Category Archives: sexuality

beliefs, ramblings, sexuality

Pornography vs Obscenity

I’ve just finished reading Brooke Magnanti’s The Sex Myth: Why Everything We’re Told is Wrong (review later) and she makes a useful point about pornography and obscenity.

The word ‘pornography’ comes from Greek roots: porno-, related to prostitution; graphos, to write. Stories about hookers, in other words … People in the nineteenth century became more worried about drawing a line between what was art and what was obscene. Those worries helped shape the view of what today is labelled ‘pornography’ versus what is labelled ‘erotica’ – even though few people, if any, can give a clear idea of the difference.
‘Obscenity’, meanwhile, comes from the Latin obscenus, meaning repulsive or detestable. Something obscene is something that is offensive to the morality of the time, something taboo. The definition of obscenity is different in different cultures, and even people in the same culture can disagree about what is obscene. Many laws have tried to define obscenity. While erotic imagery can be defined as obscene, it isn’t always considered so, and some laws recognise this

To which I would like to add the word ‘prostitute’: one who engages in sexual activity in exchange for money (payment).
Put that lot together and it means my world view goes something like this …
Technically pornography is stories about those who engage in sex for money. To me this means that any video (or other medium) which portrays a sexual act, where one can reasonably expect that (some of) the participants have been paid is pornography and (depending on one’s predilections) may also be erotic. Mere photographs of vulvas or penises may also be erotic, but are not a sexual act so are not (at least in my world view) pornographic; they aren’t ipso facto a sex act.
Whether one defines the pornographic, or the erotic, as obscene depends very much on one’s personal morality. We each have our own moral code, which may or may not align with that of society at large, and an act (image, description) doesn’t become obscene until it offends our morals and transgresses the line into being taboo. And that act doesn’t have to be sexual.
To use my own views as an example, I have no problem with the depiction of sexual acts, let alone the depiction of breasts, vulvas or penises. Pornography (as defined above) for me only becomes obscene when it crosses the boundary into being violent, non-consensual or involving minors or animals. There are sexual acts I greatly dislike (eg. male homosexuality), but that doesn’t per se make them obscene. But I do find many other things in this world obscene, amongst them the gratuitous killing of people and animals, blatant disregard for human rights, FGM, rape (of people and the environment), corporate greed and bankers mega-bonuses. YMMV.
So pornography is essentially, technically, amenable to definition. Obscenity is not readily definable so easily in anything other that one’s personal world view. Pornography is (should be) a largely objective measure. Obscenity can only ever be subjective. Which, of course, doesn’t mean that legislation cannot prohibit certain acts because the moral view of the majority of the legislature is that they are obscene for them – that’s how our collective, social, morality works and it is only by iconoclasts like me pushing the boundaries that such collective views are shifted.

history, links, science, sexuality, topographical

Your Interesting Links

There’s a lot in this month’s “links”, so let’s get right in …
Science & Medicine
For those of you with youngsters interested in science – or even just for yourself – don’t forget the Royal Society’s Summer Science Exhibition in London which runs 4-9 July.


Earthquakes are well known for making big cracks in the ground, but could an earthquake ever crack a planet apart?
So what is the oldest living thing on the Earth? And no, the mother-in-law doesn’t count!
Now this is really odd. It seems that all Cook pine trees lean towards the equator – and dramatically so! Scientists have only just noticed and they don’t understand why.

It seems that jumping spiders can see the moon, their vision is so good.
Well yes, butterflies have sex, but it is a lot more complicated than we imagine.
So just why are birds’ eggs egg-shaped? Researchers have finally worked out the real reason.
Want to smell like a dog? Well now you can. Psychologist Alexandra Horowitz is training herself to approach the world in the same olfactory way her dogs do.
From dogs to cats … there have been several articles recently on research which has worked out how cats conquered the world. Here are just two, from IFLscience! and the Smithsonian magazine.
And now to humans. Apparently foetuses turn to follow face-like shapes while still in the womb.
Be afraid, at least if you’re American. It seems the Lone Star Tick is causing people to become allergic to meat, and even causing death; scientists are still trying to work out why.
Finally in this section, one science journalist has weighed up the pros and cons of having a PSA test, and found it wanting.
Sexuality
Suzannah Weiss in Glamour wants to end the expectations of pubic hair grooming.
What happens when illness robs someone of their ability to orgasm.
We’ve known for some time, but now research has provided the evidence, that women are the stronger sex.
Men need to be talking about fertility – male fertility.
Apparently there’s an association between sex in old age and keeping your brain sharp.
Environment
Harry Mount laments the vanishing glory of the suburban front garden all in the worship of the automobile.
Social Sciences, Business, Law
Will Self looks at the need for a Britain to have a written constitution – and offers to write it!
Several years ago, lawyer David Allen Green looked at the effects of the political penchant for banning things.
Language
Here are 35 words which many people use wrongly. Yes, even I fall into one or two of the traps.
History, Archaeology & Anthropology
Apparently there was a huge wooden structure at Avebury. It pre-dated Stonehenge by hundreds of years and was (deliberately?) destroyed by fire.

Something many aren’t aware of is that medieval castles were very cleverly designed, even down to the spiral staircases.
So what really did happen at Roswell in 1947.
London
IanVisits goes in search of London’s lost Civil War fortifications.
Also from IanVisits are two items on the London Underground. First a look at possible plans to make gardens in unused ticket offices; and secondly at some of the engineering challenges in taking the heat out of the Underground system.
Lifestyle & Personal Development
Are 16 and 17-year-olds really too young to vote? Dean Burnett, in the Guardian, looks at the evidence.
There are some amazing photos showing the work of Sutherland Macdonald, Victorian Britain’s first professional tattoo artist.
Ada Calhoun, in the Guardian again, looks at how to stay married. Spoiler: don’t get divorced.
People
And finally, Geoff Marshall (who has twice held the record for travelling the whole London Underground in the shortest time) and Vicki Pipe (of the London Transport Museum) are on a record-breaking mission to visit all 2,563 railway stations in mainland Britain this summer – documenting the state of our railways as they go. They started in early May and are already over halfway there. Follow their progress on YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and at All the Stations.

environment, food+drink, medical, people, personal, science, sexuality

Your Interesting Links

There’s a lot in this month’s edition so let’s get straight in …
Science & Medicine
Medics are now saying that arthroscopic surgery for degenerative knee problems (ie. essentially arthritis) does not actually do any much good.
[TRIGGER WARNING] Breaking the taboo of talking about miscarriage.
Another new study shows that, against expectation, women who source online and use abortion drugs do so with very little need for emergency medical help.


And yet another on reproductive medicine … It seems the folk contraceptive “Thunder God Vine” (Tripterygium wilfordii, above) really does prevent conception.
On the physics of having a shit.
More new research has found that daily small doses of cannabis can slow brain decline with ageing – at least in mice.
And here’s yet another instance where it seems we’ve had it all wrong … apparently eating cheese does not raise the risk of heart attack or stroke.
It has long been thought that the way we categorise colours is cultural, but surprisingly it appears to be genetic.
Sexuality
Porn is allegedly having a “terrifying impact” on men. Girl on the Net lifts the lid and finds the evidence rather thin and attitudes biased.
Is the “Dildo of Damocles” daunting? What does/will happen when sex toys connect to the internet?
Environment
It is estimated that the Fukushima accident gave everyone on the planet radiation exposure equivalent to a single X-ray – although unsurprisingly those in Fukushima received rather more it was unlikely to be more than two year’s worth of background radiation, so tiny in the overall scheme of things.
Hedges are as important for the environment as trees, at least in cities.
In another non-obvious finding, research is showing that beaver dams keep streams cool.
History, Archaeology & Anthropology
There are some amazing things happening in palaeoanthropology at the moment, not least that researchers have discovered how to extract DNA from the soil around archaeological sites.
Another of those amazing pieces of palaeoanthropology is the number and age of the Homo naledi finds in South Africa.

At the other end of Africa, a 4000-year-old funeral garden has been discovered in Egypt.
In a recent, and rather more modern, find a rare medieval text printed by William Caxton has been discovered lurking in University of Reading archives.
One of our favourite London bloggers, diamond geezer, visits the Parisian Catacombs.
Finally in this section, another of our favourite London bloggers, IanVists, explores an abandoned railway tunnel used by the BBC in WW2.
London
Which brings us nicely to London itself … Londonist suggests some of London’s more secret places to visit.
Meanwhile Time Out tells us nine things we mostly didn’t know about Euston Station.
Lifestyle & Personal Development
The Guardian magazine on Saturday 27 May featured Laura Dodsworth’s upcoming book Manhood: The Bare Reality in which 100 men talk about manhood through the lens of “me and my penis” as well as having their manhood photographed.
This a follow-on to Bare Reality: 100 Women, Their Breasts, Their Stories
Pre-order Manhood: The Bare Reality from the publishers Pinter & Martin or from Amazon.
[Full disclosure: I was interviewed for this book and there’s a little bit of me in the article, although unless you know you’ll never find it.]
Following which here’s Lee Kynaston in the Telegraph on male pubic hair grooming. My only question is “Why?”.
The key to happiness is not knowing oneself, but knowing how others see us.
But then scientists and philosophers also doubt the ancient claim that vigorous self-examination makes you a better person.
Food & Drink
WFT is alkaline water? Oh, I see, it’s no different to what comes out of the tap.
If you like sushi, you might no longer as its popularity has brought rise in parasitic infections.
People
I wasn’t quite sure where to put this next item, but it is one for the railway buffs amongst us … Geoff Marshall (no relation) and Vicki Pipe are doing All the Stations: They’re travelling to every train station in mainland UK, documenting and videoing as they go. Their videos are all on the All the Stations channel on YouTube; watch the introductory video first to see what they’re planning.
[Geoff Marshall has twice held the official record for travelling the whole London Underground in the fastest time, so he had to be up for another challenge!]
Shock, Horror, Humour

And very finally here are some stories of what happens when scientists take research specimens through airport security.
More in a month’s time.

books, history, links, science, sexuality, words

Your Monthly Links

They’re off! … On the quest for this month’s links to items you really didn’t want to miss the first time.
Science & Medicine
Many statistics are lies compounded by misleading graphics. Here’s a quick guide to spotting lies in visuals.


Queueing is quite complex, both psychologically and mathematically, so no wonder there are old wives tales about how to queue. But many are wrong, and the right answers are non-intuitive. The Guardian gives us some clues.
We don’t normally think of Winston Churchill as a scientist, but he certainly had a passionate interest in, and knowledge of, the science of his day, even down to writing with great foresight about astrobiology and extra-terrestrial life.
Black chickens. Not just black feathers, but black all the way through: meat, bones and organs. No wonder they’re a special, and expensive, breed. It just seems wrong that so many are bred purely for divination.
Social Sciences & Business
In 1944 the CIA wrote a manual on how dissidents can surreptitiously sabotage an organisation’s productivity and gradually undermine it. Now it has been declassified and released.
Language
So who was Gordon Bennett? The BBC looks at a few of the people behind famous phrases.
Writers, improve your text. Here are a number of filler words and phrases which are superfluous and serve only to bulk out your word count.
Polari is a British slang dating back to at least the 19th century. Used by a number of tightly knit cultures it is perhaps best known for its use by sex workers and the gay subculture. As you might guess the Bible in Polari is quite a hoot; here’s my blog post about it.
Art & Literature
Book blogger Karen Langley has rediscovered Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast trilogy. Here’s her blog post about it.
History
Construction of London’s Crossrail has unearthed a vast amount of archaeology. Here are two very different reports on the same Clerkenwell site which includes a completely lost river and a curious pair of plague victims: the first report is from IanVisits and the second from the Guardian.
London
Apart from the above item on Crossrail archaeology there is only one snippet on London this month …
Canals are well known for carrying water not electricity, but IanVisits, again, brings the story of how the Regent’s Canal ended up safely carrying both.
Lifestyle
Life is stressful. Things are continually conspiring against us. We all know that if we get too stressed we get sick. So it’s useful to have a list of major life stressors, with their relative values, so you can work out your likelihood of a stress-related illness.
Unsurprisingly the second most highly-rated stress is divorce. Here are four behaviours which appear to be the most reliable predictors of divorce.
Finally in this section is our favourite zen master talking about immigration and tribalism. It’s a perspective worth reading.
Food & Drink

And finally, finally … Garlic. Whether you love it or hate it trying to supress the resulting odour is far from obvious.
Be good until next month!

beliefs, current affairs, sexuality

Message Getting Home

At long last a few UK politicians are getting the message about the need to decriminalise sex work. This is from the Independent a few days ago.

Liberal Democrats move to quash all historical sex-work convictions
of prostitutes and punters


What I find especially interesting, and slightly surprising, is that ex-senior policeman Lord Paddick is in favour. The police aren’t generally considered to be forward thinkers, but then Paddick has always been an outlier.
Now to get the message home to the rest of our politicians that New Zealand seems to have the best model.

arts, medical, sexuality

Femina ars [NSFW]

Here’s one for all of you who engage with art, body positivity, female anatomy or just pure eccentricity.
Artist’s Unapologetic Vagina Paintings Are A Force Of Body Positivity
and
Jacqueline Secor Art – Diversity of Nature
Enjoy!

medical, sexuality, thoughts

Taboo Vocabulary

I’ve been going on, for a long time, about how we need to normalise nudity and sexuality, and become much more familiar and at ease with our bodies and bodily functions.
Apropos this I recently caught up with a July 2016 press release from The Eve Appeal, who are a charity devoted to fighting women’s cancers.
The press release reports on research they conducted into women’s, specifically young women’s, knowledge of their sexual anatomy, language and attitudes. The results are quite worrying.
Almost two-thirds of young women have problems using words such as “vagina” and “vulva” and only half of 26-35 year-olds are able to locate the vagina (compared with 80% of 66-75 years-olds).
But it gets worse …

It’s not just a knowledge gap … the data also showed a distinct difference in attitudes towards talking about gynaecological health issues … more than one in ten of 16-35 year olds said they found it very hard to talk to their GPs about gynaecological health concerns, and nearly a third admitted that they had avoided going to the doctors altogether with gynaecological issues due to embarrassment …
These findings are in direct contrast with the popular misconception that society is more open these days, making it much easier for women of younger generations to talk about gynaecological health.

I find this very worrying. It means there is a huge section of the population who are at much higher risk than need be of serious gynaecological health issues.
And according to Men’s Health Forum, men are no better about knowledge of, and attitudes to, their genital equipment. So don’t go getting all smug, guys!
I dread to think how bad is the knowledge of the other sex’s anatomy and the naming of parts. Or of normal bodily functions like menstruation.
We just have to change this! We have to get everyone much more familiar with their bodies — with bodies of all sizes, shapes and genders. We have to teach people the correct, as well as the incorrect and slang, names for body parts. We have to overcome the embarrassment and the knowledge gap.
There is really no reason for us to be embarrassed, because medical professionals aren’t — they’ve seen it all before. When I was in hospital recently for my knee operation I had a conversation with one of the (more mature) nurses, who remarked that they all, very early on in their careers, stop seeing genitals in any sexual way; they just become another piece of body no different from a finger or toe. And that is how it should be; just another part of a body. Until one gets into a specifically intimate and sexual situation.
It is also important that we teach when it’s appropriate to use various terms. While “penis”, “vulva”, “testicles”, “anus” are appropriate for a medical context, “prick”, “cunt”, “balls” and “arse” (although perfectly good Anglo-Saxon words) are much better kept for more intimate, private or jocular occasions. And even greater circumlocutory euphemisms are best abandoned completely.
Moreover, if we were all more attuned to, and comfortable with, our intimate anatomy how much more difficult it would become (and we would make it) for sexual predators/abusers. It would be much easier for (potential) victims to speak up, either at the time or afterwards. How much easier would it be for us to fight against female (and indeed male) genital mutilation and to reduce STIs.
I don’t know how we do this piece of public education, especially when we are starting from a base of such poor knowledge and attitudes. What I do know is that the responsibility has to lie with both parents and teachers. Actually it lies with all of us … we all need to use the correct words and not be frightened to do so.
If we can achieve this I feel sure it will result in much better health for all of us, because there will be no stigma in discussing “sensitive” subjects with medical professionals, or indeed with each other, just as we are all comfortable talking about ears, eyes, knees and backache.
It beats me why we can’t just do this.

beliefs, current affairs, freedom of speech, sexuality

Don't Criminalise Us …

The fight to get governments to decriminalise sex work (and sex workers) continues. Here’s a piece which highlights the views of Europe’s sex workers — most of whom are (voluntary, not trafficked) migrants.


It is notable that it isn’t just the sex workers who are saying sex work should be decriminalised. This view is backed by

major human rights organisations such Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, the World Health Organization and several other United Nations agencies such as UN Women and the UNAIDS Advisory Group on HIV and Sex Work are also calling for the decriminalisation of sex work, noting that decriminalisation guarantees better working conditions, and reduces the social vulnerability and marginalisation of sex workers.

And as that implies many are now warning that the basic human rights — as covered, for instance, by the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union — are being violated; and that those violations are state sanctioned the world over.
When are people going to wake up to what’s going on around us? It’s being done in our name, and yet how many of us agree with it?

beliefs, current affairs, sexuality

No Sex Please …

OK, so here’s another nasty, not so little, piece of legislation from the UK government.
The new digital economy bill, which is currently going through parliament, intends to block websites hosting “unconventional” sexual content. So who decides what is conventional, and who will implement and police such a ban?
There’s a piece in yesterday’s Guardian (yes, again!) which tries to explain the What, how and why?
Now whether you like so-called pornography or not, this is worrying. The legislation is ill-conceived and appears to be not just draconian but also potentially arbitrary and ill-defined.
Worse, my personal belief is that it infringes freedom of speech (and belief) and I would agree with critics of the bill who say it is not the government’s place to police what kinds of consenting sex (or indeed anything else) can be watched by adults.
I continue to believe that pornography (unless violent, coercive or involving minors) has a valuable place, just as does the rest of the sex industry. You, personally, may find it distasteful — just as I find the idea of male-male sex distasteful — but that doesn’t mean either should be banned and I would always defend your right to indulge should you choose.
The whole of the English-speaking world has a history of drawing its rules of censorship much more tightly than continental Europe. But that changed with the internet allowing information to be streamed direct to our homes without restriction. And the English-speaking, puritan, nanny state doesn’t like it.
It’s time we started treating people like adults and allowing them to make up their own minds. But to do that requires us to invest in sensible education of our children, and isn’t it easier to keep them in ignorance and subjugated?
So-called pornography is not being forced down people’s throats. It is complete myth that the internet is awash with porn at every turn and it’s being gratuitously feed to every child in the land. Yes, it is there, but you (whatever your age) have to look for it. My systems have every available filter turned OFF and still I do not get a continual stream of emails offering me penis enlargement (surely fairly tame?) nor does every Google search bring up 27,000 pages sex videos and bestiality.
It is worrying enough to have the state control our sexual predilections but the fear is that this will go way beyond pornography; it is the first example of any liberal democratic country creating an internet censor. The fear is what such a framework could go on to be used for.
Yes, this is censorship and as such must be resisted.
Wake up, the coffee pot is bubbling on the stove.