MoSex 3/12/13
I appreciated the frankness of everything. It was interesting, and kind of
fun, to look at pornographic images in a public space, with people
all around contemplating, giggling, and saying funny things.
I’d like to stand next to those rubber bodies that you’re allowed to touch
for an entire day and watch how each visitor chooses to interact with
it. I watched a woman suggestively stroke the erect penis to make her boyfriend
pretend-angry, and then a group of Asian tourists carefully consider
it before feeling each piece of genitalia.
I thought the Internet exhibit was interesting, particularly the wall which listed porn search terms in order of popularity. “Youth” occupied the number 1 slot, “MILF” number 3, and surprisingly enough Grandma was up there in the middle! Grandpa was one of the last ones. Obviously “Youth” connotes innocence, beauty, virginity, and submission and energy simultaneously. “MILF” connotes sexual experience, naughtiness, and for the most part MILF scenes will juxtapose age and youth together – i.e. the time-worn tradition of horny, hot mama answering the door for the young, pimply, pizza boy and asking, or begging, for sexual favors. But there are also multitudes of mother-teenage girl scenes, where I guess the turn on, besides being lesbian and taboo and incestuous, is the theme of the old teaching the young. So there are two main portraits of older women in porn I feel – the extremely sexually knowledgeable and the desperate n’ horny.
But Grandma interests me. I wonder what the mindset is of the bulk of the people who search and watch “mature” porn. I’m sure there’s a faction of elderly fetishists, some who get turn on by age, some by perceived extra-helplessness. But maybe it also has to do with curiosity? Like I read somewhere in that exhibit that a lot of the searches for “penis”, particularly “large penis”, are done by males (it may have even said straight males, but I would have to double check). And that a lot of search terms in porn are just names of body parts – searched by both the curious and the horny. The Internet is a huge vehicle for the furthering of sexual exploration, on the scale of the individual and on the scale of the act itself. Rule #34 – anything and everything on the internet has been made into porn!
I also thought the exhibit on animal sexuality was poignant – practically every wall revealed something bizarre! But it’s interesting how we choose to take some cues from nature and ignore others. Animals are much freer with their sex –in the frequent practice of it, who/what gender they have sex with, and even “role reversal”, where the male takes care of the children. The Spartans did believe that male-male sex was an act of bonding, so I guess some things from nature managed to infiltrate. It turns out most animals don’t even notice gender as far as sex for pleasure goes.
As for the history of sexuality as a whole, the MoSex is a reminder that since the beginning of civilization there has been a vibrant sexual underbelly to civilization. Those vintage postcards were as dirty as anything. I really enjoyed the whole thing, even the scary, squiggly duck penis.
Tags: Age, Animal Sexuality, Internet, MoSex, Museum of Sex, porn, Youth
March 13th, 2013 at 4:15 pm
Rachel & Ariella: It’s interesting that both of you came up with the idea to film other museum-goers as they interacted with the different installations. Is this its own kind of voyeurism? How does our interest, which is potentially the result of our self-attributed superior comfort with sexuality, in how others respond to the museum reflect our own participation in scientia sexualis? Are we all doctors, eager to assess each other in hope of deducing some grander theme?