Violet Blue ® :: Open Source Sex
Journalist and author Violet Blue's site for sex and tech culture, accurate sex information, erotica and more.
From the monthly archives:
This mechanical horse machine art sculpture by Franco Losvizzero was actually in an exhibition at the Celeste art Price in Milan 2008, and in the recently uploaded video below the performer is Karen N.Wikstrand. The pacing is slow, but compelling to watch nonetheless.
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Yes, it’s an older photo (1998) but I just adore Milla Jovovitch — especially because she openly loves guns and doing action films where women kick ass. Came across it, thought I’d share. See more photos of pretty models/actresses from by Paolo Roversi on this post (image via).
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A big welcome to mew online sex magazine Voyeur: Filthy Gorgeous Things, whose inaugural issue is now live. At first glance, it’s a delicious place to spend time perusing very sexy writing and images. I’m extremely excited to see one of my very favorite sex writers on their (Flash-drenched pages) — the wonderful Debauchette (whom I’ve met in real life and is a living doll). Plus, the issue features The Mofo (more Flash), a UK based erotic photographer whom I think is one of the best out there right now.
Seriously, this is an erotic magazine done right. They update their highly arousing blog every day, too. Big props. (via Lux)
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I love the occasional NSFW posts I find at The Fashion Time; the only problem is that once they’re off the front page it’s actually difficult to find them again. But I have two hotties for you: Keep Candles Handy (May 2009 i-D; above) and the genderfuck (and seriously controversial; read the post details to see why) covers for the British March 2009 Dazed & Confused (below).
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It looks like Princess Donna recently took some lucky girl to a local bookstore for a little continued education. From the images and videos in this gallery, it looks like the girl was, ahem, well read by many literate shoppers.
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I love, love, love Scientific American writer Jesse Bering. Last night he kept me totally entertained and fascinated and all giddy with his SciAm piece Secrets of the Phallus: Why is the Penis Shaped Like That? Evolutionary psychologists decipher the “Rosetta Stone” of human sexuality. (thanks, @somadap!) It’s the best article I’ve ever read about understanding the shape (and purpose, even via ‘reverse engineering’) of the human male penis. Plus, I also got to spend the evening thinking geekily about the human male penis while drinking beer, and you know, stuff to do with penises, which is pretty much a perfect solo night in the office for a girl like me. Seriously, the best part is that Bering deconstructs every theory about cock and questions all the various cultural biases, even in science, about the wonderful male member. It’s totally enthralling, and he’s a truly great, even whimsical science writer (and evolutionary psychologist). Read and enjoy — here’s a snip:
If you’ve ever had a good, long look at the human phallus, whether yours or someone else’s, you’ve probably scratched your head over such a peculiarly shaped device. Let’s face it—it’s not the most intuitively shaped appendage in all of evolution. But according to evolutionary psychologist Gordon Gallup of the State University of New York at Albany, the human penis is actually an impressive “tool” in the truest sense of the word, one manufactured by nature over hundreds of thousands of years of human evolution. You may be surprised to discover just how highly specialized a tool it is. Furthermore, you’d be amazed at what its appearance can tell us about the nature of our sexuality.
The curious thing about the evolution of the human penis is that, for something that differs so obviously in shape and size from that of our closest living relatives, only in the past few years have researchers begun to study it in any detail. The reason for this neglect isn’t clear, though the most probable reason is because of its intrinsic snicker factor or, related to this, the likelihood of its stirring up uncomfortable puritanical sentiments. It takes a special type of psychological scientist to tell the little old lady sitting next to him on a flight to Denver that he studies how people use their penises when she asks what he does for a living. But I think labeling it as a “crude” or “disgusting” area of study reveals more about the critic than it does the researcher. And if you think there’s only one way to use your penis, that it’s merely an instrument of internal fertilization that doesn’t require further thought, or that size doesn’t matter, well, that just goes to show how much you can learn from Gallup’s research findings.
Gallup’s approach to studying the design of the human penis is a perfect example of of “reverse-engineering” as it’s used in the field of evolutionary psychology. This is a logico-deductive investigative technique for uncovering the adaptive purpose or function of existing (or “extant”) physical traits, psychological processes, or cognitive biases. That is to say, if you start with what you see today—in this case, the oddly shaped penis, with its bulbous glans (the “head” in common parlance), its long, rigid shaft, and the coronal ridge that forms a sort of umbrella-lip between these two parts—and work your way backward regarding how it came to look like that, the reverse-engineer is able to posit a set of function-based hypotheses derived from evolutionary theory. In the present case, we’re talking about penises, but the logic of reverse-engineering can be applied to just about anything organic, from the shape of our incisors, to the opposability of our thumbs, to the arch of our eyebrows. For the evolutionary psychologist, the pressing questions are, essentially, “why is it like that?” and “what is that for?” The answer isn’t always that it’s a biological adaptation—that it solved some evolutionary problem and therefore gave our ancestors a competitive edge in terms of their reproductive success. Sometimes a trait is just a “byproduct” of other adaptations. Blood isn’t red, for example, because red worked better than green or yellow or blue, but only because it contains the red hemoglobin protein, which happens to be an excellent transporter of oxygen and carbon dioxide. But in the case of the human penis, it appears there’s a genuine adaptive reason that it looks the way it does.
If one were to examine the penis objectively—please don’t do this in a public place or without the other person’s permission—and compare the shape of this organ to the same organ in other species, they’d notice the following uniquely human characteristics. (…read more, sciam.com)
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