beliefs, freedom of speech, ramblings, sexuality, thoughts

Questions about Sex Images

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This post is about pornography and a couple of current fashions in same that I don’t understand. But first let’s get something fundamental out of the way …

What do I mean by pornography in this context? I mean the normal, relatively sane, heterosexual material which can be bought legally in the UK over the counter of the corner shop or licensed sex shop or found easily on the internet. I do not mean anything involving extreme violence, abuse, lack of consent, drugs, children, animals, unpleasant bodily excretions or anything illegal – none of which I would ever condone.

Yes, I admit it, I look at pornography. Well so what? I’m a normal red-blooded male, I still have a pulse and I’m a sexual libertarian (as long as it’s consensual). Most of us have seen (if not actively used) pornography at some point of our lives, with American research showing that almost 90% of young men and over 30% of young women actually use pornography – now translate that into how many have ever seen pornography. So it’s there, we all know it’s there, we all know what it contains and we all know that at the level I’m discussing it does next to bugger all harm.

Having cleared that up, can we now have an adult conversation about it, please?

So there are two things which seem to be fashionable in current pornography which I fail to understand, and which I would welcome someone knowledgeable explaining to me.

Firstly … Why does every female (and a significant minority of men too) have to have their pubic area clean shaven? Yes, it’s a fashion. It didn’t used to be this way. Look at porn images from 30-40 years ago and everyone is hairy. OK, I understand that the lack of hair gives a better view of the genitals, but that doesn’t require complete depilation. I also understand that depilated females are supposed to look younger and more virginal, but given the current concerns with child pornography I would have thought this is something most men (and women) would want to avoid! And I also know that some people prefer a lack of hair as it increases skin contact during sex. But that does not explain why 99% of females are significantly if not totally depliated. Yes by all means tidy the hairy bits up round the edges. We all get a haircut from time to time but we don’t all go around with our heads shaved, so why shave our pubes? What is it about our naturally hairy state that is so unacceptable? Is this something more than pure fashion? If so, why? I don’t get it.

Actually now I think about it I have a subsidiary question. Why is it that the majority of women appear to prefer non-hairy men. Many times I have heard girlies interviewed and give an “Eeeuuwwwww” reaction to the idea of a hairy man – particularly hairy chests and backs. What is it about hairy men that’s such a turn-off? Or again is this just fashion, perpetuated by the likes of the Chippendales?

OK, here’s my second question. One of most men’s dreams (GOK why) is being on the receiving end of fellatio given by some nubile sex goddess (or god). And of course this appears regularly as a pornographic image. But why, oh why, do the girls (I don’t look at the men!) performing the act always look at the camera and look bored? Oh, OK, they probably are bored. But wouldn’t it be a whole sight more erotic if they were concentrating on the job in hand and look as if they are enjoying it? Why must they look at the camera in that desultory way? Sure, eye contact is important to communication, but even at a time like this? Again, I don’t get it.

Now can anyone knowledgeable explain either of these phenomena, please? Are they just fashions or am I missing something deeper?

PS. If I start getting abusive comments they will be deleted, as will any comment which unnecessarily links to pornographic images. You are perfectly entitled to your opinion, and to express it, but you are not entitled to do so in an abusive way. My rules! OK?

beliefs, medical, personal, science, thoughts

Don’t Assume

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In interacting and communicating with other people we make a lot of assumptions about the other person. Sure, we have to make some assumptions to even begin to communicate (for instance that the other person can understand our language); if we didn’t we would have to start every conversation by asking a complete set of detailed questions – so many we would end up never communicating anything. But making too many, and too deep, assumptions, and not testing those we must make, is highly dangerous. Along with not listening to what the other person actually says, is in my experience the root cause of the majority of misunderstandings.

So I decided to set out those things which it seems to me we assume about the other person or the situation at our peril:

  • Any one person speaks for everyone
  • Anyone is right about anything
  • “Culture” or “society” is the same everywhere and for everybody
  • Someone else’s ethics and morals are the same as yours
  • How young or old or young the person is
  • Someone else is of a given race or nationality
  • What someone else’s religion or spiritual belief system is
  • What someone else’s first language or nationality is
  • What someone else’s politics are
  • What someone else’s personal values are
  • What someone else’s economic class is
  • What someone else’s financial situation is
  • What someone else’s level of education is
  • What someone else’s level of intelligence is
  • What someone else’s experiences or background are
  • What someone else’s life history is
  • What the person’s family or home background is
  • What someone else’s sexuality is or that someone else’s sexual ideals or ethics are the same as yours
  • Someone else has the same body or beauty ideals you do
  • Someone else has the same values, desires, interests, likes and dislikes as you
  • All things have the same effect on all people
  • Anything is universally yucky or universally yummy
  • What someone else’s skills and aptitudes are
  • What you find easy or hard they will also find easy or hard
  • What worked for you will work for anyone else
  • Someone else is better, worse, the same or different to you
  • Any given word means the same thing to everyone
  • One kind of learning works for everyone
  • Your logic is someone else’s logic
  • What they think is the same as you think
  • Someone else’s common sense is the same as your common sense
  • What is right for you is right for anyone else, and vice versa
  • Anything is possible or impossible

Yes we often can (and do) make pretty good guesses at many of these and we base our initial communications on them, but we’d better be prepared to test our guesses and change our position accordingly. I’m sure we’ve all been in situations where we’ve made an assumption about (say) someone’s education only to find we’re totally wrong – haven’t we all come across someone with a doctorate doing a job we wouldn’t expect (driving a taxi or a bus, dealing in second-hand books, selling insurance). Or we’ve spoken to a colleague on the phone and then been surprised on meeting them to find they’re a Sikh, a Muslim or Afro-Caribbean. 

Beware quicksands! … Orator caveo.

current affairs, nudism, thoughts

Nude Hiking Burkas

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Curious article in yesterday’s Times (I can’t link to it as the Times has now gone pay-per-view) about people who go nude hiking in the mountains of Switzerland (oh, yes, they do!), the Swiss courts having recently ruled that they had the right to do so. As usual the paper sent some (apparently) feeble-minded reporter who couldn’t get his head round walking nude in the countryside – until he allegedly did get it, of course! In fact the article wasn’t all that interesting; there’s only so much you can say about “the walkers have won the right in court and some Cantons are objecting”; but they still managed to spin it into nearly two tabloid pages. 50% of which was two photos. The most interesting piece was the following quote from Puistola (one of the walkers).

At the same time as Switzerland is battling over the right to be naked, an equally acrimonious battle is being fought over the right to wear the burka. The irony is not lost on Puistola. “It is both ends of the sausage,” he says. “The same people against us are against the burka. They talk about freedom, but they mean only their freedom. They don’t think of law, they think only of order – and it is the order of their prejudices.”

He points to the mountain top on which, in the snow, there is a Crucifix. “One day I will go on a hike with a lady in a burka and put a crescent at the top. That will annoy them.”

I just love “It is both ends of the sausage”!

arts, history

Project Gargoyle

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An project in Leicestershire is hunting down gargoyles in order to help understand the region’s gothic art. Project Gargoyle has been set up to create a brand new resource capturing Leicestershire’s wealth of medieval sculpture.

Volunteers are busy taking photographs of figurative church carvings such as gargoyles on around 300 local churches. No-one currently knows exactly what is there but the project expect to uncover around 10,000 carvings ranging from gargoyles pulling faces or poking their tongues out, to ones depicting the Green Man or dragons.

The information collected by the project will become a digital resource offering fascinating insights into medieval minds.

The project is being supported by the County Council, the church dioceses and the local archaeological society.

More information at Medieval News or from Leicestershire County Council.

natural history, photography, science

Yeuch of the Day

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Noreen was off early(ish) today on a work outing. On her way she phoned me to say she had found an embryo lying on our front garden path and had moved it into the shrubbery nearby so no-one trod on it. (Handily we keep a trowel by the front door for burying the cats’ prey.)

Of course being interested in natural history I had to go and look. And yes, there was a roughly 4 inch long fresh foetus, complete with placenta still attached. Nice! And of course I just had to photograph it.

But what is it? Well it isn’t human as it clearly has a tail. Phew! It is too big for domestic cat – it is bigger than a new-born kitten. Being London this immediately says it is going to be either fox or dog. I would guess it’s too late in the year for fox, and maybe a little large.

Hmm. Interesting, if slightly yeuchy – but not as yeuchy as I’d expected.

If anyone really wants to see the photo you can find it here. I bet you all say “yeeuuuwwww”, but still go and look anyway!

arts, beliefs, quotes, thoughts

Quotes of the Week

Another in our occasional series of quotations encountered during he week which have struck me: because of their zen-ness, their humour, or their verisimilitude.

Lend your ears to music, open your eyes to painting and … ask yourself whether the work has enabled you to “walk about” into a hitherto unknown world. If the answer is yes, what more do you want?
[Wassily Kandinsky, 1910]

The unreal is more powerful than the real, because nothing is as perfect as you can imagine it. Because it’s only intangible ideas, concepts, beliefs, fantasies that last. Stone crumbles. Wood rots. People, well, they die. But things as fragile as a thought, a dream, a legend, they can go on and on.
[Chuck Palahniuk]

It doesn’t matter what you’ve got in your pants if there’s nothing in your brain to connect it to.

Hanlon’s Razor: Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.

… the result of some wobbly high-heel work at a drink addled giggle-fest.
[Alison Cross]

amusements

Auction Oddities

As usual there are some strange, and slightly zen, lots in our local monthly auction.

A conductor’s baton, in ebonised wood and silver, London 1920, and a silver child’s fork
Is the fork for use conducting, or the baton used as a child’s eating implement? 

A stuffed red squirrel clasping a nut, perched on a branch. 

An old wooden bottle box containing old garden tools, trowels, chisels, hammers, an old fire extinguisher, a carton containing an enamelled measuring jug, old door plates, a first aid box incl. old spark plugs, an enamelled bread bin and lid containing a pair of green plastic picnic tables for suspension from car windows, a collection of shells, old buckets, an old water feeder by Eltex, 2 prints, etc.
Why does one keep spark plugs in a first aid kit?  Or green plastic picnic tables in a bread bin?

Old wooden cartons containing a large number of small terracotta garden pots, some in an old pram body, a small wall cupboard and an empty box
It was the “pram body” which finished me off!

A Belgian brass trumpet signed C. Mahillon, in case, a pair of shoe trees, and a club.

A python skin, four metres long.
Every home should have one!

I’ve never actually been to this sale as, apart from the odd sword, I’ve never seen anything of interest to me.  One day I must go to the viewing if only for amusement.

quotes

Back Numbers

As hinted a couple of days ago I’ve now retrieved and reformatted the posts from the first incarnations of this weblog.  Well almost all.  What I found the other day was everything pre-March 2005, so there was a gap which I had not realised.  I have today found another file containing a further 79 posts from 2006.

However I am still missing a minimum of 20 posts from 2006 which were on a Yahoo!-based system and which I cannot now locate.

Adding that lot (and the posts of the last couple of days) to my previous totals gives me a grand total of 1117 posts, with 983 of those being specifically to this Zen Mischief weblog.

If anyone really wants to read all this old tripe you can find it in two PDF files:

But be warned: there are almost 70 pages of it!