Pervert’s Library

by Valerie Solanas
Published in 1996 by AK Press

Valerie Solanas who is most famous for attempting to assassinate Andy Warhol originally wrote and self-published SCUM Manifesto in 1966 if the epilogue’s publishing history is to be believed (other sources I found cite the date as 1968). Though Solanas’ diatribe against men and society in general never explicitly mentions what the acronym SCUM stands for, it is popularly recalled as an acronym for Society for Cutting Up Men.

This book isn’t much of a sex book, so you might wonder why I listed it here. To Solanas, sex is an activity devoid of value to women. Her claims of asexuality and hope for a future completely devoid of sex are evidence of a sex obsession more pervasive than and destructive as sex addiction. There are also the last few passages which I’ll address later.

Seemingly produced during fits of mania interspersed with short bits of depressed transitions, it doesn’t take long to realize that SCUM Manifesto is clearly the product of a deranged mind. No wonder I enjoyed it.

Solanas’ use of then-current slang is particularly charming . Solanis often describes women, or at least the ones that share her viewpoint, as “groovy.” On the ohter hand men, in Solanas’ view, are creatures almost wholly incapable of doing anything of any worth. As she wrote, “The male has a negative Midas touch – everything he touches turns to shit.” She also is a strong critic of capitalism and the money system; claiming that so long as they are existent women will never be able to reach their full potential.

If there is anything kinky about this book it is the ending where the final few pages read like they were intended as a primer for Femdoms. She writes of men in the SCUM Men’s Auxiliary:

“…SCUM will conduct Turd Sessions, at which every male present will give a speech beginning with the sentence: “I am a turd, a lowly, abject turd,” then proceed to list all the ways in which he is. His reward for so doing will be the opportunity to fraternize after the session for a whole, solid hour with the SCUM who will be present…”

Coming in at just the right length for what it is, SCUM Manifesto is a fun and entertaining read.

by John Douglas and Stephen Singular
Published in 2003 by Scribner

Written by former FBI criminal profiler John Douglas and true crime author Stephen Singular, Anyone You Want Me to Be traces the life and criminal exploits of serial murderer John “Slavemaster” Robinson. If you’re unfamiliar with Robinson’s crimes you can read about him here.

Because Robinson’s victims were like many of the submissive women I know and love, this book was difficult for me to read as I kept imagining one of them meeting a horrible fate. Anyone contemplating turning an online BDSM romance into a real life meeting would be well advised to read this book. That isn’t because meaningful, fulfilling, and loving relationship with someone you meet online aren’t possible, but because you really don’t know who is on the other end of the machine.

One thing that I did find particularly satisfying is that while Robinson was able to con many women he met online, one wouldbe victim he met in person had the foresight to set up a safecall. Though the book doesn’t refer to her actions by that name, that is clearly what the woman did. To be fair, despite her safecall she didn’t survive her encounter with Robinson completely unscathed - Robinson stole her toy bag. If you ask me, even if they hadn’t found the barrels filled his victims, stealing someone’s toybag is a crime that demands capital punishment. Kidding aside, it was this act that finally gave the police probably cause to arrest Robinson and led to the discovery of his victims.

Whether it is because, or in spite, of the fact that this book will haunt your thoughts for days after you read it, I can’t recommend it highly enough.

by Anonymous
Published in 1970 by Eros Publishing Company

Having finally gotten my hairy palms on a copy of the second volume of Encyclopedia Sexualis, I can now say with confidence that it is indeed the companion to Volume 1 and covers the sexual terms beginning with the letters M-Z.

There isn’t much of any note that I didn’t mention in my review of volume 1 save for the fact that the illustrations in the volume 2 are a bit more straightforward, and less interesting.

by Anonymous
Published in 1970 by Eros Publishing Company

Strictly speaking, Encyclopedia Sexualis is more dictionary than encyclopedia. Covering letters A-L, Volume 1 contains a hodge-podge of sexual terms from medicine, psychiatry, antiquity, and various slang such as common, vulgar, military, and so on.

Because of this book’s age, some of the terms mentioned have fallen out of favor or changed meanings. This is the book is at its best: a time capsule from a bygone era. For instance, did you know that an African toothache was any sort of venereal disease? Or that a canoe inspector doesn’t work on the river but instead in a hospital?

While it would have been easy for the book to editorialize or be silly, the compilers resisted these temptations. Definitions are presented in a concise factual manner free of judgment. Unfortunately, many of the definitions are far too concise even for a dictionary. The inclusion of word origins and/or pronunciations for obscure medical terms would make this a better reference. Also mysteriously absient is a key to explain the meaning of abbreviations. (To be fair, I didn’t have to strain too hard to figure out that “Vulg sl” was vulgar slang, but still.) Curiously, despite omitting these, it includes a term’s part of speech .

Another minor annoyance is the book’s tendency to suggest related terms that (presumably) exist in the other volume. While it is tempting to think that the work was split into two pieces to increase sales, it seems more likely the work would have been too large and expensive to print as a single volume. My copy has a sticker with a price of $6. A reseller must have added that price years later as $6 in 1970 adjusted for inflation amounts to the prohibitive price of $31.18 in 2006 (the latest data available as of this writing.) See the Bureau of Labor Statistics website at http://www.bls.gov/cpi/ if you want to check for yourself.

While the book doesn’t shy away from including all sorts of slurs, it also covers terms that sexual subcultures use to describe each other. Equally impressive is the book’s scope as it includes terms that include homosexuals, the transgendered, the kinky, and so on.

With one or two minor exceptions, the editors obviously culled photos from a small group of photo sets and slapped labels to serve as the illustrations. At first, I thought the illustration for “animalism” and “bestiality” had been repeated, but a closer examination revealed the models hands were in slightly different positions. Humorously, the same group of three women is presented as the illustration for “Lesbians” with the dog cropped out of the picture. While the illustrations by and large do little to enhance the book several are quite entertaining in their own right.

Despite the few criticisms, this is a really useful reference book. I’m sure the next time I encounter algolagnia in print, this will be the first reference source I check.

By Kay Reynolds Blair
Published in 1971 by Timberline Books

I’m not sure if this is the least dirty book in the Library’s holdings, but I am sure though that it is the only one my mother would approve of. I know this not because mom was fond of ladies of questionable virtue. Instead, I know this because mom bought this book while we were on vacation when I was just a wee dirty little boy. While a wiseacre might suggest that I was doomed from the start, I will think of it as a belated (and unmentioned) Mother’s Day present. But I digress.

Containing short biographies of the women who lived in and around the mining boom towns of Colorado after the Civil War, Ladies of the Lamplight is an entertaining remembrance of those women whose stories are often forgotten by more “respectable” histories and historians. My only complaint was that this little booklet was far too short – I would have really enjoyed more and/or longer stories of the ladies discussed.

Even though Ladies of the Lamplight isn’t dedicated solely to telling the stories of prostitutes in the old west, most of the women described were involved in prostitution in some form or fashion for at least part of their lives. Feminists reading this work might blather incessantly, as is their wont, about how that was indicative of women’s lower social status in the patriarchy and further decry that the world is works in much the same way today. But that misses the point entirely. What makes the women in Ladies of the Lamplight noteworthy decades after their passing wasn’t their flaunting of gender conventions, it was their flaunting of social conventions altogether.

Even though Poker Alice wasn’t associated with prostitution or bawdy houses (at least so far as this book is concerned) I couldn’t help but reproduce her photo. If Alice makes you horny, you are a sicker man than I. And for that, I praise you.

by Charles Moser, Ph.D., M.D. and Janet W. Hardy
Published in 2002 by Greenery Press

While most of Sex Disasters and How to Survive Them deals directly with the physiological side of sexuality, it does highlight a few emotional and legal issues that could arise from sex.

Written in an easy to digest “topic and explanation” format, the tone is light and easy to follow. Unfortunately, the topics aren’t organized, so if one hoped to find to find information on a pressing issue they would be forced to hunt through the index. Worse still, many explanations lack the comprehension one wants in the midst of that sort of crisis.

To be fair some of the topics such as “My Girlfriend and I were making out and her Doberman snarled at me” don’t really demand a great deal of detail. Then again, how likely is someone to seek out this book for that sort of advice? Having been confronted with issues covered in this book after I read it, my answer is not at all.

I have high expectations of Greenery Press. Their books tend to be the very best on topics devoted to sexuality (alternative or otherwise). Maybe it’s just cynicism, but I suspect that if coauthor Janet Hardy weren’t the head of Greenery Press this book wouldn’t bear their logo. Sex Disasters and How to Survive Them certainly is certainly the weakest of their titles I’ve encountered so far. (Note: little did I know that Intimate Invasions would make this seem like a modern classic. Oh well.).

If you happen to have had the sort of puritanical parents who refused to let you attend the fun portion of high school health class, then this book might be beneficial to you. Otherwise save your money and buy your lover something nice.