Comments | midday_volery: hostage to sexual beauty

midday_volery

hostage to sexual beauty

Sep 05, 2006 23:08

Anna Kokkinos's film of Rupert Thomson's novel, 'the Book of Revelation', was a dark delight. Its an inversion story - according to an interview with Rupert Thomson anyway - and I guess - as the author - he should know. I am a bit weary of sexual inversion plots but this one's really brave and provocative. In this case a beautiful male dancer is ( Read more... )

Comments 4

hypocondriaque September 6 2006, 01:08:10 UTC

You've made me think now, of the times when I might have considered myself a sexual predator. It's true enough that I spent two years under the rigorous tutiledge of a pair of Doms in the countryside. I got quite good at commanding men, and wielding a black snake single tail whip. On that leg of my career, I took issue with men who "topped from the bottom." I was trained not to accept that scenario, and had interesting ways of turning it over ( ... )

the unplucked rose sallowsiserary September 10 2006, 04:56:34 UTC

the sultry schoolgirl...I know a girl from japan who once told me that there is an unspoken tradition among girls entering pubery of doing similar things: slouching on the subway in short skirts and slowly spreading their legs wider while focusing on older men. Or brushing provacatively against them at unnecessary times just to frustrate a reaction. It's their way of establishing sexual power, and isn't the sort of thing anyone could really prove, so I think they feel safe doing that. On the other hand, there is also a tradition there of men getting away with inappropriate touches on trainrides, so who knows how that cycle began. Perhaps at some sub-level the sexual aggressiveness of women today is a hostile reaction to the decline in chivalry and the intricacies of courtship rituals?

Re: the unplucked rose midday_volery September 14 2006, 11:59:28 UTC

that's a really interesting observation that i'll have to think about more. i guess i have been typical of that transition though. my dad was extremely chivalrous - and at first i religiously followed his example - but later got embarrassed by all the fuss, i think when i started to seek approval from teenage feminists. but somehow i did flush the baby with the bathwater (obscure pun in there somewhere). do we really now live in an age where ritual is more improvised than prescribed - a vacuum exploitable by school girls? have you got ideas for (new) courtship rituals?

next time: an improvised prescription sallowsiserary September 15 2006, 01:43:13 UTC

One of the interesting features of chivalry when it was at its peak was that it was consistently practiced by most of the males in the classes (sadly mostly upper)it applied to. So while the forms were standard, they were simply a foundation upon which to improvise creatively. Chivalry was the norm, so it became a platform for demonstrating style. Those were the traits that probably made the difference. (I'm fairly idealistic about this topic, but I recognize that the customs designed to show respect for women were frequently applied without the honors they implied.) However, improvisation was highly valued, and was a space to exhibit genuine affection beyond that of the random polite male while minimizing risk. The really effective element (besides style) was that courtship rituals demanded that specific attention be paid to the individuality of the female, and allowed for attempts at enticing her distinct interests (be they musical, literary, etc.) while accepting "her unique personality". So this gave women something to trust ( ... )