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Web Log Archives: December 28, 2003 - January 03, 2004 Friday, January 2, 2004
Feminism has taught us to recognize the power dynamics in these kinds of relationships, and this has evolved into a dominant paradigm, the new propriety. But where once the issue was coercion or quid pro quo sex, in institutional neo-feminism the issue is any whiff of sexuality itself—or any situation that causes a student to "experience his or her vulnerability." (Pretty much the definition of sentience, I always thought.) "The unequal institutional power inherent in this relationship heightens the vulnerability of the student and the potential for coercion," the California code warns, as if any relationship is ever absent vulnerability and coercion. But the problem in redressing romantic inequalities with institutional blunt instruments is that it just confers more power on the institutions themselves, vastly increasing their reach into people's lives. Kipnis was once a professor in my grad school department, though I neither studied nor hooked up with her. My loss in retrospect. Worth reading in full.
A teenage girl from a nowhere town pours her heart into prose. A risk-taking publisher turns that prose into a book. It outsells almost everything else in Italy, making its author famous. That is an accurate enough account of what has happened to Melissa Panarello, but not a full one. It omits a few crucial details, starting with her subject matter: the erotic adventures of a sexually ravenous girl who caroms between younger and older men, homosexuality and sadomasochism. It also fails to note that Panarello and her publisher are marketing her book as thinly veiled autobiography. She claims that everything in it mirrors her experiences as a 15- and then 16-year-old in a suburb of the Sicilian city of Catania. "It's a very realistic picture," said Panarello, who turned 18 earlier this month, in an interview here on Saturday. Plus she's brainaddlingly gorgeous. I'm in love. Thursday, January 1, 2004
UPDATE: Nine more images from the Food Chain Barbie series (via Bacchus).
(Link snagged from Fleshbot.)
Here's the game's basic bit: You're a cocaine dealer, see, and you get ripped off in a drug deal that goes bad. So your mission is to get your drugs and your money back — by committing as many violent, homicidal crimes as you can possibly think up. You can pursue your goal by killing Haitians, of course, but you can also kill anyone (or everyone) else. You can machine-gun them, beat them with baseball bats, chop them up with machetes or run them over with stolen cars. And when you do, everything will look incredibly and shockingly real, with blood spewing everywhere. You can kill a cop, steal his gun, and then use it to shoot someone else. Or you can pick up a prostitute and have sex with her in the back of your stolen car, then beat her to death — or shoot her, bludgeon her, whatever you want. In fact, "whatever you want" is what the game is all about. Thanks to its artful and complex programming and its incredibly realistic graphics, the game creates the impression of being inside a totally unscripted, live-action drama in which you can manufacture your mayhem as you go along. People, this is insane. This is 10,000 times worse than the worst thing anybody thinks Michael Jackson ever did to a little boy — or than any lie the feds think Martha Stewart ever told them, or any line in any song that Bruce Springsteen ever sang that rankled a cop in the Meadowlands. Making a videogame in which players commit imaginary crimes in a cartoon world is worse — 10,000 times worse! — than raping real live 11-year-olds, according to the New York Post. (Link snagged from The Agitator.)
Whatever our feelings about porn culture, I think we kid ourselves if we believe it doesn't exact a toll. Porn takes its pound of flesh just as it gives it. We are all diminished, deadened, by the constant barrage of sexual imagery — not just from hard-core sources, but also from the advertising and media industries, which become more porno every day. Sexual imagery chips away at us, as transitory thrills give way to something more depressingly permanent. Something that really should have a name - like perversion fatigue. Tim Ferguson responds, What the market wants the market gets: pornography by the tonne. Pornography is now beyond the control of its friends or foes. Freedom of speech is a side issue here. In Western society, it is the freedom of the market and the power of the consumer that govern all. Most of the 8 million porn sites exist because there is a vast, insatiable market for them. Pornography makes money because people like watching other people having sex. If people wish to "gorge" on porn, do we care? If too much exposure to it decreases their enjoyment of the real thing, doesn't it serve them right? Isn't it their business? And if it is our business, what can we possibly do about it? Castles expresses most concern over spam and exploding popups and other ways that porn is called to the attention of people who didn't seek it out. I'm somewhat sympathetic on this count. Porn should be readily available to those who want it, and easily avoidable for those who don't want it. The problem lies in the online porn industry's decentralized nature — thousands of individual entrepreneurs, low barrier to entry, easy anonymity. (That decentralized nature also allows for the enormous creativity around the industry's periphery.) Most pornographers deplore spamming and don't do it. Porn spammers are isolated small-time operators frowned upon by the responsible folks in the industry, just as responsible people in other industries would hate to be grouped with the mortgage spammers, xanax spammers, stock tip spammers and so on. Ferguson gets it right. Lots of people like pornography, and most have no problem fitting porn (or alcohol, drugs, gambling, TV, gaming or any other source of transitory thrills) into a balanced, productive, moral life. Free markets and freedom of expression and the internet collude to make it easier for annoying people to annoy us and easier for self-destructive people to find trouble, but their overall impact on modern life is overwhelmingly positive. Tuesday, December 30, 2003
UPDATE: Here's her site: Melissa Lincoln. Scroll down to the update "11/24/2003 - Out Drinking With My Friends" for the photos that started all the trouble.
In his book titled Living in Space, the late G Harry Stine, a former NASA technician, wrote that agency staff at the Marshall Space Flight Centre in Huntsville, Alabama, had used a buoyancy tank that simulated low-gravity conditions to test the possibilities of having weightless sex. "It was possible but difficult, and was made easier when a third person assisted by holding one of the others in place," The Sunday Times quoted him, as saying. In another book, Pierre Kohler, a French scientific writer, claimed that NASA had tested 20 positions by computer simulation and then arranged for the two people to try the best 10 in zero gravity conditions. According to him, only four were possible to reach without ‘mechanical assistance,’ while an elastic belt and an inflatable tunnel, like an open-ended sleeping bag, were needed for the other six. "One of the principal findings was that the classic so-called missionary position, which is so easy on earth when gravity pushes one downwards, is simply not possible," wrote Kohler. I'll keep that in mind. Monday, December 29, 2003
Acacia Research Corp. started by targeting dozens of adult entertainment companies, demanding royalties of as much as 4 percent of their revenue from audio and video streaming. Now the firm is seeking fees from universities that use Web video for remote learning, from companies that serve up movies to hotel rooms, from cable and satellite providers, and from major streaming-media companies such as RealNetworks Inc. and America Online Inc. The article isn't just about the Acacia battle. After hooking readers with the porno angle upfront, it delves into the broader problem of questionable information technology patents stifling innovation. The (Portland, Oregon) Business Journal looks at how universities are responding to Acacia's demands. The first educational institution to sign with Acacia was the distance learning company 24/7 University. Brandon Shalton at Fight the Patent talks to the CEO of 24/7 University about that decision. I called the CEO of the company and his story underscored the point that businesses are faced with making business decisions and the decision to fight the patent claims is grossly skewed over the cost of licensing. In my conversation, he mentioned that he did do his research, he has been reading the message boards and articles (and my website), but the issue of the patent's validity is not the major issue for him. The major issue is what's the best decision for his business (ie. could he afford to fight). 24/7 University uses the Real Networks platform to handle the streaming of their learning videos. I asked him if Real was there to support him and his response was no. This is mindboggling. Your business buys a software package from Real; another company comes along and says, "we own the rights to the technology Real sold you, you have to pay us too"; Real refuses to back you up. As if there weren't already enough reasons to hate Real. Meanwhile, Acacia has now signed more than 100 porn companies to its licensing scheme. Acacia had offered a November 30 "amnesty" deadline for porn companies to sign the license and not be held responsible for past royalties and fees. Acacia also sued eight new companies earlier this month, including Jenna Jameson's ClubJenna. This could be their fatal mistake — no one messes with Jenna! Acacia's stock price hovered around $1.75 for August, then skyrocketed in September and peaked around $8.50 in mid-October. Since then it has steadily declined, currently at $5.19 on Monday afternoon. (Past Acacia patent battle items from the Daze archives.)
I wanted to do a series on how I feel popular culture is getting more and more saturated with pornographic imagery whenever something needs to be sold — any product, any TV program. The pimp-and-whore look is everyday fashion. But as people get more and more sexed up, they don't necessarily have a happier or healthier sex life. They don't have a better relationship with their sexuality. My point was not to claim that pornography or sexual self-empowerment were "bad" or "immoral," just to say it's everywhere, and our acceptance of it is a pose. If you told some of the same people who wore pimp-and-ho clothing that you support gay marriages or gay adoption, they'd be up in arms. Daze verdict: interesting idea, dull execution. Sunday, December 28, 2003
So, what is the meaning of human sexuality anyhow? Sexual activity has two natural, organic purposes: procreation and spousal unity. Babies are the most basic and natural consequences of sexual activity. "Spousal unity" means simply that sex builds attachments between husband and wife. Spousal unity is the feature of human sexuality that makes it distinct from purely animal sexuality. As far as I know, humans are the only animals that copulate face to face. Shakespeare described the sexual act as "making the two-backed beast." Both the Hebrew and the Christian Bible describe the sexual act as uniting the spouses in the most literal sense: "the two become one flesh." Two people become, if only for a short while, one flesh. Evolutionary psychology observes the survival value to spousal cooperation. Males and females who attach themselves to each other, have a better chance of seeing their offspring survive long enough to produce grandchildren. Science can now tell us how the hormones released during sex help to create emotional bonds between the partners. Several political bloggers have linked to and rebutted Morse's essay. Most agree with Will Wilkinson that "Jennifer Roback Morse is full of shit, and the National Review continues to demonstrate its status as a go-to source for scientific illiteracy." More meaning-of-human-sexuality punditry: If you don't have the time or interest to read it all, start with Wilkinson's piece.
Dr. Yusuf K. Hamied, chairman of Cipla, an Indian drug company that copies many drugs patented in the West and makes AIDS drugs for Africa, operates in a less restricted environment. He can let his imagination roam. He makes knockoffs of Viagra, Levitra and the newest member of the class, Cialis. He originally planned to market Cialis in India as Lexis or Elexis, playing on Lexus. But since it's known in Europe as "the weekender" because its effects last 36 hours, he's now thinking of "Y-End?" "It's a gimmick," he said. "It may catch on." In India, his version of Viagra is called Silagra, from its generic name, sildenafil citrate. Indians were already so familiar with Viagra that it made sense to echo Pfizer's name, he said. But in Latin America, he sells it as Eviva. It sounds like "revive," but also has an echo of the female Eve. He said he almost named it Tarzia "because it makes you feel like Tarzan." In the Middle East, he forgoes all subtlety. There, it's Erecto. (Link snagged from Amygdala.)
"Dancing is the single least important part of exotic dancing," says Sternberg. "It's no different than any other sales industry. It's all about the right communication." Six months since his company, Naked Assets, Inc., officially started offering "wealth training" to exotic dancers, Sternberg says most of his 40 to 50 clients have at least doubled their money. According to Sternberg and his partner, a retired dancer who asked to be only referred to as "Boyscout," physical appearance is a very small part of the whole equation. As they tell it, speech patterns and methods of persuasion far outweigh exterior qualities. [...] According to trainee and Showgirls dancer "Jezebel," the training turned her $200-a-night earnings into $800 a night. "I had been working for about a month and not making that much. On stage I was OK, but it was hard for me to approach the guys for dances," explains the 20-year-old UNLV marketing major. "Through the training I learned persuasion and influence and how to turn a 'no' into a 'yes.' Before, I would walk up to a guy and say: 'Do you want a lap dance?' He'd say no and I'd just walk away." Jezebel now knows how to "watch a room and scope it out." She looks for signals from customers who want to spend -- such as multiple drink orders, which implies they intend to stay, and large groups of men, which is usually an indication of a party. Then she plans her "strategy of attack," as Sternberg puts it. (Thanks, Xowie.) |
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Edit the story just a bit, and it becomes a heartwarming tale of early ambition and unpredictable success.
