The President's Club, Sex Workers, Social Media and Conservative Protectionism

Mrs Merton, once hilariously asked Debbie McGee, “What was it that first attracted you to the millionaire Paul Daniels?” A similar question might be asked of the wives of Donald Trump. The concept of women prepared to marry older, and often not very attractive men, who happen to have lots of money, is not new. The fact, is that sex has always been a commodity, and like any other commodity, it can be sold for money, or exchanged for value in some other form. And, Engels himself, as his correspondence with Marx, from Paris, illustrates was no stranger to such trade. 

There was moral outrage at the revelation that the President's Club fundraising event was something akin to a Roman orgy. Who'd have thunk it, that a male only gathering, of the rich, privileged elite, employing female only hostesses, told to wear provocative clothing, might descend into such debauchery? The moral outrage, which led to some front bench politicians resigning, and charities that had benefited from donations from the event, sending back the money, follows on from the #metoo movement that sprang up after the Harvey Weinstein revelations. There is a reactionary, puritanical element that surrounds some of this moral outrage. It smacks of the kind of Victorian attitude towards sex, and relations between adults that you might find in a Jane Austen novel, in which propriety was assured by the use of strict guidelines and etiquette in the process of courtship, along with the requirement for any contact to be monitored, and assured by an appropriate chaperone. Today, the same thing seems to be aimed at by setting down all such terms of contact via the use of Internet dating websites, and so on. 

One pundit I heard on radio commented on how they could not believe such behaviour and events still occurred. Really? Where have they been living? Have they not been aware of the growth of Internet pornography, of the growth of lap-dancing clubs, and so on? I have no doubt that MP's of all parties, and other members of the elite are frequent visitors to all of these, along with huge numbers of other members of the population. Have they not seen Channel 4's “Naked Attraction”?The figures for the number of people, men and women, who access porn even from their work computers illustrates the point. Internet development, and before it the video industry was driven by pornography. This again smacks of the kind of Victorian hypocrisy that Marx and Engels and others railed against, whereby everyone pretended that sex didn't exist, that women should have no interest in sex, and that their only role was to lie back and think of England, as they performed their wifely duties for their husband! 

And, the implication, in much of the prudish narrative, is that it is only men who buy these sexual services. Yet. even going back twenty years, remember The Chippendales or The Full Monty? In more recent times, a whole industry has grown up providing for Hen Parties that are frequently as raunchy as their Stag equivalents. Alongside the term laddish, we have had the introduction of the term ladette. And why not? Do we really want to go back to the reactionary, prudish days, prior to the 1960's, which was the dream of Mary Whitehouse and others? Sexual liberation, and the removal of the dead hand of the state, imposing its censorship rules for social and sexual mores, comes with risks and responsibilities, and it thereby places responsibilities on individuals to act as mature adults, in being able to think for themselves, to be able to make distinctions, and to respond to situations accordingly. A clumsily placed hand on a knee, as a speculative sexual advance, can be removed, if its recipient does not welcome the advance. It is not the same as rape, or a sexual assault, and it only diminishes the seriousness of the latter when that distinction is blurred. 

For decades people were able to deal with requests for a kiss underneath the mistletoe without feeling that they had been seriously violated. As kids of 10-12, we used to play “Kiss chase”, as part of the process of learning the unwritten, and imprecise rules of these interpersonal relations without the risk of being branded a sex pest by an irate parent.   When, we learned how to whistle properly, boys and girls, the first thing you did was learn how to wolf whistle!

I had a boss once who said that a friend of his had told him that whenever he got talking to women he fancied, in a pub etc., he would always at some point openly ask “is there any chance of a shag?” In nine cases out of ten, it would result in him getting a slap across the face, and the end of the discussion. He felt it was worth it, because in one case out of ten, he would get a positive response. The point being that he took the chance of the slap, as the price of being open in his advances, and those who were in receipt of the advance were able to respond accordingly. The appropriate response to the cheeky advance by anyone who was offended was the slap across the face. 

Of course, there is the question of power. A boss is in a more powerful position than a worker. In fact, it's that difference, the fact that a worker needs to work to live, that enables capital to insist that the worker provides some labour for free. Workers cannot escape that requirement by going to work for some other capital, because all capital requires that tribute to be paid. But, that does not mean that workers are not free to seek employment from capitals that pay higher wages, and to refuse to work for those capitals that pay lower than average wages. It is that which leads Marx to describe it as free wage labour, and it is this ability to move freely, that leads to competition between capitals for labour-power, that drives towards the formation of an average wage, equivalent to the value of labour-power, just as competition drives towards the formation of an average annual rate of profit. 

That doesn't stop some capitals paying lower than average wages, or offering worse than average conditions. If the long-term answer to that within capitalism is that such capitals tend to go out of business, as labour moves to better paying employment, the short-term solution is that workers form trades unions to protect themselves against such abuses, and that includes protecting themselves against sexual harassment by the firm's bosses. But, not all interrelations at work are between bosses and workers. There are interrelations between workers and workers. Again different power relations might exist, but the question of being able to think, and to make distinctions is important. 

When I was 18, I worked in an office as an administrator in a small firm where the large majority of workers were female machinists. On the factory floor, there was a male foreman/engineer, a male cutter, and a young lad of about 16/17 who helped the cutter and engineer. One Summer's Day as part of the kind of rights of passage, and general larking about that happens on such factories, the dozen or so women chased the young lad around the factory, threatening to remove his trousers. He eventually took refuge up on the roof, from where he laughed at them. The women, because of their age - some of them were mothers of people I had been at school with – and numbers had more power than did the young lad. But, neither he nor anyone else thought that this amounted to sexual harassment, or that he was in danger of being raped. The situation would have been quite different had it been a dozen or so men chasing a 17 year old girl around the factory, threatening to remove her jeans or skirt. 

But, not long after, I worked on a potbank, where during the Summer, it was quite common, on a hot day, for the women to sit at their benches wearing just their bra and knickers. Again it was a workplace, as with most potbanks, where the women significantly outnumber the men. As a young man at the time, whenever I had to walk through the factory, you got used to getting whistled at. It sometimes caused me to blush, but I never felt that I had been scarred for life by the experience. My son who was filming on a potbank a while ago, said that similar things still occur today. 

For some time now there has been a debate over sex work. Some see it only in terms of sexual exploitation, despite sex workers themselves arguing that it is inherently no more exploitative than any other form of wage labour. Indeed, to the extent that the workers themselves are able to be self-employed, or to form co-operatives and collectives, it might be less exploitative than wage labour. Those who see it only in terms of exploitation focus on the examples of human trafficking, violence and necessity. Yet, sex workers themselves point to the fact that it is criminalisation of the work that creates the conditions for violence etc. They point to the number of sex workers who enter into it, out of their own choice, to provide income whilst they are undertaking studies at University etc., and yes, even those who enter into it, because they enjoy sex! The denial of the latter itself reflects a falling back into those Victorian, and prudish concepts of sex, where women were somehow not supposed to enjoy sex, but merely had to endure it. The current discourse, is in fact, anti-feminist, in that it paints a picture of women in which a victim mentality is inherent, of women as fragile creatures who must be protected from the world. It is a mild version of the kind of ideology that wants to wrap women from head to toe in the burkha. 

The reality is that sex has always been a commodity that could be sold - and as Richard Gere depicted in "American Gigolo" it can be sold by men as well as women.  There is a big difference between someone who decides to sell sex, or to exchange it for something else they desire, and someone who is raped or sexually assaulted, just as there is a difference between a free wage labourer who decides to sell their labour-power to employer A rather than B, as against a slave who is forcibly made to work for the slave owner. In Ken Loach's film “The Spirit of '45”, there is a bit where a woman, who has been trying to get a council house for a long time, relates how, in the end, she got one by going into the Housing Manager's office, locking the door behind her, and giving the Manager “what he wanted”. In essence, it was a bribe, but paid in sex rather than money. The housing manager was corrupt, and took bureaucratic advantage of his position, in a way that is common where goods and services are rationed bureaucratically rather than by the market, but the woman wasn't raped. She made a conscious choice to act corruptly herself, in bribing the manager, rather than doing what others had to do, and simply wait for their turn in the housing queue. In making that choice, she equally took advantage of her position of being prepared to sell sex – and maybe others who were prepared to do so, were not as attractive to the Manager – in order to obtain what she wanted. 

There is little difference here to actors, or anyone else who sells sex to get a lucrative job. In the end, they have the choice to do that to get the job or not. And, there is a big difference between the necessity even to get a council house, or to get any kind of job, compared to getting a job paying hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars, as a film actor. They might feel ashamed of themselves afterwards for having done so, especially when they look back on the decision from the comfort of having obtained a comfortable career and lifestyle, but the fact remains that, unless they actually were forcibly assaulted, they had the choice of saying no, and not getting the job, just as a prostitute, or a lap dancer has the choice of doing that work for money or not. 

These are completely different situations to where someone is not actually given that choice, but is the subject of rape or other serious sexual assault. From all accounts, many of the women employed as hostesses at the President's Club event had gone back for several years. Many reportedly enjoyed it, not just because some also obtained other work through it. And why not? It's not just that we no longer live in the prudish world of the 1950's that Mary Whitehouse wanted to take us back to, and so sexually liberated women can go to see male strippers, have raucous Hen Parties, but it's also women as well as men who go to Swingers Clubs, who produce as well as buy pornography and so on. Its a world in which the proper response to an unwanted advance should be a slap across the face, or a clear rejection, not a court case, or the branding of the “offender” as a pervert, because in a sexually liberated world, where people do not require chaperones or strict codes of courtship, people will misread signals, try their luck and so on. 

Failing to distinguish between actual rape or sexual assault, and these other situations can only, in the end, diminish the seriousness with which the former is seen. But, that distinction is being blurred by the moral panic that has been whipped up, that now turns every touched knee, every piece of risqué banter into a sex crime, and the perpetrator into a pervert. It is also being conflated into a series of unrelated issues, for example, over gender equality. It has a thoroughly reactionary, prudish undertone that seeks to put all human interaction into tightly censored and constrained boxes. 

Social media means that the pressure to conform becomes almost irresistible. For the media, it is like a Christmas present every day, because salaciousness, and scandals are what they live on. They would be happy if some story could be produced everyday about some politicians, celebrity or whatever, however insignificant, no matter how unfounded or unsourced, that enables a press furore to be whipped up demanding another resignation, because for the media it is more readers and viewers. 

For conservatives and reactionaries, it provides them with a field day, because any bit of banter by a John McDonell, for example, can be turned into a touchstone by which every Labour spokesperson is judged, in the same way that in N. Korea, everyone is judged by their profusive acknowledgement of the Glorious Leader. Because alongside this requirement to view interpersonal relations in this prudish manner, goes the growth of the requirement to avoid anything that might be considered offensive by someone, somewhere. Every Corbyn supporter is open to charges of misogyny, or anti-Semitism, and bullying by every opponent of Corbyn, that the media will actively take up as being absolute truth. 

On the one hand, the Tories are rightly prepared to criticise the lunacies of the “Safe Spaces” movement in Universities, that is an affront to the liberties that workers and others fought for over centuries, but on the other, the Tories are prepared to adopt exactly the same stance and to describe as “anti-Semitism”, statements by supporters of Corbyn, whether they are or not, simply as a means of the Tories attacking Corbyn himself by proxy. Every Labour MP, every Labour Councillor who finds their previous cushy career being threatened by Labour members, calling them to account, is free to rush to the media to shout “bullying”, “misogyny”, “anti-Semitism” without any real evidence, and to receive a welcome, unquestioning reception. Then we see Labour spokespeople being required to condemn those involved, in the same way that the Spanish Inquisition required those brought before it to recant, and denounce, or as was required by those brought before the Salem Witch Trials. 

This requirement to conform has been well researched and documented by psychologists. Milgram, for example, wondered why it was that camp guards in Nazi Germany could be persuaded to act in such barbaric manner, and why so many ordinary Germans went along with the barbarity. He conducted tests using actors who played the part of people who others were asked to administer electric shocks to, whenever they answered a question wrongly. He found that the majority of ordinary people were prepared to continue to administer the shocks when told to do so, even when they believed that the shocks might be lethal. In his series on the Human Brain, Michael Mosley related these experiments, and undertook others to show the extent to which people would accede to a request, even from someone not in authority, for example a request to give up a seat on a park bench. Around half did so, unquestioningly. The reason appeared to be that there is something ingrained in human behaviour that leads to a willingness to respond positively to requests to conform. The main problem he found, as was reported in the initial experiments, was a feeling of discomfort himself in making what was in reality an unwarranted request, which again suggests that we are led to behave in ways that are themselves conditioned by accepted norms of behaviour. 

Time after time, we see public figures questioned about this or that statement or action, to which they are expected by their interrogators to disapprove, and who are visibly unable to resist, because they feel this requirement to conform with what has become a popular meme.  The requirement to say that you "respect" the EU referendum result is a good example, when, in fact, Labour politicians  should say that it was a stupid decision that will seriously damage the interests of workers!  Yet, in many of these cases, the politicians should simply say “Really? Are you seriously seeing it in that manner? You need to get a grip, and show some sense of proportion and context!” Does anyone seriously believe that John McDonnell was actually calling for Esther McVey to be lynched, or was seriously supporting such calls by others to do so? In fact, does anyone seriously believe that those he was quoting were actually calling for that either? Of course not, any more than anyone seriously believes that when Kenny Everett stood up at a Tory Party event in the 1980's, and shouted “Let's bomb Russia!”, he was seriously calling for that either. It's supposed to be Americans who don't understand, British irony. Yet, week after week, we see media presenters repeating the comment of McDonnell, and demanding that he recant, and that others denounce him for the comments. The only thing missing is the instruments of torture, and the stake and bundle of sticks waiting for the fire to be lit, as they repeatedly pose these “Have you stopped beating your wife yet?” questions. 

The real irony, of course, is that whilst no serious person believes that McDonnell was calling for McVey to be lynched, the actual policies that McVey, and other Tories were promoting that led to the comments, did cause actual pain, anguish, injury and, yes, even death, to some benefits claimants! Yet, the media fail to address that actual violence that was being done by Tory policies to millions.

A couple of weeks ago, Miriam Margolyes, appearing on Peston on Sunday related a story about when she auditioned for a part in “Reds”. She told of how, having been ushered into Warren Beatty's trailer, he met her with the comment, “Do you fuck?” “Yes”, she replied, “but not with you, I'm a lesbian.” Beatty responded according to Margolyes, “Can I watch?”, to which she in turn told him to get over himself, and get a grip. The audition proceeded, and she got the part. 

Perhaps those of us of that generation are made of sterner stuff. Perhaps in fighting against an oppressive and authoritarian puritanism, we recognised that freedom also comes with risks and individual responsibility. For the last thirty years, the conservative free market ideology ran rampant, and in the shape of Trump, Le Pen and others, it is today facing a swing of the pendulum in the other direction, towards state intervention and protectionism. The same swing of the pendulum appears to be happening in terms of individual liberties and interpersonal relations, attempting to once more impose that dead hand of the state, as a substitute for individuals learning to think, to differentiate, and to take risks, knowing that sometimes the risk leads to mistakes. But, it is the fact that sometimes we make mistakes, that we might get rebuffed, slapped across the face and so on that teaches that actions have consequences, and so we learn to balance the risk against the consequence. It means that if you are buying a house in a flood plain, you know the risk that the house is going to get flooded, and you shouldn't expect someone else to bail you out for your ill-judged action, just as if you buy shares in banks that take big risks, you shouldn't expect the state to bail you out, when the bank goes bust.

Carnival of Socialism

When I agreed to Phil’s request to do this Carnival of Socialism , I thought, “What on Earth shall I put into it?” My first thought was to just do a roundup of current blogs, but I thought that would be a bit tedious for me to write and for you to read. So I thought, instead, it would be better to pick a theme, and then see what various bloggers had to say on it. Question what theme? In a recent discussion with a regular contributor to my blog, I found the answer – Sex!

For some reason the Left seems always to have had a problem with sex in recent decades, a problem that earlier socialists and feminists, certainly don’t seem to have suffered from. Its probably, a bit like racism. Afraid of saying the wrong thing or being accused of being racist, people on the Left have often shied away from the necessary discussion of important issues. Similarly, afraid of being called sexist, or having impure thoughts, their seems to have been a similar tendency in regards sex, and even as my contributor demonstrated a retreat into Victorian moralism.

The dilemma was illustrated to me 25 years ago when I was a Stoke City Councillor. One of the Committees I sat on was called the “Law and Parliamentary Committee”, which had responsibility amongst other things, for licensing the sex shops that were just beginning to be set up. I have to say that some of the most illuminating information I had come across in relation to sex was provided to me at that time, by a succession of Church groups who bombarded me with mail including photocopies of all sorts of adverts for dildos and vibrators from the aforementioned shops, in an attempt to mobilise the good Christian people of the area to oppose such a den of iniquity in their midst.



In fact, compared to the sex education Phil says he got at school, the information we received at school was non-existent. The only thing I remember was for some reason the Music Teacher showed us some films about fish, we didn’t even get to see rabbits shagging. Its, perhaps amazing, that I can’t remember any of the girls at the school getting pregnant, but then it wasn’t as though even without the officially sanctioned education we were completely ignorant. I remember learning all you needed to know from a friend of mine when we were about 13. Going round to his house during one school summer holidays he was explaining why he was in some discomfort from the teeth marks one of the girls in the class had left in his dick. A female maths teacher in the school was also a bit of a ‘biker chick’, and delighted in telling the class in a very suggestive voice that her favourite bird was the Shag. I seem to recall she had to leave.

Anyway, when the vote came for licensing the sex shop I found no reason to vote against it. As far, as I was concerned if women found anything they were selling offensive, or exploitative they could picket the shop, and I’d support the picket, but apart from that I saw no reason why I should censor other people’s sexual behaviour.

That was fine until some time later on another committee there was a proposal to subsidise the holding of the Miss Stoke on Trent Contest. As far as I was concerned, opposing censorship by the State was one thing, but actually giving support to an event that specifically portrayed women as sexual objects to be leered at by a bunch of old men, was completely different. I voted against it, and almost immediately, started getting anonymous and threatening phone calls, my wife even got a load of hassle at work. Part of the reason given for the huge opposition that arose was the excuse that the event raised a lot of money that was given to local charities. That was a load of bunk, but even if it wasn’t it wouldn’t have been a justification.

Of course, what it did lead to was a load of Puritanical Right-Wing Labour Councillors attacking me on the basis of voting against a beauty contest, whilst not opposing the licensing of a sex shop. That I think sums up the dilemma I mentioned at the beginning. On the one hand we oppose sexual as much as any other kind of exploitation, but we are not Puritans, nor Moralists, and our job is not to dictate to people what kind of sexual behaviour is acceptable, and what is not.

So, I thought this was a good opportunity to see what various Left bloggers have to say about Sex in the hope that it might open up the discussion. After all according to some survey I saw a while ago people on the left are supposed to make the best lovers because of our tendency to be more open to new ideas, and generally more adventurous attitudes. And who am I to disagree with that?

Running a search on “sex”, on Phil’s blog I found quite a good selection of posts ranging from a fairly recent blog dealing with the question of Paedophilia as viewed through the always interesting prism of Louis Theroux, to Phil’s terrible attempts to tell us that he only went in to Ann Summers to buy a Birthday Card!!!!!

Phil

For those who prefer their sex not straight a similar search at Afemanistview provides a wealth of information, including quite a good set of reviews of the recent TV series, “Sex Education Show v Pornography”.

Another example of the dilemma, and self-censorship I was talking about above is given by Action Without Theory , who talking about a meeting at Manchester University, asks,

“I was wondering whether we live in a climate where organising for a man to speak to students about sex would be considered inappropriate.”

There is an interesting post about male and female prostitution Air Pollution at Air Pollution’s blog.

Over at Anglonoelnatter there is a discussion of the supposed moral breakdown that we are supposed to be experiencing.




Always willing to give a plug to those who bash the Daily Mail, this selection from the Angry Mob looks at a number of Mail stories and its campaign for moral rectitude.

On the theme of censorship Benjamin Solah has a number of good pieces starting with a look at Amazon’s decision to withdraw a number of books from sales ranks, search listings and the store’s bestseller lists, including some LGBT books, which it classified as “adult”. He has quite a number of other interesting posts dealing with various forms of sexism, and sex and religion.

Bent Society had quite a few good posts, including this one on advertising and prostitution.

A roundup of news stories affecting trans people is given over at Bird of Paradox , while Blood and Treasure I think strikes a correct note in a story about Kink.com being given a subsidy by California, when he comments,

“The actual scandal here is that subsidies went to a company which should be able to turn a perfectly good profit without state aid, while being required to meet payrolls and tax bills. Union recognition should be required too.”

Bob Piper has quite a lot of short comments dealing with the question of hypocrisy by mainstream politicians when it comes to matters of getting caught with their trousers down.

An interesting discussion about the term “sexy” is given by Capitalismbad . Additionally, there are some good posts about the question of rape. Othering Rapists .

“(This in turn feeds into a meme where straight sex is a necessary social glue - an "investment" in the future of society, as it were - whereas gay sex is seen as a purely "consumption commodity", a frivolous luxury. The Protestant work ethic has much more in common with the Protestant sex ethic than we might have thought.)”

Comments, Chaos Marxism in a post titled, “Mistargeting”.

Chicken Yoghurt has a spread of topics covering every part of the body politic.

In a post entitled “Fucking With Kant”, I’m assuming this could be some kind of pun, Considerphlebas gives a penetrating philosophical discourse on intercourse.
Coventry Green Voice have some good posts dealing with sexual health, as well as questions relating to prostitution. There is also a good little short post about Tory hypocrisy over lap dancing.



Cruella-Blog also has a wide range of posts dealing with many aspects of sex, especially the way it is dealt with in the media.

Culture Sluts has a post based on a post from stroppyblog about what the left get up to in bed. As they say, and as part of the reason for choosing this topic, “So what does this tell us? Firstly that lefties, who tend to have a theory on pretty much everything, have no unified approach to sex. In my experience most left-wing bloggers, who are generally male, tend to avoid or fudge the subject. It does however come up quite regularly on Splintered Sunrise and A Very Public Sociologist, and Madam Miaow can be also very funny when she deals with the subject.”

I’m not sure that I agree with the statement “The survey also tells us that a lot of people- presumably men, as they are primary users of porn- are hypocrites, in that they use porn even though they think it degrades women.”, because there seems to be a lot of evidence that women use porn quite a lot too. For example, Cambridge Women’s Porn Co-op .

The Daily Quail has a number of humorous posts, including one that has discovered a survey that found pornography is rude, and another story about Homosexual Ducks in a Polish Zoo.

daisydeadair has a number of interesting posts, including one asking the question Can Comics Be Pornography to which with a picture of Homer Simpson attached to it, you are almost bound to say no.

Dave Ostler over at Dave’s Part has a good selection, in particular his post Capitalism and the Commoditisation of Heterosexuality which he begins with,

“BACK when I used to frequent strip joints,”

Just, to put my own oar in on the discussion on this topic. A few years ago, I used to do some training at my Kung Fu club with a woman who was a Lap Dancer. I have to say that she was far from the image of someone who was oppressed or exploited. She was extremely confident at both a personal level, and when it came to sparring. She was intelligent, and saw her job as being just that a job like any other, except as she said, she was very well paid for the hours she put in, and for her, the martial arts training was just part of an overall fitness regime she saw as being part of the training she needed to do her job professionally.

Directionless Bones has a number of posts on Sexual Political Philosophy, and on Sexual Politics .

This story caught my eye.

“I find this story utterly baffling. A man has "sex" with a bicycle, ok so far, so normal, though I quibble over the phrasing (was the bicycle a willing partner? courted with flowers and candlelit meals? roughly seduced?). Anyway he does this in the privacy of his locked hotel room, then a pair of nosey-parkers use a masterkey to force their way into his room, catch him in flagrante delicto, then "extremely shocked" inform the hotel manager, who in turn informs the police.”

Given by Dolphinarium . But, this story covered a lot of the ground here

If you want a comprehensive round-up of the treatment of sex by the tabloids then Enemies of Reason have a wide selection.

Charlie Mc Menamin has a bit of a chuckle at the way the credit crunch is affecting bankers sex lives.

I found that Fat man on a Keyboard has some very posts looking at sex and hypocrisy.

Over at Feminist SF there are a number of posts that include discussion of sex within Sci-Fi.

Feministing had a range of posts, including one providing “Agony Aunt” advice.

Fetch Me My Axe had probably more material on the subject than most, and some of it quite funny.

I’ve noticed many blogs concentrating on what the media have to say, and 5 Chinese Crackers again looks at hypocrisy in the treatment of sex by the papers.
Generation Y has a number of posts on sex and sexuality with a Latin twist.

Issues such as Sikhism and Homosexuality, and Sex Before Marriage, are just a few of the topics covered by get There Stepping .

In The Unkindest Cut Grimmer Up North looks at Genital Mutilation and “The perfect Vagina”.

I had to quote this from HarpyMarx because I had the misfortune to see this Jeremy Kyle bloke on a TV in the gym the other week, and was intending to write something similar.

Homo Ludens has some great posts on pornography.


Ian Bone has a blog about “Anarchist Speed Dating”!

Confirming, that I was not making it up in an earlier statement, Identity Check has a number of relevant posts including this one on why “Anarchists Make Better Lovers”. No doubt, however, this will provoke a debate on whether it is actually Anarchists or Marxists who are better, and whether this has to be considered within some kind of structural context. So, which is better Anarchist love-making or Marxist Love making …. There’s only one way to find out. To paraphrase Harry Hill.

There is a series of great posts on the question of legalising prostitution amongst other things at Infantile and Disorderly .

If you’re more into the mechanics than driving the car, Rough Trade has a couple of posts on human fertilisation and embryology.

For a fascinating view transgender transformation, including swimming in Stoke, visit Jenny v The World .

Tom P at Labour and Capital has a short post about a survey on people’s fears about the risk to children from paedophiles. He’s right that the stats actually mean people think the risk to kids was greater 20 years ago than ten years ago, though still less than today. I think it probably says more about people’s understanding of statistics than it does their attitudes to paedophilia.

As we approach Hay Fever season, Lay Science has some welcome news in research that suggests that the solution to nasal congestion could be masturbation!!!

Life is a Question has a number of posts on gender as well as another about a woman who was desperate for here son with Dwns Syndrome to lose his virginity.

If you have the time to read it all there is also Louis Proyect’s review of “The Homosexual in Society”.

Madam Miaow gives us a taste of her own flair for literary erotica, as well as an obituary for Betty Paige.



There are some excellent posts on the question of abstinence and chastity, and the attendant religious bigotry and hypocrisy over at Ministry of Truth

Musin and Confusin has some great posts on sex workers rights, and one about young men’s expectations suffering from watching too much porn. Time was that when you looked forward to your Sunday roast it came with Yorkshire Pud.

There are a number of posts on sex and sexuality, particularly in respect of Muslim societies in a series of posts by Not Of A Free Thinker .

Obsolete was not alone in having a post about the recent case of the teenage dad, and the issues that stand behind it.

Penny Red has a range of posts. I was going to say “including”, and pick out a couple of the best, but there is such a range that my advice is just “Go read em”.

As Republic of Teesside says, “Brace Yourselves, It’s a blog about Girls Aloud”!

A selection of more good posts over at Pink Scare.

Plattitude has a couple of good blogs for example, one on cyber sex, and another entitled “Polygamy, Oral Sex, and the Imam”.

I was glad to find a number of posts on sex here Postman Patel , because I just love that name, and would otherwise have had to have made some up just to include it.

Progressive Gold had this about old naughty cartoons.

Rachel From North London had some good posts, and I was particularly taken by two posts –you should check out – “Won't somebody please think of the perverts?” and “Poledancing slatterns and media tarts”

There are some good posts from an internationalist perspective, particularly looking at attitudes to porn, and roundups of the legal position in a number of European countries at Radical left
If you want a psycho-therapists view then this piece by Ragged Trousered Philanthropist should fit the bill.

Red Star Coven has this blog on the response to the Tarrantino film, “Death Proof”.
Skip the first two posts in this selection from Ryan McReynolds , and you get to some interesting posts on Nazis having sex with animals, and a blog about Andrea Dworkin amongst others.

Second Life left Unity has a discussion on the attitude to Pornography amongst other issues relating to sex. In addition to this post another view is given in This Post
Serge’s Fist has some great posts on Sex and the Revolution.

There should be a new Commandment instructing “Thou Shalt Have Sex”, says, Shavings Off My Mind.
Shiraz Socialist has this thoughtful, and in my view pretty much correct view on Lap Dancing.

There were a number of posts at Splintered Sunrise such as this one on the Sex Education Show.

Fancy a bit of Literary Sex? Try State Street .

The Cedar Lounge Revolution has this interesting review of Tristan Hunt’s new autobiography of Engels. For those who seek to turn Marx and Engels into some kind of automatons this quote is a useful remedy.

“It is absolutely essential that you get out of boring Brussels for once and come to Paris, and I for my part have a great desire to go carousing with you,” Friedrich Engels wrote to Karl Marx in 1846. “If I had an income of 5000 francs I would do nothing but work and amuse myself with women until I went to pieces. If there were no Frenchwomen, life wouldn’t be worth living. But so long as there are grisettes [prostitutes], well and good!””

The last Resort has this post on raising Trans Gender awareness.

You should definitely check out Un-Cooler Than Thou .

For a more Trade Union orientated view also look at Union Futures .

Unknown Conscience has a post on Polyamory.

Vulgar Marxism has a number of posts about beauty pageants.

Phew, that’s about it. I need to lie down now. If I missed you out its probably because you had nothing much to say about sex. If you did, and I missed it, I blame the search engine. You can still post a comment, and a link here.

The Next Carnival is over at The Third Estate .