Pornosophy: The Strong Silent Type

Wyatt Earp

A reader of this blog recently wrote in to ask why in the old days, at the turn of the last century men were so quiet and women so garrulous (and serious)? Talk about emotions, back in them days men never talked about their emotions. But there was a reason for it and it was not because it made them more vulnerable or less masculine. Back in the year l900 families were much larger and it was not unusual to have a brood of nine or more children. Most of the discussion of family life in that era centers around how hard this was for women. However, it was an even larger burden for the men. The turn of the last century was approximately a hundred years before the advent of internet pornography and in the days of the horse and buggy sex was real work. Men were more quiet because they had to spend much of their day conjuring up fantasies which would facilitate all the sex that was necessary to produce nine or more children. Today your average millennial just hangs out on a site for a few minutes, indulging his favorite fetish (whether it’s exhibitionism, voyeurism, lingerie, flagellation, bukkake, bestiality, forced feminization, gagging, suffocation, humiliation, coprophilia, Greek or golden showers) and he's ready to rock. And the same goes for his or her female counterpart. More importantly no social stigma is attached to having a family with just one two children. Yet before the miracle of modern cyberporn, men were forced to think up all manner of sexy scenarios just to make sure they could keep up with the Joneses. Take out one of your old family albums, the ones with the yellowing black and white photos held onto the page with little corner stickers. If you look into the eyes of your forebears, you'll see that behind these strong silent types was depravity. Most of the men stare out from these pictures like desperate trapped animals. They know that once the festivity, at which all the picture taking occurred, was over, they would be chased around their bedrooms by demanding wives, whose fecundity was on the line.

Germans Crack Down on Bestiality

According to a recent Times piece, “Germany’s upper house of Parliament, the Bundesrat, voted Friday to criminalize… ‘using an animal for personal sexual activity.’” (“German Legislators Vote to Outlaw Bestiality," NYT, 2/1/13). One hopes the irony of having an a political organization with a name like Bundesrat pass the ban was not lost on the German electorate. Zoophiles, or those who oppose animal rights groups in sanctioning the blessings of animal love “argue,” according to the Times “that their  relations with their pets, or ‘partners’ as they prefer, are entirely mutual." Michael Kiok is identified in the piece as director of Zoophilic Engagement for Tolerance and Enlightenment and David Zimmerman, a director who is described as having “had a Great Dane with which he occasionally had sex…now...lives with his similarly zoophilic boyfriend and their Dalmation” after his Great Dane passed away. The question, of course, is not simply whether the sex is consensual. Beyond the fact that there is literally no way of telling if a dog is giving his or her consent, one might question whether an animal really knows what is best for itself and if so which ones? For instance Mr. Zimmerman’s Great Dane might have been considered by some to be more in a position to make judgments of this kind than Mr. Zimmerman’s boyfriend’s Dalmation. Great Danes give the appearance of being more considered in their choice of sexual partners while there is an impulsive streak in Dalmations, often known as “firehouse dogs," which might mitigate against their deferring gratification. These are some of the questions that the Bundesrat should consider if these issues ever come back to the floor of the chamber.