While I grew up in Europe, males wore speedo-style briefs at the beach and pool. When I moved to the United States, my mother sent me to the day camp's pool day with a speedo. I was confronted with the culture shock that almost trousers were almost required swimwear. Everyone was shocked. I felt more confused than ashamed since I swam better than everyone else. And while I was biased in favor of speedos, an objective look at swimsuits tells us that:
speedos increase speed (because there's less drag)
speedos reduce buoyancy (no bubbles under the taint zone)
So why was the reaction so hostile? Why was everyone juvenile towards a preference? Who cares? I certainly wasn't making fun of anyone. Why can't we just get along? "Who gives a shit?" rhetorically asked eight-year-old Andkon.
That's called culture, especially a mono-culture that does not tolerate differences. The implications for grero are obvious: even with the massive evidence, culture has made it impermissible for anyone to wear speedos.
Speedos aren't just an analogy but a direct attack on masculinity. It's not just a metaphor about the power of culture. The hatred against speedos is actually explicitly anti-masculine. Given the functionality of speedos, why do people jeer at them? Why the juvenile snickering and hooting? If they are functionally better, people should embrace them, not hate them. The purpose of speedo hatred is to cover up masculinity, quite literally. Whereas burqas in the Islamic world cover up desired feminine aspects (curves, pretty hair, etc), speedos cover up the most visible sign of masculinity. So swim shorts are male burqas for the crotch, anti-masculine abominations. In our sexphobic culture, tits must be covered up and so must cocks. We must be ashamed of ourselves. We must pretend we don't have penises! And it's this shame that jeers down a functionally better swimsuit that would reveal our natural masculinity. It's like showing a car to the Amish. They have no use for innovation because they value slavery and subjugation to old ideas. No wonder grero (or alternatives) have not made much head way in the past.
My mother rarely gave me good advice, but she told me the hullabaloo over my speedo would die down with a day or two. She was right. After a few days no one cared anymore. But if we're afraid of wearing speedos or back down and submit to the majority's baboonery*, no progress can be made.
*Yes, it's a real word: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/baboonery
Seedos are handy for keeping your stuff up where it belongs and not hanging loose in the wind so to speek. Probably not good for babymaking however but that is another topic. Men should be allowed to show what they have as much as women do as long as we dont fall out. Ha.
: Re: 0005: Speedos
: bobhall69April 29, 2013, 10:47:48 AM
Glad to hear that you agree. I see this as a freedom to choose and if you have the guts (not overhanging too much) to wear what you want it is your choice. Nice to hear from a sensable guy. I Have grown tired of the double standards inposed by some in this world./
Isn't it interesting, though, that the guy who designed the classic speedo brief in 1960 -- Australian Peter Travis, now in his 80s -- is gay (at least he's alleged to be gay in http://bettermost.net/forum/index.php?topic=45731.0 ). Mr. Travis may simply have taken an idea for competition-style nylon briefs that had already been used by Olympic swimmers in the mid-50s, and persuaded the Speedo company to sell it commercially, according to http://scaq.blogspot.com/2008/01/peter-travis-80-invented-speedo-in-1961.html .
It's not too surprising that "budgie smugglers" and "banana hammocks" have always appealed to gay men; it's also not too surprising that they got people arrested for indecent exposure even in Australia in the earliest days of their existence. If you Google "speedo ban" you'll see that it isn't just the U.S. that's squeamish about these things: http://www.outtraveler.com/travel-tips/2013/04/24/speedo-ban-united-arab-emirates http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1205564/Alton-Towers-bans-Speedos-inappropriate-family-resort.html
It seems that a few years ago, Cape May, New Jersey **repealed** a 30-year-old ban that had originally been enacted because of complaints that gay men came to the beach to cruise in skimpy bathing suits. http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/offbeat/2005-04-30-Speedo-ban_x.htm
It also seems that in France, public swimming pools **require** men to wear speedo-style suits, by law, as a matter of hygiene. http://ourhouseinquercy.blogspot.com/2011/11/public-swimming-pools-in-france.html
I remember that when I was, oh, 12 or so, I had a red nylon swimsuit that wasn't quite a speedo, but that still showed more in front than anything I'd ever worn before. And I still remember the initial discomfort (combined with a certain degree of excitement) I felt each time I went to the local public swimming pool in that thing. Of course my self-consciousness wore off once I actually got in the water, but it always returned the next time I went to the pool.
I also remember the first time I saw real competition-style briefs, at the same public pool. There was a swim-team using the pool for practice, together with their coach; and all the guys -- a bit older than me I think -- wore black speedo-style briefs, and when the guys lined up at the edge of the pool ready to dive in they displayed conspicuous bulge. In fact I remember thinking that one guy had an outright erection.
I was a sheltered kid, and an only child -- I didn't know the terms "boner" or "hard-on" or even "erection", or what the significance of the phenomenon was except as a source of mingled shame and excitement -- until astonishingly late in the game. I can't remember how I thought about such physiological events before I had the words for them. But I'm not the only guy in my cohort who was ignorant about the facts of life, even in middle school. I remember being at a friend's house after school one day -- we must have been in 7th grade -- he introduced me to the Time/Life Science Library books, and lent me a novelization of the sci-fi movie _Forbidden Planet_; that's where we were intellectually -- and the conversation came, who knows how, to a point at which he asked me "You know how, when you think or talk about that stuff, your thing down there gets big and sticks out? Does that happen to you?". And I replied "Yeah." and left it at that. ;->
But as uncomfortable as I'd been in that red nylon bathing suit a few years earlier, I can only imagine the trepidation some of the guys on that swim team must have had to get over when they were handed those black briefs. "I have to wear **this**?" And silently, because there was no one with whom to talk about such things, "But what if I, you know. . .?" And practicing wearing the thing in the bedroom until the eroticism (you hope) is extinguished enough that you don't make a spectacle of yourself in front of the other guys, the coach, and your parents. These stories are on the Web these days, and kids can find out that other kids have the same problems and worries. That's definitely a good thing.
But yeah, the homoerotic charge of the speedo (and the jockstrap -- mandatory in my day, and was **that** an eyeful when I first saw one, and saw the other guys wearing them; and the wrestling singlet) have not gone away, though the increased visibility of all things gay has made it impossible for anybody -- even middle-school kids and their parents and coaches -- to ignore the fact that these are all fetish garments among gay men. And that's probably a source of the increased mockery and prudery surrounding such things, even worse than the way it was 40 or 50 years ago.
Isn't it interesting, though, that the guy who designed the classic speedo brief in 1960 -- Australian Peter Travis, now in his 80s -- is gay (at least he's alleged to be gay in http://bettermost.net/forum/index.php?topic=45731.0 ). Mr. Travis may simply have taken an idea for competition-style nylon briefs that had already been used by Olympic swimmers in the mid-50s, and persuaded the Speedo company to sell it commercially, according to http://scaq.blogspot.com/2008/01/peter-travis-80-invented-speedo-in-1961.html .
Hmmm, I didn't know all that about the Speedo, but as the article says the style wasn't new.
It's not too surprising that "budgie smugglers" and "banana hammocks" have always appealed to gay men; it's also not too surprising that they got people arrested for indecent exposure even in Australia in the earliest days of their existence. If you Google "speedo ban" you'll see that it isn't just the U.S. that's squeamish about these things: http://www.outtraveler.com/travel-tips/2013/04/24/speedo-ban-united-arab-emirates http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1205564/Alton-Towers-bans-Speedos-inappropriate-family-resort.html
It seems that a few years ago, Cape May, New Jersey **repealed** a 30-year-old ban that had originally been enacted because of complaints that gay men came to the beach to cruise in skimpy bathing suits. http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/offbeat/2005-04-30-Speedo-ban_x.htm
It also seems that in France, public swimming pools **require** men to wear speedo-style suits, by law, as a matter of hygiene. http://ourhouseinquercy.blogspot.com/2011/11/public-swimming-pools-in-france.html
I remember that when I was, oh, 12 or so, I had a red nylon swimsuit that wasn't quite a speedo, but that still showed more in front than anything I'd ever worn before. And I still remember the initial discomfort (combined with a certain degree of excitement) I felt each time I went to the local public swimming pool in that thing. Of course my self-consciousness wore off once I actually got in the water, but it always returned the next time I went to the pool.
I also remember the first time I saw real competition-style briefs, at the same public pool. There was a swim-team using the pool for practice, together with their coach; and all the guys -- a bit older than me I think -- wore black speedo-style briefs, and when the guys lined up at the edge of the pool ready to dive in they displayed conspicuous bulge. In fact I remember thinking that one guy had an outright erection.
Show-er vs grower :-) Such show-ers can't tuck it downwards either. But what if you do get a real erection that way?
I was a sheltered kid, and an only child -- I didn't know the terms "boner" or "hard-on" or even "erection", or what the significance of the phenomenon was except as a source of mingled shame and excitement -- until astonishingly late in the game. I can't remember how I thought about such physiological events before I had the words for them. But I'm not the only guy in my cohort who was ignorant about the facts of life, even in middle school. I remember being at a friend's house after school one day -- we must have been in 7th grade -- he introduced me to the Time/Life Science Library books, and lent me a novelization of the sci-fi movie _Forbidden Planet_; that's where we were intellectually -- and the conversation came, who knows how, to a point at which he asked me "You know how, when you think or talk about that stuff, your thing down there gets big and sticks out? Does that happen to you?". And I replied "Yeah." and left it at that. ;->
I wonder what the response to "No, that's completely weird. Go see a doctor." would be.
But as uncomfortable as I'd been in that red nylon bathing suit a few years earlier, I can only imagine the trepidation some of the guys on that swim team must have had to get over when they were handed those black briefs. "I have to wear **this**?" And silently, because there was no one with whom to talk about such things, "But what if I, you know. . .?" And practicing wearing the thing in the bedroom until the eroticism (you hope) is extinguished enough that you don't make a spectacle of yourself in front of the other guys, the coach, and your parents. These stories are on the Web these days, and kids can find out that other kids have the same problems and worries. That's definitely a good thing.
But yeah, the homoerotic charge of the speedo (and the jockstrap -- mandatory in my day, and was **that** an eyeful when I first saw one, and saw the other guys wearing them; and the wrestling singlet) have not gone away, though the increased visibility of all things gay has made it impossible for anybody -- even middle-school kids and their parents and coaches -- to ignore the fact that these are all fetish garments among gay men. And that's probably a source of the increased mockery and prudery surrounding such things, even worse than the way it was 40 or 50 years ago.
My mother told me only poor kids wore the trunks in 1950's Hungary. It must have been more of a status symbol to be able to buy a specific garment for swimming instead of just wear old shorts.
I was born in the early 50s and went through puberty in the 60s (I had my first masturbatory orgasm shortly after the premiere of the original Star Trek TV show ;-> ), and the degree of my ignorance surrounding the whole subject of sex must be inconceivable to somebody growing up in the age of the World Wide Web (except maybe for Mormons ;-> ). But even in those days, the ignorance, fear, and shame might possibly have been less intense for a boy with brothers, or a boy who got along with his father better than I did, or who was better-integrated into his cohort of male peers than I was. Or maybe not. I guess I'll never know.
I can remember when I was 4 or 5, before I had to go to school, taking an afternoon nap one day next to my mother in my parents' bedroom in our suburban house. I had been looking at a kids' picture-book earlier that day, and even then there were certain images that were exciting to me in a way that I would now call erotically- charged. (Finding and eliminating all images that might have an erotic potential for any kid anywhere would probably require forbidding altogther the practice of illustrating childrens' books -- which is I guess what orthodox Muslims believe anyway: that it's sacrilegeous to depict Allah's creatures!)
So I'd been looking at a book of fairy-tales or something, and it had pictures of people in medieval-style tight breeches, with lots of leg -- prominent calves -- and hints of buttock. And the little five-year-old pervert that was me got turned on. And later, in bed at naptime, pulling the covers over my head, I somehow found myself with my pants down, flipping my soft penis back and forth with an index finger while thinking about those pictures and staring at the calf of my own leg. I must have known, even then, that this was something that had to be done under the covers and out of sight. And then my mother, wondering what the hell I was up to, yanked the covers back and saw me _in flagrante_, and yelled at me "Wait til I tell your father what you've been doing!" I was terrified, and waited all day for my father to come home from work and for the other shoe to drop, and then nothing happened. (I'm sure the conversation took place, and I can imagine my father's reaction: "Oh, for crying out loud, he's a **boy**!" But nobody bothered to defuse the situation **for me**.)
I never connected this incident to the innocent teasing games that I sometimes played with my parents over the kitchen table, asking them "Where do babies come from?" and getting the inevitable answer "You'll find out when you're older." And repeating the question more insistently "But I want to know now!" and getting the same answer until they got tired of the game and yelled at me to knock it off and go play.
Some years later -- from the music I remember on the radio I think I must have been 9 (Chubby Checker was singing "Let's twist again like we did last summer" ;-> ) -- I spent a few weeks during the summer with my country cousins, daughters of my father's older brother, one the same age as me and one a couple of years older. It was the first time I'd spent a substantial period of time away from home, and I was proud that I managed it with a minimum of crying at night from homesickness. My cousins did not live in a suburban development with endless concrete sidewalks and asphalt streets, but in a place where there were wild raspberries to gather, and a creek with minnows and watercress. I was recruited as part of the housework brigade too, and under my cousins' direction I managed to clean a toilet all by myself, which I thought was pretty cool. But the most memorable experience of that visit was when my youngest cousin (and we were both pre-pubescent, remember) was getting dressed one morning and I caught a glimpse of her naked groin. And there was nothing there except a slight vertical fold. I was flabbergasted! "What's that?" I asked as she hastily covered herself. "Can I see?" And she deigned to give me another quick glimpse. This was the cause of a great deal of hilarity on the part of my cousin -- "You mean you **don't know** that girls are different from boys down there?" And the truth was -- no, it had never occurred to me. For all I knew, a penis is just a thing to pee through, and I had had no prior reason to think that girls didn't have one too. My cousin wasn't cruel about it, but the startling discovery cast a pall over the rest of the visit, for me. We went to a lakeside beach that afternoon, and I remember that the whole time I worried, with a kind of sick feeling in the pit of my stomach, that there would be unpleasant consequences to my discovery -- that my cousin would tell my uncle and aunt what I had asked her to show me, or that my own parents would find out, or **something** bad.
I don't think I connected this discovery about female anatomy with another incident I remember, which may have taken place earlier or later, I don't know. There was a boy -- a rough-and-tumble "red-blooded" boy named Gerry G. who was two grades ahead of me and who lived across the street. Sometimes -- presumably in earlier grades -- I would tag along with him and a group of neighborhood kids on the walk to school in the morning -- the local elementary school was on the main road with the churches and shopping center that ran through the middle of the suburban development we lived in. And one day Gerry was being "a man" by telling his pals an off-color story. I found this kind of thing threatening -- not because I was a prude, necessarily, but because I knew it was stuff that adults wouldn't like ("transgressive," a pomo theorist would say ;-> ) and I was innately afraid of where that kind of thing might lead. so anyway, he was spinning this kids' pornographic tale of sitting in class and seeing up a teacher's skirt under her desk and catching a glimpse of her "pussy". I had no idea what "pussy" meant, but I was struck by the way Gerry salivated around the word, as if he had a mouthful of fresh chewing gum.
And then there was the time that I, completely inadvertently and innocently, put my foot through the hornet's nest of sex in a way that got the neighbors up in arms. When I was 10 or 11, give or take, I started getting kids' illustrated science books as gifts (wonderful books, like the kids' version of the Time/Life coffee-table book _The World We Live In_, or _The Wonders of Life on Earth_). Anyway, one of them was called _The Human Body_ (in fact, it was exactly this book: http://img0.etsystatic.com/000/0/5888370/il_fullxfull.287287604.jpg Amazing, how you can reconstruct your past from the Web nowadays. ;-> ) So at that stage, while I knew a bit more about "where babies come from" -- I knew there was a sperm, and an egg, and a zygote, and a blastula, and a gastrula, and all the stages of fetal development -- I was nevertheless still completely ignorant about the role of the vagina, and the penis that gets erect, and penetration, thrusting, orgasm, and ejaculation. The "fun stuff". ;-> I think I had a theory for a while that "catching a sperm" was something like catching a cold -- that if people lived close together a sperm could be transmitted like a virus. Or maybe you had to kiss somebody. Or sleep in the same bed. I didn't think it through very clearly. I don't think I even knew the "scientific" word "penis" at that time -- I'll spare you the ridiculous word my mother used for the organ. (Hm... did she make it up, or did it come from some tradition or other? I should try to find out one of these days.) I still can't bring myself to tell anyone that odd word my mother used. (I actually heard it used as a personal name on a TV show once, so maybe it's a real word with a real history); but it nevertheless wasn't as bad as the name used by my other (male) cousins' mother -- "Tinker Bell". Can you imagine seeing Peter Pan (or anything with a Disney intro containing the trademark green-skirted fairy) without turning beet-red after an entire childhood spent thinking of your penis as your "Tinker Bell"? (I can guess the etymology -- "Tinker" from "tinkle" as in "urinate"; "Bell" possibly because the glans looks like an inverted bell, cf. "[ding] dong".) I didn't learn the "manly" street word "cock" until I was much older -- school kids used the word "dick" (which oddly enough, still has the most erotic charge for me), and the myriad other words I learned much later. "Cock" and "dick" still seem to be the ones heard most often in porn dialog.
Anyway, so at the time I had acquired this kids' book about the human body, there was a little girl who used to come over to my house named Debbie B. I think she was a year or two younger than me, and lived a few houses down from us. The family had a slightly foreign air -- I think the father may have been ex-military, and the mother was French. They had a big old black Citroën, with running boards (the car was non-functional, I think, a never-completed restoration project) parked in the street in front of their house. Little Debbie spoke with a bit of an accent, but I don't think she actually knew much French -- she once told me that "bateau" means "boat", but she didn't know too many other words. I presume the family was Catholic.
I had become something of a know-it-all science nerd by then, and I remember one conversation that took place in our back yard where my parents had installed a swing-set and sliding board. We were using the sliding board, and I asked Debbie if she knew why the grass was green. And she said "Because God made it that way." And I said "No, it's because it has chlorophyll in it." So in that spirit, one day she had come over, and we were hanging out in the carport, and I brought out _The Human Body_ and showed it to her. I don't remember particularly dwelling on the chapter about human reproduction (which in any case **starts** with the fertilized egg and leaves out the scurrilous preliminaries -- although, come to think, there may be **very** oblique allusion to them in a single sentence along the lines of "after a man and a woman have embraced") -- but that's the part that stuck with little Debbie, apparently (and not so surprisingly, in retrospect). So she went home and started asking her parents questions. And her parents were not at all amused. Her father marched up to our door (I was not a witness to that scene, fortunately) to express his displeasure and demand that my parents reveal to him everything that I had been telling his daughter. So then (after Mr. B had departed -- I never had to face Debbie's parents directly) **my** parents (who were none too enlightened themselves) gave **me** the third degree. Debbie had apparently used the phrase "kiss and swell up", and so my parents wanted to know what **I** knew about this "kiss and swell up" stuff, and what I had said about it to little Debbie. Fortunately, it didn't take me long to realize that all this must have something to do with the book I had recently shown her, so I got out the book and showed the relevant chapter to my parents (which got me off the hook as far as any serious blame or punishment from my own parents was concerned, but didn't spare me the emotional fallout from what was to follow), and my mother (brave woman, I suppose, but not quite brave or enlightened enough) took the book and marched down to the Bs' house, only to have the door unceremoniously slammed in her face. And that was the end of all our interaction with the Bs -- Debbie and I were forbidden to play with or speak to each other, I was forbidden to go near the Bs' house (I was even reluctant to walk or ride my bicycle past their place for years afterward), the Bs would no longer speak to my parents, and apparently there was plenty of juicy gossip exchanged with and by the other neighbors. I suppose it's something of a credit to my parents that they didn't take the book away from me (I never actually thought of that until just now). But quite a few years later, during some kind of tiff between me and my mother, she glared at me and said "**You're** the reason I can't hold my head up in this neighborhood." I assumed at the time that she was dragging up the Debbie B. incident, and maybe she was, but it's also possible that I had acquired the air of a queer kid by then. (I never came out to my parents, but I know they had their dark suspicions.)
That same book popped up unexpectedly many, many years later. I was channel surfing one day (on the TV, which I almost never watch anymore in these days of the Web), and I came across a rerun of _The Wonder Years_ (which I didn't watch regularly, but I knew what it was about). I think it was in fact an episode in which Kevin is dreading having "the talk" with his father, and there was a scene in which Fred Savage as Kevin Arnold is lying on the living-room sofa with The Book (**my** book!) propped open on his stomach. I got quite a kick out of seeing that book again, on TV no less!
Speaking of the "air of queerness" that must have caused concern and disappointment for my parents, particularly by the time I'd reached adolescence, the first memory I have of crossing some kind of gender-role boundary is a very early one. I think I may have been only 3. It was Christmas Eve, and I was getting some Christmas presents early, and one of them was somewhat odd -- it was a kid-size toy clothes iron, maybe a third the scale of the real thing, painted red. My father didn't like the present, and he said "Santa Claus must have left that at the wrong house. Little boys don't play with things like that." And he made a move to snatch it away from me ("Let's give this back to Santa so he can take it to the right house.") and of course I didn't like getting a present only to have it taken away the next minute. So I started to cry, and wanted to keep the iron. And my father got mad. And that really spoiled the whole Christmas-eve scene (and must have had a significant emotional impact for the memory to have stuck with me from such an early age). In recent years, I've formulated a hypothesis as to where that iron might have come from. Electric steam irons were more common appliances in those days than they are now, and of course they're also hazardous for little kids to be around. I suspect that my kindly grandmother had had to make me cry by chasing me away from her ironing board, for safety's sake, and made up for it by getting me the little iron of my own for Christmas. It's not like I had any particularly strong desire to play with it, though I kept it for many years.
Another incident must have happened around the time I was 10 or 11, and was entirely innocent (if a little clueless) on my part, but must have caused my parents a fair amount of angst. I was sitting on the living-room couch early one evening in front of the TV, and my mother and father were in the kitchen. Either my father had just come home and we were just about to have supper, or we had just finished supper and my parents were having their evening drinks, leaving me a brief time alone with the TV before they took over the living room. And I asked (I have no memory of what may have prompted my question -- I may have asked out of sheer mischievousness, but I don't know why it would have occurred to me in the first place. Maybe it was something I'd just seen on TV.) "Hey -- if a man and a woman can get married, why can't a man and a man or a woman and a woman get married?". And my parents were **not** amused. "They just can't, and that's the end of **that** subject. We don't ever want to hear any more about it, and what the hell's the matter with you anyway, asking a question like that?" I realized instantly, just from the tone of the replies, that I'd gone where no kid ought to go, and I kept a very low profile for the rest of the evening, and my parents were distinctly on edge with me.
A couple of years later an attempted father-son bonding (ahem ;-> ) experience went sour. My father decided to go see the newly-released movie _Goldfinger_. My parents seldom went to the movies, and they weren't usually amenable to movie suggestions from **me** -- I'd wanted to see the George Pal _The Time Machine_ a few years earlier, but never got to go (I had to get the condensed version from a neighbor kid; some kids were skilled at retelling movies and TV episodes in those days) -- so it must have been entirely my father's idea. And I can (now) guess why -- it had the reputation of hovering right on the edge of being a "blue" movie (a fact my father would have heard bruited around at work). So my mother stayed home, and my father took me to see James Bond. I had no reason to refuse the invitation, and in fact I enjoyed the film a great deal -- as an **action** movie (I was blown away seeing that Lincoln Continental crushed into a little cube with the gangster inside it). The "blue" parts (Honor Blackman introducing herself by saying "I'm Pussy Galore." and Sean Connery muttering "I must be dreaming.") went completely over my head. I didn't remember those parts, and I had no memory of the burst of giggling that must have erupted in the theater at the name "Pussy Galore". (I still didn't know what "pussy" meant, apart from an affectionate word for "pet cat".) So when we got home, we all sat down at the kitchen table, and my mother and father had drinks. And my mother asked, with a bit of a leer, if I'd enjoyed the movie. And I said yes, and she said "I've heard it's a bit **racy** for a kid your age." And then my father (who must have been just a bit buzzed by this time) demanded "Is there anything you didn't understand about the movie? Huh? Is there anything you want me to **explain** to you? Huh? Is there? IS THERE?". And I couldn't figure out where the manifest hostility was coming from, and said "No. No." and sort of backed away from the table. And my father bore down on me, and repeated his question "Is there anything you want me to **explain** to you?", not letting up until my mother, sensing that something ugly was happening, raised her voice to my father and said "Jim! That's **enough**! Leave him alone." And I was dismissed to skulk away somewhere out of sight. I can now guess what was going on. This was going to be my father's opportunity to have "the talk". He was going to tell me all about "pussy", and my mother was probably in on it too. But his little fag of a son was too scared and clueless (too much of a "pussy" himself ;-> ) to cooperate in the fun. And so my father got mad. It was very weird and disturbing.
In the broader culture, more than three decades after my own "Debbie B." debacle, I stumbled across what I found to be a rather shocking example, and in a rather unexpected place, of the continuing minefield of potential trauma that anything related to sex can be for kids (and not just because sex is, in itself, a powerful biological urge). In the 90s there was a TV show called "Loveline" that grew out of a radio show of the same name. ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loveline ) It was presumably a more conventional and more heterosexually-oriented version of what Dan Savage does these days with his "Savage Love" podcast. It was hosted by a macho, wisecracking (and somewhat leering and obnoxious) comic named Adam Carolla (later host of "The Man Show") together with a pale-faced, tight-lipped, wire-rimmed-glasses-wearing "serious" psychiatrist named Dr. Drew Pinsky (who today counsels celebrities on TV about their addictions, or something). So people would call in about their relationship (and, gasp, tee-hee, sex!) problems, and Carolla would vet the callers and dismiss (with comic abuse) the ones he didn't deem serious enough for extended attention, and turn the "serious" cases over to "Dr. Drew" for a psychiatrist's "serious" advice.
So there was this one "Loveline" caller -- a mother -- who had burst into her young son's bedroom (whether he was prepubescent or postpubescent I do not recall) who was having a circle-jerk with his little buddies. They all had their dicks out, and fully erect, and were masturbating with gusto. I can't remember whether they were watching porn as well, or were just providing each other with visual stimulation. So mom shrieks a little, and drops the pizza she's carrying, and rushes out of the bedroom. And now she wants to know, from the "Loveline" experts, what, if anything, she should do about it. So Dr. Drew takes up this case with great seriousness, and replies that yes indeed she must do something. She must find the **ringleader** -- find out who instigated this outrage against morality and propriety -- and see to it that he is punished and that her son severs all ties with him! I couldn't believe what I was hearing from this guy. Remembering my own neighborhood scandal over the little girl and the science book, I heard "Dr. Drew" advising this mother to 1) Grill her own son on the facts. Which would presumably go something like this: "Who was the first boy to start talking dirty? Was it **you**? Who was the first boy to get an erection? Was it **you**? Who was the first boy to start rubbing his erection through his pants? Was it **you**? Who was the first boy to take his penis out of his pants? Was it **you**? Who was the boy who suggested that everybody else do the same thing? Was it **you**? Who was the boy who brought over the porn tape (if there was one)? Did **you** supply the pornography?" And then 2) after subjecting her own son to detailed interrogation (assuming she had the stomach for it, after shrieking and dropping the pizza), she's supposed to call up the parents of her son's friends and have similar conversations with each of them. "My son Johnny says your son Bobby took his erect penis out of his pants last night in Johnny's bedroom in front of Johnny and the other boys gathered there, and starting masturbating." Etc. And this is going to "get to the bottom of it" and she, and the parents of all her kid's friends, are thereby going to regain control of their kids' sexual morality. And there's not going to be any shouting, or hung-up telephones, or legal threats, among the parents. And people are going to be perfectly friendly with each other in the years to come when they pass each other in the supermarket. And there's not going to be any bullying or other humiliating fallout for little Johnny and his little friends at school or church or elsewhere in the neighborhood. Riiiight! My God, and this guy's supposed to be a professional counsellor! And he's not even a Mormon -- Wikipedia calls him a "nonobservant Jew" ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drew_Pinsky ). I was more than a little nonplussed that nothing seemed to have changed in more than thirty years, and that having an M.D. degree and training as a psychiatrist from the mid-80s and later apparently gives some adults no more insight into handling a situation involving kids and sex than my (non-college-educated) parents and Debbie B.'s parents had in the early 60s.
It's also the case, unfortunately, in today's atmosphere of near-hysteria about the potential for child abuse (and particularly child **sexual** abuse) that even enlightened adults can be walking a minefield if they dare to broach the subject of sex with children, even their own children. I suspect that in my own parents' generation, the inhibition was mostly due to their own hang-ups and embarrassment about the subject. But these days, an enlightened parent giving his own child clear information about the facts of life in all their variety -- clear information about masturbation or homosexuality, let's say -- might thereby incur a nontrivial risk of hearing from the local Child Welfare department if the kid passes on the information (and the identity of its source) to another child (and through that child to a paranoid adult, parent or otherwise) or directly to a paranoid adult (a teacher, a psychologist, a minister, a guidance counsellor, a pediatrician, or whoever). There's a good movie from the 80s about such a situation spinning out of control: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Good_Mother_(1988_film) There's a cute YouTube video -- apparently an excerpt from an episode of an adult-themed cable-TV comedy called _Weeds_: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weeds_(TV_series) -- in which "Uncle Andy" gives his (13-year-old?) nephew "Shane" a no-holds-barred stand-up-comic style lecture about masturbation: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FWzOQTFwRBE It's very entertaining, but in real life, in some areas of the country (or in some families) Uncle Andy could get in a lot of trouble for a frank talk like that.
Nevertheless, would-be censors (authors of the Child On-line Protection Act and similar legislation) have been kept at bay to the extent that all the information a kid needs is available on-line nowadays, in as much detail as desired. Including an ocean of free, high-quality pornography. Even when I was in my 20s, newsstand magazines were still tiptoeing at the edge of the envelope of what they could show without having their product seized by the authorities. Especially the homosexually-oriented magazines. In 1972 the newsstand magazines (like _After Dark_ and _Playgirl_ -- not the stuff you'd have to go to an adult bookstore to find) could show naked men in speedos, but no genitalia. Then a few years later, _Playgirl_ would show flaccid penises, but no erections (maybe the occasional semi-erection). Then came (by 1980) full erections, in a host of new titles: _Mandate_, _Honcho_, and the rest. But you still had to get the magazine past the store clerk, and you still had to pay money for it. Now, if you can get on Tumblr, you can get anything you'd care to see (which may change, now that Yahoo has acquired it, but that only means it'll go elsewhere). This widespread exposure is deplored by the religious right and other social conservatives. But I can't help but think it's overall a good thing. And it certainly ties into the Grero agenda -- widespread exposure, for instance, to gay porn, is desensitizing -- it makes people less likely to react with disgust to a form of sex which the viewer might not necessarily want to participate in himself, as well as, I would think, making it somewhat more likely that a viewer might be inclined to "sample the wares", so to speak, himself (though this would itself be evidence, from the point of view of the religious right, that pornography will destroy the fabric of public morality ;-> ). I've been both surprised and amused to see comments, on some of the Tumblr blogs and elsewhere, along the lines of "I'm straight and married and have kids, but I enjoy your blog. I have no desire to have sex with a man, but I just love looking at dicks!"
The very first pornography (not labelled as such) that I reacted to **as pornography** was inadvertently supplied to me by my father, in the form of a small collection of bodybuilding magazines left over from before he was married. Apparently he didn't think there was anything particularly embarrassing or "dangerous" about these, since he made no attempt to hide them, and in fact some of them were in a pile of reading material at the bottom of a bookcase in the living room. Though I found these within easy reach, I nevertheless somehow knew I had to be circumspect about looking at them. I'd wait until my parents were out of the house, and then get them out and look at them. I got very aroused looking at them, but I didn't yet know how to masturbate, so I'd just enjoy the feeling of arousal until it was time to hide the magazines again by putting them back exactly where I'd found them. One cover was a particular favorite: http://muscletrek.com/60s/jamespark.jpg The legs were a turn-on, and also something new -- that beautiful bulge in profile in the front of the briefs (rather daringly prominent by the standards of the time -- the reflection from the side of the shiny posing trunks could have been air-brushed out, but in this case it wasn't). The genital bulge became my primary erotic fetish in male imagery -- even more than exposed genitalia, the pouch of a speedo or jockstrap or tight underwear became the focus of arousal for me. I did finally learn to climax while looking at (or remembering) that cover, many times.
It's interesting (and maybe a sign of the naivete of more repressed times, when people just didn't think about such possibilities) that those muscle magazines were treated so casually by my father. As late as 1960, respectable college professors could have their careers ruined as a result of the police raiding their homes and finding magazines with images not much different from those in my father's modest collection: http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/greatpinkscare/ And five years after that, decency crusaders were watching the Charles Keating financed propaganda movie "Perversion for Profit": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perversion_for_Profit http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y_J55Fawfgk which rails against "physique" magazine as lures of homosexuality. And as the film's narrator, George Putnam, warns: "We know that once a person is perverted, it is practically impossible for that person to adjust to normal attitudes in regard to sex." But not Grero attitudes, eh?
Nowadays, the magazines themselves are collectors' items, and the images are freely available on the Web. A plethora of riches! "But psychiatrists believe that prolonged exposure of even the normal male adult to this type of publication, though he may not be aware of its true nature, will nevertheless pervert. Think then of the consequences to the inexperienced youth, who in purchasing and studying this material, becomes a pawn for these misfits -- these homosexuals! -- who have a slogan that betrays the evil of the breed: 'Today's conquest, they say, is tomorrow's competition.' See the tender age at which homosexuals prefer their conquests. Look here at the young face and bright smile which could be the hope of the world. But in the other half of the picture is revealed the seduction of the innocent."
It could have been worse. My parents were fairly typical of their generation. They smoked and drank too much.
My father came from a large family, finished high school, and had some post-high-school education (accounting courses at a fairly prestigious state university, if I recall correctly, but only an associate degree). He served in the military during World War II, at a desk job (because of the accounting training, presumably), and later got a job with a large corporation and quickly rose from a blue-collar entry-level position to a lower-echelon white-collar job -- as an accountant -- where he spent the rest of his career. He got married rather late, at the age of 33, to a woman 7 years his senior (who had been married before; her first husband died, I believe). Physically, he was a bit of a runt (think Woody Allen and you wouldn't be too far off) -- hence the bodybuilding literature (and the set of barbells that he had, but never used as far as I know). He overcompensated for his puny size with a big mouth and a rather overbearing personality (especially when he'd been drinking). He was a "hale fellow well met" glad-hand type, but he also had a flashpoint temper and tended to argue with people and hold long-lasting grudges against them. My father was no intellectual -- his idea of a fun weekend was to park himself in front of the TV or radio with a supply of beer and listen to or watch whatever kind of ball game was in season -- baseball or football. (I **hated** to be in the same room while that was going on, except when at a certain point in my life I started to notice football players' asses in their tight uniforms. ;-> ). Some people might say that my father had ambitions in life beyond his proper station -- his oldest surviving sister said to me a few years ago "We were never anything but blue collar people, Jimmy, but your father had Ambitions." He was a Republican and social conservative, of course (my parents **hated** JFK -- the first election during which I was old enough to know what was going on). Well-educated and genteel folk -- the kind he always hoped to impress -- probably saw through my father instantly and wrote him off as a crass blow-hard and know-it-all with a "my way or the highway" nasty attitude. But for all that he was responsible -- he kept his job, bought a house in the suburbs, raised a kid, put up with my mother, and while he may well have been an alcoholic by today's standards he never went on benders or crashed the car (though he did back over a bush next to the driveway one memorable night). The alcohol eventually caught up with him, and he died (in the care of his second wife -- my mother had died 12 years earlier) of liver failure brought on by chronic drinking in 1985 at the age of 68.
My mother finished school at 8th grade and never went any further. She had had clerical jobs before marrying, but never worked afterward. She never drove a car, so she was stuck in the house unless one of her more automotively-skilled and mobile girlfriends took her someplace. I gather she had once had some degree of physical attractiveness (think a seedier version of Shelley Winters), but she was always overweight, and she developed osteoarthritis and Type 2 diabetes as she got older. She couldn't have been a happy person, but she did her duty too -- cooked the meals, cleaned the house, and did the laundry. My father's family treated her with barely-concealed disdain -- they thought my father had chosen poorly or that she had "caught" him. Not only was she overweight, and not very well educated, but she could be shockingly childish and petulantly immature sometimes. As my father's aged sister also said to me "She just wasn't right in the head." In any case, her health finally failed and she died of a massive heart attack in the spring of 1973, at the age of 62. I had moved out of the house by then. My father was out mowing the lawn when it happened, and when he came back into the house, he found her dead on the kitchen floor.
I do think my parents would have been better off if they'd skipped the conventional thing and hadn't insisted on trying to raise a child. Another sister of my father's once confided in me, on the verge of adulthood, that having a child was entirely my father's idea and at his insistence; my mother hadn't wanted any children, and indeed she suffered during the late-in-life pregnancy.
I'm afraid they didn't get much back for their efforts -- I was an all-around disappointment to them. By the time I graduated from high school, I didn't like them, and they didn't like me.
So it goes, sometimes.
> Do you think the Loveline episode is available > here: http://www.lovelinetapes.com/ ??
I suspect not. While one of the curators of that archive ("Giovanni" http://www.lovelinetapes.com/faq/ ) claims to have discovered Loveline via the MTV television spinoff of the radio show (that ran between 1996 and 2000, according to IMDb) the archive itself seems to contain only recordings of the radio version of the show.
The particular episode I mentioned was on MTV.
There are a handful of the MTV episodes on YouTube, but chances are it's not there (the YouTube shows probably ended up there because of the celebrity guests -- largely music-industry celebrities, in the case of the TV show -- it was MTV after all).
According to Wikipedia: "A TV version of Loveline ran on MTV from 1996–2000; which was produced by Stone Stanley Entertainment. It followed the same general format as the radio program but featured a live audience and a female co-host. The female co-host role was filled over the course of the series by MTV VJ Idalis, actresses Kris McGaha, Catherine McCord, Diane Farr and comedienne Laura Kightlinger. Loveline TV was filmed at Hollywood Center Studios."
I don't remember the "female co-host" or the guest celebrities from the show I saw. Even worse, I don't remember what year I happened to see that show.
Even if you had access to all the episodes, searching for a particular caller's topic would be, as they say, like searching for a needle in a haystack.
Some people seem to have enjoyed the shows (though not everyone who has publicly commented on them on the Web!), but that terrible advice from "Dr. Drew" in the case of the kid and his friends caught by mom turned me off of Pinsky forever.
By the way, a little Dan Savage goes a long way with me, too. He's smart, and funny, but he's also full of himself, and he can get mighty nasty with people sometimes.