Benny Hill, Lisztomania, and the barmaid’s outfit

Benny Hill got his start at The Windmill Theatre, which “was infamous for its risqué dancing girls and nude tableaux but it was a tough crowd for comedians who would make up part of the show. Not too many patrons were there for the jokes. … Hill had a strange relationship with women. He was very confused about the accusations of sexism in the latter part of his career. … But society around him had moved on and an elderly man surrounded or chased by very scantily-clad women made for uncomfortable viewing.”

From the FAQ section at Science Cheerleader: “The Science Cheerleaders are professional cheerleaders pursuing science careers who playfully challenge stereotypes, turn everyone onto science by encouraging participation in citizen science activities, and inspire the 3-4 million U.S. cheerleaders to consider careers in science, technology, engineering and math.”

“Now, thanks to The Icelandic Phallological Museum, it is finally possible for individuals to undertake serious study into the field of phallology in an organized, scientific fashion. The Icelandic Phallological Museum contains a collection of more than two hundred and fifteen penises and penile parts belonging to almost all the land and sea mammals that can be found in Iceland.”

On Ken Russell’s Lisztomania (1975): “The girls tear and claw at Liszt, who whips a harp from out of nowhere [and] … inspires them to summon out his trouser snake with a sweet siren’s song. Their lilting calls yield totally unexpected results as Liszt’s member expands and expands, finally ending up at a length of about ten feet.” Liszt is played by Roger Daltrey, the Pope is played by Ringo Starr. Somehow, Wagner and Hitler also get into this movie. Here’s a frame that I copied from the previously linked Cine-Miscreant:

The Rhine maidens in "Lisztomania"

“After outlining Marcuse’s theory of the role of Eros in social life, I discuss two pornographic Web sites that combine eroticism and social critique. I argue that Marcuse’s work is valuable for its emphasis on the intersection of sex, technology, and capitalist economy, but that it needs to be supplemented by a focus on masculinity and the male body in Internet pornography.”

“Jacobs describes an experiment in which she and a group of her students went to a Starbucks coffeehouse in Shenzhen to search for sexually explicit media on the Internet. The aim was to see what they could access through mainland China’s Great Firewall. “We were there for 30 minutes and we found all this porn using an Internet connection in a public space.” Pornography has been officially banned in China since the foundation of the People’s Republic in 1949. …
Subcultures of user-generated or DIY pornography have evolved on the Internet as a result.”

From Dyan Elliott’s The Bride of Christ Goes to Hell: Metaphor and Embodiment in the Lives of Pious Women, 200-1500: “The impact of Bernardine spirituality among the early Beguine mystics provides the impetus for a sensual, embodied, and ultimately eroticized bride of Christ. The tendency to express this spirituality somatically perhaps culminates in the matrimonial embellishments of later pious widows such as Bridget of Sweden and Dorothea of Montau.”

Karmen MacKendrick: “It is hard to see how one might have an obligation to others to feel the bite and burn of a well-wielded whip …. It is just as hard to see how it makes sense to say that one could have the right, just for oneself, to be broken out of that self, slammed against the sturdy boundaries of the ego until they break. … This shattering, exteriorizing intensity is an otherness that arises from within the focus on the body and its pleasures. … We, at least since Leopold von Sacher-Masoch first eyed the Lives of the Martyrs … have been inspired by images of the saints: Teresa, unspeakably joyous as the cherub’s arrow pierces her entrails; … Sebastian, serene with his multiple arrow-piercings; Catherine stretched and broken on the wheel.”

"Monna Vanna" by Franz von Stuck

According to Anne Dufourmantelle, “Philosophical ideas, like sexual enjoyment, exceed our control and can only come to us unbidden. Both offer the illusion that we can escape time and mortality into the timelessness of thought or the ecstatic moment of the sexual encounter. In sex we try to overcome our separateness and to connect with someone else. Likewise, philosophy tries to grasp a hidden world order in which everything is connected. Most importantly, in sex, one encounters another body, another world outside one’s own, and this unseats and transforms.”

“Although neither Severin nor his creator [Sacher-Masoch] appears in David Ives’s wildly intelligent and sometimes frightening new play, “Venus in Fur” (at the Classic Stage Company), it helps to have some knowledge of the novel and its author …. This sexual roundelay about power and powerlessness, about the imagination butting up against so-called “reality,” is played out by two contemporary characters.” That review’s a couple of years old.

Have you seen the article in the Atlantic about Jaroslav Flegr’s work, which links schizophrenia and car crashes to a brain parasite that we can get from cats? According to that article, male rats that have the parasite behave in more risky and even self-destructive ways and are more attractive to female rats than the more prudent males are. Well, now the folks at Improbable Research have linked to another of Flegr’s papers, which is called “Dominance, submissivity (and homosexuality) in general population. Testing of evolutionary hypothesis of sadomasochism by internet-trap-method,” (here’s the pdf of that paper).

“Subcutaneous Penile Insertion of Domino Fragments by Incarcerated Males in Southwest United States Prisons: A Report of Three Cases: … In each case, an incarcerated Hispanic male or fellow inmate filed a domino into a unique shape for placement under the penile skin. Utilizing the tip of a ballpoint pen or a sharpened shard of plastic to create a puncture wound, each man inserted the domino fragment into the subcutaneous tissue of the penis. … Conclusions: Incarcerated males put themselves at risk for injury and infection when attempting penile enhancement with improvised equipment.” (via Improbable Research)

“The editors, who are also contributors to this book, begin by identifying themselves as “part of a generation of women currently entering the workforce as professors, researchers, lawyers, and other professionals who also worked during some part of our lives in the sex industry” (xi). “Flesh for Fantasy is devoted to destigmatizing the sex industry, illuminating the labor conditions of strippers, and revising the cultural connotations of exotic dance” (xxxii). It challenges the patronizing attitudes about sex work that have characterized most, but not all, feminist discussions until very recently.”

“The distinction drew a line between sex and gender. Sex referred to the reproductive categories of male and female, and it was a useful biological concept, applicable to humans, nonhuman animals, and plants. Gender, on the other hand, indicates the socially constructed roles, behaviors, and traits of male and female. … The French philosopher Michel Foucault set the agenda when he lamented … that “the notion of sex made it possible to group together, in an artificial unity, anatomical elements, biological functions, conducts, sensations, and pleasures, and it enabled one to make use of this fictitious unity as a causal principle.”"

“On the evening of May 29 [1912] at Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris the audience was scandalously titillated (or titillated scandalously) as they watched Nijinsky’s erotic pleasure dancing the lead to Claude Debussy’s Prélude à L’Après-Midi d’un Faune. The audience was captive to and captivated by the great exhibitionist in a dark brown and white costume designed by Léon Bakst and based on a Greek satyr … enthralled with his erection the size of a tree trunk.” Here’s Nijinsky about to scandalize Parisians by simulating masturbation with a nymph’s scarf:

Nijinsky as the Faun about to pounce on a nymph's scarf

“Barmaid’s risqué outfits cause gender divide in Italian town: … The female mayor of the town has called the 34-year-old barmaid a threat to public order, because her miniskirts, high heels and skimpy tops are drawing male customers from up to 70 miles away, who clog up the nearby streets with their cars and park illegally.”

“A how-to guide for better masturbation that hangs in Skidmore College bathrooms is steaming up the campus in more ways than one. The [guide], published by the college’s Center for Sex and Gender Relations, encourages masturbation as “a great way to relieve some of the stress that comes with classes, finals and the never ending homework.” The poster shows a map of the body’s erotic zones and offers suggestions for heightening self-pleasure.”

David Barash on “The Evolutionary Mystery of Female Orgasm” Parts 1, 2, and 3.

Uncanny photo erotica by a Russian artist.

Here’s a kinky scene from the 1963 film of Jean Genet’s The Balcony. The cast included Peter Falk, Leonard Nimoy, and Shelley Winters. The actors in this scene are Ruby Dee and  Peter Brocco.

Frisky elk, the iceman cometh, and sharia law on sex robots

“Since 1995, [75-year-old Professor Judith] Hanna, a University of Maryland [anthropology] researcher, has helped clubs repel efforts to tax, regulate or close them, arguing more than 100 times that striptease is just as much an art as ballet. Next year, her lap-dances-are-art argument will be part of an appeal before New York’s highest court. A stripper in heels is like a ballerina en pointe, she says.”

“Reframing sexual differentiation of the brain: … The dominant model of sexual differentiation stated that genetic sex (XX versus XY) causes differentiation of the gonads, which then secrete gonadal hormones that act directly on tissues to induce sex differences in function. This serial model of sexual differentiation was simple, unifying and seductive. Recent evidence, however, indicates that the linear model is incorrect and that sex differences arise in response to diverse sex-specific signals originating from inherent differences in the genome and involve cellular mechanisms that are specific to individual tissues or brain regions.”

“Disrobing Associated with Epileptic Seizures and Forensic Implications: … Two cases involving disrobing associated with seizures …. An additional case reveals the legal consequences endured by one patient who experienced a nocturnal seizure and began wandering in an unclothed state. Collectively, these cases illustrate the medical reality of seizure-related disrobing and the related adverse effects on patients’ quality of life.”

Pharyngula on an unfortunate woman with two vaginas: “In didelphys, the vagina is divided in two by an internal septum, nothing more.”

The 1st lesbian scifi novel: “Which makes Gregory Casparian’s The Anglo-American Alliance. A Serio-Comic Romance and Forecast of the Future (1906), the first lesbian science fiction novel, all the more notable.”

“Sex Differences in Sports Across 50 Societies: … In all 50 societies with documented sports, there were more male sports than female sports; hunting and combat sports were almost exclusively male activities; and the sex difference in sports was greater in patriarchal than in non-patriarchal societies. These results show that a robust sex difference in direct physical competition co-occurs with meaningful variation in its expression.”

“The origins of [circumcision] are lost in antiquity. It was performed since 3000 BC by the Egyptians for hygienic and religious reasons. … Nowadays, circumcision is performed as a routine procedure by the Jews and the Muslims for religious reasons. The world prevalence of men with circumcision is 12.5-33%, especially in USA, Canada, Islamic people and Africa; in Europe the prevalence rate is low (in Great Britain it is 1.5%).”

Dr. Petra on average penis size: “The other problem with this area is studies differ in how they operationalize their measuring of penises. Some relied on lab based studies where men were measured by researchers, others based their work on self-reports from men …. Some studies were based on erect penis measurements; others relied on stretching a flaccid penis as far as it could be pulled and measuring that as an approximation of a hard-on.”

“[Historian Ivan Crozier] explores how koro – the fear that the genitals are fatally shrinking into the body – has been central to the definition of the ‘culture-bound syndrome’.”

“Damage to parts of the penis vital for proper erections has been repaired for the first time with the help of stem cells. In rats, the treatment restored full erections, improved blood flow and accelerated healing.”

“Ethical and Legal Implications of Sex Robot: An Islamic Perspective: … This study first review the state of the art in sex robot and its associated ethical and legal issues. Secondly the issue is evaluated from Islamic perspective together with position of Islamic law (Shariah) towards the deployment of robot in sexual activities. The social effect of robot sex to the institution of marriage in particular is examined.”

“‘Imagining Cihuacoatl’ examines the conundrum of the multiple identities of the ‘serpent woman’, a Mexican goddess, analysing her relationship with other goddesses in the Nahua pantheon. She and the others were marked in a particular sexualised and gendered manner in the Nahua world. This article argues that Cihuacoatl and the fertility goddesses cannot be conceptualised in a symbolic universe that has binary divisions between male and female, nor can they be analysed by the methods currently employed in the social and cultural history of sexuality.”

“Jonas and Wyatt Maines were born identical twins, but from the start each had a distinct personality.” “The twin boys were identical in every way but one. Wyatt was a girl to the core, and now lives as one, with the help of a brave, loving family and a path-breaking doctor’s care.”

“Airborne molecules that elicit a reaction in a member of the same species are called pheromones, and the most famous ones are potent aphrodisiacs, like androstenone and androstenol in the saliva of male boars. If a fertile female gets a whiff of these molecules, she’ll present her rear to the male, a universal gesture in wild pig patois that means, “Let’s start a family.””

“Swede shocked by backyard elk ‘threesome’: … While he’s used to seeing elk get tipsy from eating fermented apples, Lundgren said he was wholly unprepared to have a front row seat at an elk sex show taking place in his backyard. “I’d never seen anything like it. Not with elk, at least,” he said. … “An older bull would never try to mount a cow in a wide-open residential backyard at this time of year,” [said Pär Grängstedt, researcher at the Grimsö research station].”

British banker leaves Goldman Sachs to start a custom-fit condom company.

Bollywood actors and filmmakers interviewed about shooting sex scenes.

Typewrite erotica c. 1920′s, inc. some nudes.

Blind passion

Theda Bara

“This is the Tenga onanism cup, or Onacup for short, launched in sexually-adventurous Japan in 2005 and now sold in over 40 countries – with global sales of 13 million units including 1.5 million in Western markets. … Its creator Koichi Matsumoto – a car mechanic by training – says he wanted to help male toys shed their “nasty” image.“

“Natalie Portman has branded her masturbation scene in the much-anticipated movie, Black Swan, as “disgusting”. The film – about two ballerinas battling it out for the lead role in Swan Lake – contains a particularly graphic scene in which Natalie’s character Nina is caught by her mother pleasuring herself.“

Scrotal hyperthermia: “Your balls can’t take the heat from your laptop“

“Historical Highlights of Erectile and Sexual Dysfunction: an Illustrated Chronology,” including 18th-Century masturbation hysteria and Baker Brown’s female genital mutliation as a “cure” for masturbation. Here’s more about clitorectomies and other 19th-Century sexual surgeries, and a dramatic depiction of some of the characters behind this practice

“Massive Magnets Reveal More Sex in the Brain“: “They showed heterosexual male subjects a range of pictures, some of them pornographic, others “emotional” but non-sexuaual. … [A]nticipating seeing a picture, as opposed to actually viewing one, activated different areas of the cortex and also of the thalamus …. Sexual arousal was also correlated with activity in a third thalamic area.”

Man goes blind at ejaculation. From the study: “A 66-year-old man complained of recurrent transient monocular visual loss in his left eye during the climax of sexual intercourse. … Each attack of blindness lasted 1–2 min, consisting of monosymptomatic complete visual loss of rapid onset in the left eye only (no light perception). Vision remained normal in the fellow eye. The patient stated that each attack was followed by spontaneous complete visual recovery over a few minutes.”

Cats as the BDSM enthusiasts of the animal world. “In both large wild cats and smaller domestic cats, males tend to get rather rough with females.“

“Is the female orgasm an evolutionary by-product?” Scicurious attacks a recent study.

J. W. Howe on wicked nurses & blonde nymphos (1887)

Joseph William Howe in Excessive Venery, Masturbation, and Continence (1887) (also available here):

“Dogs, cats, monkeys, and rats have been known to masturbate. … [I]t is … probable that the creatures so indulging must have been taught the habit by some depraved beings of the human species.“

Howe has it in for nurses, blaming them for causing men to masturbate. You might think he means that if there weren’t so many hot women around, men wouldn’t be tempted to indulge in the secret vice. In fact, this idea gets sublimated and expressed by Howe as the strange conviction that those women who are nurses literally make men masturbate:

It is an authenticated fact … that children at the breast are often  excited by their nurses, in order to keep them quiet. The titillation [a favorite word of Howe's] of the child’s genitals produces sensations of pleasure which allay its cries. Thus the seeds of a loathsome disease are often sown.

He continues his rant about wicked nurses as follows:

At least ninety percent of the persons addicted to the vice [masturbation] owe their misfortune to the instructions obtained from domestics or from older and more vicious playmates. Or they are taught by erotic nurses …. A gentleman of my acquaintance, who for years suffered from the consequences of onanism, informed me that his first experience occurred between five and six years of age. The nurse, who slept in his room, carried him one night to her own bed, and gave him his first lesson in the art …. All nurses, good, bad, and indifferent, need watching.

He adds that a “rigorous law” is needed to “deter depraved nurses from transferring their lewdness to the innocent minds of the children.” (pp. 64-5) Wow! Talk about your ol’ take-a-repressed-desire-you-feel-guilty-about-and-attribute-it-to-the-resented-object-of-desire.

From the Morbid Anatomy blog (via Mind Hacks):

Last stage of exhaustion due to onanism (1845)

On pp. 65-6, he blames certain “gymnastic exercises” as well as working in “stores and factories”. He stresses that men who work outdoors are less susceptible of the vice. Note that the description of indoor-workers emphasizes blue-collar types (factory workers), not office workers.

On pp. 96-7, Howe disses epileptics, saying that in many of them “the epilepsy … was due to over-excitation of the nervous system by the secret vice.” On p. 98, he describes one “epileptic masturbator” who “foiled every attempt made to prevent him from masturbating. … His hands were tied behind his back,” but “the next day he was seen to slide down to the foot of the bed, and rub his perineum against the foot piece. He was finally tied hand and foot to the bed, so that he could not move a muscle.” Sadly, though, “Whenever he was released … to perform some … necessary duty, his hands … sought the neighborhood of his genital organs. He was sent subsequently to an asylum as incurable.”

While describing the local symptoms of masturbation, Howe says that in women it leads to an enlargement of the labia minora. “I have known them to measure two inches and a half in breadth and to look very much like the ears of a spaniel.“

He says later that another effect is nymphomania, “Blondes are more frequently subject to it than brunettes.” (p. 109) “The only cure” for nymphomania, says Howe, “is marriage, or amputation of the clitoris, according to the plan recommended by [Isaac] Baker Brown.” Howe notes that Baker Brown earned the disapproval of his colleagues in London for “a too free use of the operation.“

Onania, John Harvey Kellogg, and Isaac Baker Brown

Title page of Onania

While novels about dystopia are set in the future, it doesn’t take much historical rummaging to turn up dystopias in our own past. That’s the conclusion I draw from my perusal of the history of anti-masturbation tracts. We laugh at these things now, but it’s horrifying to see the extent to which solitary sex was taken to license the intrusion by some pretty gruesome “authorities” into people’s lives.

Apparently, the first publication to warn of the dangers of self-abuse was Onania, the author of which remained anonymous for centuries. According to Tony Perrottet,

The identity of Onania’s creator remained a mystery until 2002, when Berkeley scholar Thomas W. Laqueur traced the authors who had worked with the publisher Varenne before and fingered the unsavory London quack John Marten (1670-1737). This shadowy figure was a self-educated surgeon and medical huckster who had been clapped in irons for obscenity over a fanciful book on venereal diseases.

Here’s a typical page from Onania that gives a sense of its general tone, which is that of moralizing BS masquerading as science. Here’s a quotation:

It [masturbation] has been the Cause of fainting Fits and Epilepsies; in others of Consumptions; and many Young Men who were strong and lusty before they gave themselves over to this vice, have been worn out by it, and by its robbing the Body of its balmy and vital Moisture, without Cough or Sptting, dry and emaciated, sent to their Graves. (p. 6 of this pdf of Onania)

It’s funny until you discover what this led to in the 1800′s. I’ve written in a previous post about Homer Bostwick’s case studies, and of how even dear old Ida, relatively progressive though she was, saw masturbation as downright dangerous. Other crusaders against ‘self-abuse’ included Ellen G. White (she of 7th-Day-Adventist fame), Sylvester Graham (to whom we owe the Graham Cracker), and Dr. John Harvey Kellogg (whose brother started the breakfast cereal company). Here’s a write-up on Kellogg and Graham. And here’s the self-abuse chapter in Kellogg’s Plain Facts for Old and Young.

After reading excerpts from Kellogg’s work, I really hate him. His arrogance and busy-body tyranny come through loud and clear in his writing. In the above-linked chapter from his Plain Facts book, Kellogg writes this about a young man under his care: “The characteristic symptoms of disease from self-abuse were marked, but the father was positive that no influence of that kind could have been at work. … A short time sufficed, however, to secure the indisputable evidence of the fact by his being caught in the act by his nurse.“

Turning from this anecdote about his trusty guard-nurse, Kellogg tells us about a “wicked” nurse: “All of the children in a large family had been taught the habit [of masturbation] by a wicked nurse for the purpose of keeping them quiet after they were put to bed. … The crime could hardly have been a worse one had the nurse … cut the throats of those innocent children; perhaps it might have been better for the children.“

Kellogg goes on at great length documenting the spread of this soul-destroying menace. Of course, like any vice that corrupts the youth, masturbation is (he says) rampant in the schools: “Thousands have taken their first lessons in this debasing habit at school. Teachers … testify that it is often practiced even in school hours, almost under the teacher’s eyes.“

Kellogg didn’t approve of reading fiction, a vice that was wrecking havoc in the minds of the nation’s young women: “The taste for novel-reading is like that for liquor or opium. It is never satiated. It grows with gratification. A confirmed novel-reader is almost as difficult to reform as a confirmed inebriate or opium-eater. The influence upon the mind is most damaging and pernicious.” He continues, “”By reading of this kind, many are led to resort to self-abuse for the gratification of passions which over-stimulation has made almost uncontrollable.” He adds that Chaucer’s poems are especially bad in this regard.

From Pier Paolo Pasolini’s 1972 production of the Canterbury Tales:

Here’s an article with more info about the ‘great masturbation scare’ (which apparently ran from 1710 to 1910).

One of the more troubling results of this crusade was the spread of circumcision and other surgeries to combat masturbation. Robert Darby has an article connecting this scare to the normalization of male circumcision. Darby there says,

Hodges traces the origins of routine circumcision to the masturbation phobia of the eighteenth century, but more specifically to theories of degenerative disease and reflex neurosis which held that disturbances of nervous equilibrium could cause disease, and which thus targeted sensitive parts of the body as the guilty parties. In this scenario, erotic sensation was redefined as irritation, orgasm as convulsion and erection as priapism; as the most sensitive part of the penis, the foreskin was particularly suspect.

This same article (also available here) describes also the advent of mutilating surgeries to “cure” masturbation in women:

When the London doctor, Isaac Baker Brown, was expelled from the Obstetrical Society in 1867 for treating masturbation in women by clitoridectomy, his opponents referred to the operation as a “questionable, compromising, unpublishable mutilation” which would affect the women’s sex lives, leave them permanently maimed and cast an indelible slur on their honour. Brown defended himself by claiming that masturbation caused hysteria, epilepsy, mania and, eventually, insanity and death.

A still from Pasolini's Canterbury Tales

While frowned upon in the UK, Brown’s methods continued to be used in other parts of Europe and in the USA:

The gynaecologist, Isaac Baker Brown (1811-1873), and the distinguished endocrinologist, Charles Brown-Séquard (1817-1894) advocated clitoridectomy to prevent the progression to masturbatory melancholia, paralysis, blindness and even death. Even after the public disgrace of Baker Brown in 1866-1867, the operation remained respectable and widely used in other parts of Europe.

Kellogg’s concern to save youths from the evils of masturbation led him to perform surgery on a 10-year-old girl. More about these anti-masturbation surgeries in women:

Doctors corrected a clitoris in an unhealthy state using one of four surgeries-removing smegma or adhesions between the clitoris and its hood, removing the hood (circumcision), or removing the clitoris (clitoridectomy)-in order to correct a woman’s sexual instinct in an unhealthy state. Their approach to clitoral surgery, at least as revealed in published medical works, was a cautious one that respected the importance of clitoral stimulation for healthy sexuality while simultaneously recognizing its role as cause and symptom in cases of insanity that were tied to masturbation.

The Circumcision Reference Library (yes, there is one) has posted an 1867 editorial about Brown from a London medical journal. Here’s an overview of this and other draconian 19th-Century attitudes to female sexuality by a UK gynaecologist. James Whorton has a short article that covers some of the same ground, but with an emphasis on a good doctor who helped to dispel the pseudo-scientific hysteria around masturbation (one J. W. Robertson, M.D. — can’t find much info about him, though). From 1981, here’s an attempt to defend Isaac Baker Brown (by arguing that while his methods were wrong, those of his contemporaries were no better and were less scientific).

Finally, a review of Thomas Laqueur’s book, and a neat blog post on this topic.

Thomas Laqueur's book Solitary Sex

Ida Craddock’s “The Wedding Night”

Ida Craddock

Ida Craddock: “As to the clitoris, this should be simply saluted, at most, in passing, and afterwards ignored as far as possible; for the reason that it is a rudimentary male organ, and an orgasm aroused there evokes a rudimentary male magnetism in the woman, which appears to pervert the act of intercourse, with the result of sensualizing and coarsening the woman. Within the duller tract of the vagina, after a half-hour, or, still better, an hour of tender, gentle, self-restrained coition, the feminine, womanly, maternal sensibilities of the bride will be aroused, and the magnetism exchanged then will be healthful and satisfying to both parties.”

Here’s a book about Craddock. She was a 19th-century mystic from Philadelphia whose spirituality (New Age avant la lettre) led her to a relatively enlightened approach to sex ed. She wrote openly about “the act” at a time when women weren’t supposed to, partly because she wanted to change the cultural practices that resulted in many women knowing nothing about sex until the wedding night. Part of her text, “The Wedding Night” (from which all the quotations in this post are taken), is devoted to putting forward her conception of sex as a means of getting closer to God, aka “The Force”:

[T]here is another reason for union with the Divine during the act; it is that one thereby enters into fuller harmony with the universe, giving and receiving sexual pleasure, in a way undreamt of without such union. … it is a duty … which we owe to that wonderful, all-pervading Force in whom we live and move and have our being. … Do you suppose, for one moment, that there is any attribute of your being which is not an inherency of the First Cause? … Therefore the First Cause, the Ultimate Force, impersonal though it be, must be inherently capable of sexual feeling and of individual personal attraction to any given creature.

She adds: “If yoga were properly understood and practiced in the marital embrace by every newly married couple, their sex life would be, from the start, so holy, so healthy, so happy, that they would never care to descend to the methods commonly practiced among married people today—methods which involve loss of sexual self-control, tigerish brutality, persistent rape of the wife’s person, and uncleanness.”

Craddock recommended not having sex on the wedding night on the grounds that it would most likely be a shock for the woman (assuming she had been deprived of sex ed), one that was unlikely to give her much pleasure. Ida advises men as follows:

If you will first thoroughly satisfy the primal passion of the woman, which is affectional and maternal (for the typical woman mothers the man she loves), and if you will kiss and caress her in a gentle, delicate and reverent way, especially at the throat and bosom, you will find that, little by little (perhaps not the first night nor the second night, but eventually, as she grows accustomed to the strangeness of the intimacy), you will, by reflex action from the bosom to the genitals, successfully arouse within her a vague desire for the entwining of the lower limbs, with ever closer and closer contact, until you melt into one another’s embrace at the genitals in a perfectly natural and wholesome fashion; and you will then find her genitals so well lubricated with an emission from her glands of Bartholin, and, possibly, also from her vagina, that your gradual entrance can be effected not only without pain to her, but with a rapture so exquisite to her, that she will be more ready to invite your entrance upon a future occasion.

Craddock shared her contemporaries’ animus against masturbation:

There is but one lawful finger of love with which to approach her genitals, and this is the male organ. Even where there is a hymen whose orifice requires to be gradually enlarged in order to effect a painless entrance, the male organ, and not the finger, should be employed, lest a masturbative response be set up in the bride at the outset, which would be most unfortunate.

Piper at the Gates of Dawn (Paul Bransom, 1913)

A riff on Pan the randy piper

Ida also breaks the news to men that the organ of which they are “so proud” won’t always seem so wonderful to the wife:

[R]emember that that organ of which you are, justly, so proud, is not possessed by a woman, and that she is utterly ignorant of its functions, practically, until she has experienced sexual contact; and that it is, to her who is not desirous of such contact, something of a monstrosity. Even when a woman has already had pleasurable experience of genital contact, she requires each time to be aroused amorously, before that organ, in its state of activity, can become attractive. For a man to exhibit, to even an experienced wife, his organ ready for action when she herself is not amorously aroused, is, as a rule, not sexually attractive to her; on the contrary, it is often sexually repulsive, and at times out and out disgusting to her. Every woman of experience knows that, when she is ready, she can cause the man to become sexually active fast enough.

The Faun (Carlos Schwabe, 1923)

“I would add that the habit of using a wife as a convenience for a man’s easing himself of a fluid which is looked on as an excretion, is chiefly responsible for the widespread idea that the sex relation is unclean, and for the growth of Comstockism, with its baneful efforts at suppression of all enlightening literature upon the details of coition as being ‘obscene, lewd, lascivious.’”

Her reference to Anthony Comstock strikes a sad note. Comstock was a crusading official at the Post Office who attacked the distribution of “obscene” material. He was about to deprive Craddock of her freedom by having her locked away in an asylum (based on her odd but harmless idea that she was married to an angel). Rather than face life in an asylum, Craddock took her own life (in 1902).

Here’s Craddock’s helpful advice to couples who are mismatched physically (though the “electrical treatment” to which she alludes sounds scary):

Sometimes the man’s organ, which in a state of activity should be about six inches in length, is much longer and proportionately large; and if the woman’s orifice and vagina chance to be unusually small, great suffering will result unless one party or the other has been cautioned and knows what to do. In a case where the organ had attained a phenomenal length, the man married a young woman of average proportions, and almost killed her upon the wedding night. [?!?!?] Fortunately, the family physician, to whom the suffering bride referred her case, insisted that the husband should wear a pad, made as a ring, which prevented the entrance of the organ beyond a certain distance; and the couple are now living happily and have had several children. In other cases the man’s organ is small, like a little boy’s, so that entrance is an impossibility. Such a husband simply arouses and excites his wife, without being able to afford her the normal sexual satisfaction. Or, again, the organ, while of average length, may be slender, and the woman’s orifice and vagina unusually large, so that his organ does not completely fill it, and this also often fails to result in full satisfaction to the woman. In the latter case the male organ can sometimes be enlarged by electrical treatment. But I think that where the organs of either party depart very greatly from the average size, the party who is abnormal in size one way or the other is committing a great wrong upon the other party not to give due notification of his or her abnormality in advance. Such notification, if given to the family physician, could be acted upon by him and advice which in many cases would greatly lessen the annoyance of the matrimonial misfit, and preserve both parties from making a wreck of their lives.

Homer Bostwick, Ernst Gräfenberg, and the Excessive Machine

Barbarella in the Excessive Machine

I’ve been skimming through an 1847 book by Dr. Homer Bostwick called A treatise on the nature and treatment of seminal diseases, impotency and other kindred affections, with practical directions for the management and removal of the cause producing them; together with hints to young men (that link is to the whole book on Google — on pp. iv and v of which you’ll see the hand of the woman who scanned in the book — she has … um … prophylactic rubbers on her fingers).

It’s a hard-hitting tract on the evils of masturbation that would do Christine O’Donnell proud. On p.46, while describing the horrific effects of masturbation, Dr. Bostwick says, “The testes have dwindled away, and the penis has become small, and to the touch conveys a cord-like feeling.” He then adds that, “Indeed, nervous twitchings of the eye-lids, head, and limbs, are occasional consequences of long continued masturbation.” The condition of the un-regenerate wanker degenerates until (by p. 47),

He is finally either hurried to a premature grave … or, insanity, taking the hopeless form of dementia, has removed him … to the mad-house. It is safe to say, that of all the cases of incurable insanity, a large majority are caused by involuntary seminal emissions, or by masturbation.

Later, Dr. Bostwick recounts some cases from his own practice. Though much of the book focuses on men, Dr. Bostwick includes some cases involving female patients. Thus, on pp. 208-210, he quotes a young widow, Mrs. R., who — though she lived in the northeast — I like to imagine as speaking in a southern accent:

Before my marriage my imagination was wrought up to the highest points by connubial enjoyments. The venereal appetite was first excited by novels, love stories, theatrical representations, gay parties, etc. … So strong were my passions, that it was with the greatest difficulty that I could conduct myself in a decorous and lady-like manner in the presence of the other sex …. I acknowledge, with shame, that I practised self-abuse both before and after marriage …. If I cannot be relieved of this agonizing condition, I am certain that the struggle between my moral sense and lascivious longings must soon send me to the grave.

'Death of Onan' by Franc Lanjšček

Drastic measures are called for, since, as we have learnt from Dr. Bostwick, the young lady’s fears are all too likely to be borne out if she cannot still the dreaded hand of Onanistic passion (sorry). As a remedy for the poor dear, Dr. Bostwick, among other things, instructed Mrs. R to apply “six leeches to the os uteri, and … to throw up the vagina a decoction of poppy-heads and hops, four or five times a day.” He later “cauterized the urethra, and used the nitrate of silver, in the solid state and in solution, to the excoriated surface of the vagina and vulva” (p. 210). Happily, Dr. Bostwick reports, Mrs. R made a full recovery and re-married [because, you see, a passionate woman who masturbates is so unwell as to be unfit for marriage].

Another case (pp. 211-212) invovles Miss D, a woman “of a tall, spare, and uncomely appearance, and of filthy habits.” On examination, Dr. Bostwick discovers that,

On the inside of the right labium, there was a large growth of warty vegetations …. The urethra pouted out, and was indurated and inflamed; the clitoris was very much elongated, but it was in a dry and hardened condition.

Fear not — she, too, makes a full recovery under the doctor’s guidance.

Homer Bostwick’s other cases include a man with immense testicles who wants to be castrated and a convicted rapist who castrates himself.

Lest it be thought that Bostwick’s attitudes were an inevitable product of his age, note that little more than thirty years later, Mark Twain would pen (but not deliver) his glorious defence of masturbation, ‘Some Thoughts on the Science of Onanism‘ (which was posthumously published).

Skipping ahead several decades brings us to the inspring work of Ernst Gräfenberg (after whom the G-spot is named). Someone has devoted a whole site (with a blog) to him and his spot. The 1950 paper in which Gräfenberg posited the G-spot is on-line. It’s called ‘The Role of Urethra in Female Orgasm‘ and was originally published in the International Journal of Sexology (which was discontinued in 1955).

The G-spot is intimately bound up with female ejaculation, the controversy around which could be the basis for an opera. A tragic one, though, since the G-spot’s low profile makes it so difficult to locate.

“Female ejaculation has been a topic of debate for more than 50 years. … [R]ecent careful investigations have confirmed both the existence of semen-like liquid emission and the existence of the female prostate (Skene’s glands) as its primary source.“

“This fluid can sometimes eject under pressure and thus resemble male ejaculation. It may presumably originate in the vagina, in the bladder (orgastic urination) or in the paraurethral (Skene’s) glands, labeled by some authors as the female prostate.“

“The G-spot is an ill-defined region, located on the anterior vaginal wall, in its upper outer third, suggested by Ernst Grafenberg …. The G-spot is thought to be the vaginal part that lies beneath the posterior part of the “female prostatic gland”, which, when stimulated, results in female ejaculation during orgasm.“

“One of the seven women reported ejaculation at orgasm …. On MRI, paraurethral glands could be visualized in six of the seven patients. There was no relation between glandular volume and ejaculation status.“

“Ancient Indian texts in sexology (kamaśastra) from the 11th century onwards prove that their authors knew about the area later termed the “Gräfenberg zone” in Europe, as well as about the female ejaculation connected with the stimulation of this area.“

Kamasutra illustration

“In ancient Asia female ejaculation was very well known and mentioned in several Chinese Taoist texts starting in the 4th century. … First mentioned in a 7th century poem, female ejaculation and the Gräfenberg spot (G-spot) are described in detail in most works of the Kāmaśāstra. In ancient Western writings the emission of female fluid is mentioned even earlier, depicted about 300 B.C. by Aristotle and in the 2nd century by Galen. Reinjier De Graaf in the 16th century provided the first scientific description of female ejaculation and was the first to refer to the periurethral glands as the female prostate.“

“The female ejaculate had lower levels of creatinine, but had elevated levels of prostate specific antigen, prostatic acidic phosphatase, prostate specific acid phosphatase, and glucose. … We hypothesize that female ejaculation has a unique function in producing a secretion into the urethra that provides protection from urinary tract infections (UTIs). We further predict that female ejaculate contains antimicrobial compounds including elements such as zinc.“

“Every woman has the right to feel sexual pleasure. … The vulva is formed by the labia majora and vestibule, with its erectile apparatus: clitoris (glans, body, crura), labia minora, vestibular bulbs and corpus spongiosum. … Knowledge of the embryology, anatomy and physiology of the female erectile organs are important in the field of women’s sexual health.“

Jane Fonda in Barbarella

I have a thing for research that involves orgasms in a lab. Here are two previously cited cases. Here’s another, and now there’s this new one reported by Pharyngula:

“‘In one experiment we asked women to self-stimulate and then raise their hands each time they orgasmed. Some women raised their hands several times each session, often just a few seconds apart,’ Professor Komisaruk said.” SciCurious has more about this case.

And I found this older one:

“Sexual arousal by clitoral self-stimulation was used by healthy, young adult women volunteers (n =28) to induce orgasm in the laboratory. [italics added] … The mean measured orgasm duration was 19.9 seconds (SD, ± 12, n =26). For 14 subjects, their estimate of the duration of their orgasms (12.2 ± 9.8 seconds, mean ± SD) was greatly underestimated compared with the measured duration (26 ± 14.6 seconds). This result indicates that data obtained on the duration of orgasm from questionnaires or interviews have suspect validity.“

“More detailed examination of responses during intercourse revealed that, while female orgasms were most commonly experienced during foreplay, copulatory vocalizations were reported to be made most often before and simultaneously with male ejaculation. These data together clearly demonstrate a dissociation of the timing of women experiencing orgasm and making copulatory vocalizations and indicate that there is at least an element of these responses that are under conscious control, providing women with an opportunity to manipulate male behavior to their advantage.“

More Polly-Jean:

Schéhérazade, Sir Henry Head and the Ladybirds

Cover for an LP by Scheherazade

I wish I knew what artist made this cool cover for a recording by a Japanese band called Scheherazade. I hit upon it while looking for images of the ballet Scheherazade, based on Rimsky-Korsakov’s music. The choreographer was Michel Fokine. The ballet’s first performance starred Ida Rubinstein and Vaslav Nijinsky.

Findings from the National Survey of Sexual Health and Behavior (a 140-page pdf)

“There has been a transition for women in direction towards a stereotypically ‘male’ personality profile, but not at the expense of traditionally socially important female traits. Comparisons in psychological profile subscales showed an increase in dominance, exhibition, aggression and achievement.“

“Using … data from a high-fertility polygynous human population of Senegal, we first show that extraversion, a personality dimension predicting men’s mating behavior in this population, is associated with inter-individual differences in testosterone profiles, with men in the top quartile of extraversion distribution having 29% higher testosterone levels.“

“This study conducts an exploratory investigation of various post-coital behaviors that the authors propose may reflect the divergent adaptive reproductive strategies of each sex as understood from an evolutionary perspective.“

‘What the presence of attractive young women can do to men‘

The scientific case for masturbation — 4 theories about its adaptive function

The best cover for a Scheherazade LP or cd, c. 1963.

“A recent study suggests that daily masturbation and ejaculation can reduce the amount of accumulated DNA damage in sperm by 12%.  Therefore wasting sperm into a sock can actually improve the mobility of sperm and increase fertility.” Here’s the study

Some history of masturbation: “Freud famously concluded a 1912 symposium on masturbation for the Psychoanalytical Society in Vienna by saying, ‘I think the time has come to break off. For we are all agreed on one thing–that the subject of masturbation is quite inexhaustible.’“

Mind Hacks posted on erotic asphyxia. Here’s a review of the literature on autoerotic deaths between 1954 and 2004. Here’s a pdf of the first paper that I could find on this topic (in the British Medical Journal, 1960). After a gruesome description of the circumstances in which four men had died, the authors venture a Freudian hypothesis — somehow, the men wrapped themselves in plastic in order to simulate a return to the womb. (!) Then the authors make a more sensible claim: “A much less elegant and more superficial explanation is that these people were trying to achieve some undifferentiated thrill or excitement from partial suffocation or anoxia. This factor may have existed but it does not explain the transvestism, sexual arousal, or complete enclosure of the body. It is an interesting reflection that the sexual impulse in man is so protean in its manifestations that a technical advance resulting in a new packaging material can result in a new perverse manifestation.”

Here are some more recent (but equally sad) cases involving less typical autoerotic causes of death: “These modalities include ligature around the thorax or abdomen, plastic bags covering the face, electrical current, inhalation of a toxic gas or chemicals, or partial or total submersion, known as aquaerotic asphyxiation. This study highlights 11 cases of atypical autoerotic death, including asphyxia with a plastic bag, electrocution, and inhalation of butane and nitrous oxide (N2O).” Two more atypical cases: “We here report the case of a 34-year-old man who died due to asphyxia, secondary to body wrapping in the largest and most complex plastic bag ever involved in a published case of autoerotic death“; and “Unusual death of a 24-year-old man, involving propane inhalation and plastic bag suffocation, is described.“

Back to a less depressing topic: You get a sense of the erotic nature of Scheherazade from this review of a perfomance by Anna Kisselgoff in the NY Times (Jan. 18, 1981). Kisselgoff summarizes part of the narrative as follows: “The wives bribe the chief eunuch to release the slaves who spring out to make love to the women. The leader of the orgy is Zobeide’s ‘golden slave’ …. It is common to think of ‘Scheherazade,’ with its frank acknowledgement of sexual passions, as an early expression of Freud’s century. To most Anglo-Saxon audiences at the time, it was inconceivable that a powerful queen would bother with a black slave. Russians brought up on tales of Tartar harems and white princesses had no trouble with the idea.” Here’s Yvonne de Carlo as she appeared in a 1947 movie called Song of Scheherazade.

Yvonne de Carlo in Song of Scheherazade (1947)

“Based on the results of my study, there is a percentage of women (just over 30 percent) who feel powerful when performing fellatio. Apparently some women find it empowering and believe that it can wield a lot of power.“

Sir Henry Head’s self-experimentation: “We then discovered that the glans penis responded to cutaneous stimuli in that peculiar manner with which we were already familiar from our study of the first stage of recovery after nerve division. … When … [the tip] was dipped into water at 40° C, no sensation of heat was produced, but [Head] experienced an unusually disagreeable sensation of pain. … But, as soon as the water covered the corona without reaching the foreskin, both cold and pain disappeared, giving place to an exquisitely pleasant sensation of heat.“

“For women not using hormonal birth control, it would appear that some information regarding female fertility appears to be encoded in gait.“

“Women with higher estradiol levels in the peri-ovulatory and luteal phase of the menstrual cycle were correlated with higher senses of desirability and a lower relationship commitment in women.” But SciCurious has objections.

Yvonne de Carlo in her most famous role as Lily Munster

“In a study of 443 women, a pair of British researchers discovered that women were more likely to make impulsive purchases during the weeks between ovulation and menstruation, known as the luteal phase of the menstrual cycle.” Here’s the study

“Now let’s look a little deeper into the action of those neurotransmitters [dopamine and oxytocin] and how we can manipulate their action to extend the neurological orgasm for as long as possible.“

A device for accurate breast volume measurements

William Saletan on anal sex

Angus McLaren, an academic explorer of the history of sexuality

“A woman’s race/ethnicity and socioeconomic status impact whether health care providers recommend one of the most highly effective forms of contraception.“

On Carl Djerassi, inventor of the pill

Vogue‘s first celebrity models

Alexander Lee’s ‘Short History of Desire‘

A list of abortions in literature

More about the trial of Lady Chatterley’s Lover

“Depicting the harem as a home rather than as a sexual prison, books written by women from the progressive elite of late Ottoman society challenged the prevailing stereotype of harem women as ignorant, indolent odalisques whiling away their days awaiting their lord and master.“

Ida Rubinstein in Scheherazade (1910) .jpeg by M. Evans & Theatrex

Male bonobos need their mommies to help them hook up with female bonobos

“The male [chimpanzee] will pluck a leaf, or a set of leaves, and sit so the female can see him. He spreads his legs so the female sees the erection, and he tears the leaf bit by bit … dropping the pieces as he detaches them. Sometimes he’ll do half a dozen leaves until she notices. … [S]he sees the erection and puts two and two together, and if she’s interested, she’ll typically approach and present her back side, and then they’ll mate.“

“Exposure to a chemical found in food packaging and other plastics, BPA, can reduce the quality of men’s semen” More here

“A non-stick coating for a substance found in semen dramatically lowers the rate of infection of immune cells by HIV“

Female boa constrictors can reproduce without mating: “Large litters of all-female babies produced by the “super mom” boa constrictor show absolutely no male influence — no genetic fingerprint that a male was involved in the reproductive process.“

“But there is an interesting property of sea squirt pornography and local oceanography that may have consequences in the debates surrounding marine reserve design.“

‘The Ladybirds: the world’s first and only all-girl topless band‘; more here.

Rachel Maines | Technology Historian | Big Think

The “Technology of Orgasm” author recounts the outrageous history of female genital “manipulators,” from water-powered turbines to the contraption called the Chattanooga.

The Steam-Powered, Coal-Fired Vibrator | Rachel…, posted with vodpod

Recent (or not) sex news

Mata Hari

Mata Hari, who pioneered the ‘honey trap’ and Greta Garbo’s Mata Hari movie (1931), which is apparently hard to find in its uncensored form

Japan’s penis & vagina festivals: “These are folk rites going back at least 1,500 years, into Japan’s agricultural past. They’re held to ensure a good harvest and promote baby-making.”

Review of Oniroku Dan’s Season of Infedility

Sex toys from the 1700′s sold at auction: ‘Auctioneer Wendy Wood said: “You might laugh but it’s a good opportunity for investment. You won’t see another one in a long time.’”

The feminist porn awards, which were covered by Violet Blue

The plight of a feminist sex submissive

The maker of Baise-Moi, Virginie Despentes, is interviewed

An interview of the folks who made the MRI video of two people during sex:

‘Vacuum cleaner injury to penis’: “Five cases of significant penile trauma resulting from this form of masturbation are presented.” (ht NCBI)

More about sperm rivalry in insects and in voles

Angry Mouse’s righteous sex rant at Daily Kos

A catalogue of unconventional sex conventions

“Disease-free society helps effeminate men attract women“

Classic Spanish novel, La Celestina (1499): “Celestina is a procuress who restores hymens and sells the body of young maidens as virgins – over and over again.”

Mistresse Matisse on M. Febos’ Whip Smart

How Jewish editors helped shape Playboy‘s mind

An issue of Granta devoted to sex

“On the pleasure of having naked women read to you“

Shhh! A survey of librarians about sex

Formicophilia, “Fetish of having bugs crawl around on your genitalia“

Olivia Judson on evolving sexual tensions (lots on sage-grouses)

Car crash leaves woman in a state of continual sexual arousal, or (to use the technical term), Persistent Sexual Arousal, which was covered by ABC News and is thought by some to be associated with increased soy intake. It’s been re-named Persistent Genital Arousal Disorder. Here’s another case, allegedly caused by a Wii Fit injury

Multiple Sclerosis can also cause hypersexuality

Sleeping Beauty Paraphilia — after head trauma, a man gets aroused by viewing sleeping women. “This case report highlights the potential link between paraphilia, deviant and aggressive sexual behaviour, neurological disturbance and self-representation.”

Epileptic seizures have been known to cause orgasms. In one case, the seizure-orgasm was triggered by toothbrushing

In the late 1890′s, half a century before Kinsey, Dr. Clelia Mosher surveyed women about their sexual practices

Mind Hacks on an article about heart attacks and sex: “All reported cardiac deaths surrounding sexual conduct involved extramarital sex, suggesting psychological stress as an added factor.”

The sad story of a sportswriter with gender dysphoria

The hijra of south Asia: “Asked whether the hijra family members were all congenital eunuchs and hermaphrodites, Nanni, 35, insisted that they were all born that way.” More on the hijra

Gandhi’s sex life

A book about the sexploits of Western men from Asia to North Africa over the past several centuries

Candy Barr was hot! And perky, very perky!