Libido Films Blog

Masturbate-a-Thon

2008-05-22T08:35:00.000-07:00

May, we hear, is Masturbation Month and it's time again for the annual Masturbate-a-Thon at San Francisco's Center for Sex and Culture, which is run by our friends Carol Queen and Robert Lawrence.

This year the event is set for Sunday, May 25 and in the spirit of solidarity, we offer these details of what it's all about and how you can participate.

WHAT'S THE MASTURBATE-ATHON?
It's a fundraising, and consciousness-raising, event featuring masturbation -- just like a Walk-a--Thon, except your feet don't hurt when you're done (unless you masturbate in a fascinating way that we would like to know more about!).

The event is one of many National Masturbation Month events planned around the US, Canada, and Europe. Unlike most of the others, the CSC's Masturbate-a-Thon is a live group event at which participants will raise funds by getting others to sponsor them for the length of time they masturbate. CSC will hold the event at 1519 Mission Street in San Francisco. Special celebrity guests and MCs include Nina Hartley, gay porn start Robert Black, and performer Tom Orr (of "iTom Shuffle" and "Dirty Little Showtunes" fame!).

Founded by San Francisco's women-focused sex toy company Good Vibrations in the wake of then-Surgeon General Joycelyn Elders' firing for stating that masturbation "is perhaps something that should be taught" about when discussing youth sexual options, National Masturbation Month seeks to raise awareness and dispel shame about this most common and natural of sexual activities. Good Vibrations and its sister sex toy stores and sex-positive nonprofits have been celebrating National Masturbation Month since 1995. The Masturbate-a-Thon became the centerpiece of National Masturbation Month when it was added to Good Vibrations' slate of activities a few years later. GV has historically sponsored the Masturbate-a-Thon as a private event, as most masturbation is; the Center for Sex & Culture followed the lead of a private organization in Salt Lake City in celebrating it as a group activity.

If you have a question you don't find the answer to here, look at http://www.masturbate-a-thon.com. If that doesn't answer your question, email us!

HOW DOES IT WORK? WHAT CAN I EXPECT?
If you want to break the "longest time spent masturbating" record (currently 8 hours and 40 minutes), you can arrive at 12 noon on May 25. General admission starts at 3. We'll go on til everyone is done -- probably sometime between 9 pm and midnight. Everyone will need to show ID (to prove they're over 18) and sign a release. Payment is up front at the door, or after the fact if you have a filled-out pledge sheet. (More on that below.)

One room will have a stage, cameras, and voyeurs sitting in chairs (for more about being a voyeur, see below). To enter that room, participants MUST sign a release and bring two forms of ID. From that room we'll webcast people masturbating AND Carol and Nina's MC chat AND interviews and more. Besides the stage and the voyeurs' platform, we'll have space for women to congregate together, for men to congregate together, and for all genders to occupy. Except for the voyeurs, anyone entering that room might show up on our webcast.

There will be a separate room for the people who DON'T wish to be on the webcast but who do wish to masturbate together. Again, it will be separated into women's, men's, and mixed space. There will be no voyeurs in this space. People from the webcast room may enter this room to masturbate out of the limelight, but people from this room won't be allowed into the webcast room unless they go back to the front desk and sign the webcast release.

We'll provide a secure clothes check area and a "chill space" room with refreshments.

You might want to bring: your fave lube and toys; a towel; a kimono or robe. We'll have plenty of padded space.

FAQ: Can I appear on the webcast in a mask? YES! We especially favor Groucho Marx noses; we think he would approve. No George Bushes, please, we do not want an honorable activity like wanking to get mixed up in that sort of thing. If you're worried about your mom recognizing you, don't forget to cover your tats.

FAQ: Can I attend with my partner/s? YES! Masturbating together is fabulous.

FAQ: Can I masturbate my partner? NO! At least, not for long. You can stay involved physically with your partner, but think of yourself as a sex toy, an addition to their masturbatory experience. There are sex parties for partner-play -- there's only one Masturbate-a-Thon (in SF at least), and its purpose is to honor SOLO sex.

FAQ: What's an "energy vampire," and how do I avoid people thinking I'm one? EEK! An energy vampire is a person who, instead of settling down and getting busy, wanders the rooms looking for people and scenes to stare at. This can make other people feel uncomfortable, especially outside the exhibitionist room, and in a packed room, you risk invading others' personal space. Please voyeurize respectfully and at a distance (though if someone is urging you closer and egging you on, fine! Enjoy!).

WHAT IF I WANT TO COMPETE?
Let us know at the front desk when you sign in, and make sure you let us know when you're done. Our staff members will keep an eye on your progress and document time lasted, orgasms (let us know if you want an orgasm counter, or bring your own), and distance. The distance competition will be held at 7 pm. (Current distance record to beat is 36 inches.)

WHAT IS A FEATURED MASTURBATOR? CAN I BE ONE?
A Featured Masturbator is anyone who signs up in advance and provides a photo, image, or bio that might inspire people who visit the Masturbate-a-Thon website to sponsor you. It's especially good if you want to be on the webcast, though that's not required; we can report on your progress throughout the evening. Featured Masturbators are especially encouraged to alert their friend or fan networks to encourage sponsors, which can be made through the website. Want to do it? Let us know!

HOW DOES THE PLEDGE AND/OR MONEY THING WORK?
To get in, you must EITHER pay $20 at the door OR bring a pledge sheet (and you must agree to let the people who pledged you know how much money they're expected to remit based on how long you masturbated). We urge you to get at least a few sponsors, because that's the way community involvement in the Masturbate-a-Thon grows, as well as pro-masturbation discussion -- the whole point of this endeavor! If you get sponsors but they don't pledge $20 or more, you can pledge yourself to make up the difference.

IF you don't want to participate but wish to attend as a VOYEUR, the cost is $40 at the door (though more is always appreciated!). You may keep your street clothes on, but you can only enter the refreshments room and the voyeur platform. (If you get really inspired and want to masturbate too, come on over to the front desk and let us know, and then visit clothes check.)

WHAT IF I'M JUST REALLY SHY?
You can always participate in the Masturbate-a-Thon from home. You can still download a pledge form from http://www.masturbate-a-thon.com, get friends to sponsor you, masturbate all alone or with your partner, and send in the pledges to us at 2215-R Market #455, SF CA 94114 or via the PayPal account on the website.

WHAT IF I'M A JOURNALIST OR WANT TO WRITE ABOUT IT?
Great! Just let us know in advance so we can mark you as Press.

BLOG ABOUT IT!
Dedicate a blog entry or two to masturbation or the Masturbate-a-Thon. In fact, if you want, you can blog about it FROM the Masturbate-a-Thon -- we have wifi! Make sure you let us know so we can link to you.

AND!! NEW THIS YEAR: THE TWITTERGASM!
Twittergasm: a post to your twitter profile indicating that you just had a real orgasm:
ICSW (I came, so what?)
JOSW (jacking off, so what? related term to indicate you are jacking off)
By typing the character string: ICSW to your twitter profile, you say with pride: I Came! Prudes of the world will be forced to realize once and for all that no one really cares what adults do with themselves, and everyone does it.

What is Twitter?
Twitter is a micro-blogging platform accessible from the web, instant messenger clients, and mobile phones, which allows people to post brief messages to share their activities and interests with friends and fans. It links to people’s blogs and Facebook and Myspace pages, too, so it makes possible the updating of many social networks with one entry of 140 characters or less, allowing the sharing of links to websites with brief commentary on why the site is interesting. A short video on twitter explains it very clearly: http://www.commoncraft.com/Twitter

What does Twitter have to do with Orgasms and Jacking Off?
The 2008 Masturbate-a-thon is participating in twitter in an historic way. In partnership with GameLink.com, one of our sponsors, we have created the twittergasm. It’s a way of coming out of the closet as someone who masturbates by posting to your twitter profile whenever you come. A secret handshake of sorts, only others who follow the twittergasm profile, or who have read about the campaign will know, so your prudish friends will be left alone until they, too are enlightened.

We will be using the popular service http://www.tweetscan.com to track twittergasms in May and we will publish the results on the Masturbate-a-thon.com site and related blogs and sites.

Twitterers can participate in national masturbation month in several ways. Become a follower of one of these profiles:
http://www.twitter.com/jackingoff (the profile off the masturbate-a-thon.com)
http://www.twitter.com/thebiggesto (a profile that tracks the orgasms of twitterers)
2) Use this code on your twitter profile to indicate whenever you have an orgasm:
ICSW or JOSW when you jack off. (hint, multiple orgasms can be indicated by using a colon and a number to indicate how many: ICSW:3 (…If you are tempted to fake a twittergasm, read our blog for info on why you shouldn’t.)

3) Ask your friends and twitter followers to pledge to donate a certain amount to the Center for Sex and Culture for every orgasm you have in May. Visit www.masturbate-a-thon.com/twitter.php to register your twitter profile for participation in National Masturbation Month (May 2008) and send emails to your friends to ask them to make a pledge on your behalf. Send a link to that same page where they can sign up to donate as much as they chose for each time you come. Donors do not have to be on twitter to participate.

PS -- If you notice anything here that contradicts what you read on the Masturbate-a-Thon website, pretty please let us know! Thanks, and happy wanking from Carol, Robert, and the gang at CSC!

Prehistoric Venus Figures and Vulva Paintngs

2008-04-13T14:33:00.000-07:00

The vulvas of Tito Bustillo

By Marianna Beck and Jack Hafferkamp

How old is porn?

From the record, it would seem to be very old indeed. It goes back about as far as art itself.

In prehistoric art, it is not unusual to find images of vulvas either carved or painted on cave walls.

These red painted vulvas are found at Tito Bustillo in Spain. They most likely date from the Magdelanian period, 18,000 years ago to the beginning of the ice age 10,000 years ago.

Prehistoric art included small pieces that could be carried from place to place. Often these pieces had an erotic quotient. Venus figurines reflect the enormous diversity in subject matter, use, and date of creation.

For example, the Venus of Galgenberg is considered to be one of the world’s oldest statues. Created around 32 000 years ago and found in 1988 in Austria, it is thought to be of a woman dancing.

Venus of Galgenberg

The so-called Venus Immudique is an example of how cultural attitudes and sexism of the time inform the artifact.

Venus Impudique

Consider the word “venus” that describes these figures. It was first used in a kind of mocking irony by the discoverer of what was then the first Venus figure to be found. It was discovered in France in the 1860s. As you can see, she’s a headless and armless ivory statuette.

Interestingly, she also looks like a dildo. The discoverer named her the Venus Impudique or Immodest Venus, first as a playful reversal of the Venus Pudica used to describe a statue type of the Classical Venus that shows, in many statues the goddess attempting to conceal her breasts and pubic area from view. Does the faceless demeanor indicate a conscious desire to not represent individuality because of its sacredness?

While the Venus of Willendorf is by no means the oldest example of portable art found in Europe, she is probably the most famous of the 200 or so female figures that have been found across Europe.

Discovered in 1908 near the Danube in Willendorf, Austria, this five-inch limestone figure was at first assumed to be about 10,000-15,000 years old. But in 1990, with more precise and reliable radiocarbon dating, she is now estimated to be somewhere between 24,000-26,000 years old. That puts her smack dab in the middle of the Gravettian Period (28,000-22,000 years ago) – a time from which many Venus figures stem.

Venus of Willendorf

Found in 1922 in the Rideaux cave of Lespugue in the foothills of the Pyrenees, the six-inch Venus of Lespugue figure is carved from a fragment of mammoth ivory tusk, of which much of the front portion has been restored.

Venus of Lespugue

About 23,000 years old, it is yet another example of a Venus figure that raises more questions than it answers. Is this swollen body with its egg-shaped parts an exaggerated celebration of fertility, a portable amulet of power, a portrayal of a priestess? Is she a depiction of how men viewed women and thus a culturally idealized view of female beauty? Certainly given the Ice Age climate, fat would have been critical to survival.

Although the game hunted for food was a reoccurring subject in cave painting, so was the female sex organ. To our way of thinking these two themes convey something fundamental about what was important to the artists who created these works.

The meaning of depicting game is fairly easy to comprehend. The meaning or meanings of female figures is less easily understood in our contemporary context. But that there was an erotic component is hard to deny – and it says something about what was important to the artists who created these works

THE KISS OF SHAME

2008-03-19T13:42:00.000-07:00

WELCOME to the Libidofilms blog where the aim is to put sex into historical/socio/political context. This week, with Spring looming, we look back at the anti-woman nature of The Inquisition. As always, comments are invited. Scroll down to find the place.

Witchcraft, The Inquisition and The Devil’s Anus

By Marianna Beck

Conjure up an image of a witch these days and most likely it’s a cartoon-like fairytale representation of an evil old crone with a broom and a black cat. In reality, the history of witches is anything but benign folklore. It’s actually a bloody, sadistic history of epic proportions — and one that provides chilling insight into how the Christian Church of Western Europe dealt with the merest hint of feminine power.

Originally, a wicce (female witch), practiced the healing arts, had a considerable knowledge of herbs and was not persecuted by the early Christian Church. In fact, in a ruling in 785, later confirmed by Charlemagne, the death penalty was applied to anyone who put a person to death for practicing witchcraft.

But the moderate attitudes held by the Catholic Church changed drastically by the 14th century and all manifestations of female power became suspect. Those practicing the craft of healing were denounced for consorting with the Devil and therefore guilty of the worst of all heresies.

The Flying Witch
The notion that many witches confessed to flying under torture is an interesting one when we consider the fact that many of these women were healers and aware of the properties of certain hallucinogenic plants. Ingesting psychotropic plants like belladonna, hemlock and mandrake for instance can certainly create the illusion of flying.

By 1486, two fanatical Dominican inquisitors, Heinrich Kramer (Dean of Cologne University) and Jakob Sprenger, published the hugely influential (The Hammer Against the Witches) — a handbook for future witch-hunters. It’s significant that in the title of this book, the word, “maleficarum,” (meaning wrongdoers) is in the feminine form. This implied that women were more susceptible to witchcraft than men because, as the text noted, “all witchcraft comes from carnal lust, which in women is insatiable.”

Indeed the official handbook of the inquisitors of witchcraft declared that witchcraft and satanism were caused by women’s carnal lust since God “allows the devil more power over the veneral act, by which the original sin is handed down, than over all other human actions…because of its natural nastiness.”

Witches’ Sabbath In folklore, a witch is often construed to be sorcerer or
magician, associated with the spirits of nature. While not necessarily evil,
she, sometime he constituted a threat to the order of the cosmos,

So at the height of the European witch-hunt craze, which lasted from about 1560 to 1660, hundreds of thousands of women — some men and some children — were tortured and burned. To illustrate the insanity of this misogynistic mania, two villages in the area of Trier in Germany were left in 1585 with one surviving female each. Elsewhere, the Bishop of Genoa burned 500 people in three months, the Bishop of Bamburg 600 hundred, the Bishop of Würtzburg 900 hundred. One inquisitor Nicolas Remy burned 800 women in one day.

It’s generally estimated some 200,000 people executed in Europe.

Witches Swimming
One widely held belief, particularly in England was that a witch would not sink in water. The accused party would be subjected to something called swimming or "floating". The suspect would be thrown into water with her left hand or thumb tied to her right foot, and her right hand tied to her left foot. The guilty would float, the innocent sink, in the belief that water would reject corrupt agents of the Devil.

Since all women were therefore considered susceptible to sexual enticement by the Devil, they became the main focus of witch-hunts. They could be accused of causing infertility, impotence, birth defects, insanity, crop failure, storms or any unexplainable phenomena. If you had an unexplained skin tag somewhere on your body…an epileptic fit, any manifestation of a mental disorder….this was enough to be questioned.

Witches were often portrayed in the company of other demons that took the shape of animals — usually cats and dogs. Today, we still have the superstition of a black cat signifying evil or bad luck.

Under torture, victims were forced to confess details on other demonic rites including the drinking of menstrual blood, kissing the Devil’s anus, cooking children, flying at night on broomsticks to orgies, having intercourse with cats, dogs, frogs and crows and otherwise engaging in licentious behavior with any of the 7,405,926 under-devils in the service of Satan. (Yes, the Inquisition had determined this exact number along with its other list of Devil details).

Osculum Infame
The osculum infame is mentioned in nearly every single recorded account of a witches' in their confessions – usually extracted under torture. It was called the Kiss of Shame because it was generally regarded as the ultimate act of degradation.

The obsession with the Devil is fascinating. Inquisitors came up with all sorts of details about the devil’s anatomy including the size and temperature of his penis. He engaged in the forbidden acts which is why he is so frequently accused of sodomy. This became known as the osculum Infame…or Kiss of Shame. It was believed it was the kiss that allowed the devil to seduce women.

TROUBADOR LOVE

2008-03-11T18:48:00.000-07:00

WELCOME to the LibidoFilms Blog where we put sex into socio/political/historical context. Comments and questions are invited below. For part one of this two-part piece scroll down past the piece on sex workers.

By Marianna Beck

Part Two: The Birth of Romantic Love

A troubadour typically wrote love poetry, set it to music and then chose a married noblewoman to whom he devoted his life’s work. A relationship could last a lifetime and the question still remains whether the connection to his Mi-dons, My Lord, was platonic or sexual.

Given the political (and often fatal) consequences of adultery, not to mention the problematic issue of illegitimate children in a culture ruled by primogeniture, sexual contact seems unlikely — though not impossible.

Unrequited love, however, seems to have been an inherent component of troubadour romance and fueled many of the fetishistic elements of this idealized relationship. A look, a smile, a thread from a glove, a garter or tuft of fur was seemingly enough to sustain a poet’s passion for light years.

BIRTH TRAY
In this image Venus is venerated by six earthly lovers. Sunrays emanating from her vulva refer not only to the power of her pudenda but to her fertility. It is an image that celebrates femaleness — a concept that was to reverse itself dramatically during the European witch-hunt craze.

Taking the psychoanalytic tack here puts us squarely in Freud territory. If, according to chivalric concepts, the ideal is to worship an unattainable woman (i.e. mom) then it makes sense that the notion of consummation with the love-object might be undesirable — if not socially unacceptable.

In his illuminating book, Sex in History, G. Rattray Taylor states: “…a man who has fixated on his mother tends to be impotent with women he loves and idealizes, but has no difficulties with persons of a lower class who cannot be regarded as superior in position.

As Freud points out, such men tend to direct their love to someone who already belongs to another, and who therefore can never be possessed.”

THE GAZEBO OF DESIRE 1400
It seems little surprise then that many troubadours chose the Virgin Mary as their special patron and devoted poems to her. In a sense, the emergence of the progressive, Eros-focused troubadours is all the more interesting in light of the anti-sexual, blood-thirsty, milieu of the Middle Ages from which they sprang. That they got away with it is short of amazing. Not long before the advent of the troubadours, addressing a love-song to any married woman would have been punishable by death.

Given the rules of courtly love set forth in Capellanus‘ sensitive treatise, De Amore, this makes perfect sense. Capellanus warns that the main reason to avoid sexual contact is that “love leads to incest” — hardly the primary reason for two people not to make like the beast with two backs. Capellanus goes on to advise that for sexual relief, it’s best to seduce lower-class women who do not aspire the sense of awe that the worshipped mistress does.

Adds Taylor in his analysis: “…in the troubadours we have a body of men each of whom loves and obeys a woman who is powerful and superior to himself, and with whom he never sleeps, apparently for fear of incest.” Apparently, if it isn’t one thing, it’s your mother.

The troubadour phenomenon did not last long. The devotion to the erotic — even in its abstract and chaste forms — was essentially anathema to Church teachings. From the middle of the 13-th century on, the Church set out to wipe out anyone holding heretical views — and that included anyone who proselytized about earthly delights.

The concept of romance would be dead for a long time. And the one that emerged in the 18th Century, was very different.

Marianna Beck holds a Ph.D. in Erotology, the study of the material culture of sex.

2008 Desiree Alliance Conference in Chicago, July 16-21

2008-03-05T10:05:00.000-08:00

WELCOME!
The LibdoFilms blog aims to put sex into historical/cultural/social context.

This week we are helping to spread the word about the Desiree Alliance's sex worker conference set for Chicago July 16 -- 21, 2008. For more, visit the film/video site (the button in the upper right) to see "Performance Piece," our video featuring sex worker celebrity Veronica Monet.

WHO IS A SEX WORKER?

by Serpent Libertine
www.sexpros.net

If you are...

A Prostitute
An Escort
A Whore
A Hooker
A Streetworker
A Madam
A Courtesan
A Dominatrix
A Master
An Erotic Masseuse
A Full Body Sensual Masseuse
A Stripper

An 1800s Russian engraving depicting the
Whore of Babylon riding the
seven-headed Beast.
(Source: Wikipedia)

An Exotic Dancer
An Adult Film/Porn PerformerSomeone Who Shoots, Directs, or Produces Porn

A Fluffer
A Phone Sex Operator
A Tantra Provider
An Agency owner
A Pimp
Someone supported by A Sugar Daddy/Mama
Someone who has had sex for food, drugs, or to get the money you needed to survive
A Clerk at a Sex shop
An Owner of a Sexually Oriented Business
A Peep Show Dancer
A Webcam Performer
A Fetish or Nude Model
A Fetish/Erotic Photographer
An Online Domme
An Adult Webmaster/mistress
A Burlesque Dancer
A Sex Advice Columnist
A Sex Toy Reviewer
A Sex Worker Advocate/Activist
A Publisher/Editor of A Sexually Oriented Publication
A Hustler/Ho
A Waitress at A Strip Club
A Phone Operator at an Escort Service
A Fantasy Sex Provider
A Curator at A Sex Museum
A Sex Educator
A Sex Surrogate
A Sex Therapist
Rent Boy/Girl

...you can consider yourself a sex worker. A sex worker isn't necessarily someone who has sex with her/his clients.

While all these professions may be vastly different from one another, we are linked by one thing-our knowledge and expertise in a specific profession related to sex. We are asking you to come share your skills and knowledge with us this summer at the 2008 Desiree Alliance Conference in Chicago. From July 16-21 sex workers from all over the country will gather in Chicago for the national convergence, "Pulling Back the Sheets: Sex, Work, and Social Justice."

Please join us as either a presenter or attendee. Your voice is important to us.

For more information on registration and call for submissions, go to http://www.desireealliance.org

TROUBADOR LOVE

2008-02-25T18:01:00.000-08:00

WELCOME to the LibidoFilms Blog where the idea is to consider sex in socio/political/historical context. Comments and questions are invited.

By Marianna Beck

Part One: The Birth of Romantic Love

Romantic love. Brain scientists blame an overabundance of epinephrine; country western singers look for it in all the wrong places and cynics define it as the simultaneous exchange of fantasies and skin.

The question is: how did we ever get into this mess?

Do we blame the Greeks for the peregrinations of Zeus, the Romans for engineering the horny festival of Lupercalia — or the French for inventing champagne and underwear?

The truth, as usual, resides a little bit of everywhere. But for those standing on the millennial precipice, still wondering how we become a love-sick, Hallmark-card carrying culture, the answer lies (mostly) with a bunch of sensitive, poet types in the 12th-century called troubadours whose vocal and literary ambitions merely disguised their horizontal urges.

KNIGHT WITH VENUS HEADDRESS
The idea of chivalry and courtly love was a very short-lived phenomenon that most likely started in southern France in the early 12th century.

That the troubadours managed to blossom out of a warrior culture is strange enough. That they told stories and sang about sex, albeit in disguised and symbolic fashion, addressing their mating calls to unattainable married women — the wives of their bosses no less! — is even more paradoxical and speaks to a kind of harmonic convergence of social, religious and political change.

Naturally, there are all sorts of theories as to how the concept of courtly love, defined as a kind of obsessive, doggy devotion governed by rules, gifts, glances, and symbolic gesture, grew out of the gothic chivalric tradition.

The troubadour movement most likely started in the Provence and Languedoc regions of southern France in the early 12th century. Some historians have fingered a feudal lord, Guilhem of Aquitaine, as the inventor of courtly love.

It seems that Guilhem had a habitual Lewinsky problem but a short supply of damsels — particularly after a local clergyman began preaching that the fires of hell and damnation awaited adulterers of both sexes.

Guilhem’s defense was to pen some love poems in which he argued that love was not a sin but a divine mystery and that women who inspired love were worthy of adoration. (Word has it, Guilhem’s ruse worked brilliantly, countering the preacher’s inflammatory predictions).

This idea of honoring women was certainly a departure from the wholly anti-erotic Christian mind-set and was most likely brought from the East by crusaders and pilgrims who found a tradition of Persian literature in which women were the subject of extravagant devotion. This new movement spread quickly to northern France, England and then later to Germany.

TROUBADOR AND FEMALE DANCE
Troubadours represented the antithesis of brutish male warrior culture, and focused instead on the arts and an excessively idealized concept of love. They were the sensitive males of the time.

Medieval art of the time also reflected the intertwining of the sacred and profane. Art historian Michael Camille suggests in his sumptuous book, The Art of Medieval Love, that this radical shift in spirituality occurred even among clerics, such as the 12th-century reformer Bernard of Clairvaux (1090-1153).

He criticized courtly excess while describing his relationship with God in terms of a lover approaching his beloved. According to Camille, religious iconography of the time takes on a much more intimate and sensual scope, and is often described as man’s mystical union with God. Similarly, it was not uncommon for nuns to characterize their relationship to Christ in terms of “bride” and “bridegroom.”

Clerics were often the most fervent promoters of these new poetic ideas of love. Camille writes that these religious figures were nearly always “…described as refined in manners, wealthy, and generous in giving gifts, compared to rough brutish, military men.”
In this category, the most popular promoter of the time was Andrew Capellanus who as chaplain at the court of Eleanor of Aquitaine penned a bestseller in 1186 — De Amore — detailing the elaborate rules governing the art of courtly love.

LOVER CAPTURED BY LADY
“Courtly love goes so far as the kiss and embrace and the modest contact with the nude lover, omitting the final solace, [read orgasm here] for that is not permitted to those who wish to love purely.”

To wit: “Courtly love goes so far as the kiss and embrace and the modest contact with the nude lover, omitting the final solace, [read orgasm here] for that is not permitted to those who wish to love purely.” Enter the era of the sensitive male.Troubadours, along with these refined clerics like Capellanus, are credited with having created a whole new language of love. They were responsible, at least until the Inquisition kicked in a hundred years or so later, for promoting a revolutionary change in relationships between the sexes. — at least among the nobility.

They represented the antithesis of brutish male warrior culture, and focused instead on the arts and an excessively idealized concept of love. In some cases, they even pressed for social reforms.

It seems little surprise then that many chose the Virgin Mary as their special patron and devoted poems to her. In a sense, the emergence of the progressive, Eros-focused troubadours is all the more interesting in light of the anti-sexual, blood-thirsty, Thanatos-based milieu of the Middle Ages from which they sprang.

That they got away with it is short of amazing. Not long before the advent of the troubadours, addressing a love-song to any married woman would have been punishable by death.

Next: The Conclusion of Troubador Love: If It's Not One Thing, It's Your Mother

Marianna Beck holds a Ph.D. in Erotology, the study of the material culture of sex.

The Roots of Western Pornography

2008-02-14T12:43:00.000-08:00

Marianna Beck

WELCOME!

The LibidoFilms blog space is devoted to exploring the socio/political/historical contexts of sexuality, in other words exploring the field of Erotology. This week we conclude Dr. Marianna Beck's excellent series on the evolution of Western Pornography. As always comments are welcome.

Part 7
Victorian Obsessions and Fin-de-Siècle Predilections

By Marianna Beck
Regardless of the increased availability of works with a sexual theme both from French imports and a flourishing underground press, the Society for the Suppression of Vice kept up a steady fight and, over the course of 55 years managed a successful prosecution rate of 97 percent. In 1853 the English Parliament passed its first legislation on obscenity, which authorized customs to seize "indecent or obscene prints, paintings, books, cards, engravings or articles." It was regarded as the best way to stem the flow of Parisian etchings, books and the new daguerreotypes, but in reality only served to make everything more expensive.

The underground trade in pornography thrived in spite of the new restrictions, although smaller dealers and street traders who sold cheap prints, books and pamphlets were more vulnerable to the agents of the Society for the Suppression of Vice than booksellers who attempted to screen their clients more carefully. Nevertheless, publishers like William Dugdale, who produced huge amounts of material in the mid-19th century, served at least nine prison sentences for publishing obscene books and prints.

Since there were generally no named authors to pay -- besides the famed Anonymous or authors like "D. Cameron" (a playful twist on Boccaccio’s 14th-century collection of bawdy tales entitled The Decameron) -- publishers made a lot of their money re-printing old works like Sade’s. Books like Fanny Hill had a rebirth with dozens of re-prints, some of which were enlivened with new chapters or with words altered to make the characters sound more crude and contemporary.


In short, magazines attempted to cater to every possible taste. This image is from one of the most popular publications of the time -- The Pearl.

By the early 1850s, a plethora of magazines had emerged, some of them focusing on what Lord Alfred Douglas would later describe as "the love that dare not speak its name" -- homosexuality. Part of this was encouraged by an almost reverential attitude toward Classical Greek art and architecture and by the view that male friendship was somehow a purer expression of love than that between men and women. The contradiction, of course, was that the conventional Victorian view saw homosexuality as completely unacceptable.

In 1868, one of the tightest gags ever imposed on English writers -- namely, the Hicklin rule -- was to have profound effects on both sides of the Atlantic for decades to come. It established that the test for obscenity was whether or not material could corrupt those whose minds were open to immoral influences. If the answer was yes, the material was suppressed. The rule was applied not only to literary works but to materials like sex education pamphlets.

The Hicklin rule, while a serious deterrent, simply made underground publishers more vigilant. Booksellers kept secretly printed texts and magazines stashed away for only a select and trusted clientele -- magazines with rather sophisticated titles like The English Woman’s Domestic Magazine, The Pearl, and The Exquisite -- one of the first to feature "pin-ups." Others sounded a bit more suggestive: The Boudoir, Glee, Pleasure, The Annals of Gallantry. In short, magazines attempted to cater to every possible taste.

The Pearl (published between 1879 and 1880) contained serialized novels, short stories, poems, songs, jokes, limericks, letters, and gossip with a heavy interest in flagellation, as well as homosexuality and bisexuality. At one point, the entire collection was sold in a 3-volume set for the sum of 25 pounds -- roughly the annual salary of the average worker of the time.

Aside from the well-worn theme of the reluctant virgin, references to flagellation were ubiquitous in English pornography. Judging from titles like The Curiosities of Flagellation, The Whippingham Papers, and The Romance of Chastisement, among dozens of other works, there was a clear and abiding fascination with it. The possible reasons for this consuming interest in the pleasure of whipping reflect the eroticization of a social reality. Corporal punishment had been an integral part of English culture for hundreds of years, and was more or less institutionalized in schools, the military and the penal system. The predominantly upper-class male audience interested in the flagellation genre would most likely have experienced it as children, where it was an ever-present component of boarding school life. One theory set forth regarding the Victorian fascination with flagellation literature centers on the notion of the buttocks replacing the genitals as the primary erotic zone. This becomes clearer when one analyzes this literature and noting that although it was designed to arouse, the genitals are almost never mentioned.


The possible reasons for this consuming interest in the pleasure of whipping reflect the eroticization of a social reality. Corporal punishment had been an integral part of English culture for hundreds of years, and was more or less institutionalized in schools, the military and the penal system.

No study of late-Victorian erotica would be complete without mentioning My Secret Life, a 4,000-page, fact-crammed, first-hand portrait of Victorian sexuality written by "Walter" -- presumably an Englishman of some means. Experts disagree on whether or not Walter was, in reality, Sir Henry Spencer Ashbee, a well-known collector of erotic books who ultimately donated his enormous collection to the British Library.

Born somewhere between 1820 and 1825, Walter’s memoirs essentially span the Victorian era, ending when he is in his mid-60s. My Secret Life details Walter’s sexual exploits with over 1,200 women, recording dress, manners, social customs, and Victorian lifestyle. The book serves as an important document, in that it reveals more of London’s lowlife and the exploitation of women and girls, including the massive trade in child prostitution, than any book Charles Dickens might have written. It is an extraordinary example of the thriving sexual subculture that existed in spite of Victorian efforts to eradicate the existence of sex through collective amnesia.

Fin-de-siècle themes in both art and pornography played with a whole spectrum of ideas, including hermaphroditism, transvestism, bisexuality, and homosexual love. The sexually provocative drawings of Aubrey Beardsley, for instance, were filled with both hugely erect and sexually ambiguous figures, and Teleny, a novel published in 1893 and to which Oscar Wilde is thought to have contributed, is considered to be the first modern homosexual novel. While the 1890s produced some of the more interesting and sophisticated expressions of erotica, it was also the decade in which Oscar Wilde was sentenced to prison for being homosexual. At his arrest, Wilde was reported to have been carrying a copy of The Yellow Book, a controversial magazine that Aubrey Beardsley had helped found. As a consequence, Beardsley lost his job.


My Secret Life details Walter’s sexual exploits with over 1,200 women and serves as an important document. It is an extraordinary example of the thriving sexual subculture that existed in spite of Victorian efforts to eradicate the existence of sex through collective amnesia.

Toward the end of the 19th century, the production of pornography in England subsided dramatically and shifted again to France, where several London publishers were forced to relocate. In the early part of the century, as well as in the years following the First World War, France would become a publishing epicenter, nurturing writers of literary porn like Henry Miller and Anaïs Nin. It also became the arena for major censorship battles and home to Maurice Girodias’ Olympia Press, a publishing house devoted almost exclusively to the production of porn novels. In 1947, French publisher Jean-Jacques Pauvert dared to publish the works of the Marquis de Sade, and then proceeded to fight a protracted legal battle in which it was ruled in 1958 that four of Sade’s works -- 120 Days of Sodom, The New Justine, Juliette and Philosophy in the Boudoir -- would continue to be suppressed. A few years later, however, new publication freedoms made it possible for these works to appear in mass-market paperback editions. Similarly, it wasn’t until the 1960s and the defeat of prosecutions against books like Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure -- a work written over 200 years before -- that the Western world would finally choose to recognize its erotic masterpieces.

As pornography has been shaped by historical forces, the battle over its existence has most often come down to issues of control: the right of the individual to read, view or produce it versus the right of society to control its consumption. In spite of this culture’s heavy sex-negative mantle, wrought by its Judeo-Christian heritage, no Western society has yet been successful at purging sexual expression.

What the last few hundred years do seem to reveal is that suppression provides an effective, and often welcome springboard -- to more sexual expression. In fact, the more a government attempts to squeeze erotic expression out of people, the more new ways it finds to raise its priapic head.

Twentieth-century philosopher Herbert Marcuse recognized the potentially revolutionary aspects of pornography in political terms, applauding its subversive function in rigidly ruled societies. Those conforming to the status quo in a sexually repressed culture cannot tolerate pornography because, Marcuse explained: "The unsublimated, unrationalized release of sexual relations would mean the most emphatic release of pleasure as such and the total devaluation of work for work’s sake. The tension between the innate value of work and the freedom of pleasure could not be tolerated by the individual; the hopelessness and injustice of working conditions would strikingly penetrate the consciousness of individuals and render impossible their peaceable regimentation in the social system of the bourgeois world."

A concept that Aretino would have heartily endorsed.

(Ed. note: the last sentence is a reference to the first segment of this series. If you are a late arrival, start at the bottom and work your way up to Part 7.)

VALENTINE'S DAY

2008-02-09T11:51:00.000-08:00

J.W. Waterhouse
Pan and Hamadryan

A Distant Heart Murmur

By Jack Hafferkamp

Funny how our hearts-and-flowers merchandising day -- second only to Christmas -- has evolved. In the beginning it all was so different.

According to Charles Panati’s most excellent book, Extraordinary Origins of Everyday Things, our St. Valentine’s Day stems from the Roman holiday of Lupercalia, which dates to the 4th-century B.C. Roman mythology of the time held that in the city’s earliest, most difficult days the god Lupercus protected Romans by keeping fierce wolves at bay. His festival became an important spring holiday.

For young Roman men, Lupercalia was a very special erotic time, marking a rite of passage. It was their turn to reach into a box and pull out the name of a particular young virgin. For the next year he and she were committed to function as companions in search of mutual entertainment and pleasure in a variety of forms, especially sexual.

This pre-family values tradition lasted about eight hundred years.

As it so often did when trying to win over people’s hearts and minds, the early Church sought to gain control of the situation by substituting its own "lover’s" saint for Lupercalia. Thus we got St. Valentine.

The historical Valentine mostly likely was a bishop martyred about 270 A.D. At the time, the Roman emperor, Claudius II, a.k.a. Claudius the Cruel, had banned marriage. He thought it was bad for making men good soldiers. Valentine held secret marriage rites. The emperor found out and ordered Valentine brought to him. As the story goes, Valentine so impressed the mad emperor that he tried to convince Valentine to convert to the pagan Roman religion. Valentine not only refused, he tried to convert Claudius to Christianity. Bad idea. On Feb. 14, the story goes, he was clubbed, stoned and beheaded.

Legend has it that while awaiting death, Valentine miraculously restored the sight of his jailer’s blind daughter -- as well as falling in love with her. On his way to death, he supposedly signed a farewell message to her: "From your Valentine."

Two centuries later, when Rome had become Christian, Pope Gelasius tried a little clerical bait and switch. He outlawed Lupercalia, but in its place he created a new game he thought was more uplifting. Each young player would randomly pick the name of a saint; his or her challenge was to emulate that saint’s life. Valentine was the sainted overseer of the whole festival.

Apparently, the tradition of sending cards to people one wishes to court does date to this time, as a kind of reminder of the older, earthier celebration. The oldest extant Valentine’s cards are in the British Museum, products of the French Duke of Orleans who was captured by the British at the battle of Agincourt in 1453 and kept prisoner in the Tower of London. To give himself something to do, he wrote poems to his wife. Over the next couple of centuries, Valentine’s Day became an important focus of the rising culture of chivalry.

In England, at least, the lottery system lived on in the custom of young unmarried people putting their names in boxes to be drawn out in male/female pairs. For the following year, the male would wear the female’s name on his sleeve and was duty bound to protect her. In the 17th century, St. Francis de Sales, the bishop of Geneva, tried to get rid of the romantic notion of cards sent to love objects by reinstating the long-gone saints lottery. He failed. In fact it was at this point that the image of Cupid, according to Roman mythology the child of Venus, the goddess of love, became closely identified with valentines.

What really got the Valentine’s Day card thing going in the 19th century was a reduction in postal rates. Cheaper postage made it possible for any guy to send his love to his gal pal. Of course, it also made possible the sending of anonymous Valentines. And that led some guys to go too far with verses too racy for certain Victorian sensibilities, especially those of chief U.S. Censor Anthony Comstock. Author Panati notes that in Chicago at the turn of the last century, the Post Office rejected some 25,000 cards it determined were not fit to be sent through the U.S. mail.

Judging by the terminal cuteness and sickly sweetness of many cards making their way through the mail, many of them still aren’t fit for mailing. But then that’s the perspective of an old non-romantic curmudgeon.

But then I also know that even if your lover knows that our own Valentine’s Day is just a marketing ploy, you’d still better not forget to give him/her a card, flowers, dinner and a major orgasm. Not if you know what’s good for you.

Pan and Hamadryad -- roman mural

The Roots of Western Pornograpy

2008-02-07T08:54:00.000-08:00

Welcome! This week the LIBIDOFILMS blog continues our series on the emergence of pornography as a political and social force in European history -- a chapter all too often overlook when the history of western civilization is told. Comments are welcome.

Part 6
How the Victorian Era Spawned Pornography's Golden Age

By Marianna Beck


New moral standards began to evolve along with new ideals of domesticity. No longer was porn viewed with alarm for its social and political criticism, but for its potential harm in subverting established sexual differences and worst of all, corrupting the innocent and feeble-minded -- meaning, of course, women.

During the 19th century, the traffic in pornography grew at an enormous rate and shifted from France, where it had been dramatically shaped by Sade, to England, where it would become highly commercialized. Ironically, the morally severe Victorian Age yielded some of pornography’s most popular classics: The Romance of Lust, The Amatory Experiences of a Surgeon, and The Autobiography of a Flea, to name just a few titles. In a century characterized by its rigid moral codes and authoritarian controls, pornography evolved into a genre whose sole raison d’être was sexual arousal.

With the French Revolution having sent shock waves throughout Europe, there was greater policing of potentially subversive materials. One major outward sign of changing attitudes in England was the formation in 1802 of the Society for the Suppression of Vice. It sought to get rid of bordellos, as well as to eliminate what it considered obscene, particularly the traffic in salacious materials from Paris. Based on what had happened in France, there was also a lingering fear of political subversion. In 1819, for instance, the Society for the Suppression of Vice successfully prosecuted publisher Richard Carlile for publishing, of all things, Thomas Paine’s Age of Reason, in which he criticized Christianity and the morality of the Bible. (For this, the publisher spent two years in prison.) This proved to be one of many examples in which obscenity prosecution was used by government as a weapon to silence critics.


*The theme of depicting women in a harem setting was extremely common in pornography because it suggested that women underneath it all -- and* given half a chance -- were really sex crazed creatures.**

Nineteenth-century social reformers were especially mindful of keeping incendiary literature suppressed -- and especially out of the hands of women. Stricter moral standards evolved and every effort was made to eradicate sexual materials. Greater emphasis was placed on the modesty of women who it was thought, were biologically inferior and hence more impressionable to carnal influences. No longer was porn solely viewed with alarm for its social and political criticism, but for its potential harm in subverting established sexual differences and worst of all, corrupting the innocent.

Just as there was a growing distinction made between chaste women and sinful ones, books began to be classified as either morally uplifting or degrading. An instructional example of the tenor of the times was Dr. Thomas Bowdler, a well-to-do middle-class physician, who in 1818 produced The Family Shakespeare. What he did was to "purify" Shakespeare’s plays by removing all the offending parts, so that "a man could read aloud to his daughters with complete confidence." The Family Shakespeare was a great success. Hence the term "bowdlerize," which means to cleanse a literary work of anything offensive.

While women were protected from anything that might cause a blush to rise in their cheeks, pornography for men in England began to flourish. An official statistic of the Society for the Suppression of Vice indicates that by 1834, there were 57 porn shops on one street in London alone.


One of the prominent characteristics of Victorian porn is its almost burlesque quality, and its skewering of family values and institutions at almost every turn. Much like Sade, who excelled at mocking morality, Victorian pornography sought to create moral anarchy whenever possible.

One popular novel in this period was The Lustful Turk by the prolific author, Anonymous. Although it’s considered a pre-Victorian novel with its narrative mode and prose style, its themes played out in much of the pornography that was to follow. The Lustful Turk is a good example of 19th-century pornography with Sadian overtones, particularly in its depiction of violent, aggressive sexuality. The plot of The Lustful Turk, as that of many other later works, was largely concerned with this sexuality of domination accompanied by elements of sadism: a reluctant virgin is raped and then herself becomes obsessed with sex. This particular fascination with deflowering virgins permeated much of 19th-Victorian pornography, and was an all-consuming passion in an enormous work called My Secret Life.

This recurring theme of the virgin who metamorphoses into a sexually driven character is especially revealing, given the widely held perception of women as sexually pure creatures who, according to Dr. William Acton, a leading physician of the day, were "happily not much troubled with sexual feeling of any kind." Acton further asserted that "love of home, children and domestic duties are the only passions they feel." Pornography’s function has often been to mirror the opposite of standardized social behavior, so it seems no surprise that in a society that did not accord women sexual feelings, female porn characters would be portrayed as aggressive and highly sexed.


It seems hardly a coincidence then that the golden age of repression gave birth to the golden age of stroke literature. One of pornography’s tenets has always been to lampoon, if not convey, society’s opposites.

One of the prominent characteristics of Victorian porn is its almost burlesque quality, and its skewering of family values and institutions at almost every turn. Much like Sade, who excelled at mocking morality, Victorian pornography sought to create moral anarchy whenever possible. In a society that publicly refused to accept homosexuality or any other activity outside the bounds of heterosexual sex, pornography was filled with every possible kind of sex. It seems hardly a coincidence that the golden age of repression gave birth to the golden age of stroke literature. One of pornography’s tenets has always been that its characterizations tend to lampoon, if not convey, society’s opposites. The powerless morph into the powerful. Pornography becomes a kind of Rorschach test reflecting not only political and social discontent, but central cultural taboos.

Next: How greater repression and increased policing yielded a flourishing underground press.

The Roots of Western Pornography

2008-01-31T19:52:00.000-08:00


The Marquis de Sade’s novels marked a major transition in the 1790s. Rather than targeting political figures, Sade attacked every aspect of conventional morality.

Part 5

The Marquis de Sade’s Twisted Parody of Life

By Marianna Beck

The Marquis de Sade’s novels marked a major transition in the 1790s. After the French Revolution, pornography lost its political overtones and gradually began to be replaced by material that pushed more generalized social boundaries. Rather than targeting political figures, Sade attacked every aspect of conventional morality.

In many of his works, Sade focused primarily on the complete annihilation of the body in the pursuit of pleasure, and in doing so, he has been characterized as everything from a raving lunatic to the embodiment of the devil to a brilliant philosopher and prophet of disorder. Many of the themes in modern pornography were touched on in Sade’s novels.

He fixated on exploding bourgeois sensibilities and fantasized about a total inversion of all values -- social and sexual. Many of Sade’s inverted expressions and ideas detailed in novels like Justine and Juliette have been perceived as an embryonic form of 20th-century existentialism and nihilism.


His influence can be found a hundred years later in artists like Aubrey Beardsley as well as into the 20th century when he became a cult figure among the Surrealists -- especially the artist René Magritte.

Donatien Alphonse François Sade was born in 1740 to an aristocratic family. In his early years, he lived the life of a debauching aristocrat -- until his powerful, politically connected mother-in-law made an arrangement with the government to have him imprisoned. Sade’s incarceration gave him the isolation he needed to vent whatever anger he had against God, the state, women, his relatives -- all the forces that had conspired to send him to prison. In all, he was incarcerated for 27 years, first under the old regime and then at the hands of the revolutionaries who forced him to spend his declining years in an insane asylum.

Sade can really never be condemned for writing material that arouses. In fact, his obsession with blasphemy would indicate that his greatest mania was religious rather than sexual. The violence aside, his works are hard to read: they’re didactic, repetitious and obsessive. It is, however, important to look at how Sade’s work plays with gender. In his novels, he scoped out a polymorphous world -- one in which sexual differences tended to blur and disappear. It is a world divided not into men and women, but rather slaves and masters. In orgy scenes described in Juliette, for example, there is often a switching of roles: females become aggressive and predatory, and males often have sex by penetrating one another. Bestiality, anal intercourse -- anything other than ordinary heterosexual sex is presented as being preferable.

Sade’s Juliette has a taste for torture and orgies that she shares with such figures as the Pope. She goes from whore to teacher to the complete embodiment of Sade’s philosophy. In many ways, Juliette is also a send-up, a parody of the virtuous maiden who zealously guards her virginity (a popular theme in mainstream novels of the day).


In orgy scenes described in Sade’s novel Juliette, for example, there is often a switching of roles: females become aggressive and predatory, and males often have sex by penetrating one another. Bestiality, anal intercourse -- anything other than ordinary heterosexual coupling is presented as being preferable.

The Misfortunes of Virtue, which is considered Sade’s greatest contribution to 18th-century fiction, was originally written in two weeks. It was later revised as the New Justine in 1797, prefacing Juliette, and is a bizarre mixture of lust and brutality -- the story of a virtuous girl who suffers under the whips and branding irons of her persecutors. The destruction of innocence, particularly if the victim was a young, beautiful female, was a favorite theme of Sade’s and gave him endless opportunity to pillory religion and celebrate his belief in a godless universe, where the only "heroes" were those who tortured and murdered their victims.

Philosophy in the Boudoir, which is the shortest and perhaps least sadistic of Sade’s novels, traces the gradual sexual initiation and corruption of a 15-year-old girl by several male libertines and one woman. The book is divided into seven dialogues in which Eugénie, a young innocent, is given information about truth, politics and the world. The truth, of course, is imparted with violence and cruelty, but Eugénie responds with great enthusiasm to her sex education, and by the end of the story, she sees to it that her own mother suffers sexual violence as well. In true Sadian fashion, virtue and religion are described as despicable, while evil and cruelty are celebrated as the true laws of nature.


Sade’s scoped out a polymorphous world -- one in which sexual differences tended to blur and disappear. It is a world divided not into men and women, but rather slaves and masters.

It is important (but difficult) to read Sade with a sense of irony and attempt to view his extreme philosophy as a twisted parody of life. This begins to make greater sense when taking into account that Philosophy in the Boudoir was begun when Sade was incarcerated during the Reign of Terror in 1794, and was jailed within view of a guillotine used to execute over 1,800 men and women.

Much like Aretino, Sade used pornography as a way to violate established social codes, but he pushed boundaries unlike anyone before him. His works evoked such fear that the majority was unavailable for public consumption until well into the 20th century. At the British Museum, for example, where forbidden and "dangerous books" have been collected for well over a century, it was rumored that anyone wishing to read manuscripts of the Marquis de Sade would have to do so "in the presence of two museum trustees and the Archbishop of Canterbury."

Next: How the morally severe Victorian Age yielded some of pornography’s most popular classics.

The Roots of Western Pornography

2008-01-23T15:54:00.001-08:00

WELCOME!
Today's entry is the next installment in Marianna Beck's series on the context and content of porn as it evolved in European History.

Part 4
The French Revolution and the Spread of Politically-Motivated Pornography

During the French Revolution, pornography acquired a wide, new
audience — large numbers of working class people. By undermining the
old regime, politically-motivated pornography helped bring about the
revolution. By the way, the dildo the woman is holding is inscribed with
the words: "The Rights of Man."

By Marianna Beck

In the years leading up to the French Revolution, politically motivated pornography increased steadily, reaching a fevered pitch in both volume and vitriol after the presses were freed in 1789. The prime targets were the aristocracy and the clergy, and both groups were frequently depicted as impotent, disease-ridden and morally corrupt. Paradoxically, sexually oriented materials, which had once been the sole domain of the upper classes, now became the weapon used by the lower classes against the despised aristocrats.

No one connected with the aristocracy was immune to attack, including King Louis XVI and Queen Marie-Antoinette. Some of the most vicious attacks were leveled at the Queen. Pamphlets questioning the paternity of her children, her wild orgies and presumed lesbian activities circulated for the first time to large numbers of the bourgeoisie and working class. These misogynistic attacks continued even after she was imprisoned, at which point materials were circulated accusing her of having an incestuous relationship with her young son.

The purpose for these vicious assaults was to undermine royal authority; if the king couldn’t control his wife or know for certain whether he was the father of his children, then how could he possibly demand obedience from his subjects? Another possible reason for the extreme viciousness may center on the underlying anxiety about the role of women and the issue of delineating clear gender boundaries. Degrading the queen had a kind of leveling, democratizing effect, particularly when she was depicted having sex with members of the lower classes. In other words, her body, especially when portrayed as a prostitute, made her ostensibly available to every man. These attacks continued until she was beheaded in 1793.

When the presses were freed in France in 1789, political pornography became even more vicious — and much of the vitriol was aimed at Queen Marie Antoinette. One theory for going after the queen was of course to undermine the whole notion of royal authority." This one depicts Marie Antoinette and General Lafayette — the same LaFayette we all learned about in school who helped out during the American Revolution.

This is yet another image from a pamphlet portraying the queen as a prostitute. Many of the attacks centered on her voracious sexual appetite. One thought for the viciousness centers on the general anxiety surrounding the role of women. Were they fellow revolutionaries, mothers or prostitutes — and where exactly, in this time of upheaval, were the gender boundaries?

This particular caricature is a great example of the change of pornography’s role in terms of both political and religious subversion. It was distributed anonymously throughout the new republic and was intended as a double insult. This person featured was both a politician and member of the clergy.

Next: How Sade’s warped vision became an embryonic form of 20th-century existentialism and nihilism.

For information on reprinting this series for classroom use, please contact us at editor@libidomag.com,