The History of Sex: Prague -- 'I Don't Do Porn' -- (Chapter X, Part 32)

But John's unimpressed.

One woman in particular is an affront to his aesthetics: a blonde with collagen injections and perfectly formed fake breasts.

'She's plastic,' he frowns. 'I like my girls fresh off the farm. Ohhhh naturell.'

The Goldfingers logo

He perks up, though, as a black-haired girl with dark eyes and caramel skin returns to the stage.

She's got the mischievous, dimpled grin of the girl next door—the cheeky tomboy you played with as a kid—but the body of a woman who's all grown-up now.

John's sure she's aiming her seductive charms right at him. 'She knows me. Her name's Adriana. I met her two weeks ago through Tarra White—'

—the star of Dude, Your Girlfriend Is In a Porno! 3 and Meet the Fuckers 5, in case you're wondering—

'—she was trying to convince her to do porn, but I told her not to. If a girl has never done porn, I tell her it'll fuck up her life. No man will want her, so she won't be able to have children. Czech girls don't always realize the consequences.'

That doesn't sound like the John I know, but Adriana does seem to recognize him as she trawls the tables afterwards offering lap dances.

She confirms to him that she doesn't do porn. She may dress up like a nun, strip to a Gregorian chant, writhe around onstage and finger another dancer while engaging in simulated or actual oral sex, but she definitely doesn't do porn. 'I have a boyfriend.'

'Does he mind you doing this?'

Adriana's surprised that I should ask. 'No. We're getting married next year.'

John seems somewhat embarrassed as he escorts me and my faux paus out of the club.

'Czech men don't mind their girlfriends doing this,' he explains. 'But for us Westerners, it's different.' 

* * *

The History of Sex: Prague -- Another Kind of Christmas Market -- (Chapter X, Part 31)

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The History of Sex: Prague -- I Blame Gauguin -- (Chapter X, Part 27)

Noting my discomfort, John reckons we should double back to a place called Sweet Paradise, yet another oasis of kitsch in a concrete desert, a pseudo-tropical bar burrowed into a wintry grey street.

Not for the first time on my journey, I can't help but wonder: why do sex clubs have to be so tacky? Why do plastic palm trees and Pavlovian neon signal SEX to the male psyche?

Personally, I blame Gauguin, the artsy stockbroker who ditched his day job in Paris for a life of getting laid in paradise.

Unfortunately, he took his syphilis with him, sharing it with the fourteen-year-olds he purchased with sweets and alcohol until his running sores made him so repulsive even the poorest Tahitians wouldn't touch him.

Paul Gauguin's portrait of Tehura, his 14-year-old 'wife'
in Spirit of the Dead Watching

His paintings, now in every major gallery on the planet, are like The Picture of Dorian Gray in reverse: immortalizing an innocent sexual Eden, whereas the reality was sordid and syphilis-ridden, thanks to colonialist cretins like him.

Since Gauguin, the tiki-plasticky look has been the décor de rigueur of dodgy clubs and cocktail bars around the world.

In its own way, Sweet Paradise, promising 'luxurious ambience and almost family atmosphere,' is more surreal—and depressing—than anything Kafka ever dreamt up.

Outside, it's Christmas in the Old Country; inside, it's the Land of the Yuletide Luau, with a full-scale beach hut in the corner adorned with a snowman and accompanying conifer.

A dozen prostitutes sit drinking and smoking on the ledge lining the lounge, facing the few men on hand with expressions ranging from bored apprehension to fabricated lust.

John reckons he's getting the evil eye from the Queen of the Brothel, a pretty enough twenty-year-old, though her hair's so bleached you wonder if it's fallen out in clumps and been superglued back onto her head.

'She's one of the most popular girls here. Clients end up feeling sorry for her,' he laughs. 'She doesn't want to be here. She's got a kid.'

John knows this because he and Martina used to be an item.

'To have someone who you liked as a boyfriend, and who kind of liked you as a girlfriend, pimping you—well, it's not very nice.'

The History of Sex: Prague -- Skanka, Hasbeenka and Nothankya -- (Chapter X, Part 26)

Our next stop is a suburban house-turned-brothel that's owned by Russians and run by a sour Romanian.

'It's interesting what they've done with the place,' John remarks.

That's one way of looking at it.

What was once the front room of the house is now a bar, and the large sitting room is lined with cracked, fake-leather couches and Klimt prints.

The nook in the corner where the TV might have been is now home to a live entertainment system: a small dancefloor with mirrors on three sides and a pole in the middle.

The hookers make their entrances and exits via the sliding patio door.

John highly recommends a blonde in a black catsuit named Christina.

'She charges 6,400 crowns for nine hours. You can't beat that anywhere,' he says, stroking the back of her arm. 'That's about two hundred euros.'

'Two hundred and twenty-five euros,' she corrects him.

Or just £17 an hour (around $25).

'She's one of the best in Prague. She's really enthusiastic and lots of fun.'

Frankly, she'd have to have enough enthusiasm for both of us.

Ditto the girls at a couple other dives.

I'll spare you the one where the strippers are so uncomely they don't even dare take their tops off and skip straight to the basement joint where the head whore supposedly insists on the manager shagging her every day; otherwise, she and the other girls will walk.

Sadly, Vanessa's not here tonight.

So John introduces me to Lenka and her co-workers, Skanka, Hasbeenka and Nothankya.

A tall redhead with a big nose and small chin, Lenka's gussied up in black lingerie and walks with a stoop, as if her suspenders are too tight.

A price list from one of the clubs

According to John, Lenka started her career on a non sequitur: she was so keen to lose her virginity, she decided to become a prostitute.

She's now fallen in love with a British john named Nicholas, after the patron of Christmas and whores.

When ol' Nick came back for more jollies, however, Lenka told him she wouldn't sleep with him again—because she loved him.

He promptly left for London, and she's been texting him ever since.

'Half the girls get into this business because they want to find a boyfriend or a husband,' John claims.

Indeed, Lenka goes gooey-eyed at the mention of Nicholas, tilting her head and clasping her heart... while rubbing a gartered leg against my thigh.

The History of Sex: Prague -- 'They're Really Nice and Feminine Like That' -- (Chapter X, Part 24)

Which is probably true.

But many of his other observations are far more controversial.

'I come from the Land of Ugly Women,' he announces. 'It's all plastic.'

Apparently his American clients are the second easiest to please—surpassed only by the British.

'British girls are brutish. They're the ugliest I've ever seen. I was expecting Mary Poppins, and they come over and shout'—he affects an accent that would make Dick Van Dyke cringe—'"Where's the pub?!?" With my English clients, it's like they've been eating out of a garbage can their whole lives, and suddenly they're being treated to a gourmet meal.'

Not just a modern phenomenon:
Mug shots of an Edwardian ladette,
complete with tattoos (True Love K.B. on her back left arm)
and a drink problem
(The Daily Mail)

John keeps going on about how gorgeous Czech strippers are, but I keep doing double-takes to make sure they aren't transvestites. Something about the way they sculpt their make-up makes them look oddly hard and masculine.

Call me paranoid, but any woman who needs to dye and paint herself that much must be hiding something.

The fact that most of the strippers don't remove their G-strings isn't reassuring, either.

However, John swears the girls are 100% woman.

'Czech women get their sense of self-esteem from male attention. If they don't have a boyfriend, they think they're the lowest of the low—they're really nice and feminine like that,' he says blithely.

'They find it very hard to take a compliment. If you tell them they're beautiful and then touch their arms or their backs, they'll actually break out in a sweat.'

Maybe 'cause pervy strangers give them the creeps.

But John fancies himself a connoisseur.

As a redhead with a six-pack cedes the pole to a blonde with a belly, he gabbles appreciatively about the latter's perfectly formed breasts: 'The shape here is very good. B to C cups—those are typically Czech breasts; the larger sizes, D and up, are rarer.'

The History of Sex: Prague -- Bliss Without Risk? -- (Chapter X, Part 19)

At present, though, you could be forgiven for mistaking the modern 'heart of Europe' for its throbbing groin.

The Czech Republic ranks not only as one of the world's biggest sources of trafficked women (and children) but also a major destination and transit country, with 'Romeo spies' having been replaced by 'loverboy' pimps who seduce girls into prostitution.

And whereas a British prime minister once betrayed Czechoslovakia to the Nazis by calling it 'a small country about which we know nothing,' nowadays hordes of British, German and American tourists fly into Prague to get to know it in the Biblical sense.

FROM BIG BROTHER TO BIG SISTER

Many aid agencies work from the premise that the sex trade is simply a fact of life.

'Bliss Without Risk' is a catchy name, but it seems an odd choice for a group trying to help prostitutes (surely most of the 'bliss' they encounter is male-oriented).

In its fight against sex diseases, the charity distributes comic books that are so graphic, they could be called 'How to Be a Whore,' complete with pictures of infected penises and blowjobs, handjobs and hotdogging.

Meanwhile, would-be prostitutes have a plethora of job opportunities, including specialist agencies like 'Oral Without Condom' and a club that's put a postmodern twist on the Big Brother sexpionage of yore: at the BigSister brothel, punters pay a cover fee of €10 for toiletries, but the sex is free—provided they sign a contract allowing BigSister to broadcast the video footage on the World Wide Web.

One client in 2008 was a lardy socialist from Scotland, a former candidate for the Solidarity party.

'Yes I did it,' he told The News of the World, 'but I was drunk.'

In other words, sex is so cheap in Prague, they're virtually giving it away.

The History of Sex: Prague -- 'The State is Pimp' -- (Chapter X, Part 16)

For the most part, the protests against the invasion were fatality-free.

A unique eyewitness account comes from a sex writer who toured Czechoslovakia before, during and after the Prague Spring.

Mankoff's Lusty Europe is a vintage sex guide, one of those books you can't believe was ever published, let alone in 1972—and by a reputable publisher.

Having already ventured behind the Iron Curtain into East Berlin, author 'Allan Mankoff' (rhymes with…) also trawled the streets of Prague.

'There are no apparent pimps,' he concluded. 'The State is pimp.'

Dolled-up 'Tuzex girls' would sleep with foreigners for hard currency to buy Western luxuries in state-run 'Tuzex' stores.

One 'beautiful young coed' was selling herself for thirty dollars a night. 'The Soviet Union will never let us go… and so, I shall sleep with a hundred men and then I shall have enough money to go to England.'

Mankoff also described the tense scene as a schoolgirl mooned Russian troops in the Old Town.

'For a frightening instant, one young guard who looks no more than seventeen teases the nipple of her heaving breast with his bayonet. Then he lowers it, grins, says something dirty in Russian, and the girl runs off in the direction of the macabre, death-mask likeness of Kafka which marks his former residence.'

One of the main goals of the Prague Spring had been to force the Party to punish those responsible for the purges and show trials of twenty years earlier.

The media had taken advantage of its freedom to try to rehabilitate a little-known martyr of democracy and genuine heroine of postwar Europe.

Milada Horakova had fought against the Nazis and spent nearly five years in concentration camps.

Horakova defending herself at her trial

After the War, she resigned from parliament to protest against the Communist coup.

Accused of conspiring against the regime, she was arrested, tortured and sentenced to death in 1950.

Her last words under the gallows were: 'I have lost. I die like a soldier—with honor. I love my country and its people… I wish for you… I wish…'

And then the hangman cut her dead.

'The Communists did what the Nazis never dared to do. On June 27th, 1950, Milada Horakova was hanged.'
You can read this Cold War 'comic book' about her life here.

* * *

The History of Sex: Prague -- The Last Chance for Communism -- (Chapter X, Part 14)

In late twentieth-century Prague, Bittman says, sexpionage was conducted on a case-by-case basis using known prostitutes.

The women's motives had nothing to do with patriotism; they did it to score cash or avoid jail.

Officially, prostitutes were 'social parasites'—not for having sex, but for living off the state—but they could stay on the game if they worked for the police.

Brothels would be rigged a la Salon Kitty or luxury hotel suites would be kitted out with secret cameras to film dignitaries' indignities.

Although the Eastern bloc may have used sexpionage more, Bittman says the West also used dirty tricks—in fact, he puts the split at seventy-thirty.

'Western intelligence services, including the Americans and the British, used the same methods. But I think some of the Soviet bloc authorities overestimated the potential to recruit people based on sexual entrapment. Gradually, in the Sixties and even in the Seventies and Eighties, when I was not involved anymore, this method became rather secondary.'

Mainly because of changes in Western attitudes toward sex.

When he defected, Bittman was working as a press attaché/spy at the embassy in Vienna.

'Every trip home was a distressing experience,' he writes. 'Czechoslovakia, once a highly developed country, had become the victim of economic and political mismanagement and a paradise for idlers and empty-headed babblers.'

Good TV interview with Larry Bittman; 
great footage of Prague and Vienna during the Cold War

At the beginning of 1968, though, there had been real hope for change.

With the initial blessing of the Kremlin, a mild-mannered reformist took power in Czechoslovakia, beginning the ill-fated experiment known as the 'Prague Spring.'

Contrary to popular misconception, Bittman notes that the Czech reform movement 'was neither anti-socialist nor anti-Communist. Many Communists who took part in the democratization process considered it the last chance for communism in Czechoslovakia.'

The History of Sex: Prague -- Gay Honeytraps -- (Chapter X, Part 9)

The tale of Claude put a positive spin on the real-life story of John Vassall, one of Britain's infamous Cold War traitors.

Lewis reckons a raven from Verkhonoye helped blackmail Vassall.

A gay man from a good family, the embassy attaché was invited to a party in Moscow where he was photographed sleeping naked with a man.

Back in London, he agreed to steal official documents for the Soviets from his office overlooking the back garden of No. 10 Downing Street.

In fact, if a similar plot had worked, Communist puppetmasters would have pulled the strings at No. 10 itself.

In his memoir, a former spy named Josef Frolik recounted how one of his colleagues at the Czechoslovakian Embassy in London spent two years trying to trap a Conservative who 'was not markedly heterosexually inclined.'

The Tory was unmarried and a keen musician, so the Czechs arranged for a bisexual organist from Moravia to visit London and bump into him at recitals.

As they chatted, the British MP mentioned that he'd like to play the organ at the Church of St. James in Prague.

The Czechs immediately invited him to visit—the idea being that once he was there, the Tory would also take a turn on the Moravian's organ.

Unfortunately, 'at the last moment, some wise member of British Counter-Intelligence warned the would-be organist that someone waiting for him in Prague was prepared to play another kind of tune.'

Sexually ambiguous to the end, Ted Heath went on to become Prime Minister (only to be posthumously 'outed' by a gay Tory in 2007).

The History of Sex: Prague -- The Soviet 'House of Love' -- (Chapter X, Part 6)

The most remarkable aspect of Sexpionage was Lewis' interviews with reputed alumni of the KGB's top 'sex school'—or the 'Verkhonoye House of Love.'

Having passed their preliminary training at the Marx-Engels School outside Gorky, potential sex spies were transferred to a special training center at the Lenin Technical High School at Verkhonoye*, a godforsaken spot near the Autonomous Tatar Soviet Republic.

Between lessons on politics, economics and how to kill people—the usual spy stuff—the recruits were told their mission and forced to lose their inhibitions.

This titillating article...

A defector in London named Sasha Demidov recalled that 'ravens' were ordered to start having sex with each other—even though homosexuality was officially illegal:

'If they were invited to an orgy in the West, they had to be able to participate with both sexes. If they thought a Western male could be blackmailed after having an affair with them, they had to be able to overcome any repugnance and sleep with him. At all stages it is emphasized that any task which is for the good of the Soviet Union must be undertaken.'

SWALLOWS AND RAVENS

The same ethos applied to the opposite sex.

With the aid of a former West German spook, Lewis managed to track down one of the few swallows who flew the nest and lived to tell the tale.

'Vera' seduced a KGB colonel to travel in East Germany and then escape West.

At the time Lewis met her, she was in her mid-thirties and living in Tunisia with her husband and two young girls.

Still fearing a KGB hit, she chose to meet Lewis in a small café in the walled brothel district of Sousse.

As she lit a cigarette—just like in the movies—the former sex spy recounted how the fifteen women and five men in her group were transported to Verkhonoye, split into groups, and systematically degraded into accepting their Party-designated fate.

After a pep talk from a female instructor promising them a life of luxury (countered by a uniformed man telling them their true motivation should be love of the Party), they were gradually made aware of what their country expected in return.

...is from this 'men's magazine'
from April 1965

----------
* Note for potential researchers/documentary makers: Lewis--and other sources likely based on his book--consistently spell the location as Verkhonoye; unfortunately, a Google search for that name doesn't yield any hits, though that could be for any number of reasons. 

According to Lewis' book, Verkhonoye itself was located 'about 100 miles from Kazan near the Tatar Autonomous Soviet Republic.' Kazan is actually the capital of modern Tatarstan, so I take that to mean that Verkhonoye itself was just outside the Tatar Republic.

The closest fit I can find on Google Maps is Verkhniye Tatyshly--though there are a lot of other potential candidates (like Verkhnyaya Salda).

The Lenin Technical High School, or 'Verkhonoye House of Love,' was reportedly part of a complex covering seven square miles, 'approached by a long, narrow road which runs through bleak countryside.' So for anyone on the ground, it shouldn't be hard to miss.  

The History of Sex: Prague -- Sexpionage, Soviet-Style -- (Chapter X, Part 5)

For Beria, this institutionalized sadism took the form of kidnapping and raping young girls.

Professionally, he also turned sex into one of the KGB's most advanced weapons against the West.

'By using specially trained prostitute spies and combining their skills with the latest technological advances, the Soviet secret service has achieved the most refined form of sexpionage possible,' declared the author of what is in turn one of the most fascinating books from the Cold War era.

In Sexpionage: The Exploitation of Sex by Soviet Intelligence, David Lewis claimed to expose how the KGB trained its agents for work that was literally undercover—revealing, for instance, that the Russians called male sex spies 'ravens' and females… 'swallows.'

Though Lewis was billed as 'one of Britain's leading investigative reporters' in 1976, there's no way his book could have been completely accurate, simply because of its timing and the top-secrecy of its subject.

What's more, the photo on the jacket—a Caucasian jezebel beneath a Soviet flag bedcover—makes you wonder if it should carry a 'Warning: Parts of this book may have been sexed up.'

So more than thirty years afterwards, I tracked down the author to find out. Having documented Commie-v-Capitalist spy gadgets during the Cold War—my fave is the American 'breast transmitter' that fit under a fake nipple—Lewis is now a neuropsychologist who uses brain sensors to advise multinationals on how consumers think as they shop.

Back when he was researching Sexpionage, he tells me, it was hard to assess the information he dug up.

'I think a lot of it was exaggerated—not through my desire—but simply by what I was being told,' he says candidly.

'You just didn't know who to trust. Everybody could've been spinning you a yarn.'

The History of Sex: Berlin -- 'Berlin Meant Boys' -- (Chapter IX, Part 9)

Among the countless foreigners attracted to this milieu was Christopher Isherwood, who'd heard about Berlin from his friend, Wystan (WH Auden to the rest of us).

Writing in the third person, Isherwood made it clear why he moved to Germany in 1929: 'To Christopher, Berlin meant Boys.'

Auden had introduced him to his favorite rent-boy bar, where another regular recalled that the blond Aryans wore 'extremely short lederhosen which showed off their smooth and sunburnt thighs to delectable advantage'—with the pockets cut out for ease of access.

Soon after his arrival, Isherwood visited the world's first Institute of Sexology, founded by Hirschfeld a decade earlier in a grandiose building in the Tiergarten.

The doctor's much younger lover—and later Hirschfeld himself—took him on a tour of the center, where Isherwood giggled with embarrassment at the menagerie of 'sex in every manifestation.'

Photos of hermaphrodites decorated the walls, and live specimens were on hand for inspection—including a young man with 'two perfectly formed female breasts.'

Hirschfeld dubbed cross-dressers 'transvestites' and ended up counseling the first sex-change patient, a Danish painter (Einar Mogens Wegener / Lili Elbe) who died after his final operation—a failed attempt to transplant a woman's ovaries into his body so that he could become a mother.

The same year that Hirschfeld opened the institute, he'd also produced and starred in the world's first gay film, shot in the Schöneberg district.

Different From the Others (or Anders als die Andern) was released in 1919 and told the highly didactic tale of a gay man driven to suicide by a blackmailer exploiting Paragraph 175, with a star turn by Hirschfeld as a sexpert.

Classic dowager line at 29:29 -- 'If that boy's completely normal, then I'm a virgin.' Hirschfeld himself appears at 30:50 in this hour-long clip.

The silent film had been banned in the Nazi stronghold of Munich, as well as Vienna, where a gunman fired into the audience.

Hirschfeld himself had been attacked by anti-Semites in Munich in 1920.

'He was so beaten that his eloquent mouth could never again be kissed by one of his "disciples",' a Nazi noted.

Nevertheless, the fifty-two-year-old doctor had bravely returned the following year—and received such a hiding that some papers ran his obituary.

Hirschfeld survived, however—only to be shot at during a lecture in Vienna.

The History of Sex: Berlin -- 'The German Vice' -- (Chapter IX, Part 6)

Like history, for instance.

Sooner or later, while slogging through your umpteenth tome on the erotic past, you realize that practically all modern sex histories share one unquestionable underlying assumption: namely, that Sex Is a Very Good Thing Indeed.

Tossing off any pretences of objectivity, even the driest academic works tend to portray 'sexual progress' as being synonymous with 'more sex,' while the only 'good' kind of sexual control is birth control.

As an outsider, it's probably no coincidence that I first noticed this bias while trawling through the literature on homosexuality: I think the book that finally clinched it for me was a university hardback entitled Sodomy in Reformation Germany and Switzerland, 1400-1600.

By one Helmut Puff.

It was then that I realized: if history is written by the victors, you can practically hear Freddie Mercury caterwauling 'We Are the Champions' when you open your average 'queer studies' text. 

Oddly, though, the genre often overlooks one believe-it-or-not fact: contrary to what I would have guessed, the gay-rights movement didn't begin in New York or London—or even Paris or Amsterdam—but in Berlin at the end of the nineteenth century.

As a matter of fact, it was a German émigré (Henry Gerber) who later founded America's first gay organization, naming the Society for Human Rights after the groups he'd been involved with in Berlin.

Some also credit Germany's gay-rights movement with pioneering the term 'activist'—amid a slew of other world firsts.

And not for nothing.

If spanking was le vice anglais, the French called homosexuality le vice allemand.

Homophobia and chauvinism aside, there were many reasons why the Continent's Germanic core became the home of gay emancipation in the nineteenth century.

Perhaps most importantly, Germany's activists had something concrete to kick against.

The History of Sex: Berlin -- A Polysexual Party Capital -- (Chap. IX, Pt. 3)

It was while I was over at MORE that I got some useful bondage-bar guidance from the author of Sextips für Schwule Männer, or Sex Tips for Gay Men.

Stephan Niederwieser had recommended the restaurant, which is on the main drag in the gay district, right around the corner from where Christopher Isherwood wrote the stories that became Cabaret, which in turn spawned its own gay icon: Liza Minnelli, daughter of Judy 'Dorothy' Garland.

Stephan had given me good advice when I told him I wanted to see a darkroom.

'You shouldn't go in there with those shoes,' he said, glancing under the table at my feet.

In truth, I'd expected as much—I may be in the ancestral land of Dr. Scholl, but comfy, Velcro-strapped sandals probably aren't the footwear of choice in gay clubs, even on a hot night in Berlin.

'Is that because there's a dress code?'

'Well, that—and you might step in something. Sometimes there are pissing games down there.'

Ohhhh.

My immersion into gay culture has just begun.

In recent years, Berlin has recouped its reputation as a polysexual party capital.

The city's first openly gay mayor, Klaus Wowereit, outed himself in 2001 (before the press could) and has since been re-elected, appearing in public with his partner at events like Pride Week and shocking the tabloids by going out of his way to welcome a hardcore S&M festival to the German capital.

The city boasts not one but two monthly queer-listings magazines, including one named after the Victory Column, or Siegessäule, erected to celebrate Prussian military conquests but now an adopted symbol of triumphant gays.

While Germany's overall birth rate has hit rock bottom—like many European nations, the Germans are effectively dying out—some estimates claim that one in four adult Berliners is homosexual.

An entire queer infrastructure caters to this affluent minority, concentrated in two main districts on both the western and eastern sides of the city.

Berlin's central tourist office offers advice for gay visitors, but the city also has two designated information centers—one for men, the other for lesbians.

Listings advertise bars, shops and dance clubs for cocktails or 'beer-fueled male raunch,' with monikers like 'Le Moustache,' 'ABBA, hallo?!,' 'Boyz 'R' Us' and Ficken3000—Fucking3000—as well as a gimp-mask establishment flogging videos called Cum Hungry and Fist Pigs alongside tins of Crisco, an American-as-apple-pie product that apparently has a whole range of lubricious applications outside the kitchen.

The History of Sex: Graz and Vienna -- Here's Where It Really Gets Messy -- (Chapter VIII, Part 34)

As a diagnosed masochist (and elementary schoolteacher), then, Anna Freud preached that kids could be taught to control their irrational impulses and conform to society—a notion that sounds far more benevolent than it really was.

In keeping with her father's methods, Anna secretly tested her theories on the children of her lifelong female companion, the heiress Dorothy Burlingham, daughter of artist Louis Comfort Tiffany. Sigmund called her kids 'naughty American children.'

Anna and Sigmund managed to escape the Nazis, 
thanks to the strings pulled by his foreign disciples:
'It was one of the most privileged emigrations of the Nazi regime,' the director of Vienna's Freud museum told me.
'They allowed him to take everything with him.' 

Obsessed that the boy was homosexual and therefore in her view abnormal, Anna subjected him and his sister to live-in analysis throughout their childhoods.

At first, her methods seemed to work: the children turned into apparently model citizens who married and had children of their own.

Sure enough, the son didn't become gay—but he did end up drinking himself to death.

His sister committed suicide in the same house in north London where Sigmund had 'died in freedom' and Anna had subjected her to experiments (ironically, the house is now a shrine to Freudianism: the Freud Museum at 20 Maresfield Gardens).

And they're still at it:
The Anna Freud Centre in London

As for Anna herself, her dad's dodgy analysis left her with a father complex so severe she ended up dying a 'vestal' virgin guarding his legacy, huddling in his overcoat as an old, childless spinster on Hampstead Heath.

By that time, unfortunately, Anna's theories had been foisted on a generation of schoolchildren on both sides of the Atlantic.

The tragicomic implication of all this is that when the inevitable backlash came, the rebels of the Sixties wound up kicking against the wrong targets.

Behind the scenes, Freud and his disciples were as much (if not more) to blame for creating the consumerism and conformity of the 1950s as the usual scapegoats: namely, religion, bigotry and the nuclear family.

What's more, when a generation of disillusioned rebels tried to break with the past and create a new future, they looked to another misguided follower of Freud as their savior.

* * *

The History of Sex: Graz and Vienna -- Concocting the Oedipal Complex -- (Chapter VIII, Part 28)

What was novel about Freud's take on the Unconscious was his contention that people were ruled from infancy by their libidos.

Around the time that he was exculpating himself for having helped one friend to kill himself with cocaine and another to disfigure a patient, he claimed to remember that his own libido had been awakened towards his mother when he was roughly two years old.

Freud reckoned he'd made a journey with his mother to Vienna 'during which we must have spent the night together and there must have been an opportunity of seeing her nudam,' he told Fliess.

As if that weren't speculative enough, Freud then admitted that the inspiration for this was Fliess himself and his remark about his own young son supposedly having an erection after seeing his mother naked.

So Freud cobbled together a pseudo-memory of his own and a disparate anecdote from a colleague to concoct a grand unified theory of child sexuality.

Incredibly, Freud then congratulated himself for his candor.

'Being totally honest with oneself is a good exercise,' he wrote, claiming that he realized he'd been in love with his mother and jealous of his father. 'I now consider it a universal event in early childhood.'

Eh?

To this day, there's no proof to support Freud's very specific claim that all boys aged two to three literally want to have sex with their mothers (or vice-versa little girls and their fathers).

Ironically, though, one reason that the Oedipus Complex has been accepted into popular mythology is because it ties in neatly with the old Christian view of sex and Original Sin: it's probably no coincidence that Freudianism took off in traditionally—or perhaps formerly—puritanical countries like England and America.

How to Look Ab-Hijab-ulous

From the archive: 2010

At first, I thought this article was a spoof: a 'liberal' paper giving fashion tips to Muslim women who 'need' to cover up.

'For me, clothing needs to cover everything but the hands and face, and be loose enough to hide my body shape,' writes a Muslim fashionista in Britain's Guardian.

One of her fashion tips?

Harem pants.

'Hijab-friendly' harem pants? 

Apologies if this seems sooooo last millennium, but hey - women's oppression is timeless, right?

'EURABIA' AND MUSLIM PORN

I've previous written about a demographer who's predicting that Muslims will make up 10-15% of the population in high-immigration countries like Britain, Germany and France by 2050.

That compares to just 3-4% now in the UK.

So if the Guardian article is anything to go by, you can expect big changes in years to come.

Europe may not turn into the 'Eurabia' that conservatives fear, but I reckon Islam will have a far bigger impact on modern European culture than many liberals realize.

So if you don't know your burka from your chador, here's a neat little primer from a few years back.

I used it while writing about a French producer of Muslim porn, whose 'actresses' wear a headdress -- and nothing else...

The BBC

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Top University Offers Pole-Dancing Classes

From the archive: 2010

Britain's Cambridge University is offering pole-dancing classes in the same room that once hosted the likes of Winston Churchill and Desmond Tutu.

The Cambridge Union Society says the classes in the Blue Room will be for females only, and it's even wheeled out a gender turncoat to deny that pole-dancing objectifies women.

'The lessons are a way of empowering women, as well as being a fantastic way to exercise and have fun together with other women,' said press officer Rebecca Bailey.

'To suggest the union is in some way guilty of condoning chauvinist attitudes towards women would be as insulting as it is ridiculous.'

Why? Because she says so.

To which one wag replied, paraphrasing Orwell: 'If you want a vision of the future, imagine a high-heeled shoe, stamping on the face of feminism, forever.'

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The History of Sex: Paris and Provence -- Cochons, Defloration-Mania, and the City of Light -- (Chap. VII, Pt. 15)

Ironically, despite the current bondage boom, S&M clubs are virtually nonexistent in the land of the Marquis.

So I've decided to go to Paris in search of a latter-day Sade—or at least a real, live, squealing cochon (slang for 'pervert').

The City of Light sealed its illicit reputation in the century after the Marquis' death, when pornography became mass market and consumerism fueled the notion that both people and goods could be disposable.

The English had popularized the term 'shopping' during the Marquis' lifetime, while 'defloration-mania'—the sale of virgins—became the rage on both sides of the Channel.

In 1855, a French playwright came up with a new term for the decadent 'half world' that thrived beyond the bounds of prudish 'respectable' society.

Fast-forward to the present, though, and le demimonde could easily describe tout le monde.

In keeping with stereotypes, sex and swinging clubs are as common as poodle muck in Paris, but surprisingly there's only one venue devoted to BDSM.

Cris et Chuchotements—'Cries and Whispers'—is tucked away where the red-light spillover from the Pigalle meets the chi-chi respectability of the seventeenth arrondissement.

Don't believe the hype:
They wish they were this sexy

In fact, the S&M site sits right behind the local town hall and just down the street from a police station and an elementary school.

The kids' laughter is echoing down the street as I approach the dungeonesque door, marked with a flickering candle encased in a glass. It seems fitting that the nearest Metro stop is Rome.

Inside, the entrance is predictably dark, contrasting with the flash of white flesh that greets me.

A chubby blonde is peeling off the last of her street clothes to squeeze into something a little less comfortable, and from what I've seen (without wanting to), I reckon she's at that age just before the physical slide turns into an avalanche.

The guy who takes my coat, on the other hand, is a buff gym bunny who I've been assured is a serious S&M player, despite the friendly lettering on his T-shirt—Philippe—and his codename—Le Marquis Noir—which probably sounds more menacing if you twirl a fake moustache and pronounce it with a villainous stage cackle:

The Marquis Nwah-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!

The History of Sex: Seville -- Tricksters and Conquistadors -- (Chap. VI, Pt. 8)

Though prone to corruption, a devil's advocate could argue that the Inquisition served as a check on decadence during Spain's 'Golden Century.'

Even after England thrashed the Spanish Armada in 1588, Spain ranked as a global superpower, with vast territories encompassing Latin America, the Caribbean, Florida, California and the southwestern US (without forgetting the Philippines).

The Spanish Inquisition also influenced fashion throughout Europe, though Continentals eventually ditched the rich-but-dour look for more revealing styles (even as the Spanish bizarrely took to binding their daughters' chests with lead plates to make their breasts 'as flat as a sheet of paper,' according to a French contemporary).

At the same time, Spain popularized the Cult of the Virgin, forcing women back up on an even higher pedestal.

Seville still prides itself on being MUY MARIANA: VERY MARIAN.

At least two centuries before the Vatican made it official, the home of Don Juan touted Mary's Immaculate Conception, a doctrine that took the concept of female purity to the extreme: not only had the Mother of God been an eternal virgin, she'd also been conceived sans original sin.

NONCONFORMISTS VS. CONQUISTADORS

Crucially, the riches that made this age 'Golden' for Spain weren't so much earned as stolen, with the conquistadors taking far more from the New World than they put in.

Consider the settlers of New England versus New Spain.

The former were Calvinist nonconformists who risked their lives for an ideal: to be able to practice their beliefs free from religious persecution.

In contrast, the semi-literate brutes who conquered 'New Spain' (like the English fortune-seekers who settled the American South) risked their lives solely to get rich or die trying.

The mountains of gold and silver they shipped back via Seville fostered generations of aristos with no real purpose but to waste their fortunes and amuse themselves by exploiting others.

It's this decadence that produced the character of Don Juan.

Miguel de Manara, often cited as the 'real' Don Juan

The original Trickster of Seville was a straight, wages-of-sin cautionary tale, penned around 1630 by Tirso de Molina, a monk turned playwright.

Don Juan Tenorio is a rich young blade who gets his kicks tricking women into bed.

Catholic to the core, he seduces and double-crosses his way from Naples to Seville, cynically boasting that he'll seek God's forgiveness with his last breath.

The supernatural twist is that the ghost of a man he's murdered—the father of a dishonored woman—kills Don Juan and drags him off to hell before he can repent.