The history of gay porn cinema.

[gorgik9]

Truly wonderful post haiducii !!! So rich and dense! I'll have to read again later this night, but I sense there are some interesting points from which some rewarding comparisons could be made.

And the movie "A Trip" is great; I think I'll watch it once again tonight!

 

[Shelter]

Truly wonderful post haiducii !!! So rich and dense! I'll have to read again later this night, but I sense there are some interesting points from which some rewarding comparisons could be made.

And the movie "A Trip" is great; I think I'll watch it once again tonight!

I've seen "A Trip" as well and surely its a great film. Thank you Haiducii! Very interesting too to hear the original language!

 

[gorgik9]

So many things in this rich post that deserves commenting and questioning, but I must be content with just two things:

1) I know that president Tito managed to keep Yugoslavia (and, hence, Slovenia) out of the Warzaw Pact, but still - Tito's regim was a communist regim, right?

So what I would like you to comment on is the possible influence of the KOMINTERN-doctrin of homosexuality as an expression of bourgeoise decadence (written by Georgi Dimitrov himself in 1936) in post-WWII Yugoslavia society and culture. I know that the KOMINTERN organisation as such was dissolved in 1943, and had a successor in KOMINFORM, but my interest concerns the doctrin.

2) A much more general question: What about changing laws as a method to change society, what do you think?

My own "standard position" is, that changing a particular law ON IT'S OWN doesn't change particularly much. What truly changes society is peoples habits and attitudes. (My cardinal example on how fuckin' little a law on it's own will change, is the example of Denmark, where same-sex actions were de-criminalized in 1930, and Sweden, where it was de-criminalized in 1944, but both countries experienced the worst wawes of extreme public homophobia ever from the late 1940's and early 1950's on, and it didn't get substantially better until the mid-1960's.)

 

[gorgik9]

Thanks dargelos!

Do you know when Peter Tatchell's article originally was published?

Works of Anti-Porn Crusaders have a strong tendency to be extremely repetitive, and I think that this Anti-Prophet Gary Wilson at rock bottom isn't much more than an updated version of 18th century voluminous discussions on a) "Onania; or: The heinous sin of self-pollution" ; b) the new type of popular literature : Novels.

It's pretty fascinating how much of oh-so-modern discussions on Internet porn isn't much more than masturbation scare & novel fright re-digested for the umphteenth time. And everything is always so new and the science behind it more scientific than ever...and the bullshit as smelly as always...he he...

 

[dargelos]

Peter's site says the essay was published in the London edition of International Business Times 15 April 2015 though I can't check this, the link is not working.
Edit; it is now.

 

[haiducii]

So what I would like you to comment on is the possible influence of the KOMINTERN-doctrin of homosexuality as an expression of bourgeoise decadence (written by Georgi Dimitrov himself in 1936) in post-WWII Yugoslavia society and culture.

I think that Comintern homosexual doctrine didn't influenced on Yugoslavia society and culture.

On 6 January 1929 King Aleksander Karadjordjevic introduced a dictatorship. On 27 January 1929, the new uniform Criminal Code of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia was enacted. Between the two world wars homosexuality was a criminal act under paragraphs 129.b and 206 of the Penal Code, which classified it as a ''crime against nature''. After WW2, when Slovenia became a republic within the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, homosexcuality was still a crime under the Article 186, Paragraph 2 of the Yugoslav Penal Code. It prescribed that a male homosexual act was considered to be criminal, and it would be punished by one-year sentence in prison.

There were no registered cases of putting this legal regulation into force. One of the explanations could be that in former Yugoslavia it was considered that homosexuals and lesbians do not exist in reality.

A much more general question: What about changing laws as a method to change society, what do you think?

Agree. You can change the regime or the laws of the country over the night, but you can not change people's culture, incl. habits, tradition, etc.

 

[gorgik9]

@ haiducii

Thanks for all the great info!!!!

 

[gorgik9]

Sailors, soldiers & Hustlers, part 2: The to-be-looked-at-ness.

...or the Hustlers of New York, New York...



But first - What the fuck is this?

It's a mural made by Andy Warhol as a part of a commission by New York State to Warhol and a group of nine other artists to decorate the New York State Pavilion at the 1964 World's Fair at Flushing Meadows, New York.

Warhol decided to print and silkscreen large-scale copies of images from a booklet published on 1 February 1962 by NYPD, entitled "The Thirteen Most Wanted", showing 22 head-and-shoulder mug shots of wanted men. Warhol printed in silkscreen ink on Masonite, and the completed 20 feet (6.1 m) 5-by-5 square (including three blank frames) was installed at the site by 15 April.

But government officials quickly objected to the images and on 16 April the pavilion architect Philip Johnson told Warhol that he must remove or replace the work within 24 hours. The stated reason was that New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller was concerned that the images - mostly depicting men of Italian descent - would be insulting to an important segment of his electorate.

Anyway, Warhol gave his permission for it to be painted over, and it had been obliterated with aluminium house paint before the fair opened to the public. Some critics have seen the mural painted over in monochrome silver as a separate artwork, as a form of ironic comment on images of the "most wanted" men not being desired at the World's Fair. Later commentators (like professor Richard Meyer) have also suggested that the title "wanted" bears a double meaning, referring to homosexual desire, with the mugshots rearranged so many of the men were looking at each others.

While I think Meyer got it right about the homoerotic tensions in Warhol's work, there's still some aspects that don't fit: Meyer thinks that Warhol mainly had a message of rather coy homosexual connotations and that those allusions were what got him in trouble.

But as historian Barry Reay explains, the main problem is that Meyer can't get his head around the trade aesthetics and the to-be-looked-at-ness of hustlers, not only in Warhol's art of the 1960's, but in the whole epoch of American culture - novels, stories, plays, movies, theater, photography etc - from about the mid 1940's to the early 1970's.

Warhol was explicit rather than connotative, but to SEE that, you'll have to found your reasoning in the visual street culture and the urban street lingo of about 1960, but NOT the middle class educated lingo from about the year 2000.

It will be important to stop using the words and concepts of homosexual and heterosexual, and instead start making distinctions like queer versus normal (where "normal" first of all means masculine acting and masculine looking, but it doesn't nescessarily say that you'll say "no" to getting your cock lovingly sucked by other men; so, queer versus normal wasn't a simple synonym to homo versus hetero) and masculine queer versus effeminate faggot.

The last dichotomy - effeminate faggot vs masculine queer - was coined by that vicious effeminophobe William S. Burroughs who said, that it was totally true that he was queer, but he would gladly murder anyone who dared to call him faggot.

Trade Aesthetics & the To-Be-Looked-At-ness.

So what was trade (or rough trade)? It was a normal - meaning: masculine, non-queer - man, usually working class, who every now and again engaged in same-sex action, and if he engaged for money and more or less professionally he was a hustler.

Trade aesthetics is a) the kind of street aesthetics the professional hustler constructs to catch the eye of potential partners / johns ; b) a kind of second level trade aesthetics occures when painters, photographers, moviemakers, playwrights, novelists and other artists make art founded in the visual and behavioural traits of trade and street hustlers.

Another way to talk about trade aesthetics would be through the phrase to-be-looked-at-ness, which an expression from British film maker and movie theorist Laura Mulvey's 1975 theoretical essey on Visual pleasure and narrative cinema, where Mulvey explains the central concepts of her feminist/psychoanalyst/structuralist film theory:

Her starting point is the notion, that there are three male looks in cinema: fisrt the voyeuristic look of the camera; second the look of men within the filmic narrative, for whom the women of the narrative are the objects of their gaze; third the look of the male spectator which mimics the first two.

So the gaze is necessarily male, while the object of the gaze is equally necessary female, and the male gaze bestows the to-be-looked-at-ness to the objectified woman.

Let's say there is such a thing as the male gaze - but that also the object of the gaze could be male - in narrative cinema as in everyday street life - is an impossibility to heteronormativist theorists like Mulvey and her ilk.

Of course this is the point where every competent homo must protest, and this is precisely the point of film scholar Thomas Waugh's and historian Barry Reay's re-interpretation: the intention is to let male homoerotic desire into theoretical existence.

Second level trade aesthetics: some examples from different genres.

Let's go back to the kind of second level trade aesthetics that's so typical of this specific period: it's James Leo Herlihy's 1965 novel Midnight Cowboy and John Schlesinger's 1969 cinematic take on the novel with Jon Voight and Dustin Hoffman; it's John Rechy's novel City of Night (1964); it's Hubert Selby Jr's Last exit to Brooklyn also from 1964, and then the long line of less well known 1950s-60s novels.

And this is just the beginning of a very long catalogue, but I'll stay content with two of the arguably richest and influential contributions to second level trade aesthetics:

My first example will be the plays, novellas and short stories of Tennessee Williams (1911-1983). Examples: "The Roman spring of Mrs. Stone" (1950); "Two on a party" (1954); "Hard Candy" (1954); "The Milk Train doesn't stop here anymore" (1964); "Small craft warnings" (1972); "The killer chicken and the closet queen" (1978); "Vieux Carré" (1977); "One Arm" (1948); "Kingdom of the Earth" (1968).

But Williams contributions are even richer, considering the fact that many of his best plays and novellas got successfull stage and/or film versions with some of the very best American male actors in the 1940s, 50s and 60s, often portraying the powerful and ambiguous male sexuality related to working class trades and hustlers:

Among other performances: Marlon Brando and Ralph Meeker as Stanley Kowalski in "A Streetcar named desire" (1947/1951); Ben Gazzara and Paul Newman as Brick Pollitt in "Cat on hot tin roof" (1955/1958); Burt Lancaster as Alvaro Mangiacavallo in "The rose tattoo" (1955); Cliff Robertson and Marlon Brando as Val Xavier in "Orpheus descending" (1957) and its film version "The fugitive kind" (1959); Montgomery Clift as Sebastian Venable in the 1959 film version of "Suddenly last summer".

I think it's necessary to oogle the 1951 version of Marlon Brando! In my book it's the sexiest, swettiest, hottest creature ever!



And some wonderful photos of Brando around 1950 by Carl Van Vechten!

My second example is the art of Andy Warhol (1928-1987).

Second level trade aesthetics was central for Warhol's - and later on Paul Morrissey's - film making in the 1960s, and in particular one of my own favourites in his early moviemaking - "Blowjob" from 1964 - which exists in several versions, of which the original has about 40 minutes length, and the longest version I've watched myself is about 25 minutes. The version we have here is heavily edited and just about 8 minutes.



What do we see? The head and shoulders of a handsome young man, his head harshly lit from above to the left, and dressed in a dark leather jacket.

Do we know for certain that the young man actually is getting blown? No we don't , since we don't see anything beneath the shoulder line, but considering the bodily movements and the facial expressions it's quite possible, maybe even probable that someone - Warhol himself??? - is administering a juicy blowjob to him.

What we do know is, that the young man most probably is a 60's street hustler - his attitudes, body language, hair-do, and clothes tells us so. It's a young man who knows the importance of the to-be-looked-at-ness.

One year later - in 1965 - Warhol made a movie with the title "My Hustler", who's "hustler name" was Paul America, and the action in the movie happened on famous Fire Island.




A few photographers.

First the grand old lady of physique photography and the one and only editor of Physique Pictorial, Robert Henry "Bob" Mizer (1922-1992).

Not so few of Mizer's models were working class lads who hustled now and again, and the sets of AMG photos could function as advertising for the "goods" the lad had to offer. I think Mizer very well understood the situation and so did many other physique photographers.

Danny Fitzgerald.

One of the best physique photographers active mainly in the 1960s was Danny Fitzgerald, who started his own studio Les Demi Dieux in 1958 in Brooklyn, New York, and among his favourite motives were smashing young working class hustlers, lokal horndogs from Brooklyn. Fitzgerald's photos has recently been published by German publisher Bruno Gmünder in a beautiful book entiteled "Brooklyn Boys".

William Gale Gedney.

One of the great photographers of both street life in New York and small town life and country roads Kentucky in the 1960s and 70s was IMO William Gale Gedney.

Here's two of the most well known pictures of street hustlers in NY 1967.

Only Connect! : Joseph Angelo "Little Joe" Dallesandro.

In 1965 a tough teenage hustler from Queens of Italian descent, called Joe Dellesandro, managed to run away from Camp Cass Rehabilitation Center for boys in the Catskill mountains - to which he had been sentenced by a juvenile delinquency court in 1964 - to make the long trip to Los Angeles, among other things to meet physique photographers like Bob Mizer and Bruce Bellas.

Back in New York in 1967 young Joe managed through pure serendipity and happenstance to meet a film crowd centered around Andy Warhol and Paul Morrissey.

Joe got roles in 6 Warhol / Morrissey productions from 1967 to 1972, and in my opinion by far his most important work was as the protagonist in all three movies in the Flesh-trilogy - Flesh (1968), Trash (1970), Heat (1972) - with Warhol as producer and Morrissey as director.

In all three movies the male protagonist is named "Joe", and in Flesh it's "Joe the Hustler" : http://www.gayheaven.org/showthread.php?t=504256&highlight=Flesh

Let's look at three special YT-clips that shows us Joe's work as street hustler!







What makes Joe Dallesandro so central in my opinion to this period in American cultural history is his strange ability to connect so many sociocultural spheres on so many levels: He connects the world of street hustlers with the world of physique photography; he connects gay popular art with Warholian underground avantgarde, and connects the New York art world back to the street world of hustlers.

I'll end this post with a gay porn movie from 1976 by Jack Deveau, about the street hustler Billy : "Wanted: Billy The Kid". http://www.gayheaven.org/showthread.php?t=506766

I actually think this piece of gay porn is a minor masterpiece, and I got very fond of it!

 

[majax79]

Has anyone read the ebook or watched the doentary called, "Toby Ross and the 70's"? I haven't had a chance myself (mostly because it's kinda hard to find), but I'd bet it would be fascinating to read about some of the actors in his porn films.

 

[gorgik9]

Has anyone read the ebook or watched the doentary called, "Toby Ross and the 70's"? I haven't had a chance myself (mostly because it's kinda hard to find), but I'd bet it would be fascinating to read about some of the actors in his porn films.

Thanks for the tip! I couldn't find more than the trailer for the docu right now, but here it is!



I think I'll have a chat with haiducii and see if he can find the movie on the net!

 

[mikk33]

great post gorkik9.
Was not 'Little Joe', who "never once gave it away, everyone was made to pay and pay" the archetypal hustler, who actually was.
The eponymous 'star' of 'blow-job' was DeVerne Bookwalter, one of Warhol's "The thirteen most beautiful boys", which inspired the most wanted art of the 1964 exhibition. The guy giving the 'blow-job' was Willard Maas.
(warholstars.org)

 

[gorgik9]

great post gorkik9.
Was not 'Little Joe', who "never once gave it away, everyone was made to pay and pay" the archetypal hustler, who actually was.
The eponymous 'star' of 'blow-job' was DeVerne Bookwalter, one of Warhol's "The thirteen most beautiful boys", which inspired the most wanted art of the 1964 exhibition. The guy giving the 'blow-job' was Willard Maas.
(warholstars.org)

Thanks a lot mikk for some great info:thumbs up:

 

[majax79]

Thanks for the tip! I couldn't find more than the trailer for the docu right now, but here it is!



I think I'll have a chat with haiducii and see if he can find the movie on the net!

That would be amazing if it could be found. I'm hoping he mentioned his movie "Twins". I thought that was some incredible work.

 

[haiducii]

The Bobby Blake Story

Twenty years ago, Bobby Blake (born August 11, 1957 in Memphis, Tennessee) was known as one of the top African-American superstars (if not the top one) in the world of gay porn. He was one of the greatest American Black gay porn stars of the 1990's, and make an impact on the industry as an icon of the Beefy Black Men.

Bobby was raised mostly by foster parents because his biological mother had nervous break downs during his youth. His biological father was basically just a sperm donor. Bobby also spent almost two years in Tennessee Prepatory School a state run school for displaced youth. It was around the age of 14 or 15 that Blake’s sexual curiosity began to awaken as he remembers entering an adult bookstore where he first viewed adult movies. He thought to himself back then ''I want to try this one day''.

Beginning as a male dancer at mostly gay clubs, he move to Los Angeles in the 1980's and begin starring in gay and, on occasion, bisexual pornography. On the advice of a friend, he visited a gay sex club owned by porn actor Paul Hanson. Impressed with Blake's performance, Hanson recommended him to adult film producers who cast him in his first film, Ebony Knights (1996). Known for working alongside veterans and adult film performers such as Gene LaMar and J.C. Carter, Blake appeared in over 100 films playing aggressive and dominant top roles. Privately, Blake say he is "more broader". But on camera, Bobby Blake is a aggressive, sometimes violent, top. Check out THIS video to see how daddy wants to do the horizontal samba with a big black mamba!

He has retired from adult films around 2000 becoming an ordained Christian minister. ''I was a minister before I went into porn; I stepped down. Now, I'm very active in the church, and I enjoy helping people across the board'', said Blake in a 2008 interview with Andrew Davis from the Windy City Times.
In his personal life, Bobby Blake was the long-term partner of Flex-Deon Blake, another well-known black gay pornographic actor. It was Bobby Blake who, by referring Flex-Deon to the producer Edward James, introduced his partner to the adult industry. Bobby Blake has told the story of their relationship in his book, My Life in Porn (2008). You can download the PDF directly HERE.

They met in L.A. at a club on Wilshire Boulevard in 1998. Flex-Deon was dancing as a guest male stripper, and Bobby was there hosting a party that weekend. They were lovers for four years, during which time we made over a dozen films together. In chapter seven, titled ''Co-Workers'' Bobby reveals his relationship with Flex-Deon: ''I gave him my last name and we were known as a celebrity porn couple. We never had sex with each other on film-that was the line we drew to maintain some privacy in our relationship-but we fucked other guys together, we put on shows together, and for a short time we even escorted together. Of all the people I worked with in the adult entertainment business he was unquestion ably the most significant to me''.

The film Niggas' Revenge (2001), and Flex-Deon Blake's role in it, have become the subject of academic discussion. In his book, Unlimited Intimacy: Reflections on the Subculture of Barebacking, Tim Dean, a professor of English and the director of the Center for the Study of Psychoanalysis and Culture at the State University of New York at Buffalo, treats Niggas' Revenge in detail because of the way in which it fetishizes the simultaneous transgression of a number of taboos, all in order, Dean argues, to ''conjure the transgressive charge of unprotected anal sex among gay men.'' The representation of interracial sex, rape, violence, and incest (between Chris Blake and Bobby Blake) is enhanced by what Dean calls Flex-Deon Blake’s ''phallicized'' appearance: ''The African-American performers are heavily pierced and tattooed, especially Flex-Deon Blake, who, in addition to pierced ears, eyebrow, nipples, and navel, sports a formidable Prince Albert through the head of his penis. The thick silver hoops that adorn his body are complemented by the chain-link harness that he dons for the sex scenes, along with black leather boots…''

''I want people to get to know the real person—and to know the journey that has made Bobby Blake the man he is today: a humble, strong, open-minded and wise individual. I hope that the book will inspire and encourage people to open their minds for equality for all'', a Black Prince of Porn said in media interviews while promoting his book.

The book is written in tabloid vocabulary. The introduction sets the tone: "My favourite book is The Bible" Bobby tells us. His faith is something that is talked about throughout the book. ''My faith in God helped keep me strong in that difficult time'', wrote Blake. He believes that his sojourn in the world of porn was all part of God's plan for him: '' I understand that God had a plan for me, and that, curiously enough, it took me into the world of adult entertainment, and then it took me out again so I might help other suffering souls. I tell these troubled souls they don't belong to the pastor, to the bishop, or to the elders; they belong to God and God loves them whatever their sexuality.''

Bobby Blake says that he is bisexual but by his own admittance "all the serious relationships of my adult life would turn out to be with men". Blake admit to being in love with a girl during his youth but some of his comments about women, later in the book, sounds misogynistic. Also, later in the book, he define himself as gay which leads one to think at fifty Bobby Blake is still unsure of his sexual orientation.

One of the hardest fought battles of recent history in the gay movement has been securing the legal right to marry. Marriage is a fundamental right enjoyed by heterosexuals providing them with legal protections for their loved one’s and families. But Bobby Blake doesn’t buy the concept of gay marriage: '' I'm from the South. Being reared in the church and in the strongly knitted African-American community, our environment is different than our counterparts—, so our philosophy, theology and concepts are somewhat different. I see no need for two men or two women to stand before god and say to god I want to be married to this person.''

Today Bobby Blake has a much different view about the industry that propelled him to stardom and financial success. He sees an environment so corrupt with drugs and unscrupulous business deals that he actively encourages young people not to enter into the porn industry and instead get an education and to learn a trade. He says: ''Porn today I don’t think it’s a good thing. There are companies who use young men as though they are animals. I have always dealt with companies from a business level. I never smile in their faces never cared if they liked me or not. I expected and demanded things from companies and models who were in my circle. I was hated by a lot of models and companies did I care? No...not at all. I have a in your face mindset.''

 

[gorgik9]

This is an entertaining read which is worth anyones time. There is much boasting and contradiction but if even if only half the events he describes are true that's still an amazing life. I was getting to like him until, right at the end, he has to go and spoil it by expressing his admiration for one M. Thatcher. Come to think of it, just before that there's mention of an AIDs charity event when he makes a personal appearance, and takes a $500 fee from them. Taking money away from AIDs prevention work instead of giving it, Maggie would be proud of him.

I fully agree with dargelos - the Bobby Blake memoir definitely is a good read! So thanks haiducii for finding and uploading the pdf!

I don't agree with everything Bobby says or does, but the book is interesting and gives quite a lot of food for thought, just like my other fav among porn actor memoirs, Scott O'Hara's Autopornography.

Bobby asks a few serious questions to his readers (meaning: us); considering the marriage equality question, he asks himself and his readers why he should sign up for a political agenda totally dominated by a very WASP gay movement if you know, that the American gay movement very seldom have been interested in supporting black gays and looked in to their specific problems and needs.

Bobby Blake definitely isn't the first gay black person articulating questions of this kind. As an example, I think of Essex Hemphill and Marlon Riggs in the 1980-90's.

 

[gorgik9]

Pornography, Masturbation and the Novel.

First I wanted to tell, that I had a chat with haiducii a couple of days ago, and we decided that my post today will be the last regular post before summer break. I'll probably hop in and do some shorter posts now and again, but the looong one will be for after the break.

I've taken my point-of-departure for this post from a text from Peter Tatchell - posted by dargelos earlier in this thread http://www.gayheaven.org/showpost.php?p=2051606&postcount=168 - and more particularly some lines where Tatchell talks about Gary Wilson and his book "Your brain on porn".

Wilson's claim is, that pornography is re-wiring users brains to view sexual gratification as a passive, solitary and often addictive consumer experience that undermines relationships.

My counter-claims are basically two: a) that it's a modernized version of very old (18th century) rhetoric, talking about masturbation "dissolving" the natural instinct of pro-creative sex; and talking about all bad things coming from bad books;

b) Wilson and all of his ilk pre-supposes, that there is a singel, universal thing called "pornography" to which "your brain" - not you, your brain! - can react in a uniform way. Mr Wilson is blabbermouthing about non-existant entities, since pornography isn't anything else but thousands of books, thousands of images, and thousands of films, and every single reader and viewer is another story. But mr. Wilson loves to reificate human experience and make it in to a single thing, which mr Wilson can controle; this is an old story repeating itself again and again.

My point is, that this mr. Wilson is an un-original god-knows-what; lets scrutinize some 18th century originals instead.


New kid on the literary block.

In the second half of the 18th century, there was a new kid on the block: a big kid, getting even bigger, and popular as hell.

His name was : the Novel, and he wasn't particularly well liked by the über-literati, the educators, teachers, headmasters and critics, who didn't find much else but fault and error in the Novel kid.

Among the genres of print media, few became so popular and economically important as daily newspapers and the novels, and few literary genres were so controversial - let's say from mid 18th to mid 19th century - as the novel.

Neither novels nor newspapers were totally new, both existed already in the 17th century, but they became dominating phenomena in European society in the 18th century.

New trends in the book market & new ways of reading.

The European book market was rapidly expanding, but the most important changes were qualitative, rather than quantitative. How many books annually were published was far from the only important question, but also:

what kind of books (less theology and religion, more secular topics in general);

what size of books (less big size books (folio, quarto), more smaller size books (octavo, duodes or smaller)), which mattered a lot since the price of books depended much on its size;

several new institutions for bookreading (commercial lending libraries; clubs and associations for reading and discussions) were established from the mid 18th century, so it became possible to become an active reader of many books without necessarily having to buy own books.

The social composition of the reading public changed: more secular middle class, less aristocracy, academic and cleric; more women and servants who read.

And on top of everything else, a profound change in the way people read :
from intensive reading to extensive reading which means:

from reading a small number of texts again and again, to ruminate on and know by heart (typical objects for intensive reading: books in the Bible, catechisms, psalms, prayers);

to reading a large number of texts for information and/or for entertainment (typical objects for extensive reading: novels, handbooks, encyclopedias).

I think that what drove the century-long quarrel about the badness of novels was the impossible longing to get back to the innocent times of intensive readning habits and a time, when books weren't commercial objects to be sold and bought in the market like everything else.

A central argument in so many articles and esseys written by the critics of the novels was, that there were too many novelists, writing and publishing too many shitty novels, and too many readers spending much to much time reading novels, and too much money spent in buying them or going to the commercial lending library. The abbreviated version of the argument: Much too much! (If you exchange "reading" and "novels" with "surfing" and "porn" we get to the contempoary version of the old argument.)

"Books are to the soul what food is to the body."

A good help to stabilize and focus all these negative feelings was a long train of metaphores and analogies firmly rooted in the Bible, and in particular the Old Testament book of Hesekiel, chapter 2, and in the New Testament the book of Revelations, chapter 10:9-10, telling us, that books are to soul and spirit what food is to the body: essential nourishment.

If books are food, then reading is like eating and writing is like cooking, but then what will happen if you start only reading equivalents of fat, sugar and sweets? Bad things will happen! You must get some spritual equivalents of beef, fish, potatoe, cabbage, vegetables and beans.

Not just fat and sugar. Meaning: not just novels!

Addiction and infection.

If you eat nothing but junk, you can get addicted to junk: Since there's no real nourishment in junk, you eat more and more, and more often. Sooner or later you will suffer from indigestion and obesity, but also from malnutricion. The important moral point will be, that as an addict to spiritual junk - just as in any other addiction - it's not you who govern the addiction. It's the addiction who's in charge of you: German philosopher J.G. Fichte wrote, that novels are "narcotic" reading.

From anothe angle, novels and the reading of them could be looked upon as infectuous diseases, using the language of fever, plague and epidemia. The basic moral problem with infections are an analogue to addictions : you're not in charge of the disease, the disease governs you.

I guess we'll find it almost obvious, that the expanding discourse on mental illness in the early 19th century sneaked its way into angry aricles on too much reading of popular novels (in particular the Gothic horror novel) as a cause for madness.

Because of the damn novels every imaginable weekness of the body could also afflict spirit and soul. Of course there were individual novels and novelists who became famous in the positive sense, rather than infamous in the negative meaning, but the novel genre as such continued to be fiercely scolded for more than a century.

And now its time for even scarier tings: masturbation X_X

The great masturbation scare.

There's a distinct "before" and "after" in the European history of masturbation: before and after the publication of the pamphlet Onania; or: the heinous Sin of Self-Pollution in the London book market sometimes in the early-to-mid 1710's.

We don't know precisely when the first edition occured in London, but we know that the 4th edition published in 1718 is the earliest edition existing in British libraries, just as we know that the 2nd edition was announced in the London newspapers in February 1716. So maybe the first edition had occured in 1715 or 1714.

But what is certain is, that this pamphlet became a spectacular commercial success, that the small pamphlet soon transformed into a fat book of several hundred pages, and that there were new editions of Onania to be bought still in the 1750's.

Masturbation had been looked upon as a sin and a vice for centuries, but what was the big news in Onania was, the it became considered as a grave danger to your health and potentially lethal. From the mid-to-late 18th century, physicians descibed masturbation as the root cause to almost every serious health problem, affliction and disease, possibly excepting bubonic plague and smallpox.

General weakness, acne, pale skin, blindness, deafness, impotense, insanity, tuberculosis and whatnot - wanking was very dangerous. Illustrations and advertisements were published in the hundreds during the 19th and early 20th century to make you get the point - that masturbation was at the roots of every bad development in life.

Before Onania: Samuel Pepys, Jacob Boëthius, John Cannon.

Let's meet three men from early modern Europe, two Englishmen, Samuel Pepys (1633-1703) and John Cannon (1684-1742), and a Swede, Jacob Boëthius (1647-1718).

Pepys and Boëthius lived all their active life before Onania started having its effects in the late 1710's, but when John Cannon wrote his autobiography around 1740, the memories of his masturbatory life in childhood and youth were tainted with shame and guilt in a way, that wasn't the case for neither Boëthius nor Pepys.

Samuel Pepys was an administrator of the British Navy, member of Parliament and a Fellow of the Royal Society, and the Royal Society president it was Pepys who gave imprimatur to Isaac Newton's Principia Mathematica, but first of all - Pepys is one of the greatest diarists of the 17th century and of all times.

Pepys diary is a massive work; though he kept diary for less then 10 years (from January 1660 to May 1669) he was an extremely industrious and prolific diarist, and all the volume together amounts to almost 10.000 pages.

Pepys wrote on so many subjects, but the most important to us is, that he wrote a lot about his sex- and lovelife in general, and his masturbatory life in particular. Since he was a well educated man and a pious christian, he of course knew, that masturbation was considered a sin, but his attitude seems to have been that the number of sins are legion, and you must decide yourself what's important and what isn't : being unfaithful to mrs Pepys is a very grave sin, masturbating your cock isn't.

It seems he truly enjoyed wanking and did so more and more if we're to judge from his diaries. When he managed to get himself off without using his hands through the mere power of his imagination, he gets pretty proud of himself.

One of the hottest episodes is on a summer day, lying in the bottom of a boat getting ferried up the Themsen; while getting ferried, his erotic imagination goes amok and he gets his trousers duly spermed and wet.

Another episode is on a Christmas Evening Mass, while sitting in church and looking around at cte girls, he gets a fierce boner, starts imagining and - BAM! - wets his pants.

Swedish Jacob Boëthius was headmaster of Västerås Gymnasium, vicar and provost of the parish of Mora the province of Dalarna, and also a poet.

His masturbatory life was emotionally much more difficult than Pepys, and was very serious about his sexual sins, but that didn't mean he didn't wank - he was an avid wanker!

Late in life he wrote a detailed and shockingly open confession of personal sins, and it's thanks to this remarcable doent we know so much about his sexual life.

He starts by telling the archetypic story about how he - as a ten year old boy - learned how to wank in a group of boys his own age.

He talked a lot about how much he wanked, even when sitting on horseback!

And his own prick wasn't the only prick he managed; he liked to wank the prick of young boys and to handle the pecker of men his own age while being guests in his house, so here's a horny provost for you!

But what's important to our story is, that though he thought so much about masturbation as a sin, he never said a word on masturbation as a danger to hid health. He lived all his life before Onania.

John Cannon wrote a fascinating memoir in manuscript around 1740, where he tells about how he at age eleven in 1696 learns how to wank in a group of boys - like Boëthius - at a country swimhole. The oldest of the boys, said Cannon

"...took an occasion to show ye rest what he could do if he had a female in place, and withall took his privy member in his hand rubbing it up and down till it was erected and in short measure followed Emission."

But John Cannon was guilt ridden in a way that not even Boëthius was; he was a member of the first generation to be hit by the message of Onania. Cannon begs his pardon that as a young boy he wasn't in touch with the "contemporary standards", the post-Onania standards of the 1730s-40s.

Doctor S.A.D. Tissot and the medical problems of the imagination.

In 1760 masturbation scare became science and medicine thanks to a book written by the well known Geneva doctor Samuel Auguste David Tissot : L'Onanisme; ou, Dissertation physique sur les malades produites par la masturbation, a book which became one of the biggest splashes in the non-fiction book market in the late 18th century, getting more than 60 editions and translations to at least seven languages besides the original French.

The dangers of masturbation became the enlightened talk of the town: Voltaire, Rousseau, Kant, the Encyclopedists and hundreds of lesser luminaries - everybody "knew" that Tissot got it right, and the very few doctors who dared to have a different opinion were in for the most enlightened bullying.

But what was it that made masturbation so much more dangerous than sex with procreative intent? Well - said Tissot and his followers - procreative sex was instinctual and natural; it wasn't you who actively took the decision to fuck this cute girl because I'm so fucking horny, it was rather the natural instinct (not you!) that started stirring in your belly and sent a natural sex object (meaning a girl, since you're a boy) in your way to fuck.

When the fucking was happily over and done with, you would get the good feeling of being fully satiated, and nine month later you would become a father. This natural procreative sex had it's own health problems and you should never fuck more than necessary, but the health problems in procreative was nothing compared to masturbation.

Masturbation started in the most un-natural fashion - with your own explicite subjective intention to get excited and get a hard-on. Next un-natural step is to conjure up erotic images in your imagination and start wanking; we get into the totally un-natural loop of conjuring up images and stroking your cock, which of course ends in ejaculation. Masturbatory sex wasn't centered on any natural sex object, but rather centered on a kind of asocial inward turn, adding another dimension of un-naturalness.

Compared to the natural procreative sexuality, masturbatory sex will be fundamentally un-satiated. You won't feel satisfied and. hence, you'll start imagining and stroking again and again. Masturbatory sex puts an enormous stress on your body, in particular your nerve system and the amount of blood in your body.

The common idea on sperm in the 18th century was, that sperm was the result of blood boiled down - so to speak - to a highly concentrated end product specific part of the body. According to a medical saying, 1 ounce of sperm was the equivalent of 40 ounces of blood, which meant that for every time you ejaculated, you necessarily lost an amount of blood.

Another common notion - closely following from the ideas of the blood/sperm relation - was, that it was good for your health and bodily strength to "store" the sperm in your body as long as possible; the ideal was to ejaculate as seldom as possible.

The main point in this chapter has been, that the problem with masturbation wasn't the sexual pleasure, but rather the artificial un-natural pleasure centered on the imagination. You could almost say : the more vivid your imagination, the worse your health.

Masturbation, women-hating and perversion.

Yet another central idea in Tissot and his many followers is, that men who get addicted to masturbation, also more and more often "dissolves" the natural sexual instinct; that there is such a thing as a natural sexual instinct and also what it is are among the fundamental taken-for-granted in 18th and 19th century medicin, and the content of the natural instinct of course is procreative sex.

The scientific name of the functional modification of the sexual instinct was perversion, and every perversion was pathological, i.e. a class of sexual diseases.

The thing I don't think has been analyzed enough is, that during a period of more than a century from Tissot on, masturbation was considered the root cause to ALL kinds of sexual perversions, diseases and sexual criminality.

Let me give a Swedish example from about the turn of the century 1900! : It was still standard procedure in sex crime cases for forensic doctors to closely investigate and interview the suspect about his masturbatory habits, and the reason for this procedure was, that masturbation always was a plausible cause for mental illness expressing itself in various criminal sex acts.

If masturbation "dissolved" a mans natural inclination to have sex with women, instead you could feel the desire towards ANYTHING BUT the opposite sex. Men could become women-haters, who in the next step could become attracted to other men. So masturbation - women-hating - attraction towards other men could be a plausible trajectory.

No, it didn't get better: Masturbation in the 19th century.

In 1857 the British Parliament promulgated the very first modern anti-pornography law, Lord Campbell's Act or Obscene Publications Act, and I hope the connections to this new 1857 law and more than a century of intense masturbation scare discussions shouldn't be particularly difficult to get : if the imagination could be considered the main culprit concerning the dangers of masturbation, then books and pictures intended to stimulate the imagination towards masturbation and ejaculation could probably be considered something even worse.

At the same time, entrepreneurial spirit triumphed and came up with so many inventive, painfull, and humiliating gears and gadgets to prevent boys from mastubating. Let there be lots of pain, sadness and stiff upper lips in young mens life!

But the most inventive was of course, when the great doctors and scientists of the Anglophone world finally came up with the brilliant idea to just cut off a piece of the penis of young boys : Circision, that's the name of the bloody game!

And to learn a lot more on this grizzly and ghastly Anglophone speciality, there's historian of medicine Robert Darby's web page with enormous amounts of information: Anon URL

*********************************************
I sincerely hope y'all have a very nice summer, and as the unforgettable Dame Vera Lynn said - We'll meet again!

 

[Hyp]

hope y'all don't mind a little self-promotion, but I'm posting
a large collection of dirty old magazines, many of them based on
classic 70s and 80s porn movies over in the graphics section...

http://www.gayheaven.org/showthread.php?p=2067428

enjoy!

 

[gorgik9]

@Hyp

Thanks for your contribution to this thread!!!

 

[gorgik9]

We're not forgetting this thread!

Hello y'all!

I thought I should make a post just to show that we - myself & haiducii - haven't forgot about this thread and its followers

I wanted to tell a bit about what we're up to and will post later!

First of all, we'll post a big double post on the impact of AIDS on gay porn after the summer break, but I'm also thinking about some posting on a topic I don't really know yet how to frame, but my basic idea is to talk about 17th and 18th century libertine literature- with Marquis de Sade as its most famous representative - and hopefully make some intelligent connection to modern S/M-porn.

And I'm pretty sure we'll come up with some other ideas!

 

[Shelter]

Great Gorgik and Haiducii we all will wait. This is really one of the best posts and/or threads I've ever read. Very informative, good written und not so academic. So you can read it easy and learn plenty of knowledge. So thank you to both of you for your GREAT work.