Gloria's Oversexed Mind

Needless to say, the uproar over the Mosley case has -- depending on your point of view -- either opened a frank and exciting new public dialogue about sadomasochism or given vanilla people an opportunity to try and rut around in our psyches.

Some people, like the very admirable British activists Deborah Hyde (not to be confused with American SM author, Debra Hyde), believe Mosley's case is positive news for SMers.

from....

Whatever turns them on? Inside the minds of the sadomasochists

This trial is a good thing,' said Deborah Hyde, spokeswoman for Backlash, which campaigns for BDSM rights. 'We're finally getting the chance to talk to the media, who have ignored us for years. In Max Mosley we've got a man who says: "This is who I am." He's got expensive lawyers who can fight his case, but many others end up being dragged through the family courts or in front of their employers. In Mosley, we have someone who is fighting our corner.'

It's probably fair to say that Mosley, 67, was not intent on championing a sexual subculture when he launched his invasion of privacy action over the paper's publication in April of his predilection for S&M.

Hmmm....I agree with her, philosophically. But then when I think about people who don't even know that much about human sexuality in the first place trying to impress with titles like "Inside the Minds of Sadomasochists," I cringe. Talking to media is great, it's wonderful to know they are willing to listen. But what exactly are they hearing? More importantly, how much do they understand and what message are they sending?

For example, the title of the above story suggests that there is some kind of giant consolidated SM mind or attitude that can be penetrated to reveal what makes us all tick. Bah. That's a one-dimensional approach. You can't get "inside the mind" of all SMers anymore than you can get inside the mind of all Catholics or Jews. See (whispering a big secret): people are individuals! Even sadomasochistic people. SHHHH! Don't tell anyone. We wouldn't want to scare vanillas by making them actually consider SMers as diverse human beings instead of widgets whose specs can be published on the web.

Also, note how the reporter felt compelled to include information about how SM causes psychic stress for some people and becomes an "addiction." Oy fucking vey. Please note: "Sexual addiction" is not a clinical diagnosis; it is not listed in the APA; it is a theory developed in large part by a shrink of dubious standing (Patrick Carnes); it appeals to people who think sex is bad therefore a lot of sex is even worse. So why did the reporter feel the need to dredge up a negative angle on SM? If he was writing about the joys of married sex would he feel compelled to find a marriage counselor to tell him about all the husbands and wives who credit marriage with destroying their lives? Of course not: because vanillas assume that married sex is a good thing and that sex problems in a marriage are unusual events; whereas they assume that SM is a questionable practice and that problems in SM are therefore, if not the norm, certainly a reasonable expectation.

Or how about this next article, whose title suggests that SM is all about pain (and thus suggesting its opposite, that you're not an SMer if you don't like pain). Holy crap. Didn't we all cover this in SM workshops years ago? If not, well I KNOW I covered it in my books.

Adventures in the world of pain

The orgy at the heart of the Max Mosley case wasn't just any orgy. It was an S&M orgy. Are sadomasochistic activities an 'affront to civilisation'? Or just part of a wide spectrum of acceptable sexual activity?

The latter.

And so this is why I always prefer reading about SM *by* SMers. We own our sexuality in ways no vanillas can begin to comprehend. We live it. We get it. It should our truths that tell the story of SM.

I'm not saying we should shut off this dialogue: I love the fact that people are now being forced to consider that even famous racing bosses from rich families shamelessly enjoy the slap-and-tickle, alongside rent-boys in leather chaps and the proper wives of British spies. I'm delighted Mosley's smashing stereotypes and demanding the right to do whatever-the-fuck-he-wants with consenting adults.

But unless and until we get media to quit promoting prejudice by writing from a base of ignorance about WIITWD and instead bring abroad people who actually know what they are talking about, people who are clueful to the breadth, depth, scope, diversity, and all-around infinity of permutations of SM personalities, I fear this dialogue will stumble along and re-enforce old prejudices for years to come.

July 23, 2008 in Science and Culture, Sex and History, Sex and Sadomasochism, Sex Laws and Crimes, Sexual Politics | Permalink | Comments (0)

I've been following the strange tale of Max Mosley, the F1 racing boss allegedly caught doing Nazi play in an SM dungeon. The alleged part refers to the Nazi play; Mosley himself has openly admitted he engages in SM. In fact, I blogged a while back about how I admired his courage in choosing to openly admit to being a sadomasochist, not apologizing for it or making the vaguest attempt to deny his proclivities, instead fighting to keep his job (successfully) and suing the paper which published the story.

Mosley is particularly piqued about the claim that Nazi play was involved. Mosley -- the son of a notorious Nazi sympathizer -- clearly has an emotional stake in all this and seems determined to prove several points. First, that the paper had no right to violate his privacy; that their story contained lies; that consensual SM is acceptable; and, perhaps, that as the child of a fascist, he is pretty damn pissed off about being tarred with his father's sins.

Meanwhile, as if all the above wasn't wild enough, the story is filled with more twists than a corkscrew.

For one, turns out, Mosley was set up. For another, he was set up by one of the professional dommes who was there. For yet another, that prodomme happens to be married to a British spy. Leading to a whole LOT gossip about conspiracies and why a spy's wife worked as a dominatrix....leading to statements from the spy about how this scandal has destroyed his career and his life.

The MI5 officer who quit after his wife was exposed as a prostitute in a sadomasochistic orgy with Max Mosley has told for the first time how the affair has ruined their lives.

The spy was forced to resign after confessing he was married to the ‘professional dominatrix’, who secretly videoed the sex session with the F1 motor racing boss and sold details to a newspaper.

The former £30,000-a-year mobile surveillance officer – who tracked terror suspects – said he quit to spare his bosses embarrassment.

He would not discuss how much he knew about his wife’s involvement in setting up the sting against Mosley, or if he played any part.

MI5 officer whose wife was exposed as a prostitute in Max Mosley orgy says the ordeal has devastated their lives

But wait! There's more! It now appears his wife has either gone mad, or was mad in the first place, because she's just been declared too mentally unstable to testify.

The Max Mosley privacy case took a dramatic turn yesterday as the star witness failed to appear.

Woman E, a dominatrix, took part in a sado-masochistic session with the motorsport boss and four other women and secretly filmed it for the News of the World.

But yesterday the paper's QC told the High Court her 'emotional and mental state is such that it would not be fair or reasonable to call her to give evidence'.

Dominatrix who secretly filmed Mosley sex party is declared 'unfit' to face court

July 23, 2008 in Post-Modern Pop Culture, Sex and Culture, Sex and History, Sex and Sadomasochism, Sex Laws and Crimes, Sexual Politics | Permalink | Comments (0)

Perhaps the most ridiculous and too-stupid-to-take-seriously lawsuit everin the news comes from Greece, where three people who live on the island of Lesbos tried to get local courts to make it illegal for lesbians to call themselves lesbians.

Court rules lesbians are not just from Lesbos

A Greek court has dismissed a request by residents of the Aegean island of Lesbos to ban the use of the word lesbian to describe gay women, according to a court ruling made public on Tuesday.

Three residents of Lesbos, the birthplace of the ancient Greek poetess Sappho whose love poems inspired the term lesbian, brought a case last month arguing the use of the term in reference to gay women insulted their identity.

In a July 18 decision, the Athens court said the word did not define the identity of the residents of the island, and so it could be validly used by gay groups in Greece and abroad.

In other world news, three lesbians from the Isle of Man are petitioning the World Court to make it illegal for men to call themselves men.

July 23, 2008 in Sex and Culture, Sex and History, Sex Laws and Crimes, Sexual Politics | Permalink | Comments (0)

July 9, 2008 in Sex and Culture, Sex and History, Sexual Humor | Permalink | Comments (0)

Aha! I knew there had to be at least one economic disaster we can't blame on George Bush.

Husband and wife Francisco and Casilda Figueiredo are among the last exponents of a traditional Portuguese handicraft -- making ornamental ceramic penises.

For more than three decades, the couple have carefully shaped thousands of ceramic male organs, moulding them into upright shapes and painting them in life-like colours for export to Germany, France and North America.

Francisco and Casilda, aged 68 and 65, still toil away in a humble village workshop in the Caldas da Rainha region, about 100 km (60 miles) north of Lisbon, but say the tradition is dying out.

"The days of the ceramics trade here are numbered, I see no possibility of survival," Francisco said as he prepared moulds of the couple's top-of-the-range two-foot phallic-shaped bottles in his workshop.

The couple produce ceramic mugs with a penis sticking out of the bottom or the side, penis-shaped bottles and ceramic soccer figures with the male organ popping out from under a flag.

Story and image: Couple maintain Portugal's ceramic penis tradition

July 5, 2008 in Sex and Culture, Sex and History, Sexual Humor, Sexual Strangeness | Permalink | Comments (0)

These are over 125 years old -- and still incredibly unbelievably arousing. To me, anyway.

Other than the date I have no further information on these. Anyone care to speculate? Postcards? Private photos? Country of origin?

July 3, 2008 in Sex and History | Permalink | Comments (1)

This find was dated from the 1870s. Some fetishes never change....

June 26, 2008 in Sex and History, Sex and Spirituality | Permalink | Comments (1)

I consider this an historic moment for the birth control movement. It amazes me that we make contraception difficult to obtain in the first place. It's a religious conspiracy for sure.

Personally, I am all about the condom, which is the single safest form of birth control and also provides protection from STDs. However, compared to other effective forms of birth control (patches, injections, implants), the pill remains both the most popular and least harmful of the drugs available to prevent unwanted pregnancy. And given that U.S. women are now being turned away or shamed by zealous fundamentalist pharmacists refusing to fill scrips, I'd say the US is in urgent need of a service like this.

Women in Britain can for the first time get the contraceptive pill legally online without having to see medics first.

Medical website DrThom is offering three months' supply for 29.99 pounds (59.25 dollars, 38.95 euros).

Until now, "the pill" has only been available on prescription from doctors or clinics.

The online service will initially be offered to women already on the contraceptive pill but will soon be expanded to those who have never taken it before.

Link

June 25, 2008 in Sex and History, Sexual Health | Permalink | Comments (0)

Call me a cynic but somehow I doubt it's the finest.

June 25, 2008 in Sex and History, Sex and Sadomasochism | Permalink | Comments (0)

Proving yet again, that there's very little new under the sun, here's a sweet picture postcard of two lovely ladies having some wholesome bondage fun in the woods. Couldn't find a date but am guessing late 19th/early 20th century.

June 25, 2008 in Sex and History, Sex and Sadomasochism, Sexual Beauty | Permalink | Comments (2)

For you SM history buffs...

Can't even recall what I was reading when I stumbled across a ref. to a once-famous, still popular Aussie composer named Percy Grainger, (1882-1961). Looked him up on Wiki and was agog to read the following:

Grainger was a sado-masochist, with a particular enthusiasm for flagellation, who extensively documented and photographed everything he and his wife did. His walls and ceilings were covered in mirrors so that after sessions of self-flagellation he could take pictures of himself from all angles, documenting each image with details such as date, time, location, whip used, and camera settings. He gave most of his earnings from 1934–1935 to the University of Melbourne for the creation and maintenance of a museum dedicated to himself. Along with his manuscript scores and musical instruments, he donated the photos, 83 whips, and a pair of his blood-soaked shorts.[citation needed] Although the museum opened in 1935, it was not available to researchers until the 1960s.

Lots more about him, his bizarre relationship with his mother, and his musical legacy on Wiki.

June 23, 2008 in Sex and History | Permalink | Comments (4)

I have only one question.

WHY?

Guinness World Record holder for the 'Most Pierced Woman', Elaine Davidson....showing some of her five thousand nine hundred and twenty piercings

LINK

May 19, 2008 in Post-Modern Pop Culture, Sex and History, Sexual Strangeness | Permalink | Comments (1)

At least I think it's Roman era.

May 15, 2008 in Sex and History | Permalink | Comments (0)

A ring would love to own. Mmm, carved lapis.

May 15, 2008 in Sex and History | Permalink | Comments (0)

Interesting concept: some Danes who feel stronger community with their chosen (gay) families than their biological families are now hoping to be buried in a specially-designated gay section of a Danish cemetery.

Gays in Denmark get own cemetery space

Homosexuals have been designated an area in a Copenhagen cemetery for those who want to be buried among people who shared their sexual orientation, one of the project initiators said on Tuesday.

So if you could, would you want to be buried in a sadomasochistic (or leather) graveyard?

April 9, 2008 in Sex and Culture, Sex and History, Sex and Spirituality | Permalink | Comments (0)

For sale on eBay:

Authentic Roman Glass Mosaic Erotic Penis 300AD

I wonder if this was utilitarian or strictly ornamental. It must've been a rough ride if used for play.

April 9, 2008 in Sex and History | Permalink | Comments (3)

According to the madam of a historic brothel in Hamburg, Germany, her whores can't make a living anymore. The chief culprit is the Internet, along with high-priced call-girls and noisy dance clubs on her street,

Yeah, yeah, the Internet. Seems like every old-style sex business (including the porn business) is blaming the Internet for falling fortunes. As in "We can't sell our products anymore because people can get it for free on the damn Internet." This cry is being heard throughout the world of sex, including businesses which, themselves, are johnny-come-latelies (such as adult video) and which pushed other businesses (like the pulpy, crappy porn novels so popular from the 50s - 70s) out of business.

So is it the Internet? Or is it that many sex businesses have (dare I say it) a very poor business model in the first place and don't understand that, sooner or later, your ticket is up unless you adapt to ye olde "changing marketplace"? The Internet is indeed a big piece of that change but sooner or later, change was going to come in some form and these people did not anticipate or prepare for it.

So it's hard for me to shed a tear over sex businesses that fail to keep up with market expectations. Even harder knowing that so much of the sex industry has been exploitative of clients and that organized crime and random thugs have made huge fortunes from it. As in "Oh boo-hoo, the Mob won't meet its payroll this month because people prefer free kicks on Xtube.com over pricey plastic porn featuring people pretending to have orgasms."

My husband made a revealing comment the other night. He said (and I paraphrase liberally) that he'd much rather watch dumpy women jerk off on xtube than plasticized porn models with implants and airbrushed asses in adult videos. Maybe once upon a time, when women were routinely flawed the image of the Playboy model made tongues hang down. But these days, when anyone can buy fake tits, fake asses, fake hair and fake everything else (and then use special lenses and photographic techniques to conceal the flaws their cosmetic surgeons couldn't fix), and doing it all to make money, it's actually more exciting for him (and I suspect for millions and millions of other men) to see real women with real and normal flawed bodies, having sex for FUN and exhibitionism and nothing else.

Now there's a concept: people having sex for pleasure v. profit. Kinda gets you in the gonads, don't it?

Or think of it another way: if the Free Love movement had succeeded we might not need whorehouses or Internet porn to keep us occupied at night. People might actually be having all the sex they wanted instead of jerking off to the fantasy of having it on-line.

Business is business, whether it's a sex business or a chocolate chip cookie business. The notion that any one group of people "own" an industry, much less a product which almost anyone can produce, is a sure way to find yourself without a business. The most superficial glance at history tells us that not only do some industries fade away and die (how many blacksmiths and barrel-makers do you know?) but that even business which will never die (money-lending, whoring) will, over time, change and adapt to new societies and new technologies.

Old-way whoring enjoyed over 2000 years of being essentially unchanged; and there will always be a place for brothels and inexpensive hookers-on-demand. But nobody owns the sex industry, and when other people come along with ideas and products that have greater appeal, clinging to the old way of doing business is, ultimately, going to lead to your downfall.

Just look at Bear Stearns.

Anyway, what's particularly interesting to me, though, is that this 70-year institution has been "family-run." Now, those are the kind of family values I'd like to see politicians talk about.

The oldest bordello in Hamburg's red-light district is shutting down for lack of business....

The family-run Hotel Luxor, established in 1948, is being sold to an investor and will close down for good next month, madam Waltraud Mehrer said.

Link

March 17, 2008 in Sex and History | Permalink | Comments (1)

Vintage photo (maybe a French postcard?) and oh so sexy!

February 27, 2008 in Sex and History | Permalink | Comments (1)

I'm browsing eBay, and saw an auction for a $3k Roman-era ring with "erotic scene" on it, so naturally had to click.

I think I'll pass. But for all you goat-fuckers out there, here's your chance.

ROMAN GOLD INTALGLIO RING WITH EROTIC SCENE

February 21, 2008 in Sex and History | Permalink | Comments (3)

February 19, 2008 in Sex and History, Sex and Sadomasochism | Permalink | Comments (0)

Perusing the webosphere for something interesting to mark Valentine's day, I came across the happily defunct custom of the "Vinegar Valentine," also known as the "vulgar valentine" and the "penny dreadful" valentine. Actually, most sites call them "penny dreadfuls" but a handful of more erudite ones point out that penny dreadfuls were 19th century pulp novels that sold for a penny. The Vinegar Valentine is attributed to an enterprising Scotsman who produced the first lot of cheaply printed, clumsily drawn cards in 1858. They caught on in the U.S. and the UK and sold for over a hundred years (!). The originals cost a penny, which may explain the later confusion with penny dreadful novels. Or perhaps it's because these valentines were so fucking dreadful it's hard to believe people once found them humorous. The sentiments are so mean, and the rhymes so painful, it's like reading poetry by the love child of Don Rickles and Rod McKuen.

One odd feature of these cards is that they addressed both particular professions (grocers, carpenters, smiths) and particular character types (gossips, spinsters, fat people, etc.). I avoided some of the most egregiously yucky ones.

Apparently Vinegar Valentines ceased being published around 1970. I'd like to think the Love Generation killed them. For a good short history of this low art form, visit the UK's Norfolk Museums & Archaeology Service page on Comic Valentines. The first one (with text below it) comes from their collection. Go behind the cut for all the rest. Perfect for all you anti-valentine's day nonconformists. And a fittingly curmudgeonly valentine show for this blog.

To a Carpenter

You need not be so very vain
For, like your tools you're dull and plain
And never shall be mine
I am not so great a fool
As to submit, Sir, to your rule
Or be your Valentine

February 14, 2008 in Sex and Arts, Sex and History, Sexual Humor | Permalink | Comments (0)

Golly gee willikers! I've always found them to be great wholesome fun too!

from a 1929 "Johnson & Smith" catalogue:

February 13, 2008 in Sex and History | Permalink | Comments (0)

Although I hope that Peter Tupper's prediction is correct, and that Amsterdam never changes, it seems likely to me that real estate profiteers and politicians will continue to fight this battle until they win because of the BIG BUCKS involved. So for you armchair travelers who may never get there, I searched Flickr for the best shots of the district I could find (not easy, as it's against local law to shoot pics there at all). Go behind the cut for the complete set.

February 13, 2008 in Post-Modern Pop Culture, Sex and Culture, Sex and History, Sexual Politics | Permalink | Comments (9)

via Boing-Boing, a link to a fantastic exhibit on body sciences and body arts through the ages, from astrological illustrations to anatomy lessons to freak shows. Very fun to browse!

Bodies of Knowledge

February 12, 2008 in Sex and History | Permalink | Comments (0)

found via Boing-Boing, this fascinating relic of Victorian madness, an "anti-masturbation" device for men. For sale right now on Ebay.

VERY RARE ANTI MASTURBATION DEVICE FRENCH c1880 - eBay (item 190194504224 end time Feb-04-08 20:30:00 PST).

January 31, 2008 in Sex and History, Sex On-Line | Permalink | Comments (0)

This has been sitting around in my archives so long I can't remember where I found it. Roman era, I think. So next time someone suggests to you that poly/swinging/bisexual romps are a modern invention, you could flash this at them.

January 24, 2008 in Sex and Arts, Sex and History | Permalink | Comments (1)

Apparently all those bad 1950s B movies got it wrong. But it made for pretty fantasies, didn't it?

Ancient Maya sacrificed boys not virgin girls: study

The victims of human sacrifice by Mexico's ancient Mayans, who threw children into water-filled caverns, were likely boys and young men not virgin girls as previously believed, archeologists said on Tuesday.

Notice they don't mention if the BOYS were virgins. Come to think of it, why did people assume the girls were virgins? It's not like anyone performed forensic gynecology on their bones or found intact hymens among the remains. I mean, REALLY. Did a little Greek mythology and a whole lot of Judeo-Christian fantasy get layered onto Mayan history here?

January 23, 2008 in Sex and History | Permalink | Comments (4)

Another 19th century find, this time a completely realistic drawing of a New England school-teacher giving one of her students a thrashing for misbehavior.

Whoever drew this caught the sadistic, "I'm gonna beat your bottom bloody" look on the schoolmarm's face perfectly. And by the way, check out the girl students just behind her. The one on the left looks like she wants to grow up and be a dominatrix just like Teacher. The one on the right is hiding her face but her eyes are fixed on the boy getting spanked, as she drinks in the spectacle of his shame and suffering. Uh-huh. She's submissive.

(yeah, yeah, go ahead and tell me it's just my sick imagination) ;)

January 22, 2008 in Sex and History | Permalink | Comments (6)

Found this parody of school discipline from 1849. Like all parodies, it mixes truth with wild exaggeration. But where does the truth end and the exaggeration begin here?

A drunk, sadistic teacher? I'm sure there have been plenty. Spanking kids, gagging them, making them wear dunce hats and signs around their necks, or forcing them to kneel -- some of you may remember a time when those things were not uncommon in American schools, parochial and public.

But is it possible that, once upon a scary 19th century time, teachers also kept stocks in classrooms to control unruly kids?

January 22, 2008 in Sex and History | Permalink | Comments (0)

Ah, those fabulous fabulous '50s. When stereotyping women was almost as much fun as degrading them. Found this montage (part comic, part cheesecake) somewhere and saved it for unknown reasons. It's kinda funny.

But it's kinda sad. The stereotype of the gold-digger, pertly sexy on the outside and coldly exploitative within.

What's even sadder - the stereotype persists. It's launched at virtually any woman who marries a man considerably wealthier than herself. But it isn't limited to women: people are contemptuous of men who marry women a lot wealthier than themselves. One example is the way the less successful husbands of famous actresses/celebs are routinely vilified in media as parasites. WTF? Is there a new social etiquette that if you marry someone with a lot more money you are automatically suspect of marrying them ONLY for their money? That even to consider marrying out of your economic class makes you a mercenary, a whore or a gigolo? Damn, American puritanism is pervasive!

OK, sure, some people DO marry for money rather than love. Sort of depressing to put a price on love. But not exactly a new trend either. It's as old as human history, in fact. Why do Americans get so hostile about it? Like it or not, women, the less-solvent sex, are raised to depend on male wealth. And in most cultures, the richer the husband, the more the woman is admired for making such a desirable match. Yet in America, where we are all obsessed with wealth, people act as if marrying primarily for financial security is vulgar and casts doubt on your moral character. Huh? Is it a question of sour grapes? Wouldn't we all like to be as financially secure as we can, if not for our own sakes, then for the sake of those who depend on us?

Just some random thoughts prompted by this disquieting piece of kitsch.

December 20, 2007 in Sex and Culture, Sex and History, Sex and Relationships, Sexual Humor | Permalink | Comments (0)

It's time for one of my annual rituals: a dump-out of all the orphan image files I've collected over the past year. Some are things I thought would go into art shows; some are images I planned to blog but never did; most of them were found while I was researching completely different topics and now, months later, I can't remember where I found them or, in some instances, why I kept them.

But now you, yes, lucky you, will get to see all the "almost made-it" images I've been keeping on my hard-drive. If you have any images you've been keeping on file - odd things, hot things, SM things, weird or humorously sexual things - and like me, would enjoy getting them off your hard-drive to make room for a new year of mindless, compulsive collecting, feel free to email them to me and share them with the blogosphere. Just make sure they are in jpg or gif format, since TypePad won't accept other types of image files.

December 18, 2007 in Sex and Arts, Sex and History, Sexual Humor | Permalink | Comments (0)

via Boing-Boing, a link to Google Books, where you can find

a flowchart of medieval sexual decision-making

from The Wages of Sin: Sex and Disease

Whether or not you agree with it, this amazing chart is a must-see for everyone interested in the history and sociology of sex.

December 10, 2007 in Sex and History | Permalink | Comments (1)

Ok, all you kids and even you grown-ups who think feminism is a bad thing. Take a little journey back in time with me to the world before the women's lib movement...

The outrageously politically incorrect adverts from the time equality forgot

Click the link above to see more (and more horrifying) ads that our mothers and grandmothers were raised on.

December 5, 2007 in Sex and History | Permalink | Comments (2)

Thanks to Gary for pointing me to this great story about the fascinating relationship between Cornelius Vanderbilt and two of American history's most colorful women, Victoria Woodhull and her sister, Tennie Claflin. A must-read for anyone interested in the history of sex in the U.S.

During September of 1868, barely a month after the death of his wife Sophia, 74-year-old mogul Cornelius Vanderbilt made the acquaintance of two sisters with whom he was to have a complex and absurd relationship for several years going forward.

Victoria Woodhull was a 30-old clairvoyant and spiritualist. She was also a onetime prostitute. Victoria's nubile, 22-year-old sister, Tennessee Claflin, known as Tennie, shared a similar professional history. Tennie claimed expertise as a practitioner of medicinal magnetism and manual manipulation of the limbs....

from
Strange Bedfellows: Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt and the Woodhull/Claflins

Awfully cool to catch these fascinating bio bits about Ms. Woodhull, whose name and legacy are so well-represented by the WOODHULL FOUNDATION, which devotes itself to the cause of sexual freedom. In fact, they're running a membership drive right now, and if you're in the mood to give, I can't think of a better sex-positive organization to support this holiday season.

political cartoon about Ms. Woodhull from The American View

December 5, 2007 in Sex and History | Permalink | Comments (1)

November 14, 2007 in Sex and History | Permalink | Comments (0)

Anyone know why Friedrich Nietzsche is being play-whipped by the lady, Lou Salome? (N. is the one with the mustache.) Some dramatic re-enactment?

November 12, 2007 in Sex and History | Permalink | Comments (4)

Thanks to Mike for submitting this site. What a blast from the past. Seems the 1960s mega-groupie has figured out a way to put her penis collection to good use. Here's her most famous cast of all, from guitar genius Jimi Hendrix:

If you don't know her, Cynthia was infamous for making plaster casts of musical phalli. Those were the days when a groupie with a schtick could get almost famous - and she was arguably the most famous groupie of them all. So cute to see her transform her old fetish into a source of funding for the arts. Check out Cynthia P Caster and the charitable foundation she created to help starving musicians. You can read her story about how she went from groupie to non-profit leader there too.

November 8, 2007 in Sex and Culture, Sex and History | Permalink | Comments (0)

If you have a serious medical fetish, you should check out the Development of the Modern Cystoscope: An Illustrated History. It's available on MedScape, the go-to source for everything going on in the world of medicine. I do a lot of CME's (post grad training) in sexual medicine on-line with MedScape but you don't need credentials to join their free service. You'll need to sign up to see this exhibit but if you are keenly interested in medical devices, it's worth the effort to read up on how urological technology has progressed from the early days.

Here are a few photos to tease you - the article on MedScape contains many more. Now imagine being a patient in the late 19th and early 20th century, and having your doctor come at you holding this, preparing to stick it up your urethra and take a peek.

October 31, 2007 in Sex and History, Sex and Sadomasochism, Sex and Technology, Sexual Health, Sexual Science and Medicine | Permalink | Comments (2)

found on sexblo.gs

Once upon a time, no one really questioned what went on in men-only baths, though as this funky old photo shows, it was more than a little...well...GAY. Maybe once upon a time men weren't forced to ask themselves "am I gay?" at every turn. And maybe masculinity was not quite so confusing or difficult when men had the flexibility to enjoy a little same-sex whatever.

So I ask you: in today's age, would New York cops close this joint down? And book these guys as being lewd and lascivious and a bunch of other things?

I'm voting YEP.

Kinda sad.

October 25, 2007 in Sex and History | Permalink | Comments (1)

Every now and again, when I think about so-called Conservatives who want to go back to so-called traditional values, I am reminded of those fine American values I was raised on. For example, the traditional ways that men viewed women as property. Or how men once talked about women as prey with winks and leers, a social style that was considered worldly and bon vivant.

People may want to pretend that they were hideous anomalies but, no, in fact, porn entrepreneurs Hugh Hefner and Larry Flynt are products of the Heartland (Illinois and Kentucky, respectively), as American as apple pie and as surrounded by profound sexual repression as the rest of the Midwest in the 1940s and 1950s, that so-called golden time that today's conservatives speak of so worshipfully.

America's two most visible perverts were not the children of Right or Left Coast liberals, the ones who are always accused of trying to lead the country astray with decadence and depravity. Hefner's parents were Nebraska farmers; Flynt grew up in poverty in the hills of Kentucky. What do you want to bet that when Flynt was nine years old and, by his own admission, fucking a chicken, that he was still scrubbing up for Sunday school and singing songs about Jesus?

Let's never forget what the real traditional values were - or that they are the product of sexual repression.

Visit this link for a graphic reminder - VintageGirlwatchers.com

October 22, 2007 in Sex and History | Permalink | Comments (0)

They say there's something out there for everyone.

This site is for people with a retro-sex-kitten-with-funky-old-typewriter-and-fetishy-shoes-and-stockings fetish.

from
www.typewritermuseum.org

October 20, 2007 in Sex and History | Permalink | Comments (1)

As an American, I find the LA Times report below to be very sad statement on the ongoing censorship of poets, writers and other artists in America. Personally, I had the privilege of meeting Ginsberg, and know how profoundly distraught he was over the constant government pressure to ban his works.

Oct. 3, 1957 — 50 years ago this week — Allen Ginsberg’s “Howl and Other Poems” was found to Howl have “redeeming social importance” by San Francisco Municipal Judge Clayton W. Horn in a landmark civil case. “Howl” had been impounded by U.S. customs officials and its publisher, City Lights Books, had been charged with obscenity; Horn’s decision helped pave the way for a much more open culture, in which dissenting viewpoints, language and aesthetics might become part of the mainstream.

And yet, five decades later, it looks as if we’re back to fighting at least some of the same battles, even where an acknowledged classic such as “Howl” is concerned. Earlier this week, rather than air a 1959 recording of Ginsberg reading his poem, New York radio station WBAI-FM chose to stream the material on the Internet. The logic? WBAI and its parent organization, the Pacifica Radio network, were concerned that the Federal Communications Commission, which in 2005 was given congressional approval to significantly increase penalties for indecency, would level “draconian ... fines” that might potentially lead to bankruptcy.

It doesn’t take a genius to see the real obscenity here: the use of amorphous standards of “decency “and “decorum” to restrict diversity of speech. The fact that it involves “Howl” — long a symbol of free expression — only adds insult to irony. Haven’t we already worked this out as a culture? Don’t we have more pressing issues to take on? Apparently, this is how we honor an American masterpiece, by keeping it off the public airwaves, even though it’s been read there many times over the last half a century..

from the L.A. Times blogosphere.

Here's a couple of things Allen had to say about censorship, from a series of interviews I conducted with him back in the 1990s.

Allen Ginsberg (AG): My work is consistently censored. If it's happening to me, imagine what's happening to a lot of others. I'm supposed to be, you know, classic. I'm a member of the American Academy of Poets and the Institute of Arts and Letters. I'm a distinguished professor at Brooklyn College, I'm world-famous as a poet, and I'm supposedly invulnerable to the depredations of snoopy censors and jerks like Helms. But it affects the environment I have to work in, and I think it affects every artist....

GB: What inflammatory ideas did the censors cite?

AG: Just sex....

AG: I've always been interested in notions of censorship and the question, "How do you liberate a society from people who want to maintain thought control? Censorship involves thought control. The purpose of it is usually to maintain some sort of militaristic status quo which becomes tighter and tighter.

October 6, 2007 in Sex and Arts, Sex and History, Sex Laws and Crimes | Permalink | Comments (2)

And yet another biographer has gone after the secret sex life of a Victorian writer. God bless them. If not for those earnest, hard-working scholars, we'd never know just how twisted those proper-looking gentlemen really were under their starched shirts and frock-coats.

In this case it's an obscure "mythographer" named Powys. The review offers only a few scintillating hints about his perversions.

The British novelist, student of arcane lore, and mythographer John Cowper Powys (1872–1963) is known today by only one or two of his novels — "Wolf Solent" (1929), and perhaps "A Glastonbury Romance" (1932). These are vast, multilayered works whose heady mixture of Celtic mysticism and sexual psychology has won them a coterie readership. Those who have wondered what sort of personality lay behind such peculiar epics can now find out from Morine Krissdóttir's densely detailed Descents of Memory.

From the review, we learn he was an SMer...of sorts.

In America, he met the much younger Phyllis Plater, daughter of a Missouri businessman. Though he was already married....she became his companion from 1923 until his death, and their relationship was concealed from his wife and son. The most ground-breaking work in Krissdóttir's biography is its fullness of detail about Phyllis, who had been a shadowy figure in previous accounts. She burned all her letters to Powys in 1951, but recently some early correspondence and diaries have surfaced, of which Krissdóttir makes extensive use. Powys nicknamed Phyllis "the T.T.," short for "Tiny Twig" ("Tylwyth Teg" in Welsh), casting her as a fairy, his elemental attendant. She was also the target of less agreeable fantasies, some of them sadomasochistic....

I'm assuming the reviewer, not the biographer, found Powys' interest in infantilism (adult baby, diapers) "embarrassing." This bit alone makes me want to buy Descents of Memory to read all about his fetish.

In 1935, when he was 63, he and Phyllis left America for Wales, where he remained for the rest of his life, devolving first into increasingly obtuse literature of alchemy, and finally into embarrassing sexual infantilism and voyeurism.

His infantile streak dominated him, and Phyllis was now part-nurse, part-mother surrogate. His diet consisted of milk, tea, stale bread, and olive oil.

So does this mean that even as he was writing his famous (or famously obscure) works, he was pooping non-stop into diapers?

More importantly....who feeds babies olive-oil??

I've heard of a lot of odd ways that writers go about trying to free themselves from a writers' bloc but Oh My.

October 4, 2007 in Sex and History, Sex and Sadomasochism | Permalink | Comments (0)

I used to worry about dying when I was a little girl. Obsessively. Once my father reassured me that with all the advances in science and medicine, he was sure that by the time I grew up, they would have discovered the secret to immortality. I kind of knew he was lying but it made me feel a lot better anyway.

We're still a long way from immortality but there's no doubt that people today are living longer and, perhaps more importantly, enjoying a better quality of life in old age than ever before. What's the secret? Diet? Exercise? Modern medicine? Regular habits? A positive attitude? Staying active? Luck of the genetic draw? I tend to think it's all of the above. See what scientists are discovering about the secret to long life at the website, New England Centenarian Study.

Amazing to think that longevity has so improved in America that we now have organizations devoted to the study of centenarians. When they were young hormonal lads and ladies, they were aroused by naughty cabinet cards like this.

September 25, 2007 in Sex and History, Sexual Health | Permalink | Comments (0)

We at Castle Bramenstein usually spend a chunk of our weekends catching up on TV shows, documentaries and movies we didn't have time to view during the work week. On this weekend's agenda was "Inside Deep Throat," a 2004 documentary which chronicles one of the 1970s' most controversial and bizarre episodes - the rise and subsequent demonization of porn marketed to the masses, as epitomized by the campy crappy sex flick, "Deep Throat."

"Deep Throat" wasn't the first porn movie to play in movie theatres. It wasn't the first porno to make a controversial public splash either. In 1969, the Swedish movie I Am Curious Yellow shocked, outraged and (of course) titillated movie-goers around the US. (IMO, one of the flaws of "Inside Deep Throat" is that, while it very briefly mentions the Swedish film, it doesn't acknowledge that it paved the way for its tacky American cousins of the 1970s.)

But in its day, "Deep Throat" forced a confrontational debate between people who believe in the First Amendment and those who place personal and religious beliefs above the Constitution. The documentary did an admirable job of gathering research on the key figures involved (including interviews with the film's director, Gerard Damiano, and its sacrificial lamb-cum-leading man, Harry Reems). Linda Lovelace died before the documentary was made, but there is plenty of footage on her through various stages of her life.

The filmmakers interviewed some of the FBI agents and prosecutors who worked feverishly to save America's soul from sex, including the now-disgraced Charles Keating. One of the most interesting subjects was Larry Parrish, a Tennessee prosecutor who says he was mentally scarred from watching "Deep Throat." Equally fascinating was the infamous "Deep Throat" debate between Hugh Hefner and Susan Brownmiller. 30 years later, it's clear that both sides lost. As in YUCK!! Playboy v. Women Against Pornography. It makes my feministic flesh crawl. (Brownmiller's rhetoric was one of the reasons I drifted away from organized feminism in the early 80s.)

The documentary has its flaws. Though some of the interviews were brilliantly edited, I'm dubious about some choices of interview subjects. Like - why Dick Cavett, who claims he never saw the movie? Or Norman Mailer and Gore Vidal who were, at best, on the outer fringes? Perhaps they wouldn't agree to be interviewed but I wonder what Warren Beatty or Jack Nicholson - two high-power celebs who stood up for Harry Reems in the 70s - feel today about their involvement back then. I would have loved to see more 70s porn stars talk about events that directly impacted their lives and fortunes. (It was great to see Georgina Spelvin and my buddy Annie Sprinkle - but I wish they'd added some more pioneering porn stars, like Marilyn Chambers, Gloria Leonard or Jamie Gillis.) And I really truly wish there had been a lot less Erica Jong and Camille Paglia, neither of whom added much of anything to the discussion.

I really loved the scary 70s flashbacks: the tawdry weirdness of American culture back then was deliciously captured in this film. The documentary also showed that some of the same people who hounded Reems, Damiano and others into poverty and despair are still pounding the same beat. Only now they're trying to hound Internet sex-businesses out of existence. As Larry Parrish implies at the end of his interview, if only those pesky terrorists would go away people like him could get back to next most pressing issue in America: ensuring our moral purity by suppressing porn.

Priceless.

The filmmakers did a great job of catching up with the key characters. At the end, they interviewed contemporary porn stars, like Mary Carey, who were cheerfully oblivious to the history of their biz. It's a bitter-sweet statement on how this hugely important moment in pop cultural history has been lost on those who benefit the most from it.

Personal note: I was but an itty-bitty baby perv (17 or so) when an older friend snuck me in to see "Deep Throat" in its original run at the World Theater. Even then I found it howlingly bad and, worse, boring and silly. You could not make me sit through it again: but that's what I loved about this documentary. It offers the only clips worth viewing from the original film, including footage showing Ms. Lovelace's infamous talent for swallowing an entire dick.

We caught this on TV. The DVD apparently has lots more interesting stuff. You can check it out on Amazon.

Also recommended:

September 17, 2007 in Sex and History, Sex Laws and Crimes, Sexual Politics | Permalink | Comments (0)

A special feature today for blog readers. I spent a few hours the other day culling through some of the best and worst sex-related clips available on youtube. Instead of focusing on any specific set of topics, I picked up a random sampling of clips - some funny, some strange, and some ooh-la-la.

This afternoon, I'm going to publish an assort of clips from the 1950s that give you some inkling of what kind of craaazy attitudes were promoted as "normal" in that decade. Couple of the old "hygiene" instructional vids put out by the military, aimed at compelling soldiers to beware of personal hygiene, and particularly venereal disease. Also, a wonderful bit of cheesecake of Bettie Page performing live. From there, I'll move on to a couple of humorous clips and sex parodies. The evening will close with a Ladies Night Special. You see an awful lot of naked girls on this blog and everywhere else on the Net. Much harder to find are super-sexy shots of hunky naked (or semi-naked) men. Well, we who are inside the mind are committed to making sure that some of the wrong is rectified tonight with a few vids of cuties. (Albeit pretty vanilla, but I'm sure you ladies can use your imagination once you see the guys.)

Stay tuned today for fun and games, weirdness and hilarity, and a non-stop cavalcade of my choice of some of the best - and some of the best of the worst - vids from youtube. If I get enough positive feedback, I'll make "Sex on Tape" a regular feature on the blog. It's just the kind of research I love to do, so please offer feedback and let me know if I should continue doing it for you.

I'm starting off with this curious relic on how to date girls.

What to do on a date (1950)

September 15, 2007 in Sex and Culture, Sex and History, Sexual Health | Permalink | Comments (1)

For sale on eBay:

ERROTIKA BIBLION by Mirabeau 1st Ed Erotica 1783 French

ERROTIKA BIBLION by Honore Gabriel Riqueti Comte de Mirabeau A ROME De L Imprimerie Du Vatican 1783
First edition 192 pages hardcover red cloth rebound in 1873 stated on bottom spine .

Honoré Gabriel Riqueti marquis et comte de Mirabeau often referred to simply as Mirabeau; March 9 1749 – April 2 1791 a French writer popular orator statesman and a French revolutionary offers us 10 philosophical reflections on the erotic mores and customs of ancient times as opposed to those of modern man, i.e. French 18th century . A compendium of curiosities culled from ancient writings in an effort to present indelicate subjects such as onanism - older word for masturbation or "spilling of seed," tribadism form of mutual masturbation...in a manner acceptable to the general public....

September 13, 2007 in Sex and History | Permalink | Comments (0)

If you didn't see it when it was released in 1980, chances are you've never seen William Friedkin's movie, Cruising, starring Al Pacino.

Now is your chance. A mere 27 years after its release, the film will finally be available on DVD this month. The release of the film on DVD is generating some buzz, as reviewers pile on to refresh the old debates about this film's artistic and cultural merits. One of the best commentaries, IMHO, was just published by Film Threat, which offers a very fair and rational discussion of a film that once enraged, disgusted and offended reviewers, viewers, and large numbers of people who never saw the film in the first place.

“Cruising” is, on the outside, the story of Steve Burns (Al Pacino), fresh-faced puppy of a cop who naively takes on an undercover mission towards “Gold Shield” promotion. “Ever had your pole smoked by a man?” asks his superior, NYPD’s Captain Edelson (tired-eyed Paul Sorvino), before sending Burns into the sweaty, blue-tinted underworld of New York’s gay S & M leather bars. Essentially, the duration of “Crusing” sees Burns posing as a leather bar patron in his efforts to attract and flush out a killer who’s dismembering fellow gay sadomasochists and tossing their limbs into the East River.

Beneath the trashy leather jacket and jock strap it’s wrapped in, Friedkin’s film asks several fascinating questions, even if it fails to answer any of them.

On one level, “Cruising” appears to be about Pavlovian conditioning. As Burns immerses himself deeper into the primal, extreme sensations of the bar scene, his lovemaking sessions with fiancée Nancy (Karen Allen) seem more physically aggressive. If a straight man is tossed into a sea of rough, sadomasochistic gay sex, will he begin craving this lifestyle? Will he stop appreciating the more tender, delicate advances of a woman?

from Film Threat

I was lucky enough to see the movie when it was released. This was about five years before I go into the club scene myself. I wonder sometimes if the images of the leather bars so vividly, raunchily brought to life in the film didn't lodge themselves in my brain and inflame my pre-existing fascination with leather and pain. What do you think?

I fell in lust with Pacino when I saw him in his cruising clothes -

Even in the day, it bothered me that the gay community boycotted this film (alongside a whole lot of religious prudes). Boiled down, their basic argument against Cruising was that gays should not be associated with leather-clad freaks. It's a political argument that sprang, in part, from the Gay Lib movement's efforts to achieve social parity with heteros. By distancing themselves from the fringe groups, by reviling segments of their own communities - trannies, drag queens, leathermen, etc. - they felt they could prove they were not perverts but productive, ordinary members of society.

By trying so hard to prove that they're "just like straight people," they instead (at least in my mind) made a sick and sad statement about their own lack of self-acceptance. SMers became the scapegoat for that self-hatred (read some of the 80s lesbian theory, especially Audre Lorde's for more of same). They mirrored the same narrow-minded, puritanical attitudes towards sexual minorities as the heteros who hated homos in the first place.

Nor did it help that around the time of the film's release a documentary aired on television which claimed that SM acts were causing a high death rate among gays - a documentary which was completely discredited a few years later for having lied about and invented statistics. As usual, the discrediting of the documentary received far less press than the original lies. By then, the foofawraw over Cruising had died down as well. The film went underground, screened only occasionally at an art house if at all.

Those days are gone but many of the same prejudices remain. In our own happy little leather bubble it is at times all too easy to forget that prudes (gay and straight alike) still view us as shady, immoral and either violent (sadistic) or pathetic (masochistic) characters.

If you see Cruising for the first time, expect to see unsavory behaviors. It is, after all, a true crime story (based on a series of murders of gay men in NYC in the 70s). It isn't a paean to leather; it doesn't promote consensuality; there's nothing pretty about it cinematically either. It's grainy and gritty, like others in the genre (think French Connection, for example). It is also a flawed film. The plot is muddled in places. As Film Threat notes, it chickens out at the end by not answering questions it has raised. The fine line between pleasing ambiguity and confused writing is crossed more than once.

You can also expect glimpses of a dangerous, at times unfamiliar, world of leather. Sexual repression is an ugly thing and that ugliness is built into this film. These were the days before AIDS, before safe sex, and before SSC and safe words and all the other little protections that activists began to promote as a way of protecting leather people against predators. Clubs back then were raw and secretive and sleazy, filled with guilty people who led double lives and believed that antibiotics could cure every sexual disease.

Yet, despite all that, look at the men in the bar, many of whom were real players, not actors. They are a piece of leather history. They are the people who paved the way for the rest of us, who built the clubs, who opened the dialogues on SM, and who, ultimately, are responsible for taking SM out of the closet. For opening that world to public view, both the men who participated in the film and the director, William Friedkin, deserve kudos. And so does Al Pacino for having the big hairy balls to take on a role so controversial, so publicly bashed and mocked, that it nearly killed his career. More than that, unlike at least one of his co-stars (Karen Allen) Pacino never apologized for making this movie. I love Pacino for his integrity.

As for me, I can identify with the film's protagonist's slow seduction into the world of leather, so brilliantly portrayed by Pacino. Seeing all that hedonism and intensity and sexual freedom within the thick walls of hidden clubs filled me with emotions I didn't even realize I had. If I'd had the courage of my convictions back then, I probably would've gone straight to the nearest leather club and thrown myself into the brew. And, indeed, when I finally came to terms with my SM nature a few years later, I had an overwhelming craving to find a club just like that, brimming with libertine leather intensity.

Fuck the bourgeois critics who still condemn the movie and fuck the people who marched against it. They don't know what they're missing.

September 12, 2007 in Sex and Arts, Sex and Culture, Sex and History, Sex and Sadomasochism, Sexual Politics | Permalink | Comments (0)

Found this Roman artifact on eBay, where the ad describes it as a "well preserved Roman erotic female laying statue" and dates it to 100 B.C.E.

Humm. At first glance I was sure it was a dildo but as I look it over, I don't think you could penetrate anyone very far without that sharp flat edge on the base causing injury. But if it isn't a dildo, what is it? Just an ornamental piece? (I sure wouldn't mind have it ornamenting my office.) If any readers know what this is, please pipe up.

Bidding's still on and there are more pix on eBay.

August 22, 2007 in Sex and Arts, Sex and History | Permalink | Comments (3)

Lesbians, dominatrices, women in uniforms, nuns in habits OH MY. All from a photo series published in 1965. A must-look for kinky people.

A Lesbian wedding in London. The man had apparently insulted one of their number, by falling in love with her and asking her to marry him. He had to be punished. He would come to the wedding for his whipping and bring his own whips in his flute case (he was a flutist with one of the great orchestras). He was photographed in a bathing cap, child's rubber training pants and a petticoat, being whipped by the bridal pair after which the girl he loved walked on his belly in stiletto heels.

from
Women Without Men

August 21, 2007 in Sex and Arts, Sex and History | Permalink | Comments (0)

Well, isn't this a let-down. Once open and enlightened about sexual diversity, she built a reputation on her tattoos, her bottle of Billy Bob's blood and many public statements about wild private antics. Now, Angelina Jolie thinks motherhood and partnership mean giving up bisexuality and SM.

I can understand committing to monogamy (and therefore giving up outside partners, whether of the same or opposite sex). But SM? How do you give up being the kinky person you are?

August 14, 2007 in Post-Modern Pop Culture, Sex and History, Sex and Sadomasochism | Permalink | Comments (2)

Got this great email rave about a Shunga site the other day and thought I'd share both the link and some of my correspondent's comments (anonymously, of course).