|
|
The Sex Blog Of Record
Monday, March 9th, 2026 -- by Bacchus
Although there’s no artist credit on the artwork, I believe this comic about a woman’s interrupted dream of being kidnapped and inspected for harem service is by Don Lawrence:
I found in the August 1975 issue of British adult magazine Mayfair.
Similar Sex Blogging:
Monday, November 4th, 2024 -- by Bacchus
Just another Orientalist harem slave auction fantasy! This one is a detail from an illustration in the pages of the November 1957 issue of Courage magazine:
Similar Sex Blogging:
Sunday, December 4th, 2022 -- by Bacchus
I count nine ladies of the harem. No wonder they look bored!
Art is by Eugene Reunier.
Similar Sex Blogging:
Monday, September 26th, 2022 -- by Bacchus
At first glance, this orientalist artwork by Schem looks a bit like a harem catfight to me, although it might just be a vigorous lesbian orgy. It’s hard to say!
The small amount of context I have might tip us toward the orgy theory. The artwork illustrated an article in the June 1938 issue of Le Journal Secret: Review D’éducation Sexuelle. Story title was L’Amour Sorcier chez les Arabes which, going strictly from English cognates, might mean something like “Sorcerer’s Love among the Arabs.” Presumably there’s nuance and connotation I’m missing?
Similar Sex Blogging:
Sunday, October 3rd, 2021 -- by Bacchus
You gotta wonder how a pasha or a sultan or a sheik with eight veiled-but-topless women in his harem has the energy or inclination to put all his smug self-regard into the experience of the fancy cigarette he’s smoking:
You gotta wonder, that is, until you find out that this artwork is tobacco-company propaganda: it’s a detail from a 1950 advertisement for Abdulla No. 7 ‘Virginia’ Cigarettes.
Similar Sex Blogging:
Saturday, January 26th, 2019 -- by Bacchus
These photos push lots of buttons for micro-fetishes (or at least, recurring themes closely attended to) here at ErosBlog. I’ve always had a soft spot for images featuring opulent bathrooms and fancy plumbing. Furthermore, I’m quite partial to en déshabillé women at their ablutions. Plus, since these photos show harem-induction preliminaries from a 1960s soft-porn version of the Victorian classic The Lustful Turk, they push not only all the general Orientalist harem-fantasy buttons that lurk throughout the Western literary imagination, but the very specific power-over fantasy that’s often summarized (among men, at least, and sometimes with a wink and a leer) as “have that one bathed and sent to my tent.”
*Smack!*
Hey, what’s that sound?
That, it turns out, was the sound of me writing myself smack into a brick wall. Uh, ouch.
I initially drafted this post a few months back, and found that I couldn’t post it. So I wrote a little note to the future and buried it in my drafts folder:
In early October 2018 as I am writing this, it’s looking a lot like the United States Senate is about to vote to put a rapist on the United States Supreme Court. Which means — I just discovered — that my over-fifty cis-male privileged white thoroughly-calloused nerve endings are feeling just a tiny bit raw about rape culture. In fact those nerve endings are feeling too raw, it turns out, to post Victorian-era rape porn (reimagined as 1968 soft-core sexploitation) in order to mine it for fetish fuel.
And that is not a limit I ever expected to set for myself.
I don’t even think I’m setting it now. Not once and for all, not for all time. I have more than once characterized my editorial goals here at ErosBlog as unabashed and unapologetic male-gaze writing about porn, while striving not to be a complete dickhead to and about women. Rape fantasies, and rape porn that embodies and depicts those fantasies, are enjoyed by men and women both (I do not say “alike”) and their role within rape culture is complex and controversial. I’ve cheerfully and noisily waded into those controversies in the past, with my trusty shield of “well, actually” in one hand and my slippery staff of mansplaining in the other. When it comes to porn that encompasses elements of rape culture, usually my reflex is to publish and be damned. For reasons. Damned good ones, I think.
But not today, dickhead. Not today. Not in early October 2018. Because if my not-so-very-touchy nerves are currently so raw about rape culture that I flinched at a bit of light-hearted “have that one bathed and sent to my tent” harem tomfoolery — a meme that I’ve cheerfully deployed at least four times previously — then I don’t need to ask a rhetorical question about how it’s going to feel to the women in my audience today, the day that women are lining up to be arrested at the United States Senate as Susan Collins blathers at length about what a fine and innocent man Barty McBoof is.
I don’t need to ask, because I already know. Today is just not the day for it. I’ll put this post in my queue with a hold note. I’ll post it on a happier day for women, or for the United States, or for the world. An election day, perhaps, or an impeachment day, or an indictment day, or an embolism day, or an infarction day, or a “resigns to spend more time with his family” day.
So, if you’re seeing this — nice day, isn’t it?
I woke up this morning in a sunny bedroom with the notion that having yesterday watched a powerful woman teach the president of the United States a badly-needed lesson in manners and Constitutional governance did indeed qualify today as a nice day. Cheers!
Similar Sex Blogging:
Monday, March 10th, 2014 -- by Bacchus
There’s a passage near the beginning of the erotic classic A Night In A Moorish Harem in which our hero, a British navy captain cast adrift off the coast of Morocco and offered sanctuary by the residents of a conveniently-placed seraglio, begins to get acquainted with his rescuers:
They were brimful of mischief and were evidently bent on making the most of the unexpected company of a young man. Inez put her hand on my sleeve. ‘How wet you are,’ said she. ‘It will not be hospitable to allow you to keep on such wet clothes.’ My clothes were perfectly dry, but the winks and smiles that the young ladies exchanged as they began to disrobe me led me cheerfully to submit while they proceeded to divest me of every article of clothing. When at length my shirt was suddenly jerked off they gave little affected screams and peeped through their fingers at my shaft; which by this time was of most towering dimensions. I had snatched a hearty kiss from one and all of them as they had gathered round to undress me. Inez now handed me a scarf which she had taken from her own fair shoulders. ‘We can none of us bear to leave you,’ she said, ‘but you can only kiss one at a time; please throw this to the lady you prefer.’
Good heavens! Then it was true, that all of these beautiful women had been accustomed to be present when one of them was embraced. ‘Ladies,’ said I, ‘you are unfair. You have stripped me, but you keep those charms concealed which you offer to my preference. I am not sure now if you have any imperfections which you wish to keep covered.’
The ladies looked at one another, blushed a little, then nodded and laughed, then began undressing. Velvet vests, skirts of lawn and silken trousers were rapidly flung to the floor. Lastly, as if at a given signal, every dainty chemise was stripped off and some of the most lovely forms that ever floated through a sculptor’s dream stood naked before me. Was I not myself dreaming, or had I in truth been suddenly transported amid the houses of the seventh heaven?
For a while I stood entranced, gazing at the charming spectacle. ‘Ladies,’ said I at last, ‘it would be immodest in me to give preference when all are so ravishingly lovely. Please keep the scarf, fair Inez, and when I have paid a tribute to your fair charms, pass it yourself to another, till all have been gratified.’ ‘Did he say all?’ cried a little brunette. ‘All indeed!’ cried the rest in chorus, bursting into laughter. ‘Every one,’ said I, ‘or I will perish in the attempt.’
Spoiler: He does not perish in the attempt.
Similar Sex Blogging:
Sunday, November 10th, 2013 -- by Bacchus
Unscathed Corpse has posted all 32 of the 1977 Madonna nudes acquired by Bob Guccione and recently up for auction. Perhaps the least explicit — but to my eye, the most intriguing — is this harem-girl getup:
Similar Sex Blogging:
Tuesday, February 5th, 2013 -- by Bacchus
A Georges Pichard illustration for Flaubert’s Pierrot au Sérail.
Similar Sex Blogging:
Saturday, January 26th, 2013 -- by Bacchus
“Those two? They get invited to all the best orgies in this town.”
Via Kinky Delight.
Similar Sex Blogging:
Monday, October 25th, 2010 -- by Bacchus
Your lesson for today, courtesy of Dr. Faustus at Erotic Mad Science:
Eros is an outlaw, a bandit, a scoffer at decencies. That’s why so much of erotic fantasy takes place in settings that are beyond the reach of morality somehow, some of which are not at all nice: the savage tropics, the oriental harem, the depraved convent, the women’s prison. Nazisploitation is just a development of this. If you embrace what you are, you’re going to find some things that will make other people pretty unhappy. Face it, live with it, and flourish.
Amen, Brother Faustus!
This was in reference to a fifteen-second clip from a Nazisploitation movie that once caused our Mad Doctor to “withdraw promptly into the privacy of his own chambers.”
Similar Sex Blogging:
Tuesday, October 5th, 2010 -- by Bacchus
Filenames from Usenet suggest this is from a comic called Ferocious Harem. Google confirms that such a thing exists, but doesn’t illuminate me much. It’s purdy, though:
Similar Sex Blogging:
Saturday, October 2nd, 2010 -- by Bacchus
One of the things I love about mid-20th-century American men’s magazines is that they were trying so hard to be sleazy. The result? Lovely illustrations of the girl next door in dire peril, looking as though she’s buying a nice Halloween costume at Macy’s with a most irregular assortment of fitting assistants:
Similar Sex Blogging:
Thursday, March 25th, 2010 -- by Bacchus
Long before Photoshop, magazine art directors were doing fun things with scissors. Want to put Bettie Page on the cover of your magazine as a harem girl, but don’t have that photo? No worries! Take another photo of her, plus a photo of a different girl in a harem outfit, get the art guys to draw a cartoon sultan, a hookah, and some fruit, then get out your scissors and Kraft paste and go to town!
This 1957 magazine cover courtesy of the Drake’s Way tumblr.
Similar Sex Blogging:
Thursday, June 18th, 2009 -- by Bacchus
The panels below are details from an unknown French-language graphic novel that appears to feature lustful adventures in some sort of harem:
Similar Sex Blogging:
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
|
|
