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: Berlin -- It's the Nazis, Stupid -- (Chapter IX, Part 26)

Karl-Heinz shows me around the museum's temporary exhibit entitled 'Paradise' and murmurs appreciatively: 'Here is a very interesting drawing.'

That's one word for it.

The artist was a German POW who swapped erotica for cigarettes with American guards.

The drawing shows a group of naked cuties in officers' caps putting the 'cock' into 'cocktail:' one is peeing into the proffered glass of another.

Mmm… fresh pee-tinis, anyone? 

Images from the museum's 'Paradise' exhibit

Gad told me before coming here that Karl-Heinz 'used to be gorgeous.'

For the record, that seems ungenerous, because he's only fortysomething and still a good-looking guy, with white teeth gleaming against his tan and a salt-and-pepper goatee.

He's also fun to talk with because he engages difficult subjects head-on.

In fact, I like him so much, I've decide to burden him with a couple of questions I've been dying to ask:

'I know that places around the world celebrate Christopher Street Day—even in Istanbul,' I start off. 'But why do gays in Germany focus on commemorating an American event rather than their own, far more important achievement: the founding of the world's first gay-rights movement?'

Karl-Heinz pauses before giving me a diplomatic, respectful answer that amounts to 'it's the Nazis, stupid.'

'You shouldn't forget that the infrastructure that there had been in the Twenties wasn't established again until the Eighties. From 1933, within half a year after the Nazis came to power, this widespread network and infrastructure was totally wiped out and had to go underground or become invisible. What is especially important for all the more history-oriented groups—but even for restaurants or the organizers of fucking festivals—is the knowledge that a very good community can be destroyed in less than half a year. So in Germany and Berlin this is maybe more on the table, as we say, than in other countries.'

The History of Sex: Berlin -- No Famine of Phalluses -- (Chapter IX, Part 25)

In truth, that image summed up my initial impressions of Berlin's gay scene.

Given Germany's pioneering role in the gay rights movement and the sacrifices made by its homosexuals over the decades, it seemed overwhelmingly tragic that modern Berlin should be just another gay party capital renowned for shopping and shagging.

But then I went to see Karl-Heinz Steinle, the curator of the world's first Schwules Museum: the only 'Gay Museum' in the global village.

One of the museum's exhibits

'I would say that Berlin is actually more balanced than other cities,' he explains. 'Berlin has these dark-sex-triple-gangbang-fuck-rooms—'

—a word I would love to see written in German— 

'—with all the drugs and stuff. And it has, let's say, new ideas, experimental gender-crisscrossed rooms and programs and quite a few historical groups.'

The Schwules Museum began in a flat before the fall of the Wall and now occupies an old industrial workshop; its neighbours are a gay café and a shop called 'Faster, Pussycat!'

'There is one part of gays' thinking that isn't so interested in history, but there is another part which is enormously interested to be able to say "I'm not the first one,"' Karl-Heinz says.

'The museum's development from a little special interest group to the institution that we are now also establishes gay history as a scientific study. It's not done by gays who want to say, "I will collect 2,000 photographs of cocks."'

That said, there's no famine of phalluses in the museum's exhibit on two centuries of gay history.

Inevitably, as with Freud's house in Vienna, Berlin's Gay Museum takes the we-are-the-champions approach to history.

But amid the usual namechecks—nods to the Greeks and Romans, plus Dietrich, Wilde, Auden and Isherwood—it also displays plenty of curiosities: an anal diagram from a French medical text in 1878 showing 'Desordres que produit la pederastie' (it ain't pretty)… Gestapo photos of known homosexuals, taken in three poses (including with and without hats)… and kitsch Seventies copies of him: das magazine mit dem mann featuring weedy sex symbols with bush cuts and sideburns before the American gym-bunny aesthetic conquered the world.

The History of Sex: Berlin -- Well, Blow Me! -- (Chap. IX, Pt. 5)

As with the S&M tea in Paris, I was a little nervous about wandering into a basement of biker types where no one could hear me scream.

But Stephan assured me: 'If you don't want to do anything, all you have to do is turn away.'

Though he's Bavarian, Stephan speaks English like a wisecracking New Yorker, having acquired the accent from his first boyfriend: a Sephardic Jew from Brooklyn.

While we were at MORE, surrounded by men with their mothers' smiles, Stephan announced that he'd found a US publisher for his Sex Tips for Gays, though he wasn't sure it would sell.

'It has photos of men being fisted up to here'—he measured an imaginary arse mark at his elbow—'and of a penis with sperm flying everywhere. It's not something you ordinarily see in American books.'

It's not something I ordinarily visualize over dinner, either. Particularly not over Königsberger Klopse—meatballs smothered in cream.

BEND OVER!

But then Stephan isn't a mainstream writer.

His author's site includes a photo of him posing with his hand down his pants: you certainly don't get that on ianmcewan.com.

Swallowing another spoonful of creamy potato soup, Stephan informed me that he's also written several novels, as well as individual volumes on anal and oral sex, entitled Bend Over! and Blow Me!, and he's now hard at work on the third in the series, a guide to masturbation called Do It Yourself!

Not your usual DIY manual

'I've had to do a lot of research,' he said with a straight face.

Personally, I was amazed he had any strength left to type.

But I couldn't resist asking: 'Masturbation? How much is there to write?'

'Lots' was the inevitable reply. 'It's such a huge subject. Because everybody does it. It doesn't matter if you're gay or straight or married or single.'

Sadly, as a veteran of Europe's first Masturbate-a-thon, I reckon I could tell Stephan a thing or two about wanking.

When it comes to gay sex, though, I'm a virgin.

'Hedonism among gays is tragic,' he told me. 'Berlin has a very big party scene. You have 10, 15, 25 sex parties every day where you can do everything you could ever imagine. You can have sex round the clock, 365 days a year. What is true about Berlin is that you go out and get what you want and don't care much about anything else.'

* * *

The History of Sex: Berlin -- Morning, Noon and Night -- (Chap. IX, Pt. 4)

Depending on your fancy, you can find different theme parties every night of the week: 'Naked & Underwear Sex Parties,' Turkish/Oriental 'Gayhanes,' Slave Markets and 'Candlelight Fuck,' transvestite shows and queer ballroom dancing and one-off spectacles like 'Gay Night at the Zoo' in Berlin's Tiergarten and the 'German Mr. Leather' Contest held on Easter Sunday.

The tourist info also directs you to the most popular public toilets for cottaging and hotspots for naked sunbathing, as well as a gay B&B service, numerous porn emporia with cruising areas and private cabins, and saunas and massage parlors offering male-to-male 'anal and prostate massage and fisting.'

There's even a Café PositHIV serving up tea and sympathy and a rainbow-flagged stand selling curried-bratwurst outside Berlin's landmark KaDeWe department store.

An anti-Putin rally in Berlin in 2013

In short, Berlin seems to prove the envious theory of many a straight man that when it comes to sex, gay men have it easy: without any women involved to say 'no,' the boys must be at it morning, noon and night.

Or, to quote my bilingual gay guidebook, 'Ficken klappt die ganze Woche'—'Fucking works all week.'

Now, I like to think I'm as gay-friendly as the next guy—my best man was…—but one immediate revelation in the home of homosexuality is just how little I know about the scene.

I had no idea, for instance, of the ubiquity of der Darkroom.

The idea of a purpose-built, darkened room for guy-n-gal orgies has yet to catch on in most straight clubs—no doubt for fear that the authorities would shut them down before they could say 'pass the lube.'

In many gay clubs, though, sex rooms are standard, according to Berlin From Behind (certainly a novel way of taking in a city for me): 'Darkrooms have almost become part of the basic equipment for gay bars in Berlin.'

It's also become clear that I know nothing about darkroom etiquette.

Take the fat cueball in the leather bar with his hand up the other guy's backside.

If one wanted to join in, how would one go about interrupting them?

Would you tap one of the wankers on the shoulder and say, 'Excuse me, would you mind terribly if I stuck my finger up your butt?'

Or is Igor actually employed to go around and offer extra services to customers: 'Tickle your sphincter for a fiver, guv?'

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: Berlin -- Deutschland, Deutschland, Uber Phallus: Queer as Volk since 1897 -- (Chap. IX, Pt. 1)

Chapter Nine

DEUTSCHLAND, DEUTSCHLAND,

ÜBER PHALLUS

Queer as Volk since 1897

'Oh, if only you had never gone to Berlin!' 

--the sister of gay-rights pioneer Karl Ulrichs, 
when he publicly 'came out' around 1862

It's one a.m. on a sticky summer night in Berlin, and the annual Gay and Lesbian Street Festival is still going strong, marking the first night of Pride Week in the gay capital of Europe.

Over in the postcard part of town, between the Victory Column and Brandenburg Gate, the mainstream 'Love Parade' has long since come and gone, a techno-bacchanalia full of whistle-tweeting kids.

The Prussians erected the Victory Column, or Siegessaule,
to celebrate their military conquests;
it's now an adopted symbol of Berlin's triumphant gay community

But here in the leafy bits of Schöneberg, or 'Beauty Hill,' the party vibe is much more relaxed—grown-up, even.

Men, women and those in between are cavorting under the streetlights to salsa, disco and allsorts.

And if you venture into one of the many bars radiating off Nollendorfplatz, the atmosphere suddenly becomes very adult indeed.

In one hardcore hole-in-the-wall, the de facto dress code is rubber and leatherwear.

Guys with shaved heads and facial hair slug beer and eye each other up, surrounded by black bondage gear strung across the walls.

Handcuffs adorn the wood-beamed bar, along with a plastic statue of a man wearing a dog collar and an erection.

And if you tire of admiring that, a screen above the liquor is showing a cartoon of a clean-cut blonde playing with himself on a sofa while a couple of hard-bodied uniforms deliver a new PC.

The blonde guy climaxes just as they're walking by, and a splodge of ejaculate happens to hit one of the deliverymen in the face.

Rather than beat their customer to a pulp, he and his black co-worker start beating each other off.

The blonde begins taking it in turns to fellate the black guy and the brunette, and the trio end up humping in a daisy chain, with cartoon cum rocketing across the screen.

And if you turn your head—or, in my case, avert your eyes—another TV shows a live-action film of a woman slicing off a man's ear.

Larry Flynt Was My Fleece (or How a Book about Sex Turned Me Into a Christian)

by JR Daeschner

In the end, it was the lies that got to me.

I was in Pompeii, you see, researching what I hoped would be my next big book, a History of Sex that would venture between the past and present, revealing the origins of our notions about love and romance.

Besides the obvious reasons, I'd picked Pompeii because of one little-known fact: the Roman ghost town is the site of the first known reference to the word 'Christian,' dating from around the time that the Apostle Paul visited nearby.

Even more intriguingly, the house that contained the 'CHRISTIANOS' graffiti stands across from Pompeii's brothel (and may have been a whorehouse itself).

But what struck me most was an offhand remark by Pompeii's chief archeologist as he tried to explain the exponential growth of an obscure Semitic sect just a few decades after Rome had crucified its leader like a criminal:

"No religion had ever spread so rapidly in such a capillary manner before."

And that got me wondering why.

Having been raised a Christian, I'd turned my back on the faith partly because I believed the lie that Christianity was anathema to knowledge--I thought that the more you learned about the "real world," the less faith you inevitably had.

As I began to discover, though, that wasn't necessarily true.

If anything, I came to realize that Christians have nothing to fear from learning--while the secular world has a lot to lose from an unbiased look at our past.

I soon learned, for instance, that it was Christ and his followers who gifted the concept of redemption to Western culture--the revolutionary promise that even a prostitute could be redeemed (as opposed to the once-a-whore, always-a-whore ethos of the ancient world).

And it was the early Christians who fought to stop Roman infanticide (making the modern Church's stance on abortion remarkably consistent), while it was Christ's gender-neutral character that enabled women to identify with Him and call themselves Christians--or 'little Christs.'

Contrast Jesus with Mohammed--a celibate pacifist versus a warmonger with a harem--and you can see why feminism took root in traditionally Christian societies.

Whereas polygamy inherently devalues women, it was Paul--the supposed source of Christian "misogyny"--who officially broke with Jewish custom and made marriage one-to-one, mandating that each Christian leader have only one wife and (contrary to Roman practice) actually be faithful to her.

In other words, it's very likely that the only reason Western women dare to demand monogamy from men now is because of centuries of Christianization.

Yet somehow the world continues to slander Christianity as "sex-negative"--and misogynistic to boot.

FREUD'S FRAUD

The cognoscenti will tell you that Sigmund Freud, the father of psychoanalysis, is largely disregarded now, while blithely overlooking his pervasive impact on pop culture and the wreckage it's caused.

For instance, thanks to Freud's declaration that all children want to have sex with their parents (the Oedipus complex), many of his followers dismissed actual cases of sex abuse as wishful fantasies.

And it was one of Freud's disciples, Wilhelm Reich, who helped inspire the Sexual Revolution of the Sixties and Seventies, a period that most documentaries depict as an eminently groovy time to be alive.

But have you ever heard them mention its seedy side?

At a time when erstwhile "perversions"--homosexuality, sadomasochism, etcetera--were being declared perfectly normal, many "revolutionaries" argued that pedophilia was just another avenue for sexploration.

After all, who was to say that consensual sex with children was wrong? Or, as a Dutch magazine for gays put it in 1969, "Why Not Go To Bed With Your Son?"

Modern "pedophile activists" still regard those as the good old days. In the Netherlands, I interviewed the co-founder of an ultra-fringe political party trying to legalize pedophilia.

Who did he blame for putting an end to the child-sex movement? An alliance between an all-but-extinct branch of feminism (they wouldn't have called pole dancing "empowering") and--you guessed it--devout Christians.

That was a truth I heard repeatedly, be it from a dodgy Russian biznesman in Venice or an American pimp in Prague: Christianity acts as a check on decadence.

And time and again, I came across Westerners who were having to relearn history's lessons the hard way.

In Amsterdam, I met a former prostitute turned politician who led a crackdown that shut much of the Red-Light District.

"If you're a Christian organization, people don't want to hear (your views on prostitution) because you're Christian," she told me. "But it's new when a politician from the leftwing says it's not good!'

As for pornography, I interviewed one of the makers of the "Max Hardcore" franchise in LA, a man who's filmed some of the worst violence against women outside of warzones.

"With the sex business, you gotta keep ratcheting up," he said. "It's kinda like violence in movies. You gotta keep ratcheting up. People get inured at a certain point—it's gotta be more, greater, nastier. Filthier."

Funnily enough, that's just what porn's (Christian) opponents say.

JUST ANOTHER CASUALTY

Meanwhile, the media routinely hail Hustler founder Larry Flynt as a hero of the First Amendment, a martyr to free speech.

But did you know he once claimed to be a born-again Christian--and that during his conversion, he had a premonition of himself in a wheelchair?

I asked him about it at his headquarters in Beverly Hills. He admitted that if he had closed Hustler after his conversion--rather than continue defending it in court--he might never have been shot, and he wouldn't be paralyzed today.

Up close and in person, rather than a hero, Flynt looks like just another casualty of porn, a man who's made millions but lost everything that counts, including his "soulmate" and much of his family.

All of this eventually resonated with me.

Lie after lie, I kept coming back to the faith whose truths had been proven over centuries: rules and values that built Western civilization, not because God is a god of arbitrary demands, but because "God so loved the world."

Sure, I also experienced some personal and professional disasters (it's surprising how low some of us have to go before finally surrendering).

But ultimately once I realized the truth, the inevitable question became--what do you do with it? Or "who do you say that I am?"

Some may question my decision to publish The History of Sex.

Well, all I can say is I prayed about it. A lot. And Larry Flynt was my fleece (but that's another story…)

For those of you who struggle to reconcile faith with the "real world" (particularly sex), take it from someone who's had to learn the hard way: the Truth really will set you free.

* * *

The History of Sex: Graz and Vienna -- Born This Way? -- (Chapter VIII, Part 14)

While casting around for info about the home of masochism, I found a reference to Graz on a whoremongers' website.

The businessman writing the review said he'd had a few hours to kill en route to Munich, so rather than read a book, go to a museum or do anything productive with his time, he decided to do something anti-reproductive: he went to a whorehouse.

Having ordered himself a Thai, he offered her €200 ($270) 'for fucking and pissing into her mouth… She reluctantly agreed for three hundred. I pissed, she even swallowed some, but was not enthusiastic.'

And rrrrrrrrriipppp!

Off went another layer of innocence from my psyche.

Of course, I knew about 'golden showers' and the like—Lena had a girlfriend aroused by the sight of defecation; she used to a sit under a glass coffee table to watch, raising an obvious question about friends and enemas.

But what kind of cretin expects a complete stranger to swallow his waste with a smile?

Ah, the innocence...

The typical reaction to this is to spout the relativist view that such vices have always existed and always will.

But Krafft-Ebing's work makes you wonder whether the percentage of kinksters has actually increased over the past century.

In other words, are there more 'perverts' now than there used to be? 

SEX AND CONSUMERISM

To try to find out, I phoned Krafft-Ebing's Dutch biographer before coming here.

'I think it has to do with opportunity,' Professor Harry Oosterhuis told me. 'I don't believe in a kind of essentialist sex drive. Sexual drive and desires are also recognized and realized because you have the opportunity and possibility of developing them. If you have no examples around you, perhaps you wouldn't get the idea.'

'What I know of a lot of people in Amsterdam is that they experiment. People start from heterosexuality to also experiment with bisexuality and homosexuality. They start to develop a fetish. They might be involved in S&M because there are S&M parties. It has to do with lifestyle, with consumerism, with people wanting to do something with their fantasies and having the opportunity because we live in quite a liberal and affluent society in which you can realize lifestyles.'

Notably, almost all of Krafft-Ebing's case histories came from the upper classes.

'You find very few laborers. And this sexual culture that was already there and was very elitist has simply been democratized after the Second World War.'

The History of Sex: Graz and Vienna -- It All Comes Together in the Sacher-Masoch Suite -- (Chapter VIII, Part 13)

So far, that seems premature.

Sacher-Masoch's house in Graz is now a place where people go to treat their ills; apparently, the pharmacy even has a plaque commemorating the author of Venus in Furs, but I'm too distracted by the billboard across the way advertising Der Venus Club, a girlie bar that takes its symbol from another Renaissance masterpiece—Botticelli's Birth of Venus (gold and silver plated)—and charges €75 for half an hour with a 'Top Girl' in themed rooms spanning Hollywood, Africa, Harlem… and, um, Britain. 

If only I'd known…

Instead, I've booked the 'Wanda Sacher-Masoch Suite' at a hotel in the center.

Leopold and Aurora used to dine at the Erzherzog Johann after the opera, so as part of the 2003 festival, the hotel's owners concocted a cake fit for masochists—the Sacher-Masoch Torte, natürlich (with layers of fruit and marzipan)—and dedicated a suite to the unhappy couple.

Its designer is the same Austrian woman who bullied the Pole for performance art, and the centerpiece is a large portrait of her posing as Wanda in the middle of Vienna's Kunsthistorisches Museum, right in front of Titian's Venus in Furs as well as his Ecce Homo/Christ Before Pilate.

Irene Andessner as Wanda

Now, this is all very exciting for me because the photo ties together Titian, his pornographer mate Aretino (as Pilate)...

...and the same saucy model from the Venus of Urbino...

...posing as Venus in Furs (aka The Woman in the Fur Coat)...

—plus an Austrian artist playing Sacher-Masoch's muse.

Irene Andessner's Wanda wears thigh-high boots, a corona and a satin-lined cloak with a massive train: the fake fur in the portrait is actually the bedspread of the four-poster in the Sacher-Masoch Suite.

Though the room's color scheme is predictable—black and white with red velvet features—it's the details that take the room gloriously over the top: the (somewhat disturbing) cameo of the artist as Wanda inside the bed's canopy—gloating over you while you sleep (or not)…

...the quote from Venus in Furs on the glass panels in the bathroom… the life-sized projection of Venus on the shower wall when the lights are dimmed… and the pièce de résistance: a Gideon's Bible next to the telephone.

Defend Buttman? You're Not a Liberal, You're a Libertarian

From the archive: 2010

The trial of 'Buttman' in our nation's capital shows just how confused many self-styled liberals are about porn.

For those without sphincter fixations, John Stagliano is the porn mogul who's arguably done more than anyone to popularize anal sex among heterosexuals.

Toward the end of the last century, Stagliano spotted, well, a gap in the market and cast himself as Buttman, a sniggerworthy alter ego who not only sodomized women but also pioneered forms of exploitation that are now routine in the porn repertoire. 

The success of his Evil Angel outfit--and the fact that society tolerated it--inspired established porn players to follow in his fetishistic footsteps, creating what has become, quite literally, a 'race to the bottom.'

As one of Stagliano's porn allies in LA told me while I was researching The History of Sex: 'Back in the early Nineties, (anal sex) wasn't rare, but it was like a step up from normal porn. Now it's kind of almost normal, because with the sex business, you gotta keep ratcheting up.'

'It's kinda like violence in movies. People get inured at a certain point—it's gotta be more, greater, nastier. Filthier.'

Buttman is HIV positive -- as is his porn star wife
(thankfully, their nine-year-old daughter is negative)

In the People v. Buttman case, Stagliano faced up to 32 years in prison on obscenity charges, but the judge threw out the case on technicalities. 

Bizarrely, throughout the proceedings, many so-called liberals parroted the same clichés used in Stagliano's defense: consenting adults… their own privacy… First Amendment… freedom of speech… yadda, yadda, yadda.

But if you think there's anything liberal about supporting or tolerating porn, chances are 1) you don't know how hardcore it's become or 2) you have a vested interest in the industry.

Stagliano, for instance, is renowned for pioneering 'asshole milkshakes' and 'ATMs' ('ass-to-mouths'), in which women are not only subjected to anal sex but induced to swallow the ejaculate, thereby tasting their own feces.

And if you can tolerate that, here's a sample of the dialogue from Milk Nymphos, an Evil Angel video that was played to the court, as cited by a local paper.

'One of the female performers repeatedly refers to her male co-star as a "nigger," declaring, for example, "Come on, you nigger, fuck me in the ass," and imploring the other female performer to "look in his eyes when you suck his nigger cock."'

True liberalism holds that we're all in this together: that what I do has an impact on my fellow human beings, and if I see someone being exploited or treated unjustly, it's my duty to do everything in my power to help them.

That's why so many of the early liberals--not least Nonconformist women--fought to regulate porn and prostitution.

Libertarianism is almost the exact opposite, a kind of rabid conservatism that's perverted the American Dream.

Libertarians like Stagliano believe they should be free to make a buck any way they see fit unless the law can stop them.

In their twist on history, they'd have us believe that George Washington and his boys were eating their boots at Valley Forge so that centuries later, Buttman & Co. could get rich by degrading women for money.

Sure enough, one of Stagliano's media defenders was a research fellow at the DC-based Cato Institute, a group with the lofty-sounding ideals of promoting 'individual liberty, free markets and peace'.

In reality, it's a libertarian thinktank that thought nothing of taking Buttman's money.

If you want to proclaim the Buttman trial as a victory for free speech, then go ahead: that's your right.

But please: don't call yourself a liberal.

***

The History of Sex: Paris and Provence -- The Sadeian Dream Made Reality -- (Chap. VII, Pt. 31)

Grinning, Milukman shifts the small desk where the tax inspector has been doing her dirty work to open a cabinet and show me les fucking machines, including 'Le Pump'—an oxygen mask that clamps onto a woman's privates—and the electric bread knife that's been converted into a double-headed dildo.

He also produces the black headdress that the women wear, and agrees to let me photograph him in it—if he can get it on, that is.

'I don't know how to do this,' he says, fumbling with the strings.

After camping it up on the futon where the beurettes take their pleasure, he takes a seat at his laptop next to a poster of Scarface to show me the one Internet flick he's actually proud of.

'It was very funny to do.'

The sadistic premise of No Fixed Address centers on a not overly attractive woman who arrives in a business suit saying she's willing to do anything to work in porn. 

'Anything?' the director asks off camera.

'Anything.'

So the filmmakers decide to test her by luring a homeless man off the streets—the skinheaded actor from Beurettes Rebelles in a dodgy wig and makeup—and hauling him into the studio, where the woman is waiting blindfolded.

'She can't see!' Milukman chuckles.

The filmmakers remove the blindfold, and the woman's so disgusted, she starts to walk out, but the men talk her into having sex with the tramp.

She kneels in front of him only to find that his penis has gunk on it.

'We put cheese on his dick to make it look dirty!' Milukman laughs.

Cut to the homeless man hurriedly washing his penis in the sink.

'Reality,' the director turns to me to make a Very Important Point, 'That's something the Internet can provide: reality.'

In reality, I don't know what he's talking about.

The clip progresses from oral sex to fisting and screwing, climaxing with a 'facial,' to use the trade term.

And throughout all this, the porn impresario is laughing and cackling: if you couldn't see the screen, you'd think he was watching Chaplin's Little Tramp being hit with a cream pie rather than a tramp coming on a woman's face.

Maybe that's the Sadeian dream made reality. In the new age of porn, people don't know when they're being sadistic; cruelty just comes naturally.

* * *

The History of Sex: Paris and Provence -- Muslim Porn: Behind the Scenes -- (Chap. VII, Pt. 30)

Likewise, I don't want to sound libelous, but it would be a scandal—and more than a little ironic—if the secretive entrepreneur behind Beurettes Rebelles were actually a racist enriching himself by exploiting French-Arab women.

And the more time I spend with him, I get the impression that Milukman doesn't hold France's North African population in the highest esteem: maybe it's because he's a Parisian from the upper crust or because his father had to flee Algeria in 1962 and remake his life after the revolution—Milukman still calls De Gaulle a 'traitor' for surrendering Algeria to the Algerians.

None of that makes him inherently racist, of course; in certain circles, it would just prove he's a good Frenchman.

But imagine the outrage if Milukman turned out to be a good Frenchman whose work just happened to rot the minds and reproductive relationships of immigrants to keep both them and their numbers down.

As Milukman says, though, he doesn't see it that way; it's a 'social service.'

Le Drilldo: one of Milukman's tools

'So are you planning to work in porn for the rest of your career?'

'No, no.' He shakes his head vigorously. 'If I want to have children, and they knew I was working in porn, that would be impossible for me. Maybe it's my Italian roots, but when I'm older, I can't look back at my life and say I did sex and porn.'

With that, Milukman offers to show me his studio nearby.

Instead of a professional film set—or even a photographer's studio—the woodbeamed atelier looks like a student's bedsit or, more romantically, an artist's garret, with a small skylight, a futon and a disheveled mattress, as well as DVDs of The Saint and The Da Vinci Code scattered around the TV and stereo.

The walls are decorated with postcards of tasteful nudes—there's nary a nipple in sight—in contrast to the hardcore scenes that are filmed right here.

On one of the Beurettes Rebelles DVDs you can glimpse the postcard nudes in the background—as a veiled woman with a C-section scar sodomizes herself with a massive black dildo.

The History of Sex: Paris and Provence -- 'I Don't Want to Sound Racist, But...' -- (Chap. VII, Pt. 29)

I'd rather not.

With all that and more under his belt, it's not surprising that Milukman views classic erotica like Emmanuelle as risibly tame.

'I'm from the new generation of producers. There's a gap between Emmanuelle and what I do,' he tells me, by which I think he means that old-school filmmakers tried to hide behind a fig leaf of artistic pretension, whereas his naked ambition is all about money shots.

But that's not what he's getting at.

'People of the old school did it because they loved it,' he explains.

'They were perverts—cochons—pigs. The new generation does it only because it's business. When we get together at meetings, we talk about links and partnerships, not about fucking.'

'You see webmasters who look like choirboys. There are a lot of men like me who didn't think they would work in sex, but sex came to them via the Internet.'

One glorious day I turned on the computer, and lo and behold, sex had come to me via the Internet! 

Likewise, Milukman rejects any notion that he enjoys degrading women, much less that he's a sadist.

'My job is as a businessman. This is just a business opportunity.'

'So if you could make the same money selling potatoes—'

'—then we would do that!' he smiles triumphantly. 'I want to show that you can do porn on the Internet without being a pervert.'

Which sounds perversely puritanical.

And while your mind's reeling from that, I should point out that I have no idea whether the makers of Emmanuelle were cochons.

When I mention another elder veteran of the French hardcore scene, though, Milukman is scathing: 'He's obscene, a pervert. His life is porn. My life is not porn.'

And like a canny drug dealer—or a carb-conscious purveyor of spuds, for that matter—Milukman doesn't partake of his own product.

'I never watch my own movies on the Internet. Except for one. It was very funny to do—I'll show it to you later.'

'What about the beurettes? Do you ever sleep with them?'

'Never.' He rears back. 'When I meet one of the girls, I don't even kiss her. I shake her hand. When you're on set, you're in a business mindset. Also, I have a fiancée.'

'Does she know what you do?'

'Yes.' He grimaces. 'She doesn't like it, but she accepts it. When we're with friends and family, I'm not allowed to say what I do.'

'Also, she knows that I'm not attracted to that kind of woman. I don't want to sound racist, but when you've already fucked that kind of girl, you realize that things will always be complicated with them and their families, and they're hard to put up with.'

The History of Sex: Paris and Provence -- Muslim Porn: 'A Social Service'? -- (Chap. VII, Pt. 28)

And just as Sade disowned most of his work and was ostracized by polite society, Milukman says he's been shunned by some old schoolmates because of his career in porn.

'Do you ever worry about the impact it has on society?'

'We often give the excuse'—I think he means 'justification'—'that we give pleasure to people,' he says, before echoing the ancient sex-as-safety-valve point of view.

'It's better to have boys jacking off in front of a computer than to have them raping girls in a gang-bang in a banlieue. It's a public interest thing.'

He laughs, but he's serious. 'It's true. I really believe that.'

'What about the women? Don't you think it's degrading to them?'

'Yes, it's degrading, but the girls who do it have a choice to do it. This sort of thing has to exist,' he adds. 'It's like prostitution. It's a social service.'

A true public service:
A poster in the Paris Metro for Ni Putes Ni Soumises
(Neither Whores Nor Submissives):
a French feminist movement that fights violence against women
in the banlieues and ghettos where many of France's Muslims live 

Again, he's smiling—but he's not joking.

The closest he comes to showing regret is when he mentions a girl who suddenly asked him to remove all her films from the Internet.

'A lot of Arabian girls say "I want to keep my face hidden. Because if my brother or father sees me, I'm dead." And it's true—they would be dead.'

Unfortunately for the girl in question, her boyfriend was a subscriber to the site.

'And he recognized her body, even though her face was hidden.' Milukman rolls his eyes.

'Is she okay?'

'I don't know,' he laughs. 'I can't really call her to find out.'

'How do you feel about that?'

'I removed the movies. It was her choice.'

'And?'

He finally musters up some token remorse. 'I feel bad because the girl needed the money, and for me, it wasn't so bad because it was just a funny film.' He shrugs. 'She did something very hard—that may be why her boyfriend didn't like it.'

May be.

'Hard' involves household appliances fitted with sex toys: 'fucking machines' with names like 'Le Drilldo' and 'Le Breadbang.'

'We put two dildos on an electric thing you use to cut bread—'

'You mean an electric knife?'

'Yeah. Bzzzzhh!' he's laughing now. 'And she took it in the pussy and the ass at the same time. Can you imagine?'

The History of Sex: Paris and Provence -- Muslim Porn and Darwinian Capitalism -- (Chap. VII, Pt. 27)

Apart from my word to the wise, though, Milukman says his tip-offs have come from Arabic subscribers—not outsiders.

'But surely if you care about Allah and the Dome of the Rock, you're not going to be surfing Muslim porn in the first place?' I suggest.

'All that is about hypocrisy.'

As for himself, Milukman's mother is from Naples and his father French; 'Milukman' is a meaningless nickname, and his heritage has made him a fully indifferent Catholic.

'In my mind, I'm Italian; in my way of being, I'm French,' he says. 'I'm a Christian, but that is not a problem.' 

If anything, like so many people I've met on my journey, Milukman comes across as a Darwinian capitalist, a man whose belief system consists of one brutally simple credo: 'survival of the richest,' with little if any concern for what was once quaintly called the common good.

Superficially, he's as charming as you'd expect a Franco-Italian to be and far more handsome than the stereotypical Nethead.

Fundamentally, though, he must be a pretty nasty piece of work.

Milukman made his first fortune by starting a vengeance website back in 1998, claiming that it was one of the few Internet concepts to originate in Europe and be copied in the US rather than the other way round.

On the site, jilted lovers get their own back by posting compromising photos of their exes, alongside explanations of why they want revenge.

'For me, it was a very funny idea,' he recalls. 'I never believed it would be as successful as it was.'

Now in his mid-thirties, Milukman says he's made enough money from porn to never have to work again.

I have no way of verifying this, but when he mentions that an ongoing tax inspection may cost him €150,000, he doesn't look worried at all.

'My father had a big business,' he says, adding that he didn't know anything about France's slums until he started Beurettes Rebelles.

His dad wanted him to join the family business, but Milukman rebelled. That's how he got into porn.

'It's the best business to make money in,' he shrugs.

The History of Sex: Paris and Provence -- The Dome of the Rock, Muslim Porn, and Mohammed's Child Bride -- (Chap. VII, Pt. 26)

I ask him about a Web report I've seen that claims one of his sites featured a 'photo of an Arab woman fingering her anus in front of the Dome of the Rock.'

He sighs.

'Yes, it was a mistake.'

That montage was mounted on a US version of the site by his designer, who wanted to use images that were evocative of the Middle East.

So apparently a woman diddling her rectum next to Islam's holiest of holies sprang to mind.

'And immediately people emailed me to tell me it was dangerous.'

The Dome of the Rock was quickly excised, but the beurette and her butthole are still there (or at least they were when I spoke with him), alongside a couple of veiled but otherwise topless women, some palm trees and… a scattering of decorative oil derricks.

Mistake or not, Muslim fundamentalists have harassed and killed people for less.

As we speak, rioters in the banlieues are fighting the police.

And not so long ago, protesters around the world were demanding death for a Danish cartoonist.

Not surprisingly, Milukman is keen to distance himself from those examples.

'I never speak about Allah, and I never speak about Mohammed,' he says. 

Well, except for that one time.

'My designer once put some Arabic writing on the body of a nude girl, and immediately people emailed us that some of the writing contained the name of Allah. It was an honest mistake.' He shrugs. 'How were we to know?'

Possibly by doing some basic research in the first place.

But one of the most surprising aspects about Milukman's potentially life-or-death pastime is just how little he (and his designer) know about Islamic culture.

At one point, I ask him if Aïcha, the half-Moroccan billed as a 'superb brunette' on his site, deliberately based her porn name on the Prophet's beloved child bride.

He looks genuinely shocked—and not a little worried. 

'Aisha was the name of Mohammed's wife?'

I nod.

'There are lots of Aishas in the banlieues,' he mumbles pensively. 'Maybe we'll have to change that on the site.'

Salman Rushdie was ayatollahed for less.

The History of Sex: Paris and Provence -- Provoking Muslims -- (Chap. VII, Pt. 25)

Now, I'm no expert on Islamic headgear, but this seems disingenuous at best, not least because the veil on Milukman's site isn't of the colorful, bellydancing variety but a somber black headdress that covers a woman's hair with a cap and most of her face with a long rectangular piece of cloth, leaving only her eyes exposed.

It looks to me like a close cousin of the hijab known as a niqab.

And given that France is the only major Western country where girls are banned from wearing headscarves in school, wrapping naked Muslim girls in black veils for porn shoots seems deliberately provocative, not least because their usual partner is a young white Frenchman with a shaved head.

Milukman gives me a cagey grin. 'It's not a religion-provoking site—officially.'

Nevertheless, for photos, he insists on hiding behind a veil of his own: sunglasses and a handkerchief.

He hit on the idea of using the veil as the unique selling point for a website in 2003.

'I wanted to do something that had never been done—and something to shock,' he says, emphasizing the last word by fisting the air.

I ask if 9/11 and the Iraq War had anything to do with it.

'I can't officially say Beurettes Rebelles had something to do with terrorism or politics.'

He uses his hands to show the divide between his website and those issues.

'But for me, it is a provocation,' he admits. 'In order to keep the site running, though, I have to say it's about Scheherazade and The Thousand and One Nights.'

The disclaimer on Milukman's site
(courtesy of Google's auto-translator)

Remarkably, Milukman claims he's never had any death threats.

'I've never received even one hate mail,' he says, dead-eyed and earnest. 'I think Arabian people are clever enough to understand the difference between my site and religion.'

In fact, he estimates that 80% of his subscribers are Muslims.

'Chiefly Arabian boys from the banlieues. In France, it's sexual misery for these men. The only way for them to see girls is the Internet, and it's not that expensive for them to pay one to two euros to see a full sex scene online.'

So long as it doesn't offend their religious sensitivities, naturally.

And Milukman—a self-styled 'Web subversive'—has had some close scrapes...

The History of Sex: Paris and Provence -- Milukman and Muslim Porn -- (Chap. VII, Pt. 24)

In analyzing the adventures of the 'new Tintin,' an arch-conservative journalist (and Flemish separatist) noted that the case was the latest in a series of sleaze scandals.

'Morality has gone berserk all over Europe, but nowhere to the same degree as in Belgium,' he claimed. 'If Europe ever "belgianizes", i.e. becomes a state without a real nation, it will end up as the same moral cesspit that Belgium is today.'

As entertaining as Belgium-bashing may be, I'm sure there are plenty of Belguel types in other countries: I've even arranged a rendezvous with one in Paris.

ENTER MILUKMAN

'I think that Belguel guy was mad,' my contact says, though many people would say he's not so sane himself. 

The mystery man across from me is known to hordes of adoring wankers only as 'Milukman,' the founder of websites specializing in what some Westerners refer to as 'Muslim porn'—a deeply offensive term in its own right, especially when pornographers make puns on the word 'submissive' in the S&M sense and the literal meaning of Muslim as 'one who submits.'

Milukman's flagship site is Beurettes Rebelles, a beurette being any French-speaking girl of Arabic or North African extraction, particularly if she hails from one of the immigrant sink estates, or banlieues, on the outskirts of Paris.

For around €350 (less than $500), Milukman's French-Arab 'rebels' willingly subject themselves to varying degrees of humiliation: some masturbate in close-up—with or without the aid of 'fucking machines'—while others limit themselves to oral and anal sex (saving their vaginas for their loved ones), and a hardcore group of wannabe porn stars put their every orifice at the director's disposal.

But all the 'rebel beurettes' have one thing in common: they start off wearing nothing but their birthday suits… and a black veil.

'The veil is my brand—it's my marketing,' Milukman explains.

However, it's not a hijab, he adds.

Although it may look like sacrilege, Beurettes Rebelles features a disclaimer declaring that its inspiration is the (misogynistic) classic, A Thousand and One Nights, in which a courtesan tells a king a cliffhanger each night to avoid execution in the morning:

'Thus no religious character should be attributed to these veils,' the site states.

In fact, Milukman claims the beurettes' black headdress came from a costume store.

'It's a veil like Scheherazade wore.'

The History of Sex: Paris and Provence -- The 'New Tintin' Unmasked -- (Chap. VII, Pt. 23)

While scrupulously blotting out his own belle gueule, he made no attempt to hide the women's faces, leaving them easily identifiable in his before-and-after photos.

This became a temporarily diverting topic for his fellow 'mongers' online, men with nicknames like Spurter, MeatMan and XXL whose idea of an ethical debate usually consisted of whether or not to tip for oral sex without a condom.

'He gets my vote for poster of the year!' gushed one, though another warned: 'These girls are Muslims. They live in a Muslim country. You are exposing them to grave danger.'

When the forum moderator suggested covering up the women's eyes, some members countered that there was no need: their faces were already covered in semen.

THE TRAGIC OUTCOME

Belguel's images soon began making the rounds in the local souks, and in 2005, the fiancé of one of the women recognized his betrothed on a black-market CD.

Despite the obvious question of why he was watching porn in the first place, the Moroccan did the me-so-macho thing and beat up the woman, an otherwise respectable schoolteacher.

Rejected by her family and friends, the woman tried to report Belguel to the police; tragically, she was arrested instead: in Morocco, it's a crime to pose for explicit photos.

The disgraced teacher was fined and sentenced to a year in jail, while the police tracked down the other women on the CD.

At last count, thirteen had been sent to prison (two reportedly tried to kill themselves) and several others had disappeared: presumed suicides or the victims of 'honor' killings.

It turns out that the true criminal in the case had been caught with porn pictures and questioned by the Moroccan authorities the previous year.

'The police kept me in for eighteen hours, but they released me because Morocco has good relations with Belgium, where I am a well-known person,' Belguel crowed later.

With the cooperation of the Belgian police, though, he was eventually unmasked as not just a run-of-the-mill perv but a baby-faced member of the country's media elite: Philippe Servaty, the chief economics correspondent of Le Soir, Brussels' most influential newspaper.

Although he apparently hadn't committed any crime under Belgian law, Servaty was forced to resign: not for abusing the women… but for making 'racist' remarks about them.

He's since gone into hiding with a bounty on his head.