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« My Sudoku Tips | Main | My "Deprived" Childhood »

October 29, 2005

 Hot Links

Michael Blowhard writes:

Dear Blowhards --

* Chelsea Girl recalls a studly clown she once tumbled for.

* Bookgasm's Rod Lott has been enjoying Joe Bob Briggs' latest, a book entitled "Profoundly Erotic: Sexy Movies that Changed History."

* Steff offers some technical tips that many are sure to find helpful, and that many others are sure to enjoy reading about.

* This was definitely the right angle to shoot J.Lo from.

* I loved exploring the art and words of the very talented Skip Williamson. Biker artist, Playboy art director, underground comix creator -- now there's an all-American combo.

* Pussy Talk treats herself to a different kind of Victorian novel.

* Shame-Ridden Disgrace points out a key difference between today's sex stars and the sex stars of the '60s and '70s.

* Shoe Fiend confesses that Terence Conran is her kind of stud, and that interior decor items are her kind of porn.

* Give a man a digital camera, and he'll do what he can to point it at a naked woman. Give a woman a digital camera, and she'll take off her clothes and point it at herself. Not that you'll catch me complaining.

* Old joke: How do you make a woman come? Answer: Who cares? But seriously: Why do women have orgasms? Other than pleasure, what purpose might they serve?

* When I was five years old, I craved this power.

* George Takei -- "Star Trek"'s Sulu -- comes out of the closet.

* Jill maintains that there can definitely be too much of a good thing.

Best,

Michael

posted by Michael at October 29, 2005




Comments

When you were *five* years old you craved that power? At that age I would've been totally bewildered ... now, at 25, 35, 45 etc., that's another matter :)
By the way, even if it weren't for the French wording in the title bar it was pretty obvious that most of the women in the site weren't Americans - I won't say why it was obvious, but there was a dead giveaway :)

Posted by: Peter on October 29, 2005 3:29 PM

Joe Bob Briggs is hott.

He can take me to the drive in any old time.

Thanks for the steamy linkage.

CG

Posted by: chelsea girl on October 29, 2005 5:29 PM

The "I'm gay!" announcement has become a career move. It's hardly a defiant statement in the face of social disapproval.

In NYC, SF and LA, it's almost an embarassment to be straight... particularly if you're in the arts. The traditional, hetero music forms basically are no longer played in Manhattan clubs, except for the touring bands who play the top venues. Blues is dead. Real rock and country are gone, unless you consider the sex change bands.

It's so overwhelming that I suspect a number of acquaintances of pretending to be gay in order to be more acceptable.

And what is the gay worship really about? It's about class and status. The egghead class has always wanted to differentiate itself from the dumb "breeders" who are so stupid that they think that sex is about marriage and children. The first sign of class status is Manhattan is the proclamation that you view sex as a plaything. Thus, you are more concerned with career and the opinion of your status driven peers than you are with family.

It's junior high school all over. A hetero co-worker returned to the office several weeks ago to loudly and proudly proclaim that she'd spent her vacation in Provincetown. The purpose of this, of course, was to let us all know just how fashionable and tolerant she is. She dropped the names of some bars she'd visited.

"Oh, that's where all the straights hang out!" a gay co-worker chided her.

She walked out of the office in defeat.

Posted by: Shouting Thomas on October 30, 2005 8:46 AM

"...The unmarried are apt to regard marriage as a prison - actually it gives you much greater freedom. And you'd be amazed how many of the married men I know personally swing both ways. Some of them will even admit that they fill more at ease making love with other married men, rather than with out-and-out homosexuals, whom they're inclined to look on as somewhat wilful freaks.
...[M]an is bisexual by nature and [that] the homosexual who rigidly regects women under all circumstances is being just as unnatural and square as the heterosexuals who reject men!"

Christopher Isherwood, A meeting by the river

Posted by: Tatyana on October 30, 2005 9:36 AM

Re: This power

Two things strike me about this. One is the horrible clothing and overall fashion sense of these women. Two is how the overwhelming majority of them are still so attractive when you get them out of their clothes. I mean, presumably clothing is good for increasing attractiveness through concealment and status signaling, but these women might as well just give up the cloth scourge altogether.

Posted by: . on October 30, 2005 2:10 PM

First of all, the nude site seems to me to be made up of a small number of models wearing a large number of (mostly out of date) costumes. It is hardly real "woman on the street" stuff. Also, how much of a turn on can it be when you can't see peoples' faces? (No doubt makes it easier to reuse models). Clever idea though.

Second: Michael, so many of your links are to sex sites of various sorts, you're obviously fascinated by the topic (along with most of the rest of human race, but you're willing to admit to your fascination). Any chance you'll bite the bullet and do some sexblogging yourself? You have a perspective -- an older, long married (I assume from some comments you've made) man -- which would actually be a little unusual and really interesting for sexblogging. And you post under a pseudonym anyway. IMO there's not enough sex writing from the perspective of married people, how sex stays vital within a long term marriage is one of the most important sexual topics I can think of.

Anyway, I can also obviously think of lots of reasons why you wouldn't want to do this, but I'm just throwing it out there. You have an interesting and somewhat contrarian perspective on a lot of things, and it would be interesting to hear where that has led you in your thinking about sex. Which is a genuinely intellectually interesting and central topic apart from any titillation value (unfortunately that may be lessened anyway for posts from an older man instead of a younger woman...sorry).

Posted by: MQ on October 30, 2005 6:01 PM

If I'm not mistaken, Joe Bob Briggs is Jewish. His real name is John Bloom.

Posted by: dan g. on October 30, 2005 6:20 PM

RE: The Case of the Female Orgasm

David Barash’s review of “The Case of the Female Orgasm” is a great example of how many evolutionary psychologists lack both common sense and a rudimentary understanding of the wide range of human behavior and motives. The reviewer, like many non-specialist commentators on human sexuality, is desperate to impose a romantic or neatly fitting purpose-driven view of sexual intercourse, when the harsh reality is often less palatable – and far more Darwinian. As far as I can tell, men often successfully impregnate women when the woman has an orgasm, does not have an orgasm, or fakes an orgasm. Moreover, the man often doesn’t care, or assumes that whatever means gives him pleasure must also work for his partner (thus the delusion/vain hope on the part of some men that having a big penis automatically means that every woman will automatically have big orgasms with him. Add to this the number of studies which clearly indicate that large numbers of women simply do not achieve orgasm through intercourse alone. Further, within the past 100 or so years, when the diaries and correspondence of women have become available (at least in the West), it is painfully clear that many women contracted relatively loveless marriages (arranged or otherwise), endured years intercourse with infrequent or non-existent orgasms, and yet still produced broods of children. And then there is the case of someone like Marilyn Monroe, whose posthumously published transcript with her psychiatrist reveals that when she had never had an orgasm when she began her analysis, despite having numerous (and some high profile) lovers and husbands. And predictably, her analyst claimed “an orgasm happens in the mind, not the genitals. ...”

Even Rachel Maines’ slyly informative book, “The Technology of the Orgasm” demonstrates that vibrators were originally designed to “cure” women’s illness by inducing “hysterical paroxysm,” not to serve as a marital aid to induce pleasure. It’s also interesting to note how some states like Alabama still ban vibrators and other marital aids, and how the despicable act of female circumcision is designed to deliberately limit a woman’s pleasure while presuming that male pleasure – within or outside of marriage – is a divine right. These last two items, vibrators and female circumcision, are outside the realm of unimpeded natural selection, but the notion that some males would appropriate women for themselves without regard to the woman’s emotional or sexual pleasure or well-being, is not. The rules of evolution simply state that reproductive success, not being nice, is the primary objective.

While female orgasm may help cement human social and sexual relations, it is hardly a perfect fit, and the “just so” stories vainly trying to prove otherwise are as pointless as the search for the “Missing Link, ” King Arthur or the Bermuda Triangle.

Posted by: Alec on October 30, 2005 8:07 PM

As I read Alec's comments, I was struck anew by how heartily men enjoying thinking awful things about other men. His post is filled with the usual and fashionable animosity toward men, couched in the usual feminist language.

Throughout my life, men have been imagining that I must be an awful oppressor of women. Women, at least the one's I've known, have never shared this opinion. Whatever kind of oppression I was working on them, they enjoyed it tremendously. Nonetheless, other men spent a lot of time trying to protect my women from me.

I'm old enough now to read these sort of opinions, and to shake my head in wonder. My marriage to my wife was wonderful, and most of the people I know tell me that their marriages are or were wonderful, too. The feminist/gay activist history of the awfulness of the past, in which everybody was miserable, and in which we oppressed and relentlessly beat one another is a fabrication. We invent this fabrication in order to convince ourselves that we will not suffer the same fate as our parents... that we will not grow old and die. It is an illusion.

Posted by: Shouting Thomas on October 30, 2005 8:40 PM

Shouting Thomas –

You’ve got me all wrong, and no amount of trying to ascribe “feminist language” to my post can evade the central point that women do not regularly achieve orgasm through intercourse alone, and scientists who work from an a priori assumption of a purpose-driven orgasm are likely barking up the wrong evolutionary tree.

By the way, just because a woman does not regularly achieve orgasm through intercourse does not make her relationship with a man an example of “oppression.” Also, it should be apparent that a loveless, arranged marriage might make a man as miserable as it does a woman. However, it should be as clear as rain on a spring day that loveless marriages can result in numerous offspring as well as can the most intensely love-filled one, and that even arranged marriages can be as fulfulling as ones that arise from romantic love.

The point of some of the extreme examples that I raised is this: too many of the discussions about the evolution of human relationships and of human sexuality assume some idealistic pair bond in which men and women love each other up forever and ever and ever. This is simply not historically correct, nor is it science.

Your post also demonstrates one of the other dilemmas facing the development of a good evolutionary psychology which adequately and accurately describes human behavior. Some assume that evolution must consistently validate their favored social institutions or their own personal lives; but this is as pointless as demanding that gravity favor the falling objects that you prefer. Similary, several studies of the Y-chromosome a couple of years ago indicated that Genghis Khan was "roughly 800,000 times more successful at propagating his Y-chromosome than the average man of his era," leaving up to 16 million descendents. This does not argue that rape and warfare are good, just that it has been successful at times, and an evolutionary science which ignores or fails to take this into consideration is little more than junk science. Similarly, science which does not consider a fuller range of the complexity of human sexual response is meaningless.

By the way, my criticisms can also be directed at some feminists and others who, for example, like to point to the example of the sexual behavior of supposedly pacifist and pan-sexual bonobos as being somehow informative of human evolution, but then studiously ignore that fact that the clitoris in female bonobos is enlarged and more frontally facing than in human females, facilitating some bonobo sexual behavior and thus here more clearly pointing to a trait that has been affected by natural selection.

As for men thinking awful things about other men, I am just honest. I grew up among a range of men, some of whom treasured the women in their lives, and others (including one of my best friends growing up) who had a thing about “hitting it” and getting out, and never cared about the pleasure of their wives or girlfriends. Both groups of men have had equal numbers of children. I’ve also known despicable women who were hardly patriarchy's playthings. Trying to shoehorn people into ideology bores me; trying to shoehorn science into ideology is a grand waste of time.

Posted by: Alec on October 30, 2005 10:01 PM

Uh, what happened to the NSFW notices?

I'm very glad I didn't get around to looking at this site today at work.

Posted by: lindenen on November 1, 2005 8:17 PM


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