Category Archives: sexuality

environment, history, links, music, personal, pleasures, sexuality, thoughts, topographical

Weekly Interesting Links

OK guys & gals, so here’s another weekly, but doubtless occasional, new series — links to interesting sites I’ve come across during the week but which haven’t made it into a full posting.

An article by my friend Potter-san on the Soul of Okinawan Music. The music of Okinawa (the southern-most tropical islands of Japan) is a fun eclectic mix of their native music and just about anything they can import. Try it! I was surprised how much of it I liked.

Also advance information on the London Okinawa Day 2011 on Saturday 25 June. I’ve never managed to get to this annual event but it sounds like it should be a fun day. Anyone want to get together a party of us?

On a totally different subject, a thought-provoking item Should Young Teens be Prescribed Hormonal Contraception? by Prof. Kate Clancy. All the more powerful because Clancy is American and her stance is totally contrary to the prevailing American ethic of total teenage abstinence.

If you are interested in your family history and have forebears who worked on the railway you might be interested in the Railway Ancestors FHS.

In view of the week’s biggest event (at least here in the UK) history buffs may be interested in Medieval Weddings.

One of the most misunderstood areas of the law as it affects anyone involved in literary or artistic ventures is copyright. Fortunately the British Library describe the duration of UK copyright in one easy flowchart. But I suspect I shall have to continue to explain intellectual property law even to our literary society trustees. 🙁

And finally, here’s a super eco-idea: use cardboard packaging impregnated with seeds to rejuvenate the environment. No sorry you can’t have the idea, it’s already been done by Life Box.

beliefs, current affairs, history, quotes, sexuality, thoughts

Quotes of the Week

A huge selection this week, even with ignoring the royal wedding.

To most Christians, the Bible is like a software licence. Nobody actually reads it. They just scroll to the bottom and click “I agree”.
[Unknown]

Science has never drummed up quite as effective a tranquillizing agent as a sunny spring day.
[W Earl Hall]

Hey you! Yes, you, stop being unhappy with yourself, you are perfect. Stop wishing you looked like someone else or wishing people liked you as much as they like someone else, stop trying to get attention from those who hurt you. Stop hating your body, your face, your personality, your quirks, love them, without those things you wouldn’t be you, and why would you want to be anyone else? Be confident with who you are. Smile, it’ll draw people in, if anyone hates on you because you are happy with yourself then you stick your middle finger in the air and say screw it, my happiness will not depend on others any more. I’m happy because I love who I am. I love my flaws, I love my imperfections, they make me me. And ‘me’ is pretty amazing.
[Unknown]

Life would be infinitely happier if we could only be born at the age of 80 and gradually approach 18.
[Mark Twain]

A lie is a lie even if everyone believes it. The truth is the truth even if nobody believes it.
[Unknown]

A fortune teller told me: Every place is a goldmine. You have only to give yourself time, sit in a tea-house watching the passers-by, stand in a corner of the market, go for a haircut. You pick up a thread — a word, a meeting, a friend of a friend of someone you just met — and soon the most insipid, most insignificant place becomes a mirror of the world, a window on life, a theatre of humanity. The goldmine is exactly over there where you are.
[Tiziano Terzani]

Why am I an atheist? I ask you: Why is anybody not an atheist? Everyone starts out being an atheist. No one is born with belief in anything. Infants are atheists until they are indoctrinated, I resent anyone pushing their religion on me. I don’t push my atheism on anybody else. Live and let live. Not many people practice that when it comes to religion.
[Andy Rooney]

Go now and live. Experience. Dream. Risk. Close your eyes and jump, enjoy the free-fall. Choose exhilaration over comfort. Choose magic over predictability. Choose potential over safety. Wake up to the magic of everyday life. Make friends with your intuition. Trust your gut. Discover the beauty of uncertainty. Know yourself fully before you make promises to another. Make millions of mistakes so that you will know how to choose what you really need. Know when to hold on and when to let go. Love hard and often and without reservation. Seek knowledge. Open yourself to possibility. Keep your heart open, your head high and your spirit free. Embrace your darkness along with your light. Be wrong every once in a while, and don’t be afraid to admit it. Awaken to the brilliance in ordinary moments. Tell the truth about yourself no matter what the cost. Own your reality without apology. See goodness in the world. Be Bold. Be Fierce. Be Grateful. Be Wild, crazy and gloriously free. Be you. Go now, and live.
[Unknown]

Every creed promises a paradise which will be absolutely uninhabitable for anyone of civilized taste.
[Evelyn Waugh]

But adults aren’t rational. I’m unsure why we expect adolescents to be.
[Prof. Kate Clancey]

War is a series of catastrophes that result in a victory.
[Georges Clemenceau]

A rumour without a leg to stand on will get around some other way.
[John Tudor]

Life is a comedy to those who think, A tragedy to those who feel, And an incomprehensible to those who think they feel.
[Graffito found on a university door when I was a student, circa 1973]

The written word sings in silence through the caverns of the mind.
[Victor Stok]

Her breasts were two lovely promontories. Wherever one looked one discovered soft open spaces, alluring estuaries, pleasant glades, hillocks, mounds, where pilgrims could have lingered in prayer, where they could have quenched their thirst at cooling springs.
[Gabriel Chevallier, Clochemerle]

[I]n all her splendour, with the rich abundance of her lovely milk-white flesh, her bold sweeping contours, her magnificent projections of poop and prow … a frightful incarnation of lewdness, a satanic vision, convulsed and writhing in the shameful pleasures of guilty love.
[Gabriel Chevallier, Clochemerle]

It must be strange being Prince William or Prince Harry on a stag night, shoving pictures of your gran into a lap-dancer’s bra.
[Origin Unknown]

nudism, sexuality, thoughts

Good Willie!

3 Comments

Continuing our theme of normalising nudity and sexuality, I have an intriguing question. Well I think it’s interesting anyway.

My friend Katy has recently been to see the National Theatre production of Frankenstein starring Jonny Lee Miller and Benedict Cumberbatch. You can find her post about it here. At the end of it she says:

Still, at least I got to see Jonny Lee Miller’s willy […]
Good, but still nothing to beat Ian McKellen’s just in case you were wondering.
I’m doing a survey. Famous Theatrical Willies Wot I Have Known.

And it made me wonder … What makes a “good” willie? What is “good” for you? Size? Shape? Surrounding hairiness, or lack thereof? Some vague aesthetic beauty?

And here I’m talking in a non-sexual context; not about what makes for great sex with a specific partner — although they could be the same, of course. This is the willie to look at and appreciate aesthetically, and perhaps desire to know better (regardless of your interest in its owner); in the way you would appreciate Michaelangelo’s David, sans figleaf.

And for those of you who like yoni … What makes a good yoni? Again, what is good for you? Aesthetically.

Intriguing isn’t it? And surprisingly difficult. We have enough trouble saying what we like in a face, and we see hundreds of them every day. And we’ll happily discuss what we like about faces and other body parts. Lads in the pub may even discuss the finer points of boobs. Yet we never, at least in my experience, discuss the aesthetics of genitalia. And yet we all know they’re there. And we’ve all seen a few (although even the most diehard genital observer would probably never come close to seeing as many as they do faces). So why shouldn’t we discuss their aesthetics as well?

And, yes, I’m going to have to go and think about my likes and dislikes too!

freedom of speech, medical, science, sexuality

Male Circumcision

1 Comment

I’ve blogged about the circumcision of male babies as being child abuse and mutilation before (see here).

There’s a useful article, supporting my point of view, on CNN from a day or so ago. It suggests that boy babies should not be circumcised but that the option be given to teenagers when the subject can give informed consent.

The comments I’ve read support the view that boy babies should not be circumcised; if parents/medics are not worried about hygiene than it is better to teach boys to wash their members properly.

As one might expect there is, of course, debate about how a teenage boy can make an informed decision until he has some significant sexual experience. And indeed I would agree with the view that you can’t make a proper decision without that sexual experience.

I would actually go further. How about we make circumcision (male and female) illegal until such time as the person can legally give informed consent – and in my book there would be no exceptions regardless of religious (or any other) considerations barring genuinely and immediate life-threatening medical conditions.

freedom of speech, nudism, sexuality, thoughts

Aspects of Censorship

1 Comment

What’s wrong with these two pictures?

That’s right. Nothing.

But they show male and female naughty bits! And to find the likes of them on the internet is increasingly difficult: one either has to steal them from the nether reaches of sites like Flickr or go to X-rated sites. Not even most stock photograph or medical sites carry wholesome photographs of real people in the nude. This is ridiculous. Indeed it is increasingly censorship by the back door.

Malcolm Boura, British Naturism‘s (BN) Research and Liaison Officer writes a useful short article in the latest edition of BN’s members’ magazine with a longer, more detailed briefing document on the BN website.

Here, in Malcom’s words, are some of the salient points from his article:

Until a couple of years ago, I was proud to live in a country which valued freedom of speech but then I started to dig below the surface … There are an enormous number of censors but most of them operate behind a veil of secrecy …

A worrying development in recent years is the exporting of American prejudices to us by corporations such as Facebook and Apple … why should a US businessman dictate what we are allowed to see? …

Films on television are frequently cut but have you ever known a broadcaster admit to it? … Usually, the censorship is to placate those who preserve the memory of the late Mary Whitehouse, not for any rational reason, so it suits them to keep quiet about it …

So what harm does it do? If a social worker tries to obtain child protection documents from the BN website, they will probably be stopped by the council’s web-filtering software. The message is clear – naturism is so dangerous that even adults must be protected from it.

That reinforces prejudice and that could be catastrophic for any naturist family with whom the social worker is working …

Censorship has been vastly more effective at preventing access to wholesome pictures of the body than it has in preventing access to pornography. Should pornography really be the main way by which children and young people find out what people look like? Even worse, should it be the main way they find out how people behave in a sexual relationship? …

Why is it that so many people just assume that nudity must be harmful to children? Why is it that politicians just assume that people will support moves towards greater prudery? … The excuse … is “Think of the children” but as happens far too often, nobody is bothering to actually think … It is just an appeal to assumed popular prejudice. I say ‘assumed’ because I doubt very much if it really is that popular.

If you’re interested in censorship, the extent to which its tentacles reach into daily life, how it affects society and ways in which the naturist movement may be affected, then I commend the Malcolm’s briefing document.

And if censorship reaches so far into the realms of nudity, body image, sexuality etc. you can be sure it is there in may other areas as well.

We need to remain ever on our guard and fight this creeping paralysis. It’s hard because much of the censorship is not formalised and is totally unaccountable. But to maintain a civilised society freedom of speech and human rights must be upheld. And to do that nudity and sexuality need to be normalised, not marginalised and criminalised.

beliefs, current affairs, freedom of speech, pleasures, quotes, science, sexuality, thoughts, topographical

Quotes of the Week

A good selection of amusements amongst this week’s quotes …

The future is already here – it’s just not very evenly distributed.
[William Gibson]

I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it.
[Thomas Jefferson]

Society places a great deal of importance upon “being concerned” about this, that or the other terrible thing going on somewhere in the world. I agree that a bit of this concern is useful in helping alleviate suffering in those places. But it strikes me that the vast majority of what we call “being concerned” involves getting into our own heads, turning over the information, imagining whatever we want to imagine, working up our emotions, wallowing in our feelings like a pig in mud. For some reason I’ve never been able to comprehend very clearly this makes us look good socially, like we’re doing the right thing. But I’m unable to see how watching endless reports […] about a disaster really helps anything.
[Brad Warner at http://hardcorezen.blogspot.com/]

You can keep a dog; but it is the cat who keeps people, because cats find humans useful domestic animals.
[George Mikes, How to be Decadent]

Cats are smarter than dogs. You can’t get eight cats to pull a sled through snow.
[Jeff Valdez]

Life is fragile. You and I are living lives just as precarious as those people who got swept away into the ocean last week. We just fool ourselves into believing otherwise. But that’s not a reason to live in fear. Life is a terminal disease.
[Brad Warner on the Sendai Earthquake at http://hardcorezen.blogspot.com/2011/03/japan-earthquake.html]

Every mountain; every rock on this planet; every living thing; every piece of you and me was forged in the furnaces of space.
[Prof. Brian Cox; Wonders of the Universe; BBC2 TV, 13 March 2011]

I hear the argument, and it is an ingenious argument only a lawyer of his brilliance could make …
[David Cameron replying in House of Commons to Sir Malcolm Rifkind]

Never play with a dead cat and above all never make friends with a monkey.
[Osbert Sitwell, quoting his father in Tales My Father Taught Me. Thanks to Katyboo for this one.]

The natural world is a living erotic museum filled with variations in male genitalia, illustrating how natural selection has paid nearly as much attention to the male member as Catholic priests have.
[http://zinjanthropus.wordpress.com/]

To you , I’m an atheist; to God, I’m the loyal opposition.
[Woody Allen]

“Are there circumstances in which the government might …?”
“Well there could be circumstances. To answer your question in any other way would preclude all possibilities.”
[William Hague, UK Foreign Secretary, answering a question from the Parliamentary Foreign Affairs Committee; 16/03/2011]

beliefs, medical, personal, quotes, science, sexuality

Quotes of the Week

Another weekly selection of esoterica …

Anyone who tells you that your body is anything other than the beautiful, glorious MIRACLE that it is is, as they say in “Princess Bride”, probably selling something.
[Emily Nagoski at ]

[E]ach of us has the job of finding the beliefs we’re not interested in carrying with us any more, uprooting them, and finding something new and healthier to take their place. This process is neither easy nor painless. But it is a path to the confidence and joy I advocate everyone bring to bed with them every night.
[Emily Nagoski at ]

Men always fall into the absurdity of endeavouring to develop the mind, to push it violently forward in this direction or in that. The mind should be receptive, a harp waiting to catch the winds, a pool ready to be ruffled, not a bustling busybody, for ever trotting about on the pavement looking for a new bun shop.
[Robert Hichens, The Green Carnation, 1894]

Sex ought to be a wholly satisfying link between two affectionate people from which they emerge unanxious, rewarded, and ready for more.
[Alex Comfort]

The debate [in 1907 American Medicine about the weight of the soul] went on from the May issue all the way through December, whereupon I lost the thread, my eye having strayed across the page to “A Few Points in the Ancient History of Medicine and Surgery,” by Harry H Grigg, MD. It is with thanks to Harry H Grigg that I can now hold forth at cocktail parties on the history of haemorrhoids, gonorrhoea, circumcision, and the speculum.
[Mary Roach; Stiff, The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers]

Sex is one of the nine reasons for reincarnation. The other eight are unimportant.
[Henry Miller]

A promiscuous person is someone who is getting more sex than you are.
[Victor Lownes]

We do not remember. A certain group of our little people do this for us. They live in that part of the brain which has become known as the ‘fold of Broca’ … There may be twelve or fifteen shifts that change about and are on duty at different times like men in a factory … Therefore it seems likely that remembering a thing is all a matter of getting in touch with the shift that was on duty when the recording was done.
[Thomas Edison; Diaries]