Over at Inside Higher Ed, Scott McLemee celebrates everybody's favorite annoying holiday with a look at two scholars of sex: the late Gershon Legman who coined "Make love, not war" back in 1963; and Blaise Cronin, who currently studies the more respectable sort of pornography at Indiana. Personally, I half think the real purpose may have been to give him the chance to write the sentence about Legman:
Any scholar publishing a book called Oragentialism: Oral Techniques in Genital Excitation may be said to have contributed something to the sum total of human happiness.
but there is a larger point, about the complicated place of sexual imagery in society. It's got some silly aspects, but also some thought-provoking bits. Just the thing for a snowy Februrary, unless you happen to have access to a copy of Legman's magnum opus...
Department of Schadenfreude:
It's satisfying to catch Inside Higher Ed in a simple typo:
It's not "Oragentialism" (though that does make an equally good pun with Said's Orientalism - which I suspect was part of McLemee's delight in the title) - no, the correct spelling is actually Oragenitalism.