The Friday Sex Blog [The History of the Vibrator]

Hola mi gente,
A friend treated me to a showing of the film, The Birth of a Nation, and no sooner that I posted an FB status update that I thought some parts were powerful, I was accused of being a “rape apologist.”

There are people on social media who have not seen the film that are damning the work. If you were to ask me, I would recommend it. I will post a mini review of my impressions of the film as well as responding the critics of the film, tomorrow.

The Job Nobody Wanted

Being a (very) brief history of the vibrator)

Since before 1653, when physician Pieter van Foreest published a treatise on women’s diseases, women’s sexuality has been sorely misunderstood. To be sure, sexually frustrated women were viewed as suffering from “hysteria” (literally, “womb disease”). van Foreest prescribed what would become known as “vulvular massage” -- suggesting that a midwife or doctor could cure “hysterical” women through “the massaging of the genitalia with one finger inside,” using “oil of lilies, musk root, crocus, or [something] similar.”

This was nothing new. In the Western medical tradition, bringing women to orgasm via genital massage by a physician or midwife was a standard treatment for hysteria, an illness considered both chronic and common in women.

Descriptions of this treatment appear as early as Hippocrates and in the first and second centuries. It’s interesting that very little attention has been paid to a medical treatment for a complaint that is no longer defined as a disease but that from at least the fourth century until the American Psychiatric Association dropped the term in 1952, was known mainly as hysteria.

The fact is that all the so-called symptoms merely described what is consistent with normal female sexuality, for which relief, not surprisingly, was gained through orgasm, either through intercourse, or by means of a massage on the physician’s table. That normal female sexual functioning was described as a disease can be laid at the feet of a society in

which sexuality is seen almost exclusively through a male-dominated (androcentric) perspective. Androcentric views not only shaped the definition of sexuality, and their consequences for women, but also the instruments designed to cope with these so-called diseases.

What I found even more interesting was that many doctors detested doing vulvular massage and that’s where the role of technology comes in. According to historian Rachel P. Maines (and I borrow heavily from her book, The Technology of Orgasm, today), the vibrator emerged as a response to the

demand from physicians for a more rapid and efficient therapy for hysteria. As I mentioned, the diagnosis of hysteria was in actuality normal female sexual functioning. The male-dominant (androcentric) view of sexuality didn’t take into consideration that the androcentric ideal of intercourse failed to consistently produce orgasm in more than half of the female population.

Therefore, the task of relieving female arousal was given over to the medical establishment, which defined female orgasm as an illness. In effect, doctors inherited the task of producing orgasm in women because it was a job nobody wanted.

There is no evidence to show that male physicians enjoyed providing vulvular massage treatments. On the contrary, physicians, part of the male power elite, sought to substitute other devices for their fingers, such as the business end of an almost infinite line of impersonal mechanisms.

At the same time, hysteria presented a lucrative market for physicians. Patients never recovered nor died of their condition but continued to require regular treatment. One 19^th-century physician estimated that as many as three-quarters of the female population were “out of health,” and comprised the largest market for “therapeutic devices.”

Doctors also found it difficult to bring women to orgasm. The job required skill and attention. One doctor noted the difficulty in producing orgasm through vulvular massage. He stated that it was not unlike “the game of boys in which they try to rub their stomachs with one hand and pat their heads with the other.” LMAO

While women are expected to reach orgasm during coitus, more than half of all women, and possibly more than 70 percent, do not reach orgasm by penetration alone. While this has been better publicized by modern-day

sex-researchers, it was known in previous centuries. The majority of these women have been marginalized as abnormal or “frigid,” somehow derelict in their duty to live up the androcentric model of sexuality.

Historically women were discouraged from masturbating because it was believed this practice would impair their health, and most men in previous centuries (and even today!) have failed to understand that penetration alone is sexually satisfying to only a minority of women.

More on this at a later time.

My name is Eddie and I’m in recovery from civilization…

The Friday Sex Blog [Raising Children as Sexual Beings]

Hola! Everybody...
I have to make a choice between paying my phone or my storage. Most of my possessions are books, some valuable (to me, at least). I’d rather be without the phone. Click HERE if you think supporting my writing is a good idea. Have a great weekend. 

Sexual Upbringing in the US

Once you are exposed to sex -- you’re never able to regain innocence again -- from then on you have sexual thoughts -- you have sexual feelings -- innocence is forever gone. It encourages sexual curiosity that would not have been there...
 -- Oprah Winfrey on Teens and Dial-a-porn

I believe Oprah speaks for many US parents and the sentiment that if “you don’t try to shield them from... all this explicit kind of stuff until they’re ready to handle it, then you’re robbing them of their innocence, their one time in life to be somewhat carefree.”

At this point, I would like to make the observation that as a nation our teen pregnancy and abortion rates lead the developed world¹. Many are trying to blame this phenomenon on a perceived sexual permissiveness and lax sexual morals. My point is that the exact opposite is true: it is our dysfunctional relationship with our own sexuality, passed on to our children, that is root cause of our sexual problems. I will make the case that, contrary to the blather that passes for sexual discussion these days, it’s not permissiveness, but rather, repression that is at the root of our “sexual problem.” If you doubt me, just hold on for a second and absorb the following fact: the vast majority of teen pregnancies are the result of an adult impregnating an adolescent.

::blank stare::

Recently, there was a moral panic regarding the new teen sex “epidemic” called sexting. In fact, prosecutors across the nation began convicting teens as sexual predators. The reality is that studies and show and the experts agree that sexting isn’t as widespread as reported in the mainstream media. In addition, I find it the cruelest abuse to criminalize what is normal adolescent behavior.

I think when adults insist children can’t handle sexual content, they’re really projecting their own hang-ups about sex. We even fight about whether children should be taught about protecting themselves sexually.

What people seem to mean by “sexual innocence” is the absence of sexual thoughts, genital responses, and the awareness of how one is sexually aroused. A lot of parents would probably feel more relaxed if childhood did not have any sexual component and if sexuality magically appeared at puberty or, better yet, at marriage. Many parents have mixed feelings about their own sexuality and any recognition of sexuality in their children triggers their own unresolved sexual anxieties.

But let’s be honest about preadolescent sexuality -- were you “sexually innocent” prior to reaching puberty? Is that an accurate view of your pre- adolescent sexuality? When you were a child wouldn’t have you preferred learning more about the meaning of your sexual development rather than being blocked from such clarification by parents who were trying to keep you innocent?

Sigmund Freud shocked most of the Western world when he observed the reality of childhood sexuality over one-hundred years ago.

Almost all of the subsequent research of the twentieth century supported Freud’s assertion that children were sexual creatures. Alfred Kinsey, almost a half century after Freud, shocked the world with his own revelation of sexual responses involving erection and lubrication not only in preadolescent children but even in newborn infants. There’s even research on in utero sexuality.

I couldn’t begin to cite the overwhelming body of research supporting children as sexual creatures. Yet, this is exactly what we want to deny and what we want our children to deny. In the process, we teach our children that their sexual natures are evil and we drive the sexual conversation underground, where the shadow aspect takes over. It’s no surprise our children act out sexually, we don’t recognize, nor do we support their sexual natures. Shit, even saying children are sexual creatures is enough to get you in hot water. 

Parents who claim to be open-minded about sex exhibit sexual anxieties. When they do discuss sex with their children, they often fail even to mention the pleasurable aspect of sexual experiences. They prefer to emphasize its relational and affective aspects, and so they often fail to mention pleasure. Since intensity of bodily pleasure is the aspect of sexuality that most clearly distinguishes it from other activities, this omission surely sabotages any realistic preparation for sexual behavior. Children experiencing these bodily pleasures for the first time must wonder why their parents failed to understand these transformative feelings.

Adult anxiety about childhood sexuality is not based upon any sane assessment of what is happening in their child’s life. Rather, because parents see sex as dangerous and threatening, they conclude that kids should be kept away from it. As a parent, I can certainly understand parents can have a realistic fear that other adults may take advantage of their child. But if that is the main concern, it follows that more talk about sex is called for rather than promoting ignorance by acting as if childhood sexuality is a trampling of some mythical “natural state of sexual innocence.” It is their lack of knowledge about sex that makes children more vulnerable to sexual exploitation. 

Finally, even parents who accept a more modern view of sexuality are hesitant to prepare their child for sexuality. For example, the typical response I hear from self-proclaimed modern, liberal parents is: “I am open about sexuality with my children and I will always try to answer any question at all that they raise about sexuality.”

Consider whether we would wait for questions to be raised in any other area of great importance to our children. We don’t wait for children to ask before teaching them how to tie their shoes, or how to add, or why they should not to play in the middle of the highway. How well would children know how to read if we waited for them to ask us before we taught them? We think these are things they should know and we make sure they know them, whether they ask about them or not.

Why aren’t we adopting the same attitude when it comes to one of life’s greatest questions? Is it because we’re sexually permissive? I think not. I think it is because as a nation we are sexually repressed. And our children suffer for it.

My name is Eddie and I’m in recovery from civilization… 

Notes:

1. The United States’ teen pregnancy rate is over four times that of the Netherlands (14.1) over three times that of Germany (18.8), and almost three times that of France (25.7). The United States’ teen birth rate is nearly eight times higher than that of the Netherlands’ (5.3), over five times higher than France’s (7.1), and over four times higher than Germany’s.

The Friday Sex Blog [The Erotic Impulse]

Hola Everybody,
I’m still looking for work, got turned down by two organizations this week. The struggle continues.

A readers asks why I write about sex. This post is an answer to that question. 

The Erotic Impulse

The Birth of Venus, Sandro Bottecilli, tempera on canvas (ca. 1486)

My writing arises out of an erotic impulse that is an act of love.

 

For the most part, we live in a world of things and actions, of appointments and careers, of earning a living and cleaning the house, of embarking on tightly scheduled vacations, and going to the movies. It’s the world in which we turn to when we need to feel the ground under our feet. It’s the world we think of when we think we feel the need to reaffirm that there is something basic and immutable, something solid and unchanging that can provide a primal sense of stability in a decidedly amorphous and ever-changing world.

This gross base of existence is what we call the real world.

We all need stability in one form or another: it’s a matter of emotional survival. We need a fundamental pattern with which to define an ordered, reasonably predictable world over a reality that is essentially defined by chaos. Without an organizing principle everything becomes random, meaningless, uncertain. In order to avoid this senselessness, this sense of existential angst, we have been conditioned to turn to the world of reason, the world of conscious direction and illusory control. We call this, unequivocally, the real world, as if any other way of finding direction, setting our course, defining ourselves, and the world around us, were mere illusion.

What I have attempted with my Friday “Sex Blog” is to show that there is another, more subtle existence that lies beneath the rational world we acknowledge as real. It is a world of tremendous significance and power, no matter how much we try to discredit it as insignificant, delusional, sinful, or ephemeral. We often think this “world within the world” into nonexistence. In fact, we can (and often do) rationalize it to the point it dissolves before the analytical habit of our minds. But even as we use the tyranny of thought to think it away, we continue to feel both its power and essential authenticity. We may not be able to see it, but we cannot stop sensing it. We may not be able to easily label or categorize this world, but we remain aware that something is moving around down there, just underneath the surface, pre-verbal, pre-consciousness, something in the shadows just beyond the firelight, beyond the glare of the city lights. Perhaps some of us are attracted by what we sense out there/ down there, in there, seductive and elusive. Perhaps some of us are frightened by it. Perhaps both.

This world that we know exists, beyond the boundaries of science, the discursive mind, and reason, is what I address -- or try to address -- as the world of Eros. It is indeed a world of immense power and potential. This level of reality holds transformative potential in our lives, it contains energy, and personal growth when it is engaged with clarity and awareness. Conversely, it also holds a potential for great danger, confusion, and harm when engaged carelessly and mindlessly.

As some of us already know, the erotic world is one we have been taught to disrespect and fear so thoroughly that many have lost all but the most elementary ability to honor, trust, or vividly experience its many manifestations. Exploring the colors, shapes, and contours of erotic reality -- who we are and who we want to become as erotic beings -- something that should be a natural, organic process of personal growth, is transformed by our sexually fearful (erotophobic) culture into a spiritually and emotionally confusing project.

By necessity we have to become spiritual archeologists. We must dig through the imposed layers of sexual conditioning, digging through layers of fear, containment, control, and misunderstanding just to experience fully what was originally available to us naturally as breathing. We must become explorers simply to reclaim our rightful erotic impulse that is one of the most basic, life-affirming aspects of what it is to be human.

Hopefully, the essays, stories, personal statements, and poems of the Sex Blog will serve as an initial finger pointing at the moon. Perhaps some will gain a measure of insight, or some new perspective to help unravel the erotic Gordian Knot we find all around us. Grappling with the wonders and mysteries of Eros is one of the basic adventures of being alive. Eroticism is not something we will completely and totally understand or resolve in our lives. Rather it is the process by which we become more fully evolved as human beings.

Today we stand on the precipice of a realizing a new consciousness of Western erotic culture. A point in time when this whole aspect of life is being addressed and debated publicly as never before, probed and explored passionately with tremendous potential. It wouldn’t be an overstatement to submit that the issues around sex and eros are as fundamental as any other -- psychologically, culturally, socially, and even politically. We are at the edge of an evolutionary quantum leap and with every leap there is danger along with an emergence into a new consciousness. Much of the success of this leap will depend on whether we collectively choose to embrace Eros and all the possibility it represents, or regress once again into fearfully attempting to banish it to the shadows of our consciousness where it becomes warped beyond recognition and gains power over our actions.

My name is Eddie and I’m in recovery from civilization…