Sex in the News

Top University Offers Pole-Dancing Classes

Britain's Cambridge University is offering pole-dancing classes in the same room that once hosted the likes of Winston Churchill and Desmond Tutu.

The Cambridge Union Society says the classes in the Blue Room will be for females only, and it's even wheeled out a gender turncoat to deny that pole-dancing objectifies women.

The space where 'respectable' media published photos of pole-dancing (just in case their readers didn't know what it was) More gratuitous T&A in the media: nice one, Cambridge!

'The lessons are a way of empowering women, as well as being a fantastic way to exercise and have fun together with other women,' said press officer Rebecca Bailey.

'To suggest the union is in some way guilty of condoning chauvinist attitudes towards women would be as insulting as it is ridiculous.'

Why? Because she says so.

To which one wag replied, paraphrasing Orwell:

'If you want a vision of the future, imagine a high-heeled shoe, stamping on the face of feminism, forever.'

©JR Daeschner

Like what you've read?
You can buy The History of Sex (But Not As We Know It) here.

How to Look Ab-Hijab-ulous

At first, I thought this article was a spoof: a 'liberal' paper giving fashion tips to Muslim women who 'need' to cover up.

'For me, clothing needs to cover everything but the hands and face, and be loose enough to hide my body shape,' writes a Muslim fashionista in Britain's Guardian.

One of her fashion tips?

Harem pants.

'Hijab-friendly' harem pants

Apologies if this seems sooooo 2009, but hey - women's oppression is timeless, right?

'EURABIA' AND MUSLIM PORN

A few weeks ago, I wrote about a demographer who's predicting that Muslims will make up 10-15% of the population in high-immigration countries like Britain, Germany and France.

That compares to just 3-4% now in the UK.  

So if the Guardian article is anything to go by, you can expect big changes in years to come.

Europe may not turn into the 'Eurabia' that conservatives fear, but I reckon Islam will have a far bigger impact on modern European culture than liberals realize.

So if you don't know your burka from your chador, here's a neat little primer from a few years back.

I used it while writing about a French producer of Muslim porn, whose 'actresses' wear a headdress -- and nothing else...  

BBC  

©JR Daeschner

Like what you've read?
You can buy The History of Sex (But Not As We Know It) here.

Victorian Shocker: Ladies Liked Sex!

Here's another knock for the myth that the Victorians were a bunch of prudes: a little-known survey that shows ladies of the era actually enjoyed sex.

In fact, one woman said she chose to sleep apart from her husband 'to avoid temptation of too frequent intercourse.'

Dr. Clelia Mosher began interviewing American women about their sex lives starting in 1892. By 1920, she'd compiled 45 profiles.

Her results—which predated Kinsey's studies by a half century—showed that although most women entered marriage ignorant of sex (some admitted that they'd learned by 'watching farm animals'), most of them came to love it.

'Of the 45 women, 35 said they desired sex; 34 said they had experienced orgasms; (and) 24 felt that pleasure for both sexes was a reason for intercourse,' according to an excellent article in the Stanford Alumni magazine.

As one respondent, born in 1860, put it: 'My husband and I… believe in intercourse for its own sake—we wish it for ourselves and spiritually miss it, rather than physically, when it does not occur, because it is the highest, most sacred expression of our oneness.'

MY KINDA GAL

In The History of Sex (But Not As We Know It), I note one of the ironies of the Sexual Revolution: we may very well be having less sex than our ancestors.

I also argue that we should learn from the early campaigners for gender equality and ignore the sex-obsessed feminists of the Sixties.

Compared to them, Mosher looks like an unsung heroine who spent her career trying to prove that women weren't inferior to men.

 
Mosher in her Red Cross uniform

In her day, people thought that women breathed from their chests rather than their diaphragms, but Mosher showed that this supposed biological difference was probably the result of tight corsets.

She also developed abdominal exercises—'moshers'—to counter menstrual pain, arguing that debilitating periods were partly due to a lack of exercise and the common practice of confining women to their beds during 'that time of the month.'

'Equal pay for women means equal work; unnecessary menstrual absences mean less than full work,' she wrote.

Mosher lived quite a lonely life – again, the Stanford article is well worth reading – but she envisaged a day when life would be different for intelligent women like her.

'Born into a world of unlimited opportunity, the woman of the rising generation will answer the question of what woman's real capacities are,' she wrote in 1923.

'She will have physical, economic, racial and civic freedom. What will she do with it?'

Fortunately, she didn't live to see 'Girls Gone Wild.'

©JR Daeschner

Like what you've read?
You can buy The History of Sex (But Not As We Know It) here.

Defend Buttman? You're Not a Liberal, You're a Libertarian

The recent trial of 'Buttman' in America's capital shows just how confused many self-styled liberals are about porn.

For those without sphincter fixations, John Stagliano is the porn mogul who's arguably done more than anyone to popularize anal sex among heterosexuals.

Toward the end of the last century, Stagliano spotted, well, a gap in the market and cast himself as Buttman, a sniggerworthy alter ego who not only sodomized women but also pioneered forms of exploitation that are now routine in the porn repertoire.

The success of his Evil Angel outfit--and the fact that society tolerated it--inspired established porn players to follow in his fetishistic footsteps, creating what has become, quite literally, a 'race to the bottom.'

'IT HAS TO BE NASTIER'

As one of Stagliano's porn allies in LA told me while I was researching The History of Sex: 'Back in the early Nineties, (anal sex) wasn't rare, but it was like a step up from normal porn. Now it's kind of almost normal, because with the sex business, you gotta keep ratcheting up.'

'It's kinda like violence in movies. People get inured at a certain point—it's gotta be more, greater, nastier. Filthier.'

Buttman is HIV positive--as is his wife, a former porn star
(thankfully, their nine-year-old daughter is negative)

In the People v. Buttman case, Stagliano faced up to 32 years in prison on obscenity charges, but the judge threw out the case last Friday on technicalities.

Bizarrely, throughout the proceedings, many so-called liberals parroted the same clichés used in Stagliano's defense: consenting adults… their own privacy… First Amendment… freedom of speech… yadda, yadda, yadda.

But if you think there's anything liberal about supporting or tolerating porn, chances are 1) you don't know how hardcore it's become or 2) you have a vested interest in the industry.

Stagliano, for instance, is renowned for pioneering 'asshole milkshakes' and 'ATMs' ('ass-to-mouths'), in which women are not only subjected to anal sex but induced to swallow the ejaculate, thereby tasting their own feces.

And if you can tolerate that, here's a sample of the dialogue from Milk Nymphos, an Evil Angel video that was played to the court, as cited by a local paper.

'One of the female performers repeatedly refers to her male co-star as a "nigger," declaring, for example, "Come on, you nigger, fuck me in the ass," and imploring the other female performer to "look in his eyes when you suck his nigger cock."'

PERVERTING THE AMERICAN DREAM

True liberalism holds that we're all in this together: that what I do has an impact on my fellow human beings, and if I see someone being exploited or treated unjustly, it's my duty to do everything in my power to help them.

That's why so many of the early liberals--not least Nonconformist women--fought to regulate porn and prostitution.

Libertarianism is almost the exact opposite, a kind of rabid conservatism that's perverted the American Dream.

Libertarians like Stagliano believe they should be free to make a buck any way they see fit unless the law can stop them.

In their twist on history, they'd have us believe that George Washington and his boys were eating their boots at Valley Forge so that centuries later, Buttman & Co. could get rich by degrading women.

Sure enough, one of Stagliano's media defenders was a research fellow at the DC-based Cato Institute, a group with the lofty-sounding ideals of promoting 'individual liberty, free markets and peace.'

In reality, it's a libertarian 'thinktank' that thought nothing of taking Buttman's money.

If you want to proclaim the Buttman trial as a victory for free speech, then go ahead: that's your right.

But please: don't call yourself a liberal.

©JR Daeschner

Polanski gets off -- and this time, not by raping a minor

So I guess that’s progress of a sort.

The Swiss have decided against extraditing Roman Polanski to the US, where the director might have been imprisoned for being a pedophile.

 

Or not, as the case may be

Unfortunately, this is one of those stories where the media’s squeamishness makes it easy for sex offenders.

For instance, everybody’s reporting that Polanski pleaded guilty to ‘unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor.’

But you really have to dig to find out that his 13-year-old victim claimed he subjected her to oral, vaginal and anal sex—after doping her and photographing her topless (usually glossed over as simply a ‘photo shoot’).

I also didn’t know that his assault was allegedly interrupted by a knock at the door by Anjelica Huston.

Or that the 1977 crime occurred in an LA mansion owned by Jack Nicholson, the star of Polanski's Chinatown.

In a case of life imitating art, one of the key plot twists in that 1974 movie involves the molestation of a minor.

STILL ON THE FENCE?

If you find yourself swayed by Polanski’s defenders, here’s an excellent article by Sady Doyle of Tiger Beatdown on why he should be held accountable.

While writing The History of Sex, I was surprised to discover the seedy, pedo side of the Sexual Revolution, dominated by men who tried to normalize having sex with children.

A European 'sexpaper' called Suck published articles from parents who slept with their children: 'Friendly Families Fuck Together Free-quently (Parts 1, 2 and 3).'

Perversely, its founder, Jim Haynes, is now the face of After Eight mints.

The main forces that stopped the child-sex movement of the Sixties and Seventies were anti-porn feminists (as opposed to pro-pornistas like Germaine Greer, who co-founded Suck)… and Christian activists.

With few modern feminists willing to take a stand against porn, though, there’s every chance that laws against child sex will be eroded by the likes of Polanski and his defenders.

To cite a quote often used in reference to the Holocaust:

‘All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.’

'Precious' the Neanderthal and Caveman Nookie

It's been a big summer for Neanderthals, with the latest revelations being that they had 'Popeye-like arms.'

What struck me, though, is the equally cartoonish image of a Neanderthal striking a sensitive pose, reminiscent of Rodin's Thinker.

(Discovery)

That's not science; that's make-believe.

I think they should call him 'Precious:'

NEANDERTHAL NOOKIE

And here's a story I wrote earlier this year:

There's a little Neanderthal in most of us, according to a new study.

Scientists claim to have found traces of Neanderthal genes in modern DNA after studying nearly 2,000 people from around the world.

That can mean only one thing: homo sapiens had sex with their supposed evolutionary inferiors.

‘This is not what we expected to find,' says Jeffrey Long, a genetic anthropologist at the University of New Mexico who led the study.

A Stone Age love machine?

Maybe not, but I get extremely skeptical when scientists start talking about the prehistoric past.

One thing I've learned in writing The History of Sex is just how little we know about the past  3,000 years of ‘known' history, let alone the past 300,000 of prehistory.

And all joking aside (like the subtitle of this article), research like this will inevitably cause people to question whether some groups might be more ‘Neanderthal' than others.

Sure enough, here's the first message on the comment boards:

‘I have always wondered if Basques, which are known to have striking differences in the frequency of blood groups and the form of the skull from the rest of the european population could not be such a population,' writes Jacques Lerin.

‘I do not mean to be offensive in anyway...'

Offensive? Surely not.

Now if we could just prove that Neanderthals knew how to make bombs...

5MCT3G8J29M8

Introducing... The Grindr Game

by JR

So the Latin South African and I were drinking 19 stories above Manhattan, and she was telling me about the latest app making headlines.

'Grindr' enables gay men to cruise for sex using GPS, pinpointing other guys who are on the prowl (to within fraction of a foot) and allowing them to 'chat.'

I'd read about it a few months ago but decided against giving it more publicity.

And then I came across it again in a Village Voice article about Jersey's (Gay) Guido Riviera.

I even toyed with downloading the app myself—just for research, naturally.

But then I had a vision of dying an untimely death, and the cops finding a Gay Cruising app on my iPhone next to my Holy Bible app.

'Typical closet case,' they'd say, wondering how to break the news to my distraught fiancée.

'Yeah, but then I, the distraught fiancée, could fall in love with one of the embarrassed, consoling cops and marry a policeman!' La Saffa interjected, immediately spotting the silver lining in my imagined demise.

 'Shall we download it?' she asked, taking out her phone.

'Umm… OKAY!'

And with Lady Gaga hiccupping 'Telephone' in the background, we concocted a new, somewhat subversive, game.

THE GRINDR GAME

How to Play

1. Download the free Grindr app onto your iPhone or Blackberry.
2. Upload a photo of yourself or your significant other:
   Lena was keen to post a photo of me licking my fingers. I bargained her down to a pic of me in a fetching pink cowboy hat. (Long story.)
3. Sit back and watch the screen light up.

The Object of the Game

To get as many hits as possible / gauge the hotness of your man.

Think of it as 'Queer Eye for the Straight Guy' in real time. 

Who Can Play

Conceivably any adult with an iPhone or Blackberry (don't worry about uploading a gay app to your work phone—they'll never be able to fire you!).

Grindr's core fanbase must already play some variation of this game, but I can imagine groups of women would also get a giggle impersonating their boyfriends / husbands online to see how many hits they'd get.

Hetero men, too, might turn it into a competition—assuming they're very sure of themselves.

And for me, there was a certain perverse satisfaction in seeing Lena's face drop every time I got a hit: 'Dang! He's cute, too!'

Not that she felt threatened, of course.

The Playing Field

Grindr claims it has over 700,000 users in 162 countries, which sounds like an exaggeration, not unlike the way men tend to overestimate the size of their penises.

Come to think of it, that could be Grindr's motto: Making the Global Village a Global Meat Market.

They must be so proud…

As for specific locales, the possibilities are endless.

The rooftop bar of a hotel was interesting—I can recommend Mad46 on Madison Ave. (Mad Men indeed)—when the screen says someone is 93 feet away, conceivably they could be in the bar itself or several floors beneath you.

Lena also had fun trying to spot which men surreptitiously texting in the bar might be trying to pick me up. Did their beards know?

Who Shouldn't Play?

I wouldn't recommend The Grindr Game if you have any doubts about your man's orientation or your own sex appeal.

For the book, Lena and I once went to an S&M dinner in Austria, the home of masochism.

The host was a transvestite who looked cuter in a dress than his girlfriend did.

The poor thing was crazy with jealousy.

She ended up storming out, the veritable Sturm to his Drag.

How Do You Win?

By getting the most hits, obviously.

However, we found another good endpoint: stop when you get scared.

For us, that came when a heavily tattooed admirer sent across a picture of himself… brandishing a chainsaw.

Still, though, Grindr reminded me of what I learned in Berlin, while writing about the birth of the gay-rights movement:

Without any women involved to say 'no,' the boys are at it morning, noon and night.

Cardin Woos Casanova to the Marquis de Sade's Castle

Here's an article that I wrote for Reuters about Pierre Cardin's upcoming arts festival at the Marquis de Sade's castle. 

You can check out the line-up for the Festival de Lacoste here. 

Plus my new guide to Provence, taking you from the Marquis de Sade to Emmanuelle.

LACOSTE, France--Casanova will set out to seduce theater-lovers this month on the old whipping grounds of his fellow roué, the Marquis de Sade.

And the man who's bringing the two together is a legend in his own right: Pierre Cardin, the modern master of Sade's domain.

The 87-year-old fashion icon (who turns 88 on July 7) began restoring the Marquis' castle a decade ago as part of his controversial plan to turn this hamlet some 60 miles (100km) north of Marseille into "the St. Tropez of culture."

The French premiere of "Casanova: Love and Betrayal in Venice" on Bastille Day (July 14) marks the 10th anniversary of the "Festival de Lacoste," Cardin's attempt to bring big-city culture to the Provencal countryside.

Performances take place in the open-air theatre constructed by Cardin in the chateau's quarry—on the grounds where the Marquis staged his own theatrical productions, both respectable and obscene.

Depending on the year, Cardin's fest ranges from the Sade-centric to the eccentric, usually with a nod to the brand-savvy designer's pet projects.

This summer's line-up features "Le Petit Groom de Chez Maxim's," a farce set in the Parisian landmark that Cardin bought in the early 1980s and has since turned into a global chain of restaurants and hotels.

THE CASANOVA CONNECTION

The Casanova connection is also close to Cardin's heart—he's even designed the costumes for the show himself.

"I'm Italian, you know—I'm Venetian," he remarked when I met him at the Lacoste Festival, a reminder that "Pierre" was originally known as "Pietro."

Cardin's parents fled the fascism of Mussolini to move to France, where their son began his career apprenticed to a tailor.

Now a flesh-and-blood fashion label, Cardin is also the proud owner of the palazzo where Casanova trawled for love and money in Venice.

"It's very funny that I live in Casanova's villa and the Marquis de Sade's," he told me.

Still, not all of Lacoste's 420 inhabitants are happy with his designs on their community.

Until now, the village has miraculously escaped gentrification. Lacoste is ground zero of the "Year in Provence" dream, a castled hilltop of stone maisons and cobbled streets overlooking the cherry trees, olives and lavender of the Luberon Valley.

Former adman Peter Mayle began his 1989 bestseller with lunch at Lacoste and turned neighboring Ménerbes into a Mecca for upscale tourists, while Hollywood actor John Malkovich has a house in the valley and the playwright Tom Stoppard has spent time living in the village itself.

BONJOUR, Y'ALL

In a surreal touch, much of Lacoste is already occupied by an art school from America's Deep South.

The 'Lacoste campus' of the Georgia-based Savannah College of Art and Design is the legacy of Bernard Pfriem, an American painter who fell in love with Lacoste in the 1950s and began buying up buildings and restoring them.

But Cardin hopes to take Lacoste to a whole new level.

Besides the Marquis' chateau, the designer now owns some 40 buildings in the surrounding village, including the Café de Sade, a couple of galleries, a boulangerie, and a boutique that sells goodies from Maxim's—with plans for a restaurant, a couple of luxury hotels, and even a golf course.

The size of the castle's theater reflects the scale of his ambitions: it holds more than twice as many people as live in the village itself.

Cardin's opponents have organized petitions and letter-writing campaigns, likening the wealthy outsider to the feudal seigneurs like Sade who lorded it over Lacoste for centuries.

In response, Cardin has said simply, "I just want to make the village beautiful."

Against that backdrop, the timing of opening night may add a certain frisson to the Festival de Lacoste.

Bastille Day commemorates a key event in the French Revolution, when ordinary citizens rose up to destroy a medieval prison-fortress that symbolized their oppression.

And sadism's namesake also played a role in the Storming of the Bastille.

As one of its last inmates, the Marquis de Sade converted his urinal into a loudspeaker to provoke the protesters, claiming that his fellow prisoners were being slaughtered and needed to be rescued.

Ironically, his lies backfired.

Sade was transferred to an insane asylum just days before the Bastille was liberated, and much of his writing was lost or destroyed in the looting.

Let's Talk About Sects, Baby

Will the religious inherit the earth?

Apparently so, according to an article in The New Humanist, 'the magazine for free thinkers' (so long as they think like we do).

Sorry, I added that last bit in.

Editor Caspar Melville features the work of American political scientist Eric Kaufman, who's written a book called Shall the Religious Inherit the Earth?

'Kaufmann is arguing that the secularisation thesis, the assumption that modernity leads inexorably to a lessening of religious belief and a day when we are all rational humanists, is wrong...'

'Further, he is saying that there is something about our current form of liberal secularism that contains (here's another headline) the seeds of its own destruction.'

'Since the birth rate of individualistic secular people the world over is way below replacement level (2.1 in the west), and the birth rate of religious fundamentalists is way above (between 5 and 7.5, depending on the sect), then through the sheer force of demography religious fundamentalism is going to become a much bigger force in the world and gain considerable political muscle.'

'Literalist religious conservatism is being reborn, and we secular liberals are the midwives.'

They have to be carefully taught:
'Secular Baby' by Martin Rowson
for The New Humanist

By 2050, Kaufmann projects that:

• Israel will be mostly Orthodox Jewish (Haredi).
  
• America will still be more 'religious' than Europe, though slightly more secular than it is now, with the non-religious portion of the population plateauing at about 17% versus 14% now.
  
• Mormons will displace Jews as the third-biggest religious group in America (and Muslims will be fourth, pushing Jews to fifth; I'm guessing that Protestants and Catholics will stay at numbers one and two).
  
• Europe won't quite be 'Eurabia,' but Muslims will make up 10-15% of the population in countries like Germany, France and the UK.

WHY ATHEISTS?

Unfortunately, neither Kaufmann nor Melville make much distinction between religions: they seem to think they're all equally delusional.

But it's notable that humanism has its roots in Christianity.

Even the word 'secular' comes from the Church.

And while non-Christian, secular 'new humanists' wonder why 'fundamentalists' are winning the 'battle of the babies,' it seems the answer is, well, fundamental.

In What's So Great About Christianity (not at all biased, that), Dinesh D'Souza turns around the old evolutionary question of 'why has religion survived?'

He imagines two tribes, one religious, the other secular, asking: 'Which of the two tribes is more likely to survive, prosper, and multiply?'

'The religious tribe is made up of people who have an animating sense of purpose. The secular tribe consists of people who are not sure why they exist at all.'

'The religious tribe is composed of people who view their every thought and action as consequential. The secular tribe is made up of matter that cannot explain why it is able to think at all.'

'Should evolutionists... be surprised, then, to see that religion is flourishing?... It is not religion but atheism that requires a Darwinian explanation... It seems perplexing why nature would breed a group of people who see no higher purpose to life or the universe.'

And when you put it like that...

You can read the rest of D'Souza's book here.

Pompeii Dress Discovered!

A British tabloid has unearthed a dress decorated with some of the most iconic—and mysterious—images from Pompeii.

While raiding the wardrobe of an actress named Jane Asher, the Daily Mail discovered that she owns a ‘not too kooky’ dress designed by Isabelle de Pedro.

‘It’s red with short sleeves and is covered in art prints,’ Asher said. ‘It’s a real conversation piece.’

But what exactly do she and her friends talk about?

DRESS OF THE MYSTERIES

Classics expert Mary Beard points out that the prints on the dress are only some of the most famous images from Pompeii: ‘featuring flagellation, the revelation of a phallus, a female "Pan" suckling a goat and (probably) the god Dionysus with Ariadne on his lap.’

 
What the frescoes mean, nobody knows: that’s why the house they’re in is called the Villa of the Mysteries.

In this scene, for instance, a woman is uncovering an oversized phallus, while an angel of sorts averts her gaze.

 
In his book, Eroticism in Pompeii, Dr. Antonio Varone mentions a 'very ancient rite' in honor of the god Tutunus Mutunus, 'the personification of the male sexual organ, to which women about to be married submitted.'

'It took the form of sitting astride the fascinum, a reproduction of the male organ, perhaps even with penetration.'

A conversation piece for sure.