An Anonymous Patron writes “http://www.nerve.com/regulars/scanner/10_18_05/
Decades before Dan Savage advised his readers that “Eating pussy can no longer be regarded as some sort of above-and-beyond-the-call indulgence. Cunnilingus is standard. Any make or model that doesn’t come with cunnilingus should be immediately returned to the showroom,” Sanford Berman, a public librarian in Minnesota, took the Library of Congress to task for filing “see also” references to “cunnilingus” and “fellatio” under the subject heading for “sexual perversion.” Berman also suggested the revision or deletion of subject headings such as “Yellow Peril,” “Jewish Question,” “delinquent women,” “Mohammedanism,” and “literature, immoral.” The Library of Congress has (slowly) implemented a number of his suggestions.
Just last month, the bearded, bespectacled seventy-two year old wrote the Library of Congress to “warmly suggest” the creation of a new subject heading close to our hearts: “anal fisting.” And for that, he is our crush of the week. — C. Fernsebner
[via Bookslut: http://www.bookslut.com/blog/archives/2005_10.php
suggestion
Well, I certainly hope LC won’t take this suggestion sitting down.
headings long gone
I don’t know about you, but if I were an author I wouldn’t mind having my work listed under “literature, immoral.”
Re:headings long gone
if you were gay, you might.
unsafe sex
To be a smoker today is to be a pariah. Shove your hand up someone’s ass and that’s just foreplay.
Not all sex is healthy sex and an act that puts your body at serious risk should stay under the ‘deviant’ heading.
Re:unsafe sex
And, of course, the criteria by which something might be considered a serious risk is whether or not it makes you squeamish instead of something like factual medical evidence; right? So, . . . how many people per hundred thousand have died from hemorrhoids over the last five years?
Re:unsafe sex
Is that your standard for being put under the ‘deviant’ heading? Whether or not the sex involved puts the body at serious risk? So, Oral sex (between man-man, man-woman, woman-woman) should not be cataloged under ‘deviant’, right?
And, sex with a sheep, as long as it is protected sex, would not be considered ‘deviant’ either. Unless of course, it was with a ram, and the ram took offense… but that’s a whole different story.
Hmmm…. what would the differences between smoking and fisting be… let me think. Well, at the moment at least, fisting is not done (generally) in public, and I’m reasonably certain that people would be much more upset having to observe someone fisting someone else on the street corner than seeing someone smoking on the street corner.
AND.. I have not seen any dicussion of the effects of “Second Hand Fisting”. Unless it can speed up the effects of Macular Degeneration, I don’t see what the harm to a third party would be. Where as, drawing in the smoke from some ass who has decided that not only should they smoke, but everyone else around them should, can cause harm: IMHO, and the Cig Industry not withstanding. Unless someone wants to argue that it is actually beneficial to suck in half-burned carbon into my lungs.
Re:unsafe sex
Amazing that from one thing you can assume so many others.
Re:unsafe sex
If it doesn’t kill you its okay? Not a very balanced approach. I consider it a serious risk because I know its a serious risk. It shouldn’t take a scientific study to tell you that if A is larger then B and you try and insert A inside of B then there is going to be a problem.
Re:unsafe sex
Which assumptions are those? The effects of second hand fisting? That sex with a sheep (while protected) wouldn’t be considered deviant because there is not serious risk of bodily harm? I am assuming that since you didn’t add any other defintions of ‘deviant’ that serious risk of bodily harm would be the only criteria for defining a sex act as ‘deviant’.
Re:unsafe sex
Doesn’t have to be limited to that and I didn’t say it did. Don’t really have any interest in coming up with a be-all-end-all definition for deviant sex, doesn’t seem necessary for the topic.
Re:unsafe sex
I think it’s necessary if you’re going to make the claim that a particular sexual activity is deviant. There is more there than just the fact that it is potentially injurious to the body. It just seems like you’re trying to slide all those other definitions in with the one definition you provided… sort of like having a rider on a bill…
So would bodily harm, in and of itself, be sufficient for labeling a sexual activity ‘deviant’? What about other voluntary activites that equally have a potential for serious bodily injury? Many of the xtreme sports come to mind. Maybe the could be recatagorized as Sports, Deviant. Actually, I think that would please the participants.
“Doesn’t have to be limited to that and I didn’t say it did.”
Actually I agree. I think you understand the point I was making, and I will hopefully not have this discussion with you the next time I post something and don’t post every aspect of what I think about that particular topic.
Re:unsafe sex
Robert, you and I could post back and forth dozens times and you wouldn’t offer up anything unless you were specifically asked. You’re too busy trying to poke holes in other peoples arguments to offer any of your own. That’s how you choose to be, so stop whining.
I think it’s necessary if you’re going to make the claim that a particular sexual activity is deviant. There is more there than just the fact that it is potentially injurious to the body. It just seems like you’re trying to slide all those other definitions in with the one definition you provided… sort of like having a rider on a bill…
What other definitions? All I have said is that it “puts your body at serious risk” and should be listed under deviant. That’s all I said and its all I’m going to say.
Re:unsafe sex
LOL.. I’m not whining. I’m simply pointing out what I see as a double standard on your part.
Re:unsafe sex
If something somebody else does doesn’t kill you, or is not an infliction of them upon you, it’s none of your business.
This is the same way people “knew” the earth was the center of the universe and that the sun and everything else revolved around it. This is the same way Aristotle “knew” that men have more teeth than women, or that a heavier object would accelerate at a different rate than a lighter object and hit the ground first.
Ah, but your problem is not that A does not fit into B, your problem is that A does fit into B. If it didn’t, then A wouldn’t go there and other people wouldn’t be putting it there. Your overriding problem is that you still do not — and clearly will not — understand that something consenting adults do in the privacy of their own lives is not something you have to do in yours. You are just as free to choose to forgo anal fisting as they are to practice it, and their engaging in it does not cause any more harm to you than your forgoing it does to them.
Re:unsafe sex
Am I advocating banning it? No. I’m saying calling it for what it is, deviant. There will always be those who gravitate towards such things but labeling it prevents it from becoming accepted as normal.
Re:unsafe sex
1: Considering that a 60 to 66 percent majority of the American public still supports free speech that makes you a deviant.
2: Labelling something does not prevent it. Hell, carving a bunch of magic words in stone and calling them the Laws of God has not prevented even the “chosen” people from engaging in such behaviour for the last four thousand years.
3: For those who gravitate toward such things they are perfectly normal, or they wouldn’t do them.