Web Log Archives: November 10, 2002 - November 16, 2002
Saturday, November 16, 2002
The annual Sex Workers Art Show held in Olympia, Washington, has spawned a national tour. The show played in Tucson, Arizona, on Thursday as part of a weekend-long sex arts festival. Some state legislators are angry that the festival received a taxpayer-funded grant and that two events took place on the University of Arizona campus (a lecture on international sex slavery and trafficking, and a workshop on spiritual sexuality led by Annie Sprinkle). Official SWAS site and earlier Daze items about the annual Olympia shows.
Still more college newspaper sex columnist profiles, this time in Wisconsin and Kansas.
The 7th Asian Congress of Sexology is taking place in Singapore this weekend. This Reuters story plays up sex therapist Emil Ng's claim that better sex can improve the economy. "Sexual health is not just about absence of diseases or dysfunction.... It is about the ability to enjoy sex. This will improve the whole nation's well-being and productivity. When your economy is down, sexual activity will be lower, not because of sexual problems, but financial problems. This is a vicious cycle." The Straits Times has several articles on conference participants and their ideas:
(Note: the
Straits Times usually removes its news stories from the website after seven days.) The
official 7ACS site doesn't appear to have any day-to-day coverage.
Seth Mydans at the New York Times profiles Bernard Trink, entertainment editor of the Bangkok Post and a longtime chronicler, critic and booster of Thailand's red-light industry. "In 37 years of pub crawling, he has become a monument to the world he writes about — neighborhoods of go-go clubs, beer bars and massage parlors that dispense sex to all comers in an atmosphere of joyous amorality. Caravansaries, he calls them in the odd patois he has created; boîtes, dramshops, gin mills, taprooms, watering holes, all offering damsels, lasses, demimondaines and maidens.
Two years ago, an unauthorized biography of Trink was published in Thailand, But, I Don't Give A Hoot!: The Life and Time of Bernard Trink by fellow Post staff writer Jennifer Bliss. Trink himself reviewed the book for the Post and called it a "more detailed picture of yours truly than found in inane hatchet jobs. It's not the autobiography that I would have written, but it touches the bases and is fair." More.
At the Atlantic, Elizabeth Wasserman writes a concise cultural history of attitudes toward Byron, not his poetry but his scandalous personal life. His partisans have portrayed him as a heroic free-thinker and libertine, his detractors (notably Harriet Beecher Stowe) as a "vicious, alcoholic madman who tried in every way possible to break his wife's spirit." In 1922, the critic Katharine Fullerton Gerould wrote, "The simple fact is this: no woman has ever been able to keep her head about Byron; and now that he is dead, the men seem to be as bad as the women. . . . In the nonacademic world of letters no one, apparently, either knows or cares whether Byron was a great poet. After a hundred years, the sole question that impassions people is: 'Just how much of a cad was he?'"
Bloomsbury Book Auctions will hold an auction this week of erotic prints, drawings, books, photographs, decks of playing cards and other ephemera from the 18th century onwards. Among the lots are a "complete set of 15 colour drawings of the bearded hippy and his partner from the first edition" of The Joy of Sex. The Bloomsbury Book Auctions website has an illustrated auction catalog online.
Friday, November 15, 2002
The New York Times reports on a looming clash over pornography in Pakistan.
It was "English movie" night here in Peshawar, Pakistan's conservative Islamic and famously anti-American city near the Afghan border. But for the next two hours, what appeared on screen had nothing to do with the American movies advertised outside. First came three Indian music videos featuring curvy starlets with long, shimmering black hair, clingy shirts and, in one or two scenes, gently sashaying hips. An abrupt reel change later, the screen flickered with a series of Pashto-language stag films: Pakistani women in bathing suits and underwear gyrating, singing and taking off their tops. But in the end, it was the Great Satan that delivered the night's feature presentation: a hardcore 1970's-era pornographic film starring an American bleached-blonde named Jennifer Welles.
A coalition of religious fundamentalist parties won control of the provincial government in last month's election, on a platform which included a crackdown on pornography. The theater manager defends the screenings. "'If this closes, there will be more terrorism in their minds,' [the theater manager] said, referring to his patrons. 'If they see these movies, they are satisfied.'" (For those who don't like registration-required links, here's the same article reprinted at The Age.)
Hillary Frey at the Nation reviews two recent books about stripping: Strip City: A Stripper's Farewell Journey Across America by Lily Burana, and Bare: On Women, Dancing, Sex, and Power by Elisabeth Eaves. (Thanks, Jim, who suggested this link "while you're on a stripper jag.")
USA Today runs the now-standard college newspaper sex columnist craze article.
Thursday, November 14, 2002
Fox News anchor Shepard Smith made this incredible verbal slip in a segment about Jennifer Lopez's new song and video:
"J.Lo's new song 'Jenny From the Block' is all about Lopez's roots, about how she's still a neighborhood gal at heart," Shepherd declared innocently enough, before veering horribly off his teleprompted script. "But folks from that street in New York, the Bronx section, sound more likely to give her a curb job than a blow job!"
He apparently meant to say "than a block party." Salon has a 30-second streaming video clip of the broadcast. (Link snagged from Oliver Willis.)
From the archives: Fascinating memoir by Yale grad Anne Camara of her eighteen-month career as a stripper, initially an exhilirating lark but eventually just a dreary job. "Long gone were the afternoons when, as I shaved my legs listening to my favorite exotic dancing songs, the anticipation of going on stage ran through me with an exquisite wave of adrenaline. Gone were the days when I loved every minute of stage time, every minute on the floor. Now, when I drove to work, instead of looking forward to a night of fun, I'd be thinking of the money I needed to make that night." Camara captures both sides of the "empowerment or exploitation" question with no dogmatic attachment to either viewpoint.
Self-proclaimed "nice, middle-class girl" Catlin Gunn recounts how she got started working as a stripper. "Peeking into the back room where the lap dancing took place, I was shocked. Before me was a textbook illustration of immorality. Slack-jawed men slumped in chairs while naked girls appeared to crawl all over them. Well, what did I expect? Some of the girls moved sinuously and gracefully, others, clearly bored, kicked their clothes in the air and caught them nonchalantly as they snapped gum, but every single one of them was making money. I had never seen such a distilled representation of capitalism. Exploited? Neither sex more than the other."
The reverse cowgirl interviews Violet Blue, Good Vibes editor and oral sex sexpert.
On the less snarky side, a good New York Times article about the AIDS crisis in India.
Reuters reports: "An eight-foot tall condom greeted Microsoft chairman Bill Gates Thursday during a visit to an Indian city, a tribute to mark his generosity in fighting AIDS. The world's richest man smiled when he saw the giant air-filled condom in India's rising technology hub of Hyderabad, where his company has opened its first software development center outside the United States. The billionaire inaugurated his four-day visit to India on Monday by announcing $100 million in contributions from his charity, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, to spread awareness on AIDS."
Julia Scheeres discusses the legal battle over CIPA.
Wednesday, November 13, 2002
The Church of England caves to pressure in the great bell tower mobile phone transmitter porno scandal. "Preventative measures will be taken to ensure mobile phone masts on church buildings will not transmit pornographic images, the Church of England’s highest governing body was told today. On the second day of its November group of sessions, the General Synod heard that the national contracts with transmitter company Quintell included measures to prevent 'obscene matter' being transmitted from equipment on church premises." (Link snagged from World Sex News.)
The Supreme Court said Tuesday it will hear arguments over the Children's Internet Protection Act (CIPA). The 2000 law would have required public libraries to use anti-pornography software filters on public-access Internet computers or lose federal funding. The ACLU, the American Library Association and other groups challenged the law, and a panel of federal judges declared it unconstitutional last year, stating, "Given the crudeness of filtering technology, any technology protection measure mandated by CIPA will necessarily block access to a substantial amount of speech whose suppression serves no legitimate government interest." More. Past Daze items about CIPA.
The reverse cowgirl has posted a bunch more Dungeon Doll photos.
Tuesday, November 12, 2002
Novelist Sarah Waters answers questions from readers about her transition from "lesbo Victorian romps" to a more straightforward "relationships" novel, the BBC adaptation of Tipping the Velvet, comparisons to Jeanette Winterson, the price of blowjobs in Victorian London and more. More.
Nude oil paintings by South African artist Evan Oberholster.
Alle Hall reviews the controversy over Leonard Nimoy's photography book Shekhina.
The Star-Ledger profiles Rutgers student newspaper sex columnist Kate Rockland. "According to Rockland, her otherwise supportive parents wish she would write about Iraq. But her dad, Rutgers professor Michael Rockland, says that's not true. 'There's enough people writing about Iraq,' says Michael Rockland, a professor of American Studies at the school."
Beardburn editor Chris Lee "ponders why so many gay men hunger to see naked straight guys - and looks at some of the websites serving up straight meat."
The Stranger runs a lengthy excerpt from Skipping Towards Gomorrah, in which Dan Savage defends the freedom to sin against the "professional virtuecrats" who see modern America as a moral cesspool. (The excerpt appears to be the complete introductory chapter, or maybe a condensed version.)
The truly revolutionary promise of our nation's founding document is the freedom to pursue happiness-with-a-capital-H. Unfortunately, this promise is considered problematic by some Americans. The very pursuits that make some Americans happy (some very happy indeed) are considered downright sinful by social conservatives. By itself, this attitude wouldn't be a problem if these other Americans were content to avoid activities they regard as sinful, live their lives according to their convictions, and recognize the right of their fellow Americans to do the same. While some Americans might choose to lead a less than virtuous existence, at least in William J. Bennett's estimation, what skin is it off Bennett's ass?
Sadly, America's professional virtuecrats aren't content to mind their own business, to let their virtues be their own reward on earth, and to content themselves with thoughts of whatever reward they have coming to them in their peculiar heaven. Instead, Dr. Laura Schlessinger lectures us on the radio daily, Bill O'Reilly gripes at us on cable nightly, and William J. Bennett seems to produce a book a month. Fine, they have a right to their opinions, and they have a right to express themselves. However, the virtuous in America aren't satisfied with merely lecturing us. They want to give us orders, and to that end they've banded together in what appears to be a never-ending effort to shove their own virtues down all of our throats. They've convinced themselves that the pursuit of happiness by less virtuous Americans is both a personal and a political attack. Not content to persuade their fellow Americans to be virtuous--which, again, is their right--they want to amend constitutions and pass laws and coerce.
Dan Savage is now Daze Reader's official favorite pundit.
Sunday, November 10, 2002
A scandal is raging in Hong Kong after a local tabloid published a topless photo of a well-known Hong Kong actress. The photo had been taken against her will twelve years ago during a kidnapping. The magazine obscured the actress's eyes and breasts and didn't identify her by name, but her identity was nonetheless obvious to most Hong Kong readers. Entertainment industry figures have held rallies denouncing the "serious infringement of privacy." The magazine faces obscenity charges and has since ceased publication in response to the furor. A second Hong Kong magazine fueled the controversy by reprinting the photograph with the actress's body covered but her face clearly revealed.
The always fabulous Michael Musto attended the opening night party for the Debbie Does Dallas musical and talked to Sherie Rene Scott, who stars as "Debbie, the Chekhovian cheerleader." He also passes along rumors of a Valley of the Dolls movie remake in the works and offers some casting ideas.
Em & Lo address the reader question, "What would be the best way (if ever) to ask a woman to let you come on her face? Is there any gentlemanly way to broach the subject?" Their answer begins, "First off, kudos to you for spelling 'come' without a 'U.' You obviously are a gentlemen." Much good advice follows.
Libida has an interesting article about women's responses to penis size with no touchy-feely "size doesn't matter" niceties. Petra Zebroff explains how exactly longer and/or thicker penises make a difference in pleasure for some women. She also recommends various sex toys for use with or without a partner: cock rings, penis extenders or sleeves, big dildos. My favorite line: "One of the most reported problems with dildo-buying is that the eyes are bigger than the vagina. 8" is usually plenty."
