A word of warning: Some links are definitely NSFW. There is very little new under the sexual sun. Classical Roman and Greek art honor both anal and oral sex, with the interesting codicil that the higher-ranked personage was always the top, the lower ranked the bottom, for both forms of naughty. (We can guess Julius Caesar was not unlike […]
April 4th is the day Winston starts his diary in 1984. Like a million other book clubs across the country, mine just (re)read George Orwell’s 1949 dystopian novel, 1984. Its current publisher said sales increased by 10,000 percent after Trump’s inauguration, and it skyrocketed to #1 on Amazon’s bestseller list shortly after his counselor Kellyanne […]
Reader Charles recently posted his theory as to why monogamy rules in the comments section of our post “Top 10 Reasons to Be — and Stay — Non-Monogamous.” Jump into the debate in the comments below: To be blunt, the most effective method of doing something dominates. As a central economic tenant states “A firm that […]
Late 18th-century poet William Blake’s famous Songs of Innocence were often thought to be merely children’s verse. But don’t mistake simplicity and concision for lack of depth. Take this little gem, one of his Gnomic Verses — just 4 lines, 26 words in total, and only 14 unique words in all! In that neat package, he […]
Last week, we gave you a taste of Pushkin the Romantic’s more romantic side. This week, we’re giving you a peak at his more playful side. (Stay tuned for a look at his truly trashy stuff, coming soon.) The following is Pushkin’s early-1800s “Advancing from the Rear”, translated by A.Z. Foreman from his blog Poems Found […]
Not only was Alexander Pushkin the father of Russian literature, he was also a very naughty boy. In the early 1800s, he wrote plays, poetry, novels, essays and also incredibly dirty erotica. In fact, in 2005 some of his adult verses were seized in a crackdown on obscene materials near Moscow. And in 2014, a Russian […]
It’s the bawdiness of some of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales that stays with you from high school lit class (literal ass-kissing? come on!). But it’s the first tale in this collection of stories told by pilgrims lodging at an inn — The Knight’s Tale – that’s quite the opposite of bawdy: a traditional romance of courtly love […]
This epic poem from the Roman bard published in 8 A.D. outlines the “history” of the world through 250 transfomative-themed myths over 15 books. Sexual desire was traditionally described in ancient Rome as a burning flame (not much changes over 2 millennia), so Metamorphoses has a lot of hot imagery. But it’s not all positive. Like a provocative, […]
“Blue Flower,” 1918 We’re not surprised in the slightest to discover that Georgia A-Flower-Is-Never-Just-a-Flower O’Keeffe was quite the steamy letter writer. Her love letters to the (ahem, married-at-the-time) photographer and modern art promoter Alfred Stieglitz were published as part of an exhibit at the Whitney Museum of American Art a few years back. The two married eventually, and Stieglitz […]
In Kate Monro’s new book, “Losing It: How We Popped Our Cherry Over the Past 80 Years,” she picks up where Nancy Friday left off, letting a wide range of people tell their stories of how they lost their virginity, smartly bookending each with historical and cultural context. It’s a fascinating book that shows, to […]
Author Kate Monro has managed to make us jealous of her job: searching the world for first-time tales that don’t often get told. In her new book, “Losing It: How We Popped Our Cherry Over the Past 80 Years,” she picks up where Nancy Friday left off, letting a wide range of people — from a 90-year-old […]
An engraving from Michael Maier’s Symbola Aureae Mensae (1617) depicting an alchemical androgyne. FUN FACT: Romantic and sexual imagery was a popular means for describing alchemical processes in both the Middle Ages and the early Modern Period. It’s true! Long before there was Fifty Shades of Grey, there were many alchemy texts rife with blush-inducing romantic and sexual metaphors. […]
We get a lot of advice questions coming in at EMandLO.com, but sadly, we just can’t answer them all. Which is why, once a week, we turn to you to decide how best to advise a reader. Make your call by leaving your advice in the comments section below: Dear Em & Lo, My boyfriend […]
photo of Clelia Mosher from the Stanford University Archives The March/April edition of Stanford Magazine has a fascinating article on Dr. Clelia Mosher, a Victorian-Era scientist, researcher and Stanford professor who conducted the first known sex surveys of women, decades before Kinsey (who’s considered the pioneer of sex research). Even though the sample size is […]
