Saturday 21 October 2000

Pic of the day: What's on the screen today? Curvaceous furries!

Perverse sexual lust

OK, sorry to disappoint y'all, but this isn't going to be the complete collection of my own perverse sexual lust, much as that would interest a few of my readers. Perhaps another day, if any! Still, I hope any fundamentalists and American children have skipped this entry. Because here follows a rather light-hearted commentary on comic strips and us losers that love them - for dubious values of "love"...

***

Perverse sexual lust (or PSL for short) has become a catchword on several Keenspot message boards. (Keenspot is a collection of free online comic strips. Strip as in something long, thin, and flat, not like stripping. Or not necessarily.) The first place I noticed it was in the message board for the comic It's Walky, which incidentally is pretty good now and then, despite the clumsy drawing. People talked about "perverse sexual lust for Joyce", Joyce being the overly innocent college girl who chose to wipe her mind rather than remember porn flicks. So I can see how it would be considered perverse to lust for her. But such is the male nature, at least the nature of some males, that it particularly lusts for innocence.

Over the autumn (or "fall" might be a better word here), the expression has spread, as readers of more and more comics have admitted their perverse sexual lust for (usually female) comic characters. Others have argued that their sexual lust is not perverse but quite natural. One can understand this in the case of Chelsea, the young witch from Clan of the Cats. Due to her somewhat random shape change into a panther, and the subsequent transformation back to human form far from her clothes, there is often an implication of nudity. Though you will notice that there is not all that much actually onscreen. Of course it also helps that Jamie is an unusually good visual artist.

More perverse would be the attention on certain girls in Avalon. Come on, they are in high school! They may be consenting adults in some remote states and Scandinavia, but really ... And the implication that one of the girls may be a lesbian has helped made the Avalon message board one of the most active of the Keenboards, and fuelled some rather graphic fan art.

Speaking of fan art, if you want to see the original picture that's on my screen above, it's here, in the fan art gallery for The Class Menagerie, a comic I know I've recommended before. It is a very decent series, by the way. But look at that color picture and tell me that I should not want a piece of (fluffy) tail! Ahem. I've long had a soft spot for ponytails, but that fox is pretty foxy ...

***

This is where I veer off into wild speculation. Imagine a world where furries are real, and mingle with humans. (Furries, the topic of my Oct 15 journal, being humanoids with animal traits, typically fur, tail, and large ears and snouts.) Classic furries have around human intelligence, though they may have slightly different inclinations as per their instincts: Carnivores preferring fresh meat, herbivores being instinctively vegetarian etc. Now, all other things being equal, would it be more perverse to lust for a furrie than for a fellow human?

Rather than pass my own sentence on that, I want to point out a couple of related dilemmas. Aliens, for one. If an alien species have a level of sentience roughly similar to ours, and are physically compatible, is it OK to mate with them? (In the unlikely case that a fellow religious person is still reading, let's assume a proper wedding, by our rituals or theirs.) Anyway, would all sexual lust for an alien automatically be perverse, regardless? They are after all not our species. Even Superman, who was raised as a human, is genetically an alien. Not that this seems to stop Lois Lane.

In virtually all of Piers Anthony's books, there are either aliens or sentient fantasy creatures (unicorns, mermaids etc) and they are all quite attractive. Given their non-human origin, what about perverse sexual lusts for them?

I may be way off the wrong base on this one, but I have long considered Anthony's policy of miscegenation a hint about the situation in the country where he lives: In the past, different "races", that is different colors of human, were not supposed to interbreed. Racial purity (especially for the white races) was supposed to take priority over love. The attitude has changed, I think. Today, more and more people all over the world have concluded that it is the mind that counts, not the skin.

And in a country such as my native Norway, where homosexual couples are allowed to file joint tax returns, I think the secular authorities would have nothing against carnal relations with adult, consenting furries. (Actually, bestiality is not completely forbidden by today's law ... but it may be hard to prove that it was OK with the animal. Of course, if ... no, let's not go there...)

***

Of course, for us religious people, furries and aliens and mermaids are probably off limits, just like homosexuality and premarital hanky-panky. Not necessarily because it is Just Plain Wrong in any rational sense, but because religions sometimes demand people to do things for their faith, just like Jews can't eat shrimp and Hindus can't eat cows.

Then again, my religion also had a few things to say about the way I looked at Dazzler (of Marvel Comics fame), who was a human. (Well, a mutant actually, but they are known to belong to the same species.) And particularly the story where she was tied up, blindfolded, and carried off by the Spiderman ... Not that it matters now, I've burned that issue long ago. Or did I tear it into small pieces and flush it down the toilet? It's hard to remember, it's been a while. It's not always so easy for a young man to deal with ... Perverse Sexual Lust.