Week 16 entry for 52 weeks challenge.
Time for another self-portrait, I think, this week. As the title implies, this was taken sitting waiting to see my osteopath.
Good Willie!
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!
Male Circumcision
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.
Quotes of the Week
This week’s selection of quotes.
You should make a point of trying every experience once, excepting incest and folk dancing.
[Arnold Bax]
Good judgement comes from experience, and often experience comes from bad judgement.
[Rita Mae Brown]
I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.
[Galileo Galilei]
If you believe in the existence of fairies at the bottom of the garden you are deemed fit for the bin. If you believe in parthenogenesis, ascension, transubstantiation and all the rest of it, you are deemed fit to govern the country.
[Jonathan Meades]
Christianity: one woman’s lie about an affair that got seriously fucking out of hand.
[Monica at Monicks Unleashed, http://monicks.net/]
The Dalai Lama, when asked what surprised him most about humanity, answered:
“Man … Because he sacrifices his health in order to make money. Then he sacrifices money to recuperate his health. And then he is so anxious about the future that he does not enjoy the present; the result being that he does not live in the present or the future; he lives as if he is never going to die, and then dies having never really lived.”
[https://neilperkin.typepad.com/only_dead_fish/2011/03/something-to-remember.html]
I’d call you a c**t but you lack the warmth and depth.
[Amy Sedaris]
By nature a woman is an angel, but if her wings get broken she learns how to fly on a broom.
[unknown]
Measuring Balconies
No, not that sort of balcony! Monday’s Wizard of Id cartoon just tickled my sense of the ridiculous …
Bad Science Rising
Some while ago I read Bad Science by Ben Goldacre. As his website says:
Ben is an award-winning writer, broadcaster, and medical doctor who specialises in unpicking dodgy scientific claims made by scaremongering journalists, dodgy government reports, evil pharmaceutical corporations, PR companies and quacks. He has written the weekly “Bad Science” column in the Guardian since 2003.
“Bad Science“, the Guardian column and blog, seeks to expose the misrepresentation of scientific and medical reporting in the media.
Bad Science, the book, looks in greater depth at the ways in which the aforementioned journalists, pharmaceutical companies, PR people, quacks and, yes, even government reports distort, misrepresent and lie about the science behind just about everything in order to have us believe what they want us to believe.
In reading the book I culled a few good quotes (page references to the 2008 paperback edition) for you …
——
As the perfect example, there are huge numbers of creams (and other beauty treatments) claiming to deliver oxygen directly to your skin. Many of the creams contain peroxide, which, if you really want to persuade yourself of its efficacy, has a chemical formula of H2O2, and could fancifully be conceived of as water ‘with some extra oxygen’, although chemical formulae don’t really work that way – after all, a pile of rust is an iron bridge ‘with some extra oxygen’, and you wouldn’t imagine it would oxygenate your skin. [Page 25]
——
Like most things in the story the natural sciences can tell about the world, it’s all so beautiful, so gracefully simple, yet so rewardingly complex, so neatly connected – not to mention true – that I can’t even begin to imagine why anyone would ever want to believe some New Age ‘alternative’ nonsense instead. [Page 117]
——
We should also remember that bizarre English ritual whereby GCSE results get better every year, yet anyone who suggests that the exams are getting easier is criticised for undermining the achievement of the successful candidates. In fact, taking the long view, this easing is obvious: there are forty-year-old O-level papers which are harder than the current A-level syllabus; and there are present-day university finals papers in maths that are easier than old A-level papers. [Page 140]
——
SSRI antidepressant drugs cause sexual side-effects fairly commonly, including anorgasmia. We should be clear (and I’m trying to phrase this as neutrally as possible): I really enjoy the sensation of orgasm. It’s important to me, and everything I experience in the world tells me that this sensation is important to other people too […] There are evolutionary psychologists who would try to persuade you that the entirety of human culture and language is driven, in large part, by the pursuit of the sensation of orgasm. Losing it seems like an important side-effect to ask about.
And yet, various studies have shown that the reported prevalence of anorgasmia in patients taking SSRI drugs varies between 2 per cent and 73 per cent, depending primarily on how you ask: a casual, open-ended question about side-effects, for example, or a careful and detailed enquiry. One 3,000-subject review on SSRIs simply did not list any sexual side-effects on its twenty-three-item side-effect table. Twenty-three other things were more important, according to the researchers, than losing the sensation of orgasm. I have read them. They are not. [Pages 190-191]
——
Research conducted at Cardiff University in 2007 showed that 80 per cent of all broadsheet news stories were ‘wholly, mainly or partially constructed from second-hand material, provided by news agencies and by the public relations industry’. [Page 211]
——
Science coverage now tends to come from the world of medicine, and the stories are of what will kill you, or save you. Perhaps it is narcissism, or fear, but the science of health is important to people, and at the very time when we need it the most, our ability to think around the issue is being energetically distorted by the media, corporate lobbies and, frankly, cranks.
Without anybody noticing, bullshit has become an extremely important public health issue, and for reasons that go far beyond the obvious hysteria around immediate harms: the odd measles tragedy, or a homoeopath’s unnecessary malaria case. Doctors today are keen – as it said in our medical school notes – to work ‘collaboratively with the patient towards an optimum health outcome’. They discuss evidence with their patients, so that they can make their own decisions about treatments.
[…] working in the NHS you meet patients from every conceivable walk of life, in huge numbers, discussing some of the most important issues in their lives. This has consistently taught me one thing: people aren’t stupid. Anybody can understand anything, as long as it is clearly explained. [Pages 316-7]
——
The book certainly makes you think about the truth of just about everything we’re told. It is definitely recommended reading, it isn’t hard even for non-scientific technophobes and is most definitely clearly explained.
[15/52] Apple Blossom
Week 15 entry for 52 weeks challenge.
Newly opened blossom on our apple tree. I reckon it is around 3 weeks early flowering this year. And as we’re having several warm sunny days and the bees are out there’s a good chance that we’ll get a decent crop of apples this year.
Hairy-Footed Flower Bees
You learn something every day – well at least you do if you keep your eyes open.
This lovely warm sunny weather has brought out all the bumblebees and we’ve got our usual share buzzing around the garden. But this year I noticed one I’ve not registered before. Well I probably have seen it but not closely enough to wonder at what it is. It is an all black bumblebee-like bee and I’ve seen several in the last couple of days.
This morning one was silly enough to fly in through the study window and of course it then couldn’t find its way out. I rescued it in a clear perspex bug-catching pot I keep, so I was able to have a good look at it before releasing it. I also tried to photograph it but it was so constantly on the move I could not get a decent shot.
This bee was about 1.5-2 cm long, bumblebee shaped, black and hairy but with distinctive ginger hairs on its back legs; no other colour at all. At first I thought the ginger patches were full pollen sacs but they were much too dark and on closer inspection turned out to be patches of gingery hairs.
Looking it up it turns out to be a female Hairy-Footed Flower Bee, Anthophora plumipes. This is an important early pollinator. This s good because we seem to have lost our colonies of Osmia rufa (the Red Mason Bee) in the last couple of years. And it’s even better because our apple tree is in full bloom now so if we have good weather for the next few days we may get a decent apple crop this year. These bees are one of the very earliest to emerge from hibernation, with the males appearing as early as February and the females in March; they’re on the wing only until late-May. They’re quite common in the southern half of the UK, roughly south of a line from Birmingham to The Wash.
There’s a bit more information here for those who are interested.
Image from BWARS.
Ten Things – April
Number 4 in a monthly series of “Ten Things” for 2011. Each month I list one thing from each of ten categories which will remain the same for each month of 2011. So at the end of the year you have ten lists of twelve things.
- Something I Like: Koi
- Something I Won’t Do: Bungee Jumping
- Something I Want To Do: Travel from Wick/Thurso to Penzence by Train
- A Blog I Like: Art by Ren Adams
- A Book I Like: Lewis Carroll; Alice in Wonderland
- Some Music I Like: Monteverdi, 1610 Vespers
- A Food I Like: Butter Beans
- A Food or Drink I Dislike: Pernod
- A Word I Like: Merhari
- A Quote I Like: The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it. [Flannery O’Connor]
Image from 123RF Stock Photos.
Aspects of Censorship
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.