny women in identical outfits swarm all over you.

Do they mean the big heads or the little heads?