The song made me burn, and the video well….
thanks to @aleks1aAug 072010
This bone carving from Stone Age Sweden could be an ancient dildo, scientists say. Then again, it might just be a carving tool. Credit: Peter Zetterlund, Swedish National Heritage BoardA phallic carving out of antler bone dating from the Stone Age, discovered recently in Sweden. Credit: Peter Zetterlund, Swedish National Heritage Board
A bone carving from 4,000 to 6,000 B.C. recently discovered appears phallic in shape. Credit: Gšran Gruber, Swedish National Heritage Board Sex toys have come a long way since the Stone Age – but then again, perhaps not as much as we might think.
Last week, an excavation in Sweden turned up an object that bears the unmistakable look of a penis carved out of antler bone. Though scientists can’t be sure exactly what this tool was used for, it’s hard not to leap to conclusions. [See "Sex Myths and Taboos"]
“Your mind and my mind wanders away to make this interpretation about what it looks like – for you and me, it signals this erected-penis-like shape,” said archaeologist Gšran Gruber of the National Heritage Board in Sweden, who worked on the excavation. “But if that’s the way the Stone Age people thought about it, I can’t say.”
The resemblance is uncanny.
“Without doubt anyone alive at the time of its making would have seen the penile similarities just as easily as we do today,” wrote Swedish archaeologist Martin Rundkvist on his blog, Aardvarchaeology.
The discovery is so recent, Gruber said, there hasn’t been enough time to submit the finding for publication in a scientific journal, though the researchers plan to.
Ancient phallic objects
The carved bone was unearthed at a Mesolithic site in Motala, Sweden, that is rich with ancient artifacts from between 4,000 to 6,000 B.C. The area’s unique features may have allowed bone artifacts, which usually get destroyed over the millennia, to survive.
“It’s an organic object, that’s why it’s special,” Gruber told LiveScience. “Normally when we excavate early Mesolithic sites we never get the organic material. But this site where we’re excavating now is along the shoreline. The preservation is very good here – it’s been lying in the bottom sediments and clay layers of the river, and it’s been well preserved there.”
The dildo-like object is about 4 inches (10.5 cm) long and 0.8 inches (2 cm) in diameter.
It’s not the first time that such a phallic object has been found from the ancient world. Another item strongly resembling a penis was unearthed in Germany in 2005. That one is even older – dating from 28,000 years ago – and made of stone.
Yet the recent discovery was enough to shock the scientists working at the dig, which is led by National Heritage Board archaeologist Fredrik Molin.
“Nobody here, and nobody that we heard of or talked with, had ever seen something like this in northern European or Scandinavian sites,” Gruber said.
Other uses
Perhaps instead of, or in addition to, its sexual purpose, the object may have been used as a tool, such as to chip flakes of flint, Gruber suggested. One end is shaped into more of a point, he said.
It’s not immediately clear whether the tool would have been one most likely to be used by men or women or both.
“If it’s a tool and it’s also shaped like a penis, it could be an item where you want to discuss gender questions,” Gruber said.
Sexual symbolism isn’t uncommon on ancient artifacts, though more often female symbols, such as those representing a fertile mother Earth, are seen.
“I think this perhaps points in another direction, so to say,” Gruber said.
via livescience.com
JACKSON, Miss. – A rural school district that canceled its prom rather than allow a lesbian student to attend with her girlfriend has agreed to pay $35,000 to settle a discrimination lawsuit the ACLU filed on her behalf.
The district also agreed to follow a non-discrimination policy as part of the settlement, though it argues such a policy was already in place.
Constance McMillen, 18, said the victory came at the price of her being shunned in her small hometown of Fulton.
“I knew it was a good cause, but sometimes it really got to me. I knew it would change things for others in the future and I kept going and I kept pushing,” McMillen said in an interview Tuesday.
[http://yhoo.it/djgOvN">Anti-gay laws are spreading HIV in Asia-Pacific, U.N. says]
The flap started in March when McMillen challenged the Itawamba County School District’s rules banning prom dates of the same gender and allowing only male students to wear tuxedos. The district responded by canceling its prom, prompting the ACLU to file suit claiming the teen’s rights had been violated and demanding the prom be reinstated.
U.S. District Judge Glen H. Davidson refused to make school officials hold the prom, but he said in a March 23 ruling that the district had violated McMillen’s rights.
The district later announced parents would sponsor another prom chaperoned by school officials. But ACLU lawyers claimed the event was a “sham prom” attended by only about 10 students, while most of McMillen’s classmates partied at a private event elsewhere, a claim the school denied. McMillen’s suit also says she’s been harassed for her stand against the school’s policy.
McMillen’s lawyers filed notice Monday in U.S. District Court to accept a judgment offer from the Itawamba County School District that will pay $35,000, plus attorney’s fees. As part of the agreement, the school district also said it would follow a policy not to discriminate based on sexual orientation in any educational or extracurricular activities or allow harassment based on sexual orientation and gender identity.
School officials contend that their agreement to follow the non-discrimination policy merely reaffirms inclusiveness rules the district already had, said school board attorney Michele Floyd. She said the district’s insurance company will pay McMillen.
District officials said in the settlement offer that they didn’t believe they violated McMillen’s rights.
The ACLU, however, contends that if the district really had such an inclusiveness policy all along, it wouldn’t have banned same-sex prom dates. It also said the district is the first in Mississippi to implement a policy banning discrimination and harassment on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity.
Ben Griffith, the attorney who represented the district in the suit, said school officials are focused on preparing for the upcoming fall semester and wanted to avoid protracted litigation.
“The defendants have consistently taken the position throughout this case that their actions and conduct at all times have been constitutional and lawful in every respect,” Griffith said.
Christine P. Sun, an ACLU lawyer, said the case has “inspired countless other people around the world to stand up for what’s right.”
McMillen has moved to Memphis, Tenn., where she plans to attend Southwest Community College in the spring, majoring in psychology. She said she’ll use the settlement money for her college education.
She eventually withdrew from Itawamba Agricultural High School and finished her senior year at a school in Jackson, Miss.
Eliza Byard, executive director of GLSEN: The Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network, said only 12 states and the District of Columbia require school district to have policies recognizing sexual orientation and gender identity.
McMillen’s case gained national attention and she was featured on talk shows and served as a grand marshal for New York’s Gay Pride Parade, among other events. She also visited the White House.
Sun said the ACLU had represented other students in similar cases around the country, but none had garnered as much attention as McMillen’s legal battle.
McMillen said she thinks the case resonated with so many people because “prom is a common theme and everyone knows how it feels to want to go to prom. With my story, even if people didn’t agree with being gay, they understood. They figured out how cruel some people can be.”
via news.yahoo.com
Creativity is like sex. You fumble your way through, you get lost in it, you fall in love. Both are passionate, rhythmic, pleasurable, and flowing. Both can bear fruit. And both can rack your soul with vulnerability, bliss, fear and awkwardness.
read more …writetodone.com
via curiouslt and @bitrebels
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Jun 232010
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