This week’s sample from The Sire Project (will someone please buy this? it’s only $2.99!) is an extended one, depicting Angela’s hiking trip to the mountains with Kai-Kai, his older sister Elaine, and two female classmates of his. One naked male and four clothed females. Throughout the book Kai-Kai is the only one naked, and I made sure that men and women were equally represented in his world, but there is a preponderance of “CFNM” scenes. This is less common than “CMNF”, both in society and in art, but Angela is thinking back on an article in the The Sire Journal, “The Sire Does Not Lead a Sexual Life”, which points out that through most of history it was male nudity, and not female, which was more acceptable. Why is that? In nature the male is usually the flashier gender. That’s to attract females. Think of lions with their manes, or brightly colored male mallard ducks. This tendency was inherited by the human race. But it got reversed in recent centuries. Why?
1. The author of the Sire Journal article believed that, because early human societies were almost all patriarchal, women’s uteruses, and by extension their bodies, were important commodities and had to be protected and covered up.
2. With the growing power of women, their attire became more important. Fashion became commercialized. This was not necessarily to attract men. As has often been pointed out, women dress to impress other women.
3. Nudity -- contact with the elements -- is more sensual than being encased in clothes, and women are allowed to be more sensual. This one-sided emergence from Victorian prudishness is related to their greater options. True, they must cover their breasts. But aside from that, in every situation, they are allowed greater freedom in clothing than men. We see Rod bemoan this:
And it was freezing in this place. Maybe in Montreal they assumed everyone else had the same tolerance of cold as Canadians. He was thankful for once for being covered in long sleeves and pants, cinched up to the neck. Despite the things weighing on his mind he was bemused by all the women in backless and sleeveless gowns, the bare legs and sandals. Usually he resented dress codes. They were so unfair to guys, and pure hell in hot weather. But it was funny to see all these white arms and bare shoulders -- well, some were brown -- rubbed by their owners’ hands to keep warm. A few had been draped with tuxedo jackets by their chivalrous companions. (“Tami Beethoven”, Part 72.)
There was nothing stopping the women at that event from covering up, was there? Except perhaps the catty glances of other women. Sometimes freezing for fashion gets extreme. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TxNMC45u27A (“Why Girls Get Cold on Halloween”)
This is unfair to men, of course. Not only are they inhibited by culture, but in summer they have to sweat in full-length clothes while women show up in bare arms, bare legs with sandals, and light dresses, even though men’s bodies naturally radiate more heat. This is a frequent situation in offices. Or on stage, or on TV. A male broadcaster has to sweat in his shirt, tie and jacket while his female co-anchor gets to insists on a warm studio so that she can sit in skimpy attire looking like she’s going to a cocktail party. I blame Fox News, which started this trend in the 90’s. Previously women who wanted to “look professional” covered up almost as much as men, with jackets, buttoned up blouses, nylons.
4. We see photos of women in Islamic countries, covered from head to toe, sometimes even their faces. And they have no rights. As has often been pointed out, it’s in societies where women expose their bodies the most that women have the most power -- political, cultural and sexual. Yet in the CMNF universe of erotic fiction women are almost always submissive to clothed males. Blanke Schande stands in lonely opposition. But I think it is an extension of the general trend for women of less clothing = more power.
5. Blanke Schande strips women completely. While the guys have to stay covered up. There are a few differences. The guys don’t have to sweat all day in suits. (It is, after all, a college campus.) They’re mostly liberal minded and not that inhibited. And the girls don’t get to turn up the heat -- if it’s cold, they have to get used to it (and they do, and are proud of the strength that comes with that). But BSC women, once they have conquered shame (usually within the first month of their freshman semester), move freely, unconstricted by clothes, and get to be quintessentially sensual -- enjoying the air and sun on their skin, the water all around them when they swim, the grass under their bare feet. The men can look at their bodies but, as with anywhere else, they can’t touch except with permission.
Far from it being a male fantasy, it almost seems like a fantasy for the women sometimes. Maybe that’s going too far. But all in all the girls often seem like they’re having a better time than we are. I’ve noticed two things about the guys here. One, they are very modest about showing their bodies. Usually, I hear, at college the guys are thinking of any way to strip, like streaking, or walking around in just their shorts, trying to turn on the girls. Here, the roles reversed, the guys never walk around in underwear when girls are around, we even hate showing our feet. As for showing our dicks, forget it. We’re all insecure about our size, of course for the girls everything they have is on full view 24/7, so they’re in a different place. The other thing I noticed is that, even though the mandatory exercise classes apply only to the girls, the guys are always working out, and watching what they eat. Maybe they’re afraid of being inadequate. (from “Life of Corey”, on the Blanke Schande page)
Back in 2002, when we were working out the initial concept of BSC, and I was writing the first BSC stories, we agreed that BSC would not be a sex-slave college. (What parent would want to send her daughter to such a place?) Also it would not be just one big orgy. A couple of ideas floating around seemed to skirt that premise. 1) “Presenting”: any girl must, on request, present any part of her body to any guy (though at first the privilege depended on the guy’s GPA). Of course typically this meant vagina or anus. 2) Girls were sometimes assigned as “indentured servants” to male frat houses, cleaning and cooking. I didn’t take up the second idea; though as always the guys couldn’t touch, it connoted a degree of inequality. But “presenting”, though it seems to place the girls at the command of guys, actually has the opposite effect. The girls are flaunting their most intimate areas, without shame, and probably driving the guys crazy with frustrated lust. At least it might seem so. In my BSC stories there is no vicious teasing. Being asked to “present” is treated as a compliment, a guy’s way of telling the girl that she’s pretty, and she spreads her legs with an easygoing smile and he admires the view.
As Corey pointed out above, with every girl constantly and publicly naked, body issues would melt away. It’s all out there, nothing hidden or mysterious, no waiting around for exposure. Everyone knows what everyone else looks like. Attention turns to other matters, like personality. With this in mind, it does seem plausible that the nudity policy was (as the BSC stories state) put in place in 1970 or so. It was an era of experimentation. I refer you to a 1966 novel, The Harrad Experiment, by Robert H. Rimmer, later made into a movie. In a new college incoming freshmen were roomed boy-girl, and if sex happened, it happened. The book was dismissed as sexploitation but it is quite serious-minded. The students, from a variety of backgrounds, study the history of sex attitudes and learn about birth control and sexual techniques. Nudity is required in physical education classes but otherwise they’re normally clothed. They end up acting a lot more mature than the students they meet at other colleges who come off as juvenile in comparison. This is an “experiment” which sounded like it might have actually been tried. As one reviewer put it, “One gets the idea that somewhere in the woods around Vassar is a bootleg college called Harrad.”
7. So let’s get back to male nudity. It is less accepted now than female. Unfortunately this is mostly due to men themselves. They censor themselves. Look, for example, at the recent online videos called “Hysterical Literature”. We see a woman above the table reading from a novel, but below she is being stimulated to orgasm, and the viewer’s erotic entertainment is from seeing how long she holds out before she succumbs (usually about ten minutes). Is there a male equivalent? No. There is a male version but it’s a parody, played for laughs. Men are afraid to let their guard down. There was even a porn star, Lexington Steele, who was mocked because he dared to shout when ejaculating. (As for Kai-Kai, he shouts during drainings, but at “impregs”, which he does with respectful care, he announces the arrival of his ejaculation with a “polite low moan”.)
As for resistance to male nudity, the problem I think is penis size insecurity. Men are afraid that unless their penises are porn-star-size they will get laughed at. In fact porn has ruined our ideas of proportion. The average erect penis is a little more than 5 inches. Minus trick camera angles (Steele, one of the biggest, was probably only about 8 inches), such a penis looks pretty small to us. But five inches is normal!
Penis size insecurity is mentioned here and there in The Sire Project:
Again she thought of the contrast with Michael’s penis, the white head of it hardly bigger than an acorn. This brownish purplish glans of Kai-Kai’s was the size of a plum. She then thought of the contrast with their personalities, where it was Michael who was outsized and Kai-Kai who took up so little space. Much as she loved him, Michael could be pushy and loud sometimes. He liked to show off. Kai-Kai was quiet and shy and modest.
(“Weekly Sire Inspection”, ch. 2)
Michael’s behavior fits the stereotype of a man compensating for a small penis. (He probably drives a “muscle car”.) If we all had our heads on straight -- like Harrad graduates -- there would be a true male counterpart to “Hysterical Literature”, men with (genuinely) small penises would not mind being seen naked, would not feel the need to be aggressive and cause all kinds of mischief, and Angela’s fiancé would be easier to love.
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