"Sexual Fluidity"

February 12th, 2010.

Just read two texts in your zine about sexual fluidity. Starting with Don Bellew's story. Both good. Both "preaching" open-mindedness in the "question" of sexual "orientation". The one with the story-tellers approach, the other in the scientific mode. Both right on.

Once upon a long ago I bought a dime-novel in Dutch translation (I live in Holland), but I'm sure it was originally written in English. Both the title and the author's name have long been deleted from my feeble memory, but not the plot. Nor my thoughts about it.

Unfortunately I threw the book away in one of my vain attempts to "cure" myself of my homosexual tendency and to get back on the "straight trail to hetero happiness and marital bliss". All to no avail, of course.

Anyway, the plot in brief:

Man A meets, falls in love with, has sex with and moves in with Man B. (Man A is on the rebound after disappointing split-up from relationship with Woman C.) B is uptight about homosexuality thing, breaks off relationship with A, meets and begins relationship with C. C, although she comes to love B, does so partly because he so resembles A, whom she still misses. Later C and A hook up again and leave B out in the cold. End of story.

So called "happy end", because "normal" hetero life re-established.

In my opinion the only good and happy ending would have been a ménage à trois (3-way-houshold). But alas. Anyone recognize story? Anyone got a copy of it not destroyed for being a. evil b. substandard literature c. uninteresting. Me, I still like to fantasise on how the book should have ended and how I'd like my life to be / have been.

Wolf Bayne

“Skimpy Sexism”

April 10th, 2009

I see the preference for trunks to Speedos as a question of fashion. I was once barred from entering a pool in Japan because I was wearing trunks. Women, however, had to wear one-piece suits. Now I always pack both kinds of swimwear when I travel.

No Speedos in a family hotel? Does that make swim meets unsuitable events for families?

Athletes wear Speedos and shave their bodies for hydrodynamic reasons. Trunks slow you down; they cling to your thighs and balloon up over your butt. They’re great for wading and splashing around, but get in the way of serious swimming. (Whenever possible I swim in the raw, although a Speedo would be more hydrodynamic. But I don’t shave either.)

The idea that Speedos are too revealing is an after-the-fact rationalization invented by people with prurient minds. Since they ogle women in bikinis, men who wear Speedos must also put them on to be ogled. They should open their eyes as well as their minds. The front bulge on a Speedo may be suggestive, but dripping wet trunks clinging to a man’s cock and balls leave less to the imagination.

Anel Viz 

(See original article)

"Skimpy Sexism"

August 4th, 2009

Editors:

It’s a wonder to me that this sort of prudery has re-emerged so soon after a generation (and a long one at that) of generally very skimpy swimwear for both sexes, if swimwear was worn at all.  As an early Baby Boomer, I grew up with communal nudity for males of all ages – we swam nude at the YMCA and rinsed off the chlorine in communal showers, we swam nude in the school pool, we showered after physical education class in large multi-tap shower rooms, and no one thought about it: it was just the way things were done among men.  At the same time, women’s and men’s swimwear for mixed public bathing was getting smaller and smaller, to the point that both sexes basically wore what could only be classified as a cache sexe, barely large enough to cover the genitals, if they wore anything.  The incidence of rape and other crimes of forced sexual acts did not rise in response to the increasing amounts of bare skin on view. 

For some reason, our sons, and their sons, seem to find such exposure difficult, humiliating, and dangerous.  Or so I surmise from what I’ve observed at my gym and various pools and beaches in just the last twenty years.  It amuses me to see a man in his early forties doing the towel dance in a locker room, wriggling and gyrating under a no more than adequate gym towel to get his midsection covered, often from waist to knee, but it disgusts me to see that same fellow or men younger showering in their underwear (if they shower at all) after a workout.  Young men these days seem to think nothing of getting completely covered in sweat and then just blotting it off, often with their T-shirt, slapping on some cologne or a fresh application of deodorant, and sallying forth to spread their stale funk on the unsuspecting public.  They are dragging us back to Victorian times and Victorian “morals”.

And there is definitely a generational divide.  At my last gym, men’s and women’s facilities, including wet areas, were completely separate and nudity in the pools, steam room, and showers on the men’s side was expected.  Who actually used those areas nude, however? Only the men who were 50 years old or older.  The habit crossed racial lines – we had members of every race, and aged from 18 to 80, and it was the comparatively younger men, of all races, who did the towel dance, and the youngest men, of all races, who didn’t shower or expose themselves at all, whereas those of us over 50 stripped quite casually and swam, soaked, steamed or showered in naked comfort and without embarrassment. 

Meanwhile, the various Miss Something pageants are trumpeted as “family” entertainment even though the contestants parade in blush-makingly skimpy bathing suits and dominatrix-height heels which only serve to force their bodies into an eroticized posture of submissive availability with the breasts and buttocks thrust unnaturally out of healthy alignment.  No one thinks anything of it, because the contestants are female – and leaving aside the demonstrated lack of brainpower that has come to dominate such contests (who has not seen one of the contestants interviewed in these days of instant internet communication?), what really are these women doing besides displaying themselves as sex objects?

Men on the other hand . . .  When I hear of someone “swimming” in T-shirt and board shorts, it confounds me.  I can’t imagine any costume less calculated to provide hydrodynamic ease or physical comfort.  And the younger generation provides other forms of visible internal conflict.  It’s quite the fashion nowadays for them to build up their bodies, develop muscles beyond what a body naturally develops, run miles every day, and generally show off their athletic prowess.  Then, in order to display their hyperdevelopment even more, they strip the hair off their bodies and limbs, leaving themselves as smooth as prepubescents, and compensating for their lack of body hair with endlessly inventive (and endlessly troublesome to maintain) forms of half-beards and goatees.  But we dare not view them as sexual beings.  Heavens, no! Having developed fashionably attractive bodies, they have also cultivated without seeming to be aware of it a form of coyness distinctly at odds with their program of physical improvement, resulting in the towel dance, “shorts” that end at mid-calf, and “T-shirts” with three-quarter length sleeves.  Why men nowadays object to being regarded as sex objects, or as objects of desire, or even to showing enough to be seen as generally attractive is, as I said at the beginning, beyond my comprehension. 

But it’s a damn shame.

Yours truly,

Richard Small

(See original article)