Although I skipped a couple of weeks due to a complicated holiday schedule and because I was busy setting up my own Patreon, it’s now time for the newest thrilling episode of Patronize This!
Today I’m featuring three people who are supported on Patreon by people who also support ErosBlog, although I won’t lie to you: I picked one of them mostly on the strength of her “I Dream Of Genie” avatar. (And, her Patreon video made me laugh.) Aside from that, though, I’m letting the artists do their own talking:
a light-hearted, humorous, sex positive educational weekly webcomic that covers a wide spectrum of the sex world; from sex toy reviews to sex education to interviews with sex industry professionals and more.
Nesoun draws “erotic sensual stuffs” and “your favorite characters in sensual manner.” Yup!
Enjoy!
Image Credit (directly above): Movie patrons in an advertisement for the National Cash Register Company’s new ticket-printing register, from the Motion Picture Studio Directory and Trade Annual 1916.
Today’s post is tell you about an offer from the Discount Porn Club for a Kink Unlimited discount that, as far as I know, is not routinely available anywhere else.
From time to time, I’ve been known to point ErosBlog readers at one or another porn subscription offer, or to point out a toys discount that struck me as too good to ignore. But not every good deal is available everywhere. Sometimes the best link I have is to normal pricing, but somebody else has negotiated the right to offer a special better price. As I explained once before:
The same porn site may have half a dozen offers at different pricing with different terms. You can pay for a month with automatic rebilling, sometimes there’s an initial discount that goes away when the rebilling kicks in, you can pay for three months or six months (with or without rebilling, depending on the offers available), you can pay for a year, sometimes (though rarely) you can even buy a lifetime membership. Further complicating matters is that not every pornsite shows every offer to each customer who lands on the “buy now” page. The prices you see may depend on who sent you, or (more precisely) on the codes used to build the links you followed. And so it is that porn consumers, like consumers everywhere, are sometimes forced to wonder whether they are getting the best price.
Kink Unlimited, as I have mentioned here a few times before, is the new consolidated product that brings together all of the video offerings from thirty of the sites that Kink.com used to run as standalone websites with separate monthly subscription fees. Consolidated mega-sites like Kink Unlimited are increasingly the trend in online pay-porn. It’s a bit like a cable TV subscription: you may pay a bit more for the package than you would pay for one individual site, but you get more than you can ever look at for an “all you can eat” price that’s a considerable bargain. Or, as the Discount Porn Club puts it:
To date, my complaint with the Kink sites has been that there was no main network or mega-site that you could join, so if you wanted to explore different fetishes you would have to sign up for the individual sites, which started getting pretty expensive. That has come to an end now! Kink.com has heard the call of their fans and set up Kink Unlimited.
The normal monthly subscription package — the one favored by people who treat their porn as a utility and expect to pay for their preferred sites monthly — costs $49.99, but the offer at the Discount Porn Club is for just $39.99 billed monthly, and it’s described as a “lifetime” rate, which I assume is a promise not to jack you up to the regular price after a short promotional period as too many promotional offers do. I have a friend who has been subscribed to his favorite porn site since the 1990s (!) and does not plan ever to stop being a subscriber. If anything like this describes your feelings for the Kink Unlimited offering, this deal will save you 120 bucks a year. That’s not chicken feed!
ErosBlog is now in its fifteenth year, and yet I’ve never done one of those statistics-based retrospectives that are popular this time of year. I prefer to look forward rather than backward, but if we view my new Patreon initiative as the bones of an effort to do more of what makes ErosBlog worthwhile (which I do), might it not be worth looking at some statistics about what kinds of posts actually bring people here?
Here are the top five ErosBlog posts of 2016, as measured by Google Analytics data from 2016. By “top” I mean that these are the most popular entrance pages for people who were linked here (or sent by search engines) to a specific post:
FBI’s Email Broadcast Stings Four CollarMe Users: My breathless rant about mass surveillance, law enforcement incitement versus entrapment, and official hysteria over imaginary human trafficking.
Breaking Velma’s Snooping Habit: My soft-core summary in eight photos of some very hard-core Velma-from-Scooby-Doo parody bondage porn.
French Pussy Spanking: A piece of vintage French pussy-spanking artwork. (To my shame, unattributed.)
A Nude Celebration Of Sports Victory: Some celebratory force-you-to-grin sports nudity that went viral after it was falsely attributed to a team then in the news for an amazing string of victories.
Vintage Vibrator Porn: My deep dive (including twelve screenshots and substantial narration) into a vintage French porn film starring two friendly massage nurses with an early electric vibrator/massager and some impressive oral skills (plus a willingness to share).
As top posts go, I’m rather pleased with these. My Patreon pitch focused on vintage erotica curation, better provenancing of web erotica in general, and long-form writing about threats to the adult web. Four out of five top posts are square matches for those categories of effort, and though the fifth (the Velma parody porn) was created as affiliate-link porn marketing to pay the bills, it stands as a photo essay that’s not without entertainment value. Meanwhile I’m particularly proud of my provenance-cleanup on the deservedly-popular soccer-team-in-the-shower photo. And the unpacking of the vintage French vibrator porn movie is precisely the sort of work that makes me happiest as a sex blogger.
None of these were quick or easy posts; the fastest was undoubtedly the Velma post, but all the rest of these were multi-hour efforts (especially if you include the time I spent breaking my teeth on the fruitless pussy-spanking provenance). Making and choosing and cleaning up the screen shots for the French vibrator porn was particularly slow and painstaking; I remember that project consuming the best part of one whole day. So it’s good to look back and see that these were the posts that brought the most people to ErosBlog.
I should emphasize these stats are all about people who arrive at ErosBlog from somewhere else. They don’t document the preferences of all the faithful readers who click an ErosBlog bookmark every day or two and read whatever is here. What say you, loyal ErosBlog fans? What were your favorite ErosBlog posts in 2016? Let me know in the comments…
I saw a crop of this image doing the spin cycle on Tumblr, where the artist’s signature had been painstakingly removed by some pointless asshole. It took me awhile, but I sourced it to German artist Tim Dinter, on whose website it is captioned “aus der reihe »6 x 6 monogatari, 36 pin-ups«, MONOGATARI, 2001“. For whatever relevance it may have, the word “monogatari” references a series of Japanese “light” (illustrated) novels.
I recently became aware that for some time, the history of nipple piercing was controversial due to a lack of documentation. Let us pick up the story with Charles LaFave of the Bodyartforms blog:
A longtime legend in the piercing community has it that during the Victorian Era, young women from England were briefly caught up in the fad of having their nipples pierced. It was all the rage, and then it went out of style.
It’s one of those stories, like Julius Caesar’s own pierced nipples, or King Tut’s stretched lobes, that seems made up, or at least padded with potential exaggeration. It’s the sort of thing that raises eyebrows, challenges how we think about Victorian Culture (The same people who supposedly covered their table’s legs because they too closely resembled female ankles were getting their nipples done?) and just plain seems impossible.
Except it’s all true, and then some.
Thus opens a very entertaining three-part series of blog posts. You should read it. But lately I’m on a mania about attribution and provenance, so this is the part that really caught my interest, as Charles LaFave grows increasingly determined to track down his nipple-piercing legend:
I started trying to track down evidence of the nipple ring trend, and found plenty of other people on the trail, including some other piercing bloggers and Wikipedia. What everyone had in common was a guy named Stephen Kern, who published a book called Anatomy and Destiny in 1975.
Kern says:
“In the late 1890s the ‘bosom ring’ came into fashion briefly and sold in expensive Parisian jewelry shops. These ‘anneaux de sein’ were inserted through the nipple, and some women wore one on either side linked with a delicate chain. The rings enlarged the breasts and kept them in a state of constant excitation…The medical community was outraged by these cosmetic procedures, for they represented a rejection of traditional conceptions of the purpose of a woman’s body.”
That represents just about everything anyone seemed to have on this. But I checked out Kern’s book and the above passage was cited to Eduard Fuchs, who published something called a moral history, where he talks about the Victorian Nipple Ring trend. The problem with Fuchs was that he wasn’t big on citing sources. He was like the Marco Polo of sex. So the whole thing looked more and more like a tall tale.
This is the exact same experience I often have when trying to track down the provenance of some piece of web-discovered erotica. Everybody gives the same vague attribution, and they all seem to be quoting the same source, but when you finally find that source it’s a nothingburger, such as an uncertain-sounding caption on a random Pinterest post.
My solution is always “keep digging!” And that’s what LaFave did too:
Then I found The Golden Age of Erotica, published in 1965, which cited the same thing, except they said Fuchs got his idea from a magazine article. A magazine article, published in the 1890s, in Victorian England, about people getting their nipples pierced, and connecting those nipples with chains.
I’m not going to lie, I let this sit for a while. I wrote other blogs. There were easier stories to tell. I have deadlines. But like a fool, I’d opened my mouth. I’d told people. And everyone who heard about the Victorian Nipple Rings was like, “Wha?” and then they wanted to know more.
…
Something had to be done. I dusted it off and kept digging and then, one glorious day, I found the magazine: English Mechanic and the World of Science.
“Glorious” is a good word for that nearly-orgasmic feeling, in that moment when you finally unearth the primary source, the detailed contemporaneous account, the citation so thorough it defies disbelief. In this glorious moment, LaFave and I are brothers.
Then he takes his magazine article and spins it into three very good blog posts, unpacking references and explaining non-obvious things about the story. They’re excellent blog posts. But the payload is the account we finally get to in the third post. It’s the account of one Constance, telling how she and her little sister went to Paris one fine day in 1889 and got their nipples pierced, and what that was like.
And now, suddenly, LaFave and I are no longer brothers. Because he can’t shut up and let Constance talk! He summarizes, he editorializes, he offers helpful asides and entertaining explanatory exposition, but his one actual quotation from Constance’s letter is less than 170 words long! And there’s no link, no scan, no “here’s the whole thing so you can read it yourself.” Nope, you get LaFave’s highly readable gloss, and that’s it.
Bah.
I couldn’t take it. I wanted to see Constance’s nipple-piercing letter in its entirety. Luckily, Google Play has the proper volume of English Mechanic and the World of Science. It’s free, and the OCR on the scan is pretty decent; good enough to search for “nipples” in, anyway. I did have to do a bit of cleanup on the text in order to quote it in full, but here it is:
I promised to tell you, on my return from my visit to the Paris Exhibition, what I and my sister Millie had done in the matter of having our nipples pierced and having rings inserted in them. We stayed in Paris much longer than we had intended, and only arrived at home a few days ago.
I should very much have liked to hear again from “Fanny,” whose answer appeared in your number for May 10th, and to know what are the inconveniences she has experienced during her five years continuous wear of the rings. I think the troubles cannot have been very serious, or she would not have continued to endure them.
I was fortunate enough to obtain in Paris all the information which I could have desired. Soon after our arrival there we made the acquaintance of an American lady, who had taken her degree in medicine, and was staying in Paris in order to study a special subject at one of the hospitals. I consulted her as to any danger likely to arise from having the nipples pierced. She could not give me any opinion from her own knowledge, but offered to make inquiry of the surgeon at her hospital. He told her that he did not think any danger would arise from the operation if care were taken not to injure the breast.
He knew personally one lady, and had heard of others, who had undergone the operation. He kindly gave us an introduction to the lady mentioned, and we visited her. We found her very obliging, and she gave us all the particulars we wanted to know. She had been wearing the rings more than three years, and during that time had had two children; the younger of which she was at the time nursing herself, which is, I am told, not a common custom with Parisian mothers. She did not find any inconvenience from wearing the rings, neither did they seem to incommode the child, who seemed in very good health.
This lady told us that she had first worn the rings a few months after her marriage, at her husband’s desire, and that they had been inserted by a certain Madame Beaumont, who made the performance of the operation a part of her business. We obtained her address, and made an appointment to visit her. We found her occupying an elegantly-furnished apartment in a street leading from the Rue de Rivoli. She is a nice, pleasant, middle-aged lady, and along with her was one of her daughters, a fine girl of about eighteen. Madame B.’s business is to minister to the little wants and requirements of ladies, such as hair-dyeing, enamelling, corn doctoring, piercing their ears, and occasionally also their nipples. She has quite an assortment of large gold rings made expressly for this purpose, and she showed us that both herself and her daughter were at the time wearing them. They were rather larger, but thinner, than our own rings which we had brought along with us.
Madame B. has invented an instrument for the purpose of insuring that the perforation is made in the proper direction through the nipple, and without any chance of failure. It is something like a sugar tongs in form, but instead of the spoons at the ends of the legs there is a pair of small tubes about 1 inch long, and in a straight line with each other, so that when the nipple is grasped between the inner ends of the tubes by means of a screw in the handle, a piercer can be passed through the whole without any chance of deviating from its proper course.
Our own rings being rather too thick, we purchased two pairs from Mdme. B., and I, being eldest, was to be first operated on. I must confess I felt very qualmish, and almost repented having consented to it. However, I could not now retreat, and I had to make the best of it. Mdme. B. assured me that the pain would not be great, so I partially undressed and seated myself on a couch by the side of Mdme. B., who passed her arm round my neck and held me steadily. Mdme. B. then bathed my right breast for a few minutes with something which smelt like benzoline, and seemed almost to freeze it. She then adjusted the instrument to the nipple, and screwed it up securely, and then, almost before I was aware of her intention, she plunged the piercer through the tubes.
I scarcely felt its passage through my nipple, which seemed almost insensitive. She then unscrewed and removed the tongs, leaving the piercer still sticking through the nipple, the point of a ring being then put into a hollow in the base of the piercer, the ring was passed through the nipple and closed. The whole operation, excepting the bathing, did not, I believe, occupy a minute. I felt scarcely any pain; and only a drop or two of blood flowed, which was at once absorbed by a little styptic wool. My other nipple was then pierced in like manner. I am sure I was not ten minutes under Mdme. B.’s hands, and should never have imagined that the operation could have been so quickly and neatly performed.
My sister Millie then had her turn. She seemed to feel it a little more than I had done, for when the piercer vent through her nipple the first time she uttered a little scream; but I think she was more frightened than hurt, as she did not scream at the second piercing.
Mdme. B. charged us 10 francs each for performing the operation, and 30 francs per pair for the gold rings. She told us that we were the first English ladies who had visited her for the purpose of having their nipples pierced, hut that she had had several American ladies visit her, and many from France and other parts of the Continent. On the whole, we were much pleased with our visit to her, and glad that we had found the facility for carrying out our wishes much more conveniently than we could have hoped for in London.
Some little time after we had quitted Mdme. B.’s I began to feel sensation returning in my breasts, and before long I could have fancied that the rings were red hot, the irritation was so intense. Fortunately we were soon back at our hotel, and, hurrying to our chamber, we spent the next few hours in bathing our breasts with camphorated water, which Mdme. B. had recommended us to use. After a time the pain subsided, and we were able to dress and go about. We continued to use the camphor water for some days, as occasion served, but had no recurrence of the pain. I wore a pad made of several thicknesses of wadding, over the breasts, to prevent the edge of my corset from rubbing the rings, and this I still wear for the present. It is now about seven weeks since we had the rings inserted, and the wounds in our nipples are fast healing. The perforations are mode directly through the centres of the nipples, but so that the rings do not quite touch the breasts.
Constance.
I don’t want to pick on LaFave. I still think we are more brothers, philosophically speaking, than not. His blog posts are excellent. But for me, the payoff at the end of the hunt is the primary source. I want to find it, unearth it, and display it. The source is the gem.
ErosBlog readers, when I set up the ErosBlog Patreon I took some pains to explain that my pledge rewards are about service to the ErosBlog community, precisely because I don’t want to
turn ErosBlog into a “I did some nifty stuff, you don’t get to see it unless you go somewhere else and make a pledge” platform. That’s totally not what this is for. The goal is to make ErosBlog stronger and better, with your support.
However, I did promise the early patrons one exclusive article, which I have now published on the Patreon platform:
If you haven’t supported the ErosBlog Patreon effort yet, please consider doing so. Just a one-dollar pledge will get you access to all patrons-only posts! (This is currently the only such.)
