"I possibly cheated on my wife once. Alone in a room, a young woman reached out her hands and seductively groped mine..."

"... inviting me to engage and embrace her. I went with it. Twenty seconds later, I pulled back and ripped off my virtual reality gear. Around me, dozens of tech conference goers were waiting in line to try the same computer program an exhibitor was hosting. I warned colleagues in line this was no game. It created real emotions and challenged norms of partnership and sexuality. But does it really? And who benefits from this?"

 
Writes Zoltan Istvan in "Don't Bash Digisexuality. For Some, It Brings Hope" (Newsweek).

"Instagram ads tend to focus more on warm images of cooing babies cuddled by radiant, fully covered mothers and less on the agony..."

"... of aggressive feedings and the mess of midnight cleanups. The disconnect can leave first-time parents underprepared during a transitional period often described as the fourth trimester...." 

From "On TV, a Rare Realistic Look at Breastfeeding/A commercial from the parent products company Frida, to be broadcast during the Golden Globes, is part of a wider effort to show the struggles of the 'fourth trimester'" (NYT). 

Here's the 30-second ad that aired during the Golden Globes.

Frida worked with the network on a 30-second edit that blurs or covers nipples that are visible in the original 75-second ad — a “fairly robust editing process at NBCU’s insistence,” said Chelsea Hirschhorn, the company’s chief executive, in a statement. She added that the point of the ad remained intact — “that the physical and emotional breastfeeding journey puts an unrivaled pressure on women to ‘perform,’ and no longer should women be expected to prioritize making milk over their own physical discomfort.” On YouTube, the original ad, which was posted on Feb. 24, already has more than 1.4 million views. 

Here's that 75-second ad, where you will see nipples. You'll also see women in the shower trying to massage their clogged lactating breasts with the handle end of an electric toothbrush and the front end of dildo vibrator.

By the way, do you know what the NYT meant by "aggressive feedings"? I'm presuming the aggression is on the part of the baby. 

And do you like that term "fourth trimester"? I can see that it's been around for a while, but this is the first time I've noticed it. The message — as I hear it — is that the mother's body and the baby's body are still a single unit. Your body is not yet all yours again. The baby is still sharing it.

"Imagine arguing that at the turn of the 20th century, female nurses were giving hand jobs to male patients to treat them for psychological problems..."

".... that men didn’t realize anything sexual was going on; that because female nurses’ wrists got tired from all the hand jobs, they invented a device called a penis pump to help speed up the process. Then imagine claiming nobody thought any of this was sexual, because it was a century ago.... But why don’t we think the same story is absurd when it’s about women?... It portrays sexual knowledge as marching on a steady line of progress, from clueless Victorians to today’s sexual sophisticates. It also serves as a feminist fairy tale of sorts, in which women subvert patriarchal society by procuring orgasms from their doctors, paid for by their husbands..... The harmful idea that women are naturally sexually ignorant and that women who do have sexual knowledge and drives are outliers, has been the basis for repressive laws throughout history.... [D]octors didn’t invent vibrators because their wrists hurt from rubbing hysterical women’s clitorises. They invented vibrators as cure-all devices; those devices ended up curing very little, until our great-great-grandmothers put them toward their highest purpose.... "

From "(Almost) Everything You Know About the Invention of the Vibrator Is Wrong" by Hallie Lieberman (in the NYT), author of "Buzz: The Stimulating History of the Sex Toy" and a forthcoming book on "the history of gigolos."

"Go ahead, have a laugh, even if it is just for the camera.... Do something for others, but don't forget about #1. Yes, that is a vibrator. Gaze into your soul, but also stare into the abyss. That's joyful too."

(That was great, in my opinion.)

"By 2039, the Supreme Court basically doesn’t matter anymore. It’s just wallpaper."

"We have very fanciful ideas about a protective, progressive Supreme Court, and that is almost entirely a function of a chunk of time in the 1960s and ’70s. The truth is, for almost all of history, the Court was protecting monied business interests at the expense of minorities. And we survived. But from the 1960s and ’70s, progressives got this notion that the Court was going to save us. More recently, Democrats thought we were winning because of the Obergefell gay-marriage case. But actually, we’ve lost everything, including the right to free and fair elections. We might continue to lose. There’s been a 40-year laser focus on the political right around the Court. There has been an absolute sucking noise on the left around the same issue. We had a 4-4 Court for a year, and I didn’t see Americans going to the polls over it. I didn’t see anybody thinking about it."

Writes Dahlia Lithwick in one of the "8 Predictions for What the World Will Look Like in 20 Years" (NY Magazine). She says "By 2039, the Supreme Court basically doesn’t matter anymore," but I guess it all depends on what "doesn't matter" means. Maybe it means it shouldn't matter when it's not doing what I want.  That is, Lithwick and the people she likes won't channel their political aspirations into litigation. But I don't see how that makes the Court "just wallpaper," because if it's so bad at doing what you want, it's maybe good at doing what the other guy wants.

By the way, I love the phrase "I didn’t see anybody thinking about it." Maybe by 2039, we will be able to see what people are thinking.

Anyway, what are the other 8 predictions?, you might wonder. Is anything else as scintillating as the incipient wall-paperization of the Supreme Court?

Well, according to Kate Julian, "There Will Be a Lot Less Sex and a Lot More Masturbation":

Masturbation and other varieties of solo sex will continue to be more prevalent than they were before; porn aficionados will enjoy VR sex and sex robots. Like many other aspects of our world in the decades to come, the gap between the haves and have-nots will continue to grow. Those who have many advantages already will be disproportionately likely to find romantic and sexual partners if they desire them and to have fulfilling sex lives. There will be good parts of this: Nonconsensual sex will be far less common than it is today. There will be little to no social stigma attached to being unattached. Those who approach singledom with psychological and financial advantages will flourish. It will be the best time in human history to be single. But there will be less unambiguously positive developments as well: For better and for worse, the birth rate will continue to fall, and those who are less suited to solo life will suffer from profound loneliness....

"Secretaries claimed he was both brilliant and 'cute,' although Michelle Obama was skeptical, writing that white people went 'bonkers' any time you 'put a suit' on a 'half-intelligent black man.'"

"She also thought his picture had a 'whiff of geekiness.' But she was more than impressed after meeting him, by his 'rich, even sexy baritone' and by his 'strange, stirring combination' of serenity and power. 'This strange mix-of-everything-man,' when she finally let him kiss her, set off a 'toppling blast of lust, gratitude, fulfillment, wonder.'"

From "Michelle Obama rips Trump in new book" (AP).

I chose to focus on something other than the ripping of Trump. Toppling blast of lust, gratitude, fulfillment, wonder — now, that's amusing! It's hard to picture Michelle Obama toppled. But how is anyone supposed to write in a dignified, appropriate way about the fact that they're sexually excited by the person they married? "Toppling" is as good a word as any, and you say "lust" but in a mix of other more exalted concepts.

I note she used the word "strange" twice — "strange, stirring combination" and "strange mix-of-everything-man."

Anyway, I'm less interested in Michelle Obama's shots at Trump than what she can say about random ordinary white people — like those secretaries — and what she thinks they think of any "half-intelligent black man" that you (who?) "put a suit on." Can't half-intelligent black men put on their own suit? But I like anything half-honest about how it felt to be an accomplished black woman in a Chicago law firm and trying to succeed despite suspicions and whatever real inequities prevailed at the time and looking to meet a man who could make a good-enough match for her. And then getting Obama! That really is strange!

ADDED: I'll just say one thing about the Trump ripping:

She remembers how her body “buzzed with fury” after seeing the infamous “Access Hollywood” tape, in which Trump brags about sexually assaulting women.

Is the book written in — speaking of "ripping" — bodice-ripper prose? We saw above that Michelle was toppled and blasted by a first kiss, and here we see that she experienced the "Access Hollywood" story as a bodily "buzz." Does she grasp things intellectually or do they happen in her body? And isn't that what Trump was really saying when he made that "grab them by the pussy" remark?

When you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything... Grab ’em by the pussy. You can do anything.

The stardom itself reaches into the body and readies the woman to receive him — that's what he was saying.  Trump's impudent verbalization of that process angers Michelle Obama, but the way those words worked was to cause her body to "buzz" — as if Trump's voice were a vibrator.

"Romantic love and the longing for God are closely intertwined in our music and literature, in our theology, and, beneath all that, in our souls."

Writes Kevin D. Williamson in "The Psalmist and the Sex Doll" (National Review). The "psalmist" is Leonard Cohen, and the essay begins with a discussion of the song "Hallelujah." As for the "sex doll," he's writing about the new brothels (in Toronto) where men pay to have sex with realistic looking/seeming dolls.

The sterility of the act in question is not merely biological. Regulation of that act is not entirely beside the point, but it is not really the point itself, either. Imagine, if you can — with charity, if you can — the state of a man in a silicon brothel paying to have sex (a simulacrum of sex) with an inanimate object. The act indicates a profound alienation not only from ordinary healthy sexual expression but from humanity. And from something more than that. If you want an image of a man alone in the universe, bereft, then there it is.

The Marquis de Sade thought that the old order might be overthrown by a great orgy of dissolution and blasphemy, an organized assault on every accepted value until the achievement of a state of absolute freedom. De Sade and those who follow him hated and hate what marriage was, because they hated and hate the order founded on it. (Even now, what is left of it.) But they genuinely appreciated its power, and believed that if it were to go down, it would go down in flames. He would have been disappointed by the smallness and banality of where we ended up, even if it is more perverse (though generally less violent) than his fantasies, which were almost exclusively limited to the traditional, transgressions and violations sufficiently longstanding to have Old Testament injunctions against them. De Sade dreamt up theatrical acts of depravity, while we have only dreamt up new ways to be alone.

From the psalmist who discerned in the love of husbands and wives an indication of God’s design to the question of which kind of silicone sex dolls might be unallowable in the marketplace — that is the arc of our history, and of our sorrow.

I haven't copied the part of the essay that explains the religious objection to same-sex marriage, but it made me think that the objection applies even more strongly to sex outside of marriage and to masturbation and sex with robots.

I'm not creating a new tag for sex dolls, so I'm giving this post some old tags that say whatever they say about the topic — sex tools, masturbation, prostitution, dolls, robots. The salient one is masturbation. That's what it is — sex with a sex doll. There is no human mind you're connecting to.

But there could be love and longing for real connection.

If there is no God, is prayer the same as thinking to yourself?

Is masturbation elevated if you're visualizing profound connection with another person, even if that person is not with you? Even if that person is imaginary?

"Sexbots With Full Motion Are Closer Than You Think."

That sounds dangerous. You're making them sound like stalkers. In the next room, perhaps.

The headline is from Pajamas Media, linked by Stephen Green at Instapundit. The first comment is "Faster, please."

Full motion? Can they rape you? Can they strangle you if you rape them? What are we talking about, full motion?

As I've said before, I think someone really interested in sex would prefer some sort of virtual reality machine. A full size, human-like robot is more of an all-around companion:

It occurs to me that the preference for a robot over virtual reality reflects a longing for a real human companion. You have this human-sized, human-looking object in your home. Why would you want that? Perhaps to give the feeling you have company, someone to talk to. And it would talk to you. If it were only for sex, wouldn't virtual reality work better and seem more realistic as sex?

There are so many lonely people.... You might say: Deprive them of realistic robots so they will be forced to get out in the world and find somebody. But not everyone can do that easily (or without exploiting or manipulating another human being). I don't want to say that anyone is too old, ugly, disabled, diseased, or disagreeable to find a sex partner, but it's a big challenge for some people.

"The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning."

I'm reading about that book here...

In Sweden, people start the process as early as their ‘50s, slowly but steadily decluttering as the years roll by...

“My motto is, if you don’t love it, lose it. If you don’t use it, lose it,” [Margareta] Magnusson tells me. (She loves a motto, the book is full of them. My favourite, when discussing how to deal with your secret vices, is this gem: “Save your favourite dildo, but throw away the other 15!”)

Death cleaning isn’t the story of death and its slow, ungainly inevitability. But rather the story of life, your life, the good memories and the bad. “The good ones you keep,” Magnusson says. “The bad you expunge.”

And here...

This reminds me of some appearance Alan Alda made in which he was talking about how his wife would say to him, "We're getting old. We should clean out the closets," and he said, "I don't get this. I say, we're going to be dead, and there are going to be people cleaning out the house after we go. What do we care? Screw them! Let them clean out the closets."

And I'm preordering it on Amazon...

In Swedish there is a word for it: Döstädning, “dö” means “death” and “städning” means “cleaning.” The idea behind death cleaning is to remove unnecessary things and get your home in order as you become older. But this word also can be applied whenever you do a thorough cleaning, to make your life easier and more pleasant. It does not necessarily have to do with age or death....

It's important for people to do this so that someone else doesn't have to. Quite aside from the burden on whoever it would be who would do this for Dead You, it's an invasion of your privacy, and even if you think Dead You cannot experience an invasion of privacy, you are experiencing it right now by thinking about it.

I like that it's presented as Swedish. I've been through the Marie Kondo books, which present de-cluttering as Japanese. I see immense procrastination potential. To read the book is not to do the thing, and there are so many countries in the world. From what sparks joy (Japanese) to you're going to die (Swedish) and onward.

Some French people object to that big sculpture in the Place Vendome...

... designed by an American and inspired by — they look so much alike — a Christmas tree and a sex toy.

The artist, Paul McCarthy, said:

« Bien sûr que cette œuvre est polémique, qu’elle joue sur l’ambiguïté entre un arbre de Noël et un plug : ce n’est ni une surprise ni un secret, poursuit-elle. Mais il n’y a aucune offense au public, et suffisamment d’ambiguïté pour ne pas troubler les enfants. Cette œuvre a d’ailleurs reçu toutes les autorisations nécessaires : de la Préfecture de police, de la Mairie de Paris et du ministère de la culture, en lien avec le Comité Vendôme, qui regroupe les commerçants de la place.. A quoi sert l’art si ce n’est de troubler, de poser des questions, de révéler des failles dans la société ? »

"I have no idea if we’ll stay together for the next 50 years, file for divorce next month, or which decision would make me happier."

Writes the pseudonymous Amanda Kling at the end of a Salon piece with the long title "I finally had an orgasm, and my husband didn’t even know/I went to a sex class to spice up our marriage. The toy I bought worked — but afterward, I felt lonelier than ever."

There are still wonderful moments when I look at my husband searching in vain for his pants in the morning, or sitting at his laptop trolling goodreads.com, and I think to myself, “OK, he’s going to be absolutely adorable at 85.” There are times when I see him standing in line next to a little girl at our neighborhood bakery, and I imagine him giving a look, not the look, but a loving, awe-inspired gaze toward our future daughter. I honestly cannot imagine what my future would look like without him.

I suppose I have to decide whether the promise of how things could get better will outweigh what has gone wrong so far. Maybe all of the things I think have gone “wrong” are just the inevitable ups and downs of any long-term relationship. Maybe if I just stop waiting for the perfect look or the perfect moment of sexual intimacy, and start accepting that this longing for more may always be there, I can finally start to enjoy my reality again.

Such are the journalings of a woman talking herself into staying with her husband. Amanda Kling ≈ a man to cling.

Much more sex at the link. I thought you might like the view into a woman's head as she's weighing the option of leaving, or, perhaps more accurately, weighing the option of permanence in an inadequate sexual relationship.

They don't have children yet, so one can only hope that weighing "the promise of how things could get better" doesn't involve experimenting with the creation of new human beings. And in the absence of any actual children, the phrase "a loving, awe-inspired gaze toward our future daughter" is disconcerting. If you have a child, it might not be a female child — a little you — and, male or female, a child does not arrive in the world for the purpose of inspiring awe or posing in cake-shop tableaux that make your husband look romantic.

As for the husband... "searching in vain for his pants" is a telling phrase.

Purchase of the day.

From the April 22, 2013 Amazon Associates Report:

Tsunami Ultra-strong Aluminum Pliers 7.5"

By using the Althouse portal, you can buy things you want, pay nothing extra, and make a contribution to this blog. We notice. We appreciate it. And only if you shout it from a mountaintop will we know it's you.

The Althouse Amazon portal: titanium coated, spring loaded, and always ergonomically correct.

"Until about 30 years ago, the typical 'Dutch Wife' (love doll) sold at sex shops in Japan was of the inflatable type..."

"... and of shoddy quality that was easily subject to deflation at the slightest, er, prick."

That's just offensive. Not just the terrible pun, but the abuse of the Dutch.

“When customers brought the dolls in for repairs, vendors would stick on hot patches, like on tire inner tubes,” [said Hideo Tsuchiya, president of Orient Kogyo K.K., a manufacturer of state-of-the-art love dolls].

Some of these buyers, however, had their own reasons for preferring rubber joy mates to real women. Some weren’t satisfied with going to brothels. Others, jilted by their mates, had become eternally suspicious of females....

Orient Kogyo also provides after-service. When and if the time comes for the dolls to part with their owner, the company will conduct a kuyo (Buddhist memorial service) for the doll, complete with floral offerings....

"Japan’s first masturbation bar for women opens in Shibuya."

That's the headline, but it's not what it sounds like. It's a place for women to talk about masturbation:

The wall behind the counter is adorned with dozens of colorful sex toys. Megumi Nakagawa, the bar’s proprietor, explains that typically a bar will have bottles of alcohol lining the wall. The appearance of vibrators, however, provides women with more confidence in speaking about spanking.

“Once they take a seat, customers are able to experience a pleasant place in which they can openly discuss masturbation,” says Nakagawa. “Since most people view female masturbation as something of a mystery or taboo, it is not a usual topic at typical bars.”

ADDED: Clicking around over at the Tokyo Reporter, I've finding other hard to fathom headlines, like "Erection of Tokyo Sky Tree leads to mobile prostitution service":

A 45-year-old who runs a tangerine (mikan) farm in Wakayama Prefecture encountered the operation towards the end of August, when he went to see the 634-meter-tall structure with three of his colleagues.

So... tangerines are involved...

"What sexbots will do is widen the already growing chasm between the sexes, until only the fittest of the fit... can successfully leap across it to woo a human companion in the way that our genetic overlord intended."

Writes Heartiste, noting that "fitness is whatever gets one’s genes to the next generation, whether beneficial to civilization or note." I got there via Instapundit, who got there via Helen Smith, who makes the present-day observation that "20% of the alpha males [get] about 80% of the women" and says:

Those men who have more trouble getting women turn to porn and seem to ignore or be oblivious to women. I wonder how Sexbots will further change the landscape?

Here's my long-term view of that landscape. As men get absorbed into virtual-reality sex, there will be sex machines for women, replete with the elaborate stories women find titillating (including many things that are too dangerous to pursue in real life about which they currently read voraciously). The women, further relieved of motivation to form loving partnerships with men, will turn more and more to the government for support. Witness "The Life of Julia." There will be more and more of that as men depart from real life and submerge themselves more deeply in machines and women consequently feel more entitled to the government's functioning in the role from which men have escaped.

Women have the voting majority, and what will stop us from employing it in the interest of women as men demonstrate their lack of interest in us?

Will women still want to raise children? Some will, especially when it is well incentivized with government support brought about by unstoppable female voting power. We will have our choice of prime semen for artificial insemination. I'm sure the government will provide us with free services and facilitate our selection of the genetic traits we think will make the best children. Who knows what the next generations will be, as mothers produce children not because they found love from a man, but because of their ideas — possibly delusional — about what would make an excellent child? That's a new experiment. Presumably, in a world where men absent themselves from the real-world life of love and relationships, these women will choose, overwhelmingly, to have daughters. Those daughters will grow up and become part of the Electorate of Julias, further depressing any political power for men.

As this process goes on, perhaps that 20%/80% split Dr. Helen observes will be the actual ratio of men to women. But those men will not be alpha men. They won't even be beta men. And the men in the women's sex machines will be The New Alpha+++ Men. There will be no way to go back.

But this can only happen in America and whatever other free, wealthy, technologically advanced democracies there may be. So don't worry. It won't last that long.

"When we dug down to about 80 meters deep, we fished out this long, fleshy object. It’s got a nose and an eye, but we have no idea what it is!"

Great moments in Chinese television.

“As we can all see, this looks like a type of fungus, on both ends of which you’ll find mushroom heads. On this side, you can see what looks like a pair of lips... The object looks very shiny, and it feels really fleshy and meaty, too”...

"To be honest, I don't know what I want a male for."

"I have some fabulous electronics to use instead. And any woman who tells you she doesn't is lying."

"MORE ON VIBRATORS, from Eugene Volokh."

Possibly the most absurd teaser ever from Instapundit. Anyway, Glenn's been going crazy with the vibrators lately.

Oh, my lord, I just looked over to see what Volokh is doing with the vibrators. He's got a 1357-word post! You know, if you guys can go on long enough, women might not need vibrators.

Now, I'll actually read what Volokh says:

This is... a family blog, and you can’t very well start a family if you’re too interested in your vibrator.

Well, hell! It depends on how you use it!

So here’s a circumstance I’ve wondered about. Imagine that a close single female friend (just a friend) mentioned to you that she has a vibrator that’s shaped like a highly stylized penis....

Oh! These lawprofs and their hypos! In this one, a female friend volunteers that she loves her vibrator. Volokh says most people would think that's okay. Then, he changes the hypo — this is what lawprofs do with hypos — and the friend expressing love for the sex appliance is male. Volokh says "many people will think it’s a bit icky, in some hard to pin down way." He then explores 5 theories. You can go over there and read them. They all assume solo use of the vibrator, so it's really more about why people would rather think about a woman masturbating than think about a man masturbating. That's a matter of the sexual preference of the person doing the thinking.

The ecstasy of housework.

Joy... fabulous... at your finger-tip's command... perfect, generous-sized... dishwasher fashion... absolutely different... toast'n jam... touch no dirt!... why wait for someday?... the famed Flexicorner... Dad's tickled pink... 4 heat settings... someday you'll be a star... Twindow!

Vintage ads... from back when "some day" was one word and every appliance was - apparently — a sex toy.

(Via Instapundit.)

"Bruno" disappointed me.

I'm a big fan of "Da Ali G Show," where Sacha Baron Cohen plays 3 characters in short scenes that wrap up in half an hour. But, having seen "Borat" and now "Bruno," I have to admit I don't want to watch one of the characters for 90 minutes, especially "Bruno." I'm not a fan of story arcs. I love disjointed little bits. I like Bruno as the Austrian fashion reporter with the microphone in his hand. People who want to get on TV and to appear trendy will tumble into agreement with praise for Hitler or take direction that makes them look gay. (Here's an example I find especially funny.) But in the movie "Bruno," Bruno is fired from that job and comes to America to try to get famous again. That's not much of a story. It's just a narrative thread to connect different scenes — possibly generated after many of the scenes were filmed.

But why am I complaining? Didn't I just say I liked disjointed little bits? Well, but now Bruno is kind of down and out, and much of it is Sacha Baron Cohen trying to show us what Americans are really like. Fortunately or unfortunately, Americans failed to give him the homophobia footage he seems to have hoped for. I'm sure a ton of unfunny footage was thrown out, and that what went into the film was the closest he could get to hilarious, but most of these Americans simply remained stone-faced and tried to preserve their professionalism and dignity in the face of a very clownish man. Cohen did what he could — for example, wielding multiple big dildoes at a martial arts instructor — to goad people into flipping out about the gay guy, but — other than getting Ron Paul to blurt out "queer" twice — it just wasn't happening.

And the struggling Bruno can't be so outrageously bitchy. He wants people to help him. He's needy. He's more like Borat. But he's not lovable. I don't want him lovable. The Bruno I like needs to believe he's wielding power so he is able to trick people into showing their desire to leverage their fame through him. We see that in the movie in the one scene where some parents are trying to get their little kids hired as models. They think Bruno has some showbiz power, and they grovel before it. One woman is ready to make her 30 pound daughter lose 10 pounds in one week and to submit to liposuction if she can't get all that weight off. Now, that was something! It would be daring as hell to have 90-minutes on that level of pain. But that wouldn't be too funny, and it wouldn't be a blockbuster.