As I’ve mentioned a couple of times I grew up in the rural south. So last summer when for the first time I actually went to New York City and needed to take the (legendary) A Train to Greenwich Village I got pretty lost. And if I’d tried to brag that I knew my way around the subways there people would have called me out for bullshitting pretty quickly.
I bring this up because of a Details Magazine article called “Is It OK to Demand Anal Sex?” Jessica Valenti of Feministing first posted it.
Amanda Marcotte of Pandagon and her commenters brilliantly dismantle the authors and interviewees who claim to persistently demand, and constantly be given, anal sex… so they can brag about it to their male friends.
I just want to bring up one point though. Check out the accompanying illustration from the article
Does the placement or alignment of the tracks, tunnel, or train in that image accurately suggest impending anal sex? Not at all. Impending conventional rear-entry vaginal sex, maybe. In other words it’s a desperately clueless illustration that, I think, mirrors the cluelessness of the would-be-worldly gentlemen who participated in the production of the article at any point.
My first clue would be that by all accounts including my own personal experience, boys in lockerrooms brag about how much and what kind of sex they’re having up to, but no further than, the point where they begin actually having sex! That the interviewees spoke glowingly about bragging rights sounds pretty, um, adolescent and inexperienced.
Submitted by 1483 (not verified) on Thu, 2007-07-26 01:30.
I find the image disturbing, but it seems to me that it's a deliberate visual reference to the final scene in Hitchcock's North by Northwest--even the landscape around the "tunnel" is the same. Hitchcock cut from a shot of the two characters in a berth on the train on their honeymoon to an exterior shot of the speeding train entering a tunnel.
I was too lazy to find the actual still, but here is the storyboard: http://www.mypicshare.com/rtv9ohtmpic.html
If we look at the final scene of the movie I think we'd find that it's very close to this. The camera's POV is exactly similar to the POV in the photo, as I remember. The crumpled tan sheets here mimic the desert landscape too.
For the record, I found it crude when I saw the movie, and no less so now.
Submitted by 1483 (not verified) on Thu, 2007-07-26 02:29.
Oops, sorry, double post!
Notice that even in the storyboard the words "The End" immediately appear during that shot imprinted over the image. My memory of the film is that it happens there also. What i linked is only the storyboard.
In any case, as offensive as the image in Details is, I believe this was an homage to the famous scene in Hitchcock. Is it offensive? Yes, I think so. Hitchcock used that scene as a sly way around the censors, and it's a crude joke.
I think this photographer is largely ignorant rather than overtly misogynistic, and was probably merely stupid rather than evil, and thought making an allusion to a famous scene was a cheap way of lending the photo artistic credibility. It's still wrong, but it isn't the same order of evil as a photographer in 2007 spontaneously thinking that this image would capture something meaningful about anal sex (or any sex).
Submitted by 1483 (not verified) on Wed, 2007-07-11 18:06.
For some reason after seeing that picture, this song keeps playing in my head:
She'll be coming 'round the mountain when she comes, (when she comes).
She'll be coming 'round the mountain when she comes, (when she comes).
She'll be coming 'round the mountain, she'll be coming 'round the mountain,
She'll be coming 'round the mountain when she comes. (when she comes).
She'll be drivin' six white horses when she comes, etc.
Oh we'll all come out to meet her when she comes, etc.
We will kill the old red rooster when she comes, etc.

We'll be havin' chicken and dumplings when she comes, etc.
We'll all be shoutin' "Halleluja" when she comes, etc.
Listen, with a lover that can't tell one tunnel from another, I'd be shouting Halleluja, too, if I could finally come.
Submitted by 1483 (not verified) on Wed, 2007-07-11 15:36.
Articles like that one leave me rather relieved that I am ignored by the male gender. *sigh*
Submitted by 1483 (not verified) on Wed, 2007-07-11 15:49.
That illustration is definitely off. Jesus Christ.
On the general topic...I've had guys bring up very early in dating what kind of sex acts they are interested in, and it's usually creepy or a turn-off. There are things about a person's attitude towards sex that are useful and lovely to know (that they are generous lovers, liberal, open-minded, etc.) but I really don't want to know your masturbatory fantasies until I ask. (And if I like you well enough, I will ask, but not until I'm prepared to hear the scary stuff.)
There was the guy I met on an online dating site who sent me, within a week, an unsolicited photo (taken from his perspective) purporting to show another woman going down on him. This was supposed to attract me how, exactly? The fuck? He didn't even have the courtesy to note in the email that the photo was NSFW.
Submitted by 1483 (not verified) on Thu, 2007-07-12 11:56.
Aside from the rather obvious fact that it's never okay to demand any kind of sex from ANYBODY, what is with the men interviewed? They must have the world's least healthy sex lives.
[Which was basically what I was getting at -- kind of like the old monty python "say no more" skit. If you read the article itself they sound even more like tools. Thanks, WG. --fl]