Sexuality

When I was young, for a few years we used to holiday at a hotel on Lake Lugano in northern Italy. And, every year, two English gentlemen—brothers—were there at the same time. One of them was called Derek. The name of the other escapes me, but we saw them so regularly they were referred to […]

#METOO has changed the landscape of society. It is no longer possible to ignore the widespread extent of male sexual dysfunction. For too long we—and by ‘we’ I mean men—have pretended that unhealthy sexual behaviour is the exclusive preserve of a few ‘bad eggs’ while most of us are squeaky clean goody-two-shoes. It’s comforting to […]

Figures released by the Statistics Bureau of Japan reveal that the country’s population is declining. The 2010 census returned a figure of 128 million inhabitants. Five years later it fell by a million. Declining population While this may not sound like much of a drop, it reflects a long-term decrease in the birth rate. As […]

If there is one area where humanity’s fundamental shame is glaringly obvious, it’s sexual dysfunction. Take a look at the following statistics: 35% of the world’s women have experienced violence or sexual violence 45% of Japanese women aged 16-24 have lost interest in sex 60% of UK girls aged 13-21 have been sexually harassed 80% […]

In the second half of the 19th century Paris saw the confluence of two major streams of change. The first was to the French capital itself. The cramped old arrondissements were demolished to make way for Baron Haussmann’s broad new boulevards. This spurred a boom in the middle classes that, among other things, flooded the streets of the City […]

“Makes Saturday is better with some #underboob”, runs a Facebook post from drunkenstepfatherdotcom. But for Thai actress and model @saramalakul, tagged in the said post, Saturday (or whatever day of the week it is when the Thai police arrest her) may not be better. For, in the latest Asian aversion to the depraved Western tendency […]

Valentine’s Day is upon us and as a result the price of a blood-red rose skyrockets. Misty-eyed lovers feverishly scribble anonymous cards to the various paramours they are desperately besotted with (or simply fancy shagging). Few pause to ponder the origins of a festival that looms large in the modern calendar. Valentinus The clue lies in […]

Agence France-Presse—who can be trusted on such matters—advise that two American sisters were arrested at the Angkor Wat temple complex after “they lowered their pants and took pictures of their buttocks”. Lindsey Adams, 22, and Leslie Adams, 20, follow in the still-warm footsteps of three Frenchmen who were recently deported for the same crime and […]

One of the most poignant memoirs of the World War II Holocaust, Anne Frank’s Diary, has recently become the battleground in an entirely different kind of war. Anne Frank’s Diary Gail Horalek, the mother of a young teen in Michigan, has labelled the book as “pornographic”. Her daughter experienced discomfort at reading passages where young Anne, […]

Once upon a time there was a far-away land called Sweden, where circa 1998 there were 2,500 prostitutes gainfully employed keeping the Big Bad Wolf in a post-coital stupor. To reduce sex trafficking, a law was passed criminalising the Big Bad Wolf for buying sex. Swedish prostitution laws A dozen years later the number of […]