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EROTIC ART AS EXIT COUNSELLING : the perfect remedy for the world's problems.

By Association member Charles Sayer

SEX FOR SALE?

On December 18th 2006, Melanie Phillips,who writes for the Daily Mail, published an article prompted by the Ipswich prostitute murders. The most contentious aspects of her critique involve arguments advanced to justify the intrinsic harmfulness and immorality of the basic act of sex for sale. She contends that prostitution necessitates a fixed immutable relationship between a man and woman that cannot do anything else but degrade women as sex objects, and that far from legalizing brothels, prostitutes and their clients should be prosecuted. To legalize brothels would encourage 'sex tourism and trafficking' and in a nutshell her position is that:

'The danger to prostitutes comes essentially not from where they ply their trade but from the trade itself. Prostitution embodies a view of women which is intrinsically brutalizing, dehumanizing and predatory. That is why the violence to which it gives rise is routine. That is why it is so appalling that anyone should be arguing that it should be regularized and thus condoned. Prostitutes are sanitized as “sex workers” by a society which thinks there is more shame in stigmatising prostitution than paying for sex.'

For Melanie Phillips, paying for sex is a mortal sin and if we go down the road of liberalization we will 'enslave millions in a post- moral degraded universe'. Now this is quite an apocalyptic phrase and reminiscent of the doomsday preachers who compare our apparently godless secular times with the fall of Rome. I'm sure the rest of the universe would not care whether we have liberal attitudes to sex or not but I'm taking her up on the end time theme since global warming is all the talk now. What has all this got to do with the AEA ? I hope to link up prostitution, the AEA and the spiritual rebirth of humankind!

WHAT'S GOD TO ME I'M AN ATHEIST?

On the rare occasions I have time, I debate in the infidels forum on the internet. I've discovered how difficult it is to persuade unbelievers to take the word 'God' seriously. I'm an unbeliever too but not in the idea of God as a philosophical theory. I personally dislike religion but the God-word is to me one of humanity's greatest semantic treasures. I wont list all the reasons why I believe this, but allow me to unpack my reasoning a bit. I think the idea of sending people to hell for fornication or non-belief is deeply offensive. When I've expressed my dismay to atheists at traditional concepts of God (namely Christ and Allah) which to me are based in sado-mythic anti-eroticism, the replies I get are always baffling. One of them might be “Well I don't believe in God or hell so why should it bother me?” It takes a bit of time to unravel all the attitudes that lie behind this parry. Christianity defines God as a man in the sky who tortures non-Christians; and atheists look at this barbaric conceptual deformity and rightly say they don't believe in God, therefore allowing Christians to define God for them. So this terrible notion of God flourishes in the minds of believers unopposed. The believers, blinded by faith, accept it as a good idea while the unbelievers blinded by indifference, accept it as a good example of their endorsement of other people's right to free speech. The indifference of atheists to the wider implications of the God-word allows hellfire theology to go unchallenged and unexposed as a vile offensive belief.

My argument is that when religion misidentifies God as a hellfire fascist it is insulting the unbeliever more than a racist slur would insult a black man because it defines the atheist as an infidel or sinner deserving damnation. It insults Nature itself by insinuating there is a dark core to reality – a cosmic torture chamber where billions of people are in the words of Christ “weeping and gnashing their teeth”. The God-word does not have to be anthropomorphic – the Lawmaker in the sky. It doesn't belong exclusively to religion. It is just as much an area of investigation for rational philosophy. Pantheism, for example, postulates that God is Nature or that Nature itself, is if you like, somehow alive. God can be a synonym for Ultimate Truth. . The martial art “Tai chi” means Supreme Ultimate – meaning chi - the energy of the universe. Hinduism is just as content with God as an 'IT' as it is with God as a 'He' or 'She'. God is not a word exhausted by superstition and rendered obsolete because we've found out the world wasn't created in six days. If God means the Originator of the universe and the universe is self-created in the big bang then the universe is God . But we need to reclaim this word otherwise we'll never get angry about hellfire. If the God-word is recognised for what it truly is, namely the core reality of the universe, then religions that describe the core reality as salvation and damnation should be tolerated only for as long as it takes to prove them to be blasphemous superstitions. The question “Do you believe in God” would then become meaningless, because it would be the same as saying “Do you believe in Ultimate Reality”. The real question is “What kind of Ultimacy do you believe in?” Those that make a mockery of it should be challenged to defend their God-model. Then and only then, will realistic and authentic debate about the meaning of life and the universe take place.

You cannot destroy religion through atheism. Religion is a divisive anti-rational definition of God and it can only be decommissioned by replacing it with a superior non-dogmatic, non-revelatory spirituality. Religion is organized deception and needs to be supplanted by a unifying more rational definition of God that doesn't exclude people as the unsaved. We don't even need faith to relate to 'God '– God can best be discussed through philosophy and science and art. The whole idea of religion being the best way to get to God is arguably one of the biggest scams of history. We don't need self-styled messiahs and egomaniacs coming down from mountains or out of caves claiming to have had revelations from God. How on earth have we ever taken these impostors seriously? If we allow anti-God religions to monopolize this word we allow them to go on mis-defining us as sinners and the universe as a dark hellhole. The Koran and the Bible teach that there is a place somewhere in this universe, or multi verse or wherever, that has been designed by God the architect for sole purpose of tormenting people without respite for ever. I'm sure that if we freed up the God-word that religion has imprisoned with high brick walls of blasphemy we could even find definitions acceptable to atheists. Then and only then would atheists begin to feel outraged by the denigration of Nature that hellfire theology represents.

GOD AS THE BIG BANG

Its common knowledge that science can't disprove the existence of a Creator but what if, for the sake of argument, it could? Let us imagine that we know for a fact the cosmos sprang into existence out of nothing - ex nihilo. If the idea of Supreme Being that has always existed strikes us as insanely impossible, we are now no better off: we have an infinitely complex universe that is self-created. My argument is that even if we knew this to be the truth it wouldn't square with 'common sense' – it would be an impossible event that had nevertheless eventuated – an infinitely strange paradox. This for me is the very essence of mysticism. For me the only word that would fit such a mega-mystery – a mystery that is arguably insoluble by science or logic would be 'God'.

Atheists will see this as as a semantic trick, a wordplay that only confuses the issue and blurs the boundaries between them and superstitionists. On the contrary I believe that far from playing with words, it is reclaiming the word 'God' for science and philosophy and spirituality. Far from causing confusion, it will clear up a major confusion that is actually preserving the tyranny of hellfire religion on our planet. For as long as atheists totally reject the God-word instead of the revelatory theology of religion that insults the word they arguably provide a major distraction from the real issue. Traditional debates about the justification for religion centre around the red herring of whether God exists or not – a debate that is always pointless because the only definition of God in this debate that is accepted is the Supreme Being – the great Watchmaker whose impeccable morality is a given, ie built in to the definition itself of God. God is good.. The argument is impossible to win unless one changes the parameters of the debate to discuss whether the Bible and Koran actually teach a theology that demonstrates their own definition of God as divine love and justice. You can't prove that a God of love does not exist but you CAN prove that the Christo-islamic version of God is self-contradictory and therefore fraudulent. The traditional God debate always allows the faithful to avoid the real issue which is their particular God-portrait. Its the theology of God that is rubbish not the idea of God per se.. If we engage the religious on their own terms, actually stealing the ground from under their feet, claiming our right to the God-word – the debate then becomes about real issues: 'What is the most plausible model of God?' as apposed to 'Does God exist.?' To put it another way – realistically you will never defeat religion with any other argument except the hellfire critique. Nothing else will work. Hellfire is the Achilles heel of monotheism – attack your enemy at its weakest point and you will win.

HATE THE SONG NOT THE SINGER

The 'enemy' is not people – it is not Christians or Muslims - it goes without saying that the average believer is a decent law abiding citizen – the enemy is their shackles, their manacles, their bondage to the misidentification of God. They need our help. Because Christians hate sin they have preached all over the world manifesting their profound dedication to our salvation and how do atheists repay this generosity of spirit? They ignore their plight, they leave them to stew in their pseudo spiritual mythomania. We need to return their goodwill(however misguided) – it is only basic manners to make some reasonable effort to save them from their mind warping superstitions. We have a fundamental right to hate and execrate 'belief' but not believers, just as believers have the right to hate the sin and not the sinner It is only when more of us unbelievers begin to feel a sense of the sacred; of the mystical essence of an inexplicable cosmos that we will really begin to feel that hellfire theology is a not only a personal insult but blasphemy.

The irony is tragi-comic in the extreme. The blasphemy laws actually function in Britain to protect blasphemy! It should be a public disgrace that Parliament not only allows this evil darkness to be taught to children – but actually encourages it by replicating faith schools. I would be quite happy to propose the motion to any debating society that the core teaching of the Bible and the Koran, namely damnation, is the most evil idea ever invented by the human mind and the most blasphemous. Try thinking of it like this. Hitler tortured six million Jews to death. Even if you don't believe their souls are being tortured already – and many believers do - as a true Christian you are obligated to believe that Christ will return on Judgment day and grotesquely reconstitute their bodies solely for the purpose of resurrecting them to hell. Hitler tortured them for three years because they were Jews, Christ intends to torture the same Jews forever simply because they are Jews -or to be more precise - because they are not Christians! Who then is the most evil Christ or Hitler..?

Throughout this article I am deliberately using the term “Christ” as apposed to Jesus, - Jesus being the nondescript run of the mill Jewish rabbi whose teaching is clouded by lack of reliable knowledge and “Christ” the ludicrous resurrected God/man fabricated by early church politics and religious mania. Whether the real Jesus ever taught hellfire might well lie beyond the skills of historians to determine with exactitude, but the Christ of the New Testament certainly did which is why he is worthy of our undiluted contempt.

IS HELLFIRE AN ISSUE OR A NON-ISSUE?

I don't want to belabour the point and make hell a dead horse that I'm flogging but if the world needs unity and a new spiritual solidarity you have to purge it of divisive superstition and the best way to prove that religion is mostly superstition is to use hellfire as a universal touchstone, for evaluating how socially fit a religion is and how acceptable it is in the 21st century. Hinduism for example espouses belief in hell but it is not a central core teaching and the hell is not eternal. It is also hell created by ones own karma and not by God to punish us. Judaism is not nearly as concerned with hell as Christianity or Islam but it has to take some responsibility for laying the foundations of this evil blasphemy so passionately held by its successor faiths.

Most non-religious people regard hellfire and damnation as a non-issue. Compared with world poverty and global warming etc. if its an issue at all, its only an issue for people who believe and even believers don't like to mention it nowadays. I happen to fundamentally disagree with this assumption, to the point where for me, the religious definition of God as a cosmic punisher is the key issue of our times – the master key, in fact to understanding the reality behind global affairs. If world politics fails to make much sense to you it is because there is always one vital piece missing from the jigsaw – the piece everybody likes to pretend isn't missing – the misidentification of God!. When religion gets God so wrong, it not only fuels all the worlds problems and creates many new ones, it prevents any alternative remedies from arising by blocking our spiritual arteries and cutting off the blood supply to new ideas and metaphysical creativity. Any new heroism of the soul is strangled at birth in the global ocean of confusion generated by thousands of backbiting sects and faiths locked up in their separatist holy synagogues,churches and temples.

Don't be fooled by the argument that most Christians these days don't believe in hell. Most still do, especially in America. The Vatican still teaches a literal hell and so it should. Christians who don't believe in hell are not following the teaching of Christ. Hell was not an empty threat and neither is it a disposable doctrine that can be phased out when it proves embarrassing in a modern world concerned with secular human rights. Even if it was universally discarded it would pose the equally serious problem for believers as to how a God-guided church could get it so wrong for two thousand years!

Hellfire religion - Christianity and Islam being the worst culprits - is the the natural born enemy of sexual freedom and more specifically – civilization and erotic art. As erotic artists we can't afford to go on ignoring this. I argue here that the State needs to keep sex and nudity dirty in order to sustain its own existence, which depends on respect for hellfire religion – respect for our national church of England; respect for our Christian monarchy and respect for the Christian institution of Parliament. I'm not 'religion-bashing' for sake of it. I'm proposing 'selective doctrine' bashing. Whether Christianity and Islam could survive having its salvation/damnation core ripped out of its guts is not my problem – this neuro-toxic insult to Truth has to be banished from socially acceptable discourse unless some real evidence for its existence arises. It almost qualifies as a thought crime! Amnesty International rightly condemns torture in this world, it would only be philosophically consistent to condemn religions that sanctify it in the next. The world needs a spiritual blood transfusion. It needs a new heroism of the soul to slough off the sick old mental habits that are keeping us in stasis.

I'm putting forward the tentative suggestion that maybe the AEA should start taking itself a bit more seriously. Is there really any harm in asking the question: Why can't erotic art be a movement to shake the foundations of western “civilization” - a civilization that is in fact very uncivilized and which is literally built on cracked crumbling pillars of religion-based anti-eroticism?. It also makes good commercial sense – imagine a world where erotica is on the high street and socially acceptable – a world where erotic art would have a mass market. This will only be done if we give religious prudery terminal decay.


THE WHORE OF BABYLON.

It is understood now by many theologians that Mary Magdalene was not a prostitute but one of Jesus's closest disciples. She was slandered in this way by religious rivals who chose prostitution as the most effective way of blackening a woman's reputation. Martin Luther regularly referred to Rome as a 'whore' and English anti-Catholic church writers called the pope a 'foul filthy old withered harlot......the great strumpet of all strumpets, the mother of whoredom'. Christians have different interpretations of Revelation 17: 'Come I will show you the judgment upon the great harlot who sits on many waters, with whom the kings of the earth committed fornication, whereas those who inhabit the earth were made drunk with the wine of her fornication'. But whatever interpretation you make of it one is left in no doubt that the metaphor is hardly complementary to sex workers.

I believe the arguments that call for the criminalization of prostitution have a common provenance with those that criticize erotic art and pornography. The arguments parallel the repressive sexual teachings of the Bible and the Koran. Anti-erotic prejudices in the general public arena, are sustained and nourished by a submerged menace of religious superstition. I don't think the legalization of brothels will work in a society that cannot outgrow its unthinking devotion to blanket religious tolerance. Erotic art has a duty to take a more critical view of anti-erotic doctrines in the most culpable religions. The only time these religions seem to unite is to attack gay sex and pornography. Sex and eroticism is our mutual battleground.

The Church through the ages has often regarded prostitutes as worse than other criminals, for they seduced other citizens from the life of moral order that authorities regarded as essential to a godly city. The witchcraft holocaust was inspired by religious fear of female sexuality. Witches were imagined to be indulging in wild sex orgies with the Devil. The witch-hunters were obsessed with female sexuality as a devilish man-threatening power: “All witchcraft comes from carnal lust, which in women is insatiable.....Wherefore for the sake of fulfilling their lusts they consort even with devils.” Wherever Christian missionaries went they spread the same misogynistic global diaspora of sex hatred. Mexican priests in the 18th century sound much like their Calvinist counterparts, warning about the dangers of dance: “You women, dancers of the devil, scandalous persons, you are the damnation of so many souls. Oh! What horror!....You provocative women dancers of the devil, scandal, nets of the devil, basilisks of the streets and windows, you kill with your stirrings....”

CHRIST – A FRIEND TO PROSTITUTES?

I find it hard to accept the common view that Christ was a kind of patron saint of prostitutes. He consorted with prostitutes only in order to persuade them to repent. Christ believed prostitution was sinful, deserving damnation in hell.. In Matthew 5.19 he lists fornication and adultery alongside murder as evils that 'defile a man'. In Matthew 5.27 he condemns lust, and by inference pornography and erotic art. He believed it was wrong to allow oneself to be sexually aroused by any one other than your lifelong married partner. Christ would have regarded modern pornography and erotic art as cardinal sin deserving damnation. Most of his followers down the ages have taken Matthew 5.27 to mean condemnation of voyeurism and even sexual thoughts or fantasies. The 17th century theologian Jean Benedicti wrote regarding masturbation: “If a person commits this sin while fantasizing about a married women, as well as masturbation he is guilty of adultery; if he desires a virgin, indecent assault; if he fantasizes about a relative, incest; a nun, it is sacrilege; if he fantasizes about another male, then it is sodomy.” For Christ, even marriage was arguably increasingly obsolescent and something ideally to be replaced by celibacy in the preparation for the end-time and the next world. He implied that there would be no sex in heaven and warned of the imminent end of the world. Many of his followers, such as the saints, Paul, Augustine and Jerome, developed this embryonic sex phobia in to a full blown war on the body and its natural lusts. Martin Luther termed prostitutes “stinking....tools of the devil”

IS IT WRONG TO PAY FOR SEX?

Sex, when not in a marriage contract, is called 'fornication ' by the founders of Christianity. Its already considered degraded even without a financial transaction – in the eyes of Christ, its even dirty between two faithful lovers if they are not married. The sale of sex is seen in this mindset as the definitive example of impersonal utilitarian sex: the sexual act devoid of love, human communication and spirituality. Two people using each other for their own selfish ends. The act is said to degrade both participants but more so the woman who is reduced to a commodity. I will argue that by making God a sex-fascist who makes most of us sexual outlaws by his diktats, sex and spirituality are actually severed and drift apart into a no-mans land of conceptual confusion – a mental landscape of conceptual deformities, making anal sex, nudity, prostitution, non-violent pornography and other wholesome facets of human sexuality, shameful. It is religion that paradoxically de-spiritualises sex, because it sells sex short; it takes the magnificent panoply of human sexual exploration and shrinks it down into a minuscule travesty of its natural glory. Thus the greatest adventure in the realm of human freedom becomes a constraint -church marriage - a 'remedy for sin' – for in the immortal words of St Paul it is -' better to marry than to burn.'. If impersonal sex sometimes appears clinical and meaningless to us it is because the church has made us forget its real meaning.

THE FAILURE OF THE FEMINIST REVOLUTION

Religion actually shapes the dark side of pornography - the dark side that is supposed to degrade women and functions in society to keep the sacred from emerging. I also want to stick my neck out here and contend that women generally are extremely slow to pick up on the way in which they have been denigrated by religion. Not only have women failed to appreciate fully how much religion is responsible for defining them in terms of their sexual danger to men but have been duped into accepting a God-model that is based on extreme male violence – the hellfire God of wrath and vengeance that hides behind the smokescreen of Christ's phony love ethic. The feminist movement in my view has failed to finish the job and is now floundering in a minutia of petty issues{relatively speaking), unable to see the wood for the trees. It has rightly given sexism a kicking but abysmally failed to see-off patriarchal religion- the ultimate manifestation of sexism - and to challenge the male defined sado-God who tortures women in hell for pre-marital sex. How is it that most women show such inconsistency, by sharing an emphatic horror of rape and domestic violence, but seldom showing the slightest inclination to protest about religions that describe an afterlife in store for them, that promises to violate and mutilate their bodies more than the worst terrestrial psychopathic serial rapist and killer? If you think this is over the top – check out the recorded ranting's of hellfire preachers like Johnathan Edwards for example, or read the Koran which details some of the specific tortures the damned are afflicted with in eternity. If you think having a dentist drill you gums with no anaesthetic is bad – you better hope Muhammad got it wrong!

In the Apocalypse of Peter, adulterous women in hell will be dangled by their hair above boiling filth. In the painting entitled “The Guilty Lovers” by the 16th century artist Mathias Grünewald, the flesh, whose pleasures the lovers have enjoyed, is pierced by snakes, toads scorpions and flies. Sexual punishments for sexual sins. Christian love – an eternal rape of the vagina by demons! Rape is real and hell is a fiction, you may object, but that's not the point. Women should be angry about religions perceiving them as DESERVING to go to hell even if hell is a nonsense , which it is of course. The black man who is insulted by the racist knows racism isn't 'true' in as far as it cant be rationally justified but he is still offended. In fact he is offended BECAUSE it is untrue. Likewise unbelievers, especially women, should be offended by threats of hell because the lack of veracity makes them deeply offensive. Wake up girls! – next time someone tells you Jesus loves you, read between the lines and understand what it really means: if you don't love him back as the only path to God he'll have you consigned to the cosmic torture chamber, where serpents will bore into your vaginas and devour your insides while the saved watch no doubt from the safety of heaven, relishing the evidence of God's love and justice. Schaudenfraude running riot Somehow the feminist revolution for the main part, has turned into a confederate of the church and even supports the struggle for women to become priests and enslave themselves in the very institution that violates them. As if that isn't enough the self-appointed guardians of this often self-defeating revolution attack pornography, lap dancing and beauty competitions. Oh aren't we men disgusting for wanting to put a row of beautiful women on a stage to admire their natural born morphology ! Girls you've really got your priorities right! Just carry on supporting all those religious sex bigots out there who have done everything in their power down the centuries to stigmatise and demonise your pretty little innocent vaginas.

Religious tolerance has less to do with liberty and free speech than it does with damage limitation exercises that help disguise the mutual hatred Christians Jews and Muslims really feel for each others beliefs behind the facade. The Age of religious tolerance was inaugurated to put a stop to heretic burnings and religious sectarian wars. It is a devise whose necessity proves the failure of religion. Religious tolerance does not serve civilization – it serves religion, and it serves religion by stifling any real debate. This is why the whole message of religion, namely the afterlife, is never discussed in the media today because it would necessitate Muslims and Christians damning each other to hell in a TV studio. Real debate is gagged in order to preserve the peace. A Christian Prime minister or a Christian President of the USA is never asked if he believes his Muslim voters deserve to be damned in hell: Prince Charles who wants to be the Defender of the 'Faiths' will never be asked if his Muslim subjects will be sent to hell by Christ on Judgment Day – the stench of political correctness wafting down from the Parliament, even when one is not directly downwind of it, is almost unbearable. The failure of the so-called Age of Reason that fostered mass tolerance, followed by the failure of feminism, has allowed this great shibboleth of indiscriminate, unexamined, religious freedom to become inviolable and enshrined in human rights legislation – legislation that refuses even today to protect children against mental rape – the global scandal of religious indoctrination of defenseless minors. To force children to learn the Koran by heart is arguably even more of an outrage than Catholic priests practicing their favourite sport on young boys.

THE OBJECTIFICATION OF WOMEN

Sex is an important part of love, a gift to share with your partner. Marriage is not essential but its a perfectly reasonable consummation of a loving relationship. So fidelity is good, marriage is good, love and sex are the best of bedfellows. What's wrong with some religions is that they condemn other options with threats of eternal damnation. Maybe the Church's fear and condemnation of sex down the centuries is in fact a sinister cover-up – a campaign of misinformation to stop people finding out that sex is the optimum path to spiritual enlightenment and that the master key to understanding this forbidden path is actually the much maligned objectification of women.

If bad objectification is about hating women for the sexual power they have over men; if it is about disrespecting them, abusing their rights and finally torturing and killing them, then it was the Christian Church that during the witch trials personified the worst objectification of women and presaged the modern snuff movie. And if the argument is valid that religion has screwed us all up to varying degrees with its centuries of sexual repression and fig-leaf censorship – is it not possible that the underlying misogyny of rapists and prostitute serial killers is partly or even predominantly caused by religion? Maybe the very things that the religious sensibility finds so offensive in secular sexual freedom- the sordid aspects of pornography, soulless casual sex, and rape are partially generated by religion itself. The church needs prostitution to be sordid and squalid in order for its cover-up to persist. If the general public begin to understand that there is such a thing as a sacred objectification of the body the game is up for Christianity.

RELIGIOUS OBJECTIFICATION

Lets take a closer look at the religious objectification of women. It all started with the Fall of Satan and the lustful angels. Early Judeo-Christian superstitions related to the tale that echoes down the centuries to our own times of the monstrous sexual union between Satan's fallen angels who 'defiled themselves with women'. Clement of Alexandria spoke of 'angels who abandoned the beauty of God, turned towards an ephemeral beauty and fell from heaven to earth' in order to dissuade men from concupiscence and women on the earth. Tertullian a second century theologian, argued that women should wear veils because of the shame of their seductive powers; 'Therefore so dangerous a beauty ought to be veiled, for it has caused ravages even in heaven...' How dangerous women are if they can even bring about the ruination of angels! Cover them up, put them in veils!He also believed they should wear veils as a sign of repentance to 'expiate that which she derives from Eve - - the ignominy, I mean, of the first sin, and the odium of human perdition.' Women are cursed with the ignominy of bringing down both angels and humankind, the former through lust, the latter through moral weakness and disobedience. In the infamous temptation of St Antony, the Devil took the form of a woman calling himself “the friend of fornication. I lay my snares before the young to make them fall into this vice, and I am called the spirit of fornication...” This is only the tip of the iceberg – a few random examples taken from hundreds of equally deranged quotes and commentaries, revealing endless theobabble by one pundit after another connecting unmarried sex to Satan and original sin and damnation in hell. Woe betide women if they arouse the lust of God- fearing men!

The ideal Christian woman was a virgin(Marriage fills the earth but virginity fills paradise) who could metaphorically become a man for the kingdom. ST Jerome of the 4th century argued that when a woman 'wishes to serve Christ more than the world, then she will cease to be a woman and will be called man' Christianity required a gender transformation that denied the vagina as far as it was possible. Firstly the virgin vagina is not a reminder of concupiscence because it has not been 'defiled' by sex and secondly, by becoming a male for Christ the vagina is symbolically replaced by a penis. St Augustine believed sex was something that actually resulted from the sinfulness of the Fall. And he also contributed to this zeitgeist of sex fear when he argued that lust overcame reason and sex was therefore anti-rational – a wonderful irony coming from a religious superstitionist; there is nothing on earth more anti-rational than hellfire religion after all. The respect for marriage as a magical certification of sex stems from the view held by St Augustine and others that divorce was unthinkable, for marriage symbolized Christ's union with the church. Adultery then become a crime against God because the vows of fidelity had been made before God.. Augustine only tolerated prostitution as a necessary evil that kept 'honourable' women and girls safe from male lust.

Lustful thoughts(termed 'adultery of the heart') also merited penance, even if they resulted in no activity, for sinfulness was in one's mind as well as one's body. The temptation at this point to relate this notion to Christ's declared intention to have most of the human race subjected to eternal torture, is irresistible. There are a whole raft of risible arguments put forward by believers to explain the doctrine of hell ranging from a denial that Christ taught it, or that if he taught it he is about saving us from hell not sending us there, to the position that hell is just absence of God and entirely self- inflicted.

A common mistake made by observers of the issue is that because Christ was never known to hurt anybody, he can't have been evil. By his own teaching on the adultery of the heart however he is guilty of evil by having evil thoughts and evil intentions. 'Men's area' in modern law recognizes that the intention to commit a crime is reason for prosecution. Terrorists go to jail simply for being found guilty of plotting acts of terrorism even if they are foiled before they happen. A husband putting out a contract on his wife will be sentenced even if his hired contract killer turns out to be an undercover cop and she escapes any harm. Likewise Christ's blasphemous ravings about hell were not empty threats – he meant them and is guilty in the eyes of the law of plotting the eternal damnation of most of the human race!

To get a full idea of the madness of religion, try adding to this equation the belief many Christians and Muslims have espoused through the ages in 'predestination' – God predestines people to hell so that they can't even chose through free will not to be damned. But the madness gets bigger and bigger the more we observe it: many Christians believe that billions of souls at this very moment are being tortured and tormented as they await Judgment Day to be re- united with their resurrected bodies so that their tortures can be doubled. You can't blame the devil – he's a weakling before God and does nothing without God's permission and he himself has to be tortured to satisfy God's justice. The popular image of demons torturing people in hell appears to exculpate Christ but this is nonsense. Christ as a member of the Holy trinity, created hell and the demons are according to Christ evil, and are therefore to be punished along with Satan. It is Christ who delivers the pains of hell. Christ is the Hitler – the devils merely his holocaust minions obeying his orders.

The same old refrain – the lewdness of women lures men to hell. Its religious objectification gone mad – women stereotyped repeatedly by Church leaders as evil femme fatale - reduced to sexual objects, but not sexual objects as we understand the term, that is women who offer us life's ultimate pleasures, but women who offer us death's ultimate dangers – damnation. At least the pornographic objectification of women in our porno films and top shelf mags celebrates women's sexual charisma. Men don't gawk at lap dancers because they find them ugly but because they find them beautiful. This may sound self-evident but its an important point that prudes overlook. Male voyeurism whatever its shortcomings is at heart a rejoicing in the beauty of women. Religious objectifiers despise the beauty of women as a threat to their salvation. Pornographic objectification despite its spiritual and aesthetic impoverishment still involves aesthetics – the appreciation of the beauty of form. The male excitement over the feminine body is just a high voltage version of male excitement over a beautiful car or a beautiful landscape. The female body is just a natural landscape.

PORNOGRAPHIC OBJECTIFICATION – THE CHRISTIAN LEGACY!

The great severance brought about by religion between spirituality and sex is reflected in the worst aspects of modern pornography. Pornography was virtually invented by Christianity. Most pagan cultures had their prudish elements but explicit sexual images were connected with religion/spirituality and often incorporated sacred erotica, even sacred temple prostitution. Japanese Shinto celebrated procreation with icons of the human genitals in its temples and likewise the Greco-Roman empire was in the main, comfortable with erotica. With the advent of hellfire religion in the form of Christianity, most of the spectrum of human sexuality became denigrated and relegated as 'sin'. God/spirituality was severed from sex and sexual art. Anything outside the marriage bed became perverted and transgressive and severed from God's ratification.

Modern pornography did nothing to rehabilitate sex spiritually to reconnect it to Nature – it merely liberated it from superstition. As a consequence pornography is now fossilized in a time warp -caught between the devil and the deep blue sea. It has allowed religion to steal its soul – it has fallen for the con- trick that although it appears to have cut itself free from the shackles of religion it still seems to accept religion's definition of it as filth. It is no coincidence that the word “filthy” crops up a lot in porn mags - its the voice of porn saying “we may be filthy but filth makes a lot of money so who gives a shit?” As long as porn allows religion to define it as filth – it will remain as filth. Its not the gynaecological imagery that makes it shallow; its the closed circuit thinking – its the filth of the self-imposed block to evolution. Porn with no pride and little self-understanding becomes its own worst enemy – it will stagnate for ever instead of trying to reconnect itself to art, to philosophy, to aesthetics - even to a new spiritual roadmap.

As far as I'm concerned the more science reveals about the universe the more mysterious and therefore spiritual it becomes. Spirituality is about reverence for life, because it is infinitely bigger than us as individuals.. Theology and holy books are the way of spiritual death. Nature is the only holy book worth reading. God doesn't speak to us in confused and confusing scriptures, riddled with contradictions and shortcomings of every kind imaginable. It is such an insult to Divinity to imagine that He, She or IT could possibly make such a monstrous communications cock-up that has resulted in thousands of different religions and sects all claiming exclusive rights to the truth.

Pornography has divorced itself from the God that tries to shame it but it doesn't know how to reconnect itself to a new God-paradigm that both embraces human sexuality and that is not offensive to science and reason. Like a malnourished imbecile in a lunatic asylum it endless babbles its repetitious platitudes. Top shelf magazines haven't changed their basic format of infantile smut in years. The typical mag is littered with juvenile slogans like 'Shag UK Tarts'; 'I was gangbanged in the Bath', 'Filth and Fucking' 'Cock sucking Slag's' and 'Nympho sluts' Spunk slurping bitches' etc. The word 'filthy' comes up a lot as if the magazine relishes its defiance at its old oppressor.

Once upon a time the birth of pornography represented genuine liberation because despite its intellectual and aesthetic inadequacies it actually got genital iconography out there in the public domain. Even the filth of pornographic language has a powerful beauty to it when it is treated in the right manner; when it is for example transmuted into art as poetry or song lyrics. The sickness of porn, is its failure to amount to anything more than an unthinking, money driven knee-jerk reaction to its erstwhile Christian oppressors. It is the failure of the captains of porn to be more than mindless money makers and their seeming inability to act as ambassadors for an industry that should be concerned with progress and ongoing self-renewal. Porn barons should be financing erotic art exhibitions and taking on religious prudery fearlessly wherever it rears its ugly head whether its through litigation or its own publications.

SACRED OBJECTIFICATION

It is beyond the scope of this critique to expatiate on the apparent difference between men and women when it comes to sexual objectification. Suffice it to say that if men are more visuo-erotic than women and more inspired by physical beauty, there is no reason why women could not become more like men in this respect, should they think this is desirable. How much of this disparity between the psycho-sexual make-up of men and women is due to genetics and how much is due to culture remains to be seen. Women are still trying to discover and redefine their own sexuality after centuries of being controlled by men. How they relate to the male nude now, and in the future is highly relevant to male objectification but the jury, it must be said, is still out on this one.

Plato maintained that the beauty of the physical body was the starting point for a journey to enlightenment. Through lust and appreciation of the outward form, a man could gain knowledge of all the forms of beauty to whatever ultimate beauty lay at the end of the journey. On this basis the sexual objectification of women, the lust a man feels at seeing a woman he desires can serve as a doorway to the infinite. Sex can be a rite of passage, especially with a new lover, to the sea of life. Through sexual love one discovers a higher love of truth and beauty itself.

Tantric metaphysics teaches much the same thing. Impersonal sex with strangers can become sublimated into supra-personal sex in which lust and coitus becomes a vehicle for reaching higher states of mind and body. Through sexual ecstasy and correct understanding of the experience the practitioners become elevated to a higher state of being – the tantric equivalent of nirvana. Sexual energy is harnessed as a spiritual rocket fuel to reach enlightenment. Similar thinking lay behind temple prostitution is some ancient cultures where prostitutes represented a goddess that men could reach through their human counterparts. The male obsession with female beauty has always known echoes of divinity and goddess worship.

Heterosexuals are visually in love with the feminine principle. Physical beauty can be a door to the infinite. Everyone should find a portal that suits them in which to access the cosmos; an inspirational starting point that gets you excited about life. A woman's physical beauty can act as a life-catalyst - energizing the psyche – a natural fix – a blood rush. Everything in the universe is connected so that any one phenomenon can be used as a stepping stone to everything else. It's just a question of getting connected.

Both men and women have minds but only women have cunts and only men have cocks. . The sight of the body temporarily eclipses the personhood because it is the real substance of male/female difference. What makes a woman a woman is her body, her genitalia. Despite all the anomalies of hermaphrodites, transsexualism and she-males etc – woman is cunt and man is cock. Cunt does not define a woman's humanity but it arguably defines her gender more emphatically than any other markers of sexual identity. This is why the physicality of a woman is so powerful. Objectification is not the denial of the personhood it is the temporary relegation of the female psyche to a secondary position in order for the male mind to cope with the shock of witnessing the summit of visual experience! Through sexual objectification one can better encounter the universe. Through seeing the outside of the body one can become fascinated by the inside - not just her psyche, or her metaphorical heart but her real heart - her very anatomy. The bones, the muscles the organs. What could be less erotic than the viscera of the human body but as Plato pointed out, there are different forms of beauty and they are like steps or links to one another. In complete contrast to Jesus, Plato accepted physical attraction as the legitimate first stage of the souls eternal journey to the pure forms. The beauty of the body serves as a passageway to all other forms of beauty in the great beyond. The inside of the human body is beautiful intellectually. Its physiological complexity is awesome – not sexy not even aesthetic, but through the initial sexual excitement of seeing the exterior, one is lead to want to know more about what underlies it and supports it.

This is why artists have so much to offer the layman. Artists read the human body like a book of aesthetics and physiology – they see anatomy and they enjoy seeing the clavicle and the pelvis and the gluteus maximus. The air-brushed pin-up is actually a denial of anatomy and a travesty of the truth; a plastic woman with no anatomy – only an artificial surface like an inflatable doll. Plain nudity gives us the unvarnished truth of Nature's genius and her erotic handiwork. Lust gives us a brightly coloured neon lighted doorway to infinity in a world that without it, would seem almost monochrome. Sex colours our mind with desire for life. Objectification in the mind of an unenlightened man, may lead to bad thoughts and deeds but like beauty itself – it is in the eyes of the beholder. The objectification of women need not be reductionist: it need not reduce a woman to a mere body devoid of mind and soul, it can have the opposite effect, utilizing the beauty of the body to entice us through its permeable boundaries into the great beyond. The average man using the services of a sex worker may not see his substitute lover in these terms of course but this is because religion has closed so many doors of our sexual perception.

IN A SEXUALLY CHARGED CULTURE, PROSTITUTION IS NECESSARY FOR PSYCHOSOMATIC HEALTH.

The diverse reasons which motivate a man to pay for sex , may be mundane compared with the tantric idea of finding enlightenment through the feminine, but none of them are degrading to men or women. A man may be on the rebound from a calamitous relationship and not be ready to get emotionally involved for some time. Is it wrong to want uncomplicated sex, until one has fully recovered from the downside of love? Another might be happily married but his wife is sexually inhibited (probably from religious guilt !) and the sex worker can satisfy some of his less conventional needs. The argument goes that such a sexual release can actually help preserve a marriage. Other men, because of their age or personality can't find relationships. Many of them would much prefer to have sex in the context of a full loving friendship but the sex worker at least gives them a taste of what they sadly will never get in full.

The heterosexual male is bombarded in modern city life with sexually stimulating images. Adverts, films TV, magazines - beautiful women are ubiquitous. Women who are rightly free to dress in the street sexily and provocatively blossom in the summer in their mini-skirts often exposing that tantalizing tummy gap that is enough to make any guy horny. The exalted status of feminine beauty is evident everywhere and it is is positively irresponsible of governments not to offer men who are blitzed night and day by this relentless temptation, some kind of socially acceptable outlet for their constantly stimulated libidos. Instead, these men and women who indulge in sex for sale transactions to serve each others needs are made to feel shameful. They must not draw attention to themselves lest they incur the disgust and censure of the surrounding community. Nobody seems to want a brothel near them. At best they can hope for red light tolerance zones, rather like a ghetto or naturist beach. The prejudice against sex is analogous to the fear of nudity. Naturists like sex workers are forced to live as sexual outlaws – natural offenders of public decency. Adam and Eve's Fall into rebellion and sin was represented by the fig-leaf covering the shameful parts – its always there- the submerged menace of Christian prudery like a virus endlessly mutating to keep sex phobia alive and kicking in the mis-named permissive secular age.

Muslims no doubt would approach the problem from the other end. If you don't want men to be aroused, ban erotic images and make women cover up. The irony of this is that in many cases, the more of a woman you cover up the less information you have to go on and therefore the more de-humanized that person becomes. If you compare the appearance of a western woman in a mini skirt and a Muslim woman covered from head to foot in black drapes – it is the latter who has become a faceless amorphous non-person, maybe not a sex-object, but something less human: literally an asexual 'thing' because all human data has been withheld from the questioning eye. You know it's female only from your powers of deduction, because you can learn nothing from observation. You cant cover sex up, its too powerful and too beautiful to be censored and concealed. We have to learn as a society to embrace it in its fullness and find ways of dealing with the attendant problems that honesty and openness inevitably bring.

THE VAGINA ICON AS A CULTURAL CONSTRUCT

The dark side of women's objectification – the more distasteful aspects of pornography, snuff movies and rape: the more sordid side of prostitution and drugs and pimps etc, are arguably more to do with religious anti-eroticism and state prohibition than in any inherent moral malaise native to sex itself or to liberal secular ideology. The point can be illustrated to some extent by taking three disparate cultural images of the vagina/vulva. In prehistory the Godhead was seen widely as female – the Mother Goddess. Her vulva imaged in an extensive iconography carved into rocks and 'Venus' figurines is understood by most experts on the subject to symbolize Nature and the cosmos-creating powers of Divinity. The explicit image of the cunt therefore was infinitely expansionist – a gateway to the universe and quite literally the heavens.

In Christian times the cunt/vulva became demonised. Women and their sexuality were feared for the powers of seduction that they had over men, the temptress seducing men to hell. The Christian hatred of women for their sexuality erupted in the witch massacres. Many of the innocent women were sexually tortured – red hot instruments introduced into their vaginas for example. The cunt in Christianity becomes the gateway, the 'maw' to hell, to damnation. This evil objectification of women is personified in the Christian equivalent of the prehistoric Venus-figurines – namely the sheela-na-gig. These stone carvings appear on many churches in Europe and depict grotesquely ugly women in 'pornographic' poses, pulling the labia apart to shock the passing viewer. They are are apotropaic{demon-repelling} threats to men who fail to heed the warnings of Jesus Christ against lust. Look into the vagina of the Goddess and you discover truth – the universe in all its magnificent complexity, but look in to the vagina of the sheela-na-gig and you see thousands of innocent prostitutes being tormented for all eternity in hell. The modern images of women in sheela-na-gig poses in our top shelf magazines reflect the ambiguity of these two rival visions. Pornography represents the liberal secular revolt against religious sex phobia and an unconscious yearning to return to the Goddess, but its failure to completely bring it off is all too apparent by the numerous vestigial traces of Christian misogyny that make this level of pornography so in need of reform.

ARMAGEDDON – THE ENDTIME?

There is now in the media a constant reference to the 'Doomsday Clock'. In Christian theology this is termed the 'end-time'. This close down of history according to both the Koran and the Bible will be presaged by a range of seemingly natural disasters, such as earthquakes and plagues before the emergence of the Antichrist and the return of Christ to inaugurate the final judgment and the separation of the sheep and goats into heaven and hell. I think most of us would agree that with global warming and the constant threat of pandemics and mutating bugs and viruses etc, the first stages of this scenario are actually taking place. The issue is not about whether they are a reality but about what is causing it and what we can do about it. If you add to this ugly equation the return of a new East-West cold war as Russia and America play out their dangerous mind-games against a background of growing nuclear proliferation and Islamic terrorism – the conclusion is inevitable – we really are doomed to a growing chaos and geopolitical disintegration. The only real alternative is to find a new world-view that can override the deadly divisiveness of clashing superstitions.

It would be fair to say that to suggest a major global paradigm shift is less utopian than sticking your head in the sand and hoping the problems will go away. So why don't we grasp the nettle and admit we need to find a solution that gives us a spiritual unity – shared value-system that gives us a an ideological solidarity. Only a new and daring road map of reality will enable us to unite and work together to solve our manifold and deep rooted problems worldwide, from poverty and global warming to the prevention of wars and genocide.

Most of the problems of the world are caused by religion – the most obvious being the Judeo-Islamic conflict in the middle East and the nightmare of Islamic terrorism. It is simply wrong to accept the politically correct rubbish put out by politicians and religious leaders that the terrible things done in the name of religion are the 'abuse' of religion. Religion itself, the madness of the holy books is the cause of all the problems that are attributed to religion. It is in the essential nature of revelatory religion to lend itself to endless interpretations and ongoing upgraded revelations – especially with Christianity. The horrific tortures of the Christian inquisition were quite justifiable within the closed circuit thinking of the Christian mindset. To torture heretics was justifiable in the warped mind of the tormentors as an act of love, because by giving heretics a foretaste of the pains to come in hell they were saving their souls from a much worse fate if they managed to extract a confession and repentance. The 7/11 terrorists and the Taliban and all the other religious nutters who kill and maim and threaten others and their right to free speech, are absolutely sincere in their religious conviction and in their theological vindication. To argue their interpretation of holy scripture is wrong, is as illogical as maintaining that Martin Luther's was wrong or that the Mormons are not Christians.

It could also be argued very cogently and many pundits have, that religion is a substantive contributing factor to global warming with is emphasis on a transcendental God separate from nature who presides over a world contaminated with sin and doomed to be destroyed by God in the end-time. To Christianity and Islam this is a throwaway world. For centuries these religions have failed to help us relate to nature in a way that might have prevented the all-pervasive contempt humanity now shows for the environment. Monotheism is not a 'nature' metaphysic – it is not a spiritual way that teaches us to love nature and to respect nature. Both Christians and Muslims could quote texts that contradict this but the core reality of these religions is anti-world, anti-flesh: this world is seen to be a place of planned obsolescence – planned by an angry God hellbent on wrath and vengeance against an impious and wayward humanity. The Bible predicts that humanity cannot save itself but that the political condition of the world will get progressively worse. The best monotheism can offer us is a morbid holding operation to keep a sinking ship afloat until the life boats are in place. You can't fight for a better future on such doomsday theobabble. Why should we care about a planet that God tells us is doomed because of human iniquity?. Monotheism is not a message of hope and optimism; it is a message of pessimism, doom and gloom disguised with the fake promise of a returning saviour who never returns, and of course never will!

It could also be argued very cogently, and many pundits have, that the end time is actually a self-fulfilling prophecy. The madness of religion with its doomsday world view has so deeply penetrated our cultural bloodstream that it is now arguably the primary influence on western politics. I am not alone in thinking that the radical Jewish and Christian voices in Washington have their own sinister agenda which is to help the end-time along. They have strongly influenced President Bush to inaugurate and persist in one of the most insane, unethical and dangerous wars of all time. Its danger to humanity cannot be overestimated because of its place in the doomsday scenario as an Armageddon trigger. Religion, insanely protected by political correctness from being seriously challenged in free debate, is propelling us towards the final conflict. All the signs are there, all the ingredients for humanity's self-destruction are in place. All we need is more of the same for another decade and goodbye world.. Christians are already preparing big time in America for the 'rapture' when they will be miraculously taken up to heaven – leaving us behind in a world engulfed by unimaginable horrors and calamities of course. Think about it, they are actually indoctrinating their children with this crap in a modern high tech society, and all in the name of democracy and free speech.

Democracy itself – the keynote clarion call and rallying shibboleth of western leaders and statesmen has arguably been shown to be riddled with ambiguity by modern politico-religious developments. Democracy, to my knowledge, has no inbuilt constitutional commitment to rationalism. It is therefore always under threat from theocracy. If democracy is simply the will of the people, when enough voters become religious, they effectively create a theocracy – a society governed by the values of holy scripture and anti-scientific revelations. In realpolitik democracy and theocracy are interchangeable terms. At any time a democracy can slide into theocracy. What kind of strange beast is this – a tiger that can change into an elephant and still call itself a tiger? Are British soldiers dying in Iraq for democracy or to promote Islamic theocracy and is not creeping Islamisation a real threat to Britain and our so-called democracy?

WHAT IS THE RELEVANCE OF THIS TO THE AEA?

Prostitution, the sexual objectification of women, sexual freedom, pornography ,erotic art are all issues that impinge on our relationship with religion and spirituality. Sex has been repressed by hellfire religion because it is, as tantric wisdom tells us, the royal path to ecstasy and enlightenment – and dare I say it “God”. We as erotic artists hold the trump cards; we have the real message of salvation. Eroticism is arguably the most useful basis to the global spirituality that can save the world. Through lust and sexual love we connect deeply with Nature. It is the duty of art to be radical, and when there is a justification, to offend the deluded with the truth. Has there ever been a more crucial time than now for telling the truth? A new sexual revolution; a new spiritual sex- positive vision of reality. Art movements can have manifestos and agendas that can make a real difference. Maybe we could find enough of a consensus in the AEA to put together a manifesto so that the media see us as having a recognizable and more radical identity. An organization with ideological teeth that is prepared to bite bullshitters wherever they find them. An organization that could persuade some porn barons maybe into sponsoring or bankrolling our exhibitions and name and shame those that don't: an organization that could even have a representative standing for Parliament in a general election to promote the idea of sexual health and enlightenment in a society that has little understanding of how sex relates to almost every issue in world politics. We could take on the commercial art galleries who snub us and the art critics who through prejudice refuse to take erotic art seriously.

I recently checked out the London Art Fair in Islington which no doubt is representative of the art scene in London. The impression I got from it was identical to that which I get from being a regular visitor to private views all over the capital – the London art market is terrified of the human genitals! The only erotica you get with very few exceptions are the classic nudes or other socially acceptable traditions. It is said most of us are thinking about sex one way or another frequently during most of our waking hours. It is something we all enjoy and regard as of vital importance at least at some point in our lives. It is the means by which the human race perpetuates itself – do we need any more reasons for elevating sex to a status of high regard, even veneration? Why is sex so under-represented in art today? Art is supposed to reflect life and our relationship with the world and with each other but art today hardly mentions sex. The cultural silence about hell is deafening and the cultural silence in art about sex is equally deafening – for me they are linked. The art gallery owners and the dealers are in the main sex snobs and hypocrites, terrified of being associated with pornography if they exhibit radical hard-core erotica. They use every trick argument under the sun to avoid the label of prude or censor, but that's what they become when they betray art by denying the right of erotica to be respected. Erotic art is potentially more radical than any other art genre and maybe deep down the art world knows and fears this. Erotic art is the catalyst for a new global sex-embracing metaphysic that will spell doomsday to anti-erotic hellfire religions. Erotic art could in part function as social healing - a form of exit counseling to help those basically well meaning citizens to find the courage to leave their churches and mosques for good. And what of believers in the AEA? Lets hear from you, lets debate – the truth is hammered out in the crossfire of debate. Perhaps if such a debate took place it would be interesting to have a group exhibition reflecting the various viewpoints. The media might actually be interested in something with real substance.


THE VENUS SHAPESHIFTER

I've written a song about sex workers which I perform regularly in public and also another one that deals with an issue close to my heart – the feminine principle. I believe the heterosexual male is in love with femininity itself. He can be faithful and loving and monogamous but there is a part of him that needs to fuck the goddess. Venus in this song becomes a shapeshifter – a visionary woman who continually changes her form as you fuck her. All these transformations embody a mans ultimate dream – namely to make love with every desirable woman from every age and time,every nation, every colour. His stamina and lifespan would run out long before he could accomplish this goal but the dream remains to animate and energize his psyche, often in subconscious ways beyond his understanding. Men can fuck women they don't know because even when they hurriedly fuck a prostitute in a squalid room smelling of shame, deep down in their guts they know they are fucking the goddess – the feminine principle - they are penetrating this great mystery not just with their dicks but with their souls. I tried to express this in my song:

THE VENUS SHAPESHIFTER

In the night she came to lie with me
A dream, a vision, a mystery.
All in one, every face of Eve
Lips of youth made to please
Every colour and shape of lover
Hearts beating under mine
Kaleidoscope of feminine lights
Spiraling through time
There's a diamond with many facets
Who shines like the moon at night
There's a diamond with many faces
Who shimmers in the sunlight
When you hold her in your arms
You see the shapes she changes to
Every shade of beauty's there
All in one for you
She's the Venus shapeshifter
The answer to dreams
She looks like perfection
And she's everything she seems.


The difference between pornography and erotica is that the former is like the very religion it thinks it has escaped – it is system of closed circuit thinking, impervious to creative self-transformation – a series of mental habits and commercial hook lines that enhance wanking. Erotica is about showing sex to be the hub of a great wheel – the same wheel of life buddhists are always trying to persuade us to jump off! Non-attachment is not for me however – spin that wheel faster baby!

Take for example the tedious use of dirty talk in top shelf mags. If you change the format and give it a rap rhythm it takes on a whole new dynamic. I write songs in a genre I call 'eroto-rock'. The following example is not my most imaginative adaption but it illustrates I hope the crude power of dirty talk simply with juxtaposing phrases. As a concept this could be taken in many interesting directions:

My shagtart, my sweetheart, lets fuckstart. Lets suck and fuck.
Your clit, your love bud, your biteable bullet nipples burn me with their busty beauty
To fuck your love-slit is to get a rush-hit
I'll pump my creamy cum into your butt-bum and in your love-succulent quim, and in,
your rabid shaven minge, gagging for cock-shagging;
my fuck-thruster, my hymen buster, aches for your honey pot –
your velvet vent, heaven sent
to let my stiff fuck-tool make your cunt drool...... love juice.

 

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