Archive for the ‘Vaginality’ Category
May 9, 2024
An astounding story of linguistics in the public eye that begins with Beyoncé’s name being added to the new edition of the Larousse dictionary, an event that so impressed the BBC that on 5/2 they approached the distinguished German linguist Martin Haspelmath to comment on it, a request that MH found utterly bewildering (as did pretty much everyone who knows MH and his work — his meticulous scholarship — and Queen Bey and her work — her extraordinary voice and her presentation of herself as a flaming-hot sexual being). In fact, the more you know, the weirder it gets.
Eventually, as a genuine éminence grise (I was born in 1940, MH in 1963, and QB in 1981, so we’re dealing with three generations here), I undertook to recount some of my experience in being interviewed by the media; I’ll re-play this below. But first, an enormous amount of background.
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Posted in Gender and sexuality, Linguistics in the media, Linguists, Music, Taboo language and slurs, Vaginality | 1 Comment »
October 16, 2022
(Gets right into gay men’s sexual parts, fore and aft, and man-on-man sexual acts, using street language, so not suitable for kids or the sexually modest.)
… or like cherry, vanilla, peach, or pumpkin spice. These are the Tasty Hole flavored body scrubs, formulated to make your hole tasty for the guy who’ll be rimming you.
(Just for the record: I hate flavored condoms. And flavored lubes. And flavored douches, which is the territory we’re moving into here. Unless the flavor is something like Male Sex Sweat. As for cherry flavoring, I hate it in cough drops and syrups and all that stuff, so I’m certainly not going to get it up for licking cherry scrub out of my trick’s hole. Your tastes might differ, of course. But you should know ahead of time that I’m inclined to mock the basic idea of Tasty Hole products.)
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Posted in Double entendres, Emoji, Language and food, Language and the body, Language in advertising, Language of sex, Phallicity, Signs and symbols, Smell, Vaginality | Leave a Comment »
October 14, 2022
(There will be discussion of penises and vaginas, some of it using street language, so not for kids or the sexually modest.)
Having discovered and posted about a vintage photograph of three young men displaying their swimmer’s bodies (which I bought and mounted on a bookend, to make a free-standing portable photo display), I was led by Etsy to other sources of somewhat similar photographs, in particular the trove of photographic male art offered by The Male Image Art Shop (dba TheMaleImageArtShop), among which this photo caught my eye:
(#1) “Dmitry and Matteo”, as advertised on-line: the more Slavic-looking bodybuilder type on the left is presumably Dmitry, and the more Mediterranean-looking swimmer type on the right Matteo; their gazes are fixed on us, the viewers, with no expression; Dmitry has a friendly, or perhaps a proprietary, arm on Matteo’s shoulder
Other than this, we know nothing. But we struggle to extract a story that it’s telling us, some story about the relationship between the two men (and possibly about why they’re posing for us), so we ask: when was this photo taken? where are they? why are they naked? what are their lives like? what does that arm on the shoulder mean? is this photo a slice of these men’s lives, or are the men random male models posed to create a puzzle for us?
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Posted in Art, Language and animals, Language and the body, Male art, Music, My life, Myths, Phallicity, Photography, Signs and symbols, Slang, Taboo language and slurs, Vaginality | Leave a Comment »
July 9, 2022
(Some indirect and asterisked reference to man-on-man sex, but, hey, it’s from the Associated Press.)
Or: Love among the mobsters. In some hot news:
Chicago (AP wire story) — An odd chapter in American mobsterdom came to an end in a hail of bullets yesterday as thugs of the Buonanotte crime family gunned down Pasquale “Patsy” Baloney, the famously vicious soldato for — and long-time secret lover of — capo Carlo “Charlie” Ravioli of the Bastardo family, who died of a massive heart attack only two months ago.
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Posted in Ambiguity, Beheading, Count & mass, Etymology, Gender and sexuality, Homosexuality, Idioms, Language and ethnicity, Language and food, Language of sex, Masculinity, Metaphor, Phallicity, Puns, Taboo language and slurs, Vaginality | 1 Comment »
June 27, 2022
Today’s Zippy strip is a triple riff on masspop culture — on bowling as recreation, on the Googie style of architecture, and on Polynesian-stye “Tiki” culture (architecture, food and drink, and entertainment) — enlivened by our Pinhead’s fascination with words (and the images they call up), here with: bowl, Java, lane, cocktail, alley, ball. Cocktail, with its combination of sexual associations (plus penumbral associations with mai tais and other Polynesian-associated drinks), gets a panel all to itself, so setting the tone for interpreting the rest:
(#1) As usual, the setting is taken from real life; those are drawings of Java Lanes in Long Beach CA (3800 E. Pacific Coast Highway) — but a Java Lanes from the past, since the place was demolished in 2004, almost 20 years ago, to be turned into condos
The historical setting, first from the bowling point of view, then from the architectural and Tiki-culture point of view:
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Posted in Architecture, Art, Language and food, Language and the body, Linguistics in the comics, Mantras, Metaphor, Phallicity, Pop culture, Signs and symbols, Vaginality | Leave a Comment »
February 17, 2022
Today’s Zippy strip has Griffy and Zippy inside the Boulevard Diner in Worcester MA while snow falls outside:
(#1) The two men exchange opinions about their two favorite things, which are definitely not raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens: Griffy’s (diners and snow) are more conventional, and are linked to their context; while Zippy’s (Vincent Price and sushi) are decidedly eccentric, and have no connection to the context or to each other
And now the time has come to speak of many things.
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Posted in Actors, Diners, Gender and sexuality, Homosexuality, Language and food, Linguistics in the comics, Masculinity, Music, Phallicity, Vaginality | 1 Comment »
December 29, 2021
Warning in advance: this posting will turn to discussions of genitals, mostly female, with symbolic and schematic representations, so it won’t be comfortable for everyone.
But it starts with a culinary celebration of the holiday season, Owen Campbell’s Facebook posting of course 3 of Christmas Eve dinner at his house:
(#1) Seafood moments: mussels here — and then oysters (courses 2 and 4), plus mushrooms stuffed with crab
Why all this seafood? Because it was Christmas Eve, and though Owen and his husband are in wintry Winnipeg and not sunny Sicily (where the seafood is a component of La Vigilia), bivalves and crustaceans are still appropriate for anticipating the arrival of the Child.
So, first: about the Seven Fishes (with fish ‘seafood’). Then specifically about mussels, as food. And then more about mussels, as symbols of the female genitalia (where we will encounter an instructive anatomical diagram cheerily entitled “Meet the Vulva” — note warning above).
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Posted in Clothing, Holidays, Language and food, Language and the body, Music, Phallicity, Vaginality | 2 Comments »
March 15, 2020
(Little kids, but I pursue them into the weeds of sexual anatomy, though without the photos or raunchy talk. Take appropriate cautions.)
The One Big Happy cartoon from 2/9:
(#1) Once again, about the kids finding a word (un)familiar in a particular sense: the apparel noun hood
And the OBH from 2/17:
(#2) And minute ‘extremely small, tiny’
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Posted in Ambiguity, Clothing, Language and the body, Language change, Linguistics in the comics, Metaphor, Semantics of compounds, Social class, Vaginality | 2 Comments »
February 13, 2020
(Uncompromisingly raunchy references to male bodyparts and mansex, so absolutely not for kids or the sexually modest.)
Lincoln Darwin Valentine Day lies in the cleft between Lincoln Darwin Day, February 12th, and Valentine’s Day, February 14th. It is a day of unbridled mansexual excess, coming as it does between the high seriousness of the day that honors two towering figures — two Great Men — of the 19th century and the romantic heterosexual excesses of Valentine’s Day. It’s Carnal Carnival without reference to the religious calendar (actual Mardi Gras can fall any time between February 3rd and March 9th).
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Posted in Art, Books, Gay porn, Gender and sexuality, Holidays, Language and the body, Phallicity, Signs and symbols, Underwear, Vaginality | Leave a Comment »
December 14, 2019
From Tim Evanson on Facebook, this image of (literally) horny guys in nothing but pouch-thrusting underwear, sucking suggestively on spicy sticks for Christmas:
(#1)
From Tim, I learn that this entertaining photo — a still from a Xmas beefcake video — was created by the Sellers Dorsey Foundation in 2013 as part of a Full Frontal Freedom / Out2Enroll campaign encouraging gay men to enroll in Obamacare. The full video can be viewed on the OUT Magazine site.
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Posted in Gender and sexuality, Holidays, Music, Parody, Phallicity, Underwear, Vaginality | Leave a Comment »
