Strub, Whitney. 2011. Perversion for Profit : The Politics of Pornography and the Rise of the New Right. New York: Columbia University Press. Amazon
I’ve been reading Whitney Strub’s book, and despite its age, it is still very relevant in explaining the culture war over pornography in American politics. One of the things he details is though American history is littered with censorious firebrands like Anthony Comstock, those moral crusaders frequently stumbled over the problem that the majority of Americans don’t care very much about pornography as an issue. Men like Comstock and Charles Keating of Citizens for Decent Literature could mobilize a small, but vocal minority.
As Strub tells it, when the neoconservatives and the New Right rose to cultural power in the 1970s, they had to reconcile their belief in small government, free markets, and libertarianism with more culturally conservative allies, particularly evangelical Christians.
Thought it sought a socially conservative, generally religious voting base, the New Right was heavily corporate-sponsored, and such groups as the Committee for Survival of a Free Congress recognized the value of neocon thought in legitimizing their project of deregulating American markets even as they reregulated American morality.[Pg.190]
We’ve seen this strange-bedfellows alliance ever since, creating people who believe the Invisible Hand should rule everywhere except areas like pornography, abortion, and queer issues.
In 1979 the New Right organizer Paul Weyrich had come dangerously close to admitting the movement’s emphasis on social issues was a shallow commitment designed to garner evangelical votes while obscuring the substantive procorporate agenda of New Right politicians: “Yes, they’re emotional issues, but that’s better than talking about capital formation,” he said. Certainly the corporate benefactors of the New Right’s organizational superstructure valued profits over ideology; Coors, for instance, was headed by a reactionary zealot whose donations largely funded the important Heritage Foundation. But when the company recognized the consumer power of the gay market in 1979, it unhesitatingly ran ads in the gay paper the Advocate. [Pg.191-192]
More than 40 years later, we still see the same dynamic, even if the names have changed: trans people instead of gay people, puberty blockers instead of abortion, “cultural Marxism” instead of “the permissive society”. The 2023 brouhaha over trans streamer Dylan Mulvaney endorsing Bud Light suggests that the free-marketers sometimes back down when challenged by the cultural conservatives. Donald Trump himself embodies this contradictory political alliance: a man with multiple wives and a history of sexual indiscretions, who has been on the cover of Playboy magazine, can somehow be favored by the Christian right and even more reactionary forces. Grifters and quacks like Matt Walsh, Ben Shapiro, and Jordan Peterson constantly stoke culture wars over issues of sexuality and gender, anything to drown out considerations of economic policy from the discourse.
I’ve said it before, and I hope I’m wrong, but I still think it’s only a matter of time before BDSM takes the place of trans in this particular social-political complex.
Thoughts & Advice on Sex & Relationships
Pleasure Me Now, Virtual Vibrations: Bringing LDR Bliss With Blowjob Machines
Tantric Sexual Healing, Awakening Intimacy: A Tantric Journey to Sacred Sensuality
Erotic Fiction
Fern River Cub, Luc listens in
Lexi Rose, The Message: A Short Erotic Story – Part 1
Modesty Ablaze, “A Naughty Surprise” Part 4 of my Hotwife Diaries Audio Reading
Product Reviews
Sydney Screams, The Bivius Alien Dildo by Uberrime
Morgan Destera, TOY TEST – Funzze Black Fantasy Dildo
Liz X, Kiiroo Pearl 3 Vibrator Review: Remote Play & Video Sync Make It Unstoppable
Sex Toy DB, The Top 5 Squirting Dildos in 2024 to Simulate Ejaculation
Of Sex and Love, Heidi
Erotic Non Fiction
Awakening Your Inner Essence, A Tantric Perspective on Reclaiming Our Inner Worth
Kristina J, Humiliation To Liberation: A Dance Of Desire – 10 Years Of Submission
barefoot sub, Dancing In The Dark
Femina Viva, Managing the “feels” when visiting a companion
Sex Work
Carman Fox, Master Escort Communication
Thornhill Digital, The Future of Labour Rights Within Online Sex Work
Elizabeth, Torture Goddess
Sex Worker Search, Sex Worker Blogs via RSS Feed
Oz Bigdownunder, Oz in Dubai. Australian Halal Sausage is Back on the Menu
Books and Movies
The History of BDSM, The People’s Porn: A History of Handmade Pornography in America, by Lisa Z. Sigel
Writing about writing
Ramone Quides, When One Door Closes, Meditation Begins
- The re-election of Donald Trump as president of the United States may have far-reaching impacts on the production and distribution of distribution of pornography in the USA, particular kinky material. The US Supreme Court, now right-leaning, might overturn the 1972 Miller decision that protected material as art.
- The Sex and Psychology podcasts interviews Esmee Louise James, author of the new book Kinky History, about the myth of the Victorian vibrator, and how the true history of the vibrator is actually stranger.
- Richard Perez Seves has previously published biographies of kinky artists Charles Guyette, Eric Stanton, and Gene Bilbrew, and his magnum opus is his new biography of John “Willie” Coutts, artist, photographer, and publisher of Bizarre magazine.
- The Nation interviews Anna Poletti, the author of the new novel Hello, World?, about a pair of people who, displaced from their former lives, enter a dominant-submissive relationship. In particular, it talks about how their genders and political backgrounds influenced their kink (e.g. the sub is a man from a privileged background in Orban’s Hungary). It also comes a little too close to the idea of bdsm-as-therapy.
- Archive.org is back online, thankfully, and here are a few new finds:
Sanctuary is a 2022 drama film directed by Zachary Wigon and written by Micah Bloomberg. IMDB Amazon
This essay contains spoilers.
Sanctuary resembles David Ives’ stage play Venus in Fur (film adaptation by Roman Polanski): it focuses on two people in a single location, and deals with the constantly shifting power relations between a man and a woman.
Hal (Christopher Abbot) is the heir of a hotel empire. He’s about to be appointed the CEO after the death of his father. In the luxury suite of one of the hotels, he meets with Rebecca, who at first appears to be a lawyer who will interview him for the position. This escalates into a humiliation scene of Rebecca watching while Hal cleans the toilet in his underwear.
Continue reading »The Leather Boys is a 1964 British “kitchen sink” drama film about the working-class motorcycle club culture of the early 1960s. While featuring little explicit sex of any kind, it does provide a glimpse of the leather-clad biker culture of the time in the UK. It was also an early sympathetic treatment of male homosexuality in British film. Amazon
Continue reading »Sigel, Lisa Z. 2020. The People’s Porn : A History of Handmade Pornography in America. London: Reaktion Books. Amazon
In the early 21st century, we think of pornography as a ubiquitous, mass-produced, and corporatized phenomenon. Sites like PornHub present the viewer with vast quantities, individually tagged according to theme and sexual act. Advances in video production and distribution technology means almost anybody can make and consume sexual content with a high degree of technical quality and specificity.
Sigel’s book explores an entire history of what might be called “craft” or “artisanal” erotica, produced in single items or small sets, and using a wide variety of media, from carved whalebone to modified mass-produced photos to handmade garments. Many of the items discussed in the book aren’t “erotica” in the usual sense, i.e. items intended to arouse the viewer, perhaps as an aid to masturbation. These artifacts, such as a carved wooden figure of Abraham Lincoln with an erection, might more accurately be described as “adult novelties”.
Continue reading »- PinkLabel.tv is streaming a series of BDSM films and documentaries for queer history month, including Remedy (2013), Bloodsisters (1995), Thee Debauchery Ball: Director’s Cut (2022), The Secret Love Life of the Urban Leopard (2019), The Wrong Airbnb (2024), and many others.
- Going back to the 1990s, The Observer looks at Janet Jackson’s kinky 1997 album The Velvet Rope, and the role of BDSM in 90s pop and her career in particular.
- Atlas Obscura profiles Chez Christiane, a Paris brothel specializing in “special passions”. Unfortunately, it closed in 1946 and all that remains now is a building facade.
- The Betwixt the Sheets podcast discusses sex in ancient Mesopotamia. While only loosely related to BDSM, this discussion does examine how different practices of sex and gender can be in other societies, and how modern-day historians can project their own misconceptions into the past.
- The American Medical Association’s Journal of Ethics published a brief history of how different editions of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual handled homosexuality, BDSM and other “deviant” sexualities.
- Jessie Meadows wrote a critique of Anna Lembke’s book Dopamine Nation, which shows how “porn addiction” discourse ties into old Calvinist ideals of self-denial and hard work, and into modern neoliberal ideas of self-regulation. This is one thread going into the neo-puritanism rising in modern society.
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Thoughts & Advice on Sex & Relationships
Musings of a Switch, Porn thoughts
Tantric Sexual Healing, Sacred Sex: A Path to Deep Connection and Spiritual Awakening
The Disorderly House, How to Fuck Yourself, An Ultimate Sexual Self Intimacy Guide
Betty’s Toy Box, Experience Your Ultimate Pleasure: 10 Types of Orgasm for You to Try
Erotic Non Fiction
Kristina J, Manners Matter: Why Being Polite is Sexy (and Non-Negotiable, Even for Sex Workers)
Awakening Your Inner Essence, Exploring The Full Body Orgasm: A Personal Journey as a Tantric Practitioner
Little Red Spanking, The Lover’s Spat: A Paddle Story
Thoughts & Advice on Kink & Fetish
Pain as Pleasure, Building A Role Play– Chat GPT and the end (or beginning) of everything
Erotic Fiction
Jerusalem Mortimer, In the Realm of the Sensei Prologue-3
Sugarbutch, Don’t Swallow
Jasmine Gold, A Nun’s Humiliation
Product Reviews
Buzzing Babe, The Best Male Vibrators for Pleasure You Didn’t Know Existed (2024)
Liz X, Powerful Pleasure: Kiiroo’s Duo Powerblow FeelPocket Stroker
Sex Work
Hellga, One Overnight in Paris. Fly Me to You
Miss Kim Rub, Top Five BDSM Practices
Sex Worker Search, How to Send a Takedown Request to an Escort Directory
Femina Viva, How to Set Your Price (or not) as a Sex Worker
Sandra, Flogging, DP and Two Pearl Necklaces. A Duo with Oz
Nuit d’Or, Self-care For Dominants
Oz Bigdownunder, I Fucked Her Sissy Tits Off. A Duo with Lady Ava Sheridon and Her Sissy Slave
Books and Movies
History of BDSM, Strangeland (1998): The Celluloid Dungeon
Poetry
Simone Francis, Watch Me
“Sado Machismo” is an essay written by Edmund White and published in New Times, 8 January 1979, reprinted in the collection The Burning Library (Knopf, 1994)
White wrote this at a very different time: Not even ten years after Stonewall, before Cruising and definitely before HIV. The collection notes this essay was “… published during the height of Anita Bryant’s anti-homosexual campaign in Florida and in the midst of the Briggs Amendment campaign in California.” Gays and lesbians fighting for their rights to work as teachers were in the news, but a certain kind of “queer chic” was in the air too.
Continue reading »