h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Much more enticing than thongs!

I don't like boxers for myself. Worn with trousers, they tend to crinkle up into the groiny groove between the thighs and the manly danglers. The silk ones are good playwear, though. Lots of 'rubbing through' opportunities.

(And don't get me started on *kissing* through womens' underwear, or I won't be able to stand up for a while)

>> And don't get me started on *kissing* through womens' underwear, or I won't be able to stand up for a while

Or I sit down!

My feeling is that there are knickers for every occassion, and they all have their plusses and minuses.

Thongs are good for making sure there is no vpl, but you need buns of steel. Cellulite and thongs should not be seen on the same bottom.

French knickers are the girlie equivalent of boxers, surprisingly enjoyable as I mentioned, and fun for elegent White Mischief erotic moments. The other advantage of French knickers is ease of - ah - access; they are infinitely more practical for gropes on the back-seat of taxis or for knee-tremblers in lifts, for example.

There are a whole variety of all-in-one garments with poppers at the relevant seam. Personally I am not fond of them - they have to be the right length and width in so many places to be comfortable, and most of them are not built to accomodate hour glasses. They do give a nice line to the body, but I dislike having to scramble out of underwear, and they can be a scutter to put on again.

Occasionally one can find relatively normal knickers which tie at the sides with ribbons or bows. Not great for wearing under trousers, because one ends up with odd red lines on the upper thigh, but an enticing way of extending your partner's ability to undress you, and an elegent way of avoiding unsightly wriggling.

And that is just the stuff available from Markies!



B

Perhaps this one borders on the pervy, but here goes.....white cotton worn underneath a red tartan skirt!

For me, stroking and outside and gradually unpeeling is one of the great pleasures. It's also my favourite moment in porn scenes - increasingly hard to find because the trend is towards 'wham bam'

Damn! Keep this up and I'm going to have to go to the bathroom

One of the things Z and I have been discussing on and off for months is the combination of cultural pressure, peer group, fashion and conformity in what is considered erotic.

Example: bondage these days has a very limited set of imagery, which seems to consist of black leather and steel studs with occasional bits of rope or chain. This imagery extends through what is worn, the props and toys, to the furniture. I suspect that a lot of this imagery came from the Weimar Republic and the Berlin Scene in the 1920s and 30s. However, the Parisian scene (for want of a better term) in the late 19th C and on into the 1920s and 30s, was much more a matter of silk, satin and red velvet. This applied to the toys as much as the furniture. So, one practice, but different fashions for erotic imagery.

Another example: In the 1930s lesbians had their hair cut short and slicked down with brylcream, they wore 'mannish' clothes, and sometimes wore ties and monacles. They aped the male fashions of the times. There was throughout most of the 20th C an assumption that every lesbian couple would include a butch lesbian and a fem one. I have a fondness for an Australian term: 'diesel dykes', but that is my love of language coming out. Now there is finally a strand of lesbianism which is neither butch nor fem; the most public example of this what the infintitely irritating Kitten, who was tomboyish but not butch, from this year's big brother.

We can see a similar thing happening with gay men. The style of campness favoured by Larry Grayson and the character in Are You Being Served? is now nowhere to be seen on the scene. It just isn't fashionable to be camp in that way. My assumption about that particular kind of campness is that it was a useful signal in the days before and just after the legalisation of male homosexuality in 1967. Hoo makes the interesting point that Marco, also on Big Brother, is desperate to convince *himself* he is gay.

What I find encouraging about both of these trends is that same-sex couples appear to be feeling less pressure to mimic heterosexual role models. I am not sure if this is a result of changes in the balance of what is masculine and feminine in straight society, a blurring of the roles to be modelled, or if this is a symptom of the legitimisation of same-sex sexuality.

I could ramble on about this for hours, and in fact do. I will finish with one final comment, lables constrict as well as legitimize, and it is interesting if one can find one of the few remaining unlabelled forms of sexual expression or sexual encounter and explore it.

B

Absolutely! We all wear are cultural uniforms - and gay culture is bogged-down in various sub-cultures, taken to the Nth degree. An interesting one of these is 'Bears', who are, to all intents and purposes, indistinguishable from a certain kind of beer-swilling, bearded US biker (not like leather queens: the uniform seems to be check shirts and leather waistcoats)

Yes...it's strange how we restrict ourselves, and how cultural identifiers can mutate into behavioural codes. My understanding of pre-enlightenment lesbian culture is that souples *had* to consist of a butch and a fem (see 'The Killing of Sister George') - although I'm sure there were many perfectly normal lesbian relationships conducted outside of the scene.

And straight people do it too. I believe that pornography has a corrupting effect in this way....not because it is sexual, but because of the relentless commercial pressure to push out stereotyped, repetitive material. 'DP' now seems to be a sexual ideal and, I fear, that abuse of women is being increasingly displayed as the norm. We need to take the means of production away from the Mafia and give it to people like Mike Winterbottom! (did I tell you my 'ethical pornographer' story, by the way?).

And another example...I'm sure that many men would enjoy anal stimulation of various degrees from women - in fact, more then women would! Yet because this behaviour is labelled 'gay', even those who have had it would never admit it (remember the episode of Sex in the City when the lawyer one was talking dirty and the man got annoyed when she mentioned how much he liked a finger up there?)

>> although I'm sure there were many perfectly normal lesbian relationships conducted outside of the scene.

Well there was Virginia Woolf and Vita Sackville-West. And the Ladies of Llagollen, for that matter. Interestingly there is a distinction currently being made between 'lesbian' and 'women who have sex with wmen'. Did you see 'Angels Across America' earlier this year? Robert de Nero had the line in it 'I am not a homosexual, I f**k men', which sums the difference up pretty accurately.


>> 'DP' now seems to be a sexual ideal

DP? Was ist das?


>> and, I fear, that abuse of women is being increasingly displayed as the norm

Yes. Ask Z for his story about teaching sex education to teenagers, and asking them how to turn a girl on.

Actually there is an allied topic, concerning the stereotyping of the female orgasm. From my exprience, most male orgasms look and sound much the same to an interested observer. My instincts tell me that either female orgasms are similar to each other but very different from the male orgasm, but that the most usual depiction of their expression is patterned on the look and sound of male orgasm, or that there is a far greater variety of female orgasm. Certainly the "Oh god, yes, yes, harder, harder, f**k me now, Oh.... my..... god....." sort seem to me to be a case of the lady protesting far too much. It always amazes me that guys fall for it. I really *must* see When Harry Met Sally.

I have only ever seen one piece of male-female porn where she looked like she was really into it; the features of her face had blurred in that unmistakable way, and - I don't know - there was something about the way she was shifting to change the angle that made me think she was not just waiting for the director to say 'cut'.

I think that what disturbs me about porn is that sucking and f**king are presented as the only forms of sexual expression, with the variety coming from context - tied up, in a jacuzzi, two to one, and so on.

I think I am coming back to Chrissy Hinde and my, my, my 'magina-ation. The problem is that it is hard to depict the truly erotic. Sometimes I feel that I am in a French Art-House movie, but the power of most erotic situations is - well - situational, not about which piece of skin is rubbing how fast against which other piece of skin.


>> We need to take the means of production away from the Mafia

Good point, and one I had not thought of


>> and give it to people like Mike Winterbottom! (did I tell you my 'ethical pornographer' story, by the way?).

No. Do tell. I will then pose my Larry Flint question.


>> I'm sure that many men would enjoy anal stimulation of various degrees from women

Of course they do.

It isn't something I've ever practiced myself, because I have lingering germs issues, but let's face it, the sphincter is the sphincter, and the prostrate is the prostrate. In fact, numerically, there is more anal sex taking place among straight couples than there is among gay couples simply because there are so many more straight couples than gay ones.

It is a mixture of a matter of trust, nail length, imagination, and penetration issues. Get those right, and bingo. It doesn't strike me as being a particularly difficult thing to get right, it just happens not to be on my list of things to do.

B

The ethical pornographer story:

Last year, I was at a conference in Prague. Since I'd been there before I volunteered to take some people on a guided tour and out to dinner. At the end of the evening, as I flagged a taxi for them, I announced that I was going to walk back to the hotel (a coupe of miles, but what the heck)

Anyway, I got around the corner and came across a tiny, studenty-looking bar. I went in on an impulse, and as I sat down at the bar, I noticed a certain, herby smell. So I pulled out the spliff in my suit pocket (Excellent stuff! Stopover in Schiphol) and asked the barmaid if it was OK to smoke. As I sat there, I overheard a discussion going on, in English, about Iraq. I joined in, and it turned out that it was between an American and a Greek. I sat with them, and the American introduced me to his business partner, who was from Manchester. I asked the Mancunian what business he was in, and he said 'I'm a porn producer'. This being Prague, nobody batted an eyelid.

Anyway, over the course of the evening, the guy explained his ethical philosophy. He kept insisting 'I refuse to rip anyone off' (he was rather drunk) and said that the only type of contract that he and his partner would enter into was a four-way profit split between them and each performer. Plus, he said 'They have to come to me.' By this he meant that he would never suggest to anyone that they get involved. However, a woman might come to him and say 'I hear you make porn. What would it involve?' Then he might say 'Well, I could film you smoking a cigarette. I could sell that'. But, of course, there wouldn't be much profit in that, so they might go on to discuss ways of upping the profits. All voluntary. If there's any exploitation, it's capitalism putting her in the position of wanting money (mind you, the Czechs are more liberal about sex anyway). Of course, he'd then sell it on to dodgier people in Amsterdam, but didn't regard their business ethics as his responsibility. There was one dodgy bit, though: One of his performers was 19 but looked 14 (They published her birth certificate on the www as proof). Technically, there was no exploitation going on...but the pathology of paedophilia is such that the desires are strengthened through fantasy and masturbation.

Anyway...there can't be much money in it. He got in a fist fight with one of his technical guys who owed him about £20. All in all it was an interesting night. I was introduced to his flatmate, a lovely, lovely lady called Veronika who I bonded with over a love of language (she's an English teacher). In fact, I gave her my Oxford Book of World English the following night and we're still in touch. Oh...and she briefly introduced me to 'the guy who has the licence to kill from the Mafia'. In the back room there was a pile of money and a handgun on the table!

So...Larry Flynt?

Wey hey! What a story. Can I copy it into an entry, and put it into <./>rf5</.> for potential inclusion in the UnderGuide?

Larry Flint.

Just a question really, but one which is relevant.

Some years ago I was driving up Blunsden Hill on the A419 outside Swindon while Peter White was interviewing Larry Flint on the Radio. Peter White is, as you know, a blind broadcaster, and one of the best broadcasters we still have. Flint was shot in an assassination attempt some years ago, and most of the conversation was about how that happened, how it changed his life, and his attitudes to disability.

White was also talking with Flint about pornography and politics. Flint has been an activist demanding the right to freedom of speech in the US. He has a point, given the US's prudery regarding matters sexual and erotic. What White failed to ask him was which came first: had Flint been in a society such as Japan, which has an excessively liberal attitude to pornography, but which controls other freedoms of speech, would Flint have still been a pornographer, or would he have simply failed to have become politicised.

It is a question I remain curious about.

Incidentally, I have been told but not verified the meme, that Japanese woman have straight pubic hair.

Let me know about whether or not I can submit your post to the AWW.

B

Sure...but I've only given you a condensed version! (By the way - I was presenting my paper the next day, but I stayed up until three! Never mind. I had a couple of puffs beforehand and sailed through). Maybe consider it a 'Work in Progress'. It's worth writing up in full. You might also like to see my AWW entry on Bonoboism (see my space) - a satirical religion I'm in the process of inventing. In the Freedom From Faith Forum, the prevalent view seems to be that there are many possible 'valid' views of reality. So I'm putting one forward which is valid but stupid.

The Larry Flynt story reminds me of Woody Allen talking about getting some braille pornography and rubbing against his genitals!

Coincidentally enough (and wouldn't it be weird if there were never any coincidences?)...at the weekend I read a damning review of Desmond Morris's book about the female body. They mentioned the straight Japanese pubes. In my only sexual experience with black woman, I discovered that hers were particularly curly without being extensive, but that wasn't a comprehensive survey.

By the way...have you seen Nerve.com? Some decent fiction and photography. I can let you have a pw for the members area.

Well write it up, and slam it in.

Nerve.com? No. I am not feeling very exploratory at the moment.

Odd how unexpected deaths upset. I did not expect to grieve for Freddie Mercury, but I still do.

B