Some genius paired 50 Cent's In Da Club with a video put out by the Jehovah's Witnesses to encourage deaf people not to masturbate. This is probably inappropriate or deafist or whatever, but it also provided me with a much-needed tears-rolling-down face laugh the other day.
(via stellar)
Because of the frequent testing and safety measures, adult film stars are perhaps the world's safest community, STD-wise. No one in the industry has been infected with HIV since 2004. Porn star Stoya explains:
The production manager printed out a copy of each performer's page in the APHSS database. I signed my own copy and James's, indicating that my results were mine and accurate and that I had seen James's and was comfortable working with him and his clean test which had been taken less than 14 days prior. He did the same. Then the production manager performed an inspection. He looked in our mouths, at both sides of our hands, and at our genitals to make sure there were no visible sores or open wounds. There was another paper to sign stating that we have no sores or open wounds on or in our mouths, hands, and genitals and had been inspected. We also looked at each others genitals, mostly for fun but if either of us had seen (or smelled) something odd we would have called off the scene ourselves.
(via @claytoncubitt)
This is your classic "boy meets girl, boy and girl go back to her place, and he breaks his penis having sex" story. It also might be the best medical love story you'll read all month.
Somehow the conversation turns to Margaret Thatcher. Somehow Margaret Thatcher becomes a recurring topic. Somehow Margaret Thatcher becomes our go-to sexual depressant. Somehow Margaret Thatcher ends up sitting naked on a suburban fence, legs swinging and twirling a top hat. Occasionally Reagan makes an appearance, too. There's a lot of glitter involved. I invoke the former Prime Minister whenever I need to cool off. For emergency purposes only.
Also from The Awl, A Treasury of the World's Worst Online Dating Stories. Warning, contains doozies.
Nick Bergus recently posted a link on Facebook to a 55-gallon drum of personal lubricant sold by Amazon -- it's only $1500! Then the post got sponsored and his family and friends started seeing it when they used Facebook, turning Bergus into a pitchman of sorts for an absurd amount of sex lube.
A week later, a friend posts a screen capture and tells me that my post has been showing up next to his news feed as a sponsored story, meaning Amazon is paying Facebook to highlight my link to a giant tub of personal lubricant.
Other people start reporting that they're seeing it, too. A fellow roller derby referee. A former employee of a magazine I still write for. My co-worker's wife. They're not seeing just once, but regularly. Said one friend: "It has shown up as one on mine every single time I log in."
Get used to this...promoted word of mouth is how a lot of advertising will work in the future.
BTW, as with many unusual products on Amazon, the "Customers Who Viewed This Item Also Viewed" listing (horse head mask?) and the reviews are worth checking out.
As a Fertility Specialist for Pachyderms, this was exactly what we needed to help rebuild elephant populations all over sub-saharan africa. It's not all just Medications and IVF treatments. Some times you need a loudspeaker, a Barry White CD and a 55 Gallon drum of Lube.
From a paper published in the Journal of Cosmology entitled Sex On Mars: Pregnancy, Fetal Development, and Sex In Outer Space:
Humans are sexual beings and it can be predicted that male and female astronauts will engage in sexual relations during a mission to Mars, leading to conflicts and pregnancies and the first baby born on the Red Planet. Non-human primate and astronaut sexual behavior is reviewed including romantic conflicts involving astronauts who flew aboard the Space Shuttle and in simulated missions to Mars, and men and women team members in the Antarctic. The possibilities of pregnancy and the effects of gravity and radiation on the testes, ovaries, menstruation, and developing fetus, including a child born on Mars, are discussed. What may lead to and how to prevent sexual conflicts, sexual violence, sexual competition, and pregnancy are detailed. Recommendations include the possibility that male and female astronauts on a mission to Mars, should fly in separate space craft.
Items on this pimp's handwritten business plan -- aka "Keep It Pimpin'" -- include:
- my word is my bond
- take my game to the next level (from the concrete streets to executive suites)
- take care my bitches more better
- minimize my budget (cash cars, houses, etc.)
- keep a good photographer
Evolutionary speaking, premature ejaculation may not be such a bad thing after all.
So given these basic biological facts, and assuming that ejaculation is not so premature that it occurs prior to intromission and sperm cells find themselves awkwardly outside of a woman's reproductive tract flopping about like fish out of water, what, exactly, is so "premature" about premature ejaculation? In fact, all else being equal, in the ancestral past, wouldn't there likely have been some reproductive advantages to ejaculating as quickly as possible during intravaginal intercourse-such as, oh, I don't know, inseminating as many females as possible in as short a time frame as possible? or allowing our ancestors to focus on other adaptive behaviors aside from sex? or perhaps, under surreptitious mating conditions, doing the deed quickly and expeditiously without causing a big scene?
Still, for recreational sex, it blows. (As it were.)
Somehow it became NSFW day here at kottke.org. So we're rolling with it, in the hay. Here's the Tron version of the Kama Sutra. It is so very NSFW even though everyone stays fully clothed in glowing blue garments.
Among primates, only humans masturbate. Why is that? Perhaps it's our big....brains.
Go on, put this article aside, take a five minute break and put my challenge to the test (don't forget to close your office door if you're reading this at work): Just try to masturbate successfully -- that is, to orgasmic completion -- without casting some erotic representational target in your mind's eye. Instead, clear your mind entirely, or think of, I don't know, an enormous blank canvass hanging in an art gallery. And of course no porn or helpful naked co-workers are permitted for this task either.
How'd it go? Do you see the impossibility of it? This is one of the reasons, incidentally, why I find it so hard to believe that self-proclaimed asexuals who admit to masturbating to orgasm are really and truly asexual. They must be picturing something , and whatever that something is gives away their sexuality.
(via clusterflock)
Update: Apparently the author has never been on YouTube. (thx, all)
How spies have used sex and romance to get information, from WWI on.
Spies use sex, intelligence, and the thrill of a secret life as bait. Cleverness, training, character, and patriotism are often no defense against a well-set honey trap.
In a TED talk, Mary Roach discusses ten things that you didn't know about orgasm.
A woman had an orgasm every time she brushed her teeth.
A bit NSFW here and there. (via 3qd)
Fascinating and disturbing story about a male student who posed as female online and got several of his male classmates to send him naked pictures of themselves. Which led to extortion and eventual arrest.
In the beginning, when Kayla and Emily asked these boys for naked pictures, the majority of them thought little of saying yes. This exchange was within the range of what kids -- lots of kids -- consider normal. Online, a boy chats with a girl he's never met. Pants go down. Pictures are sent. And a chain of unpredictable, unknowable consequences is set in motion.
London call girl blogger Belle de Jour has outed herself and, surprise, she's a hot nerd.
Her name is Dr Brooke Magnanti. Her specialist areas are developmental neurotoxicology and cancer epidemiology. She has a PhD in informatics, epidemiology and forensic science and is now working at the Bristol Initiative for Research of Child Health. She is part of a team researching the effects of exposure to the pesticide chlorpyrifos on foetuses and infants.
(via waxy)
This, I guess, is NSFW but really, if I didn't tell you that it's an MRI video of two people having sex, you probably wouldn't even know it.
Nisan is a balding 37-year-old man with gray hair and Nemutan is his girlfriend, a video game character printed on a pillow.
When I joined the couple for lunch at their favorite all-you-can-eat salad bar in the Tokyo suburb of Hachioji, he insisted on being called only by this new nickname, addressing his body-pillow girlfriend using the suffix "tan" to show how much he adored her. Nemutan is 10, maybe 12 years old and wears a little blue bikini and gold ribbons in her hair. Nisan knows she's not real, but that hasn't stopped him from loving her just the same. "Of course she's my girlfriend," he said, widening his eyes as if shocked by the question. "I have real feelings for her."
2-D love has similarities to objectophilia. (via waxy)
Sage advice from Alec Baldwin about the Mark Sanford affair: Don't Take the Bait.
Now is a wonderful opportunity to show the country what Democrats/liberals/progressives/unaligned learned from the Clinton era. Whatever personal problems that public officials deal with privately, leave them alone. This could happen to anyone, in any state, regardless of party. Why make the voters of South Carolina suffer while Sanford is skewered? If he wants to resign, so be it. If not, let him deal with it in private.
And Baldwin didn't say this but I will: lefty political sites like HuffPo and TPM have and are devoting a lot of time and attention to these Republican sex scandals. Hey, they're good for pageviews, right? That's part of the problem too. Aren't there more important political things going on in the world than this gossip?
A short but revealing interview with Eliot Spitzer over a hot dog lunch in Central Park.
I asked him why so many politicians are caught in insane sex scandals. "What is it with you all?"
"I'm not going to make excuses," he replied evenly. "Let me ask you a question: Is there a difference between politicians and anybody else? Or is it that the lives of politicians are so very public?"
"There is a difference, Mr. Spitzer. You were elected to a position of public trust."
"That's right," he conceded. "It's why I resigned without delay. Some said I could try to ride it out. But I didn't see it that way. What I did was heinous and wrong."
(via the browser)
How to seduce a friend who has a boyfriend and otherwise wouldn't sleep with you.
Step Four: Remove all your clothes and break into your friend's house.
Step Five: Use the knife to cut your body in various places. Avoid the face. If possible, focus on your back. The more blood the better.
This is weird and disturbing and awesome. (via 3qd)
In this video, the NY Times profiles a pair of Pakistani brothers who run a business in Karachi designing and manufacturing bondage and fetish wear. As you'll see in the video, many of the firm's employees are unaware of what they're making. (thx, andrew)
Gay Talese is writing a new book about his marriage to Nan A. Talese, a union that was almost ruined by a previous book Gay wrote about the sexual revolution.
The book, originally published in 1980, is about the sexual revolution, which Talese believed would be the most important cultural shift in decades, and which he spent most of the seventies intimately researching. It's the research itself -- particularly Talese's tendency to take the participant-observer concept to the extreme -- that turned out to be the unintended legacy of the project. "If you want to write about orgies," says Talese, who at 77 is still slim and handsome, "you're not going to be in the press box with your little press badge keeping your distance. You have to have a kind of affair with your sources. You have to hang out! I wanted to write about sexuality and the changing definition of morality. Maybe if I had put that in a subhead on the cover I might have gotten a better hearing."
As detailed in a 1973 New York article (written seven years before Talese's book came out), part of Talese's research included managing two massage parlors, living in a California sex commune for six months, and attending orgies.
Erika La Tour Eiffel, betrothed two years ago to the pointy Parisian landmark, is an objectophiliac, someone who feels intense sexual desire toward inanimate objects.
Emma (not her real name), 43, the only British member of the community, suffers from Asperger syndrome -- a condition which seems to be shared by around half of OS people. Asperger sufferers often have difficulties forming relationships with other people, and Emma's fixations are radios and hi fis. When I met her, she was in love with a hi-fi system which she called Jake. Jake, she says, is "solid, reliable and beautiful". She repairs "him" when he goes wrong, and "makes love" to him on average twice a day. "This is the way I communicate with him."
(via cynical-c)
At the Shibuya Pink Girl's Club in Tokyo, men pay upwards of $130 to grope the girl of their choice on a simulated subway train.
The connoisseur picks out from the menu the girl of his choice, dressed either as a schoolgirl or office receptionist. This girl then beckons him through the window of a mock-up train carriage, which not only broadcasts station announcements, but even shakes and rattles.
Real-life incidents of subway train groping are on the decline, in part because more women are reporting them and the subway offering women-only cars during peak times.
This is NSFW if very squeaky balloon animal sex is not safe to view at your workplace. Unsafe perhaps, but hilarious. (via siege, also NSFW)
Can I interest madame in a $2000 vibrator?
The base of the vibrator is encircled with a stunning "eternity" band of 28 round-cut black diamonds.
Benoit Denizet-Lewis is a recovering sex addict. As part of his rehab process, he wrote a note from the addict inside of his head:
I will make Benoit lie and manipulate and chase sex every hour of every day, until he can't feel anything anymore, until everything good and decent about him is removed. He needs me. His life is boring when I'm not in charge. I control him. I keep him numb so he can function. I make him feel good, and I make him feel worthless. The minute he steps out of this stupid rehab, I'll start whispering in his ear. That's all it takes -- whispers. I win. I ALWAYS win.
A columnist for the Financial Times signs up for Illicit Encounters, a site for people who want to have affairs, and finds that there are lots of men from the financial sector trolling for a bit on the side.
He said that, in a recession, people wanted hugs. This struck me as a pretty feeble explanation. Surely there are easier ways of getting hugs than putting one's marriage on the line? Hugging one's children or -- if one is desperate -- even one's spouse might seem easier and safer.
He said that this was just the point: that the risk was the lure. That bankers are suffering from a risk deficit: their working lives have been derisked compulsorily and this could be a way of compensating by adding risk to their private lives.
Who's gonna make the "Bankers Want Risky Hugs" tshirts? (via mr)
Update: Aaaaaaand, here's the shirt.
Lawyers representing Roman Polanski have asked a California judge to dismiss the statutory rape case against him because of evidence presented in Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired, a documentary about the case, that the judge in the original case engaged in unethical and unlawful behavior.
Tuesday's filing said Judge Rittenband, who is now dead, intentionally violated a plea agreement with Mr. Polanski after having engaged in what it called "repeated unethical and unlawful ex parte communications" with a deputy district attorney who was not involved in the prosecution, but was independently advising the judge.
Several folks on Twitter are talking about post-election sex and Obama babies (children conceived on election night...mark your calendars for late July 2009). The consensus seems to be that Barack got laid in a big way last night.
The confessions of a first-time naked sushi model.
As the reality of what I'd gotten myself into set in, I began to have doubts. Maybe my parents were correct and I was, in fact, an absolute loon. Who the fuck does this? Maybe I should have avoided the spicy food at lunch. What if these freaking booties cause my toes to cramp? What if I twitch my arms? What if I look terrible in this position? What if I can't stop myself from laughing my ass off?
If you live in NYC, you can give the naked sushi thing a try. NSFW.
In lean times, men look for women who can work and in times of plenty, they want women who can reproduce.
The Environmental Security Hypothesis says that in tough times men will prefer women who are good at production, generally older, taller, heavier, less curvaceous women with less body fat. In good times, they will prefer women who are good at reproduction, generally younger, shorter, lighter, more curvaceous women.
A pair of social psychologists looked for signs of this in the pages of Playboy magazine.
Consistent with Environmental Security Hypothesis predictions, when social and economic conditions were difficult, older, heavier, taller Playboy Playmates of the Year with larger waists, smaller eyes, larger waist-to-hip ratios, smaller bust-to-waist ratios, and smaller body mass index values were selected. These results suggest that environmental security may influence perceptions and preferences for women with certain body and facial features.
High-end prostitutes see an uptick in business -- for a few months anyway -- during times of financial hardship and crisis.
Their clients were coming to them for a mix of escape and encouragement. As Jean, a New Yorker and a 35-year-old former paralegal turned "corporate escort" (her description) told me, "I had about two dozen men who started doubling their visits with me. They couldn't face their wives, who were bitching about the fact they lost income. Men want to be men. All I did was make them feel like they could go back out there with their head up."
Indeed, forty percent of encounters between high-end prostitutes don't involve sex...like therapy with occasional benefits.
This Harper's article from 2005 compares the food porn of the Food Network to regular porn.
Eventually, Tyler and the housewife would go cheek to cheek, lean forward, open their mouths, taste the chicken and rice, and melt into a flushed-face, simultaneous food swoon. When the inevitable sequence finally rolled, the editor kept looping their wet mouths and rapt faces as they pushed forkful after forkful of arroz con pollo past their lips, chewed, and swallowed-and pushed and chewed and swallowed again and again. "Classic porn style," said Nitke. "They're stretching the moment out, the orgasmic moment. In porn they'll take a cum shot and run it in an endless loop."
That must have been a fun one to write. See also: Food Network star or porn star? (via serious eats)
Update: Here's an interview with the author about the article. (thx, jim)
Short film: Blow Job by Andy Warhol. Mostly SFW...it's just the face of the recipient. Here's some info on the film.
When Andy Warhol decided to shoot Blow Job, he rang Charles Rydell and asked him to star in it, telling him that "all he'd have to do was lie back and then about five different boys would come in and keep on blowing him until he came," but that the film would only show his face.
Charles agreed, but when he didn't show up for the following Sunday afternoon shoot, Andy reached him at Jerome Hill's suite at the Algonquin and screamed into the phone "Charles! Where are you?" Charles responded: "What do you mean, where am I? You know where I am - you called me," and Andy the said "We've got the camera ready and the five boys are all here, everything's set up!" Charles's shocked reply was: "Are you crazy? I thought you were kidding. I'd never do that!"
Panopticist has a quick round-up (with clips) of a few adult movies inspired by the films of Stanley Kubrick.
There have been several other porn films inspired by Kubrick's oeuvre, including Spermacus, 2002: A Sex Odyssey, Thighs Wide Shut, and A Clockwork Orgy.
NSFW.
Corrections to last month's letters to Penthouse Forum.
In the letter "And Wifey Makes Three," the letter writer stated: "My wife was eager to engage in a threesome with me and our incredibly hot 19-year-old babysitter." The sentence should read: "My wife was disgusted, repulsed, and, in every imaginable way, opposed to the thought of engaging in a threesome with me and our incredibly hot 19-year-old babysitter."
NSFW if your default browser font is large enough to be read from several feet away.
The top nine songs about masturbation. Includes the obvious I Touch Myself by The Divinyls and some less-obvious songs. (via buzzfeed)
A photo gallery of snack foods that sound a bit naughty. Salted Nut Roll, Dutch Crunch, Double Creme Betweens, etc. (via buzzfeed)
Now showing on HBO:
On March 11, 1977, Roman Polanski was arrested in Los Angeles and charged with the following counts: furnishing a controlled substance to a minor, committing a lewd or lascivious act on a child, unlawful sexual intercourse, rape by use of drugs, perversion and sodomy. Less than a year later, on February 1, 1978, Polanski drove to LAX, bought a one-way ticket to Europe, and never came back. Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired explores the implausible events that took place between these dates, along with details, before and after, that forever altered the life and career of Polanski, one of the world's most acclaimed directors.
This snippet of an interview with the filmmaker should give you a taste of what to expect from the film:
I felt it was my job to explain how people think they know the story, but they don't. That doesn't excuse Polanski in any way, but it shows what he went through. I think the best viewer for this film is someone who can't stand Roman Polanski and is disgusted by what happened. But if they allow themselves to watch the film, they usually come away from it feeling differently. If not about the crime, then at least about the aftermath. It's quite surprising.
The Smoking Gun has the grand jury testimony of then 13-year-old Samantha Gailey, taken two weeks after she had sex with Polanski. If you don't catch the movie on HBO, it'll be out in limited release in theaters on July 11.
Update: There's a post on the HBO bulletin board for the movie that looks like it was written by Samantha Geimer (formerly Gailey):
I hope you all watched and enjoyed the movie. I think Marina did an excellent job in uncovering the facts. Since my mother did not participate, let me clarify a few things for you all.
She did not travel in the same social circles with Roman. She met him once, that meeting had nothing to do with my getting the modeling job. She did not send me off to be raped, or have some blackmail plot in mind. Calling the police pretty much rules blackmail out from the get go. Roman was not known as a pedophile in March of 1977, he was a influential and respected director. Even his relationship with Natasha Kinski did not occur until after my meeting with him, as far as I know.
The sex was not consentual and I have never said it was.
And last, I was not supposed to be alone with him, a friend was to come along with with us, but he talked me into going alone with him as the last minute, my mother was unaware of that until I called her later to check in. Even so, she would never have dreamed he would do what he did to me, just because we were alone. This was a long time ago, when child molestation did not immediately leap to the front of everyone's mind as is does today. I do find it strange that some of his friends say he couldn't have done it, while others say of course he would.
My mother has carried alot of guilt about this for many years, so I would appreciate it if people would stop blaming her. There is alot of blame to go around.
Slideshow of photos of phone sex operators by Phillip Toledano. (via waxy)
The Coolidge Effect is a phenomenon whereby males exhibit high sexual performance given the introduction of new willing females.
It earned its name many years ago when President Coolidge and his wife were touring a farm. While the President was elsewhere, the farmer proudly showed Mrs. Coolidge a rooster that "could copulate with hens all day long, day after day." Mrs. Coolidge coyly suggested that the farmer tell that to Mr. Coolidge, which he did.
The President thought for a moment and then inquired, "With the same hen?"
"No, sir," replied the farmer.
"Tell that to Mrs. Coolidge," retorted the President.
Zing! (via defective yeti)
The economics of high-end prostitutes.
Unlike their low-end counterparts, high-end call girls are expected to supply some level of companionship, and often accompany clients to dinners or parties. Because a beautiful and intelligent woman inevitably has other job (and marriage) options, a very high wage is necessary to encourage them to forgo other opportunities, and risk arrest, disease and shame.
And escorts must spend a great deal maintaining their value without immediate compensation. Much time and money is spent on grooming: hair removal, expensive hair-cuts (one stylist I spoke to claims several of his clients are escorts, who spend at least $1,000 a month on extensions and colour) and regular exercise. Many women have had plastic surgery (particularly if they were once men) and maintain an expensive designer wardrobe. Frequent visits to the doctor are necessary to protect against sexually-transmitted diseases.
Clayton James Cubitt's photographs of a manufactured vagina.
Male to female transsexual. This is a manufactured vagina. A Neovagina.
This is genital origami, the cock cut open, carved and folded, crafted by techniques with names like Penile Inversion, the Suporn Technique, and the Wilson Method. The head of the cock morphs into the neoclit. In some methods the scrotal skin becomes the neovaginal canal.
I don't know which methods were used in the creation of this particular neovagina, but surely this is art of the highest caliber. Sculpture in flesh tissue and nerve bundles.
Amazing and NSFW.
David Attenborough narrates a sexual encounter between two leopard slugs. I know slug sex probably isn't your thing, but this is worth a look. Beautiful.
(thx, alex)
We've heard from the sex workers about the Spitzer affair. Now the psychologists. This article compiles many ideas about why Spitzer did what he did:
Psychologist Christopher Ryan, author of "Sex in Prehistory," says the desire for sex with more than one person has always been there -- for leaders and followers alike. "The desire is not a function of status or power -- it's a question of availability."
What's relatively new to the human race, he said, is the ability to exercise power and the connection between power and sex.
That's because, for most of human existence, there was only so far a man could coerce others when food was essentially free and hard to hoard. And until relatively recently, sex with multiple partners was the norm. "It would have been very unusual 100,000 years ago for a person to have one sexual partner for 30 years," said Ryan in an interview from Barcelona.
And here's the evolutionary psychological point of view:
She points out that, while powerful men throughout western history have married monogamously (they had only one legal wife at a time), they have always mated polygynously (they had lovers, concubines, and female slaves). Many had harems, consisting of hundreds and even thousands of virgins. With their wives, they produced legitimate heirs; with the others, they produced bastards (Betzig's term). Genes and inclusive fitness make no distinction between the two categories of children. While the legitimate heirs, unlike the bastards, inherited their fathers' power and status and often went on to have their own harems, powerful men sometimes invested in their bastards as well.
As a result, powerful men of high status throughout human history attained very high reproductive success, leaving a large number of offspring (legitimate or otherwise), while countless poor men in the countryside died mateless and childless.
(thx, anne)
Update: And one more from Natalie Angier:
Yet as biologists have discovered through the application of DNA paternity tests to the offspring of these bonded pairs, social monogamy is very rarely accompanied by sexual, or genetic, monogamy. Assay the kids in a given brood, whether of birds, voles, lesser apes, foxes or any other pair-bonding species, and anywhere from 10 to 70 percent will prove to have been sired by somebody other than the resident male.
One of the side effects of the Eliot Spitzer situation is the discussion of prostitution happening in various places online by those with experience in or knowledge of that profession. Here are a few I've run across.
On the Freakonomics blog, an interview with a "high-end call girl" named Allie about the Spitzer affair.
Almost all of my clients are married. I would say easily over 90 percent. I'm not trying to justify this business, but these are men looking for companionship. They are generally not men that couldn't have an affair [if they wanted to], but men who want this tryst with no stings attached. They're men who want to keep their lives at home intact.
Susannah Breslin talks about her twin web projects, Letters from Johns and Letters from Working Girls and what light they could shed on Spitzer's actions.
But one high-end call girl I spoke to about the Spitzer affair said there are lots of reasons a man in such a prominent position might seek high-stakes sex with a prostitute. Why not just have an affair, which probably wouldn't have destroyed his career? She said that Spitzer, if he did use prostitutes, was probably one of those men for whom the payoff was the excitement of doing something really taboo. "What could be more taboo than going to an agency when you're a crusader for all that is moral and good?" she theorized. "It's only natural," this call girl asserted, "that they'd hire a girl to get off." She speculates that there was probably a "midlife crisis element" there too.
Former Hollywood madam Heidi Fleiss chimes in:
Look, it's going to go on. You're never going to stop prostitution. The way to do it is to regulate it. Clean it up a bit. Make it fair-fair for the girls, fair for the clients. At the end the government gets money out of it.
A Former Sex Worker's Thoughts About Eliot Spitzer.
I'm a former sex worker. I still have many sex worker friends that are dear to me. Ones who both face all the risks of being a sex worker, but also fight for sex worker rights in public. They are at risk from the very policies of men like Spitzer. Eliot could have done something groundbreaking. He could have been a governor that dared to advocate for sex worker human rights. But he didn't. Eliot persecuted sex workers. He made it easier for sex workers to be exploited, to be violated, to be stigmatized, to face discrimination, to face rape, assault and other crimes.
Sociologist Sudhir Venkatesh has done research on high-end sex workers in NYC and elsewhere. He explains how it works in this Slate article.
What high-end clients pay for may surprise you. For example, according to my ongoing interviews of several hundred sex workers, approximately 40 percent of trades in New York's sex economy fail to include a physical act beyond light petting or kissing. No intercourse, no oral stimulation, etc. That's one helluva conversation. But it's what many clients want. Flush with cash, these elite men routinely turn their prostitute into a second partner or spouse. Over the course of a year, they will sometimes persuade the woman to take on a new identity, replete with a fake name, a fake job, a fake life history, and so on. They may want to have sex or they may simply want to be treated like King for a Day.
If you run across any similar links, send them along.
Maybe this is surprising to you: when compared to Roman Catholicism, Islam is less conservative when it comes to sexual ethics.
Oh, The Onion: Pornography-Desensitized Populace Demands New Orifice To Look At.
Evolutionary biologist Olivia Judson speculates about the Tyrannosaurus rex's sexual equipment.
We now have a robust understanding of how sexual pressures -- the pressures to find, impress, and seduce a mate -- influence the evolution of males and females. So much so that if you tell me a fact, such as the average size difference between males and females in a species, or the proportion of a male's body taken up by his testes, I can tell you what the mating system is likely to be. For example, where males are much bigger than females, fighting between males has been important - which often means that the biggest males maintain a harem. If testes are relatively large, females probably have sex with several males in the course of a single breeding episode.
(thx, bill)
Missed this a couple of months ago: the shortlisted passages in the Bad Sex Award 2007 competition.
She nods and smiles. She is absurdly beautiful. I start to slip off my jeans and I feel her gaze as I stand in my bra and pants. Why am I embarrassed about taking off my clothes right in front of a robot? I pull the dress over my head like a schoolgirl, untie my hair, and sit down. She is smiling, just a little bit, as though she knows her effect.
To calm myself down and appear in control I reverse the problem. 'Spike, you're a robot, but why are you such a drop-dead gorgeous robot? I mean, is it necessary to be the most sophisticated machine ever built and to look like a movie star?'
A list of Cartoon Girls I Wanna Nail. And it's on Geocities, no less...I had no idea that was still around and operational. Maybe this is the only page left, the end result of Yahoo's $3.6 billion investment.
Update: The site above is currently down. Fun fact: I first linked to this almost 9 years ago. (thx, everyone)
Update: Geocities is gone but Reocities archived the Cartoon Girls I Wanna Nail page. Our shared cultural heritage is safe.
An attempt to decode the sex diaries of noted economist John Maynard Keynes. Keynes kept two diaries related to his sexual activities. The first was a straightforward listing of who/where/when.
The other sex diary is more puzzling and, in a way, more informative. An economist to the core, Keynes organized the second sex diary also year-by-year, but this time in quarterly increments.
Unfortunately for us, however, this second sex diary is in code. And as far as I know, no one yet has been prurient enough to crack it.
Here's what Keynes' tabulation looks like. For every quarter-year from 1906 to 1915, he tallies up his sexual activities and totals them under three categories: C, A, and W.
For each of these headings, he records the number of times each activity occurred, and also when. For example, between May and August, 1911, he performed (if that's the right word) C sixteen times, A four times, and W five times.
Long-exposure photo of two people having sex on a bed. (It's mostly safe for work, believe it or not.) This reminds me of two things: the timelapse threesome scene in A Clockwork Orange and Jason Salavon's work, specifically 76 Blowjobs and Every Playboy Centerfold. Those last tow links probably NSFW. (via the h line)
Update: Atta Kim's work is similar too, particularly his "Sex Series". (thx, jeff)
Very interesting paper on the economics of prostitution by Steven Levitt and Sudhir Venkatesh.
The transaction-level data we collected suggests that street prostitution yields an average wage of $27 per hour. Given the relatively limited hours that active prostitutes work, this generates less than $20,000 annually for a women working year round in prostitution. While the wage of a prostitute is four times greater than the non-prostitution earnings these women report (approximately $7 per hour), there are tremendous risks associated with life as a prostitute. According to our estimates, a woman working as a prostitute would expect an annual average of a dozen incidents of violence and 300 instances of unprotected sex.
The authors also noted that a prostitute was "more likely to have sex with a police officer than to get officially arrested by one". (via marginal revolution)
Eric Gill was a respected British artist and typographer -- Gill Sans is his most famous typeface -- but according to his diaries, he also regularly engaged in sexual relations with his sisters, his daughters, and the family dog.
For some of Gill's fans, even looking at his work became impossible. Most problematically, he was a Catholic convert who created some of the most popular devotional art of his era, such as the Stations of the Cross in Westminster Cathedral, where worshippers pray at each panel depicting the suffering of Jesus.
These details of Gill's private life were revealed in a 1989 book by Fiona MacCarthy...here's a NY Times review of the book soon after it was published.
On the erotic appeal of the Lands' End catalog:
These are images more invasive than any Victoria's Secret spread, because they don't inspire lust. This is a pornography of regret, and the longer you stare, the more seductive it becomes. These sixty pages are a self-pity trap; any sane lonely man would do well to avoid them.
(via maggie)
NYC restaurant advice from a huge douchebag Don Juan about where to wine her, dine her, and then complete the rhyming trifecta later that evening.
I have given much thought to this question of romantic restaurants. In each case you have to study the girl and find the right restaurant for her. One If by Land, Two If by Sea. Forget it. A joke. The Terrace. Never. Never. The minute you walk in she knows what you have in mind. You might as well write her a note 'Tonight I expect to do it.' It's too obvious.
(via eater)
Jason Salavon's Field Guide to Style & Color, a reproduction of the 2007 Ikea catalog with everything but the structure and color excluded. You may remember Mr. Salavon from his composite photographs and videos of blowjobs, late night talk show hosts, and Playboy centerfolds.
A timeline of human history (mostly sex and violence) by Milo Manara. NSFW.
The director of the Rotterdam Natural History Museum is looking for someone to donate pubic lice, which lice are difficult to find these days, possibly because of a decrease in pubic hair due to waxing.
When the bamboo forests that the Giant Panda lives in were cut down, the bear became threatened with extinction. Pubic lice can't live without pubic hair.
In the 1970s, Japanese photograhper Kohei Yoshiyuki stumbled upon a couple in a park engaged in sexual activity in the darkness and, somewhat more curiously, two men creeping towards the couple, watching them. Over many months, he followed these voyeurs in the park, befriended them, and outfitted his camera with an infrared flash so as to blend into the crowded darkness. The result is a fantastic series of photos called The Park. As you can see in the photo below, Yoshiyuki even caught some of the peeping toms touching their "visual prey".
Yoshiyuki's photographs explore the boundaries of privacy, an increasingly rare commodity. Ironically, we may reluctantly accommodate ourselves to being watched at the A.T.M., the airport, in stores, but our appetite for observing people in extremely personal circumstances doesn't seem to wane.
The NY Times has an audio slideshow of some images from The Park, which is on display at the Yossi Milo gallery in NYC until October 20 (more photos). A book of Yoshiyuki's photography is available at Amazon.
The Times article mentions several photographers whose work is similar to Yoshiyuki's. Merry Alpern took photographs through a window of prostitutes plying their trade with Wall Street businessmen. Weegee used an infrared flash to capture kissing couples at the movie theater (although it seems that particular shot was staged) and on the beach at Coney Island (last photo here). Walker Evans photographed people on the subway without their knowledge.
Michael Specter gave spam the New Yorker treatment in last week's issue. Probably not a lot new for kottke.org readers, but after reading this short passage,
But spammers aren't stopping there. They are learning to send out polymorphic spam, thousands of variations of the spam message, which makes each message unique and therefore hard to categorize.
I noticed examples of polymorphic spam in my junk mail folder for a penis enlargement product called Mega Dik. Here are some of the variations:
Dames always smiled at me and even youths did in the not private lavatory!
Well, now I giggl at them, because I took Me_ga. d_ik.
for 3 months and now my pecker is extremely greater than civil.
Chicks always hee-hawed at me and even bucks did in the civil bathroom!
Well, now I laugh at them, because I took Meg, a dik.
for 4 months and now my putz is badly greater than world.
Baronesses always giggled at me and even youths did in the public WC!
Well, now I whoop at them, because I took Me - ga - Di k
for 4 months and now my pecker is dreadfully longer than usual.
Baronesses always smiled at me and even chaps did in the urban WC!
Well, now I smil at them, because I took M_E_G. ADI. K
for 3 months and now my tool is much preponderant than civil.
Chicks always laughed at me and even fellows did in the unrestricted bathroom!
Well, now I whizgiggle at them, because I took M eg ad ik
for 7 months and now my member is greatly largest than federal.
I've also updated my amusing penis enlargement spam imagery page. Most of the images are NSFW but are great examples of effective folk design.
Photoshopped series of photos of people kissing themselves. Sort of disturbingly erotic, in an erotically disturbing way.
Remember the guys humping the ottoman video from Friday? There's a sequel of sorts: how to blog. (via dens)
Lovely designed condom applicator from South Africa...just put it on and pull the applicator away.
OhMiBod is the ultimate iPod accessory: a vibrator that hooks up to the iPod and buzzes in time with the music. "I will never listen to music the same way again." Don't miss the playlists compiled specifically for OhMiBod use. NSFW. (thx, tania)
Area Man Accidentally Responds To Own 'M4M' Ad. "He lives right in my neighborhood, he's a professional, and he loves to work out -- he sounds sexy."
It's almost a shame that I don't get to read more of my spam because it can be highly entertaining. Here's one of the better ones I've seen in a long time, a clever ad for Viagra. Warning: NSFW but LOL nonetheless.
Hypothesis: people live in cities so that they can have casual or anonymous sex. "[In the suburbs,] MapQuest is not immediately handy for good directions, there are two cars in play, at least one of the persons may be drunk, and there is a trust issue of being trapped in some weird suburban cul-de-sac, surrounded only by sleeping, catatonic soccer moms with no one to hear you scream for help."
Great SF Chronicle series on sex trafficking: Diary of a Sex Slave. The story centers around a young Korean woman who accrues massive credit card debt and then is sold into prostitution to pay it off.
Remember, responsible adults should always use sexual consent forms.
Holding hands is increasingly seen as a sign of commitment and intimacy, while more seemingly intimate acts like kissing and sex are more likely to occur earlier in a "relationship".
"Fisher Island millionaire Bruce McMahan loved his daughter so much, he married her." See also genetic sexual attraction.
The wives and girlfriends of gang members in one of Colombia's most violent cities are taking part in a "strike of crossed legs", withholding sex from their men until they vow to give up their violent ways.
Update: Lysistrata, a play by Aristophanes, tells of women withholding sex from their husbands in order to end the Peloponnesian War. (thx, steve)
Andy on some recent baiting of people looking for sex on Craigslist. "In a staggering move, he then published every single response, unedited and uncensored, with all photos and personal information to [the web]."
Area Man Finally Works Up Courage To Sexually Harass Secretary.
The NY Times has a two part series on online pedophilia: what pedophiles are up to online ("pedophiles view themselves as the vanguard of a nascent movement seeking legalization of child pornography and the loosening of age-of-consent laws") and looking at sites that promote nonnude but lascivious photos of children to pedophiles.
Update: In 2003, Black Table did an interview with someone working for a nonnude site called ChildSuperModels.com. (thx, kfan)
Here's a great video of old school arcade games represented using household items...here's a Frogger screenshot. The rest of the photos and videos are worth a look as well; Roof Sex is reminiscent of Furniture Porn (nsfw). (via waxy)
No surprise really that Joe Francis, the guy behind Girls Gone Wild, is a turd. During the course of writing this piece, Claire Hoffman is physically assaulted by Francis and we hear of an alleged unreported rape by Francis of a 18-yo girl. "I'm sorry, baby, give me a kiss. Give me a kiss." Yuck-o.
Clever headline watch: Mayor tapped water customers for sex.
This is fascinating..."sex might have evolved as a way to concentrate lots of harmful mutations into individual organisms so they could be easily weeded out by natural selection".
Lolita was published 50 years ago and it's still as perverse now as it was then.
Man trades computer tech support (spyware & virus removal mostly) for sexual favors from damsels in distress (via ads on craigslist, of course). One wonders if he's receiving sexually-transmitted viruses in exchange for his computer virus removal services. NSFW if your boss is offended by tshirts with bad puns on them.
Once again, the pornographers are on the cutting edge of technology. Feast your eyes on the Web 2.0ness of mydirtyipod, which offers naughty iPod-ready videos and podcasts. I'm gonna spell this one out for you: NOT SAFE FOR WORK.
Adult spin-off of Doctor Who being developed by the Beeb will have sex and swearing. Does this mean I can throw away my photo collection of Jo Grant posing nude with a Dalek? (second link NSFW)
Nobody's talking about the anal sex portion of a recently released survey on American sexual habits. "Evidently anal sex is too icky to mention in print. But not too icky to have been tried by 35 percent of young women and 40 to 44 percent of young men -- or to have killed some of them."
Amazon has very quietly added sex supplies (lubricants, vibrators, condoms, etc.) to their massive inventory.
I thought this was going to be some sort of Flickr/del.icio.us taggy tag mashup, but Flickrlicio.us is a bunch of hot babes found on Flickr. An anonymous reader: other Flickr + hot chicks sites include FlickrBooty, chicksnbreasts, and flickrchicks. NSFW. And where are the Flickr beefcake sites?
Barcode tattoos + mobile phones with cameras = business card (or, say, a list of your sexual preferences) on your arm.
Steven Johnson's open letter to Hillary Clinton regarding her call for a Congressional investigation about the effects of video games on children. "I know a congressional investigation into [the violence and hostility in high school] football won't play so well with those crucial swing voters, but it makes about as much sense as an investigation into the pressing issue that is Xbox and PlayStation 2."
Jet Set Lara, the newest callgirl blogger. Maybe this one's actually real?
Choirboy. "As head boy at a legendary choir school, Lawrence Lessig was repeatedly molested by the charismatic choir director, part of a horrific pattern of child abuse there. Now, as one of America's most famous lawyers, he's put his own past on trial to make sure such a thing never happens again."
Pickup Lines Used by Mario [of Mario Bros. fame]. "Are you a magic flower? Because you are burning me up."
Why geeks and nerds are worth dating. "They actually give a damn about you. Not how you look (though that's a plus), not how skinny you are, not how much make-up you primp yourself up with, but they like you for you. That kind of thing lasts longer than 'DaMN baby you got a fine ass!!!'"
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