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The Sex Blog Of Record
December 2nd, 2018 -- by Bacchus
The Vice headline is lurid. Just a few days ago, on November 28, it screams at us: Millennials in China Are Using Nudes to Secure Loans. The article is breathless and couched in very current terms:
According to the latest research … some fintech companies [in China] are letting people pay for small daily purchases like burgers or biscuits on a long-term, monthly instalment basis.
In a country where cost of living is high and the chances of getting a credit card are relatively low, this new form of e-commerce has opened up a world of possibilities for a whole lot of Chinese millennials. Because it’s 2018, though, there’s also a dark side to the system. Sure, you can get a 475 gram box of Oreos and pay it back in monthly instalments of 41 cents over three years, or go jetski-shopping with peanuts to your name. But first you might have to send some nudes.
A number of dodgy lenders have realised that young shoppers are desperate for loans, and are demanding that customers hand over naked selfies as collateral.
All wording is present-tense, and no hint of scepticism about sourcing is voiced. There are links you can follow, though. And so implausible do I find this traveler’s tale — how is a nude photo useful as collateral? — that I decided to go looking at the sourcing.
It turns out that Vice was just clickbait-remilling (which is to say, ripping off) this more detailed Australian news story, which offers much more clarity about what’s going on — supposedly a sort of extortion-collection ring — and its Chinese sourcing:
In 2016, 10 gigabits of naked selfies of 161 young female students holding their photo IDs were leaked online by illegal microloan providers who had asked for the pictures as collateral for the loans.
Most of the victims were young female college students – aged between 19 and 23 years old – from China’s under-developed regions, according to a November 2016 report published by state media outlet China Youth Daily.
The victims told the Daily they were usually approached by the dodgy lenders on Chinese social media platforms such as WeChat or QQ – a replica of ICQ – and that the interest rates and conditions were poorly explained to the chat groups with hundreds of members.
According to the report, the college students usually borrowed between $1,000 to $2,000 with interest rates up to 30 per cent, and lenders threatened to leak the naked photos to their family and friends when they failed to repay the loan on time.
Other young women were given the option to work in the sex industry to pay off their debt.
China’s Central Public Security Comprehensive Management Commission cited one case where Bing Chen, a resident in China’s eastern Nanjing city, received a nude photo of his daughter, Xue Chen, via a text message from an illegal lender.
Xue Chen reportedly sent several nude pictures of herself to receive a 4,000 yuan loan ($800), which jumped to 100,000 yuan ($20,000) in just six months, according to the Commission.
During that period, Xue Chen was pressured to send more nude pictures and videos of herself in order to extend the due date of her repayment.
Despite the Commission’s efforts to crack down in December 2016 on what are widely-know as “naked loan services”, recent local media reports say the notorious practice is still rife on some Chinese social media platforms.
However, Ms Chen of Euromonitor, said the situation has improved since late 2017 when China’s financial regulators enforced new rules forbidding unlicensed organisations and individuals from conducting a lending business.
Lenders were also prohibited from encouraging over-borrowing, abusive debt collection, and stealing customers’ private information, according to the state-owned Xinhua news agency.
So what did I learn when I dug into this traveler’s tale, as filtered through the Vice clickbait mill? Vice had a couple of lurid mosaic-blur nudie mugshots as their story graphic; those turned out to be sourced via the Australian story from the 2016 naked-selfies leak:
Nothing but stubborn skepticism (those would be easy to fake) and lack of trust in Chinese state news outlets makes me question that those photos are a real thing. (Why did 161 sets of still photos add to to 10 gigabits of data? But even so.) Assume that there really was a microlending ring using shame as collateral operating a couple of years ago in rural China. I’m not sure that 161 customers in a nation of 1.3 billion people makes a “rampant” problem as Vice called it, but move past that. The Central Public Security Comprehensive Management Commission managed to cite a grand total of one case where a family member got sent an embarrassing photo. The state news organization who was crusading against these so-called “naked lenders” baldly claimed “other young women were given the option to work in the sex industry to pay off their debt” without offering any specifics whatsoever — a classic case of layering baseless sex-trafficking panic onto whatever crusade you are waging at the moment.
What I make of all this is that in 2016, the Chinese government diagnosed a serious case of chump-change loansharks operating over social media. Because these microlenders were, essentially, small-time gangsters, they were using any leverage they could think of to secure their loans. Then somebody got nabbed with a thumb drive with some naked selfies on it. And that got leaked as part of the government’s propaganda case against these social media loansharks, which itself (the propaganda case) was part of a broader regulatory crackdown (because that’s how things are done in China).
Thus, it’s old news, it’s not from any inherently trustworthy source, and the only actual evidence (the heavily doctored photos) was released as part of a state propaganda campaign and is part of a data dump that never claimed to contain more than 161 individuals.
In all this there’s absolutely nothing to support Vice’s breathless present-tense clickbait headline. But I guess you don’t get the clicks for Chinese Authorities Broke Up Tiny Micro Loanshark Ring Two Years Ago For Extorting Repayment With Naked Selfies.
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December 1st, 2018 -- by Bacchus
Remember travel agents? Remember when every high street and business district and mall in the world had a dozen of them, each with a nicely-dressed window full of posters and displays, all designed to entice you inside so you would buy tickets to some distant, expensive, scenic or exotic destination? Well, this travel agent found a better-than-usual attention-getter for its “Visit Africa” display window:
Honestly I have no idea whether “topless Bedouin-styled belly dancer” was ever a thing, or whether that’s just the colonialist lust-dream invention of a nameless Italian pulp cover artist. The art comes from from the cover of Notti d’Amore #6.
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November 29th, 2018 -- by Bacchus
It’s a lonesome dirt road, somewhere way out west. Tumbleweed alert status is HIGH. But I think she’ll get a ride, don’t you?
Update: This turns out to be one I’ve posted before. But I’ve got it this time in a slightly larger size (if you click the current post image for the uncropped version) than I did five years ago.
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November 28th, 2018 -- by Bacchus
Look. I try my level best to ignore anti-sex, misogynist nonsense, especially when it originates on the chans, or on Reddit. But when said nonsense gets properly upbraided by a medievalist with a PhD? That, I am happy to share! Herewith I present Dr. Eleanor Jenega on No Nut November:
My loves, I am very sorry, but we have to talk about No Nut November. Why, you may ask, would I say something like that to you? And you would be right to do so. Why would I ask you to contemplate a month-long abstinence exercise for men propagated on reddit? The answer to that, sadly, is because the whole misguided, misogynist, pseudo-science binfire has all the hallmarks of medieval medical and theological thought on sex, and that is my job. I take no pleasure in saying this, because as you know, I think it is very important to be careful when using the word “medieval” to describe something. Yet, here we are.
For the up-until-this-point blissfully ignorant out there, No Nut November, (or NNN), was brought to us by the genius minds of Reddit, and the stated goal of these gentlemen is not to “nut” AKA orgasm for the month of November. (Yeah I’m not going to link this for you. It;s too weird.) Initially this idea spawned when some bright spark got a hold of one (1) study that showed a period of abstinence from masturbation in ten healthy men lead to a spike of testosterone production in the subjects. (Don’t even get me started on the sample size here.) This apparently is seen as a definitive good, and some dudes decided that they would refrain from jacking it for a month in order to get this extra hormone rush for some reason. (IDK. YKINMKATOK, I guess.)
She goes on with similar breezy stylings for another twenty or so paragraphs, my favorite of which is this one from near the end:
Fundamentally, I am very much of the position that people can do whatever they want with their bodies. Don’t want to wank? Fine. Don’t want to have sex with women? Even finer if you are the sort of woman-hating douche who thinks you can save up your magical sperm to have us pawing at you. What I am not fine with, however, is the misogyny at the heart of the idea, and the framing of what is fundamentally a discredited form of thinking as “rational”.
But, obviously, you should read the whole thing.
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November 27th, 2018 -- by Bacchus
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November 26th, 2018 -- by Bacchus
The following “local color” journalism appeared in the September 13, 1958 Democrat & Times of Davenport Iowa (daily circulation 13,750) by staff writer Gloria Breisacher:
Memo to Dr. Kinsey:
Women Deny They Are Nudists At Bedtime
Quad-city women are rebuking Dr. Kinsey on his “estimate” that half the women do not wear pajamas, nighties — or anythin’ to bed at night.
I took the part of an investigator, and pried into the innermost of “feminine secrets,” [that sounds like fun, is there video? — Bacchus] to find out what women of this area are wearing when they “lay me down to sleep.”
Some were coy, but when I told them I wouldn’t use their names, they usually spoke up.
And everybody said about the same thing. Namely:
“Kinsey is wrong. Way wrong.”
Of the women surveyed, every single one of ’em said they wore something besides their birthday suit to bed at night. Several dozen women were contacted.
A Rock Island woman exclaimed:
“I’d freeze to death at night without pajamas. Who ever heard of such a thing. I think Kinsey is silly to have asked women such a question in his survey.”
One woman, a housewife in Moline, said she couldn’t understand how a man could think up such a thing to write about? “People might take these reports jokingly, but to me when the subject of the book is brought up it’s downright embarrassing. Kinsey should see my clothesline on Monday morning. A good portion is hung with pajamas and night gowns.
A young girl of Davenport commented that Dr. Kensey gets a lot of his ideas from reading too man “she and he magazines.” “So far as I’m concerned, she said, “the idea of person being minus night clothes in their wardrobe is utterly repulsive. Maybe Kinsey is supposed to be doing something for the betterment of understanding among human beings, but I have my doubts.”
The mother of six daughters and a resident of Rock Island says Kinsey better keep his surveys in his family circle. “My daughters are still in the adolescent age, and practically every day they come home with some tid bit about the newest book sensation, “The Kinsey Report.” The heard about this no night clothes business, and believe me I got that out of their heads and mouths in no time flat. If Doc Kinsey would show his face around here, I’d wrap a rolling pin around his head.”
Another Quad-city woman, a Davenport nurse, said that Kinsey must have interviewed all kinds of women like Marilyn Monroe. “I’ve read that all Marilyn wears to bed at night is perfume. Chanel No. 5, at that.”
“Maybe Kinsey thinks all women are movie crazy, and follow the various rages of Hollywood glamour girls like they did back in the 20s. Being a nurse,” she said, “I have first hand information that the ladies today are still very old fashioned when it comes to the question of night gowns. They still like them high necked and full length.”
Kinsey, however, does have one fan — a casual one — in the area. She’s a five foot, white-haired lady of Moline, 82 years young, who has six flannel night shirts. “I think the man is alright. He’s just trying to earn a few extral dollars.”
Oh, yes. To make this survey official, what do I wear. Well — shorties in the summer, and flannel PJ’s in the winter.
My great thanks to @HistoryOfPorn for providing the newspaper clipping on Twitter that I have painstakingly transcribed above and reproduced below!
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November 24th, 2018 -- by Bacchus
This photo comes from a shoot originally done for a site called My Friend’s Feet, but it’s currently [currently in 2018, not any more though] being distributed via Kink.com:
However, it will probably come as no surprise that a dude who maintains bondage stocks in his living room and tickles his “friends” beyond all mercy with an electric toothbrush also gives them handjobs while their hands and feet are tied. That’s a friendly thing to do, right?
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