Web Log Archives: March 23, 2003 - March 29, 2003
Friday, March 28, 2003
E. J. Graff provides an excellent blow-by-blow review of the Supreme Court hearing at The American Prospect. At the end she writes, "I haven't been able to find anyone -- including the Harris County district attorney's office -- who will predict a Texas win. But what kind of gay-rights victory is coming? Will it be an equal-protection win only, striking down just the four same-sex-only sodomy laws in Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas and Missouri -- a 6-to-3 vote, an opinion that's written very narrowly to persuade a reluctant O'Connor and Kennedy to sign on? Or will Kennedy and O'Connor be willing to overturn Bowers outright, declaring that, because other sodomy laws are, in practice, invoked only against gay people, they amount to little more than outmoded incursions into individual privacy?"
Thursday, March 27, 2003
hidden city linked to Dahlia Lithwick's Slate article with this humorous comment: "an article in Slate about the Supreme Court hearing on the constitutionality of the Texas law against same-gender sex leads with this: The Supreme Court Tries Sodomy. Okay, now that's a twisted opportunity for some serious slash fiction! It does beg the question: they may have tried it, but did they like it?" Hmm, if someone does write some Rehnquist/Scalia slash, I'll link to it, but I'm not sure I'll actually read it.
Meanwhile, Justin Slotman called my attention to a subgenre I didn't know existed: sports slash. "Mandolin" has written a pair of Steve Nash/Dirk Nowitzki slash stories. More pro basketball, baseball and hockey stories at Sports Slash Online. The Football Fiction Archive (aka soccer, not American football) is an active site with stories by nineteen authors. Open Directory has more links to adult sports fan fiction, though some links are dead.
Andrew Sullivan has placed his recent New Republic essay "We're All Sodomites Now" online for free at andrewsullivan.com. In his weblog he summarizes the essay's argument: "The case in front of the [Supreme Court] is about the right to privacy, equal protection and so on. The case I make is something related but more fundamental. I try to argue that sodomy - i.e. non-procreative sex, whether heterosexual or homosexual - should not merely be defended negatively. It needs to be defended positively. It can indeed be an absolute moral good."
A while back, Daze linked to an online gallery of photographs by Vee Speers. Most little-known artists would be delighted to have their work called to the attention of several thousand new viewers, but not in this case. This morning I received the following email:
To Whom it May Concern,
I would like you to remove my link from your site IMMEDIATELY. It is an offence to place a link without consent. I have not given you my authorisation, and the link has also been removed from Indie Nudes. If you do not remove the link, I will begin court proceedings against you.
Thank you,
Vee Speers
I felt torn between conflicting impulses: respecting the artist's wishes vs. defending my right to link freely. If Ms. Speers had been more polite about the delinking request, I might have quietly taken down the link. But her nasty tone and empty threat pissed me off. My email response:
Vee Speers,
I do not plan to remove that link. I did not need anyone's permission to place that link, and you have no right to request its removal.
You might wish to read - http://www.chillingeffects.org/linking/faq.cgi
If you bring legal action against me, I will defend my free speech rights to the fullest.
Evan Daze
editor, Daze Reader
http://www.dazereader.com/weblog.htm
On a side note . . . I searched "Vee Speers" at Amazon and came up empty. Then I tried searching at Amazon's French site, but they'd never heard of her either. The first search response for "Vee Speers" was this item. Now that's grounds for legal action, if you ask me.
Wednesday, March 26, 2003
The Supreme Court "appeared deeply divided" during today's arguments over the Texas sodomy case. This AP story provides a decent overview of arguments presented during the hearing and by interest groups backing both sides. I'll link to other accounts as they appear online. Mindboggling side note:
A large crowd stood in line outside the court before the oral arguments in hopes of getting a scarce seat for one of the court's biggest cases this year. A knot of protesters stood apart, holding signs that read "AIDS is God's revenge," "God sent the sniper" and other messages.
The first message is despicable but familiar. But "God sent the sniper"? What the fuck?!?
UPDATE: If you want to read only one article about today's Supreme Court hearing over the Texas sodomy law, try Dahlia Lithwick's detailed, witty analysis at Slate. If you just can't get enough sodomy, there's more here and here and here and here.
For those interested in more advanced discussion of the legal issues, Rutgers law professor Sherry Colb discussed the case at FindLaw here and here. (Link snagged from How Appealing.)
UPDATE: New York Times article,
Supreme Court Seems Set to Reverse a Sodomy Law.
The annual Kanamara Matsuri (Festival of the Steel Phallus) takes place every spring in Kawasaki, Japan. One travel site explains:
Created back in Japan’s Edo period (1603-1867) to pray for sexual safety (especially against syphilis) among Kawasaki’s prostitutes, this Shinto gathering now helps raise money for HIV/AIDS research. But the festival attracts more than just those interested in fighting STDs; it also draws Japanese couples looking for good fertility luck, a large gay/lesbian crowd, lots of proud locals, and scores of interested foreigners who come to gawk at the gigantic portable plaster phallus shrine and buy souvenir John Thomas lollypops and charms.
This Kanamara Matsuri page (photos) from Hideous Japan gives a different account of the festival's origins:
The festival celebrates the vanquishing of a demon that lived in a woman's vagina and would bite off the penises of her lovers! According to legend, a local craftsman fashioned a steel phallus which broke the demon's teeth.
From another good travel article (photos):
Today, the highlights of this saucy festival include transvestites parading through the town's streets carrying a mikoshi (portable shrine) with a humungous pink phallus on top. . . . Other attractions include locals carving penises out of daikon (radish), children and young women sitting astride penis-shaped seesaws for good luck and fertility blessings, as well as a seated banquet in the compound of Kanamara Jinja (aka Wakamiya Hachiman-gu shrine) where the phallic radishes are auctioned.
Or as this account in delightful Engrish (photos) puts it:
"Elizabeth MIKOSHI" which is conspicuous in the pink is shouldered only by new half type woman (?) and the woman wrapping person. Wow!
More photos here and here. This year's Kanamara festival will take place the weekend of April 5-6. (Awareness sparked by and some links snagged from Geisha asobi.)
Em & Lo answer a sensitive question from a man whose humongous man-organ has been scaring away his girlfriends. "Is there a way of providing some sort of 'prior warning' in my profile (or during a first date?) without sounding like I'm trying to brag?"
Tuesday, March 25, 2003
The US Supreme Court is slated to hear oral arguments over the Texas sodomy case tomorrow. The case is previewed here and here. The New Republic has an article about the case by Andrew Sullivan entitled "We're All Sodomists Now," but it's available online only to TNR subscribers.
The Athens (Ohio) News profiles Ohio University telecommunications professor Joseph Slade, who has been studying pornography since the 1960s. "My thesis is that, like it or not, pornography has enriched American culture." His crowning achievement is the three-volume Pornography and Sexual Representation: A Reference Guide, named by Library Journal as one of the best reference works of 2001.
The Vagina Monologues was performed in Pakistan for the first time earlier this month. "In a discreet hotel conference room in the Pakistani capital, an audience wept, gasped and screamed with laughter as a cast of eight women, clad in scarlet saris, salwar kameez (loose shirts and baggy pants) and red-painted toenails, performed Eve Ensler's award-winning play."
I love Tatu. Well actually, I can't stand Tatu. I occasionally listen to top 40 dance pop on the car radio or piped in at the gym, and most of it is pleasantly listenable, but "All the Things She Said" became grating about halfway through the second listen. But I love their playful, brazen, defiant sexuality. I love the way they merge different popstar archetypes on stage, the teasing sex kitten and the swaggering insatiable sex god, equal parts Britney and Mick Jagger. And I love the way they toy with the media, giving different answers to every different interviewer who asks the same inevitable "So, uh, are you two really doing it?" question. From a USA Today profile earlier this month:
"Maybe we are having sex every night, but maybe not. We're still trying to figure things out, and we're not telling anyone about it. There are different kinds of love. You can love your mom, dad, girls, boys, friends, nature. I can't understand why everyone thinks we're lesbians."
Hmm, okay. (That article also includes this juicy aside: "Katina, who reads Dostoyevsky and Chekhov when not mugging for the camera . . . ." Swoon.) Being interviewed for a German newspaper, they told a different story.
"We really love each other and the sex is phenomenal. It's a thousand times better than with a man. And contrary to what others might say, we don't just talk about it. We have sex at least three times a day."
So what about men?
Lena says: "It doesn't bother us if it's a man or a woman. But it is not as much fun with men.
Julia adds: "I don't know about other men but Russian men are like sewing machines - always just a quick stitch."
And what about groupies?
"Maybe we've had four or fivesomes, it's our secret. After gigs we like taking a couple of sexy girls to our hotel room."
Of course, they're probably making it all up. Who cares?
Monday, March 24, 2003
Jayashree Lengade tours India's first sex museum, known as Antaranga ("Inner Self") and located near a red light district in Bombay. "Unlike similar museums in the West, the Bombay museum aims to tutor rather than titillate. 'This is not a place that will arouse passions,' said Arvind Shah, a doctor and a founder of the museum. 'We have designed the museum to educate and provide correct information.'"
William Dean envisions some futuristic sex toys he'd like to see.
Anne Semans interviews feminist pornographer Candida Royalle about her foray into sex toy design with the Natural Contours line of vibrators.
Bismarck Masangu reflects on an unexpected homoerotic wet dream. "I was shell-shocked, appalled and confused, but mainly bowled over that my heterosexual integrity is, nay, was, not a completely resolved matter. In fact, my initial reaction was to bolt in the opposite direction and shag the first accommodating trollop. Then I thought, perhaps I should bombard myself with a deluge of gay porn just to check if it would have the same lecherous effect while I was conscious. As you can gather, I felt like someone holding a key for which there is no door." Great essay.
Federal prosecutors have arrested three men for running an internet porn scam, including a "a soldier in the Gambino crime family" and the chief executive of the company that publishes Playgirl. The FTC and New York's attorney general shut down the scam and sued those involved in 2000. Kudos to the feds for protecting web smut consumers and honest smut entrepreneurs.
Sunday, March 23, 2003
From British newspaper The Observer: "Libido-boosting drinks will flood into bars this summer as young clubbers are targeted with a potent new range of products that have been dubbed 'Viagra pops'. Powerful blends of Chinese aphrodisiacs, vodka and passion fruit will create a 'generation of randy super beings', according to drinks manufacturers who expect the new tipples to rock the market the way alcopops did in the 1990s. None will actually contain Viagra, produced by the American pharmaceutical company Pfizer, relying instead on Chinese herbs such as cordyceps and epimedium grandiflorum, better known as Horny Goat Weed." As much as I'd love to become a randy super being, this sounds vile.
This Ted Casablanca column from April 2000 apparently launched the "Lara Flynn Boyle got her anus bleached" rumor.
