🍆✨The Nexialist #0095

the porn conversation | how tech is reshaping male masturbation | the origin of war | dreamer | strong | softness as a technology | straight men kissing | estás buenísimo | how qatar bought the world

Nov 17, 2022

welcome to another week of not-so-random bits and links, The Nexialist!

hello, everyone! i hope this e-mail finds you ~~horny~~ well. this week, before i realised what i wrote a year ago (TN#45) about eroticism, this week’s edition was already taking shape to talk about pornography, post-masculinity and other horny/sensitive things. i guess things are ciclical after all. i hope you enjoy it and share it with your friends.

also, i would like to take a moment to thank maria clara villas from the galáxia newsletter for the shoutout in her newsletter and welcome everyone who signed up to the nexialist. welcome! i’m truly honored. i’m a big fan of her work and what she had been doing at hysteria, and i wish the best of luck on season 3 of galáxia. it’s not gemini season, but it is.

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🍑the porn conversation

Erika Lust’s TEDxAthens talk jumped at my feed and i just had to play it. if you watch porn and/or have children, it’s a must-watch. i just loved to see how the audience started all giggly and then got so quiet paying attention to what she has to say.

she is so eloquent and transparent about pornography, and lays on the table what happens today as we keep hiding from the taboo: a handful of companies control porn aka Big Porn. and their interests are all about traffic, algorithms and money, not showing representative bodies, diverse sexual practices and female/queer pleasure. they basically dictate what the norm of sexual intimacy and take the role of (bad) sexual education for a lot of young (and not so young) people. quite an impressive statistic: porn’s traffic represents today more than twitter, tiktok, instagram, pinterest and zoom combined. i will just recommend you play this one, because it’s a big deal.

Porn today is Mass Media, up to one-third of all Internet traffic, occupying the discourse that modern Sex Education should be leading. Erika Lust will analyze the actual role of porn in society and explain why an honest Porn Conversation is inevitable.
Erika Lust is a mother, a feminist, and an award-winning erotic filmmaker. Her sex-positive adult cinema is a more inclusive and cinematic alternative to mass-produced mainstream porn.

🍆how tech is reshaping male masturbation

i think i’ve mentioned this text here before, but i thought i would highlight it here since we’re talking about porn.

“Technology-assisted opportunistic masturbation can cause stress or have a negative effect on the libido for real-life, partnered sex,” says Kerner. “Men aren’t using their imaginations or thinking about real people in their lives like their girlfriends or exes — they’re not tapping into their own erotic database. There’s something that gets lost when you’re masturbating to people like porn performers, who aren’t personally or intimately relevant to you.”

🍌the origin of war

Laura Árbol’s illustration is something that stayed with me since i saw it a few months ago. it contraposes the iconic and controversial Courbet’s L’origine du Monde (1866) with Orlan’s L’origine de La Guerre (2014), which i had not seen before. it is a meme if you ask me, because it’s been living rent free in my head. it’s a clear picture of the female and male archetypes. it’s interesting (and quite worrying) to see the comments and realize how men are defensive about this discussion.

💭dreamer

the blaze makes mesmerizing music and touching videos, and i have been noticing a red thread in their videos: sensitive masculinities, shown in an intimate and almost documental way. in virile (2016), two men are chilling in their appartment showing affection to one another, dancing and smoking. the video resonated with so many people, that the duo felt the need to keep directing their videos. territory (2017) starts with a man in tears and then an intimate and emotional moment of a young man coming back home to his family and friends. dreamer again brings this beautiful energy, sharing affection with their children and their loved ones. it is so necessary to have this kind of beautiful imagery of men being sensitive, to feed this references of masculinities. it just fills me up with hope.

Read: The Inside Story of the Blaze’s Amazing Music Videos | Anothe Man Mag

🦾strong

romy from the xx is outdoing herself in this song/video. how can someone make a song about mourning so danceable and deep? it’s so good! i felt some kind of self-forgiveness, to not be so hard on yourself. “you don’t have to be so strong.”

“‘Strong’ came from a moment in my life when I was processing past grief,” Madley-Croft said in a statement. “Whilst writing the lyrics I was thinking about my cousin Luis, we both have the shared experience of our mums passing away when we were young. I recognise in him the same trait I have which is to try and hold emotions down and put on a brave face. The song was a way to connect with these feelings, offer support and ultimately find a sense of release in the euphoria of music. Luis is with me on the single cover and in the music video too which was really special.”

Read: Romy – “Strong” | Stereogum

🫀softness as a technology

Arca @arca1000000

softness as a technology

this is another poweful sentence that has been in my mind since i saw it in arca’s twitter. a reminder that softness can also be powerful.

😽straight men kissing

the cut makes these fun social experiments that i love, and this time they recorded straight guys kissing for the first time in their ‘first takes’ series. more interesting than the kisses (which are pretty cute imo), is to hear candidly what goes through their minds: internalized homophobia, curiosity, insecurities. press play and get ready for smiles and giggles.

👄estás buenísimo

this woman… i just can’t. she is not only a stunningly beautiful woman, but she is such a rockstar. i just love seeing her move, and in this case, make a move on jon kortajarena.

“The fact that there aren’t many women singing songs to men, telling them they’re hot. But there are a lot of songs the other way around. It’s interesting to show that perspective, from a natural side, but also in a satirical and ironic way. It’s trying to normalize the fact that women can also flirt, say what we’re thinking about a person that we like. Without having to repress ourselves to fit in an established behavior just to fit in.”

Read: Nathy Peluso Wants Women to Be Horny Too on New Song “Estás Buenísimo”: Stream

⚽️how qatar bought the world cup

johnny harris has been on fire with his content. now, just in time for the world cup in qatar, he released an investigation on qatar’s move to buy the world cup (or the qatari member bribing the powerful men who vote to choose the hosting country). it’s all power, money aka buying soft power (very adequate for this nexialist). on top of this, there is the barefaced homophobia from the government and the organization, which honestly makes even less interested in this whole thing. cheers to the athletes speaking out and artists refusing to perform.

see you next week, you horny sensitive folks!

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