Disinformation » Sex

Teenagers Are So Boring

majestic — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 20:59:00 +0000

So what do teens do to be different from their parents these days? Write code? From the New York Times:

Every few years, parents find new reasons to worry about their teenagers. And while there is no question that some kids continue to experiment with sex and substance abuse, the latest data point to something perhaps more surprising: the current generation is, well, a bit boring when it comes to bad behavior.

By several noteworthy measures, today’s teenagers are growing increasingly conservative. While marijuana use has recently had an uptick, teenagers are smoking far less pot than their parents did at the same age. In 1980, about 60 percent of high-school seniors had tried marijuana and 9 percent smoked it daily. Among seniors today, according to the University of Michigan’s Monitoring the Future survey, which has tracked teenage risk behaviors since 1975, 45.5 percent have tried the drug and 6.6 percent are smoking it frequently.

Adolescent use of alcohol, tobacco and most illegal drugs is also far lower than it was 30 years ago. In 1980, about a third of 12th graders had smoked in the past month; today that number has dropped to fewer than 1 in 5. Teenage alcohol use has reached historic lows. In 1980, 72 percent of high-school seniors said they had recently consumed alcohol, compared with just 40 percent in 2011. In 1981, about 43 percent of 12th graders had tried an illegal drug other than pot; in 2011 that number fell to 25 percent.

Today’s teenagers are also far less likely to have sex or get pregnant compared with their parent’s generation…

[continues in the New York Times]

The Lesbian Vampire Story That Inspired “Dracula”

Haystack — Sat, 10 Dec 2011 07:33:00 +0000

In composing his novel Dracula, Bram Stoker drew heavily upon an earlier, more seedy story in which a young woman succumbs to the attractions of an undead countess. Victorian Gothic reviews J. Sheridan Le Fanu’s Carmilla:

First published in 1897, Bram Stoker’s Dracula was destined to become the universally-acknowledged masterwork of vampire fiction, but it was not, by any means, the first of its kind. Stokers genius consisted not in having invented the modern vampire monster, but in the imaginative way he synthesized and expanded upon the ideas that prior authors had already been exploring.

One of these was J. Sheridan Le Fanu, whose 1872 tale Carmilla provided a template for many of Dracula’s best-remembered characters and motifs, including the occult doctor (Dr. Hesselius), and the lonely Gothic castle set in a barbarous region of Europe. Many of the proper names in Dracula, in fact, are direct allusions to Carmilla’s characters and settings: “Karnstein” became “Carfax,” “Reinfeldt” became “Renfield,” and so on. Le Fanu’s protagonist, Laura, corresponds roughly to Stoker’s Mina; both are afflicted young women whose souls come depend upon their families’ efforts to unravel the vampire mystery.

Carmilla is told in the first person, from Laura’s point of view. She is a lonely Englishwoman who lives with her father and governesses in an ancient scholss in Styria (southeast Austria). After receiving word of the sudden death of a would-be guest, Bertha Reinfeldt, Laura and company gather on the castle drawbridge to admire a calm, full-moon night when an out-of-control carriage crashes in upon the scene. A weak, unconscious Carmilla is thrown from the compartment in the accident that ensues. Her “mother,” a mysterious noblewomen, professes to be on an urgent, secret mission, but reluctantly consents to leave Carmilla to recover in the family’s care.

Laura quickly recognizes Carmilla from a dream she had as a child; a dream of being visited in bed at night, and bitten on the shoulder. Carmilla, too, professes to remember Laura from a corresponding dream, wherein she awoke to find herself in an unfamiliar bed chamber, and Laura there. Quickly, they develop an intimate friendship, characterized pressings of hands, kissing of cheeks, and plenty of blushing.

[More at Victorian Gothic]

Female Orgasm Brain Scan Animation

majestic — Fri, 02 Dec 2011 14:38:24 +0000

Ian Sample reports for the Guardian that the animation will help scientists understand how the female brain conducts the symphony of activity that leads to an orgasm:

Scientists have used brain scan images to create the world’s first movie of the female brain as it approaches, experiences and recovers from an orgasm. The animation reveals the steady buildup of activity in the brain as disparate regions flicker into life and then come together in a crescendo of activity before gently settling back down again.

To make the animation, researchers monitored a woman’s brain as she lay in a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scanner and stimulated herself. The research will help scientists to understand how the brain conducts the symphony of activity that leads to sexual climax in a woman.

By studying people who have orgasms, Professor Barry Komisaruk, a psychologist at Rutgers University in New Jersey and his team hope to uncover what goes wrong in both men and women who cannot reach sexual climax.

The animation was compiled from sequential brain scans of Nan Wise, a 54-year-old PhD student and sex therapist in Komisaruk’s lab. “It’s my dissertation,” Wise told the Guardian. “I’m committed to it.”…

[continues at the Guardian]

Sex Addiction – A Real Epidemic?

majestic — Wed, 30 Nov 2011 13:55:03 +0000

Newsweek devotes some serious column inches to the “epidemic” that has made its way into popular awareness via notable celebrities such as Tiger Woods and Domenique Strauss-Kahn:

Valerie realized that sex was wrecking her life right around the time her second marriage disintegrated. At 30, and employed as a human-resources administrator in Phoenix, she had serially cheated on both her husbands—often with their subordinates and co-workers—logging anonymous hookups in fast-food-restaurant bathrooms, affairs with married men, and one-night stands too numerous to count. But Valerie couldn’t stop. Not even after one man’s wife aimed a shotgun at her head while catching them in flagrante delicto. Valerie called phone-sex chat lines and pored over online pornography, masturbating so compulsively that it wasn’t uncommon for her to choose her vibrator over going to work. She craved public exhibitionism, too, particularly at strip clubs, and even accepted money in exchange for sex—not out of financial necessity but for the illicit rush such acts gave her.

For Valerie, sex was a form of self-medication: to obliterate the anxiety, despair, and crippling fear of emotional intimacy that had haunted her since being abandoned as a child. “In order to soothe the loneliness and the fear of being unwanted, I was looking for love in all the wrong places,” she recalls.

After a decade of carrying on this way, Valerie hit rock bottom. Facing her second divorce as well as the end of an affair, she grew despondent and attempted to take her life by overdosing on prescription medication. Awakening in the ICU, she at last understood what she had become: a sex addict. “Through sexually acting out, I lost two marriages and a job. I ended up homeless and on food stamps,” says Valerie, who, like most sex addicts interviewed for this story, declined to provide her real name. “I was totally out of control.”

“Sex addiction” remains a controversial designation—often dismissed as a myth or providing talk-show punchlines thanks to high-profile lotharios such as Dominique Strauss-Kahn and Tiger Woods. But compulsive sexual behavior, also called hypersexual disorder, can systematically destroy a person’s life much as addictions to alcohol or drugs can. And it’s affecting an increasing number of Americans, say psychiatrists and addiction experts. “It’s a national epidemic,” says Steven Luff…

[continues at Newsweek]

Male Spiders Pay For Sex

bluemana — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 00:41:04 +0000

Via PhysOrg:

Male nursery web spiders (Pisaura mirabilis) prepare silk-wrapped gifts to give to potential mates. Most gifts contain insects, but some gifts are inedible plant seeds or empty exoskeletons left after the prey has already been eaten (presumably by the male himself!).

Males will also ‘play dead’ if a female moves away and then attempt to re-establish mating. New research published in BioMed Central’s open access journal BMC Evolutionary Biology examines the reproductive success of deceitful males and shows that females are not impressed by worthless gifts.

Male spiders were provided with either a potential gift of a fly, or a worthless item, such as a cotton wool ball, a dry flower head, a prey leftover (previously eaten housefly), or no gift at all. All the gifts were approximately the same size, so the females would not be able to tell what the gift was without unwrapping it. Males that offered any gift were more likely to successfully mate than males without. However the length of time the females allowed males with worthless gifts to spend transferring sperm was shorter than those with edible gifts (and even shorter for those with no gift at all!).

Penis Cancer Linked To Sex With Animals

majestic — Tue, 08 Nov 2011 17:03:34 +0000

Photo: Waugsberg (CC)

A warning for zoophiles from MSNBC:

For many people, bestiality is a bad joke, but for some it could be a matter of life or death, according to a new study finding that men who had sex with animals in their lifetimes were twice as likely to develop cancer of the penis as others.

The study of 492 men from rural Brazil found that 35 percent of study participants, who ranged from 18 to 80 years old and included both penile cancer patients and healthy men, reported having sex with animals (SWA) in their lifetimes. A team of urologists from centers around Brazil co-authored the paper, which looked at risk factors for penile cancer in men who had visited 16 urology and oncology centers in 12 Brazilian cities. In addition to SWA, three other risk factors for penile cancer were found: smoking, the presence of premalignant lesions on the penis and phimosis, a condition where the foreskin cannot be retracted over the penis.

Men who had sex with animals also reported a higher incidence of sexually transmitted diseases.

Of the 118 penile cancer patients, 45 percent reported having sex with animals, compared with 32 percent of healthy men, who visited the medical centers for benign conditions, check-ups or cancer prevention. Fifty-nine percent of men who had sex with animals did so for one to five years, while 21 percent continued the behavior, also known as zoophilia, for more than five years. The subjects reported a variety of frequencies for their sex acts, ranging from monthly to daily…

[continues at MSNBC]

Project Ouroboros Planet

KE$HA KULT — Sun, 23 Oct 2011 02:20:35 +0000

Evolution of Narcissism: Why We’re Overconfident and Why It Works

BananaFamine — Sun, 18 Sep 2011 03:20:24 +0000

David and Goliath, Osmar Schindler (c. 1888)

Christine Dell’Amore writes in National Geographic:

For years, psychologists have observed that people routinely overestimate their abilities, said study leader Dominic Johnson, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland.

Some experts have suggested that overconfidence can be a good thing, perhaps by boosting ambition, resolve, and other traits, creating self-fulfilling prophecies.

But positive self-delusion can also lead to faulty assessments, unrealistic expectations, and hazardous decisions, according to the study — making it a mystery why overconfidence remains a key human trait despite thousands of years of natural selection, which typically weeds out harmful traits over generations.

Now, new computer simulations show that a false sense of optimism, whether when deciding to go to war or investing in a new stock, can often improve your chances of winning.

“There hasn’t been a good explanation for why we are overconfident, and this new model offers a kind of evolutionary logic for that,” Johnson said.

“It’s unlikely to be an accident — we’re perhaps overconfident for a good reason.”

For more information, see original article.

Homophobic Politician Gay Sex Scandal Tracker

JacobSloan — Mon, 12 Sep 2011 17:57:43 +0000

Gay Homophobe provides the service of tracking the most recent gay sex scandal involving a prominent anti-gay politician — and the sometimes fascinating explanations offered. For the Christian Right, the site is kind of equivalent to those “days since our last tornado” signs which all old Wild West towns had. (Or which I imagine they had?) In conclusion: who knows when the latest tornado in someone’s pants will arrive.

Dirty Girls Ministries’ Crusade Against Female Masturbation

majestic — Wed, 24 Aug 2011 13:29:39 +0000

Blaire Briody, from Bust, reports on this fight against evil for Utne Reader:

In a small, plainly decorated room in Lenexa, Kansas, 26-year-old Crystal Renaud logs on to a free video-chat site. She sits at her desk and peers over her black-rimmed glasses, which reflect the dull blue glare of the computer monitor. Meanwhile, in homes scattered around the United States, five other women are staring into their webcams as well. As their faces pop up around Renaud on all their screens, they begin the 6th week of a 12-week pornography addiction recovery group for women called No Stones.

“Does anyone want to share a story where they felt they had some sort of personality disorder? Or something related?” Renaud asks, before her voice temporarily cuts out and the screen freezes. The group is having technical issues tonight. “For me, I found myself really clinging to certain personality types, those opposite of my dad,” she says when she’s back on. The assignment for this week, she tells the women, is to write down their sexual histories. “I know it’s overwhelming, but don’t be defeated by this,” she says. “There’s hope. This is truth. Even though it’s hard and painful, the truth is what sets you free.”

The No Stones recovery group is part of an organization called Dirty Girls Ministries that Renaud launched in 2009 after suffering from her own self-described pornography addiction. She says she wanted to help other women recover from their X-rated fixations by connecting with them online and holding meetings at her local church. But her use of the terms porn and addiction may be misleading. The growing group of 100-plus members who participate in the forums say that they masturbate or view porn—which they define as including erotica and romance novels—twice a week or less. For most of us, that would hardly be considered excessive. But to Renaud, it indicates an epidemic of addiction, one that can be treated by helping women stay “clean” of masturbation.

In addition to the online ministry, she speaks regularly at various evangelical churches in Kansas and has written a book called Dirty Girls Come Clean. “Whether you believe it or not, women are addicted to porn,” Renaud preached in a recent sermon. “You’d be surprised at how many women—women in your own lives—are hiding this deep, dark, and dirty secret.”

While many of the women she counsels report turning to pornography as a form of escape—from traumas like sexual abuse, infidelity, and even prostitution—Renaud compares their masturbation to alcoholism, saying that “like drugs and alcohol, so many things that feel good in a short amount of time can end up hurting you.”

Renaud’s advocacy is labeled antipornography, but it aims to treat all masturbation, whether it involves porn or not…

[continues at Utne Reader]

Canada Unveils The First Canadian Android, Then Touches Her Inappropriately (Video)

TunaGhost — Thu, 18 Aug 2011 03:03:00 +0000

C3PO she ain’t. In the video “Aiko” is presented as Canada’s first android, and is promptly sexually molested against her wishes. Seems like a strange way to display her synthetic skin and vocal responses to pain:

According to her website, Aiko was created “to help our aging population to do simple tasks like make tea and coffee, tell them the weather, read a magazine or remind them to take their medication at the correct time. There are many applications for Aiko in the home, office or public places.” Or even … private places? “Human/Cyborg relations” indeed.

The designer, Le Trung from Brampton, Ontario, claims “Aiko is the first android to react to physical stimuli and mimic pain. This technology could be applied to people born with or who have undergone amputations. Aiko is the first step towards a life-like mechanical limb that has the ability to feel physical sensations.”

Hi, I’m the Anti-Christ

KE$HA KULT — Sat, 06 Aug 2011 02:56:48 +0000

Hi, I’m the Anti-Christ:

My name is R. Talmadge Lacy and I was born on 12/13/1979. (12 = number of Apostles + Jesus = 13) // (1+2+1+3+1+9+7+9=33) 33 is called the Christ vibration for reasons that are mysterious and weird. On top of all that my dad was a carpenter and my mom’s name is Virginia: (Virgin)ia.

Now what exactly makes me the “Anti”-Christ? Well according to mainstream Christianity, Christ is something separate from yourself; an external authority figure one must submit to in order to be saved. I, however, do not believe in this model of Christ. You might even say I believe the exact opposite is true. Now I’m not the first or only person to hold this point of view — from Jewish mystics to gnostic Christians, many have associated the Messiah (the morning star) with our personal consciousness. Thereby by the light of consciousness every man & every woman was likened to a star — therefore one must follow one’s own highest light in order to become one with God. This is Resurrection.

Furthermore, one will find this is in keeping with the narrative found in the Bible … According to the serpent in Genesis (commonly associated with Satan) upon eating the forbidden fruit, the naked hippies will ‘awaken’ and become like God. And let’s not forget Lucifer means ‘light bearer.’ As far as being the ‘Prince of Lies,’ consider that all I have said is in fact FALSE as a written word is not a word, but an image of an idea one hath spoken. Therefore I have no use for Truth; I just want a LIE that will deliver unto me: ANARCHY, CHAOS, SEX, DRUGS & MONEY.

SURPRISE!! You were expecting maybe Keanu Reeves? Well, let’s get down to business.

• ANARCHY. To be blunt, the Apocalypse is happening right now underneath our very noses. To be sure it is the battle between Good & Evil, but such generic and malleable terms do us little good; instead let’s use the terms ripened & unripened souls. And to be precise let’s call it the battle between the animal & Man •OR• the beast & God.

The animal has an instinct for hierarchy; to divide people into two classes: leader & follower. Each type is destructive for their respective reasons. Followers are destructive because of their willingness to be manipulated by leaders: fighting wars or engaging in mindless consumerism or just generally ignoring the pain of suffering of others are but a few examples. Leaders are destructive because they have no vested interest in anyone’s well-being other than their own. However, Man, having transcended the animalistic instinct, being possessed by consciousness and following his highest light (God within You), is synchronized with others on higher mental levels. Indeed, Man, by virtue of consciousness, possesses empathy and embodies all moral principles without the need of “authority figures” to enforce ‘good behavior’ because he understands the intrinsic value of love thy neighbor as thyself & do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Anarchy then becomes the only logical conclusion for Mankind! But do not try to join the revolution — that’s impossible. Only try to realize the truth – there is no revolution. Then you’ll see it is not the revolution you have joined — it is humanity. You are already monarch of your own skin — your inviolable freedom waits to be completed only by the love of other monarchs. Thus, the only possible society is that of lovers. The only possible society is that of lovers.

•CHAOS. In studying turbulence, chaos scientists have realised that apparently a-causal phenomena in nature are not only the norm, but are measurable by simple mathematical equations. A successful magical act causes an apparently a-causal result. A properly executed magical release of energy creates a wave form (visible by Kirlian photography) around the magician causing turbulence in the aetheric space.

And by being aware of that process via the Collective Unconscious we can have a more direct influence ON that process thereby allowing us to perform even more spectacular mind-blowing feats. To wit … The promise made in Matthew 21:21 by Jesus is literally possible because REALITY is a living hologram that is manipulated by Consciousness via quantum fluctuations.

Basically the Collective Unconscious is how we’re all connected telepathically. So by tapping into this ‘cloud of consciousness’ we can influence the behavior of others to our own benefit. Think of your desire like a puzzle and the actions of individuals as the puzzle pieces. One piece fits another and another culminating in a butterfly effect that makes your desire a reality when all the pieces are ‘put in their place.’ And yes, I know the pieces fit, because I watched them fall away.

Freewill has not been neutralized because the Collective Unconscious itself confirms we are all one consciousness experiencing itself. “As the individual becomes more collective, the collective becomes more individual.”

All of this is just a more complicated way of saying that by following your highest light (God within You), you are synchronized with others on higher mental levels … even with REALITY itself.

• SEX. The concept here is “SEX-HYPNOSIS.” Now we all know what regular hypnosis is — the induction of an altered state of consciousness by means of guided meditation. Self-hypnosis means you guide yourself through meditation to achieve an altered state of consciousness. With sex-hypnosis we use sex as the means by which we meditate to achieve an altered state of consciousness.

The altered state of consciousness we wish to induce is something like a hyper-lucid dreamworld. The idea is this ‘dreamworld’ is the gateway to the Collective Unconscious. The symbolic key to opening the gateway to the Collective Unconscious is the 3rd EYE. Therefore we have sex in the name of the 3rd EYE. So as a matter of convenience we call the 3rd EYE “MONITOR.” We have sex in the name of MONITOR.

• DRUGS. The 3rd EYE has always been associated with the pineal gland, and although no conclusive findings have been made; the pineal gland has been implicated in the production of DMT. However, it matters little if DMT is produced in the pineal gland or even how much DMT the body is capable of producing, because fundamentally we use sex-hypnosis to tell the mind to start hallucinating, and through this rabbit hole in our heads we wish to fall into the abyss (or “void”) of the Collective Unconscious. To leave earth and dive obliquely between those spaces that Lovecraft celebrated in his nightmare tales.

• MONEY. In the beginning there was no money; only the primal flow of energies that constituted the balance of power i.e. the trade of Light. But as relentless logic made all possibilities apparent it was decided a representation of Light could be made. And so it was done; a first Dollar, and it was called Art & it was good.

WANTED: Females interested in experimenting with sex hypnosis. Religious affiliation not important. I also hope to establish a NEW CALL for contemporary artists to invent “radical new forms” & apolitical ART. For us, there is no “tradition.” The symbols and myths of history’s sects, orders, and faiths, are constructs, useful fictions, “games.” By ripping mystic techniques and sensibilities from their traditional “occult” contexts and applying them to the concept of “PLAY,” Consciousness absorbs itself in synaptic fury – spewing out the genetic code of a new posthuman language. • verbum fiat • If interested please contact me via Facebook (R. Talmadge Lacy) or email (Talmadge613(-at-)gmail(-dot-)com) •• Satan loves you. > >

Japanese Love Hotels

JacobSloan — Mon, 11 Jul 2011 16:21:50 +0000

Via Trendland, photographer Misty Keasler examines the strangest places on Earth, Japan’s themed love rooms, which resemble everything from gigantic bird cages to outer space to subway cars. In the future, they are where all romantic activity will be conducted:

The Love Hotel is an intensely unique Japanese institution. The themed rooms [are] rented by the hour. There are an estimated 30,000 to 40,000 of them in the country and they are so prevalent that the Japanese take them for granted.

____________

Social Networking Surpasses Porn As Top Internet Activity

JacobSloan — Wed, 29 Jun 2011 20:08:27 +0000

“My theory is that young users spend so much time on social networks that they don’t have time to look at adult sites.”

Reuters claims that social media has overtaken porn as the primary reason for having an internet connection. (My advice: If you want to make a fortune, figure out a good way of combining the two.)

Bill Tancer, general manager of global research at Hitwise, an Internet tracking company, has analyzed information for over 10 million web users to conclude that one of the major shifts in Internet use in the past decade had been the fall off in interest in pornography or adult entertainment sites.

He said surfing for porn had dropped to about 10 percent of searches from 20 percent a decade ago, and the hottest Internet searches now are for social networking sites.

“As social networking traffic has increased, visits to porn sites have decreased,” said Tancer, indicated that the 18-24 year old age group particularly was searching less for porn.

First Advertising Campaign Targeted At Monkeys

Pelliciari — Tue, 28 Jun 2011 20:28:08 +0000

The advertising belief that sex sells may not just work on humans, but on monkeys too. That is what the first non-human aimed advertising campaign is basing its marketing strategy on. Via Wired:

A primatologist has created the first advertising campaign aimed at non-human primates and believes that it will be sex that sells.

Laurie Santos from Yale University’s Comparative Cognition Laboratory has teamed up with advertising agency Proton Studio to “determine where advertising has innate primate responses”.

Santos and team will create two foods specifically aimed at Capuchin monkeys — possibly two different colours of jelly. One will be featured on a billboard outside of the monkeys’ enclosure and the other will not. After a set period, the monkeys will be offered both foods. “If they tend toward one and not the other we’ll be witnessing preference shifting due to our advertising,” Keith Olwell of Proton told New Scientist.

[Continues at Wired]

…

Male Birth Control Pill On The Horizon

BananaFamine — Tue, 21 Jun 2011 05:34:13 +0000

Reports LiveScience via MNN:

Equality for men may be on the horizon — contraceptive equality, that is. For more than a half century, women have been able to pop a pill to prevent pregnancy, but a pharmaceutical alternative has never emerged for men.

Now, research to interfere with the body’s ability to use vitamin A is showing some promise, because, in men, vitamin A is necessary for the production of sperm.

One recent study found that a compound that interferes with the body’s ability to use vitamin A rendered male mice sterile while they were receiving 8- or 16-week courses. But once the mice were taken off the compound, they resumed making sperm. Significantly, the researchers found no side effects, and the testosterone levels of the mice stayed normal, meaning no fluctuations in mousey libido.

“Our mice, they mate quite happily, so that is not something we have interfered with,” said Debra Wolgemuth, one of the study researchers and a professor of genetics and development at Columbia University Medical Center.

For more information, see original article.

Madame Restell: The Wickedest Woman in New York

Haystack — Sat, 18 Jun 2011 17:15:26 +0000

Madame Restell was a flamboyant 19th century abortionist whom history remembers as ”the wickedest woman in New York” —but had she been? Victorian Gothic takes a critical look:

The cover of The New York Illustrated Times for February 23rd, 1878 depicts the arrest of the notorious abortionist Ann Lohman, alias “Madame Restell,” by the moral crusader Anthony Comstock. Flanked by reporters and deputies, the statuesque crime-fighter is pictured with a search warrant in hand, which he reads to the lady villain in the attitude of a holy messenger, banishing evil by its sacred words. Comfortably situated amongst the opulent furnishings of her Fifth Avenue mansion, Madame Restell wears a cool, appraising expression, as if to say “Ah, Comstock, my nemesis—I have been expecting you.” Her right hand is clenched into a fist, which overlaps the womb of a veiled woman who weeps with shame in the background.

Dubbed the “wickedest woman in New York,” Madame Restell built an empire of cruelty; promoting vice, and profiting upon the mistakes of married women and wayward girls. She plied her trade openly, publicizing her services through thinly-veiled advertisements in the penny press. Though she was object of perennial public scandals and outbursts of moral outrage, she shamelessly flaunted her wealth, parading about the city in a showy carriage with four horses and a liveried coachman. She evaded justice by bribery, by clever legal maneuvering, and by threatening to expose the identities of her wealthy clientele—or so, that’s how the story goes.

Ann Lohman and her relations left no journals or correspondence to offer us insight into her true actions, personal feelings or motivations. She has been the subject of two modern biographies, Allan Keller’s Scandalous Lady and Clifford Browder’s The Wickedest Woman in New York. Each of these, in weaving its narrative, has been forced to rely heavily upon hostile newspaper accounts, courtroom transcripts, police memoirs, and anti-abortion tracts, as these are virtually the only sources now available. History has recorded the story Madame Restell almost exclusively in the voice of public condemnation—a circumstance that immediately begs the question: who was she, really?

[Full Article at Victorian Gothic]

Why Are Democrats So Weak? Thoughts on the Weiner ‘Scandal’ (Video)

bluemana — Fri, 17 Jun 2011 04:46:16 +0000

Rachel Maddow speaks with Cenk Uygur of the Young Turks who has plenty to say:

Homophobic Men Most Aroused by Gay Male Porn

phunkychic666 — Sat, 11 Jun 2011 20:42:10 +0000

Nathan Heflick writes in Psychology Today:

Even a man who thought that women all want to have sex with their fathers and spend much of their life distraught because they lack a penis is right sometimes. This person, the legend that is Sigmund Freud, theorized that people often have the most hateful and negative attitudes towards things they secretly crave, but feel that they shouldn’t have.

If Freud is right, then perhaps men who are the most opposed to male homosexuality have particularly strong homosexual urges for other men.

One study asked heterosexal men their attitudes toward male homosexuality. Based on these scores, they then divided these men into two groups: men that are homophobic, and men who are not. These men were then shown three, four minute videos. One video depicted straight sex, one depicted lesbian sex and one depicted gay male sex. While this was happening, a device was attached to the male participant’s penises. This device has been found to be triggered by sexual arousal, but not other types of arousal.

Even If You Are an Atheist, You Worship Something …

ralph — Wed, 08 Jun 2011 20:59:32 +0000

From the late great David Foster Wallace:

Because here’s something else that’s true. In the day-to-day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshiping. Everybody worships.

The only choice we get is what to worship. And an outstanding reason for choosing some sort of God or spiritual-type thing to worship — be it J.C. or Allah, be it Yahweh or the Wiccan mother-goddess or the Four Noble Truths or some in-frangible set of ethical principles — is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive.

If you worship money and things — if they are where you tap real meaning in life — then you will never have enough. Never feel you have enough. It’s the truth.

Worship your own body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly, and when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally plant you. On one level, we all know this stuff already — it’s been codified as myths, proverbs, cliches, bromides, epigrams, parables: the skeleton of every great story.

The trick is keeping the truth up-front in daily consciousness. Worship power — you will feel weak and afraid, and you will need ever more power over others to keep the fear at bay. Worship your intellect, being seen as smart — you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out. And so on.

Two Florida Teens Arrested For ‘Sexting’

BananaFamine — Tue, 07 Jun 2011 06:12:36 +0000

I still hate the word “sexting” … Jim Peppard writes for WTSP 10 News:

Brooksville, Florida — Two teenagers were arrested for sexting a photo of a bare breast.

A 15 year old boy was taken into custody after he told a school resource officer he forwarded a cell phone picture he received last December of a young girl’s breast, the sheriff’s office said. He said another student at Hernando High School had threatened to do him harm, after learning of the photo.

The girl herself was also charged, after admitting she took a picture of herself in the mirror wearing underwear and exposing a breast, and sending it to the boy, according to the arrest affidavit.

Both were charged with transmission of pornography by electronic device, processed at the Hernando County Jail and released into the custody of their parents.

The Sex Trafficking Of Americans

majestic — Sat, 28 May 2011 23:49:10 +0000

Amy Fine Collins has written one of those lengthy investigative pieces for Vanity Fair, on a subject that most people would prefer not to talk about in polite company. As such it’s a compelling read…

Even as celebrity activists such as Emma Thompson, Demi Moore, and Mira Sorvino raise awareness about commercial sex trafficking, survivor Rachel Lloyd publishes her memoir Girls Like Us, and the Senate introduces a new bipartisan bill for victim support, the problem proliferates across continents, in casinos, on streets, and directly into your mobile device. And, as Amy Fine Collins shows, human trafficking is much closer to home than you think; victims, younger than ever, are just as likely to be the homegrown American girl next door as illegally imported foreigners. Having gained access to victims, law-enforcement officials, and a convicted trafficker, Collins follows a major case that put to the test the federal government’s Trafficking Victims Protection Act.

The names of all victims and their relatives have been changed. Quotes from Dennis Paris, Gwen, and Alicia are taken from court testimony.

“He called me a stupid bitch … a worthless piece of shit.… I had to tell people I fell off stage because I had so many bruises on my ribs face and legs.… I have a permanent twitch in my eye from him hitting me in my face so much. I have none of my irreplaceable things from my youth.”
—From the victim-impact statement of Felicia, minor prostitute-stripper enslaved by trafficker Corey Davis.

“Prostitution is renting an organ for ten minutes.”
—A john, interviewed by research psychologist Melissa Farley.

“Would you please write down the type of person you think I am, given all that you’ve heard and read?… I’ve been called the worst of the worst by the government and it’s going to be hard for you to top that.”
—Letter postmarked June 27, 2008, to Amy Fine Collins, from Dennis Paris, a.k.a. “Rahmyti,” then inmate at the Wyatt Detention Facility, in Central Falls, Rhode Island, now at a high-security federal penitentiary in Arizona.

The Little Barbies

In the Sex Crimes Bureau of the Brooklyn District Attorney’s Office, in the pediatric division of Fort Bragg’s Womack Army Medical Center, in the back alleys of Waterbury, Connecticut, and in the hallways of Hartford’s Community Court, Assistant D.A. Rhonnie Jaus, forensic pediatrician Dr. Sharon Cooper, ex-streetwalker Louise, and Judge Curtissa Cofield have all simultaneously and independently noted the same disturbing phenomenon. There are more young American girls entering the commercial sex industry—an estimated 300,000 at this moment—and their ages have been dropping drastically. “The average starting age for prostitution is now 13,” says Rachel Lloyd, executive director of Girls Educational and Mentoring Services (gems), a Harlem-based organization that rescues young women from “the life.” Says Judge Cofield, who formerly presided over Hartford’s Prostitution Protocol, a court-ordered rehabilitation program, “I call them the Little Barbies.”

The explanations offered for these downwardly expanding demographics are various, and not at all mutually exclusive. Dr. Sharon Cooper believes that the anti-intellectual, consumerist, hyper-violent, and super-eroticized content of movies (Hustle & Flow), reality TV (Cathouse), video games (Grand Theft Auto: Vice City), gangsta rap (Nelly’s “Tip Drill”), and cyber sites (Second Life: Jail Bait) has normalized sexual harm. “History is repeating itself, and we’re back to treating women and children as chattel,” she says. “It’s a sexually toxic era of ‘pimpfantwear’ for your newborn son and thongs for your five-year-old daughter.” Additionally, Cooper cites the breakdown of the family unit (statistically, absent or abusive parents compounds risk) and the emergence of vast cyber-communities of like-minded deviant individuals, who no longer have disincentives to act on their most destructive predatory fantasies. Krishna Patel, assistant U.S. attorney in Bridgeport, Connecticut, invokes the easy money. Criminals have learned, often in prison—where “macking” memoirs such as Iceberg Slim’s Pimp are best-sellers—that it’s become more lucrative and much safer to sell malleable teens than drugs or guns. A pound of heroin or an AK-47 can be retailed once, but a young girl can be sold 10 to 15 times a day—and a “righteous” pimp confiscates 100 percent of her earnings…

[continues at Vanity Fair]

The Sexual World Of Bankers

Danny Schechter — Tue, 24 May 2011 16:42:32 +0000

Strauss-Kahn And The Secret Culture Of Aggressive Sexuality In The High Pressure World Of Bankers And Banksters.

My colleague Mike Whitney asks:

“So, what are the chances that Strauss-Kahn will get a fair trial now that he’s been blasted as a serial sex offender in about 3,000 articles and in all the televised news reports?

Do you remember any Wall Street bankers being dragged off in handcuffs when they blew up the financial system and bilked people out of trillions of dollars?”

The answer to both questions is certainly Non, in French or No in English, but there’s more to the connection between Sex and Wall Street. Without commenting on the evidence in this case—which has been asserted, not proven– there is a deeper context that is being ignored.

I call it the “Testosterone Factor” in The Crime of Our Time, my book about how Wall Street criminally engineered the financial crisis.

Interesting isn’t it that there have been so few references to the link between the pervasiveness of salacious sex and the highly-charged life of a class of “entitled” wealthy bankers who live off of others with few rules or restraints.

There is also often no news about that or the practices of the IMF which is often accused of raping poor and vulnerable countries with unfair structural adjustment programs. The IMF chief is now experiencing what many in France feel is an unfair “personal adjustment program” at the hands of the New York cops and courts.

Odd, isn’t it, that there have been so few references in the coverage also to Eliot Spitzer, the one time “Sheriff” of Wall Street who was denouncing criminal financial practices by the Bush Administration when he was brought down in a sex scandal.

Strauss-Kahn had also been in the news lately as a possible Socialist presidential candidate to topple our pal Sarkosy in France as well as a critic of US banking practices. He recently outraged official Washington by asserting that the Chinese economy was surpassing ours.

In both cases, powerful forces have motives to bring down such potential reformers, but it is also true that in each case these men themselves were, on the surface anyway, sexually obsessed and prone to illegal behavior that put them (and others) at risk.

Both are ‘Alpha Males’ known for pushing envelopes of personal responsibility. Both were known for personal arrogance and living in highly secretive sexualized personal cultures. Writer Tristan Banon claimed she had to fight DSK off in an earlier incident, calling him a “strutting chimpanzee.”

Bear in mind that part of what intelligence agencies do these days in targeting people is to prepare sophisticated psychological profiles before they intervene. They know that the knowledge of the secret lives—and kinks — of public figures can easily discredit them. They specialize in foraging for dirt and can leak information or use it opportunistically.

Remember Richard Nixon’s authorized break in at the office of Daniel Ellsberg’s psychiatrist pursuing highly personal information?

Nothing is off-limits as people like former weapons inspector, Scott Ritter, learned as well when he became embroiled in a mini-sex caper.

When people are highly stressed, they are prone to making mistakes. The agencies shadowing them know that, and from time to time encourage it or just wait for the opportunity to help them bring themselves down.

What needs to be examined is how the crimes of the rich and powerful are treated. Bush’s bombing or Geithner’s tax maneuvers were ignored.

But when sex is involved, all bets are off.

Sex scandals have become a staple of media exploitation with personal morality plays trumping political morality confrontations every time.

They are both great distractions and effective tools of character assassination which are often more effective than more violent ways to neutralize people considered dangerous.

That’s why the FBI was so hot to discredit Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. with leaks of so-called wiretapped sex tapes. In his case, this tactic failed but the other worked.

In some cases both tactics are deployed as in the physical assassination of Bin Laden and then the character-killing aimed at his supporters through the release of porn allegedly found in his “lair.”

Intense sexual appetites are an extension of the “culture” of an avaricious financial world. Illegal sex and Wall Street (or in La Defense, France’s financial district) has long been linked. Writes Heidi Moore, “This is all a reminder that the financial district hasn’t always been gleaming skyscrapers and Starbucks.”

Consider this passage from City of Eros: New York City, Prostitution, and the Commercialization of Sex, 1790-1920:

“Adjacent to the Wall Street business district, prostitutes worked in saloons along Greenwich Street, taking men upstairs. In addition, immediately south of Wall Street was the Battery Tender- loin, on Whitehall Street. The Water Street area, however, remained the most significant and poorest waterfront zone of prostitution. Amid the rookeries, rat pits and dance halls, prostitutes exposed in each window to the public view plied their trade.”

In the modern era, many of the street’s most macho traders are, according to David Russell who worked in the industry for two decades, known as “swinging dicks.” It is well known that the big money in Wall Street has kept a vibrant, upscale sex industry alive and well.

There has been one scandal after another. Here are a few cases cited by Moore before Spitzer’s demise:

• BP Chief Executive John Browne left both his post at the oil company and his directorship at Goldman Sachs Group last year after it was revealed that Lord Browne had lied to a court about his young male lover, whom he had met through an escort-service Web site.

• A group of six women sued Dresdner Kleinwort in 2006 for $1.4 billion on allegations that male executives entertained clients at strip clubs and even brought prostitutes back to the office. The case was settled out of court in 2007.

• Canadian hedge fund manager Paul Eustace in 2007, by his own admission in a deposition filed in court lied to investors and cheated on his wife with a stripper.

• In 1987, Peter Detwiler, vice chairman of E.F. Hutton & Co., was, according to court testimony, instructed by his client, Tesoro Petroleum Corp. Chairman Robert V. West, to hire a blonde prostitute for the finance minister of Trinidad & Tobago, which had been supporting a tax issue that would have hurt Tesoro’s profits.

• A woman claiming to have been Bernard Madoff’s mistress published a book about their secret liaisons. Earlier. His secretary said he had a fondness for massages in an article in Vanity Fair.

Wall Street’s fall is said to have brought down the sex industry almost as if it had been a fully owned subsidiary, if not an extension, of the financial services business.

To find out more, I spoke to Jonathan Albert, a psychologist practicing in mid-Manhattan. He told me:

“I see a lot of clients in NYC who are impacted by the economic crisis. People deal with stress in many different ways. Some people exercise, some people over-eat, some use drugs and alcohol, some even sexualize those feelings.”

“Sexualize?” I asked him, how do they sexualize these feelings?

His response:

“I’ve seen a lot of Wall Streeters who sexualize feelings of anxiety and stress and depression. So for example they might rely on adult sexual services to deal with those feelings.”

Loretta Napoleoni, an Italian author who worked on Wall Street for years, offers a provocative thesis for how the need for paid sex “on the wild side” became part of the culture of irresponsibility.

“I can tell you that this is absolutely true because being a woman, having worked in finance 20 years ago I could tell you that even at that time – when the market was not going up so much – these guys, all they talk is sex.”

She complemented her personal experience by citing a study by researchers from Oxford University:

“The study discovered, that an excessive production of testosterone, in a period of fantastic financial exuberance, creates a sort of confusion. It is what people in sports call ‘being in the zone,’ which means you get in a certain situation where you feel that you will always win. That you are infallible.”

I asked Dr. Albert if that finding may have indeed had relevance to Spitzer or be endemic in the industry? His reply, “I do see this a lot in the finance industry, yes, peeople in positions of power often feel as if they can perhaps get away with it. There is sometimes a sense of entitlement.”

“They feel entitled to take part in risky behavior?” I pressed.

“High-risk behavior. It’s similar to what they do on a daily basis. They invest millions and millions of dollars and there is a great risk involved with that. The same is true with using the services of a prostitute. Obviously there are great health risks; their relationship is in great danger if they are using the services of a prostitute. A lot of people skate on the excitement, on that euphoric rush.”

The culture of risk on Wall Street was intoxicating to many in the same way that gamblers become addicted or report a rush when they are winning.

The euphoria of life in the fast lane often implodes when one’s luck runs out leading to depression and family breakups. One remedy is going to self-help groups like:

“The ‘Wall Street Wives Club’ formed to empower and serve the needs of wives and girlfriends whose husbands or significant others work in the stressful and volatile brokerage community. Men are often uncomfortable expressing their feelings.”

Some of Dr. Albert’s clients coped with the pressures on them to perform in kinkier ways.

“…. they just want to let loose, relax and take a very passive role in their sexual practice. So they may seek out the services of a dominatrix, where they are at the mercy of this sex worker. I’ve had clients who seek out services where they get whipped, cuffed, put on a leash like a dog.”

Beating others can also be part of this culture. There is violence lurking to the surface that can easily erupt when desires are denied.

I am not being moralistic here, but a climate of narcissism and living secret lives often desensitizes its practitioners leaving them little time to think of how their actions may affect others. (Or how the policies they promote impact on their customers or the poor!)

None of this context excuses anything that Strauss-Kahn may or may not have done, but what it does do is shine some light on a culture of aggressive power-driven hyper-sexuality that our media is often too hypocritical to investigate.

Filmmaker and News Dissector Danny Schechter edits Mediachannel.org.

For more on his film Plunder: The Crime of Our Time and companion book The Crime Of Our Time: Why Wall Street Is Not Too Big To Jail, visit plunderthecrimeofourtime.com.

German Insurer Munich Re Rewards Salesmen With Prostitutes

BananaFamine — Sat, 21 May 2011 18:43:59 +0000

BBC News reports:

One of the biggest insurance companies in the world held a party for salesmen where they were rewarded with the services of prostitutes.

Munich Re is the world’s biggest re-insurer — in other words, the company acts as an insurance company for other insurance companies.

One of its divisions, Ergo, told the BBC that the party had taken place to reward salesmen in 2007. A spokesman said the people who organised it had since left.

The gathering was held at a thermal baths in the Hungarian capital Budapest as a reward to particularly successful salesmen.

For more information, see original article.

Sex On The Brain: Orgasms Unlock Altered Consciousness

imkaan — Tue, 17 May 2011 09:09:44 +0000

Kayt Sukel writes in New Scientist:

With a click and a whirr, I am pulled into the scanner. My head is strapped down and I have been draped with a blanket so that I may touch my nether regions — my clitoris in particular — with a certain degree of modesty. I am here neither for a medical procedure nor an adult movie. Rather, I am about to stimulate myself to orgasm while an fMRI scanner tracks the blood flow in my brain.

My actions are helping Barry Komisaruk at Rutgers University in Newark, New Jersey, and colleagues to tease apart the mechanisms underlying sexual arousal. In doing so, not only have they discovered that there is more than one route to orgasm, but they may also have revealed a novel type of consciousness — an understanding of which could lead to new treatments for pain.

Despite orgasm being a near-universal human phenomenon…

Japanese Kissing Machine

JacobSloan — Mon, 16 May 2011 22:35:04 +0000

Never been kissed? Now there’s a robot for that. It’s from Japan, obviously, and watching its graduate student creator perform a demonstration is even more awkward than one would have imagined.

Florida Senate Accidentally Outlaws Sex?

bluemana — Mon, 16 May 2011 04:57:40 +0000

Weird move, Florida. Via Southern Fried Science:

Question: If your elected officials fail basic taxonomy, promote anti-science curriculum, and consistently attempt to undermine the fundamental underpinning of all biology, what happens when they start trying to legislate from this flawed view of reality?

The answer is this poorly-worded miasma of a law recently passed in Florida, which presumably was designed to prevent bestiality and promote animal welfare, but which has actually made it illegal, effective October 1, 2011, for anyone to have sex in Florida:

An act relating to sexual activities involving animals; creating s. 828.126, F.S.; providing definitions; prohibiting knowing sexual conduct or sexual contact with an animal; prohibiting specified related activities; providing penalties; providing that the act does not apply to certain husbandry, conformation judging, and veterinary practices; providing an effective date.

IMF Director Arrested After Alleged Sex Attack on NY Hotel Maid

Join Or DIE — Sun, 15 May 2011 00:30:34 +0000

Via MSNBC:

NEW YORK— The leader of the International Monetary Fund, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, was arrested on Saturday, minutes before he was to fly to Paris from John F. Kennedy International Airport, The New York Times reported.

Strauss-Kahn, a candidate for president of France, was taken off an Air France flight by officers from the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey and turned over to Manhattan detectives, a Port Authority spokesman told the Times.

He was accused of a sodomizing a maid at a Times Square hotel earlier in the day, the authorities said. He has not been charged but was being questioned, police said.

Strauss-Kahn, 62, allegedly crept up behind a maid after she entered his room and forced her to perform oral sex on him, sources told the New York Daily News. The New York Post said he was naked and had emerged from the bathroom.

Drugs Help ‘Reduce’ HIV Transmission

Pelliciari — Fri, 13 May 2011 21:07:57 +0000

HIV-1 particles assembling at the surface of an infected macrophage.

BBC News reports:

An HIV-positive person who takes anti-retroviral drugs after diagnosis, rather than when their health declines, can cut the risk of spreading the virus to uninfected partners by 96%, according to a study.

The United States National Institutes of Health sampled 1,763 couples in which one partner was infected by HIV.

It was abandoned four years early as the trial was so successful. The World Health Organization said it was a “crucial development”.

The study began in 2005 at 13 sites across across Africa, Asia and the Americas.

HIV-positive patients were split into two groups. In one, individuals were immediately given a course of anti-retroviral drugs. The other group only received the treatment when their white blood cell count fell.

Both were given counselling on safe sex practices, free condoms and treatment for sexually transmitted infections. Among those immediately starting anti-retroviral therapy there was only one case of transmission between partners.

[Continues at BBC News]

Is Semen An Antidepressant?

BananaFamine — Tue, 10 May 2011 17:42:07 +0000

Human sperm stained for semen quality testing in the clinical laboratory. Photo: Bobjgalindo (CC)

Jennifer Abbasi writes in Popular Science:

Back in 2002, psychologists at the State University of New York at Albany published a study in the Archives of Sexual Behavior looking at the potential role of semen in alleviating depression in women. The researchers presented evidence supporting an earlier hypothesis that the hormones in semen have a mood-boosting effect on women. For any woman who has had sex — and enjoyed it — this may not come as a huge surprise.

Cut to this past February. Lazar Greenfield, the incoming president of the American College of Surgeons (ACS), wrote a short Valentine’s Day-themed editorial about mating in Surgery News. In it, he discussed the sex lives of fruit flies, rotifers and humans. He cited the SUNY Albany study before concluding: “So there’s a deeper bond between men and women than St. Valentine would have suspected, and now we know there’s a better gift for that day than chocolates.” That gift, of course, being semen.

Greenfield’s editorial sparked a controversy among ACS members, many of whom felt it was blatantly sexist. In response to the flap, Greenfield — a highly respected retired professor at the University of Michigan with a reputation for supporting women in surgery — apologized and stepped down from his post as editor of Surgery News; two weeks ago, as the controversy continued, he also resigned from his position at the College. In an interview with the Detroit Free Press Greenfield said, “The editorial was a review of what I thought was some fascinating new findings related to semen, and the way in which nature is trying to promote a stronger bond between men and women.”

Setting aside the unfortunate politics of this story, I decided to look into the science behind “Semengate” for my first Sex Files column. Could the stuff in semen actually be nature’s own antidepressant?

For more information, see original article.