Balance

En busca del Kamasutra

Over the counter once more
Ian Pindar is glad that James McConnachie’s tome of good conduct for men, The Book of Love, has been rescued
Ian Pindar
Saturday December 15, 2007

The Book of Love: In Search of the Kamasutra
by James McConnachie
272pp, Atlantic, £17.99

In The Book of Love James McConnachie lays to rest some of the enduring myths surrounding the Kamasutra: it is not a sex manual but a book of good conduct. It is not illustrated and it has nothing to do with Tantric sex.

Little is known about its author, Vatsyayana, but he probably lived in third-century northern India. What we do know is that he started a trend - some have called it a revolution - when he decided to write a sutra or scholarly treatise about kama or sexual desire.

The word kamasutra has become a sort of shorthand for “advanced fucking”, says McConnachie, but it doesn’t really deserve its reputation as a book of sexual gymnastics. The sexual positions Vatsyayana discusses (”the crab”, “the lotus”, and so on) are not especially acrobatic, nor are there all that many. Certainly not as many as can be found in The Horn-Book: A Girl’s Guide to Good and Evil (1899), which lists 62 positions - including the “view of the Low Countries” and the “elastic cunt” - or the Golden Book of Love (1907), which offers 531.

Vatsyayana organises sex into eight distinct topics: embracing, kissing, scratching (love marks were “a major fetish in ancient India”), biting, the notorious sexual positions, moaning, “the woman playing the man’s part” (women-on-top) and oral sex (the art of fellatio; cunnilingus is barely mentioned). The Kamasutra is a male fantasy aimed at nagarakas, wealthy young men in the cities, and it presents a world in which women are always available and compliant and never need to be seduced, only aroused in frescoed bedchambers filled with flowers and incense. The effect of the work, says McConnachie, is to surround us in a kind of “erotic cocoon”. If Vatsyayana has advice for women, it is how to keep men happy, not how to enjoy themselves sexually. His greatest crime in modern eyes is not that he never once questions the caste system, but that he appears totally unaware of the existence of the clitoris.

La satisfacción erótica (y II)

La satisfacción erótica (y II)

Carlos de la Cruz* - 24/12/2007

¿Cómo lograr la satisfacción erótica? Algunas posibilidades son: baños de espuma, masajes con aceites aromáticos, esperando a tu pareja completamente desnudo o desnuda, seduciendo a tu pareja con mensajes sugerentes al móvil, practicando el sexo oral a pesar de que nunca te ha gustado especialmente o practicándolo porque te gusta especialmente, recorriendo toda la piel con la lengua, leyendo juntos literatura erótica, dejándote desnudar, tapándote los ojos y dejándote acariciar… ¿Más? Inventarse historias e interpretarlas, ducharse juntos, volver al coche, no olvidarse de los pezones, el cuello, los lóbulos, el ombligo… intercambiarse la ropa, hacer lo que te pidan, acariciar soplando todo el cuerpo…
Indudablemente todo esto sólo son sugerencias pero para que funcione la puerta de todas ellas ha de ser el deseo. Mal asunto si hay quien realiza alguna por la única razón de que un sexólogo las ha planteado como una posibilidad. Y quien dice un sexólogo, dice un amigo, amiga, un programa de televisión, tu propia pareja o un artículo de El Confidencial. Las posibilidades son sólo posibilidades, nunca prescripciones. Ni siquiera la buena voluntad de complacer a tu pareja es un deseo erótico, es otra cosa.

Bien es verdad que para que los deseos broten hay que regar y dejar que entre la luz, y eso significa que a veces se puede ceder, se puede probar, se puede ‘intentar’. Pero algo muy distinto es cuando se tira de las hojas para que crezcan los deseos o se riega con más agua de la cuenta. Por eso a la fuerza nunca brotan los deseos, de nada vale proponer algo con la coartada de los demás, de los sexólogos o de no parecer pacatos. Probar sí, forzar no. Parecerá un simple matiz, pero es algo más. Es lo que sitúa la erótica en el terreno de los deseos o en el de las obligaciones. Y, desde luego, ¡no es lo mismo!

Historia de la ninfomanía

Journal of Social History. June 22, 2002

Nymphomania: A History. By Carol Groneman (New York and London: W.W. Norton & Company, 2000. xxiii plus 238pp. $24.95).

In her clever and elegant little book, Nymphomania: A History, Carol Groneman explores the changing meaning of the word “nymphomania” over the last two hundred years, and in doing so, manages to explain a great deal more about our altering understanding of female sexuality. How much sex is it permissible for a woman to have? And who decides?

Groneman’s thesis is built around a familiar framework, within which she nevertheless contributes an original perspective. To the Victorians, “nymphomania” was a clear-cut concept: the “nymphomaniac” was a diseased woman as her excessive interest in sex so blatantly defied the cultural conventions of “passionlessness” and the “Cult of True Womanhood.” Groneman’s focus on medical and legal records causes her to unnecessarily exaggerate her case; of course “nymphomania” was proscribed but Groneman seems to choose the most lurid examples!! Thus, she has found evidence of gynaecological surgery designed to cure nymphomania, most alarmingly a clitorodectomy performed on a child in the 1890s. She delineates the fierce debate among the gynaecologists at the turn of the century and also cases of strong objection to surgical procedures designed to cure nymphomania. And, compellingly, she finds an “autobiography of a nymphomaniac” in which a long series of procedures undertaken is described. Yet one still wonders how t ypical such cases were. One is convinced of the prescription of nymphomania by doctors; not of the commonness of draconian cures. Equally, in a culture where reticence reigned, nymphomania cannot have had huge importance, as few people knew about it.

Jóvenes puteros

November 7, 2006

Who pays for sex? You’d be surprised
More and more young men are choosing to visit prostitutes. One writer asks them why

“There are lots of whorehouses in Macau,” Tom confided to me under his breath in a crowded bar in Islington one Thursday night. “It was my first time in Hong Kong and I remember getting a ferry to one of the brothels where there was a madam and a security guard. On that occasion I didn’t have full sex with the girl, but all my friends did.”

Tom was 23 when he jetted out to Hong Kong to visit friends in 2001, but even then he was no stranger to brothels: it was the fourth time that he had sought the services of a prostitute. He is the sort of young man of whom most mothers would approve, a 29-year-old teacher who is good-looking, well educated and respectful. Yet on his worldwide travels he has paid for sex in several countries, including Australia, the Netherlands and Thailand.

The stereotypical “John” who uses prostitutes is a middle-aged, empty soul whom you might spot slinking around red-light districts in an outsized mac and stained trousers. The uncomfortable truth, though, is that most men who pay for sex are just “regular guys” — colleagues, brothers, fathers, sons and lovers.

Volumes of research have been published on trends among sex workers across the globe — studies on drug use, on the spread of STDs, on the impact of prostitution on society. Yet as a study published in the British Medical Journal in 2005 pointed out, “far less is known about the men who pay for sex”. That study found that the proportion of British men who reported paying for heterosexual sex had increased from 5.6 per cent in 1990 to 9 per cent in 2000. Of these, the largest group were in their mid-twenties to mid-thirties, living in London and either single or divorced.

Volver al mercado

Volver al mercado

Luz Sánchez-Mellado
EL PAIS SEMANAL - 23-12-2007

“Separado recientemente con buena presencia y máxima seriedad se ofrece para iniciar una nueva relación”. El anuncio pregona en la radio la semana de Citroën Eurocasión. Alude a la pasión que unía al propietario con su coche. Tanta, que les llevó a fundar un feliz matrimonio, pero que, una vez extinta, supuso la separación de la pareja, cuyos miembros, libres de nuevo, vuelven al mercado… de segunda mano. A los vehículos usados se les suele dar un repaso antes de volver a ponerlos en circulación. Las millas del cuentakilómetros y el desgaste del motor no se borran, pero una mano de chapa y pintura aumenta sus opciones. El símil no es muy delicado, pero sí gráfico. Los publicistas están al cabo de la calle.
Bárbara está en camilla, a punto de entrar en un quirófano de la clínica Ruber Internacional de Madrid. Se va a someter a una liposucción de abdomen, muslos y caderas bajo anestesia general. Un paño le cubre los pechos, sobre los que aún destacan las cicatrices de la elevación de mamas que le practicó el mismo cirujano en esta sala hace seis semanas. Entonces se operó un viernes y el lunes ya estaba en el trabajo. Ahora se ha tomado una semana libre previendo las consecuencias de una intervención que, además de otras molestias y dolores, le obligará a sufrir durante dos meses una faja pantalón de pecho a tobillos con un agujero en los genitales para evacuar. “Ahora estoy en medio del túnel, pero ya veo la luz”, dice ella. Según sus cálculos, esa salida coincidirá con la noche de Reyes. “Ése será mi mejor regalo, estar preparada para volver al mercado”.

La felicidad humana

                                                                                                                                                      A Eva.

Si los hombres fuéramos más inteligentes de lo que somos, habríamos procurado siempre que las mujeres fueran más felices de lo que son, porque es la condición primaria de la felicidad en el mundo. En la medida en que las mujeres no son felices, no hay felicidad; y por supuesto no la puede tener el hombre.

Julián Marías (1992) La felicidad humana. Alianza Editorial. pp. 318-319

Dudas…

La satisfacción erótica (I)

La satisfacción erótica (I)

Carlos de la Cruz - 18/12/2007

No le demos más vueltas, la satisfacción sexual es posible. Por tanto, es sensato que hombres y mujeres aspiren a ser felices también en este aspecto. Sin embargo, no siempre resulta sencillo. ¿Qué sucede? ¿Cómo puede convertirse en difícil algo que, en realidad, parece al alcance de la mano?

Vayamos por partes. Imaginemos una pareja que quiera ser feliz con su erótica ¿Qué deberían hacer? ¿Cómo deberían comunicar sus deseos? ¿Cómo hace compatibles las cesiones con las coherencias? ¿Cómo distribuir las caricias, las palabras o los besos? Muchas preguntas, muchas posibilidades y, detrás de cada una, la felicidad como objetivo.

Se puede estar solo

Si la felicidad sexual se escondiese exclusivamente detrás de esas cuestiones u otras muy parecidas ¿qué sucedería con quien no tiene pareja? ¿con esos hombres y mujeres que no tienen con quien compartir sus cuerpos y sus afectos? ¿tendrían difícil conseguir la felicidad sexual o, sería más correcto decir, que se les pone más difícil conseguir la felicidad sexual?

No sé quien dejó escrito que para disfrutar con la erótica hay que tener pareja. Es una posibilidad, probablemente muy deseada por muchos hombres y mujeres, pero no la única. Es legítimo estar solo o sola, sin envidiar a quien sí tiene pareja, y es posible disfrutar, ser feliz.

Primera idea: todos los hombres y todas las mujeres pueden disfrutar de su erótica, tengan o no tengan pareja. Y, por supuesto, esto es verdad en la adolescencia, en la juventud, en la edad adulta y en la tercera edad. Faltaría más.

Historia del lesbianismo en Gran Bretaña

Women aloud

Rebecca Jennings’s A Lesbian History of Britain is full of brave and desperate women. For how long gay women will continue to be silenced or censored, asks Margaret Reynolds
Margaret Reynolds
Saturday December 15, 2007

A Lesbian History of Britain: Love and Sex Between Women Since 1500
by Rebecca Jennings
227pp, Greenwood World Publishing, £18.95

My favourite coming-out story is told by a friend who decided that it was time she spoke to her family. So she sat Mum and Dad down on the sofa and began. After a bit her father raised his hand: “OK, OK - You don’t need to go on. I understand. I’ve read How Deep Is My Well?”

It’s funny, but it’s serious too. Because this anecdote suggests some of the popular perceptions about lesbians: father would prefer not to speak their name, but he still has some notion of a public history, and yet muddles up Radclyffe Hall’s notorious title with a prurient Freudian slip. The myths of lesbian life are many. From the legend of Queen Victoria’s view that it didn’t exist, to the stereotype of the hairy-legged, man-hating butch, they are also at the extremes.

Rebecca Jennings’s serious and sensible book rejects the crude and salacious versions, but she also explains and counteracts the silences. For those familiar with queer history there will be little that is new here. But in recent years a great deal of scholarly work has been devoted to seeking out the traces of lesbian existence and tracking the varied manifestations that marked out different historical and cultural contexts. Jennings succeeds in synthesising all of this and in making clear the complicated interaction between what may, or may not have happened “then” and the political motives (or wishful thinking) of historians writing from the perspective of “now”.

Amor razonable

Cuando el amor es demasiado grande se vuelve inútil: ya no es aplicable, y ni siquiera la persona amada tiene la capacidad de recibir tanto. Me quedo perpleja como un niño al notar que incluso en el amor hay que tener sentido común y sentido de la medida. Ah, la vida de los sentimientos es extremadamente burguesa.

Clarice Lispector (2007) Aprendiendo a vivir. Siruela. p.109

Maridos y esposas

LRB 13 December 2007 Terry Castle

Husbands and Wives
Terry Castle

* Don’t Kiss Me: The Art of Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore edited by Louise Downie

* Two Lives: Gertrude and Alice by Janet Malcolm
First, a somewhat spittle-laden squawk: how one positively slavers for a good biography of the astonishing French artist known as Claude Cahun (1894-1954). Mention her in conversation and you are likely to draw a puzzled ‘Claude who?’ even from otherwise predatory culture vultures. In my own case – it’s true – certain vile French diphthongs may be part of the problem: the phonetic distinctions between Cahun, Caen, Caïn, Cannes, Cohn, canne, cane, cagne, camp, cône and con remain, sadly, a perpetual trial. Yet it’s also undeniable: though one of the most extraordinary personalities associated with both the French Surrealist movement and the Resistance, Cahun is still scarcely known to an English-speaking public.

Which isn’t to say she has languished in utter obscurity. In the baleful little world of academic ‘gender studies’ (strap-ons and piercings strongly advised) the cross-dressing Cahun has been a cult heroine for a decade or two. Nor is it difficult to see why. She was an inventive and fearless early practitioner of set-up photography: the self-conscious ‘staging’ of images in order to produce a theatrical or conceptual effect. And as with many other set-up specialists, Cahun was her own favourite subject. Though it’s hard to say if she knew the work of either, two of her most notorious precursors in this regard were the Countess of Castiglione (1837-99), a wealthy and eccentric Franco-Italian narcissist who hired a studio photographer to take scores of secret pictures of her in bizarre poses and costumes, and the Stieglitz associate F. ‘Fred’ Holland Day, whose semi-nude impersonation of Jesus Christ on the Cross – at once gauzy, grisly and homoerotic – provoked a scandal when he exhibited the photographs in 1898. The most prominent practitioner of the style in recent years has been the rubber-visaged, now slightly shopworn Cindy Sherman – known particularly for the gender-bending self-portraits she made in the 1970s and 1980s.

Something about the genre seems to invite sexual self-mystification, but Cahun’s photographic experiments are truly extraordinary. In a discomfiting series of self-portraits rediscovered in the 1980s – most of them apparently produced in the 1920s and 1930s with the assistance of Marcel Moore, the lesbian companion with whom she lived as a recluse on the island of Jersey between 1937 and 1954 – the wildly androgynous artist can be seen vamping it up in a boggling array of cross-sex get-ups. Long before dyke-daddy chic Cahun and Moore were mounting an ongoing private drag show with Cahun in all the starring parts.

Mercado de parejas

A buyers’ market
Dec 13th 2007

Men propose; women dispose

WOMEN often complain that dating is like a cattle market, and a paper just published in Biology Letters by Thomas Pollet and Daniel Nettle of Newcastle University, in England, suggests they are right. They have little cause for complaint, however, because the paper also suggests that in this particular market, it is women who are the buyers.

Mr Pollet and Dr Nettle were looking for evidence to support the contention that women choose men of high status and resources, as well as good looks. That may sound common sense, but it was often denied by social scientists until a group of researchers who called themselves evolutionary psychologists started investigating the matter two decades ago. Since then, a series of experiments in laboratories have supported the contention. But as all zoologists know, experiments can only tell you so much. Eventually, you have to look at natural populations.

And that is what Mr Pollet and Dr Nettle have done. They have examined data from the 1910 census of the United States of America and discovered that marriage is, indeed, a market. Moreover, as in any market, a scarcity of buyers means the sellers have to have particularly attractive goods on offer if they are to make the exchange.

Problema de comunicación

Onfray y el soltero

El soltero empieza por afirmar la autonomía radical de cada uno de los registros habitualmente reunidos en la mística ascética cristiana: el cuerpo y el amor, la sexualidad y la procreación, el sentimiento y la cohabitación, la fidelidad y la exclusividad, la monogamia y la promesa. Así, toda una serie de disposiciones se pueden enfocar con este alfabeto de la historia de las relaciones sexuadas: utilizar el cuerpo sin estar enamorado, gozar de la sexualidad sin encarar la unión con la idea de tener hijos, amar visceralmente pero sin compartir el mismo techo, estar profundamente atado a un ser, pero seguir practicando la pluralidad de los cuerpos; del mismo modo, tener en cuenta el amor sin obstinarse en las proximidades carnales, procrear con independencia de la sexualidad, vivir en la misma casa sin amar al otro en el sentido convencional del término amor. El soltero se define por su arte más o menos consumado de tener en cuenta todos estos registros de manera fundamentalmente disociada.

Michel Onfray (2002) Teoría del cuerpo enamorado. Pre-textos. pp. 204-205

Historia del “streaking”

A HISTORY OF STREAKING
Birthday Suits and 15 Seconds of Infamy

By Stephan Orth

Whether jeered or cheered, they’re still the best entertainment available during a boring game. They’re only looking for one thing — 15 seconds of infamy — and they barely care about the legal trouble they might face. It’s naked — or nothing at all.

The three British bobbies look clearly amused as they detain the culprit. One officer holds his hat — protectively, but gingerly — over the naked man’s groin. Meanwhile, another man rushes to the scene offering a coat to cover up the bearded exhibitionist as hundreds of completely entertained spectators watch the bizarre scene unfold from the stands.

This scene marked a world first: 25-year-old Australian Michael O’Brian is believed to have been the first person to “streak” the audience at a major stadium. During a 1974 rugby match in London between England and Wales, O’Brian ran onto the playing field naked. The photo of his arrest illustrates the forbidden appeal that comes with streaking. Every streaker knows that it’s the easiest way to instantly please tens of thousands of people, and even the authorities have trouble concealing their delight when streakers strike.