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Did not know this:
Still, these platonic tickle sessions appear to be rare. Based on a survey he conducted for his fascinating book Laughter, neuroscientist Robert Provine notes that adults and adolescents are seven times more likely to be tickled by members of the opposite sex. When asked whom they would most like to be tickled by, there was a fifteenfold disparity. Provine also notes that “the Dutch word for clitoris is kittelaar, ‘the organ of being tickled or titillated.’ ” The Internet is littered with tickle fetish sites.
…
Nevertheless, Robert Provine notes that history and mythology tell tales of death by tickle. The Leshii, a Russian fairy-tale monster, abducted peasants and tickled them to death. The Rusalka, drowned maidens of Ukrainian lore who populate inland waterways, tempted bypassing bachelors and delivered fatal tickle attacks. Real-life Prince Vlad—yes, that Vlad—of Transylvania may have tortured victims by dripping salty water onto their feet and letting goats lick it off. English rebel Simon de Montfort reportedly tickled opponents to death with a feather, and an Anabaptist sect uncomfortable with bloodshed is also alleged to have used the method. Provine suggests one possible mechanism for death-by-tickle: “The sustained, uncontrollable laughter and struggling of the victim may cause cardiac arrest or cerebral hemorrhage.”
There’s a lot more to tickling than I thought!
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Haha, brilliant. ‘Death by tickle’ sounds like something from a Monty Python sketch. Although having tickling cause a cerebral haemorrhage sounds like something South Park would use… Especially if it involved Massa.
The note on the Dutch word for clitoris reminds me of an article about Eliezer Ben-Yehuda, the chief revivalist of the Hebrew language.:
At a slumber party, young girls, even teenaged girls, proceed from pillow fights to tickling sessions.
Sorry, but no matter how you slice it, it always comes back to lots of gay men acting like young girls. Neotony.
elaine, can you read?
notes that adults and adolescents are seven times more likely to be tickled by members of the opposite sex.
i don’t know if a lot of ticking is a real big thing among gays. but it seems that tickling is a more advanced stage of flirting in interactions between heteros. it’s certainly not something which seems totally shocking to me.
In my grammar school days I remember my friends and I would sometimes have tickling contests to see who could hold out the longest. It began at a distance of a few feet, from which your friends approached you with fingers awiggling. I usually folded before they got to me. In fact most people did.
When the comfy chair comes out people laugh — they laugh themselves to death!
Yes, Razib, I can read. I was going to quote this sentence, but feeble excuse though it is, I was in a hurry and so concentrated on Massa:
“notes that adults and adolescents are seven times more likely to be tickled by members of the opposite sex.”
Nothing surprising, is it? Little girls do become big girls, and big girls date big boys, and big girls and big boys live together and/or marry one another and thus engage in the Big Tickle for the better part of their lives.
Anyway, couldn’t help myself–saw Massa’s interview with Beck and was struck immediately that for a guy who was trying to hold on to a shred of believability on all sorts of issues, he seemed to have NO clue that the audience would buy his just-a-regular-ole-tickling-session-among-grown-straight men about as easily as they’d buy a concrete structure in Haiti. Yeah, shoulda put a LOL after the comment.
A ticklish situation!
(I’m surprised to be the first to wheeze that one out.)
“but it seems that tickling is a more advanced stage of flirting in interactions between heteros.”
Of course. Girls are like your house cat pretending the spot on the carpet she has just attacked is a mouse. Young girls frequently practice their flirting techniques and plot strategies to ensnare guys when they get together, or don’t guys know this?
At the slumber parties I mentioned, girls discuss kissing and touching techniques at length, use each other sometimes and pillows often to demonstrate, or don’t guys know this?
Of course, on second thought, even George Costanza used a pillow to practice what he hoped would be his eventual conquest of Marisa Tomei so maybe guys practice this too although not in the company of one another as girls do?
thanks for the clarification elaine. sorry i was short.
At the slumber parties I mentioned, girls discuss kissing and touching techniques at length, use each other sometimes and pillows often to demonstrate, or don’t guys know this?
i assume the only guys who go to this level of detailed thought about the topic are pedophiles. am i wrong? what do others think?
No problem, Razib.
“i assume the only guys who go to this level of detailed thought about the topic are pedophiles. am i wrong? what do others think?”
I can’t speak for guys, but I’d guess you’re right. Guys do the hunting, girls the alluring, and both, I imagine, have ways of practicing what their evolutionary history has armed them with.
Dutch kittelaar is Kitzler in German, with the same meaning and etymology, so Ben-Yehuda could have been inspired from Yiddish. Can’t find an Yiddish online dictionary with an entry for clitoris, though. Maybe they’re being ticklish with things non-kosher (Are they? Dunno, actually. Any reformed lady Rabbis around here? Then again, are reformed lady Rabbis kosher? If so, their poon, too?).