Benny Hill got his start at The Windmill Theatre, which “was infamous for its risqué dancing girls and nude tableaux but it was a tough crowd for comedians who would make up part of the show. Not too many patrons were there for the jokes. … Hill had a strange relationship with women. He was very confused about the accusations of sexism in the latter part of his career. … But society around him had moved on and an elderly man surrounded or chased by very scantily-clad women made for uncomfortable viewing.”
From the FAQ section at Science Cheerleader: “The Science Cheerleaders are professional cheerleaders pursuing science careers who playfully challenge stereotypes, turn everyone onto science by encouraging participation in citizen science activities, and inspire the 3-4 million U.S. cheerleaders to consider careers in science, technology, engineering and math.”
“Now, thanks to The Icelandic Phallological Museum, it is finally possible for individuals to undertake serious study into the field of phallology in an organized, scientific fashion. The Icelandic Phallological Museum contains a collection of more than two hundred and fifteen penises and penile parts belonging to almost all the land and sea mammals that can be found in Iceland.”
On Ken Russell’s Lisztomania (1975): “The girls tear and claw at Liszt, who whips a harp from out of nowhere [and] … inspires them to summon out his trouser snake with a sweet siren’s song. Their lilting calls yield totally unexpected results as Liszt’s member expands and expands, finally ending up at a length of about ten feet.” Liszt is played by Roger Daltrey, the Pope is played by Ringo Starr. Somehow, Wagner and Hitler also get into this movie. Here’s a frame that I copied from the previously linked Cine-Miscreant:
The Rhine maidens in "Lisztomania"
“After outlining Marcuse’s theory of the role of Eros in social life, I discuss two pornographic Web sites that combine eroticism and social critique. I argue that Marcuse’s work is valuable for its emphasis on the intersection of sex, technology, and capitalist economy, but that it needs to be supplemented by a focus on masculinity and the male body in Internet pornography.”
“Jacobs describes an experiment in which she and a group of her students went to a Starbucks coffeehouse in Shenzhen to search for sexually explicit media on the Internet. The aim was to see what they could access through mainland China’s Great Firewall. “We were there for 30 minutes and we found all this porn using an Internet connection in a public space.” Pornography has been officially banned in China since the foundation of the People’s Republic in 1949. …
Subcultures of user-generated or DIY pornography have evolved on the Internet as a result.”
From Dyan Elliott’s The Bride of Christ Goes to Hell: Metaphor and Embodiment in the Lives of Pious Women, 200-1500: “The impact of Bernardine spirituality among the early Beguine mystics provides the impetus for a sensual, embodied, and ultimately eroticized bride of Christ. The tendency to express this spirituality somatically perhaps culminates in the matrimonial embellishments of later pious widows such as Bridget of Sweden and Dorothea of Montau.”
Karmen MacKendrick: “It is hard to see how one might have an obligation to others to feel the bite and burn of a well-wielded whip …. It is just as hard to see how it makes sense to say that one could have the right, just for oneself, to be broken out of that self, slammed against the sturdy boundaries of the ego until they break. … This shattering, exteriorizing intensity is an otherness that arises from within the focus on the body and its pleasures. … We, at least since Leopold von Sacher-Masoch first eyed the Lives of the Martyrs … have been inspired by images of the saints: Teresa, unspeakably joyous as the cherub’s arrow pierces her entrails; … Sebastian, serene with his multiple arrow-piercings; Catherine stretched and broken on the wheel.”
"Monna Vanna" by Franz von Stuck
According to Anne Dufourmantelle, “Philosophical ideas, like sexual enjoyment, exceed our control and can only come to us unbidden. Both offer the illusion that we can escape time and mortality into the timelessness of thought or the ecstatic moment of the sexual encounter. In sex we try to overcome our separateness and to connect with someone else. Likewise, philosophy tries to grasp a hidden world order in which everything is connected. Most importantly, in sex, one encounters another body, another world outside one’s own, and this unseats and transforms.”
“Although neither Severin nor his creator [Sacher-Masoch] appears in David Ives’s wildly intelligent and sometimes frightening new play, “Venus in Fur” (at the Classic Stage Company), it helps to have some knowledge of the novel and its author …. This sexual roundelay about power and powerlessness, about the imagination butting up against so-called “reality,” is played out by two contemporary characters.” That review’s a couple of years old.
Have you seen the article in the Atlantic about Jaroslav Flegr’s work, which links schizophrenia and car crashes to a brain parasite that we can get from cats? According to that article, male rats that have the parasite behave in more risky and even self-destructive ways and are more attractive to female rats than the more prudent males are. Well, now the folks at Improbable Research have linked to another of Flegr’s papers, which is called “Dominance, submissivity (and homosexuality) in general population. Testing of evolutionary hypothesis of sadomasochism by internet-trap-method,” (here’s the pdf of that paper).
“Subcutaneous Penile Insertion of Domino Fragments by Incarcerated Males in Southwest United States Prisons: A Report of Three Cases: … In each case, an incarcerated Hispanic male or fellow inmate filed a domino into a unique shape for placement under the penile skin. Utilizing the tip of a ballpoint pen or a sharpened shard of plastic to create a puncture wound, each man inserted the domino fragment into the subcutaneous tissue of the penis. … Conclusions: Incarcerated males put themselves at risk for injury and infection when attempting penile enhancement with improvised equipment.” (via Improbable Research)
“The editors, who are also contributors to this book, begin by identifying themselves as “part of a generation of women currently entering the workforce as professors, researchers, lawyers, and other professionals who also worked during some part of our lives in the sex industry” (xi). “Flesh for Fantasy is devoted to destigmatizing the sex industry, illuminating the labor conditions of strippers, and revising the cultural connotations of exotic dance” (xxxii). It challenges the patronizing attitudes about sex work that have characterized most, but not all, feminist discussions until very recently.”
“The distinction drew a line between sex and gender. Sex referred to the reproductive categories of male and female, and it was a useful biological concept, applicable to humans, nonhuman animals, and plants. Gender, on the other hand, indicates the socially constructed roles, behaviors, and traits of male and female. … The French philosopher Michel Foucault set the agenda when he lamented … that “the notion of sex made it possible to group together, in an artificial unity, anatomical elements, biological functions, conducts, sensations, and pleasures, and it enabled one to make use of this fictitious unity as a causal principle.”"
“On the evening of May 29 [1912] at Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris the audience was scandalously titillated (or titillated scandalously) as they watched Nijinsky’s erotic pleasure dancing the lead to Claude Debussy’s Prélude à L’Après-Midi d’un Faune. The audience was captive to and captivated by the great exhibitionist in a dark brown and white costume designed by Léon Bakst and based on a Greek satyr … enthralled with his erection the size of a tree trunk.” Here’s Nijinsky about to scandalize Parisians by simulating masturbation with a nymph’s scarf:
Nijinsky as the Faun about to pounce on a nymph's scarf
“Barmaid’s risqué outfits cause gender divide in Italian town: … The female mayor of the town has called the 34-year-old barmaid a threat to public order, because her miniskirts, high heels and skimpy tops are drawing male customers from up to 70 miles away, who clog up the nearby streets with their cars and park illegally.”
“A how-to guide for better masturbation that hangs in Skidmore College bathrooms is steaming up the campus in more ways than one. The [guide], published by the college’s Center for Sex and Gender Relations, encourages masturbation as “a great way to relieve some of the stress that comes with classes, finals and the never ending homework.” The poster shows a map of the body’s erotic zones and offers suggestions for heightening self-pleasure.”
David Barash on “The Evolutionary Mystery of Female Orgasm” Parts 1, 2, and 3.
Uncanny photo erotica by a Russian artist.
Here’s a kinky scene from the 1963 film of Jean Genet’s The Balcony. The cast included Peter Falk, Leonard Nimoy, and Shelley Winters. The actors in this scene are Ruby Dee and Peter Brocco.
