France 2010 - Day 1, Part 1 - Flight, Paris: The Banks of the Seine

"The secret of life is to appreciate the pleasure of being terribly, terribly deceived." - Oscar Wilde

***

For my France and China travelogues, I will be following a posting order similar to my Baltics and Japan travelogues in 2008 - mixing posts from each. These travelogues will probably take even longer to post than the latter 2, due to this little thing called a job, but as they say, good things come to those who wait (and that better late than never).

France 2010
Day 1 - 3rd October - Flight, Paris: The Banks of the Seine (Part 1)

I got to fly on the A380 to Paris. This was my first time on this plane. It was somewhat more spacious than other planes.

Travelling on SIA was great, as in one day I found two people whose French was worse than mine. The first had been the American lady in "Paris, je t'aime", and the second was the girl doing the SIA announcements in French.

The localisation for the SIA safety video was weird - they labelled items onscreen only in French (e.g. classe affaires, étage supérieur) and not in English.

I was seated opposite one of the areas for the crew to sit during takeoff and landing. One stewardess sat herself there. She was quite friendly, so this was the first time I'd talked to an active SIA stewardess about outside of her job scope. She was quite nice, but predictably not brilliant.

I was sleeping and reading my guidebook on the flight there, so I only sampled the inflight entertainment system 2 hours before landing. They had the cheek to feature, as a Lifestyle program, "Singapore Airline's new full flat bed in business" (sic). I was also annoyed by SSO CDs in the audio section. However, I was very impressed that the monitors had a widescreen aspect ratio, and that the movies were correspondingly in the correct format, rather than being truncated (I confirmed this by verifying that Family Guy episodes had black bars at the side).


I only figured out why there were 2 taps in the airport toilets on my last day - one is for soap.

The last time I had been in the City of Lights I wasn't able to speak French and I had lost all my photos. This time, I could've acted like it was my first visit, but I decided to do other things - perhaps I will revisit the classic must-see sights when more than 4 years have passed since my first visit; as an American I met in Tokyo and was staying there for a month commented, you don't need to *do* anything - "what if you just like being in a place?". There was one thing I *really* wanted to redo though: to visit Sainte Chapelle and revel in the splendour of High French Gothic.

I was intending to take the RER into town, but there was a disruption on RER B (which links the airport to Paris). I thought there was a strike, but I was told that there were works on the line. Rather annoyingly, the same helpdesk which told me this passed me a map which I only found out later was in German.

Since the RER was down, I took a coach into town (which irritatingly cost €15, versus €8,7 for the RER), and the TV was playing a bad ad against Child Sex featuring East Asian girls. They were comely enough, but were clearly in their 20s, which made them bad choices for this particular ad; maybe white people can't tell what age East Asians are, or it was a way to put them off East Asian women in general.

I had known that I would arrive a day too late for La Nuit Blanche (White Night), an all-night city-wide cultural event. However, I also missed Aida (with 500 performers) on the same night. Ah well.

The bus dropped me off at the Arc de Triomphe. Due to the light and my baggage, I decided not to take a picture and to come back another time. Since I did not, here is a picture I dug up online:




"le Jeudi 14 octobre 2010. Fêtez votre ENTREPRISE. 'J'aime ma boite'. Dites-le !"
("Thursday 14th October 2010. Celebrate your COMPANY. 'I love my company'. Say it!")
It sure beats striking!


"ENGLISH SCHOOL
Vous parlerez anglais facilement sans effort comme si c'était votre langue maternelle!"
("You will speak English easily without effort as if it were your mother tongue!")

My room wasn't ready, so I went out on a walk that ended up lasting a lot longer than I'd intended. I started off by strolling along the banks of the Seine, whose gift Paris is. I didn't have a particular destination, but it'd been more than 2 years since I'd experienced civilised weather, so even a simple walk would be pleasant. The annoying thing about arrival day is you don't really feel like walking around, but unlike Jakarta Paris is actually interesting.


Eiffel Tower from near my hotel.


One of the Statues of Liberty in Paris, and the Radio France building.


Quai de Grenelle.


2 PRCs were fixing an awning for the Japanese restaurant behind this van. The van itself had no French words on it. I was amused that they were servicing a Japanese restaurant; this is an embodiment of the philosophy of "Me against my brother; me and my brother against our father; my family against my cousins and the clan; the clan against the tribe; the tribe against the world, and all of us against the infidel". Then again, it was almost certainly run by PRCs.


One guiding principle for identifying a bad hotel to stay is one that has a lot of flags. This principle holds even more true for restaurants. The fact that this one was near the Eiffel Tower was an even bigger warning sign (notice the African selling Eiffel Tower crap?)


"Maison de la culture du Japon à Paris" (Japanese cultural centre in Paris)
The anti-English alliance.



Eiffel Tower


Apartments on banks of the Seine


Pont d'Iéna


Horribly big ravens, and the probable reason for their size, number and profusion (read: tourists eating substandard and overpriced food). I was considering scaring the ravens off, to see if they were still able to fly, but I didn't want them to descend on me and peck my eyes out, so.

Next I ran into a memorial to the Algerian War.


"La Nation associe les personnes disparues et les populations civiles victimes de massacres ou d'exactions commis durant la guerre d'Algérie et après le 19 mars 1962 en violation des accords d'Evian, ainsi que les victimes civiles des combats du Maroc et de Tunisie à l'hommage rendu aux combattants morts pour la France en Afrique du Nord"
("The nation couples the people who disappeared, as well as the civilian victims of massacres and abuses commissioned during the war in Algeria... as well as civilian victims of the fighting in Morocco and Tunisia, in honouring those who died fighting for France in North Africa")
This seems quite insulting to Algeria, as it seems some of the civilians are being honoured together with soldiers who killed them.




"Esplanade David Ben Gourion. 1886-1973. Fondateur de l'État d'Israël‎ (1948). Premier Ministre"
One of the nice things about Paris is that street signs are a history lesson. Paris also seems to be the city most dedicated to honouring people from other countries, let alone other cities, that I've seen. On a more depressing note, we now know why jihadists were targetting Paris.


Homeless people? Artists? Illegal immigrants? I saw no signs of human activity.


"S.V.P. Une petite piece S.V.P. du un ticket restau merci"
("Please. A small piece [of money] for a meal voucher" [?])
This was cute so I put €1 on the plate, despite it only having small denominations. Once I was at a suitable distance, a man standing nearby (presumably the one who'd set the thing up) came and took the coin, so maybe other people had been as (or more) generous than me.


Quai d'Orsay


Invalides


Pont des Invalides


Rue Robert-Esnault-Pelterie


"Ici le 25 Aout 1944: au cours d'une lutte heroique pour la liberation du ministere des affaires etrangeres tenu par l'ennemi le char 'Quimper' a ete frappe et plusieurs soldats francais ont trouve une mort glorieuse"
("Here on 25th August 1944, in the course of the heroique battle to liberate the Ministry of Foreign Affairs taken by the enemy, the tank 'Quimper' was hit and many French soldiers found a glorious death")
You'd think that France was liberated without foreign help!



Ministry of Foreign Affairs


National Assembly



Place de la Concorde


Musée d'Orsay

I saw a group of people on "City Segway Tours". They looked very happy. Probably because they didn't expect to fall off a cliff.


Start of the long line of Louvre buildings


Louvre


Door


Entrance to Pyramid courtyard


Louvre Pyramid courtyard


Louvre Panorama


Merde ! (Shit!)


Another Louvre building


More Louvre


France is filled with entrepreneurs like this, selling roasted chestnuts (or corn) from supermarket trolleys. This is a testament to the vitality that immigration brings to the economy.



Île-de-France
This is my first successful HDR image!

I saw a guy chewing on an endive, and it looked raw. Ugh.


Bridge leading to Institut de France (Pont des Arts), a grouping of académies. This is the home of L'Académie française.


"On te kiffe trop grave, Paris... bisou bisou" ("We love you too much, Paris... Kisses")
Locks on bridge. I'm assuming they all have something to do with love, following in the fine tradition of locks on bridges everywhere


Boat and Île-de-France


Institut de France


Institut de France door


Institut de France plaques: Mazarin Library, founded in 1643 by Cardinal Mazarin, the oldest Public Library in France
Académie française, Académie des inscriptions et belles-lettres (Academy of Humanities), Académie des sciences, Académie des beaux-arts (Academy of Fine Arts), Académie des sciences morales et politiques

I then had a look at what the famous vendors along the banks of the Seine were hawking. However, the books were all wrapped up which was very annoying - how is one to buy a book without knowing its contents (the one book I bought was unwrapped - which was why I bought it)?! They need Borders to wake up their idea.


"19th Market of Poetry"
"Je suis le chat de cimetière de terrain vague et de gouttière" ("I am the cat of the cemetery, urban wasteland and the gutter")


More cat poetry. You can see my lousy camera stabiliser here - the exposure was 1/60 and it's still like this; bad photos look better when you zoom out.


Various philosophical books. They also had Margaret Mead, hurr hurr.


Browsing the wares


Gaudy building


Vintage nudes on postcards


These are supposedly 17th century musical scores. I had my doubts.


Place Saint-Michel, with Fontaine Saint-Michel.

Here is a better frontal photo of the fountain:




Notre Dame


Poster for Castrati aria concert by Nguyen Duy-Thông. I went for this later in the day. Incidentally it seems some Vietnamese names are unisex, as I found this person on Twitter with the same name:


Nguyễn Duy Thông


Small streets around Boulevard & Place St Michel. In retrospect they aren't that nice.


"Le photographe a demandé une fortune.
Le mannequin est sous anti-dépresseurs.
Le styliste fait semblant d'être gay.
Tout ça pour des boots à 49,90 €."
("The photographer asked for a fortune
The model is on anti-depressants
The stylists pretended to be gay
All for some boots costing €49.90")

"eram: il faudrait être fou pour dépenser" ("eram: you would be mad to spend more")


"L'assistant a couché avec le photographe, le mannequin avec le directeur de casting, le creatif avec la cliente.
Tout ça pour des escarpins à 39,90 €."
("The male assistant slept with the photographer, the model with the casting director and the creative guy with the female client.
All for some pumps costing €39.90")


As you can see, there is a vibrant concert industry in Paris. You must, however, stay away from any concert with the word "Classik".

In what seemed like a scam, a seemingly deaf woman came up to me with a pledge sheet, and asked me to donate. She kissed my hand and rubbed it on my sleeve. She looked very dodgy (I'm assuming bona fide charities have certification - even in China they do!) so I ran away.


This ad is asking for female retail assistants. After taking this picture I quickly scooted before someone came out and I was forced to engage in a discussion on sexism, sexual discrimination in hiring and structural violence.


Rue de la Harpe


Practising a language is one thing, but for important things like immigration and hotel reservations, English is best.

Links - 13th November 2010

"Hello seeker! Now don't feel alone here in the New Age, because there's a seeker born every minute." - Firesign Theatre

***

How come some girls write what in their facebook also will have plenty of guys "LIKE" the status? - "my facebook got one girl just say "I just had maggi mee for lunch!" and 12 guys liked that status
so they is like the fact that she is eating maggi mee for lunch or what?"
A: maybe the maggie mee is branded one?
B: I think if I post a picture of da bian,they will also comment:"Wow your da bian look so yummy."
C: if the gal not chio...U see how many "likes" there will be?
D: It's like when there's a thread created by a female EDMWer in EDMW, lots of replies come flooding in.
E: TS i think u r jealous because you do not have maggie mee to eat
F: i oso show 1 ger post something like her menses is killing her, then got 3146598973123 ppl "like" it
G: go irc. type 16/f/desperate.

Stove's discovery of the worst argument in the world - "Our conceptual schemes are our conceptual schemes, so, we cannot get out of them (to know things as they are in themselves). In Alan Olding's telling caricature, `We have eyes, therefore we cannot see’... There are obvious difficulties with presenting the arguments in the original works of Derrida, or Lacan, or Baudrillard. They do not write in any natural language, they do not put the premises before the conclusion, the conclusion is distributed over the text rather than appearing in any one sentence, positions are assumed to have been established outside the texts one is actually reading, in previous texts, or perhaps future ones, and so on... If we see things only from our perspective, through the filter of our cultural experience, and so on, is there not some problem about how to get out (and see the world as it really is)?’ That may be so. But what made the `Worst argument’ worst was not that it raised a question about how to get out, but that it claimed immediately that there was no way to get out"

Twitter Mood Predicts The Stock Market

American academic in Singapore casts doubt on Yale tie-up - "2. In Singapore, the humanities and social sciences simply cannot achieve the kind of social recognition and financial reward associated with the science and business spheres. This may be happening everywhere, but it’s particularly acute in Singapore.
3. An uncongenial environment for the personal downtime and reflection that go along with a liberal arts education: try to find somewhere peaceful and quiet to ruminate on the big questions in life in Singapore, away from campus. Good luck. Over the decade-and-a-half that I’ve lived here, I’ve seen the opportunities to go for long, thoughtful walks diminish as space becomes increasingly chopped up and commercialized, and it’s even hard to find a relatively quiet place just to read or discuss off-campus where you don’t have to pay through the nose.
4. An unnecessary reduplication of effort: NUS is already doing as good of a job as Yale probably ever could in the social sciences and humanities sphere for this particular setting"

My First Dictionary - "Today's word is pact.
Lucy and Tom have made a pact. They have made an agreement. It is called an online suicide pact"

Things Japanese girls do that make guys go, 'Huh?' - "3. They go to the bathroom in groups.
9. They’re obsessed with fortune-telling.
10. They have a separate stomach just for dessert."
I think it's an East Asian thing

Why Teachers Should 'Friend' Students Online - "Have you ever considered that children are friending teachers they trust, because they are looking for an adult to watch out for them while they are online?"

Teacher banned for life for being 'useless'

Foreigners victims, perpetrators of sekuhara - ""The attitude was always the same — I was a pretty, young, blond, blue-eyed white woman, so of course this would happen to me, what did I expect?" she says. "If you fit a certain profile, then your life will be a lot more difficult in Japan"... In addition to Japanese males harassing foreign women, there is also the reverse: foreign men harassing Japanese"

YouTube - RetroHeroes's Channel
Full cartoon episodes

Malawi students’ Bible desecration could signal new Muslim militancy, priest worries - "Representatives of the Gideons Bible organization had offered a Catholic primary school in a predominant Muslim area free copies of the New Testament... Although the school had made it clear that no Bibles were to be given to the Muslim pupils and that no one was obliged to take a copy, some Muslim youths created an uproar. They tore up the Bibles, threw them at their teachers and then threw torn pages on the streets. Some of the students denounced the Bible distribution to their religious leaders as an “insult to Islam” and claimed that they had been forced to accept a Bible. In the days after the incident, Catholics feared violent attacks from Muslim groups"

the myth of mass panic - "Kathleen Tierney and her co-workers at the University of Colorado at Boulder investigated accusations of panicking, criminality, brutality and mayhem in the aftermath of Hurricane Ka- trina. They concluded that these tales were 'disaster myths.' What was branded as 'looting' was actually collective survival behavior: people took food for their families and neighbors when store payment systems were not working and rescue services were nowhere in sight. In fact, the population showed a surprising ability to self-organize in the absence of authorities... if there is such a thing as panic, it probably better describes the fear and helplessness of lone individuals than the responses of a crowd in the midst of an emergency"

Is this evidence that we can see the future? - "Parapsychologists have made outlandish claims about precognition – knowledge of unpredictable future events – for years. But the fringe phenomenon is about to get a mainstream airing: a paper providing evidence for its existence has been accepted for publication by the leading social psychology journal. What's more, sceptical psychologists who have pored over a preprint of the paper say they can't find any significant flaws... In one experiment, students were shown a list of words and then asked to recall words from it, after which they were told to type words that were randomly selected from the same list. Spookily, the students were better at recalling words that they would later type"

Vasectomy? Why so many wives tell their husbands to have the snip - "Gina now admits she wants Paul to have a vasectomy not just as a contraceptive, but to reassure her he’s not thinking about a future without her... It’s almost always the woman who suggests a vasectomy... Women are used to being in control of contraception and it’s often difficult to let go of that, even when it’s their husband’s fertility, not their own, in question... if a woman wouldn’t consider being sterilised, how can she expect her husband to do so?... ‘There are bitter cases where a man has a vasectomy to please his wife and then she leaves him a month later. It’s deliberate — she’s done it to spite him’"

bitplay INC.
A light you can shoot off, a light that has a timer and an alarm clock you must construct.

Mystery of how cats lap is revealed - "Cats use their tongues to delicately draw up water without breaking the surface of the liquid... The team thinks cats may have adopted this more complex but neater approach because it means they are less likely to be splashed with water as they drink."

Web Designers vs. Web Developers (Infographic)

Buddhist Warfare and The Six Perfections, reviewed by Katherine Wharton - TLS - "Have you heard about Vakkali, the Buddhist sage who attained Nirvana while slicing his own throat? Of all the major faith traditions, Buddhism is often seen as the most peaceful, but Buddhist Warfare exposes its darker side. The eight essays in the collection describe twisted teachings on phenomena such as “Soldier-Zen”, and atrocities carried out by groups such as the Buddhist cult army of Faqing... Takuan’s militarism could be seen as an aberration, a late distortion of Buddhist teaching, but Demiéville presents similar examples from across the tradition. Most uncanny are the texts that directly reanimate the Buddha, often in slightly uncharacteristic and shocking situations... Stephen Jenkins describes an early Mahayana text that justifies “compassionate torture” as burning of the remnants of the victim’s past sins. Derek Maher describes the fifth Dalai Lama attributing the status of a Buddhisattva to his Moghul patron Gushri Khan, a war Lord who “realised emptiness”"

Maruah gazetted as a political association - "Maruah, the Singapore arm of the region-wide Working Group for an Asean Human Rights Mechanism, is barred from receiving funds from foreign donors, letting foreigners take part in its events, operating as a political party and being affiliated to any local or foreign political party... The Political Donations Act, which came into effect on Feb 15, 2001, is in line with the Government's stance that politics in Singapore should be for Singaporeans only. Maruah is the fourth group -after the Open Singapore Centre, the Think Centre and Singaporeans For Democracy - to be gazetted as a political association"
Comments: "Most singaporeans already won't go near anything resembling 'politics' with a mile-long pole. This will make them stop thinking of even fellow human beings. Good, we can focus on capitalism and making money. For ourselves."
"Politics is for Singaporeans only, or for PAP only?"
"Does this mean that other advocacy groups like TWC2, AWARE and Nature Society will become political associations? They receive funding from the embassies too."

Supermarket cashier's large breasts overcharges shopper - "A supermarket shopper was surprised to find she had been overcharged for her fruit and veg – because the cashier’s large breasts were resting on the scales... ‘I’ve had 40 years in retail and I’ve never come across anything like this before – and I probably won’t again. The only thing I can compare to this is that we once had a problem with rhubarb being underweighed.’"

copyranter: The most inventive tear-off phone number street ad ever was for penis circumcision.

Renault peut-il baptiser sa voiture Zoé? - "'Selon que nous aurons de la chance ou pas, nous serons un joli pot de fleurs, ou au contraire un martinet, un godemichet ou un balai à toilettes'... Quand on s'appelle Zoé, a poursuivi Me Koubbi, "on n'a pas envie d'entendre: 'On va te faire la vidange', 'Je vais tâter tes airbags' ou 'ça roule Zoé?'". Selon lui, les prénoms utilisés pour dénommer une voiture comme Logan, Mégane ou encore Clio ont d'ailleurs subi une érosion spectaculaire au moment de la sortie des véhicules éponymes. C'est bien simple, "à partir du moment où le véhicule sort, le prénom disparaît!"... Les blagues que l'on pourrait faire sur le prénom Zoé, "ce sont des jeux de mots qui se font dans les cours d'écoles et n'impressionnent personne. C'est d'une stupidité affligeante!"... Enfin, a-t-il observé, il y a 122 marques Zoé à l'international. "Pourquoi donc Renault se verrait la victime de cet opprobre alors qu'il y a des utilisations de Zoé pour tout, y compris pour de la lingerie coquine?!""

An ad campaign that has obviously failed

"Birthing boys or birthing girls is equally good. Girls are also descendants"

(a picture from Guangzhou, via Charis)

Trapped!

Am trapped behind the Great Firewall until the 10th!

Good uses for your E-Mart Credit

"We are confronted with insurmountable opportunities." - Walt Kelly

***

The SAF's Misuse of Credits policy is very interesting:

"The aim of credit allocation is to allow NSmen to replace their personal equipment during their active service so that they are adequately equipped for NS training. Those NSmen who misuse their allocated credits will be disciplinarily dealt with. HQ Supply Command will investigate and take action against those NSmen who are found to be guilty of the following:

a. Using their allocated credits in exchange for financial benefits.
b. Unauthorised use of another person's identification card to carry out purchases.
c. Purchasing items of opposite genders for their spouse or relatives or friends.
d. Excessive purchase of particular items without valid reasons."

As everyone knows, in Slavery rhetoric is worthless, and without the magic phrases "severely dealt with" or "disciplinarily dealt with", you can usually do anything you want. So we just need to focus on the iterated offences which will get you investigated and disciplined.

The most obvious implication is that if you use your own identification card and do not seek financial benefits, you can make non-excessive purchases of items for members of your own gender.

However, another is that you can buy items of the opposite gender (a non-excessive amount, of course!) for your own use (presumably if you are a drag queen, or transvestite, or transsexual). I might want to try the last one myself one day, to see if HQ Supply & Transport calls me up. Who knows, I might even get downgraded (some more), as an added bonus!

On boys lagging behind girls in UK schools

"If you want to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe." - Carl Sagan

***

The smarter sex: Does it matter if girls do better than boys?

"Boys will perform just as you expect them to, it seems. If you tell them they aren't as intelligent as girls and are less likely to do well in tests, that is exactly what will happen. So says the latest salvo in the battle of the sexes that has preoccupied educationalists for decades...

Almost certainly not. After all, not all boys have been told they don't perform well in tests, yet almost universally they come in a poor second to girls...

It is nowadays the education of boys – particularly white, working-class boys – that most worries educationalists... boys were spending more time on the "three Fs" than the three Rs. The three Fs were characterised as "fighting, football and f***king"...

Facing the loss of traditional male employment... the macho lads responded to their academic failure and lack of employment prospects by celebrating the three Fs...

More action books rather than works by writers such as Jane Austen... should be used in schools, it was argued... Male role models – such as the footballers Ian Wright and Tony Adams – were drafted into schools to support reading campaigns. But by 1999, figures showed that boys were faring worse than girls in every exam...

The biggest leap in girls' performance, though, occurred in 2002 – the first year that the new syllabus for A-levels, with more emphasis on coursework, was examined. "Boys tend to do better in exams"...

Boys had at least scored one victory over girls. They were ahead on the percentage of candidates securing three straight A* grades at A-level... An alternative way, meanwhile, of dealing with the gender gap is advanced by proponents of single-sex education: teach students separately...

These arguments, though, ignore some of the social consequences of teaching boys alone. According to a study by the Centre for Longitudinal Studies at London University's Institute of Education, boys who have been to single-sex schools are more likely to end up divorced than those taught in a mixed environment (37 per cent as opposed to 28 per cent)...

Does it matter, though, that girls are now performing better than boys in exams? "I'm not sure," confesses Professor Smithers. "The issue is whether we're allowing boys and girls to develop to their full potential. In particular, that was highlighted by the old 11-plus (which determined who went to grammar schools). Girls consistently did better than boys, so boys were allowed in on lower marks – something that wasn't really made known at the time... I don't think we should want to equalise the outcomes of education, though. It doesn't bother me that girls don't appear to like physics very much but are more steeped in literature than boys."

A study by the Institute of Education concluded that the rise in exam performance over the previous decade was entirely down to the improved performance by girls; their pass rate rose at a higher rate than the national rate overall, while boys' performance remained static. This could perhaps pose an interesting question for academia: either exams have not in fact been "dumbed down" as many traditionalists have claimed, or boys are getting thicker by the year. Answers, please, on one side of an A4!"


The British seem to be more concerned about girls outperforming boys than the Americans, perhaps because they have fewer neuroses about gender discrimination (they have more neuroses about multiculturalism, though).

Outside of the UK context, this resounds with the study on why black pupils do worse than non-black ones in the US.

One is also led to wonder why girls, who by necessity have to be involved in the last of the 3 Fs, do not seem to suffer from their participation. This is probably because it is not so much about the Third F, but about the leadup to it - which consumes more resources than its performance.

Quelques extraits intéressants concernant les pipes

"The man who lets himself be bored is even more contemptible than the bore." - Samuel Butler

***

"«Plus on est jeune, plus on suce.» Cette hypothèse plutôt intuitive se vérifie en grande partie par les résultats de l’enquête...

La sexualité orale est ainsi moins souvent déclarée par les personnes sans diplôme et les femmes de milieu populaire. En revanche, la fellation l’est beaucoup plus chez les femmes ayant un diplôme supérieur, les cadres et les professions intellectuelles... les personnes des milieux sociaux les plus favorisés ont une aptitude sociale à se distancier de la norme dominante, en l’occurrence celle d’une sexualité pénétrative...

Pour les soldats [romains]... elle était considérée comme étant pire que la sodomie, plus impure... il s’agissait d’une pratique mal considérée: les tarifs des prostituées de Pompéi, chez qui la fellation était très peu chère...

Nathalie Bajos explique que la banalisation de la fellation «s’inscrit dans un mouvement d’une plus grande dissociation entre la sexualité et la procréation qui a été autorisée avec la légalisation de la contraception et de l’avortement, mais aussi dans le mouvement plus général d’évolution du statut social des femmes»...

Jacques Waynberg confirme: «La représentation de la fellation comme pratique humiliante est stupide: il n’y a pas de pratique humiliante, seulement des relations consenties ou non. Si la relation est consentie, alors l’aspect “humiliant” d’une position est accepté et même recherché.»

L’image de la fellation comme plaisir ultime pour l’homme véhiculée par le porno ne semble pas non plus vérifiée dans les faits: la fellation est la pratique qui procure le plus de plaisir pour seulement un homme sur dix, loin derrière la pénétration et les caresses mutuelles...

Jacques Waynberg... rappelle que quand les femmes ont commencé à se montrer seins nus sur les plages, le sein féminin a perdu de son pouvoir érotique sur les hommes car il est devenu moins mystérieux et trop banal. Heureusement pour les amateurs, on ne voit pas encore des couples pratiquer des fellations dans les lieux publics comme on s’embrasse devant une bouche de métro."

- La fellation, banale mais toujours fascinante | Slate