No Speed Bumps

Political Incorrectness

I was traveling in Spain 2003, and the Afgan war overtook me in the sense that the protest movement in the Iberian Peninsular spilled out more than is usual into the public arena - there were the tens of thousands of placards, marches, ... in the streets - a bit like the 'demos' around the world in the 1960's and 1970's, that were one outcome of the counter culture.

The public protest of 2003 took many forms, one being street performance pieces, like this one in Seville:



My usual knee-jerk politically-correct reaction took an unexpected direction when I saw this photo in a local newspaper:


It purported to show an act of compassion but there was something more. And then my own private reaction.

I realized I was reading in a parallel sexual dimension - entirely imposed by myself as a gay guy. It seemed in part to be to do with the water overflowing from the captive's mouth and dribbling down and off his square jaw. I wanted to explore this, rather than self-censor in the approved manner. There were the obvious similarities between the newspaper pic and my second pic - faceless soldiers, armilites, armed ready and trained, army boots and so on.

But I also saw the parallels with a certain sexual practice that often doesn't dare speak it's name. Pissing can share some of the same dimensions: power and domination, the giving of fluid, and eagar receptivity. In the piss pic below, dominance is reinforced by the receiver being pinned down by the boot.


I guess there can be a vigorous debate about whether we should censor (unexpressed) fantasizes or be able to do what we like in the privacy of our own head-rooms.