winged and finned

poete: Girls Rifle Team, Drexel University, circa 1925 I...

Sat, 30 Mar 2013 19:12:13 -0400

Girls Rifle Team, Drexel University, circa 1925

I aspire to be the young woman on the far right.

sisterwolf: Members of the Ovici family, a family of Jewish...

Sat, 30 Mar 2013 14:24:11 -0400

Members of the Ovici family, a family of Jewish dwarf entertainers known as the Lilliput Troupe, who survived Auschwitz, perform on stage.

From The National Police Gazette, 1887. ”Barnum’s...

Sat, 30 Mar 2013 09:36:13 -0400

From The National Police Gazette, 1887. ”Barnum’s Big Chance.”

A beautiful etching. A lot of ‘freak’ photographs and drawings from this time period were quite extreme. I don’t think viewers of these images actually believed they were real; they wished to believe. Who wouldn’t? Look at that gorgeous elephant-child. I want him or her to exist in the world. (As rude as it is, I crave the feeling of their soft wrinkled ears under my fingertips.)

“Five Members of the Monster Fan Club, by Diane Arbus,...

Sat, 30 Mar 2013 04:48:14 -0400

“Five Members of the Monster Fan Club, b y Diane Arbus, 1961.

From The National Police Gazette, a popular American newspaper,...

Fri, 29 Mar 2013 19:12:13 -0400

From The National Police Gazette, a popular American newspaper, 1881. ”A Newspaper Man’s Plight.”

Another image of a woman wielding a whip! Notice the man’s passive arm position, and the fact that he’s nearly all in black. He is not the focus of the image; it is the woman and her lovely whip/legs. Very sexual, very nineteenth century America. A kinky bunch!

From The National Police Gazette (an American weekly newspaper),...

Fri, 29 Mar 2013 14:24:09 -0400

From The National Police Gazette (an American weekly newspaper), 1881. “Frail Women Don War Paint.”

There are a LOT of images of women wielding whips in this popular rag. (Another one to follow.) The readership was predominantly white and immigrant men.

From The National Police Gazette, 1881. “Caught in the...

Fri, 29 Mar 2013 12:02:00 -0400

From The National Police Gazette, 1881. “Caught in the Shafting” and “Assaulted Him With A Razor.”

Note how their body positions are the same! One male, one female; both in unbearably (fatal) positions that are nevertheless titillating. I asked my students to write either about sex and death or about male/female sexual overlap, based on these images.

sigurdii: Frank Cheyne Pape (1878 - 1972)Illustrtions for Book...

Fri, 29 Mar 2013 11:56:37 -0400

sigurdii:

Frank Cheyne Pape (1878 - 1972)
Illustrtions for Book of Russian Tales 1916

October 15, 1982 - White House Press Briefing

Thu, 28 Mar 2013 21:42:29 -0400

October 15, 1982 - White House Press Briefing:

Q: Larry, does the President have any reaction to the announcement—the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta, that AIDS is now an epidemic and have over 600 cases?
MR. SPEAKES: What’s AIDS?
Q: Over a third of them have died. It’s known as “gay plague.” (Laughter.) No, it is. I mean it’s a pretty serious thing that one in every three people that get this have died. And I wondered if the President is aware of it?
MR. SPEAKES: I don’t have it. Do you? (Laughter.)
Q: No, I don’t.
MR. SPEAKES: You didn’t answer my question.
Q: Well, I just wondered, does the President—
MR. SPEAKES: How do you know? (Laughter.)
Q: In other words, the White House looks on this as a great joke?
MR. SPEAKES: No, I don’t know anything about it, Lester.
Q: Does the President, does anybody in the White House know about this epidemic, Larry?
MR. SPEAKES: I don’t think so. I don’t think there’s been any—
Q: Nobody knows?
MR. SPEAKES: There has been no personal experience here, Lester.
Q: No, I mean, I thought you were keeping—
MR. SPEAKES: I checked thoroughly with Dr. Ruge this morning and he’s had no—(laughter)—no patients suffering from AIDS or whatever it is.
Q: The President doesn’t have gay plague, is that what you’re saying or what?
MR. SPEAKES: No, I didn’t say that.
Q: Didn’t say that?
MR. SPEAKES: I thought I heard you on the State Department over there. Why didn’t you stay there? (Laughter.)
Q: Because I love you, Larry, that’s why. (Laughter.)
MR. SPEAKES: Oh, I see. Just don’t put it in those terms, Lester. (Laughter.)
Q: Oh, I retract that.
MR. SPEAKES: I hope so.
Q: It’s too late.

"I usually take a walk after breakfast, write for three hours, have lunch and read in the afternoon...."

Thu, 28 Mar 2013 14:39:23 -0400

“I usually take a walk after breakfast, write for three hours, have lunch and read in the afternoon. Demons don’t like fresh air - they prefer it if you stay in bed with cold feet; for a person who is as chaotic as me, who struggles to be in control, it is an absolute necessity to follow these rules and routines. If I let myself go, nothing will get done.”

- Ingmar Bergman (via adieufranz)

“If one desires to be convinced of the fact that there are...

Wed, 06 Feb 2013 14:24:21 -0500

“If one desires to be convinced of the fact that there are men—beasts—in this city, who are two (sic) low to be classed as men; who are merely walking human forms of filth in men’s clothing; who wear fine suits, a white vest, a silk hat, and carry a cane, yet whose very touch would contaminate one who came in contact with them; if one desires to be convinced of this fact, all he has to do is to pay a visit to the Randolph Street bridge, any time between the hours of 9 and 11 o’clock at night.”

Slumming literature — where the news writer or reporter would visit the “slums” in order to portray the dirtiest, darkest parts of the city — were very popular at the end of the nineteenth century. They were titillating for middle-class readers, played on their fears that bad people walked among them unrecognized (see “filth in men’s clothing”)… and gave information about where to go (meet me at Randolph Street bridge tonight, honey).

See works by Chad Heap and Scott Herring for more! For concerns about deceit in appearance, see Karen Halttunen.

Source: Chicago Reader. More excerpts at the source! Taken from the Daily Inter-Ocean, May 22, 1879.

From Marvel Boy #1, Astonishing #3. Dates: December 1950/April...

Wed, 06 Feb 2013 09:36:19 -0500

From Marvel Boy #1, Astonishing #3. Dates: December 1950/April 1951. Titles: “Marvel Boy and the Lost World,” and “Runaway Planet.”

Credits: Stan Lee / Bill Everett - Writer
Russ Heath / Bill Everett - Penciler
Russ Heath / Bill Everett - Inker

An example, perhaps, of feminized perceptions of “Uranians” - Karl Heinrich Ulrichs’ word for homosexuals - persisting into the 50s!

Source: Super Mega Monkey’s Marvel Comics Chronology.

“For their own more private and masturbatory purposes, the...

Wed, 06 Feb 2013 04:48:14 -0500

“For their own more private and masturbatory purposes, the Uranians collected artworks of a different sort: nudes of Italian boys by photographers such as Wilhelm von Gloeden (1856-1931), residing in Taormina, Sicily, and his distant relative Wilhelm (Guglielmo) von Plüschow (1852-1930), residing mostly in Rome 1 — photographs that have themselves become collectables dispersed by auction houses and chronicled in sales catalogues. However, for the Uranian scholar, catalogues have much to tell, and von Gloeden’s guest book was itself a catalogue of the paederastically-inclined, and included the signature of Oscar Wilde, one of his staunchest admirers.2 Like children with packets of baseball cards, the Uranians exchanged these salacious photographs as a form of pictorial insinuation and friendship.”Michael Matthew Kaylor, Secreted Desires. The Major Uranians: Hopkins, Pater and Wilde, Brno, Czech Republic: Masaryk University, 2006, p. 86-87.

Karl Heinrich Ulrichs came up with a term for men with a woman’s soul (those with contrary sexual instinct, often posed as part of the history of homosexuality), “Uranians,” from the Symposium by Plato.

Source: Reves Siciliens.

rrosehobart: Designer unknown - Cirque Daniellis - La femme...

Tue, 05 Feb 2013 19:12:27 -0500

rrosehobart:

Designer unknown - Cirque Daniellis - La femme araignée

: catalogue.swanngalleries.com

"My hand touched his organ. I was sexually aroused, but no more than usual in such situations. ..."

Tue, 05 Feb 2013 16:58:59 -0500

“My hand touched his organ. I was sexually aroused, but no more than usual in such situations. Suddenly I saw a small, yet quite brightly glowing spark on my organ, which was being touched by his hand: as far as I can remember… it was a yellowish white light, not a bluish one. The spark did not sit on the end of the object, as with St. Elmo’s fire, but rather on a point at the rim of the penis. The rest of the rim did not glow. The spark did not move; it stayed in one and the same place and was not blinking. As long as I kept my gaze on it, I could see it. This lasted for at least a few minutes.”

- From a letter to Karl Heinrich Ulrichs, reprinted in Ulrichs’ The Riddle of “Man-Manly” Love, first published in 1864 under the pseudonym “Numa Numantius.” This excerpt from Michael A. Lombardi-Nash’s translation, 1994, vol. 1.

“The first I shall present is a most frightful monster...

Wed, 16 Jan 2013 04:48:06 -0500

“The first I shall present is a most frightful monster indeed, representing an hairy child. It was covered over with hair like a beast. That which rendered it yet more frightful was, that its navel was in the place where its nose should stand, and his eyes placed where his mouth should have been, and its month was in the chin. It of the male kind, and born in France in the year 1597.”

From Aristotle’s Masterpiece, Chapter 9, Section 2, “Of Monsters, and monstrous births.”

From Aristotle’s Masterpiece, Chapter 9, Section...

Tue, 15 Jan 2013 23:58:58 -0500

From Aristotle’s Masterpiece, Chapter 9, Section 2.

“By this figure, you will see that although the arms are missing yet they are supplied by other members.

Nature to us sometimes does Monsters show,
That we by them may our own mercies know;
And thereby sin’s deformity may see
Than which there’s nothing can more monstrous be.”

"The inclinations of virgins to marriage is to be known by many symptoms; for when they arrive to..."

Tue, 15 Jan 2013 23:52:00 -0500

“The inclinations of virgins to marriage is to be known by many symptoms; for when they arrive to ripe age, which is about fourteen or fifteen, their natural purgations begin to flow; and then the blood, which no longer serves for the increase of their bodies, does, by its abounding, stir up their minds to venery: to which also external causes may incite them. For their spirits are brisk and inflamed when they arrive at this age, and their bodies are often more heated by their eating sharp and salt things; and by spices, by which their desire of venereal embraces becomes very great, and at some critical junctures very insupportable.”

- From Aristotle’s Masterpiece, unknown author, ca 1684.

I’ve been rereading this late 17th century tract — an entry in the fine western tradition of sexual education-cum-pornography (pun intended) — and having a lovely time with it. You can read the full book at Ex-Classics or via Amazon Kindle, both for free.

Hilariously, the Amazon reviews of the kindle books are people saying, “I don’t think this is actually by Aristotle. Is it? He mentions the Bible, and Aristotle was an ancient Greek, right?” No, it is not by Aristotle.

Booker sacked out next to me.

Sun, 13 Jan 2013 23:02:00 -0500

Booker sacked out next to me.

Sticky Comics.

Wed, 25 Jul 2012 09:50:28 -0400

Sticky Comics.