Web Log Archives: June 16, 2002 - June 22, 2002
Saturday, June 22, 2002
R. Kelly has released a new single called "Heaven, I Need a Hug," in which he pleads for industry and fan support while he defends himself from child porn charges. The general manager of Chicago's WGCI reports that the new song is "getting requested up the yin-yang."
Porn director Candida Royalle held a casting call in Brooklyn for first-time male actors to appear in her upcoming feature Stud Hunting. "I wanted to use fresh talent that no one had ever seen instead of the same five guys you always see in L.A." The last line of this article made me laugh out loud.
At GayWired, Simon Clarke offers pointers on how to seduce straight men. "Whatever you do, don’t call it gay sex. Remember it’s just a bit of fun and it’s not gay in the slightest. It’s just two guys messing around ‘cuz their girlfriends have gone off it lately. Giving it a name will kill it dead. However, when you’ve had him, use it all you like, especially when you’re stalking him." (Link snagged from Banana Guide.)
The Justice Department plans to appeal the appellate court ruling that struck down the Children's Internet Protection Act (CIPA), which would have required public libraries to use filtering software on Internet-access computers or lose federal funding. The Supreme Court will now decide whether to hear the case.
Friday, June 21, 2002
Wai Wai has another titillating exposé of Japanese schoolgirl nymphomaniacs entitled "Fast food sends schoolgirls into sexual feeding frenzy." The headline refers to a crackpot theory espoused by one clinic director: "Sex addiction, which involves having sex with numerous different partners over a short period, is related to bulimia. Fast food so popular among young people is absorbed unnaturally quickly by the body, making it easy for bulimia to develop. Bulimia makes it harder to control the central nervous system and a chain reaction makes it easier to develop other addictions. Sex addiction is a case in point." This article quickly drops the fast food theory, and proceeds to examine the reasons for and dangers of teen promiscuity in slightly more sincere, less sensationalistic fashion.
The House Judiciary Committee has approved a new "virtual child pornography" bill to replace the old law struck down by the Supreme Court in April. The new bill defines "virtual child porn" more specifically as computer images indistinguishable from actual photographs or movies. According to CNN, the bill also states that "defendants in child-pornography cases would have to prove that the images in question were entirely computer generated and not a depiction of actual events. Most criminal cases in the United States place the burden of proof on prosecutors."
Thursday, June 20, 2002
Neeraja Vinaswathan recounts a great used bookstore find. "On a recent Sunday, I took a trip to the Strand, a used-book store in downtown Manhattan whose shelving system makes locating a specific title roughly equivalent to searching for the Holy Grail. I say this to emphasize that I did not go there looking for porn. Within a few minutes, I was holding an innocuous-looking copy of Henry Miller's Opus Pistorum. A cursory page-flip led to the same rush of damp sensation I got from opening my first dirty book at the age of ten. Soon I was leaning furtively in the corner, trying to memorize any one of the book's dozens of sexy and shame-inducing scenes for use later that night."
David Steinberg reports from the 2002 Faux Queen Pageant, an annual San Francisco competition for drag queens trapped in real women's bodies.
Philip Clark writes a neato personal sex blog called hot action. Among his motives: "if I'm going to have a reputation in Halifax, I might as well have some say in what it is."
Jill Matrix wises off about the "controversial" Nickelodeon special about families with same-sex parents.
At Salon, Janelle Brown profiles and interviews extreme porn director Lizzy Borden, whose movies push the limits of sexual violence and degradation. Brown repeatedly voices her distaste for Borden's work throughout the article.
In fact, Borden's films are so repugnant and evil that it's difficult to justify their existence, let alone comprehend why anyone -- especially a woman -- would want to make this kind of garbage in the first place. But Borden talks about her work with pride and a kind of twisted logic. She considers herself a moralist, an artist, a realist and a provocateur (though perhaps not in such grand vocabulary). In an industry that treats women like second-rate citizens, that considers them useful only as long as their breasts are perky and their orifices exploitable, Borden sees a route to power and respect in out-boying the boys. Furthermore, she believes she's just giving audiences the same kind of violence and vileness they've come to expect from their other entertainment outlets, like the World Wrestling Federation, "Jackass" and Eminem. And thanks to her own abusive childhood, Borden is just screwed up enough to believe this rationalization.
The whip-smart Nick Urfé has already written a long, eloquent rejoinder defending Borden and the value of exploring and depicting transgressive sexual fantasies.
Max Sparber reviews two plays currently running in the Twin Cities, 7 Blowjobs and This Queer Life, which skewer anti-sex conservatives with varying degrees of humor and success.
Brita Brundage reviews The Great American Nude, an exhibition at the Bruce Museum of Arts and Science in Greenwich, Connecticut, which "traces the change in form and purpose of the nude, and the social and cultural barriers which confront art in every decade." Brundage also ponders the status of American art depicting nudity today, in a culture saturated with both sexual display and sexual repression.
The New York Times looks at varied Internet access policies at public libraries in different communities.
Wednesday, June 19, 2002
Two billboard controversies in the news. A strip club in upstate New York posted the famous flag-raising photographs from Iwo Jima and the World Trade Center on its roadsign, with text touting the club's offerings between the photos. The owner insists he just wanted to "honor those who served us," but local residents and politicians and eventually the New York Post criticized the combination. The owner quickly removed the club ad and left up the photographs.
In Los Angeles, Death Row Records is promoting a new release by Crooked I with a rooftop billboard showing the rapper sitting on the toilet with his pant's down, above the tagline "I'm the Shit!!!" Local residents and businesspeople have been urging Death Row to take down the sign, to no avail.
(LA Times registration required; link and photo snagged from Volokh Conspiracy.)
The Anthology Film Archives in New York, an institution mainly devoted to preserving and exhibiting avant-garde films, recently acquired the oeuvre of gay art-porn pioneer Wakefield Poole. Starting tonight, Anthology is running a weeklong retrospective of Poole's films with the filmmaker in attendence. Ed Halter previews the screenings and reviews Poole's career.
For most of the 1960s, when Poole lived in New York doing musical theater and shooting industrials, underground films frequently portrayed homosexual themes, though never any real gay sex. By decade's end, true hardcore loops began screening at rundown art houses. Produced cheaply and anonymously, the sleazy stags propelled an aesthetically offended Poole into action. "I went to the Park Miller and I saw this horrible movie," remembers Poole, "and I said to my friend, 'This is the worst, ugliest movie I've ever seen! Somebody oughta be able to do something better than this.'" Poole's notion was to combine the lyrical moods of Jean Cocteau and Kenneth Anger with all-male hardcore action — a taboo that Andy Warhol, Pat Rocco, and Jean Genet had approached, asymptotically, but never quite breached.
Research published in Archives of Sexual Behavior claims that unprotected hetero sex has an anti-depressant effect for women. The study's author, Gordon Gallup, speculates that some unidentified property of semen may be responsible. Daze linked to a news blurb about this study a few weeks ago; at the time I commented, "The research, at least as described here in layman's terms, doesn't sound all that convincing." Today's Salon has a longer article about Gallup's study. Some scientists quoted find Gallup's research interesting but inconclusive, while others dismiss him as a crank. The president of the Sexual Medicine Society of North America says, "This is the kind of junk science that smears the name of honest science."
Tuesday, June 18, 2002
LA Weekly has a meta-review reviewing the American reviews of The Sexual Life of Catherine M.
The Spectator has lots of new content up, including this interview with transsexual model/pornstar Vanity. Gallery of eight thumbnailed photographs accompanies the interview.
From the archives: Richard Goldstein's notorious 1999 column asking, Is Jar Jar Binks Gay? "Not since Michael Jackson has an alien raised such hellacious hackles." (I meant to post this a month ago when Star Wars 5 came out, but couldn't find it at the Village Voice website. Fortunately the webmaster of Cool Binks Links & More has transcribed and archived it.)
Eric Raymond responds to some responses to his "why is there so much bad porn?" essay. Meanwhile, Nick Urfé dissects and rebuts Raymond's first essay.
Nickelodeon plans to broadcast Nick News Special Edition: My Family is Different tonight, the Linda Ellerbee-hosted special about children with same-sex parents, despite a massive email/phone campaign by cultural conservatives.
Nice CNN feature on Peacefire founder Bennett Haselton, whose site offers free downloads and details methods for circumventing Internet filtering software. Apparently anti-porn activists and filtering software manufacturers really hate this guy.
Banana Guide has an interview with David K., creator of Nightcharm.
Toronto gay community newspaper XTRA! profiles Banana Guide editor Trevor Hennig.
Crossdresser Harry Prather, aka "Mother Rachael," is suing the Cedar Point amusement park in Ohio after park security ejected him last year during Cedar Park's annual but unofficial Gay Day. The park's parent company stands by the policy to ban crossdressers.
Janice Witherow, a Cedar Point spokeswoman, said Mr. Prather was asked to leave for violating the park's dress code, which she said has been in effect "for a number of years." A copy of the code, which is given to all visitors along with a park map, says that shirts and shoes must be worn at all times, swimwear must be sufficiently covered, and clothing with profanity, suggestive pictures, and pictures of illegal substances are prohibited.
But Ms. Witherow said the park also has "a dress code policy that includes common sense as well.... Cedar Point strictly prohibits costumes of any type to be worn in the park, and this is for safety and security reasons. We need to be able to identify our guests should something happen, and we can't allow one sex to be dressing up as another sex and entering restrooms where they're not supposed to be." Asked how the park defines a costume, Ms. Witherow replied, "Anything that is atypical dress would be deemed as a costume."
Lynn Breedlove talks about writing Godspeed. "It started out as a cathartic exercise. That's why there's a lot of what looks like gratuitous drug use in the beginning. That was just me letting it go, admitting that although I knew drugs almost killed me, there were parts that I would really miss. So it was a dear john letter, a good-bye to a bad lover letter. I get nervous that kids will look at that and think it's cool, but I can't afford to be didactic. Good writing comes from a deep need to purge something, and editing out all the parts that might be dangerous to society makes for bland prime time TV."
Police raided a private tournament at Hidden Valley Golf Club last Friday at which prostitutes were working the fairways. Investigators had been tipped off about a similar event weeks ago and had been watching the club. Tents were pitched throughout the course for the tournament, and investigators observed sex between golfers and women in plain sight on the fairways.
Among the new additions to the Oxford English Dictionary:
Bonkbuster, n. Chiefly Brit. (colloq and humorous). A type of popular novel characterised by frequent sexual encounters between the characters.
The Guardian cites Jackie Collins, Harold Robbins and Jilly Cooper as prime examples of "bonkbuster" authors. The paper also gloats that the term originated in its pages. Columnist Sue Limb, who wrote the Guardian's humorous "Bad Housekeeping" column under the pseudonym Dulcie Domum, coined the term after a publisher asked if she could write "a big, thick book with lots of bonking in it."
The Bush Administration has waged an aggressive fight against abortion, family planning, women's rights and gay rights policies at United Nations conferences, which has resulted in some noxious alliances.
Conservative U.S. Christian organizations have joined forces with Islamic governments to halt the expansion of sexual and political protections and rights for gays, women and children at United Nations conferences. The new alliance, which coalesced during the past year, has received a major boost from the Bush administration, which appointed antiabortion activists to key positions on U.S. delegations to U.N. conferences on global economic and social policy. But it has been largely galvanized by conservative Christians who have set aside their doctrinal differences, cemented ties with the Vatican and cultivated fresh links with a powerful bloc of more than 50 moderate and hard-line Islamic governments, including Sudan, Libya, Iraq and Iran. [...]
"The main issue that brings us all together is defending the family values, the natural family," added Mokhtar Lamani, a Moroccan diplomat who represents the 53-nation Organization of Islamic Conferences at the United Nations. "The Republican administration is so clear in defending the family values." [...]
"This alliance shows the depths of perversity of the [U.S.] position," said Adrienne Germaine, president of the International Women's Health Coalition. "On the one hand we're presumably blaming these countries for unspeakable acts of terrorism, and at the same time we are allying ourselves with them in the oppression of women."
This is why I'm ambivalent about the post-September 11 wave of patriotism. I support the fight against Al-Qaeda and the Taliban. In an ideological struggle between Western democracy and Islamic fundamentalism, I side with the West and consider myself blessed to have born here. But the things I love most about Western democracy tend to be the things that U.S. conservatives hate most about Western democracy. On so many important issues, the Bush administration demonstrates exactly why government dominated by reactionary religious fundamentalists is a really bad idea.
I was curious how the conservative blogger-pundits had responded to this article. Instapundit (with whom I often agree) strangely took it as fodder to criticize leftist apologists for Islamic fundamentalism, while giving no indication whether he approves or disapproves of the Bush Administration policies discussed in the article. Maybe I'm failing to read between the lines. Andrew Sullivan (with whom I often disagree) was more forthright: "Why the Bush administration should want to ally itself with Islamist states in this fashion is beyond me, except pandering to their extremist wing. How can the First Lady champion women’s rights in Islamist countries, while her husband blesses those in America who find such repression of women something to admire and aspire to?"
Monday, June 17, 2002
Researchers have found that TV viewers watching shows with sexual content are much less likely to remember the ads afterwards.
Back from a long summer weekend with a couple of wonderful poem fragments by Sappho:
Percussion, salt and honey,
A quivering in the thighs;
He shakes me all over again,
Eros who cannot be thrown,
Who stalks on all fours
Like a beast.
Eros makes me shiver again
Strengthless in the knees,
Eros gall and honey,
Snake-sly, invincible.
Translations by Guy Davenport.
