Disgust

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

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• From Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928)

  In spite of May and a new greenness, the country was dismal. It was rather chilly, and there was smoke on the rain, and a certain sense of exhaust vapour in the air. One just had to live from one's resistance. No wonder these people were ugly and tough. The car ploughed uphill through the long squalid straggle of Tevershall, the blackened brick dwellings, the black slate roofs glistening their sharp edges, the mud black with coal-dust, the pavements wet and black. It was as if dismalness had soaked through and through everything. The utter negation of natural beauty, the utter negation of the gladness of life, the utter absence of the instinct for shapely beauty which every bird and beast has, the utter death of the human intuitive faculty was appalling. The stacks of soap in the grocer's shops, the rhubarb and lemons in the greengrocers! The awful hats in the milliners! all went by ugly, ugly, ugly, followed by the plaster-and-gilt horror of the cinema with its wet picture announcements, "A Woman's Love!" and the new big Primitive chapel, primitive enough in its stark brick and big panes of greenish and raspberry glass in the windows. The Wesleyan Chapel, higher up, was of blackened brick and stood behind iron railings and blackened shrubs. The Congregational chapel, which thought itself superior, was built of rusticated sandstone and had a steeple, but not a very high one. Just beyond were the new school buildings, expensive pink brick, and gravelled playground inside iron railings, all very imposing, and mixing the suggestion of a chapel and a prison. Standard Five girls were having a singing lesson, just finishing the la-me-do-la exercises and beginning a "sweet children's song." Anything more unlike song, spontaneous song, would be impossible to imagine: a strange bawling yell that followed the outlines of a tune. It was not like savages: savages have subtle rhythms. It was not like animals: animals _mean_ something when they yell. It was like nothing on earth, and it was called singing. Connie sat and listened with her heart in her boots, as Field was filling petrol. What could possibly become of such a people, a people in whom the living intuitive faculty was dead as nails, and only queer mechanical yells and uncanny will power remained? A coal-cart was coming downhill, clanking in the rain. Field started upwards, past the big but weary-looking drapers and clothing shops, the post-office, into the little market-place of forlorn space, where Sam Black was peering out of the door of the "Sun," that called itself an inn, not a pub, and where the commercial travellers stayed, and was bowing to Lady Chatterley's car.

• From Amplified Holy Bible (2015)

  [Josh 7:15 , 25 ] 15 ‘If a man has intimate relations with an animal, he shall most certainly be put to death; you shall kill the animal also. 16 ‘If a woman approaches any animal to mate with it, you shall kill the woman and the animal; they shall most certainly be put to death; their blood is on them. 17 ‘If a man takes his sister, his father’s daughter or his mother’s daughter, so that he sees her nakedness and she sees his nakedness, it is a disgrace; and they shall be cut off in the sight of the sons of their people. He has uncovered his sister’s nakedness; he bears [responsibility for] his guilt. 18 ‘If a man lies [intimately] with a woman during her menstrual cycle and uncovers her nakedness, he has exposed her flow, and she has uncovered the flow of her blood; both of them shall be cut off from their people [excluding them from the atonement made for them]. 19 ‘You shall not uncover the nakedness of (have intimate relations with) your mother’s sister or your father’s sister, for such a one has uncovered his blood relative; they will bear their guilt. 20 ‘If there is a man who lies [intimately] with his uncle’s wife, he has uncovered his uncle’s nakedness; they will bear their sin. They will die childless. 21 ‘If a man takes his brother’s wife, it is a hated and unclean thing; he has uncovered his brother’s nakedness. They will be childless. 22 ‘Therefore keep all My statutes and all My ordinances and do them, so that the land where I am bringing you to live may not vomit you out [as it did those before you]. [Lev 18:28 ] 23 ‘You shall not follow the statutes (laws, practices, customs) of the nation which I am driving out before you; for they did all these things, and therefore I have loathed them. 24 ‘But I have said to you, “You are to inherit and take possession of their land, and I will give it to you to possess, a land [of plenty] c flowing with milk and honey.” I am the LORD your God, who has separated you from the peoples (pagan nations). 25 ‘You are therefore to make a distinction between the [ceremonially] clean animal and the unclean, and between the unclean bird and the clean; and you shall not make yourselves detestable by animal or by bird or by anything that crawls on the ground, which I have set apart from you as unclean. 26 ‘You are to be holy to Me; for I the LORD am holy, and have set you apart from the peoples (nations) to be Mine.

• From Girls & Sex (2016)

  During one of Jon’s after-Mass Sunday dinners at his parents’ house, where the TV inevitably blares in the background, an ad for Carl’s Jr. comes on. The camera lingers as Nina Agdal, a Sports Illustrated swimsuit model, rubs oil onto her glistening, bikini-clad body. She arches like a cat on hands and knees on a beach, hair flowing, and then sits, legs splayed, and takes a big, juicy bite of a codfish sandwich. Don’s mother looks away, fiddles with an earring. His sister, whose back is to the TV, doesn’t even glance up from her cell phone. Don and his father, wearing identical white tank tops, stare at the screen wearing identical slack-jawed expressions. In an interview about that scene, Gordon-Levitt commented, “What I’m saying is whether it’s rated X or ‘approved by the FCC for a general viewing audience,’ the message is the same.” He’s right. You don’t need to log in to PornHub to absorb its scripts; they’re embedded in the mainstream. And the impact of that garden-variety, “pornified” media on young people—from Maxim magazine to Dolce & Gabbana couture ads to Gossip Girl to multiplayer online games to infinite music videos—is indistinguishable from actual porn. The average teenager is exposed to nearly fourteen thousand references to sex each year on television; 70 percent of prime-time TV now contains sexual content. College men who play violent, sexualized video games are more likely than their peers to see women as sex objects as well as to be more accepting of rape myths, more tolerant of sexual harassment, and to consider women less competent. College women who, in experiments, played the virtual game Second Life using a sexualized avatar were more likely to self-objectify offline than those who played with a nonsexualized avatar and, again, were more likely to hold false beliefs about rape and rape victims. (Seeing yourself as an object apparently leads you to view other women that way as well.) Meanwhile, in a study of middle and high school girls, those who were shown sexualized pictures of female athletes subsequently scored higher on measures of self-objectification than those who saw the same athletes engaged in, you know, actual athletics. Young women who consume more objectifying media also report more willingness to engage in sexualized behavior, such as taking a pole dancing class or entering a wet T-shirt contest, and to find those activities empowering. They’re more likely to justify sexualization, and less likely to protest against it. In other words, as Rachel Calogero, a psychologist at the University of Kent in England, has written, “Objects don’t object.”

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  He looked up, ‘ Ah, it’s you. I must go on greasing. God knows when I shall use these again, to-morrow I join my regi- ment.’ But he wiped his hands on a stained overall and sat down, after clearing a chair for Puddle. ‘An ungentlemanly war it will be,’ he grumbled. ‘ Will I lead my men with a sword? Ah, but no! I will lead my men with a dirty revolver in my hand. Parbleu! Such is modern warfare! A machine could do the whole curséd thing better — we shall all be nothing but machines in this war. However, I pray that we may kill many Germans.’ Stephen lit a cigarette while the master glared, he was evi- dently in a very vile temper: ‘Go on, go on, smoke your heart to the devil, then come here and ask me to teach you fencing! You smoke in lighting one from the other, you remind me of THE WELL OF LONELINESS 309 your horrible Birmingham chimneys — but of course a wonsan fae always,’ he concluded, with an evident wish to annoy er. Then he made a few really enlightening remarks about Ger- mans in general, their appearance, their morals, above all their personal habits — which remarks were more seemly in French than they would be in English. For, like Valérie Seymour, this man was filled with a loathing for the ugliness of his epoch, an ugliness to which he felt the Germans were just now doing their best to contribute. Buisson’s heart was not buried in Mity- lene, but rather in the glories of a bygone Paris, where a gentle- man lived by the skill of his rapier and the graceful courage that lay behind it. “In the old days we killed very beautifully,’ sighed Buisson. * now we merely slaughter or else do not kill at all, no matter how gross the insult.’ However, when they got up to go, he relented: ‘ War is surely a very necessary evil, it thins down the imbecile popula- tions who have murdered their most efficacious microbes. People will not die, very well, here comes war to mow them down in their tens of thousands. At least for those of us who survive, there will be more breathing space, thanks to the Germans — perhaps they too are a necessary evil.’ Arrived at the door Stephen turned to look back. Buisson was once more greasing his foils, and his fingers moved slowly yet with great precision—he might almost have been a beauty doctor engaged upon massaging ladies’ faces. Preparations for departure did not take very long, and in less than a week’s time Stephen and Puddle had shaken hands with their Breton servants, and were driving at top speed en route for Havre, from whence they would cross to England. 4 Puppie’s prophecy proved to have been correct, work was very soon forthcoming for Stephen. She joined The London Ambu- 310 THE WELL O¥ LONELINESS

• From Girls & Sex (2016)

  “Yeah,” she said. “It’s a fart with your vagina? There were these episodes on South Park about it, and now teenage boys have that as something they can say about girls, and girls know that boys have that, so you feel awkward.” She sighed. “It’s just, there’s this whole comedic culture around making fun of female sexuality, you know? And it’s super strong.” While queefing had blessedly escaped my notice, the overall rise of the word vagina as a punch line had not. Snarky references to women’s nethers are the new fag—a way to denigrate masculinity, to ridicule or dominate an opponent. Even women use the word to signal that they’re “cool with it,” down with the bros. The implication is that everyone shares a secret distaste toward a lady’s parts, or at least a sense that the word vagina itself is a goof (as opposed to cunt, which wouldn’t be funny at all, and pussy, which as an insult has lost much of its anatomic specificity). So in the 2007 film Knocked Up, Jason Segel taunts a bearded Martin Starr by saying, “Your face look like a vagina.” In Forgetting Sarah Marshall, Mila Kunis similarly slams Segel, when he hesitates before diving off a Hawaiian cliff: “I can see your vagina from here,” she calls from the ocean below. “I can see your hoo-hah.” Another female character, in the trailer for the Adam Sandler flop That’s My Boy, heckles an ineffectual Andy Samberg with “Throw [the ball] you big vagina!” Off-screen, an essay on the website Thought Catalog titled “I’m a Feminist, but I Don’t Eat Pussy” went viral in 2013. Among its pithy observations: that while vaginas “feel really good when your penis is inside of them” they are “objectively gross . . . covered in hair. They ooze and slime . . .” They are dirty, the male writer continues, and taste bad, and for women to expect oral sex “when you know the strain it puts on men, is selfish and, frankly, discriminatory.” If that weren’t enough to plunge the average young woman into a shame spiral, heartthrob actor Robert Pattinson, whose fame and fortune were forged from the erotic fantasies of teenage girls, breezily confessed to Details magazine, “I really hate vaginas. I’m allergic to vagina.” Sign me up for Team Jacob.

• From Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928)

  For this reason, the gossip was humiliating. And for the same reason, most novels, especially popular ones, are humiliating too. The public responds now only to an appeal to its vices. Nevertheless, one got a new vision of Tevershall village from Mrs. Bolton's talk. A terrible, seething welter of ugly life it seemed: not at all the flat drabness it looked from outside. Clifford of course knew by sight most of the people mentioned, Connie knew only one or two. But it sounded really more like a Central African jungle than English village.

• From Vox (1992)

  33 sense of its all being in innocent fun in the end, then I can get turned on by shots of a wet T-shirt contest. You know?" "I can see how that works. So you're looking at the woman in Juggs." "Yes, and she was looking right at me, so appealingly, with such a lucid joyful amused look and her elbows were really digging into the pillow of the yellow raft, so it looked as if it might burst, and I could almost imagine strumming myself off to this, but then, no, there were too many things wrong—the photographer had put her hair in pigtails, tied with some kind of thick purply pink polyester yarn, and it just seemed so awful somehow, the age-old thing of men wanting to pretend that twenty- eight-year-old women are little girls by forcing this icon of girlishness, pigtails, on them, when really, when was the last time you saw a real little girl wearing pigtails? Not to mention the incidental fact that little girls are a turnoff. Here's this beautiful, alert, lovely woman, of at least twenty-seven, and all I could see was the dickhead pho tographer handing her some polyester yarn and saying, 'Uhright, now tie this purple stuff in your hair. ' And I felt at that moment that I wanted to talk to a real woman, no more images of any kind, no fast forward, no pause, no magazine pictures. And there was the ad." "But you've called these numbers before, haven't you?" she asked. "A few times, but with no real success. And I don't

• From Vox (1992)

  63 almost hate all other men. Sometimes when there's a kissing scene in a movie, and the camera shows the actor and actress chomping away on each other's gums, moy- ong, moyong, and then there's this sudden folded-up piece of shaven male jaw skin, I feel a wave of disgust— what the fuck is he doing there, get him off the set! That's not even to mention the bestial idiots in porn movies: this nice woman donating her perfect self to these horrible lascivious dumbfucks, with their suggestive evil laughs, and their intent lustful expressions, and their singlemind- edness, and their constant diverting of the conversation around to sex. Get rid of them. One time I was in a store at the dirty-magazine rack and it was a little congested there and I reached sort of over this guy's shoulder to get a copy of the magazine I wanted to look at—E-Cup or something—didn't touch him, just reached over him, and the guy half turned his head and said in this psy chopathic voice, but very soft, he said, 'Stay away from me or I'll cut you up.' I said, 'Sorry, sorry, I was just trying to get the magazine!' And he said, 'Well just stay the fuck away from me, okay?' Now I'd never say that or threaten that but that guy's reaction, when you're at the magazine rack and you want to be the only one there, among all these lovely kindly wonderful naked women, is a reaction I can at least understand. These groups of buddies who go out and drink beer together at strip clubs—it's totally mystifying to me that they would want to do that, have male company." "But women like men from time to time."

• From Vox (1992)

  But no, actually it isn’t like simple voyeurism, I don’t think—it’s holier or more reverent than that, because when I’m in that mood I don’t want to exist. I don’t mean I want to kill myself, I mean that I’m a man and a man is a watcher and a watcher disturbs the purity of the event, so I don’t want to exist, I want to be faded away to almost nothing. And of course all other men are completely foreign, they aren’t allowed in this at all. When I’m very aroused I almost hate all other men. Sometimes when there’s a kissing scene in a movie, and the camera shows the actor and actress chomping away on each other’s gums, moyong, moyong , and then there’s this sudden folded-up piece of shaven male jaw skin, I feel a wave of disgust—what the fuck is he doing there, get him off the set! That’s not even to mention the bestial idiots in porn movies: this nice woman donating her perfect self to these horrible lascivious dumbfucks, with their suggestive evil laughs, and their intent lustful expressions, and their singlemindedness, and their constant diverting of the conversation around to sex. Get rid of them. One time I was in a store at the dirty-magazine rack and it was a little congested there and I reached sort of over this guy’s shoulder to get a copy of the magazine I wanted to look at— E-Cup or something—didn’t touch him, just reached over him, and the guy half turned his head and said in this psychopathic voice, but very soft, he said, ‘Stay away from me or I’ll cut you up.’ I said, ‘Sorry, sorry, I was just trying to get the magazine!’ And he said, ‘Well just stay the fuck away from me, okay?’ Now I’d never say that or threaten that but that guy’s reaction, when you’re at the magazine rack and you want to be the only one there, among all these lovely kindly wonderful naked women, is a reaction I can at least understand. These groups of buddies who go out and drink beer together at strip clubs—it’s totally mystifying to me that they would want to do that, have male company.” “But women like men from time to time.” “I know that, I realize that, and that’s how I trick myself into accepting men’s existence: women often imagine men when they come, so men have a reason to exist.

• From Girls & Sex (2016)

  Full-frontal waxing—which is not only pricey but excruciating—was once the province of fetishists and, of course, porn stars. The first “Brazilian” salon (so named because its owners were from that country) in the United States opened in New York in 1987, but it was an episode of Sex and the City that took the practice mainstream. By 2006, trendsetter and the former Posh Spice Victoria Beckham declared that Brazilian waxes should be “compulsory” starting at fifteen. (Let’s check back with her in 2026, shall we, when her daughter reaches that age.) There’s no question that a bald vulva is smooth. Silky smooth. Baby smooth—some would say disturbingly so. Perhaps in the 1920s, when women first started shaving their legs and armpits, that, too, seemed creepily infantilizing, but now depilating those areas is a standard rite of passage for girls, an announcement, rather than a denial, of adult sexuality. That first wave of hair removal was driven by flapper fashions that displayed a woman’s limbs; arms and legs were, for the first time, no longer part of the private realm. Today’s pubic hair removal may indicate something similar: we have opened our most intimate parts to unprecedented scrutiny, evaluation, commodification. Largely as a result of the Brazilian trend, cosmetic labiaplasty, the clipping of the folds of skin surrounding the vulva, has skyrocketed: while still well behind nose and boob jobs, according to the American Society of Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons (ASAPS), there was a 44 percent rise in the procedure between 2012 and 2013—and a 64 percent jump the previous year. Labiaplasty is almost never related to sexual function or pleasure; it can actually impede both. Never mind: Dr. Michael Edwards, the ASAPS president in 2013, hailed the uptick as part of “an ever-evolving concept of beauty and self-confidence.” The most sought-after look, incidentally, is called—are you ready?—the Barbie: a “‘clamshell’-type effect in which the outer labia appear fused, with no labia minora protruding.” I trust I don’t need to remind the reader that Barbie is (a) made of plastic and (b) has no vagina. Herbenick invited me to sit in on the Human Sexuality class she was about to teach, one of the most popular courses on Indiana’s campus. She was, on that day, delivering a lecture on gender disparities in sexual satisfaction. More than one hundred fifty students were already seated in the classroom when we arrived, nearly all of them female, most dressed in sweats, their hair pulled into haphazard ponytails. They listened raptly as Herbenick explained the vastly different language young men and young women use when describing “good sex.” “Men are more likely to talk about pleasure, about orgasm,” Herbenick said. “Women talk more about absence of pain. Thirty percent of female college students say they experience pain during their sexual encounters as opposed to five percent of men.”

• From Amplified Holy Bible (2015)

  I will bring them out now; abuse and humiliate them and do to them e whatever you want, but do not commit this act of f sacrilege against this man.” 25 But the men would not listen to him. So the man took the Levite’s concubine and brought her outside to them; and they had relations with her and abused her all night until morning; and when daybreak came, they let her go. 26 g At daybreak the woman came and collapsed at the door of the man’s house where her master was, until it was [fully] light. 27 When her master got up in the morning and opened the doors of the house and went out to go on his way, he saw his concubine lying at the door of the house, and her hands were on the threshold. 28 He said to her, “Get up, and let us go.” But there was no answer [for she had died]. Then he put her [body] on the donkey; and the man left and went home. 29 When he arrived at his house, he took a knife, and taking hold of his [dead] concubine, he cut her [corpse] limb by limb into twelve pieces, and sent her [body parts] throughout all the territory of Israel. 30 All who saw the dismembered parts said, “Nothing like this has ever happened or been seen from the day that the sons of Israel came up from the land of Egypt to this day. Consider it, take counsel, and speak [your minds]!” Judges 20 Resolve to Punish the Guilty 1 T HEN ALL the sons of Israel from Dan [in the north] to Beersheba [in the south], including the land of Gilead came out, and the congregation assembled as one man to the LORD at Mizpah. 2 The chiefs of all the people of all the tribes of Israel, presented themselves in the assembly of the people of God, four hundred thousand men on foot who drew the sword. 3 (Now the Benjamites [in whose territory the crime was committed] heard that the [other tribes of the] sons of Israel had gone up to Mizpah.) And the sons of Israel said, “How did this evil thing happen?” 4 So the Levite, the husband of the woman who was murdered, replied, “I had come with my concubine to spend the night in Gibeah, [a town] which belongs to [the tribe of] Benjamin. 5 “But the men of Gibeah rose up against me and surrounded the house at night because of me. They intended to kill me, but instead they raped my concubine [so brutally] that she died. 6 “So I took my concubine and cut her [corpse] in pieces and sent her [body parts] throughout the land of the inheritance of Israel; for the men of Gibeah have committed a lewd and disgraceful act in Israel.

• From Understanding the Old Testament (2019)

  WHEN THINGS GO WRONG IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN LECTURE 4 This lecture is about Genesis 3, the second part of the story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden that begins in Genesis 2. Genesis 2 and 3 are a continuous story, which now moves into a second phase, where things go wrong. The Serpent Genesis 3:1 describes the serpent as “the shrewdest of all the wild beasts of the Lord God had made.” Christianity and Judaism have traditionally read the serpent here as the devil. However, Genesis 3 does not mention the devil or use the name Satan. The serpent isn’t the villain of this story; humanity is. 4 Understanding the o ld testament 20 It’s likely that the serpent stands for sorcery—that is, illicit knowledge or infernal wisdom. The Hebrew word for serpent, nahash, comes from the same root that means “divination.” Divination is not so much magic as trying to gain knowledge by magical means. On top of that, the serpent in this story is not a snake. It doesn’t go on its belly until the end of the story. A snake that doesn’t go on its belly is a dragon. When compared to the descriptions of what is called a Nahash in Isaiah 27:1 or Amos 9:3, the serpent is clearly a dragon. That’s important, because Israel consistently uses the dragon to symbolize evil. Evil is never a red guy with horns and a pitchfork. An Israelite reading Genesis 3 would see Nahash and think about chaos or evil. The Israelite would also see “one of the beasts the Lord God had made” and know this creature is meant to be obedient to humanity, not the other way around. In Genesis 3, the woman tells the serpent, “We may eat of the fruit of the other trees of the garden. It is only about the fruit of the tree in the middle of the garden God said: ‘You shall not eat of it or touch it, lest you die.’”

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  Hadrian, of Spanish descent, a relative of Trajan, and adopted by him on his death-bed, was a man of brilliant talents and careful education, a scholar an artist, a legislator and administrator, and altogether one of the ablest among the Roman emperors, but of very doubtful morality, governed by changing moods, attracted in opposite directions, and at last lost in self-contradictions and utter disgust of life. His mausoleum (Moles Hadriani) still adorns, as the castle of Sant’ Angelo, the bridge of the Tiber in Rome. He is represented both as a friend and foe of the church. He was devoted to the religion of the state, bitterly opposed to Judaism, indifferent to Christianity, from ignorance of it. He insulted the Jews and the Christians alike by erecting temples of Jupiter and Venus over the site of the temple and the supposed spot of the crucifixion. He is said to have directed the Asiatic proconsul to check the popular fury against the Christians, and to punish only those who should be, by an orderly judicial process, convicted of transgression of the laws.31 But no doubt he regarded, like Trajan, the mere profession of Christianity itself such a transgression. The Christian apologies, which took their rise under this emperor, indicate a very bitter public sentiment against the Christians, and a critical condition of the church. The least encouragement from Hadrian would have brought on a bloody persecution. Quadratus and Aristides addressed their pleas for their fellow-Christians to him, we do not know with what effect. Later tradition assigns to his reign the martyrdom of St. Eustachius, St. Symphorosa and her seven sons, of the Roman bishops Alexander and Telesphorus, and others whose names are scarcely known, and whose chronology is more than doubtful. § 19 Antoninus Pius. A.D. 137–161. The Martyrdom of Polycarp. Comte de Champagny (R.C.): Les Antonins. (A.D. 69–180), Paris, 1863; 3d ed. 1874. 3 vols., 8 vo. Merivale’s History. Martyrium Polycarp (the oldest, simplest, and least objectionable of the martyr-acts), in a letter of the church of Smyrna to the Christians in Pontus or Phrygia, preserved by Eusebius, H. Eccl. IV. 15, and separately edited from various MSS. by Ussher (1647) and in nearly all the editions of the Apostolic Fathers, especially by O. v. Gebhardt, Harnack, and Zahn, II. 132–168, and Prolog. L-LVI. The recension of the text is by Zahn, and departs from the text of the Bollandists in 98 places. Best edition by Lightfoot, S. Ign. and S. Polycarp, I. 417 sqq., and II. 1005–1047. Comp. the Greek Vita Polycarpi, in Funk, II. 315 sqq. Ignatius: Ad. Polycarpum. Best ed., by Lightfoot, l.c. Irenaeus: Adv. Haer. III. 3. 4. His letter to Florinus in Euseb. v. 20. Polycrates of Ephesus (c. 190), in Euseb. v. 24. On the date of Polycarp’s death:

• From Girls & Sex (2016)

  The Internet has made porn more prevalent and accessible than at any time in history, especially to teens. As with pop culture, that has spurred an escalation in explicitness, a need to push the boundaries to maintain an easily distracted audience. Mirroring (and raising further questions about) the mainstream culture’s “booty” trend, in one large-scale study of sexual behavior and aggression in best-selling porn, anal sex was depicted in over half of the videos surveyed, always as easy, clean, and pleasurable to women; 41 percent of videos also included “ass to mouth,” in which, immediately after removing his penis from a woman’s anus, he places it in her mouth. Scenes of “bukake” sex (multiple men ejaculating on one woman’s face), “facial abuse” (oral sex aimed at making a woman vomit), triple penetration, and penetration by multiple penises in a single orifice are also on the rise. I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that in real life those practices wouldn’t feel good to most women. Watching natural-looking people engaging in sex that is consensual, mutually pleasurable, and realistic may not be harmful—heck, it might be a good idea—but the occasional feminist porn site aside, that is not what the $97 billion global porn industry is shilling. Its producers have only one goal: to get men off hard and fast for profit. The most efficient way to do so appears to be by eroticizing the degradation of women. In the study of behaviors in popular porn, nearly 90 percent of 304 random scenes contained physical aggression toward women, while close to half contained verbal humiliation. The victims nearly always responded neutrally or with pleasure. More insidiously, women would sometimes initially resist abuse, begging their partners to stop; when that didn’t happen, they acquiesced and began to enjoy the activity, regardless of how painful or debasing it was. The reality is, as one eighteen-year-old pursuing a porn career told documentary filmmakers Jill Bauer and Ronna Gradus, “I’m supposed to be having sex with guys I would never have sex with, and saying things I would never say. There is nothing sexually arousing. You’re just processed meat.”

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  Exorcism, or the expulsion of the devil, which is not to be confounded with the essential formula of renunciation, was probably practised at first only in special cases, as of demoniacal possession. But after the council of Carthage, A.D. 256, we find it a regular part of the ceremony of baptism, preceding the baptism proper, and in some eases, it would seem, several times repeated during the course of catechetical instruction. To understand fully this custom, we should remember that the early church derived the whole system of heathen idolatry, which it justly abhorred as one of the greatest crimes,437 from the agency of Satan. The heathen deities, although they had been eminent men during their lives, were, as to their animating principle, identified with demons—either fallen angels or their progeny. These demons, as we may infer from many passages of Justin, Minucius Felix, Tertullian, and others, were believed to traverse the air, to wander over the earth, to deceive and torment the race, to take possession of men, to encourage sacrifices, to lurk in statues, to speak through the oracles, to direct the flights of birds, to work the illusions of enchantment and necromancy, to delude the senses by false miracles, to incite persecution against Christianity, and, in fact, to sustain the whole fabric of heathenism with all its errors and vices. But even these evil spirits were Subject to the powerful name of Jesus. Tertullian openly challenges the pagan adversaries to bring demoniacs before the tribunals, and affirms that the spirits which possessed them, would bear witness to the truth of Christianity. The institution of sponsors,438, first mentioned by Tertullian, arose no doubt from infant baptism, and was designed to secure Christian training, without thereby excusing Christian parents from their duty. Baptism might be administered at any time, but was commonly connected with Easter and Pentecost, and in the East with Epiphany also, to give it the greater solemnity. The favorite hour was midnight lit up by torches. The men were baptized first, the women afterwards. During the week following, the neophytes wore white garments as symbols of their purity. Separate chapels for baptism, or baptisteries, occur first in the fourth century, and many of them still remain in Southern Europe. Baptism might be performed in any place, where, as Justin says, "water was." Yet Cyprian, in the middle of the third century, and the pseudo-Apostolical Constitutions, require the element to be previously consecrated, that it may become the vehicle of the purifying energy of the Spirit. This corresponded to the consecration of the bread and wine in the Lord’s Supper, and involved no transformation of the substance. § 71. The Doctrine of Baptism.

• From The Canterbury Tales (2009)

  The sun had traced its arc of gold across the sky, and could not linger on the horizon of that day. The night had fallen, and darkness spread over the earth. The merry guests left the marriage feast, giving thanks to January, and rode homewards in cheerful mood. Were they going straight to bed? I don’t know. I do know, however, what January wanted to do. Bed was the only thing on his mind. He was not going to wait any longer. So he prepared himself a hot punch of spice and sweetened wine, as an aphrodisiac. He also took some herbs and simples recommended by the disgraceful monk, Constantinus Africanus, who wrote that book On Fucking. He tried every single ointment and concoction. Then he turned to the close friends who were still in the house, telling them to leave quickly and quietly ‘for the love of God’. They did as they were told. They drank up, and then they drew the curtains. The priest blessed the bed, and May was brought to it. She was as still and silent as any stone. Everyone filed out of the bedchamber, leaving bride and bridegroom there alone. January grabbed May as soon as they were gone. She was his spring, his paradise, his wife. He petted her and clawed her, kissing her on the cheek and lips. His bristle was as tough as the skin of an old dogfish. His face was like a bed of briars, and he rubbed it all over her tender flesh. Then he started crooning to her. ‘Oh dear, oh dear, I must trespass upon you, my sweetheart, and perhaps offend you. I may hurt you before I have finished with you. But consider this, my duckling. No labourer worth his hire can work hastily. It has to be done slowly and surely. It doesn’t matter how long we play together. We are both coupled in holy matrimony, so we can take all the time we want. We have been blessed by the priest. Nothing we do will be considered sinful. A man cannot cut himself with his own knife. The law gives us permission to have some fun.’ So he fell upon her, thrusting and heaving all that night. He climbed off her, eventually, and refreshed himself with some bread soaked in fine red wine. Then he sat up in bed and began to sing loudly and clearly. He leered at her, and licked his lips. He was as frisky as a colt, as wanton as a monkey. When he started singing the slack skin about his neck began to shake. His voice gave out and he started croaking. God knows what May thought of all this. She stared at him as he sat there in his nightshirt and nightcap, with his scrawny neck and bony face. She did not praise his performance. That’s for sure.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  His son Isidore was the chief, we may say the only important one, of his disciples. He composed a system of ethics and other books, from which Clement of Alexandria has preserved a few extracts. The Basilidians, especially in the West, seem to have been dualistic and docetic in theory, and loose, even dissolute in practice. They corrupted and vulgarized the high-pitched and artificial system of the founder. The whole life of Christ was to them a mere sham. It was Simon of Cyrene who was crucified; Jesus exchanged forms with him on the way, and, standing unseen opposite in Simon’s form, mocked those who crucified him, and then ascended to heaven. They held it prudent to repudiate Christianity in times of persecution, regarding the noble confession of martyrs as costing dearly before swine, and practiced various sorts of magic, in which the Abraxas gems did them service. The spurious Basilidian sect maintained itself in Egypt till the end of the fourth century, but does not seem to have spread beyond, except that Marcus, a native of Memphis, is reported by Sulpicius Severus to have brought some of its doctrines to Spain. § 125. Valentinus. I. The sources are: 1) Fragments Of Valentinus; Ptolomey’s Epistola ad Floram; and exegetical fragments of Heracleon. 2) The patristic accounts and refutations of Irenaeus (I. 1–21 and throughout his whole work); Hippolytus (VI. 29–37); Tertullian (Adv. Valentinianos); Epiphanius, (Haer. XXXI; in Oehler’s ed. I. 305–386). The last two depend chiefly upon Irenaeus. See on the sources Lipsius and Heinrici (p. 5–148). II. Ren. Massuet: Dissert. de Haereticis, Art. I. De Valentino, in his ed. of Irenaeus, and in Stieren’s ed. Tom. II. p. 54–134. Very learned and thorough. George Heinrici: Die Valentinianische Gnosis und die heilige Schrift. Berlin, 1871 (192 pages). Comp. Neander (whose account is very good, but lacks the additional information furnished by Hippolytus); Rossel, Theol. Schriften (Berlin, (1847), p. 280 sqq.; Baur, K. Gesch. I. 195–204; and Jacobi, in Herzog2, vol. V. 225–229.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  (423–455), repeated and in some cases added to the laws of the previous reign against the heathen. In the year 408, Honorius even issued an edict excluding heathens from civil and military office;100 and in 423 appeared another edict, which questioned the existence of heathens.101 But in the first place, such laws, in the then critical condition of the empire amidst the confusion of the great migration, especially in the West, could be but imperfectly enforced; and in the next place, the frequent repetition of them itself proves that heathenism still had its votaries. This fact is witnessed also by various heathen writers. Zosimus wrote his "New History," down to the year 410, under the reign and at the court of the younger Theodosius (appearing in the high office of comes and advocatus fisci, as he styles himself), in bitter prejudice against the Christian emperors. In many places the Christians, in their work of demolishing the idols, were murdered by the infuriated pagans. Meantime, however, there was cruelty also on the Christian side. One of the last instances of it was the terrible tragedy of Hypatia. This lady, a teacher of

• From The Decameron (1353)

  The Jew mounted to horse and as quickliest he might betook himself to the court of Rome, he was honourably entertained of his brethren, and there abiding, without telling any the reason of his coming, he began diligently to enquire into the manners and fashions of the Pope and Cardinals and other prelates and of all the members of his court, and what with that which he himself noted, being a mighty quick-witted man, and that which he gathered from others, he found all, from the highest to the lowest, most shamefully given to the sin of lust, and that not only in the way of nature, but after the Sodomitical fashion, without any restraint of remorse or shamefastness, insomuch that the interest of courtezans and catamites was of no small avail there in obtaining any considerable thing. Moreover, he manifestly perceived them to be universally gluttons, wine-bibbers, drunkards and slaves to their bellies, brute-beast fashion, more than to aught else after lust. And looking farther, he saw them all covetous and greedy after money, insomuch that human, nay, Christian blood, no less than things sacred, whatsoever they might be, whether pertaining to the sacrifices of the altar or to the benefices of the church, they sold and bought indifferently for a price, making a greater traffic and having more brokers thereof than folk at Paris of silks and stuffs or what not else. Manifest simony they had christened 'procuration' and gluttony 'sustentation,' as if God apprehended not,--let be the meaning of words but,--the intention of depraved minds and would suffer Himself, after the fashion of men, to be duped by the names of things. All this, together with much else which must be left unsaid, was supremely displeasing to the Jew, who was a sober and modest man, and himseeming he had seen enough, he determined to return to Paris and did so.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  His tract on the prelates who were practising simony—De praesulibus simoniacis — is a commentary on the words, "But ye have made it a den of thieves," Matt. 21:13. A second tract on the downfall of the Church—De ruina ecclesiae — is one of the most noted writings of the age. Here are set forth the simony and private vices practised at Avignon where all things holy were prostituted for gold and luxury. Here is described the corruption of the clergy from the pope down to the lowest class of priests. The author found ideal conditions in the first century, when the minds of the clergy were wholly set on heavenly things. With possessions and power came avarice and ambition, pride and luxury. The popes themselves were guilty of pride in exalting their authority above that of the empire and by asserting for themselves the right of appointing all prelates, yea of filling all the benefices of Christendom. The evils arising from annates and expectances surpass the power of statement. The cardinals followed the popes in their greed and pride, single cardinals having as many as 500 livings. In order to perpetuate their "tyranny," pope and curia had entered into league with princes, which Clamanges pronounces an abominable fornication. Many of the bishops drew large incomes from their sees which they administered through others, never visiting them themselves. Canons and vicars followed the same course and divided their time between idleness and sensual pleasure. The mendicant monks corresponded to the Pharisees of the synagogue. Scarcely one cleric out of a thousand did what his profession demanded. They were steeped in ignorance and given to brawling, drinking, playing with dice and fornication. Priests bought the privilege of keeping concubines. As for the nuns, Clamanges said, he dared not speak of them. Nunneries were not the sanctuaries of God, but shameful brothels of Venus, resorts of unchaste and wanton youth for the sating of their passions, and for a girl to put on the veil was virtually to submit herself to prostitution.410 The Church was drunken with the lust of power, glory and pleasures. Judgment was sure to come, and men should bow humbly before God who alone could rectify the evils and put an end to the schism. Descriptions such as these must be used with discrimination, and it would be wrong to deduce from them that the entire clerical body was corrupt. The diseases, however, must have been deep-seated to call forth such a lament from a man of Clamanges’ position. The author did not call to open battle like the German Reformer at a later time, but suggested as a remedy prayers, processions and fasts. His watchword was that the Church must humble itself before it can be rebuilt.411 It was, however, a bold utterance and forms an important part of that body of literature which so powerfully moulded opinion at the time of the Reformatory councils.