Archive for ‘Sex’

April 9, 2012

Expanded Orgasm

erte

Expanded orgasm is any sexual experience more intense and extensive than what can be described as, or included in the definition of, an ordinary orgasm. It includes a range of sensations that include orgasms that are full-bodied, and orgasms that last from a few minutes to many hours. The term was coined in 1995 by Dr. Patricia Taylor. It was used in her Ph.D. research of intense sensual experiences of 44 couples from various backgrounds and referenced in a video she produced in 1998. Distinguishing features of expanded orgasm are energetic sensations and contractions all over the body, especially in the abdomen, inner thighs, hands, feet, and genitals.

Dr. Taylor describes reports of practitioners going into various altered states of consciousness, bringing about deep emotional release and rejuvenation, profound spiritual experiences, having awarenesses not normally perceived in regular orgasm, and perceiving energy expanding beyond the limits of their bodies. Similar experiences were reported in studies by Dr. Jenny Wade, and by David Deida. Theories for the biological processes required for achieving these states include the progressive and balanced stimulation and elevation of the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system; this is evidenced by the tantric practice of using breathing techniques to engage the parasympathetic nervous system during sexual activities.

April 9, 2012

Aubrey Beardsley

lysistrata

Aubrey Beardsley (1872 – 1898) was an English illustrator and author. His drawings in black ink, influenced by the style of Japanese woodcuts, emphasized the grotesque, the decadent, and the erotic.

He was a leading figure in the Aesthetic movement which also included Oscar Wilde and James A. McNeill Whistler. Beardsley’s contribution to the development of the Art Nouveau and poster styles was significant, despite the brevity of his career before his early death from tuberculosis.

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April 4, 2012

Male Gaze

male gaze

The Male Gaze is a feminist theory that was first developed by British feminist film theorist Laura Muvley in 1975. The male gaze occurs when the audience, or viewer, is put into the perspective of a heterosexual man. Mulvey stressed that the dominant male gaze in mainstream Hollywood films reflects and satisfies the male unconscious: most filmmakers are male, thus the voyeuristic gaze of the camera is male. Male characters in the film’s narratives make women the objects of their gaze.

When feminism characterizes the ‘male gaze’ certain themes appear such as, voyeurism, objectification, fetishism, scopophilia (pleasure from looking), and women as the object of male pleasure. Mary Anne Doane at Brown University gives an example of how voyeurism can be seen in the male gaze: ‘The early silent cinema, through its insistent inscription of scenarios of voyeurism, conceives of its spectator’s viewing pleasure in terms of the peeping tom, behind the screen, reduplicating the spectator’s position in relation to the woman on the screen.’

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April 4, 2012

Girls with Guns

ghost in the shell

Girls with guns is a sub-genre of action films and animation, often Asian films and anime, that portray a strong female protagonist who makes use of firearms to defend against or attack a group of antagonists. The genre may typically involves gunplay, stunts and martial arts action. The genre started in the late 1950s and early 1960s in Asia. Suzuki Seijun’s 1958 film ‘Underworld Beauty’ is an early example from Japan.

In the 1966, Hong Kong actress Cheng Pei-pei starred in the Shaw Brothers Studio film ‘Come Drink with Me,’ an early Chinese film of the genre. Rival Hong Kong studio, Golden Harvest Studios, had their own female fighter, Angela Mao Ying, who also helped popularize the trend in Asia.

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March 30, 2012

Precocious Puberty

one minute puberty

As a medical term, precocious puberty describes puberty occurring at an unusually early age. In most of these children, the process is normal in every respect except the unusually early age, and simply represents a variation of normal development. In a minority of children, the early development is triggered by a disease such as a tumor or injury of the brain.

Even in instances where there is no disease, unusually early puberty can have adverse effects on social behavior and psychological development, can reduce adult height potential, and may shift some lifelong health risks. Central precocious puberty can be treated by suppressing the pituitary hormones that induce sex steroid production.

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March 27, 2012

Very Erotic Very Violent

Very erotic very violent

Very erotic very violent is a Chinese internet meme that originated from a news report on China Central Television’s flagship ‘Xinwen Lianbo’ program (a daily news show) allegedly quoting a schoolgirl describing a web page. On the Chinese Internet, this incident was widely parodied and weakened the credibility of the state broadcaster’s newscasts. This Chinese phrase follows the form of ‘very good very mighty,’ a snowclone (cliché template) for Internet slang popularized earlier that year.

In late 2007, ‘Xinwen Lianbo’ aired a report about the wide and easy availability of explicit content on the internet. The report appealed to juristic institutions and those seeking legislation in order to purify the internet environment. In the report, a young student described a pop-up advertisement she saw as being ‘very erotic, [and] very violent.’ After the airing of the report, internet users began to ridicule and parody the quote and question the program’s credibility, believing that it would be unlikely for a person of that age to find a web page to be both erotic and violent at the same time.

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March 27, 2012

Verlan

verlan

Verlan [veyr-lahn] is a French argot (secret language) featuring inversion of syllables in a word, and is common in slang and youth language. It rests on a long French tradition of transposing syllables of individual words to create slang words.

The name verlan is an example: it is derived from inverting the syllables in ‘l’envers’ [lan-ver](‘the inverse’). Different rules apply for one-syllable words, and words with more than one syllable may be verlanized in more than one way. For example, ‘cigarette’ may yield ‘garetsi’ or ‘retsiga.’

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March 27, 2012

Vagina Dentata

teeth

Vagina dentata is Latin for ‘toothed vagina.’ Various cultures have folk tales about women with toothed vaginas, frequently told as cautionary tales warning of the dangers of sex with strange women and to discourage the act of rape. Jung disciple Erich Neumann relays one such myth in which ‘a fish inhabits the vagina of the Terrible Mother; the hero is the man who overcomes the Terrible Mother, breaks the teeth out of her vagina, and so makes her into a woman.’ The legend also appears in the mythology of the Chaco and Guiana tribes.

In some versions, the hero leaves one tooth. An Ainu language (of Japan and Russia) tale containing this element was published as ‘The Island of Women’ by Basil Hall Chamberlain, where it was described as a well known Japanese tale by E. B. Tylor. In his book, ‘The Wimp Factor,’ Stephen J. Ducat expresses the view that these myths express the threat sexual intercourse poses for men who, although entering triumphantly, always leave diminished. The grain of truth in these stories is that dermoid cysts, which can occur anywhere in the body, often contain teeth. Although there are no documented sightings, it is theoretically possible for a tooth-containing dermoid cyst to develop in a woman’s vagina.

March 27, 2012

Vacuum Bed

vacuum bed

A vacuum bed is a device sometimes used in BDSM (bondage, domination, sadomasochism) play. A person is placed in a latex envelope spanned by a frame and a suction pump or floor vacuum removes most of the air in the envelope. The frame is often a simple rectangle of pierced PVC pipes, joined by PVC joints. There are several ways that the vacuum bed can be designed to facilitate breathing. The most common is a tube running from outside of the vacuum bed into the person’s mouth. A second option is a reinforced hole that is positioned so that the mouth protrudes. A third option is a reinforced gasket through which one forces the entire head. Incorporating a related fetish, some vacuum beds use a gas mask to facilitate respiration.

The vacuum bed is both a bondage and sensation device. The user is unable to move significantly (although some wiggling is possible), and is unable to speak or see, depending on the breathing hole used. In addition, though, the sensation of the vacuum bed itself, as well as any other play (stroking, percussion, vibrations) are quite pleasurable, and some are much more intense than what would be experienced without the vacuum bed. The vacuum bed must be used with the aid of another person, as the user cannot control the vacuum itself, nor escape the vacuum bed unaided.

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March 25, 2012

Heavy Metal

gloria by Angus McKie

Heavy Metal is a 1981 Canadian fantasy-animated film directed by Gerald Potterton and produced by Ivan Reitman and Leonard Mogel, who also was the publisher of ‘Heavy Metal magazine,’ the basis for the film. The screenplay was written by Daniel Goldberg and Len Blum.

The film is an anthology of various science fiction and fantasy stories adapted from the magazine and original stories in the same spirit. Like the magazine, it has a great deal of graphic violence, nudity, and sexuality. Its production was expedited by having several animation houses working simultaneously on different segments, including CinéGroupe and Atkinson Film-Arts.

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March 25, 2012

Heavy Metal

metal hurlant

jim mahfood

Heavy Metal is an American science fiction and fantasy comics magazine, known primarily for its blend of dark fantasy/science fiction and erotica. In the mid-1970s, while publisher Leonard Mogel was in Paris to jump-start the French edition of ‘National Lampoon,’ he discovered the French science-fantasy magazine ‘Métal Hurlant’ which had debuted in 1974. The French title translates literally as ‘Howling Metal.’

When Mogel licensed the American version, he chose to rename it, and ‘Heavy Metal’ began in the U.S. in 1977 as a glossy, full-color monthly. Initially, it displayed translations of graphic stories originally published in ‘Métal Hurlant,’ including work by Enki Bilal, Jean Giraud (also known as Moebius), Philippe Druillet, Milo Manara and Philippe Caza. The magazine later ran Stefano Tamburini and Tanino Liberatore’s ultra-violent ‘RanXerox.’ Since the color pages had already been shot in France, the budget to reproduce them in the U.S. version was greatly reduced.

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March 15, 2012

Loving More

loving more

Loving More is a national non-profit organization concerned with support, advocacy and polyamory awareness for the polyamorous community. Polyamory is the practice of having more than one intimate relationship at a time with the knowledge and consent of everyone involved. The three most visible projects of Loving More are a magazine, a website and two annual conferences. The organization was originally started as a News Letter ‘PEP Talk’ (Polyfidelity Education Productions) in the fall of 1984 by Ryam Nearing.

In 1991, the organization and group was renamed Loving More. The organization has been running conferences and retreats since the mid-eighties in order to educate and support people in multi-partnered families and relationships. In recent years Loving More has shifted the focus to include a push for polyamory awareness by reaching out to the therapists, doctors, lawyers and media in an effort to educate the public to possibilities beyond monogamy in loving relationships.