Dixiecrat

Dixiecrat (pronounced dik-see-krat)

(1) In US political history, a member of a faction of southern Democrats stressing states' rights and opposed to the civil rights programs of the Democratic Party, especially a southern Democrat who left the party in 1948 to support candidates of the States' Rights Democratic Party.

(2) In historic US use, a member of the US Democratic Party from the southern states (especially one of the former territories of the Confederacy), holding socially conservative views, supporting racial segregation and the continued entrenchment of a white hegemony.

1948: A portmanteau word of US origin, the construct being Dixie + (Demo)crat.  Wholly unrelated to other meanings, Dixie (also as Dixieland) in this context is a reference to the southern states of the United States, especially those formerly part of the Confederacy.  The origin is contested, the most supported theory being it’s derived from the Mason-Dixon Line, a historic (if not entirely accurate) delineation between the "free" North and "slave-owning" South.  Another idea is it was picked up from any of several songs with this name, especially the minstrel song Dixie (1859) by (northerner) Daniel Decatur Emmett (1815-1904), popular as a Confederate war song although most etymologists hold this confuses cause and effect, the word long pre-dating any of the known compositions.  There’s also a suggested link to the nineteenth-century nickname of New Orleans, from the dixie, a Confederate-era ten-dollar bill on which was printed the French dix (ten) but again, it came later.  The –crat suffix was from the Ancient Greek κράτος (krátos) (power, might), as used in words of Ancient Greek origin such as democrat and aristocrat; the ultimate root was the primitive Indo-European kret (hard).  Dixiecrat is a noun and Dixiecratic is an adjective; the noun plural is Dixiecrats.  The noun Dixiecratocracy (also as dixieocracy) was a humorous coining speculating about the nature of a Dixiecrat-run government; it was built on the model of kleptocracy, plutocracy, meritocracy, gerontocracy etc.

The night old Dixie died.

Former Dixiecrat, Senator Strom Thurmond (1902-2003; senator (Republican) for South Carolina 1954-2003) lies in state, Columbia, South Carolina, June 2003.

Universally called Dixiecrats, the States' Rights Democratic Party was formed in 1948 as a dissident breakaway from the Democratic Party.  Its core platform was permanently to secure the rights of states to legislate and enforce racial segregation and exclude the federal government from intervening in these matters.  Politically and culturally, it was a continuation of the disputes and compromises which emerged in the aftermath of the US Civil War almost a century earlier.  The Dixiecrats took control of the party machine in several southern states and contested the elections of 1948 with South Carolina governor Strom Thurmond as their presidential nominee but enjoyed little support outside the deep South and by 1952 most had returned to the Democratic Party.  However, in the following decades, they achieved a much greater influence as a southern faction than ever was achieved as a separatist party.  The shift in the south towards support for the Republican Party dates from this time and by the 1980s, the Democratic Party's control of presidential elections in the South had faded and many of the Dixiecrats had joined the Republicans.

US Electoral College map, 1948.

In the 1948 presidential election, the Dixiecrats didn’t enjoy the success polls had predicted (although that was the year of the infamous “Dewey Defeats Truman” headline and the polls got much wrong), carrying only four states, all south of the Mason-Dixon line and not even the antics of one “faithless elector” (one selected as an elector for the Democratic ticket who instead cast his vote for Dixiecrats) was sufficient to add Tennessee to the four (South Carolina, Mississippi, Alabama, and Louisiana) won.  Nor did they in other states gain sufficient support to act as “spoilers” as Ross Perot (1930–2019) in 1992 & 1996 and Ralph Nader (b 1934) in 2000 achieved, the “narrowing of margins” in specific instances being of no immediate electoral consequence in the US system.  With that, the Dixiecrats (in the sense of the structure of the States' Rights Democratic Party) in a sense vanished but as an idea they remained for decades a potent force within the Democratic Party and their history is an illustration of why the often-quoted dictum by historian Professor Richard Hofstadter (1916–1970): “The role of third parties is to sting like a bee, then die” needs a little nuance.  What the Dixiecrats did after 1948 was not die but instead undergo a kind of “resurrection without crucifixion”, emerging to “march through the institutions” of the Democratic Party, existing as its southern faction.

That role was for generations politically significant and example of why the “third party” experience in the US historically wasn’t directly comparable with political behaviour elsewhere in the English-speaking world where “party discipline” tended to be “tight” with votes on the floors of parliaments almost always following party lines.  Until recent years (and this is something the “Trump phenomenon” radically has at least temporarily almost institutionalized), there was often only loose party discipline applied within the duopoly, Democrats and Republicans sometimes voting together on certain issues because the politicians were practical people who wished to be re-elected and understood what Tip O'Neill (1912–1994; (Democrat) speaker of the US Representatives 1977-1987) meant when he said “All politics is local”.  Structurally, that meant “third parties” can operate in the US and achieve stuff (for good or evil) as the Dixiecrats and later the Republican’s Tea Party Movement proved; it just that they do it as factions within the duopoly and that’s not unique, the Australian National Party (a re-branding of the old Country Party) really a regional pressure group of political horse traders disguised as a political party.

US Electoral College map, 1924.

The 1924 Electoral College results were a harbinger of the later Dixiecrat movement and a graphical representation of terms such as "solid South" or "south of the Mason-Dixon Line".  At the time of the 1924 election, slavery in the South was still in living memory.  Although there was fracturing at the edges, the "solid south" did remain a Democratic Party stronghold until the civil rights legislation of the 1960s and it was was the well-tuned political antennae of Texan Lyndon Johnson (LBJ, 1908–1973; US president 1963-1969) which picked up the implications and consequences of the reforms his skills had ushered through the Congress:  "I think I've just lost us the South" he was heard to remark when the Senate passed a landmark voting rights bill into law.

In recent years, what has changed in the US is the Republicans and Democrats have become the captive organizations of a tiny number of dedicated political operatives pursuing either their own ideological agendas or (more typically), those providing the funding.  The practical implication of that is the elections which now most matter are the primaries (where candidates for the election proper are selected) and because primary contests are voted on by a relative handful, outcomes are easier to influence and control that in general elections where there are millions to nudge.  Party discipline has thus become tighter than can often be seen on the floor of the House of Commons in the UK, not because the ideological commitments of politicians within parties have coalesced but because they’re now terrified of being “primaried” if they vote against the party line.  Re-election is a powerful inducement because the money politicians make during their careers is many, many times what might be expected given their notional earnings from their salary and entitlements.  There are few easier ways to get rich, thus the incentive to “toe the party line”.  This behavioural change, mapped onto something which structurally remains unchanged, is one of the many factors which have produced a country now apparently as polarized as ever it has been.  The nature of that polarization is sometimes misunderstood because of the proliferation of “red state, blue state” maps of the US which make the contrast between the “corrupting coastlines” and “flyover states” seem so stark but each state is of course a shade of purple (some darker, some lighter) but because of the way the two parties now operate, politics as it is practiced tends to represent the extreme, radical elements which now control the machines.  So while in the last twenty-odd years there’s been much spoken about “the 1%” in the sense of the tiny number of people who own or control so much, it’s political scientists and historians who much fret over the less conspicuous “1%” able to maintain effective control of the two parties, something of even greater significance because the state has put in place some structural impediments to challenging the two-party political duopoly.

In the US, the state does not (in a strict legal or constitutional sense of the word) “own” the Republican or Democratic Parties because they are “private” organizations protected by the constitution’s First Amendment (freedom of association).  However, over the years, something biologists would recognize as “symbiosis” has evolved as the state and the parties (willingly and sometimes enthusiastically) have become entangled to the extent a structural analysis would recognize the parties as quasi-public although not quite at the status familiar elsewhere as quangos (quasi autonomous non-government organizations).  Despite being “private concerns”, the parties routinely conduct state-regulated primaries to select candidates and in many cases these are funded by tax revenue and administered by state electoral instrumentalities.  Beyond that, it needs to be remembered that to speak of a “US national election” (as one might of a “UK general election”) is misleading because as a legal construct such events are really 50 elections run by each state with electoral laws not wholly aligned (thus the famous (or dreaded, depending on one’s position) Iowa caucuses) and in many states, it’s state law which regulates who can voted in party primaries, some permitting “open” primaries in which any lawfully enrolled voter is allowed to cast a ballot while others run “closed” events, restricting participation to registered members of the relevant party.  What that means is in some places a citizen can vote in each party’s primary.  That done, those who prevail in a primary further are advantaged because many states have laws setting parameters governing who may appear on a ballot paper and most of them provide an easier path for the Republican and Democratic Party candidates by virtue of having granted both “major party” status.  As objects, the two parties, uniquely, are embedded in the electoral apparatus and the interaction of ballot access laws, debate rules and campaign finance rules mean the two function as state-sponsored actors; while not quite structurally duopolistic, they operate in a protected environment with the electoral equivalent of “high tariff barriers”.

Elon Musk (left) and Donald Trump (right), with Tesla Cybertruck (AWD Foundation Series), the White House, March, 2025.  It seemed like a good idea at the time.

Given all that, Elon Musk’s (b 1971) recent announcement he was planning to launch a “third party” (actually the US has many political parties, the “third party” tag used as a synecdoche for “not one of the majors”) might seem “courageous” and surprised many who thought the experience of his recent foray into political life might have persuaded him pursuits like EVs (electric vehicles), digging tunnels (he deserves praise for naming that SpaceX spin-off: “The Boring Company”) and travelling to Mars were more fulfilling.  However, Mr Musk believes the core of the country’s problems lie in the way its public finances are now run on the basis of the “Dick Cheney (born 1941; US vice president 2001-2009) doctrine: “Deficits don’t matter” and having concluded neither of the major parties are prepared to change the paradigm which he believes is leading the US to a fiscal implosion, a third party is the only obvious vehicle.  In Western politics, ever since shades of “socialism” and “capitalism” defined the democratic narrative, the idea of a “third way” has been a lure for theorists and practitioners with many interpretations of what is meant but all have in common what Mr Musk seems to be suggesting: finding the middle ground and offering it to those currently voting for one or other of the majors only because “your extremists are worse than our extremists”.  Between extremes there’s much scope for positioning (which will be variable between “social” & “economic” issues) and, given his libertarian instincts, it seems predicable Mr Musk’s economic vision will be “centre-right” rather than “centre-left” but presumably he’ll flesh out the details as his venture evolves.

Mr Musk can’t be accused of creating a “third party” because he wants to become POTUS (president of the US).  As a naturalized US citizen, Mr Musk is ineligible because Article II, Section 1, Clause 5 of the constitution restricts the office to those who are a “natural born Citizen” (Article II, Section 1, Clause 5).  Because the US Supreme Court (USSC) has never handed down a definitive ruling on the matter it’s not absolutely certain what that phrase means but the consensus among legal scholars is it refers to someone who was at birth a US citizen.  That need not necessitate being born on the soil of the US or its territories because US citizens often are born in other countries (especially to those on military or diplomatic duty) and even in international waters; indeed, there would appear no constitutional impediment to someone born in outer space (or, under current constitutional interpretation, on Mars) becoming POTUS provided they were at the time of birth a US citizen.  Nor does it seem an interpretation of the word “natural” could be used to exclude a US citizen conceived through the use of some sort of “technology” such as IVF (In Vitro Fertilization).

Lindsay Lohan, potential third party POTUS.

As a naturalized US citizen, Elon Musk can’t become POTUS so his new party (tentatively called the “America” Party) will have to nominate someone else and the constitution stipulates (Article II, Section 1, Clause 5): “No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any Person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States”.  The age requirement is unambiguous and in his Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States (1833), Justice Joseph Story (1779–1845; associate justice of the Supreme Court of the USSC 1812-1845) explained the residence requirement was “…not an absolute inhabitancy within the United States during the whole period; but such an inhabitancy as includes a permanent domicil in the United States.”  That means Mr Musk can consider nominating Lindsay Lohan for president.  She’d apparently flirted with the idea of running in 2020 but at that point would have been a few months too young; on all grounds she’ll be eligible for selection in 2028 and many would be attracted to the idea of Lindsay Lohan having her own nuclear weapons.

Whether or not it’s “courageous” (or even “heroic”), to build a new third party in the US time will tell but certainly it’s ambitious but Mr Musk is also a realist and may not be planning to have a presidential candidate on the ballot in all 50 states or even contest every seat both houses of Congress.  As he’ll have observed in a number of countries, “third parties” need neither parliamentary majorities nor executive office to achieve decisive influence over policy, some with comparatively little electoral support able to achieve “balance of power” status in legislatures provided those votes are clustered in the right places.  Additionally, because the polarized electorate has delivered such close results in the House & Senate, the math suggests a balance of power may be attainable with fewer seats than historically would have been demanded and under the US system of fixed terms, an administration cannot simply declare such a congress “unworkable” and all another election (a common tactic in the Westminster system); it must, for at least two years, work with what the people have elected, even if that includes an obstreperous third party. Still, the challenges will be onerous, even before the “dirty tricks” departments of the major parties start searching for skeletons in the closets of third party candidates (in a rare example of bipartisanship the Republicans and Democrats will probably do a bit of intelligence-sharing on that project) and the history is not encouraging.

It was the Republican party which in the 1850s was the last “third party” to make the transition to become a “major” and not since 1996 has such a candidate in a presidential contest secured more than 5% of the national vote.  In the Electoral College, not since 1968 has a third-party candidate carried any states and 1912 was the last time a third-party nominee finished second (and 1912 was a bit of a “special case” in which the circumstances were unusually propitious for challenges to the majors).  Still, with (1) the polls recording a general disillusionment with the major parties and institutions of state and (2) Mr Musk’s wealth able to buy much advertising and “other forms” of influence, prospects for a third party may be untypically bright in 2028 elections and 2030 mid-terms.  There are no more elections for Donald Trump (b 1946; US president 2017-2021 and since 2025) and it seems underestimated even now just what an aberration he is in the political cycle.  While his use of techniques and tactics from other fields truly has since 2016 been disruptive, what he has done is unlikely to be revolutionary because it is all so dependent on his presence and hands on the levers of power.  When he leaves office, without the “dread and awe” the implied threat of his displeasure evokes, business may return to something closer what we still imagine “normal” to be.

Dick-pic & Slot-shot

Dick-pic (pronounced dik-pik)

A picture of a human’s penis, if taken and disseminated in a certain context.

Dick became the pet-form name circa 1550 (though some etymologists suspect it had earlier been in use) for Richard via being the rhyming nickname for Rick, Richard's original affectionate diminutive.  Richard being (1) among the commonest English names and (2) exclusively male, it quickly become a synonym for "fellow; lad" and thereby a generally used word to refer to men, individually and collectively; from this connection came the use of dick as slang for that exclusively male body part.  Anything claimed to be an authoritative list of the slang senses must be viewed with scepticism because many forms are very old and the surviving written records are not a comprehensive catalogue of what was often an exclusively oral dialect so the date of origin is uncertain.  The meaning "penis" is attested from 1891 in a dictionary of farmer's slang and was said (predictably) to have been well-known British army slang but, perhaps regionally, the use could date back a century or more.  Most sources note "dick" in this context is thought now less offensive than once it was but for those still disturbed, there's a goodly number of alternatives. 

Pic of Dick Face: The Honorable Richard Face (1943-2023), former New South Wales (NSW) minister of gaming & racing (1995-2003).

The vulgar slang nouns dickhead & dickface (a stupid or contemptible person) are attested only from circa 1969 so Richard Face’s parents can't be accused of making what might now be thought an unwise choice.  Interestingly, although presumably not unaware of the linguistic possibilities his name offered, Richard Face was either indifferent or saw some political advantage in brand-name awareness because he chose to remain a Richard (and, by implication, a "Dick") despite being christened Jack Richard Face.  Whether he ran the usual focus groups to find which worded best (Dick Face or Jack Face) isn't known.  In time, he did live up to his name, in 2004 fined Aus$2500 an given a three-year good behaviour bond for lying to the NSW Independent Commission against Corruption (ICAC), the magistrate's rationale for not imposing a custodial sentence being (1) he was no longer a police officer and therefore "not directly involved in the administration of justice", (2) had an "exemplary record of public service", (3) had been under stress, was depressed and a heavy drinker at the time of his lie, (4) had shown remorse and pleaded guilty, (5) had "not committed perjury" or "sworn false evidence" and (6) "did not engage in persistently false swearing over sustained periods of time."

Pic of Richard Face the pussy.

Pic was first recorded circa 1885 as a shortening of picture (image, likeness, photo, etc).  Picture was from the Middle English pycture, from the Old French picture, from the Latin pictūra (the art of painting, a painting), from pingō (I paint); a doublet of pictura.  The plural is pics but pix is common in casual & commercial use so the accepted alternative plural of dick-pics would be dick-pix.  The linguistically fastidious used to be troubled by spellings which respected only the pronunciation (pix, nite, lite, luv etc) but even before the internet their use in advertising and brand names had made them so common the battle obviously was lost.  In structural linguistics, the technical term for such words is “eye dialect”, used to describe a deliberate misspelling of words to suggest a particular pronunciation, dialect, or informal tone, even though the intended pronunciation remains the same.  The use (apart from alternative spellings or misspellings which would have predated the modern practice) seems to have been popularized (and to some extent thus legitimized) in commerce for purposes of advertising or branding and from here it was picked up in casual writing where it can impart variously feelings of playfulness or the "modern".  The Ford Ka (1996–2021) and Chevrolet Cruze (2008–2023) were both named using the technique and familiar examples include Krispy Kreme, Dunkin’ Donuts and Froot Loops but it was also a literary device in fiction as early as the nineteenth century, used by Mark Twain (1835-1910) to evoke Southern American speech patterns and Charles Dickens (1812–1870) to summon the sound of what was perceived as “typical” working-class speech.  George Bernard Shaw (GBS; 1856-1950), a proponent of the internationalist Esperanto language and often (understandably) critical of English spelling rules, in Pygmalion (1913) used phonetic spellings not only to reflect variations in diction and accents but also to contrast the difference between “proper” and informal speech, a central theme of the play.  In modern use, because the forms often use fewer characters, the practice became a staple of texting (SMS; short message service) which for a certain demographic in the now distant pre-social media, pre-smartphone era became the preferred means of communication.

Dick pics and their role in politics.

As the downfall of disgraced New York politician Anthony Weiner (b 1964) illustrates, politicians should avoid dick-pics on the basis “good rarely comes of it” but, deployed carefully, they do have a place.  In 1956, the Republican Party’s campaign committee for that year's US presidential election included the slogan “I Like Ike”, taking advantage of the great popularity of Dwight Eisenhower (1890-1969; POTUS 1953-1961) who was seeking a second term.  As a companion slogan, the committee used “We Like Dick” to support Eisenhower’s running mate Richard Nixon (1913-1994; VPOTUS 1953-1961 & POTUS 1969-1974).  To cover both, there were also posters and campaign buttons with “I Like Ike and Dick” and the party enjoyed great success, their ticket securing 57.4% of the popular vote and carrying the Electoral College 457-73 (41 states to 7).  Thus encouraged, when Nixon ran for president in 1960, among the promotional materials used were posters and campaign buttons using a variation: “The Nation Needs Dick!”  In 1960, things didn’t go so well with the Democratic Party’s nominee John Kennedy (JFK, 1917–1963; POTUS 1961-1963) winning by “an electoral eyelash”: The popular vote split 49.72-49.55% in Kennedy’s favour and he took the Electoral College 303-219 although he carried on 22 states to Nixon’s 26.  So, the “The Nation Needs Dick!” campaign nearly worked because in the popular vote Kennedy prevailed only by the twentieth century’s narrowest margin: 34,220,984 to 34,108,157.  That tight result has always fuelled the idea the documented electoral fraud in several states robbed Nixon of a victory and he had no doubts, hosting a subdued Christmas party in Washington DC a few months later he told his guests: “We won, but they stole it from us.”  Despite that, things were done differently in 1960 and although he’d be told by advisors there was enough evidence of fraud for him to challenge the result, he declined on the basis of the damage it might do to the country, telling his staff: “Nobody steals the presidency of the United States.”

The various quoted numbers from the 1960 election sometimes mystify but can be explained.  The apparent discrepancy arises because the 49.7% vs 49.5% calculation includes all third-party candidates and unpledged Democratic electors, whereas the 50.08% vs 49.92% calculation isolates the two-party vote between the Democratic and Republican tickets.  There are two main factors in the numbers seemingly “not lining up”, the first being the two party share of the vote 49.7% vs 49.5% vs that of the the total electorate.  Because third-party candidates and unpledged Southern Democratic slates gained a combined total of some 500,000 votes, neither Kennedy nor Nixon secured an outright majority (50% + 1) of the full electorate.  The often quoted 50.08% vs 49.92% split represented the two-party popular vote.  The second factor was south of the Mason-Dixon Line: the so called “Alabama Unpledged Elector Complication”, a historically unusual circumstance.  In 1960, the Alabama Democrats who opposed the national party's pro-civil rights stance ran a split “unpledged” slate of electors alongside regular Democratic electors and because voters are choosing delegates for the Electoral College (rather than the candidates directly), the splitting of the vote had potential implications with the highest-voted pro-Kennedy elector receiving 318,303 votes while the highest-voted unpledged Democratic elector gained 324,050.  For that reason, historians and psephologists have been compelled to maintain two methods of calculation for the numbers.  The orthodox method credits all Democratic votes in Alabama to Kennedy (despite 6 of the 11 eventual electors refused to vote for him in the Electoral College) while the alternative approach is to split the Alabama popular vote proportionally and with that math, Nixon actually won the national popular vote over Kennedy by some 58,000 votes.  It’s now something of interest only to nerds and political junkies but does demand explanation.

Slot-shot (pronounced slot-shot)

A picture of a human female’s genitalia, if taken and disseminated in a certain context.

Slot in the sense of a "bar or bolt used to fasten a door, window etc" entered Middle English circa 1300 from the Middle Dutch or Middle Low German slot, from the Old High German sloz & German Schloss (bolt, bar, lock, castle), from the Proto-Germanic stem slut- (to close).  The anatomical use to describe the "hollow at the base of the throat above the breastbone" was a late fourteenth century adoption from the Old French esclot (hoof-print of a deer or horse) of uncertain origin, but this sense is probably obsolete except in historic references.  Slot meaning a "a narrow, elongated depression, groove, notch, slit, or aperture, especially a narrow opening for receiving or admitting something" dates from the 1520s, the idea later developed to suggest putting something "where it belongs" but this seems to have been adopted only in the mid-1960s.

Shot (in the sense of the firing of a bow (later applied to firearms etc)) was from pre-900 Middle English, from the Old English sc(e)ot & (ge)sceot and was cognate with the German Schoss & Geschoss.  It was related to the Old Norse skot and the Old High German scoz (missile).  The sense of shot as the "view from a camera" isn't attested until 1958 although it had been used in the cinematic sense since 1922 to describe the process of recording movies (mov(ing picture) + -ies) since 1922 and may thus have enjoyed earlier use.  As used to refer to individual pictures, printed usually on cardboard or special photographic paper, it dates from the late 1930s, the specialized use in law enforcement (as mugshot) began in the US in 1950.

Of context

A “Liz & Dick pic”

Lindsay Lohan (b 1986) & Grant Bowler (b 1968) during the filming of Liz & Dick (2012), a “biopic” of the famously tempestuous relationship between the actors Elizabeth Taylor (1932–2011) & Richard Burton (1925–1984).  The car is a Mercedes-Benz 600 (W100; 1963-1981) four-door Pullman with the vis-a-vis seating.  The flag-staffs (fitted in this instance above the front wheel arches) were usually fitted to cars used by the governments or the corps diplomatique.

The dick-pic, the practice of someone (usually male) sending another (usually female) an unsolicited picture of (what is usually their own) penis isn’t a recent invention but the extraordinary latter day spike in the numbers sent is a genuine cultural phenomenon.  It’s socially and technologically deterministic, something made possible by (1) the permissive social attitude of the participating demographic, (2) the ubiquity of their possession of high-definition cameras, (3) the removal from the process of third-parties (especially those who once developed and printed the physical images), (4) the extent of digital connectivity between members of the demographic and (5), the marginal financial cost of the transactions.  It’s an interesting development in that in the West, the history of the depiction of nudity is overwhelmingly female so “pictures of genitalia sent by phone” is a genre in the annals of the nude (technically probably the naked) untypically dominated by the male body.  Generally uncontroversial if either requested or welcomed by a recipient with whom an appropriate level of emotional capital has already been built, dick-pics are notorious for the negative emotions induced in those receiving them as something unsolicited and unwelcome.  So, unless the intention is actually to shock, offend or upset (and among the demographic, that is sometimes a thing) they’re best avoided; good rarely seems to come of them and in some jurisdictions, there are circumstances in which sending a dick-pic can be an offence which can result in the sender being placed for life on a sex-offender’s register; it depends on the context.

Dick-pic detail from Michelangelo Buonarroti’s (1475–1564) David (1501-1504), Galleria dell'Accademia, Florence.

Michelangelo’s David, a six-ton, 17-foot (5.2 m) tall symbol of divine victory over evil is art as a sculpture or in depiction and, despite the visible penis, in the West is usually thought not obscene.  In another context it can be, the erection of some inventive interior decorating required to conceal the offensive bits when a 3D-printed replica was displayed at the 2021 Dubai Expo.  It happens in the West too.  In the nineteenth century the Grand Duke of Tuscany presented Queen Victoria with a full-sized replica of the original which she found so confronting that hurriedly a proportionally accurate fig leaf was crafted, kept in readiness for any royal visits to be hung from two strategically placed hooks.  Even in the twenty-first century, replicas have attracted complaints, the argument being the context of a museum which people choose to visit being different for places where encounters may happen by chance.  Obscenity and offensiveness thus are situational constructs and a dick-pic exchanged between consenting adults is different from discovered in other circumstances; it depends on the context.

The SSSSS: Svakom Siime Sex Selfie Stick.

It’s assumed because there are few reports of women sending pics of their genitalia that the practice is notably less common than the dick-pic and while that’s not an accepted way to draw a definitive conclusion from two data sets, few doubt it’s true.  There are surely many reasons that’s the case and the paucity of examples is probably the reason a standardized female equivalent of “dick-pic” seems not to have evolved.  Suggestions have included “gash-flash”, “trap-snap” and “clamagram” but the most phonetically pleasing are probably “pussy-portrait” and “slot-shot”, the latter a metaphor which references the slot on a machine which is a perfect fit for coins of a certain denomination.  For women who find artistically limiting the idea of a static slot-shot, for US$149, there’s the Svakom Siime Sex Selfie Stick (SSSSS), a USB-rechargeable video-recorder-vibrator which offers, especially for those with basic video-editing skills, the chance to create a clip of an organism from the inside.  Thus the "clit-clip", a bit of digital one-upmanship (that may not be quite the right noun) on any "dick-pic".  

Available in violet, khaki & black, she can be connected to the USB port of a PC or Mac and there's a downloadable app for MacOS, Windows (XP SP2 onwards), iOS and Android.  The camera is a seemingly modest .3 megapixel unit but given the environment in which she'll be operating, that's more than adequate; videos are saved in the familiar mp4 format, the product & software manuals are both downloadable and there's an instructional video on the Svakom website.  Whisper-quiet to ensure privacy, battery-life is said to be around two hours of "continuous use" so one can understand why women might prefer such a device to most men.  The manufacturer refers to the SSSSS as "she" rather than "he" (or even "it"), an interesting assignment of notional gender given the anatomical emulation.

L'Origine du monde (The Origin of the World (1866)), oil on canvas by Gustave Courbet (1819-1877), Musée d'Orsay, Paris.

The recumbent female has, off and on, been a staple of Western art since Antiquity but there was something about French artist’s Gustave Courbet’s L'Origine du monde which was so provocative that publicly, it wasn’t exhibited for 120 years.  A slot-shot writ large, it’s still a work which many institutions avoid, even those sanguine about female nudity (and nakedness) in artistic and other contexts, one columnist noting recently the painting “… if indeed it can be called erotic…” was “…still unsuitable for publication in a paper with a general readership.”  Perhaps it’s because it so differs from the long traditions of the nude, a study more gynecological than artistic or maybe it’s the lush and untended growth of pubic hair, something which seems often to disturb though it may be anatomically accurate: One Russian gynecologist was asked whether the model was a virgin and, after casting his professional eye, answered with an emphatic “Nyet”.  There’s also the objectification, the decapitation of the subject reducing the work somehow to a slot-shottish case-study for the male gaze, a reductionism which has for decades attracted criticism from feminists.  When depictions of L'Origine du monde have appeared in bookshops and galleries, there’s often been controversy, sometimes requiring the summoning of the gendarmerie although the Musée d'Orsay reports the work appears on one of their gift-shop’s best-selling post-cards so there's that.

The head presumptive (publicized in 2013).

Commissioned by Ottoman-Egyptian diplomat Halil Şerif Pasha (Khalil Bey 1831-1879) as an addition to his famous collection of erotica, ever since first it was seen, historians of art have debated among themselves the identity of the model, their short-list with some glee referred to as Les suspects habituels de Gustave (Gustave’s usual suspects).  No conclusion has ever been agreed although the factions promote their theories, one based on an analysis of the joining edges of the respective canvases, an allegedly matching upper-section displayed in 2013.  The Musée d'Orsay issued a statement saying L'Origine du monde is, as it exists, a complete work and not part of a larger whole.  The mystery continues.

Highlight of Coastal Carolina University vs East Carolina University, Clark-LeClair Stadium, East Carolina University, Greenville, North Carolina, 8 March, 2025. 

There are also “butt pics”.  In March 2025 a user posted on X (formerly known as Twitter) a clip from ESPN’s coverage of a baseball game between Coastal Carolina University and East Carolina University (Coastal Carolina won 9-11-1 to 1-6-0) which showed two women, one snapping what quickly was described as a “butt-pic” of the other.  Almost instantly viral, the tweet gained more than 10 million views, numbers the ESPN programmers doubtless wish college baseball could generate.  The two protagonists were said to be “not identified” but presumably promotional opportunities on Instagram and TikTok beckon and there may soon be OnlyFans accounts.

Fedsurrection

Fedsurrection (pronounced fed-suh-rek-shuhn)

An ostensibly spontaneous, public event (protest, demonstration or rally) (1) actually arranged or organized by organs of a government or (2) such an event when government agents (posing as participants) infiltrate said event, inciting (or inducing others to incite) unrest and violence, either as a form of entrapment or to create a public perception of crisis, enabling repressive measures to be imposed.  The companion term is “fauxsurrection”, used in a similar vein.

1922: A portmanteau word, the construct being (fed)eral agent (or (fed)eral government) +‎ (in)surrection.  In federations, federal (pertaining to or of the nature of a union of states under a central government where sovereignty resides (a federation) as distinct from a looser constitutional arrangement in which sovereignty is shared between the constituent states and the central government (a confederation), as an adjective (often capitalized), is used to distinguish between the central and the state or provincial governments.  Federal dates from 1625–1630 and was from the French fédéral, replacing the earlier foederal, from the Classical Latin foeder- (stem of foedus) (formal agreement, treaty, league, covenant, alliance).  Insurrection was from the late Middle English insurreccion (uprising against a government, rebellion, revolt; civil disorder, riot; illegal armed assault”), from the Middle French insurrection, from the Old French insurreccïon (which persists in modern French as insurrection) and from their etymon the Latin īnsurrēctiōnem, the accusative singular of īnsurrēctiō (rising up, insurrection, rebellion), from īnsurgō (to rise up), the construct being in- (the prefix used in the sense of “in, inside, within”) + surgō (to arise, get up; to rise), the construct being su(b)- (the prefix used in the sense of (from) beneath, under)) + regō (to direct, govern, rule; to guide, steer; to manage, oversee) (ultimately from the primitive Indo-European hereǵ- (to right oneself, straighten; just; right)).  The Late Latin insurrēctiōn- was the stem of insurrēctiō, from insurrēct(us) (risen up, rebelled), the construct being the past participle of insurgere (to get up, ascend, rebel”; insurgent) + -iō (-ion); the –ion suffix was from the Middle English -ioun, from the Old French -ion, from the Latin -iō (genitive -iōnis).  It was appended to a perfect passive participle to form a noun of action or process, or the result of an action or process.  Fedsurrection, fedsurrectionism, fedsurrectionary & fedsurrectionist are nouns, fedsurrected & fedsurrectioning are verbs, fedsurrectious, fedsurrectional, fedsurrectory & fedsurrectionesque are adjectives and fedinsurrectionally is an adverb; the noun plural is fedsurrections.

The multi-media US personality Ye (the artist formerly known as Kanye West (b 1977)) in MAGA hat.

It’s not clear just who coined or first used fedsurrection but it spiked rapidly in use in January 2022 when, during a press conference marking the one-year anniversary of the 6 January Capitol attack, it was used by MAGA intellectuals Marjorie Taylor Greene (b 1974; US representative (Republican, Georgia) since 2021) & Matt Gaetz (b 1982; US representative (Republican-Florida) since 2017).  MAGA is the acronym for “Make America Great Again”.  Donald Trump (b 1946; US president 2017-2021) first (publicly) used the phrase in November 2012, the day after the 2012 presidential election in which Democrat Barack Obama (b 1961; US president 2009-2017) defeated Republican Mitt Romney (b 1947; governor of Massachusetts 2003-2007, US senator (Republican-Utah) since 2019) when he tweeted on X (then known as Twitter): “We will Make America Great Again!”  The initialism “WWMAGA” obviously wasn’t going to work as an acronym so it was truncated to MAGA which quickly Mr Trump registered as a trademark.  In political history, there have been a number of variations of the phrase, most famously: “Let's Make America Great Again”, used by Republican Ronald Reagan (1911-2004; US president 1981-1989) during his successful 1980 presidential campaign.  Since creating the MAGA trademark, Mr Trump used it as what he called “my theme” and in the modern parlance it became “his brand”, applied to the usual merchandise (T-shirts, USB sticks, baseball caps etc), all presumably manufactured somewhere in the Far East.

The event which inspired “fedsurrection” was of course the 6 January 2021 “Capitol attack” in Washington DC, the dramatic day which gained a new audience for the post Civil War (1861-1865) Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution (Section 3, 1866):

No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.

Fox News staples (for different reasons): Lindsay Lohan (left), Ted Cruz (centre) and Marjorie Taylor Greene (right).  The sublime to the ridiculous.

Fedsurrection describes what sounds a classic conspiracy theory: the assertion federal agents or informants orchestrated or incited the events of that day and while most were at least sceptical, the theory gained traction as it was discussed and promoted on a variety of conservative platforms, notably Tucker Carlson (b 1969), then hosting a nightly talk-show on Rupert Murdoch’s (b 1931) Fox News.  Although most analysts conclude Fox News “preaches to the converted”, the more controversial (some prefer “wacky”) content does get disseminated, its influence on political discourse thus extending well beyond the committed Fox audience.  Those who have chosen to promote (or at least less than critically discuss) fedsurrection, include two of the usual suspects, X owner Elon Musk (b 1971) and Ted Cruz (b 1970; US senator (Republican-Texas) since 2013); whether either believe the “theory” or its implications isn’t known but both will have their own reasons for finding it a helpful device.

Support for the theory is not restricted to a right-wing fringe in the US.  In July 2016, what came to be described as “a faction within armed forces”, staged a coup, attempting to overthrow the government of Turkey (now officially the Republic of Türkiye).  In the turbulent business of post-Ottoman Turkish politics, military coups are not unusual (some half-dozen of them since 1960) but the 2016 coup was as ineptly executed as the Wehrmacht’s failed attempt to overthrow the Nazi state in July 1944, both quickly suppressed.  However, so efficiently crushed were the Turkish plotters that almost immediately suggestions arose that it may have been something “staged” by the state to justify a long planned crackdown on dissent, a view given some credence by Recep Tayyip Erdoğan (b 1954; prime-minister or president of the Republic of Türkiye since 2003) doing exactly that.  In one of the more unnecessary statements of political intent, in the coup’s aftermath, Mr Erdoğan warned those responsible they would “…pay a heavy price for this.” and he was a good as his word, his “counter-coup” notably more successful than that of the generals & admirals: within months, the purge claimed some 68,000 military & police officers, academics, judges, regional politicians and civil servants, variously arrested, suspended or jailed, some receiving life sentences.  The Turkish people understood Mr Erdoğan’s language and there has been no repetition of the misbehaviour though there’s little to suggest what happened in 2016 was a fedsurrection but that’s not to imply governments don’t use the tactic, “public” demonstrations known to have been encouraged (ie ordered or paid for) by administrations in the PRC (People’s Republic of China), The Islamic Republic of Iran and any number of regimes in the Middle East, the journalist Robert Fisk (1946–2020) noting in The Great War for Civilisation: The Conquest of the Middle East (2005) that while it wasn’t unusual for crowds to turn up for “spontaneous demonstrations”, they were viewed in the Arab world as a threat only “when they are real and not the government sponsored variety.”

Hilt

Hilt (pronounced hilt)

(1) The handle of a sword or dagger.

(2) The handle of many weapons and tools.

(3) In anatomy, the base of the penis.

(4) To furnish with a hilt.

(5) As the idiom “to the hilt”, to the maximum extent or degree; completely; fully.

Pre 900:  From the Middle English hilt, from the Old English hilt & hilte (handle of a sword or dagger); cognate with the Middle Dutch hilt & hilte, the Old Norse hjalt, the Old Saxon helta (oar handle) and the Old High German helza (handle of a sword).  Source was the Proto-Germanic helt, heltą, heltǭ, heltō & hiltijō, probably from the primitive Indo-European kel- (to strike, cut).  One form of the idiom which died out was “up to the hilts”, the plural having exactly the same meaning as the still familiar singular; first noted in the 1670s, it was extinct by the mid-eighteenth century except in Scotland and the border regions of northern England where it survived another hundred-odd years.  The vivid imagery summoned by the expression “to the hilt” is of a dagger stabbed into someone’s heart, the blade buried all the way to the hilt.  The phrase is used to suggest one’s total commitment to something although those training British commandos in such things during World War II (1939-1945) did caution that a blade buried in a victim "to the hilt" could be "difficult to get it out", such were "the contractions of the sinews".  Hilt is a noun & verb, hilting is a verb, hilted is a verb & adjective and hiltless is an adjective; the noun plural is hilts.

Consisting of the pommel, grip & guard, hilt was a European swordsmith’s technical name for the handle of a knife, dagger, sword or bayonet; the once used terms haft and shaft have long been obsolete.  The pommel is the large fitting at the top of the handle, originally developed to prevent the weapon slipping from the grasp but during the late medieval period, swordsmiths began to add weight so they were sufficiently heavy to be a counterweight to the blade.  This had the effect of shifting the point of balance closer to the hilt, the physics of this assisting swordsmanship.  The pommel could also be used as a blunt instrument with which to strike an opponent, something from the German school of swordsmanship known as the Mordhau (or Mordstreich or Mordschlag (literally “murder-stroke” or “murder-strike” or “murder-blow”)) method, a half-sword technique of holding the sword inverted, with both hands gripping the blade while striking one's opponent with the pommel or cross-guard.  The technique essentially makes as sword function as a mace or hammer and in military training was envisaged for use in armoured combat although in the hands of a skilled exponent it could be deadly in close combat.  Some hilts were explicitly designed for this purpose.  Pommel was from the Middle English pommel (ornamental knob or ball, decorative boss), from the Old French pom (hilt of a sword) & pommel (knob) and the Medieval Latin pumellum & pōmellum (little apple), probably via the Vulgar Latin pomellum (ball, knob), diminutive of the Late Latin pōmum (apple).  The use in weaponry came first, the sense of "front peak of a saddle" dating from the mid 1400s and in fifteenth and sixteenth century poetry it also sometimes meant "a woman's breasts".  The gymnast's pommel horse (vaulting horse) is so called by 1908, named for the removable handles, which resemble pommels of a saddle, the use in saddlery noted first in 1887.

Grips still are made almost always of wood or metal and once were usually wrapped with shagreen (untanned tough leather or shark skin) but this proved less durable in climates with high-humidity and in these regions, rubber was increasingly used from the mid-nineteenth century.  Whatever the material, it’s almost always both glued to the grip and wrapped with wire in a helix.  The guard sits between grip and blade.  The guard was originally a simple stop (a straight crossbar perpendicular to the blade (later called a quillon)) to prevent the hand slipping up the blade but later evolved into an armoured gauntlet to protect the wielder's entire hand from an opponent’s sword.  By the sixteenth century, guards became elaborate, now often decorative as well as functional, the innovation of this time being a single curved piece alongside the fingers (parallel with the blade and perpendicular to any cross-guards); it became known as the knuckle-bow.

Lindsay Lohan with saw-tooth edged dagger held at the hilt; from a Tyler Shields (b 1982) photo session, 2013.

The “blood” in this photograph is believed to be “fake blood” of the type used in film & television production; it's a substance with an interesting history.  Before the introduction of color film, the liquid was not red but black or a deep blue because those were the hues which, when using monochrome (ie black & white) or sepia film stock, those were the shades which looked convincingly “red” while true red did not.  In the industry, the stuff variously is called “stage blood”, “theatrical blood”, “Prop blood”, “FX blood” or “SFX blood”.  “FX” is the general term for “effects” while “SFX” refers to “special effects” and there’s also “VFX” which, meaning “visual effects” doesn’t have a blood department.  Chemically, the mix is interesting stuff because there are a number of flavours including (1) edible blood which is safe (though not necessarily pleasant) to ingest (made from water, corn syrup & vegetable-based food coloring, etc), (2) non-edible blood used on clothing and props (it can include detergents, thickeners and even sand), (3) rapid-drying blood designed to simulate dried or clotted blood and (4) flowing blood which is used in scenes with active bleeding so realistic viscosity is needed, the mixes ranging from “squirting” to “flowing”.  Historically, each variety was tailored to the specific lighting conditions in use but with post-production digital editing of brightness, color saturation and such now routine, that’s now less critical.

Great moments in elaborately carved hilts: Ivory hilt for ceremonial sword carved in 1801-1802 by the London firm Rundell, Bridge and Rundell for George IV (1762–1830) King of the United Kingdom 1820-1830).

George IV’s ivory hilt (left) depicts the rescue of Andromeda by Perseus, who descended on his winged horse Pegasus to destroy the fierce dragon tormenting his captive.  The artisans were thought to have been influenced by the ivory carvings which emerged during the mid-seventeenth century from workshops in the Netherlands city of Maastricht when large volumes of ivory were being imported by the Dutch East India Company.  The hilt consists of four separate pieces: (1) pommel and grip (with Perseus and the chained Andromeda), (2) knuckle-guard (with the long neck and mouth of the dragon), (3) quillon-block and rear quillon (the dragon's back and tail) and (4) the (somewhat diminished) shells, carved with the dragon's wings and feet.  The wavy-edged blade was sometimes a feature of ceremonial swords.  In London, the most accomplished of the artisans who worked with ivory were members of the Worshipful Company of Cutlers.

Great moments in elaborately carved hilts: Ivory hilt for hunting sword carved circa 1740 and attributed to German artisan Joseph Deutschmann (1717-1787) for Maximilian III Joseph (1727–1777; Prince-elector of the Holy Roman Empire and Duke of Bavaria 1745-1777).

Prince Maximilian’s ivory hilt is a classic example of the Rococo ornamentation of the era (some were more extravagant) and is thought also to be a piece of unsubtle political messaging, the lion a top the grip holding a crescent moon in its claws, an allusion to recent European victories over the Ottoman Turks on the battlefields of Eastern Europe and, despite being crafted as a “hunting sword”, this blade almost certainly was reserved for ceremonial purposes.  Hunting swords were one-handed weapons which in the mid-twelfth century emerged in Europe as a distinct class.  They were characterized by a relatively short blade and were essentially a sidearm carried when hunting big (and sometimes dangerous) game, their size and weight making them a convenient weapon able quickly to be drawn and swung.  Many single-edged hunting swords featured a saw-like serrated pattern on the back edge; this was another convenience item as hunters utilized this for slicing or sectioning the catch.  The blade shape evolved over the centuries to become narrower on the first two-thirds of its length before at the end widening.  Hunting swords remained in general use well into the eighteenth century.