Alain de Botton's guide to porn

The writer and philosopher Alain de Botton has spoken of his desire to create a new form of pornography, one "fit for thoughtful, good human beings" and that could be "harnessed to what is noblest in us." Here, writing exclusively for Heresy Corner, he outlines his vision and offers some more reflections on the modern porn industry.

The most boring and unproductive question one can ask of any pornographic film is whether or not it turns me on. To save time, and at the risk of losing readers painfully early on, let me bluntly state that, of course, no pornography turns me on in the visceral, blood-pumping, testosterone-surging, genital-engorging sense familiar to many, if not most, regular consumers of the genre. That is, needless to say, a symptom of the intellectual and aesthetic deficiency of most contemporary erotica, its increasing irrelevance. It must also be the root cause of the crisis in confidence among many of its traditional consumers, a crisis exhibited most clearly in an increasing unwillingness to pay.

There are those whose response to the alienating, ennui-inducing nature of today's pervasive internet smut is to reject it entirely, to see in its garish, unimaginative images and its hackneyed and implausible scenarios proof of porn's inherent exploitativeness or degeneracy. Or, at best, as demonstrating Schopenhauer's observation that, for most people, sexuality is a "source of brief pleasure and protracted suffering." This would be a mistake. By far the wiser course would be to harness the undoubted power of the erotic so as to turn people on to philosophy and art, to provoke deep and noble feelings. Instead of being an aid to masturbation, it could become an aid to cogitation, a genuine art form in which the viewer might emerge from watching an intense thirty-minute session of group sex with a new (and hopefully lifelong) appreciation of Proust.

To this end, I have compiled a short (and sadly not exhaustive) guide for the pornographically perplexed:

ANAL

Of all variations of sexual practice, the anal must be the most inherently futile, at least in its heterosexual manifestation. Quite apart from being, both in practice and in contemplation, somewhat uncomfortable, it is also a case of, quite literally, missing the point. To take a wrong turning, to proceed willfully up a blind alley, to mistake one's destination when it is, or ought to be, in plain view: these are the most obvious analogues of anal intercourse. How then can one explain its prevalence in contemporary porn? It is, I feel, a sure indication of modern man's fear of commitment, either to people or to causes, a preference for the gesture over the inner reality, a refusal to face facts. Anal sex is denial sex. It is sex in which the flesh might be willing but the spirit, ultimately, is weak. Transcending the anal will provide the key to a revived and truly philosophical pornography.

BDSM

As Friedrich Nietzsche so wisely observed: "Thou goest to woman? Do not forget thy whip."

CELEBRITY SEX TAPES

For Descartes, it was sufficient to think in order to be confident of one's own existence. The human being was self-determined. He or she had no need of external validation. Modern culture inverts this insight: I am seen, therefore I am. The sexual act, precisely because of its imagined intimacy, is especially vulnerable to this externalisation of perspective. Just as one cannot truly exist except in the minds of others, so to be a sexual being is to be, in some sense, an exhibitionist. Hence the paradox of celebrity. The singer or actor (male but most especially female) is available to the world (in most cases) in all senses except the sexual -- and thus not truly available at all. He or she remains a figure of remote fantasy. A celebrity without a publicly released sex-tape is thus only half-formed and so, for all his or her ubiquity, not quite real. Understood this way, the sex-tape is less a violation than a validation. It represents the visible consummation of the marriage between celebrity and public on which the modern system of fame ultimately depends. Coeo ergo sum.

FEMINISM, Pornography and

Sex might be "chiefly an affair of the man" (Schopenhauer again) but porn tends to be mainly about women. Feminists see in this evidence of misogyny and oppression. Yet outside of the porn industry, the only place one is likely to see such a prioritisation of the female experience over the male is at a feminist conference or in the women's pages of the Guardian.

FISTING

It is impossible to watch, still less to perform, the act of fisting (or impugnation, as it is of course more properly called) without contemplating the many metaphorical meanings of the fist. It was, from the first, a symbol of power. In ancient Mesopotamia, the clenched fist of the goddess Ishtar proclaimed her divine omnipotence; and already by classical Greek times boxers had discovered that, wrapped in leather, a fist made a potent weapon. More recently, a raised fist evokes feelings of solidarity, of the struggle against oppression. The fist is the instrument of liberation: it breaks through the barriers of the past. This is why the depiction of fisting has always proved especially troubling to censors.

The fist, furthermore, is about achieving the impossible. Thus in porn fisting represents the trampling of boundaries, transcending the limits which nature seems to set upon us. It is not that it is worth doing for its own sake; rather, it teaches us a valuable lesson in perseverance. One finger at a time. No pain, no gain. But it can also hold out false hope. Like the so-called American dream, it promises to everyone an earthly paradise as a reward of effort and virtue. But as Seneca was well aware, even the successful insertion of a whole fist cannot guarantee an orgasm.

GANGBANG

Group sex is the ultimate reflection of the shallowness of the consumer society, in which people are defined not by their inner uniqueness but by their outward interchangeability. In a gangbang, the ostensible goal of variety is paradoxically undermined by the repetitiveness of the action and the clone-like appearance of the participants. One may fuck one person in a hundred different ways, it seems, but one may fuck a hundred people in only one way -- or, at most, two or three.

GONZO

As is well known, "gonzo" porn takes its name from Duke Federico di Gonzaga, 16th century prince of Milan and patron of Pietro Aretino. Aretino's "Postures", the name commonly given to a sequence of erotic poems with accompanying, highly graphic, illustrations, was banned by the Catholic Church for many centuries and remains to this day a key source of inspiration for pornographers. The term "gonzo" is thus a reminder of the noble artistic tradition of which modern porn partakes and to which today's producers too rarely seek to aspire.

ORAL SEX

Whenever I watch a porn actress performing a blow-job, I am forcefully reminded of the West's problematic relationship with food. The prevalent method of "deep-throating", in which the man's penis is fully inserted into the woman's mouth, is a visual metaphor for excessive consumption, the more so given pornography's preference for outsized male genitalia. It cannot be a coincidence that the popularity of deep-throating should exist in parallel with an obesity crisis. Yet the act itself is plainly bulimic, a fact demonstrated not just by the excessive skinniness of many of the female performers but also, more significantly, because oral intercourse is often the immediate prelude to ejaculation.

SOFTCORE

Perhaps the most honest form of pornography. Hardcore porn promises what it can't ultimately deliver. Softcore promises nothing, and thus cannot leave the viewer disappointed.

WEBCAMS

The Webcam offers the most exciting, yet most tragically underutilised, vehicle for porn I know. Nothing offers more completely the prospect of real communication, a genuine (if technologically mediated) connection between producer and consumer. Yet what do we find? Bored girls going through a circumscribed repertoire of repetitive acts. Equally bored customers whose deepest, most secret fantasies turn out to be no different from anyone else's. And at the end, a sense of frustration, of utter futility. How much more fulfilling it could be if, instead of merely touching herself intimately, the webcam girl took time to open her customer's mind to the glories of French literature! Just think of the satisfaction of knowing that, at such a remote distance, one could bring another human being, not just to orgasm but to a deeper knowledge of Kant! That surely would be a pornography in which eroticism would support, rather than undermine, our higher values. A pornography which even the greatest of philosophers would not be ashamed to download.
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By viewing this post, you're breaking the law

That's if you're in Britain, that is. In other parts of the world, you may be OK - though probably not. It depends.



This rather worn print, by the early nineteenth century Japanese master Eisen, is currently being offered for sale by Fuji Arts with a starting price of $245. I wouldn't advise you to buy it, though - there might be a problem getting it through customs. Or else the police will knock on your door five minutes after the postman has dropped it through the letterbox.

Eisen is best known for his charming prints of elegant kimono-clad beauties, but in old Japan there was also a lively trade in exquisitely drawn but absolutely filthy pornography, coily known as Shunga ("spring pictures"). Almost all the major artists produced shunga, including the most famous of all, Hokusai, whose Dream of the Fisherman's Wife depicts a woman being groped and orally pleasured by two octopuses.

This one, by contrast, shows a woman trying to juggle the joint attentions of a man and her baby. Sociologically it raises some interesting questions. Were living conditions so cramped in pre-Meiji Edo (now Tokyo) that such scenes were commonplace? Is the woman a prostitute, or is the man her husband? Is the picture intended to be comic, or did Shunga-buyers get off on that sort of thing? (Another picture up for sale on the same site shows a woman receiving cunnilingus from a horse, which is certainly comic. And Hokusai's tentacle porn is just hilarious.) Perhaps there are deeper ideas at play: the baby may be there as a reminder of the possible consequences of the sexual act, or the picture may express male ambivalence about the dual role of woman as mother and lover, or male fear of being usurped by his offspring in the woman's affections. And why does he look so bored?

My purpose here, though, is to draw attention to the probable illegality of the picture under one of New Labour's recent laws. Section 62 of the portmanteau Coroners and Justice Act 2009 (which I discussed here) makes it a criminal offence to be in possession of a pornographic image of a child, however unrealistic, which "is grossly offensive, disgusting or otherwise of an obscene character - which porn is by definition, of course. Being "in possession" includes looking at something on the internet. The offence also (ss 7) covers depictions of "the performance by a person of an act of intercourse or oral sex with or in the presence of a child." That is certainly what is going on here. It's no defence that the work in question is artistic (as the Eisen might possibly be considered to be). "Pornographic" is defined as "produced solely or principally for the purpose of sexual arousal". Art historians agree that that was, indeed, the main purpose of Shunga.

This blog is not hosted in the UK, and I've deleted any versions of the image I may have had briefly on my hard-drive. So I'm safe, I think. But I'm sorry to say you're guilty. Go on, give yourself up. Read the rest of this article

Face the truth about porn

Following on from today's Heresy Corner article on the impact of ubiquitous hardcore porn on the nation's children and teenagers, I'd like to share with you a little talk by Cindy Gallop, delivered at the free-thinking but ever-so-slightly cultish TED.

Drawing on her personal experience with younger lovers (she cheerfully admits her cougarish proclivities) Cindy tackled a standard pornographic cliché: "My concern is particularly with the young girl whose boyfriend wants to come on her face. She does not want him to come on her face, but hardcore porn has taught her that all men love coming on women's faces, all women love having their faces come on, and therefore that she must let him come on her face, and she must pretend to like it."



That sounds plausible enough. But I can offer an equal and opposite experience. A close friend (all right, it was me) was once in bed with a woman and enquired what turned her on, sexually speaking. She replied that she liked it when men came on her face. "Surely not," I protested. "Men only come on women's faces in porn." My theory, I continued - I talk more or less how I blog, I'm afraid - was that the whole coming on women's faces thing was an invention of the porn industry, serving the practical function of externalising the act of ejaculation. I believe I actually used the verb "externalise". And now (by this time I was channelling Cindy Gallop) young girls habituated to porn pretended to like it when their boyfriends (who, equally cluelessly, got the idea from porn that coming on the girl's face was just something they were meant to do).

"Oh no", said my companion, who was no ingenue and, like me, remembered the days before internet porn, "I like it when men come on my face." "Not really my thing," I lamented.

Needless to say, the relationship was doomed. Read the rest of this article

A night of wild sexual abandon

I attended my first-ever orgy the other night. Well, sort of. The Night of the Senses, incorporating the Erotic Awards, is a long-running institution founded by pioneering activist Dr Tuppy Owens (she was the first, though not the last, pornographer-academic and now leads the Sexual Freedom Coalition, among other things). It pitches itself both at "seasoned sexual adventurers" and at those at an earlier stage in their sensual journey, serves as a showcase for erotic performers, raises money and, via the Awards, recognises artists, campaigners and sex-workers alike. It sounded quite fun. And knowing (at least virtually) some of the nominees I stunned myself by purchasing a last minute ticket. Friday evening found me at a club near London Bridge, heart in mouth, ready for whatever might be about to happen.

The dress-code was flexible but seemingly unforgiving: anyone in civilian wear - or anything "plain, humdrum or unsexy" - would be invited to visit the "dressing up shoppe" or else leave, I read. Dressing up, said the programme, allows you to "float around in a haze instead of feeling invisible". Nudity was an option, though not for me. Cue frantic search through the wardrobe. I considered black tie - but would that be "different" enough to avoid a humiliating arrest by the style police? In the end I went with subfusc, enlivened by a slightly garish silk waistcoat I once wore at a student ball. The academic gown with its schoolroom connotations was at least mildly kinky.

I needn't have worried. There were plenty of people less exotically dressed than I was, though there was no shortage of stereotypically kinky outfits and goth wear. One man came dressed as the Pope, which in present circumstances was perhaps the most outrageous costume of all. There were a few extravagant historical or fantasy creations. On the other hand, those partygoers who used the same outfitters as Hans Christian Andersen's emperor were in for a chilly night: the programme warned people against wearing too much, yet many of those I spoke to complained about the cold. My gown, meanwhile, garnered several compliments, including from a similarly clad gentleman who was running a spanking booth.

The evening kicked off a little before nine with the famous Erotic Awards. The trophies - impressively large (at least I thought so) winged golden penises - were distributed to a selection of performers and activists in a ceremony that was at times fairly shambolic. Dr Petra Boynton, winner of the blog prize, was unable to be present - much to my disappointment - but Anna Arrowsmith (aka Anna Span) famously representing the Lib Dems in Gravesham, did step forward to accept her trophy as politician of the year. Her moment of glory came only after an embarrassing kefuffle when the compere forgot to announce the category and declared the end of the awards.

Of course Arrowsmith is a hero to the sex industry, both as a pornographer and now as a public face, but I did wonder if she was strictly eligible, given that she is only potentially a politician. Perhaps she won it for agreeing to turn up. Another Liberal Democrat, Chris Huhne, had been suggested for the honour but (mindful, perhaps, of the shape of the trophy) had declined to be nominated. Even so, with the party's MEP Chris Davies the only other nominee it was clear where the organisers' political sympathies lay. That's not so surprising. Conservatives tend to veer inconsistently between libertarianism and moral puritanism - remember "back to basics"? - while pro-gay rights and feminist Labour has introduced a plethora of authoritarian laws against prosititution and extreme porn. As Ewan Morrison puts it in an article for Erotic Review - handed out free to departing guests - "no matter how much it tries to disguise the fact with its talk of liberties, the Left is about normalising standards for all and enforcing them."

Other winners included two longstanding internet buddies of the Heresiarch's, the writer Jane Fae (formerly John Ozimek, and still looking more like a John than a Jane, alas) and the campaigner Clair Lewis. It was nice finally to meet them, if only briefly in Clair's case: her evening ended on a sour note when the organisers neglected to offer her a wheelchair-accessible platform from which to say a few words about the work of her pressure group CAAN. She left soon afterwards, and has since declared the whole ceremony to be a sham and the compere "very rude". Given that Night of the Senses prides itself on its acccessibility to disabled people, and raises money for a charity that aims to improve the personal and sexual opportunities available to the disabled, Clair's experience is at least somewhat embarrassing. She now dismisses Tuppy Owens' charity as "an archaic organisation which is too busy patronising disabled people to let us join in on an equal basis."

After that unpromising start to the evening the cabaret began, a pleasingly varied succession of burlesque acts. There was blind woman talking while draped in a red sheet, a munchkin who polished a blow-up doll before taking her clothes off (hilarious but also a little bit scary), a Spanish poet who recited a rubbishy poem while removing his clothes and a much better one stark naked, a woman wearing a kimono and rope bondage who almost started a fire while attempting to light a paper lantern - and my personal favourite, a cross-dressing male stripper styled Major Suttle-Teese, part top-hatted toff, part vamp.

Then it was party time.

It wasn't quite the full-blown orgy I had been nervously anticipating. Indeed, I spent much of the time managing to avoid thinking about, talking about, and certainly having, sex. Perhaps that says more about me, but others I spoke to also complained that there was too much conversation and not enough action. The venue was plastered with notices demanding guests behave with appropriate respect and threatening transgressors with summary expulsion - not an unreasonable sentiment, of course, but the assumption that it needed to be said at all lent the party an unfortunate whiff of the nanny state. Equally counter-intuitive was the woman offering "non-sexual hugs". Non-sexual hugs have their place, of course - many, perhaps most, of the finest hugs have no sexual component - but as a Ukrainian-American artist I got chatting to pointed out, that place is surely not at an anything-goes sex party. There was a dungeon, but when I put my head round the door it was populated by people sitting around drinking while the implements of torture stayed forlornly underused.

Needless to say, there was sex to be had, some of it presumably in the Room of Riotous Pleasures ("specially designed for women to live out their fantasies of enjoying anonymous sex with a succession of men"). I couldn't find it. I did notice the "frantically busy" Dark Room, which was reputed to contain people randomly having sex in the dark (though I didn't go in to find out). But nanny had insinuated herself even there. "Be respectful to others," cautioned a programme note, "No pushing or shoving, ask before joining in, ask before putting fingers anywhere." There was also a Grope Box, apparently a Night of the Senses institution, which you went in to be groped by unseeing arms. Whenever I walked past it seemed to be occupied by a woman, the groping hands almost entirely male. Maybe this is significant, maybe not.

The only actual sex I witnessed all evening was in a tastefully decorated boudoir dubbed the "Sensuality Chamber". Participants were accompanied by musicians, while peep holes provided glimpses of the goings-on. I spotted one voyeur masturbating enthusiastically at the sight, but he was an exception.

Much more to my taste was the Salon of the Five Senses, in which I was blindfolded, tickled, massaged, fed strawberries, enticed by all the perfumes of Arabia and lulled by gentle bells. Blissful. Given that sight was excluded, Salon of the Four Senses might have been more appropriate - unless, of course, an extra "sexual sense" had been identifed. I had kept my trousers on (I know, I know) so was not in the best position to find out. Waiting for my turn in a long but comfortable queue I found myself sitting next to a man sporting what turned out to be a Ukrainian floral headdress. (It belonged to his female companion, the American-born artist mentioned above. She was quite interesting. One of her projects, I learned, explored the practicalities of snogging in zero-gravity conditions. I subsequently discovered that she was staying at a charming boutique hotel near Paddington.) The woman on my left commented that he looked "baroque". "Like something out of Caravaggio", I suggested, thinking of the celebrated portrait of Bacchus. It turned out that she was an art historian.

That sort of thing happened to me a lot. Later I found myself talking to Dr Antony Lempert, founder of the Secular Medical Forum and Golden Penis laureate in the academic category. We discussed the Pope, the insidious spread of faith schools, the brilliance of Lord Justice Laws' recent judgement in the McFarlane case, the religious strangehold on hospital counselling services (in the guise of denominational chaplaincies) and his own idée fixe, the iniquity of male circumcision, which appears to him to contravene the Offences Against the Person Act. Fascinating, but in the circumstances more than a bit surreal.

Though perhaps not quite so surreal as what I saw next, back in the cabaret lounge, where renowned artiste Mouse was putting on a jaw-dropping show loosely based on the story of Goldilocks. Mouse used considerable dramatic licence. There there was only one bear, for example, and I don't remember the part of the nursery tale where the heroine inserts fireworks into every available bodily orifice, or lights a birthday cake using a candle held with impressive firmness in her vagina. And then sits on it. Nor was I psychologically prepared for the woman in the blonde wig's demonstration of her ability to absorb and then spew out copious amounts of liquid. I was thankful to be standing at the back.

It was the most extreme thing I have ever seen or am ever likely to see. After that, anything could only be an anticlimax (even the climaxes being offered to patrons of the Climax Clinic). In any case, I was wilting. It was an all-nighter, and I hadn't had much sleep the night before - the anticipation, you see. Plus a tummy ache. I crashed out in the cabaret room, almost oblivious to the hardcore porn being projected onto the big screen or the gyrations of an amateur pole-dancer who had come to the party with a much older man. Four O'clock found me sitting at a table with Jane Fae and my new artist friend, discussing the minutiae of East European geography, Jane's problems with nPower and the balance of subject matter at Heresy Corner. And that, I thought, was that.

I was wrong, but that's a whole different story.
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New light on "60's sex-ed mystery"

Like many proper viruses, viral emails have a tendency to lay low for long periods of time, briefly breaking out in epidemics before disappearing again. The supposed sex-advice I covered in the last post is a case in point. Over the past few years, it has broken cover several times. The earliest outbreak I could trace was in 2003, though doubtless there were earlier instances. As I discussed, the extract derives from an elaboration of an earlier spoof entitled "The Good Wife", purportedly from a 1950s housekeeping magazine but more likely dating from the late 1980s.

So what caused this latest outbreak, which centres around what looks like a scrunched-up photocopy? While the printed original remains elusive, I've found what might be a clue from a blog entry by Maria Williams, a journalist with the South Wales Argus, dated 5th October 2009. She writes as follows:

IT'S been a thoroughly depressing week on many fronts... So I was cheered when a colleague brought in an item one of his relatives had been given at a retirement seminar to show just how far our society has come in the past 40 years.

It was an extract from a 1960s sex education textbook for girls, written by a woman - and I shall share it with you in a bid to brighten your day.

Is the South Wales Argus the source of this latest infection?

Ms Williams also has this to say:

How the world has changed - perhaps a little too far now that tweenie magazines have advice on sexual positions and how to get and keep your boy using management techniques.

But is does put me in mind of that great quote by the American humourist P.J. O'Rourke: "If anyone ever tells you that things were better in the good old days, just say the word dentistry."

As sex law expert Chris Ashford notes, hoaxes like this are doubly revealing: of our views about the past, and of our present attitudes and ideas. We are encouraged to smile at the supposed naivety or antediluvian attitudes of our predecessors, but at the same time pause for thought at the implied contrast with today's sexual free-for-all. What Williams' "dentistry" remarks shows, however, is that the piece ultimately affirms contemporary mores by casting the past as a place of rampant sexism and sexual misery.

It may not be entirely coincidental that the "advice" has re-emerged at a time when traditional views of marriage have once again become politically contentious. The subject is certainly "in the air" - witness the news story about the Rev Mark Oden's instruction to the women in his congregation to submit to their husbands. Though I don't think Oden was just talking about sex.

No doubt I'm reading far too much into what is just a bit of harmless fun. Read the rest of this article

Cautionary advice to young ladies - and Internet users

I found this bizarre photocopy - posted here - via someone's Twitter feed earlier today. Stu Kennedy, who put it up, tells me that it was forward to his brother at work as part of a circulatory email.

The text, which purports to be from "a sex education textbook for girls" from the 1960's", reads as follows:

When retiring to the bedroom, prepare yourself for bed as promptly as possible. Whilst feminine hygiene is of the utmost importance, your tired husband does not want to queue for the bathroom, as he would have to do for his train, but remember to look your best when going to bed. Try to achieve a look that is welcoming without being obvious. If you need to apply face cream or hair rollers, wait until he is asleep before doing so, as it can be shocking for a man last thing at night. When it comes to the possibility of intimate relations with your husband, it is important to remember your marriage vows and in particular, your commitment to obey him.

If he feels that he needs to sleep immediately afterwards, then so be it. In all things be led by your husband's wishes. Do not pressure him in any way to stimulate intimacy. Should your husband suggest congress, then, agree humbly all the while being mindful that a man's satisfaction is more important than a woman's. When he reaches his moment of fulfilment, a small moan from yourself is encouraging to him and quite sufficient to indicate any enjoyment that you may have had.

Should your husband suggest any of the more unusual practices, be obedient and uncomplaining but register any reluctance by maintaining silence. It is likely that your husband will fall promptly asleep after relations have concluded, so once he is fast asleep, adjust your clothing, freshen up and apply your night-time face and hair care products.

You may then set the alarm so that you can arise shortly before him in the morning. This will enable you to have his morning cup of tea ready when he awakes.

A hoax, I presume. It certainly reads like one, though that hasn't stopped many people from taking it at face value. The "sex education" book isn't named in any of the online sources for the text. It is variously attributed to the early 60s, the 1950s, or specifically to 1963; several sources add the claim that it was "written by a woman" (although the author herself is never named). Almost all versions include the phrase "this is an actual extract". The earliest dated example I've tracked down online is from an old messageboard, August 2002.

The page above, whose provenance I cannot trace, seems to be from a printed original. I can't confirm this; there are, however, other known printed versions. The same passage also occurs in "The Good Wife's Guide", supposedly taken from a Home Economics textbook (also from the Sixties) in which the sexual advice is tacked onto the end of more general comments about an ideal housewife.

The first paragraphs of this read as follows:

Have dinner ready. Plan ahead, even the night before, to have a delicious meal ready on time for his return from work. This is a way of letting him know that you have been thinking about him and are concerned about his needs. Most men are hungry when they come home and the prospect of a good meal (especially his favourite dish) is part of the warm welcome needed.

Prepare yourself. Take 15 minutes to rest so you will be refreshed when he arrives. Touch up your make-up, put a ribbon in your hair and be fresh looking. He has just been with a lot of work weary people. Be a little gay and a little more interesting for him. His boring day may need a lift and one of your duties is to provide it. Clear away the clutter. Make one last trip through the main part of the house just before your husband arrives.

These same paragraphs also occur in a shorter piece with the same title, which claims to be from Housekeeping Monthly, 13 May, 1955.

This is how The Good Wife's Guide ends:

Don't ask him questions about his actions or question his judgment or integrity. Remember, he is the master of the house and as such will always exercise his will with fairness and truthfulness. You have no right to question him.

A good wife always knows her place.

The longer Internet version omits the two sentences following "fairness and truthfulness". Instead, it continues like this:

Once he has had a chance to have his evening meal clear the dishes and wash up promptly. If your husband should offer to help decline his offer as he may feel obliged to repeat this offer and after a long working day he does not need the extra work.

Encourage your husband to pursue his hobbies and interests and be supportive without seeming to encroach. If you have any little hobbies yourself try not to bore him speaking of these, as women's interests are often rather trivial compared to men's.

At the end of the evening tidy the home ready for the morning and again think ahead to his breakfast needs. Your husband's breakfast is vital if he is to face the outside world in a positive fashion.

Once you have both retired to the bedroom prepare yourself for bed as promptly as possible....

There follows the sexual advice with which we began.

According to Urban Legend site Snopes, the magazine extract is a fabrication: it didn't surface until long after the text began circulating by email and is "clearly a mock-up". It is just possible that it dates from the 50s - presumably as a satire on contemporary images of the ideal housewife. On balance it's likely to be far more recent, however. It is said to have been circulating in faxed form since the 1980s.

To sum up: the sex advice, purporting to be "an actual extract from a sex education textbook", began life as a hoax continuation of an original spoof article, itself likely to have been a hoax. But the style also owes something to another piece dismissed by Snopes, the hilarious "Advice to Young Brides" supposedly written in 1894 (though the repeated use of the word "sex" rather gives it away). The bride in that text, though, is imagined to be a young woman of rather more spirit than the submissive Stepford-style wife depicted in the passage allegedly from the 1960s. For example:

The wise bride will permit a maximum of two brief sexual experiences weekly during the first months of marriage. As time goes by she should make every effort to reduce this frequency.

Feigned illness, sleepiness, and headaches are among the wife's best friends in this matter. Arguments, nagging, scolding, and bickering also prove very effective, if used in the late evening about an hour before the husband would normally commence his seduction.

Clever wives are ever on the alert for new and better methods of denying and discouraging the amorous overtures of the husband. A good wife should expect to have reduced sexual contacts to once a week by the end of the first year of marriage and to once a month by the end of the fifth year of marriage.

It's also rather kinky:

Most men are by nature rather perverted, and if given half a chance, would engage in quite a variety of the most revolting practices. These practices include, among others, performing the normal act in abnormal positions; mouthing the female body; and offering their own vile bodies to be mouthed in turn.

A hoax, obviously. Yet according to Wikipedia, while Advice to Young Brides "reads like a satire on the Victorian era" and is often assumed to be a spoof, it is actually genuine. At least, it is accepted as being so by the University of Washington, which published the piece in its bizarre entirety on its website in 1998. The URL would seem to bear this out. Furthermore, it was the pamphlet's use in a UW course in human sexuality that year that led to its modern circulation on the Internet.

Despite these undoubted facts, I remain sceptical. There are good reasons for thinking it to be a hoax: neither the alleged writer (a suspiciously-named Ruth Smythers) nor the supposed publisher have left any trace in the records. In fact, the only evidence offered in the text's favour is its endorsement by the University of Washington. Academics have fallen for hoaxes often enough not to take this as decisive.

And what of the piece with which we began? Some sources date it precisely to 1963, the year (according to Philip Larkin) in which "sexual intercourse began". A coincidence? The world it depicts probably never existed - unless Mad Men is a documentary.

If anyone has any clue as to who actually wrote any of these pieces, and when, do please let me know.

SEE UPDATE 14/2/2010
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Hunting PunterNet

In her speech to the Labour conference today, Harriet Harman announced a new, shocking development in the world of online vice:

And there is a very sinister development which we are determined to stop. You know trip advisor – a website where guests put their comments on line for others to see. There is now a website, like that, where pimps put women on sale for sex and then men who’ve had sex with them put their comments on line. It is ‘Punternet’ and fuels the demand for prostitutes. It is truly degrading and puts women at risk.

Punternet has pages and pages of women for sale in London. But Punternet is based in California so I’ve raised it with the US Ambassador to London and I’ve called on California’s governor Arnie Schwarzenegger to close it down. Surely it can’t be too difficult for the Terminator to terminate Punternet and that’s what I am demanding that he does.

And I’ve got news for him: if he doesn’t, I’ll be back.

Actually, according to its front-page PunterNet has been going for more than ten years. There are no pimps in sight - though women working in the sex trade are active in the site's forum pages. Several have left messages today mocking Harriet's hopelessly naive comments. There's a lively thread here. One of the contributors points out that PunterNet is actually registered in Ohio! From what I've seen, PunterNet is, as its name implies, entirely client-driven. It's basically a modern version of Harris's List of Covent Garden Ladies, though rather less well-written.

Alix Mortimer, now gloriously restored to blogging life, pulls Hattie to pieces here.

Also up on the site today was an open letter from the site's proprietor, who goes by the name of Galahad:

Dear Mrs. Harman,

I have a few points to make regarding your recent remarks regarding my website and your fantastic demand that the Governor of California close it down.

Firstly, PunterNet is not violating any laws. If it were, then surely the many websites catering to the US prostitution scene (where sex for pay is almost completely illegal) would already have been closed down.

In the USA, there is a concept called "freedom of speech" which is considered the most important personal right guaranteed by the Constitution. It exists specifically to prevent the sort of abuse of power that you are attempting. The Governor (indeed, even the President) has no authority with which to shut down a perfectly lawful enterprise such as PunterNet.

PunterNet was not the first, and is certainly not the only, website in the UK with the same subject matter. Rather than creating the demand for commercial sex, sites like PunterNet are a response to that demand, which has existed since the dawn of mankind and certainly long before the advent of the Internet!

One of the missions of PunterNet is education - to provide information and guidance in hopes that the commercial sex scene is limited to consenting adults and those who choose of their own free will to engage in it.

If sites like this one did not exist, and if prostitution were outlawed, then it would effectively be handed to organised crime on a platter - just as happened with liquor during Prohibition. If, on the other hand, sex-work is recognised as a legitimate, honourable profession, then there will be no market for the criminal elements, and the truly despicable aspects of the scene such as sex slavery and trafficking will die out. Surely that is a far more desirable goal than driving it back underground where it will then consist only of criminals and victims?

In closing, I would like to thank you for the huge influx of traffic to my website which your actions have caused. I am sure that the ladies who are a part of the PunterNet community thank you as well, as they will no doubt benefit financially from the many new clients who might otherwise never have found them.

The last point is, of course, the most pertinent. In delivering her scoop about the existence of a ten-year old website, Harman has triggered a predictable Streisand effect. But she got her Terminator gag in, so she's probably happy. Read the rest of this article

What Women Want

The hit topic on Comment is Free today concerns an erotica/porn mag aimed at women called Filament. It has recently launched, or it will launch if it can find a printer. They started off with soft-focus shots of men in shorts - but it seems that in the course of their research they uncovered a desire for something a little more obvious, to wit, erections. The magazine's staff were more than happy to oblige - indeed, photographer guidelines have been issued which state, inter alia, that "if your model is keen, we encourage it", but encourages freelancers to "think creatively when photographing an erection". Some may find that easier than others.

Unfortunately, they hit a snag: "the pervasive nervousness about depictions of aroused men". Nervousness among printers and distributors, that is. There was some concern about the Obscene Publications Act, and printers, citing potential objections from "the women's/religious sectors", didn't want to go anywhere near it. Kristina Lloyd and Mathilde Madden, writing on CIF, think that this attitude ("cockblocking") reveals "a deeply entrenched sexism: men can look at women but women cannot look at men". In a magnificent display of Guardian logic, they then go on to argue that while pictures of naked women aimed at a male audience are inherently sexist, pictures of naked men aimed at women aren't:

But there's nothing inherently sexist about depicting nudity. It's sexist when only women are deemed to signify the erotic; it's sexist when eroticised images of women are so normalised and widespread that women stand to be viewed first and foremost as sex objects – their value inextricably linked to their sexual desirability. The sexism is in the inequality.

Filament, by contrast is "challenging a culture that positions women as sex-products for men" - by, erm, positioning men as sex-products for women. This is far more positive, since it "is asking for women to be acknowledged as human beings who can look and lust just as men can." Otherwise, the "deficit" in penis (compared to nipple/vagina) depiction "positions women as the providers of sex for perpetually horny dudes." This leads on to a rather convoluted piece of political positioning, which rather misses the point of any sort of porn, which is to turn people on:

Perhaps what's most insidious in this saga is that the market's refusal to admit that Filament reinforces an idea of female sexuality that justifies that very refusal.

Come again? No, that sentence doesn't work, grammatically or otherwise.

The absence of visual erotica for women on shelves crammed with magazines where women are products for male consumers, reduces female desire to the less-interested counterpart of male desire.

Help!

And so, runs the self-fulfilling logic, of course women don't want magazines targeting their desire. Women don't have desire, see? They merely receive it. How do we know? Just check out those magazine shelves.

Oh, I see. I think. As an experiment it's worth doing. There's no reason in principle why women shouldn't be able to buy magazines featuring naked men, with or without erections., provided the same concession is accorded to men wanting to look at naked women. But I fail to see why it should be seen as some sort of moral crusade. Many feminists object to pornography on the grounds that it degrades and "objectifies" women. It certainly reduces its participants, male as well as female, to their sexual attributes, using them instrumentally to provoke sensations of arousal. Porn is exploitative, by its very nature: not because it exploits the women who appear in it (some of whom, it seems to me, are more exploited than others) but because it exploits the consumer. It takes a fact of nature - that sexual arousal (in the male) is a necessary precondition of successful coitus, which in turn is biologically driven - and turns it into a source of profit.

Is the woman (or the man) who is "objectified" in the name of porn degraded thereby? Only in a society which regards sexual allure as inherently demeaning, surely. Such would seem to be the underlying assumption of those opposed to porn on political as opposed to religious grounds. It's one thing to say that sex is crassly commercialised in the modern western world, and that this puts undue pressure on young women to dress or act in overtly sexy ways. But it's quite another to maintain that women who do act in this way, to the extent that they become strippers, glamour models, pornstars and the like, are debased by it. In a society that worships sex, such women ought to be objects of worship; and, indeed, the most successful "adult" performers become brands, selling not merely videos but sex-toys and other paraphernalia, signing autographs for the thousands of fans who queue up for a brief glimpse - in the flesh, as it were - of their fantasy object.

Kristina Lloyd protests in a comment:

At the heart of all this seems to be a culture which says women don't want to be consumers of sex/porn/erotica because women don't lust, they are the objects of lust.

But are the women in porn seen merely as objects? On the contrary, they are usually depicted as active participants, getting a kick out of displaying their bodies, masturbating, actively enjoying the sexual acts taking place, reaching improbably explosive orgasms. They are not - except in some sub-genres - lying still and passively accepting what is being done to them. The main purpose of heterosexual porn marketed to men is to arouse men by the depiction of female pleasure. An unrealistic fantasy of female pleasure, no doubt, and one that flatters the male that he is a "stud" - and may mislead the viewer as to what women actually enjoy - but the payoff is nevertheless significant. The woman who is sexually uninhibited, unabashed, in control, demanding "more" - and getting it, and climaxing - is the star of the show. It is the male, with his obliging erection, who is the bit-part player. He isn't even strictly necessary, as the huge market in faux-lesbianism reveals. At most, he provides reassurance to the male viewer that women really enjoy heterosexual intercourse.

Why should there be such emphasis on female pleasure if porn is inherently misogynistic and degrading? Why, if men hated women, would they want to fantasise about women having fun?

But back to Filament. On their website, the editors set out what they see as the main imbalance in the erotic marketplace.

Representations of women’s bodies far outnumber representations of men’s bodies everywhere: from advertising to art. In erotic image in particular, representations of the male body specifically designed for women are almost non-existent.

The common explanation for why women have sometimes seemed disinterested in images supposedly intended for them – the idea that "women are less visual" – has now been largely disproven by research. Research also shows that women prefer images of men designed quite differently to those usually marketed toward women.

Filament's big idea is "the female gaze" - cod-academic jargon for what women find attractive. To discover precisely what women did want in their naked men, the editors looked at both psychological research into female sexual tastes and the input of a panel of women who contributed their thoughts via LiveJournal (I notice that this year's most exciting young feminist, Laurie Penny, was one of those who took part). They determined that women tend to prefer men who were "not muscle-bound", had "more feminine faces" and adopted poses that showed "the subject's character and the environment he is in". Boy bands rather than hunks, then. However, the guidelines suggest that "if you’ve got a guy who is very muscular and you think, very hot, we’ll certainly consider your images".

The advice for photographers is extremely detailed - and thus informative as to what they think women want to look at. It counsels photographers against using body-oil, instead suggesting a “flushed and sweaty” look that might be achieved by "having your model run up and down the stairs a few times before you photograph them." It urges them to shoot in interesting, beautiful and/or recognisable environments where it would be reasonably believable that a sexual encounter might take place - which apparently does not include "places like kitchens, the outdoors, plain studio backgrounds or hotel rooms". Facial expression should "convey eroticism" without being "angry or arrogant", and could include "vulnerability", but not "pictures of men looking hurt or abused". They don't want pictures of men cross-dressing, holding babies ("just inappropriate") or doing housework.

What is most striking about Filament's website is its overwhelming, almost oppressive, air of moral seriousness. This is porn with a purpose. It might be thought that satisfying a demand among women to see naked men was enough on its own, but no. Under "What inspired the concept of Filament?" we learn that:

Women are 10 times more likely than men to undergo cosmetic surgery and 43 times more likely than men to suffer an eating disorder. Is this because women are ‘naturally’ life-threateningly obsessed with their appearance, or is this in some way influenced by women’s media? Many men’s magazines don’t discuss men’s appearance, but nearly all women’s magazines discuss women’s appearance.

Difficult to see how a few tastefully photographed stiffies will put an end to all that.

UPDATE: Ms Penny explains her involvement with Filament in more detail here. Similarity of title might or might not be a coincidence.
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Mistress of Reinvention

It's a year since the Heresiarch first became intrigued by the goings-on of Max Mosley and his friends in Chelsea. For those directly involved, it has been quite a year - especially for Mosley himself who not only won his legal action and reasserted his control over the FIA but has turned himself into a scourge of tabloid journalism. His ongoing feud with Paul Dacre may well lead to permanent changes in the way in which newspapers operate in this country, for good or ill.

For his nemesis, the Milton Keynes-based dominatrix known officially as Woman E, who filmed the private spanking party (inaccurately described as a "Nazi orgy") at the behest of NoW's Neville Thurlbeck, the fallout from the affair has been less happy. Her husband lost his job with MI5, the Screws diddled her out of some of the money they had promised, she was shunned as a traitor by many former colleagues, barred from clubs and placed on blacklists. She was reduced to begging forgiveness in a cringe-making Sky Television interview - in which she was revealed as a very ordinary-looking housewife called "Michelle" - and selling her story to Dacre's Mail on Sunday.

It seemed to be all over for her. But, as the Heresiarch can exclusively reveal, the dominatrix formerly known as Abi is now getting back into the mistressing business. She has a new name, a new website, and even a new costume which an untutored eye might think incorporates elements of Nazi chic.




In her new site, illustrated with pictures both of her facilities and of herself in a number of poses, she introduces herself as "Mistress Kiera, supreme Dominatrix and Goddess". "I am a tall, beautiful, sensual and sadistic Dominatrix with many years of experience," she proclaims. "I have a commanding presence and I am always dressed in the finest rubber, leather and fetish clothing." But although she might "seem an unattainable goddess", she reassures her potential clients that she is "approachable" and will "consider most requests". Including, no doubt, those from journalists.

Kiera offers "high class BDSM and fetish services from my fully equipped chambers in Buckinghamshire". (Always fully-equipped, these dungeons. When did you last hear of a "semi-equipped dungeon"?) The range of her services is as extensive as ever, ranging from "anal training" and "foot worship" to "light to severe nipple torture" and "shaving". Wasn't that one of Max's special requests?

Not without reason, given last year's events, Kiera would appear to be especially proud of her expertise in blackmail. She boasts:

I run a number of blackmail and financial schemes including; taxation, extortion, contractual control, photo and personal details blackmail. Each scheme is tailored to individual requirements and a bespoke contract will be drawn up between us by my legal slave. Because of timewasters you will be expected to prove you are genuine by either visiting me for a session or pay an upfront fee to cover the set up costs (contracts etc) before any scheme can start.

She must regret not following these rules when negotiating with Mr Thurlbeck.

Given the animosity towards her in the tight-knit world of bondage and whipping, it might be expected that she would be desperate for any custom that came her way. But apparently she can still afford to be choosy. She writes:

Personal hygiene is extremely important to me and I expect the same from clients. Anyone arriving for a session who is lacking in this area will be turned away. Also anyone who in my opinion is under the influence of alcohol or drugs will be turned away. My chambers are situated within a private house and are extremely discreet. I expect the same level of discretion from all clients in return. Anyone who fails to arrive for an appointment without having the courtesy to cancel will be banned from ever visiting me again. Likewise all other timewasters will have their phone and email details submitted to 'timewasters' websites and to fellow Mistresses.

As to who those fellow mistresses might be, we are given no clues. Presumably they don't include the celebrated Mistress Switch, her former best friend turned sworn enemy, who has been warning her contacts and anyone else who cares to listen of the prospect of Woman E's re-entry onto the scene for several months now. On an online forum, La Switch has repeatedly calumniated her traducer as "thick" and "a liar" who "has no loyalty to anyone except herself". "Leopards don't change their spots", she believes. She complains that:

This bitch is playing the sympathy angle, I hear what untrue stories she is putting about. I'm sure she'll be deluding herself and not facing facts. Too scared to look at herself and see what she did. All you have to remember is SHE (not her husband, not the newspaper) walked into a flat wired and betrayed a client and her friends for money. Who would do such a thing?

Who indeed? Clearly, for Mistress Switch, the anger is still very raw against a woman who "went against everything that is fundmental to a PD/client relationship, discretion and trust". She was "blinded by the pound signs" says Switch, who isn't above issuing the odd predictive curse:

I believe in karma. Years ago a neighbour caused our family unnecessary nasty aggravation. My husband said at the time that she was evil to the core. 2 years later she died of bone cancer.

Another mistress joins in, expressing doubt that Kiera's new venture will prove successful. "Even the watersports enthusiasts wouldn't piss on her if she was on fire!" But this lady intuits that there might be something more to the story:

Is she hoping that this will hit the tabloids and get her some more lucrative column inches, a contract with Max sodding Clifford, and perhaps a new job on the telly where she's wheeled out to make a comment on every future scandal as it breaks from an *insider's* perspective? It all seems a bit odd.

It makes the atmosphere in the higher reaches of the Labour party seem loving by comparison.

"She's most likely back because she's penniless and isn't qualified to do anything else" Andi Switch speculated the other day. She's advising anyone booking a session with Kiera to "film your sessions for You Tube, we could do with the laugh being on her". I thought YouTube had guidelines about that kind of thing.

For Mistress Switch herself, things are going rather better. Together with two of the other Mosleyettes and a number of other women, she was in Las Vegas a couple of months ago to film some shorts and take part in a prestigious spanking convention. She continues as active as ever in her particular demi-monde. Women C and D are equally busy: a recent explicit lesbian romp featuring the two of them has attracted great excitement, while Miss D chose to celebrate the completion of her doctorate by getting several of her colleagues to kidnap her and subject her to waterboarding and "interrogation". It was, she reports, "the most amazing experience in my scene life so far". Mistress Switch was a particularly sadistic interrogator, by all accounts, leaving her victim "totally broken". Perhaps "Kiera" should watch her back.
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Goodbye to all that?

Here are some pictures from the CAAN/Backlash demo last sunday - the eve of the coming into force of the "extreme images" ban. Thanks to Clair Lewis for letting me have them.

Mark Mackenzie

The lady with the "Big Brother is Watching You Masturbate" sign is the renowned spanking model and scene icon Pandora Blake. More pictures, together with a first-hand account of the day, on her highly recommendable blog.

Bruno Deflorence

Taking centre stage here, erotic fashion photographer Ben Westwood, who last time led a group of chained fetish models around Westminster. One of the "slaves", Jade (more conventionally dressed this time) is busy texting.

MM

Here's Clair herself looking at home in front of a TV camera. She later turned up on the BBC Ten O'Clock news.

BD

What would Winston make of it all, I wonder?

MM

Another proud day in the life of the Home of Democracy. Read the rest of this article

Sex and the Slutmaster

As one of my regular Heretics remarked, Manuelgate encapsulates so many of the themes this blog has been pursuing this past year and a bit that I might have orchestrated it myself. Apart from the tittle-tattle, and the debate around the role of the BBC in shaping national standards of taste and decency, the workings of the media industry, the Goth scene that James was exploring (in a quite different context) the other day, the "blasphemy" implied in the name Satanic Sluts, even a bizarre and improbable connection with the Max Mosley saga that occupied the Heresiarch so much earlier this year, the story also brings to mind the present government's attitude to porn and, more broadly, to sexuality as evidenced in its Extreme Porn Ban.

I was first alerted to this (courtesy of CAAN's indefatigable Clair Lewis) by the borderline extreme nature of some of the photographs in which Miss Baillie appears, one of which briefly appeared on the Daily Mail website. Possibly the strongest of these (it wasn't in the Mail) featured Georgie in a bath of fake blood, naked, her carotid artery apparently severed by a kitchen knife held by another naked woman lying in the same bath. She didn't look particularly dead, though: so it might pass the "explicit and realistic" test set out in the Act. Be that as it may, the links between Manuelgate and the current porn debate are deep and fascinating yet have been relatively little explored.

The mastermind and impressario behind the Satanic Sluts is the avant-garde filmmaker and erotic horror importer Nigel Wingrove. Wingrove in fact has a long history of involvement in censorship controversies of one sort or another. His 1989 short Visions of Ecstasy was the last work to be banned by the BBFC on the grounds of potential blasphemy - a ban upheld in a famous test case by the European Court of Human Rights in 1996, but now presumably consigned to history along with the law of blasphemy. A later production of his, Sacred Flesh (1998) was described by Dr Linda Williams (a.k.a. Mrs Mark Kermode) as being "replete with deranged nymphets tearing off their habits and lasciviously mounting giant crosses, its overwrought screenplay fleshed out by a range of underwrought acting styles."

In 2000, The Independent called Wingrove "an unlikely champion of liberal causes". By contrast, Stephen Green of Christian Voice urged his followers earlier this year to pray "that his troubled soul will find rest in the Lord Jesus Christ." Don't make the mistake of visiting his website, Green warned: "This is truly another world which should not exist in a civilised nation."

In the mid 1990s, Wingrove was one of the first importers to take advantage of Michael Howard's new liberal approach to hardcore porn (yes, you read that right) after the Tory Home Secretary gave the green light to the BBFC to pass scenes of basic intercourse uncut. The theory, as the former BBFC director James Ferman told Panorama, was to "draw the line between sexual portrayals which are simply within the range of normal sexual practice and sexual portrayals which are degrading particularly bestiality or lavatorial practices or whatever, or force, or violence or restraint". Ban everthing, he argued, and you just drive it underground where "inevitably it will be mixed up with other criminal kinds of representations which involve torture and degradation."

John Ware, the presenter of that 1998 edition of Panorama, entitled Porn Wars (here's a full transcript), described the relaxation of the previous ban on all hardcore porn as "one of the last Tory government's best-kept secrets". They didn't even tell the police, who raided Wingrove's distribution centre while he was promoting his wares at the 1997 Cannes Film Festival. When he protested that the material they had seized was fine by the BBFC the vice squad retorted that in that case they'd have to raid the censors. It all came down to how you interpreted the 1959 Obscene Publications Act, which outlaws anything tending to deprave and corrupt. As the great John Mortimer QC told the programme, prosecutions have not always been trouble-free since "it’s very difficult to find anyone who's actually come forward and said they’ve been depraved and corrupted".

The incoming Labour Home Secretary, in an early indication of the new government's moralising tone, was outraged when he found out what the BBFC had been up to, describing Ferman's attempt to distinguish standard porn fare from the extreme variety as "circular and risible". Which is an interesting statement, given the legislative contortions recently perfomed by the government as it tried to do precisely that. He claimed and suggested that allowing any hardcore pornography would lead to "a much greater likelihood that more extreme material would take its place."

What finally did for the attempt to keep out porn, of course, was the Web. The Home Office finally gave up the fight under David Blunkett, and today the BBFC scrutinises hundreds of porn videos each year. Their guidelines ban, besides the obvious no-nos of child porn and bestiality, depictions of rape and sexual violence, the infliction of pain (with the possible exception of "mild consensual activity"), "penetration by any object likely to cause actual harm or associated with violence", and "any sexual threats, humiliation or abuse" - which is "likely" to be cut even if clearly consensual. To take an example, Anna Span's 2006 film Hug a Hoodie - a satirical work which consisted of sexual scenes filmed on a housing estate - was cut (says the BBFC) "to remove vaginal penetration with a hand and a foot."

Such a policy would seem in line with Ferman's stated aims of more than a decade ago. Then, to judge by the Panorama film, the authorities were as alarmed as they are today by the more extreme end of the market, although in those days the concern was with under-the-counter material stuffed into plain brown envelopes and sold in (often) illegal and unlicensed sex shops. Despite Straw's objections, the police rarely bothered prosecuting videos showing consensual sex. The programme interviewed Chief Inspector Martin Jauch of the Met's Clubs and Vice department - based in Charing Cross - who summed up the cops' priorities:

For most people pornography is..tits and bums and it’s not, the material that we deal with is an ocean away from that. It includes the most revolting sorts of torture, of coercion, of exploitation of both sexes. It’s material that I think most people haven’t got the remotest idea even exists.

Yet even "extreme" material didn't always make the grade. Jauch described his frustration with the OPA and the way some juries interpreted it. One particular tape he had seen involved the insertion of a fire extinguisher into a body orifice. In his view,

It was quite outrageous, it was degrading, it was really beyond anybody’s experience and that was found to be not obscene, it makes you wonder if they’ll find some of this material to be not obscene, then what will they find to be obscene.

Fast forward a decade, and you don't need to bother with underground networks or even pay-per-view websites. Today Fleshbot, a site owned by, and openly linked to from, the popular New York-based political and media gossip blog Gawker, offers hardcore porn without even the interposition of an age-confirmation screen. Just last week it offered online readers "Extreme Halloween with Belladonna". Said the none-too-explicit text:

Have you picked out your Halloween costume yet? We're still working out the details on ours, but we think we're going to go as Belladonna. It's a pretty easy costume—just get a black wig, paint on some tattoos, and carry around a baseball bat... wait, you didn't get that last part? Um, maybe you should just watch this video then. (And Happy Halloween!)

This playful introduction led into video footage in which a full-sized baseball bat was inserted (big end first) some distance up the rectal passage of a young female performer (presumably "Belladonna"). It's most unlikely that such a scene would have been passed by the BBFC, and it seems certain to fall foul of the CJIA ban on depictions of "injury or threat of injury to the anus." Yet here it is for ten or twelve year-olds to look at.

There are signs that even the sybaritic Nigel Wingrove - who deals in (and produces) some pretty hardcore stuff himself - has concerns about the current easy availability of extreme porn. Writing on his blog a few days before Manuelgate brought the Satanic Sluts to wider public attention, he described a typical day at the office. His muse Kelly Lyne (nom de slut: Sabrina Sixx - she can be seen romping with Georgina Baillie in a clip from the cable "reality show" Slut House, courtesy of the News of the World) was busy uploading trailers for a new internet shop.

She commented on the extreme grossness of some of the footage, possibly a gaping arsehole oozing cum or something equally delightful had caught her attention. This was not inspired by prudery or timidity on Kelly's part and neither were these titles 'extreme' in the porn sense of the word as they were all in fact trailers for titles produced by the highly regarded and mainstream UK adult company Harmony.

Wingrove took this incident as a starting point for a meditation of the changing nature of porn, and the ratchet effect whereby what is at first outrageously far out soon becomes commonplace:

For now, gaping arseholes sell so gaping is good, so is seeing women's faces covered in spunk as umpteen men stand around her and masturbate, their aim to get as much spunk as possible onto her face, for extra effect her eyes and mouth are often held open to increase her discomfort, in some films the men piss on her and into her mouth just in case the film's misogynistic fervor was in danger of passing the viewer by. Also popular in the current new wave of porn is the introduction of vomit, this is favoured by the likes of Max Hardcore and his ilk and is where men force their cocks or hands so far down a women's throat that she throws up! This is highly erotic of course, as is shoving lit cigars and various large objects into women's vaginas and anuses, double vaginal penetration, double anal and spitting into their eyes are also popular modern seduction techniques.

Max Hardcore, a notorious American pornographer (real name Paul Little), was recently convicted by a court in Florida for distributing obscene material and sentenced to almost four years in jail. During his trial, many of his regular performers turned up in court to testify as to the thoroughly consensual nature of the film-making process. Others, though, have described very young girls - barely 18 - being "persuaded" to participate in extreme and disgusting acts. The popularity of his product certainly demonstrates the jading nature of much contemporary porn whose consumers, like junkies, need progressively greater fixes. As Wingrove puts it, "constant exposure to something one desires necessitates constantly upping the ante." The internet sex shop, he writes, is "the Disneyland of pornography" where "every perversion, every possible function of the human body and every fetish ever conceived or imagined can now be accessed in minutes, day in, day out." And by children and teenagers as well as by adults.

The pursuit of pornographic extremes recalls the Roman Colosseum, where audiences fed up with watching the usual gladiators slugging it out were offered women, or dwarves, or blind men fighting ostriches. It also mirrors the descent into an abyss of tastelessness of more mainstream culture, where each series of Big Brother introduces more uninhibited or damaged personalities and the contestants on I'm A Celebrity... are subjected in the name of mass entertainment to a theatre of cruelty. And submit, because the exposure helps their careers. An interesting question thus emerges: is porn becoming ever more extreme because that tendency is in the nature of porn, or because that tendency is in the nature of modern society?

Porn can of course be a valuable educational tool for teenagers, who now come to sex far more knowledgeable and proficient than they ever used to. For adults in committed relationships it can provide an enriching source of fantasy and inspiration, opening previously unimagined horizons and enabling communication between partners. It can even save marriages. But it has a distorting effect. It can encourage premature sexual experimentation. It projects unattainable ideals (or unnatural norms) of bodily perfection, pubic topiary and (for boys) penis size. Girls feel the need to perform deep-throating or submit to anal sex: boys come to think that the natural conclusion to a bout of lovemaking is to ejaculate in their partner's face. It is deforming, perhaps dehumanising. Long term, the social and sexual effects of a generation reared on hardcore porn are difficult to gauge. This is an experiment that has escaped the laboratory.

I have previously criticised the current government's decision to ban possession of extreme pornography, which strikes me as being ill-judged and badly-drafted. It is based on the dubious proposition that a taste for violent or sadomasochistic porn indicates a propensity for violence, or encourages its viewers to commit acts of violence. Often, the opposite is true. Individuals attracted to the darker or more unconventional side of human sexuality are typically seeking fantasy, exploring their desires in a safe and controlled environment. In their day to day lives they tend to be well-balanced and successful. Whether by accident or design, the new measures target - and may jeopardise the livelihood or even liberty of - an entirely inoffensive and law-abiding part of the community.

The government, moreover, seems determined to return to the days of pre-internet border control, when Britain stood unique in the western world in its aversion to even the mildest porn. It appears driven by a combination of neo-Victorian religious moralism (can it be a coincidence that New Labour has also presided over a rapid expansion of faith schools and various "faith-based" initiatives?) and feminist dogma which sees all pornography as inherently exploitative and degrading to (and objectifying of) women. Jack Straw's instinctive revulsion at the very idea even of adults being able to watch consensual and no-frills intercourse suggests that the ban on "extreme porn" is only the beginning.

Yet there's a big difference, surely, between permitting informed adults, whose tastes tend that way, to receive and enjoy material which the majority would consider extreme or outrageous, and a situation in which such disturbing material can be accessed anywhere, at any time, by anyone, sometimes without any warning. The problem has only just begun to attract the serious attention of lawmakers, but in this area as in others the days of the internet free-for-all may well be numbered. History moves in cycles, as the licence of one era provokes a reaction in the direction of repression and moralistic control. I sense such a flipover may be upon us.
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Everything I've Learned about Spanking

When the Max Mosley "Nazi orgy with hookers" story first broke I scarcely noticed it. Lacking much interest in sadomasochistic orgies, Nazi or otherwise, never having heard of Max Mosley (or, come to that, the FIA: I imagined that motorsport was run entirely by Bernie Ecclestone), and not being a regular reader of the News of the World the fuss barely registered on my radar screen. But then, a few weeks later, came something that did interest me: the revelation that one of the women involved - the very one who sold the story to the Screws, moreover - was married to an MI5 officer. I wondered how much I could find out about her, and the circumstances involved. Was there a grand conspiracy? Who really set Mosley up? What kind of truths, all these weeks later, were still out there?

Cherchez les femmes quickly became my watchword. I searched - and found. No smoking gun, no conspiracies (I lacked Lord Stevens' resources or expertise), but I did discover fascinating details about the women involved in the case. What I found overturned completely all my preconceptions. It may also, in retrospect, have skewed my moral compass.

The process of tracking down the women, originally fuelled by pure, prurient curiosity, slowly changed into something else as I learned more about the world they inhabit and about the women themselves. I pursued them through a network of message-boards, blogs and obscure fetish sites. I learned a new vocabulary, of CP and BDSM, of pro-dommes and submissives, of munches, judicials and paddles. I hung out in deviant chatrooms. I have seen enough photographs of striped, enflamed, bruised and scarred backsides to last several lifetimes. I was never remotely turned on; yet bizarre, disturbing images, which must appear inherently abusive, began to appear normal, even banal. I found this disquieting. But whatever my final thoughts about their lifestyle I have over the past weeks developed a respect and, strange though it sounds, an affection for the women who, for whatever reason, choose it.

What at first seemed to be an undifferentiated group of "hookers" turned out to be anything but. There was the outwardly respectable middle-aged divorcee with a head for figures and an allegedly "dynamite" contacts book; the young glamour model struggling to raise her child alone; the ultra-bright graduate student who craved polyglot humiliation and the firm thwack of a hairbrush; the German with an enigmatic past and hair as dark and lustrous as polished obsidian; and, of course, the villainess, the arch-deceiver, spanking's own Mata Hari, who owned and ran a fully-equipped dungeon in old Milton Keynes. Far from obscure, they were stars in their limited firmament, with an adoring fanbase. Like proper celebrities, they even did their bit for charity.


The treacherous Mistress Abi, who can now be pictured. They're calling her "Michelle"

Whether or not one chooses to use the word "prostitute" of such women is a difficult question (even among themselves), and to some extent an artificial one. At one level, they are obviously providing "sexual services" in exchange for money, even though the services rarely include penetrative sex (and if sex does occur, it is a freely-given extra, on the woman's terms). But in other respects they are most unlike prostitutes, even highly-paid call girls, whose whole raison d'être is to earn money through sex. With the spankees and dominatrices of the corporal punishment (CP) scene, even if spanking is their career (and it usually isn't) it is above all a personal need, an outward expression of inner compulsion. And, indeed, it's hard to see how it could be otherwise. Being hurt for money sounds like the most abject degradation: yet these women are not degraded. They do it because that is who they are. If they aren't paid to be spanked, they offer themselves up for free. And if they can't find anyone willing to do if for free, they may even pay.

Another awkward question raised for some by the professional BDSM scene concerns the political (and, indeed, moral) ramifications of the infliction of pain in exchange for money. Whether or not it is "prostitution", whether or not it is consensual, is it inherently abusive? This is something that particularly troubles feminists. Kit Roskelly, herself an S&M Submissive and self-declared feminist, puts the problem this way in an article posted on The F Word:

While people of every orientation and gender are involved in BDSM, the scenes in which heterosexual couples interact, and particularly those in which a woman takes the submissive role, are of particular interest in the context of female sexuality. In taking on control of a female submissive during scenes, dominant men appear to be enacting all that is worst about male privilege and control. The use of tying and restraints, physical punishment and sexual domination, all ring alarm-bells for the feminist viewer.

Roskelly's own answer to this question stresses - as do all apologists for BDSM of any variety - the paramount importance of consent. But some feminists - sharing in this (and not for the only time) the views of the distinctly non-feminist journalists at the Mail - find this less than convincing. And where money changes hands, the "punishment" of a female submissive seems to go beyond the ritualisation of the assumed patriarchal dominance in wider society and to depend on it directly. After all, those paying, whether to spank or to be spanked, or merely to watch the spanking, are overwhelmingly men. They have the money - and therefore, if you accept the feminist analysis, they also have the power.

As "Prime Rib" put it in a comment on CIF, "He [MM] assaulted women (yes, they were prostitutes - so what?). Since when did handing money over excuse violence? What about their 'feelings?' What about their health and safety?... " When I put it to her that the women were consenting and in any case were doing it for their own enjoyment as much as Mosley's, she described my point of view as "bullcrap":

Personally, I find S&Mers largely comic, sad and only rarely disturbing. But that's because they're still a subset of oddballs. Normalise, and the 'boundaries' become far less defined. Too many men (and some women) have 'issues.' Licence to express them sexually, for money, is a recipe for abuse.

Such an argument seems to me to be based on dogma rather than experience, and strikingly similar to arguments made forty years ago against the legalisation of gay sex: that the young and vulnerable would be taken advantage of, or that normalising something deviant will damage society more widely. Yet I cannot dismiss it entirely, and - picking up hints here and there - it seems clear that despite a strongly expressed attachment to the principle of consent the potential for abuse remains. I found this blog comment, for example, by a professional spank model - one of the best in the business:

But when is play not so good for the sub? I guess when what he or she receives is not at all what she was expecting (and is not a slave and so has a right to complain about this) and is really rather damaged from the whole experience both physically and mentally. I have seen (and been subjected to once or twice) the result of bad play and it can really do bad things to both your psyche and your posterior!

What all this emphasises, of course, is the centrality of trust and personal relationships. In an interesting post, Adele Haze (another leading light of the Scene, who was not directly involved in the case) compared herself and her fellow spankees to geishas whose position is, perhaps, similarly anomalous. Among ten points she raised, she mentioned that "both a geisha and a spanking model compete for attention of a relatively small group of people". This, I think, is key. It's a small community of about 20-30 girls who know each other, go to the same parties, show up in the same films and on the same specialist websites, and who therefore put a high premium on trust. It seems far removed from the seedy, anonymous, soulless world of commercial sex. Eady J alluded to this element when he wrote in his judgement,

I was told that there is a fairly tight-knit community of S and M activists on what is known as “the scene” and that it is an unwritten rule that people are trusted not to reveal what has gone on. That is hardly surprising....It is alleged against the woman in question (known as “Woman E”) that she breached that trust and that the journalist concerned must have appreciated that she was doing so.

The judge further quotes a text message sent by Miss A to Max Mosley soon after the News of the World exposé

“ … our scene is based on complete trust and complete discretion. However one of my so called close friends dominatrix [Woman E] has betrayed that confidence by doing what she has done. I am devastated by this act of pure total selfish greed, she has no morals, no integrity, no loyalty, complete disregard to others, cruel, and she is a liar!!! No one … deserves this invasion of privacy.”

Everything that I have learned confirms this impression. Ethics matters to these people. Miss A spoke in court of the "family atmosphere" that bound the women together - and their clients, too, with whom they often come to form close relationships. Although, as in all extended families, there are also quarrels, rivalries and feuds. One important distinction would seem to be between "pro-dommes", mistresses doing it just for the money, and "genuine players", who do it for love. Identifying Mistress Abi as a purely mercenary dominatrix enabled some on the scene to put her betrayal into some kind of context. Yet other pro-dommes retort that confidentiality is just as important to them as to anyone else, and Abi's behaviour wasn't their fault. Who knows when, or whether, the breach will be healed?

The Scene is, as it is designed to be, a world of mirrors, in which real identities are submerged behind false names and, occasionally, fictitious details. This serves as a buffer between the scene and the mundane, or "vanilla" world, which is perceived as being potentially threatening. There is a fear that with exposure would come consequences, a sense that the world as a whole, or at least the powers that control it, represent a threat to their lifestyle, to their jobs and to their relationships. With that fear comes also solidarity, a desire to protect each other's security and, when need arises, to circle the wagons.

One important aspect of this security concerns names. "Scene names" are carefully chosen. Sometimes, they will have purely theatrical connotations - "Mistress Switch", for example - and will therefore give no indication as to the actual identity of the person behind the name. Others will resemble real names, but not be. Similarly, clients will tend to use pseudonyms - Max was "Mike", for example - even where their real names are known to their closest confederates. As far as I can tell, that element of confidentiality has so far been largely preserved. Certainly the "real" identities of the women are not easy (though not impossible) to uncover.

The need for trust - and the close personal relationships that this entails - thus exists in tension with circumspection. The girls on the Scene, and their largely male clientelle, are bound together not just by a shared enthusiasm for spanking but through fear of the consequences of exposure. It is this delicate balance that the Max Mosley case has upset. Above all, it was the action of "Woman E" - a professional dominatrix and a close friend of at least one of the four other women in the case - that has sent shockwaves through the community. The sense of betrayal is still raw. Adele Haze, for example, writes on her blog that the affair has left her "numb with anger". She had come to know the scene as a place of trust and safety, "a benevolent, friendly world of kinky humans". E's actions had destroyed all that:

This is why it was such a blow to me that the betrayal of my colleagues (and Max, their client) came not from a mustachioed spy creeping into a dodgy spanking party, but a woman they considered one of their own. This alone was hard to take in, and I still struggle to understand what has to go through the mind of a woman who throws away all relationships, connections and friendships in the scene, gleefully pushing five people off the cliff...

I couldn’t begin to equate my distress to the daily anguish suffered by the girls and Max. I’m safe and well here behind my computer screeen. And yet, the profound disappointment in my scene is looking to haunt me for a long time. I don’t see being able to walk into a spanking party without guessing who is going to betray everybody present.

Shortly after the MM affair went public, one of the leading organising figures on the British corporal punishment scene, Lucy McLean, sent a round-robin email urging her spank-buddies not to blog about the incident, to protect the women involved. She feared that they might lose their jobs or even the custody of their children if their true identities were exposed. The embargo was adhered to until the case concluded last week. By a bitter irony, however, it was McLean herself who was to suffer most.

Together with her husband Paul Kennedy, Lucy runs the Glasgow-based Northern Spanking site, where CP enthusiasts can pay to watch videos of their favourite models being spanked. Four of the five Mosley women were regular or occasional performers in NS productions - indeed, it was owing to a prior engagement shooting for them that Woman D was unable to take part in the first of Max's two parties in March. As a result of these connections, NS came to the attention of a reporter who, unable to find out much about the Mosley affair itself, decided to expose Lucy and Paul instead. The ensuing publicity cost Paul his job and the couple most of their income. There's not a great deal of money in online spanking, it would appear. "It has always been a labour of love for both of us," says Lucy.

In a comment which sums up a general feeling on the scene, Lucy proclaims, "The fact that these animals are allowed to completely ruin people's lives under the guise of "public interest" and "freedom of press" is abominable and must be stopped."

The moment the dangers of exposure really hit home to me, however, came when I discovered the identity of Miss D. Like the Mail a few months later, I had been fascinated to learn of her double life - research scientist by day, professional spank model by night. Her well-written and fascinating blog (now, for whatever reason, defunct) became, for me, a window into a world of which I had hitherto had no knowledge. She came across as open, candid, brave, likeable and popular, with many friends and a positive approach to life. So open was she, indeed, that I began to rue my earlier pursuit of her and (hypocritically, perhaps) became genuinely annoyed that the Mail had, if anything, gone further (and, of course, a national newspaper must be far more dangerous to her anonymity than a relatively obscure blog). And then I found out her real name, the names of her colleagues and supervisors, and the name of the institution to which she was attached. Suddenly it seemed a lot less funny. If anything I wrote contributed to her problems then I am truly sorry.

So what have I learned? Firstly, more than I ever wanted or needed to about the milieu in which Max Mosley moved undetected for more than 40 years. It's an intimate society with rules and conventions, and one that operates at several levels. There are basically three interconnecting circles: and the Mosley women operated in all three. There are the private appointments - "1-2-1" sessions and small, confidential parties, at which the first rule is absolute discretion. It was such a gathering that was successfully infiltrated by the News of the World back in March. But there are also larger, more public assemblies, which are all ticket affairs including fairly elaborate theatrical tableaux.

It emerged in court that Miss A used to arrange such events in Euston, with financial backing from Max Mosley himself. As described in the newspapers, these were orgies where "up to 30 men pay around £200 to have sex with ten women in a stage-like setting". This led the Telegraph's Kevin Garside to note that "having a financial interest in a tawdry sex den in Euston... is of a different order of perversion" which might have been even more damaging to Mosley's reputation that the goings-on in Chelsea. I've seen photos from similar parties, and they do indeed seem fairly uninhibited; but apart from the odd bit of fondling the only "sexual acts" were being performed on stage between the women. And this account of such a party by a regular participant makes it sound like an S&M version of speed dating:

there was not really enough time to enjoy the CP from all the guys as we had to rush to the next and the next (and so on)....and the implements and caning was particularly speedy (kinda like speed spanking). I felt a little rude asking the guys to come over quickly and do their stuff at speed, particularly as I did not feel I had spent enough time with some of them, however that is the nature of a large party and I have to hope that the guys there understood that.

(Bisexuality would seem to be a near-universal trait among spankees. As Eady J commented at para 121 (getting a little hot under his robes, or so it seems to me), "although the Claimant's sexual activity as revealed in the DVD material did not seem to amount to very much, some of the women stayed on after the party was over and indulged in same sex action purely for their own entertainment.")

The third level is that of the websites and specialist films. There's an obvious overlap here between BDSM and more "mainstream" varieties of porn, much of which features S&M scenarios. But the differences are equally striking, such as the fact that most spanking films do not feature explicit sex; or the fact that almost all the girls who appear in films or on websites are also available for private bookings and attend the above-mentioned parties. Or the fact, admitted by Adele Haze, that physical attractiveness is not always a prerequisite for the women in the films.

The second thing that became overwhelmingly apparent was the strong sense of community and fellow-feeling that exists in the spanking world, and BDSM generally. The Mosley affair threatened them, and they responded partly by closing ranks, and partly by standing firmly behind Max in his fight. He became an unlikely hero; and the women who gave evidence, braving exposure, had at least the consolation of strong support from their network of friends and colleagues. Whether the Scene will re-emerge unchanged, and whether the four women will continue to play their formerly prominent roles within it, it's probably too early to tell. In some ways, its denizens will be safer after the judge's explicit acknowledgement of people's right to conduct their personal sex lives in private. But the fear of exposure will remain; as the case of Paul and Lucy has confirmed, being outed as an S&M practitioner still puts your life and career at risk. And while many ordinary people may take a more tolerant line than the News of the World, or indeed the Daily Mail, the BDSM community remains one of the few against which explicit discrimination is still legal.

The other thing I learned was about myself. I'm not into spanking. Honestly.

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