Sex at Dawn, Beatlemania, and India (video)

Michael Gerber, Hey Dull Blog; Ashley Wells, Seth Auberon, CC Liu (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

Beatles fangirls? Romance addicts? Nothing sexual going on here, just everyday mania.

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How We Mate, Stray...Modern Relationships

Ever read the book Sex at Dawn: The Prehistoric Origins of Modern Sexuality?

It's a fascinating and controversial attempt to explain modern human sexual behavior via “anthropology, archaeology, primatology, anatomy, and psychosexuality.”

One of its primary assertions is that human females are as randy as males, if not more so — and it takes maximum effort on Western society’s part to make it seem otherwise. The book:

Being a rockstar pays, bigtime.

“And yet, despite repeated assurances that women aren’t particularly sexual creatures, in cultures around the world men have gone to extraordinary lengths to control female libido: female genital mutilation, head-to-toe chadors, medieval witch burnings, chastity belts, suffocating corsets, muttered insults about ‘insatiable’ whores, pathologizing, paternalistic medical diagnoses of nymphomania or hysteria, the debilitating scorn heaped on any female who chooses to be generous with her sexuality…all parts of a worldwide campaign to keep the supposedly low-key female libido under control. Why the electrified high-security razor-wire fence to contain a kitty-cat?”

Across the Universe: The Beatles in India, Ajoy Bose excerpt (Penguin Random House India)

In India: John Lennon ‘tormented by his inner demons and constantly seeking’ (Express)

What happened to the Beatles with their guru the Maharishi in India in the Sixties?

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My reading list in, India

We commodify a biological behavior, turning a piece of one’s essential personhood into a kind of wealth owned by someone else -- to be hoarded, traded, used to sell stuff.

This is absurd, outrageous, and causes all sorts of pent-up rage. We're not reading anything we don’t already know — or at least 50% of us. Why bring it up?

Others have posted — like Nancy Carr — that "Beatlemania" was largely female-driven, the objects of the frenzy being men.

Everyone from William F. Buckley to Allan Sherman was threatened — and our male-dominated popular culture heaped scorn on the whole thing. More

• "Get Back" Documentary Halftime Report
• The Beatles and India: John Lennon (Express)