by yoursl | Sep 25, 2016 | Sex and Art, Sex and Culture, Sex and History, Sex and Religion |
My partner Dutch and I were sitting down to watch restored films in our friend Todd’s backyard last night when someone in the audience asked for a bottle opener. Todd’s new neighbor, a young blonde woman, whipped out a bottle opener which was penis-shaped. Of course, I had to ask her where she found such an item. “Spain,” she said as she handed me the opener to admire. The opener was beautifully decorated wood with a lovely shape that fit in my hand perfectly. It was painted black with scrollwork in gold and white with the tip of the penis etched and painted gold. Quite simply, it was a beautiful piece of working art. Even Dutch agreed that our simple unadorned wooden shoe bottle opener from The Netherlands doesn’t compare to this woman’s penis bottle opener. A Google search revealed that her penis opener can be found in Fuerteventura, Canary Islands, Spain. Sadly, I cannot locate any history on why the penis is offered as a bottle opener — if it is a tourist money-maker or if there is a cultural reason. My internet search revealed that other penis bottle openers are sold as souvenirs in Bali and Greece as well. Travelers to Australia can purchase a furry kangaroo scrotum bottle opener. The genuine kangaroo balls are harvested and processed according to Australian National Parks and Wildlife Service rules and regulations, meaning the kangaroo scrotums are harvested only after the kangaroos are killed for other reasons, such as for meat consumption. Visitors to The Icelandic Phallological Museum, located in Reykjavik, Iceland, can enjoy the world’s only museum dedicated to...
by yoursl | Apr 7, 2016 | Dating/Relationships, Men's Sexual Health, Sex and Culture, Sex and History, Sex and Literature, Sex and Science, Sexual Discussion, Sexual Exploration, Women's Sexual Health |
Historically, America has held a somewhat negative societal view of masturbation that can be traced back to several centuries ago. In America in the 18th and 19th centuries, the perfect storm collided to help condemn masturbation as being a degenerate act. Decades of the Judeo-Christian tradition of condemning masturbation as being a misuse of one’s sexuality combined with the general prudishness of the Victorian era, which lasted from 1837 to 1901, and with the Great Awakening religious revivals of the early 18th century to the late 19th century to land masturbation into the banned acts arena. Literary works during the Victorian era helped move masturbation from being just a socially wicked act to being one of a physical and mental health nature that required medical treatments and even cures to eradicate. One of the biggest opponents of masturbation during this time was American physician Dr. John Harvey Kellogg (1852-1943), who thought sex was detrimental to our physical, emotional and spiritual well-being. He had evener stricter views on masturbation. In addition to sharing his anti-masturbation and anti-sex beliefs with others, Dr. Kellogg physically lived his beliefs and values. It is believed that Dr. Kellogg was celibate, that he and his wife never consummated their marriage, that they kept separate bedrooms during their entire marriage and that all eight of their children were adopted. Dr. Kellogg was raised as a devote Seventh-day Adventist and kept to his faith all throughout his life. He went to medical school before returning to his home state of Michigan where he would eventually practice as a physician at an Adventist-operated sanitarium. In his written work...
by yoursl | Mar 24, 2016 | Just For Fun, Sex and History, Sexual Discussion, Women's Sexual Health |
I recently watched an episode of Game of Thrones in which two characters were conversing about a bride being free to marry another man based on an absurd notion. Basically, since the purported virgin bride did not bleed on the bedsheets on her first wedding night, the first marriage was never consummated and she could now be married off in a second marriage. Let’s ignore the fact that this second marriage would unite two prominent families and just focus on debunking what I like to call the virgin myth. Let’s start with a solid fact: not every virgin bleeds during her first vaginal sexual intercourse experience. Another solid fact is that nearly every female human is born with a hymen, which is a piece of fringed tissue that is filled with blood vessels and located in between the two folds of the vulva. The hymen develops during the third or fourth month of pregnancy, and the reason for its development is still a bit of a mystery. Hymens, just like vulva, come in a wide variety of shapes and sizes, which means no two are alike. The hymen doesn’t actually cover the vaginal opening. Instead, the hymen creates folds that cause the opening of the vagina to be smaller in size than it would be without a hymen being present. The size of the hymen opening can be small enough to prevent some women from using tampons during menstruation. In rare cases, the hymen opening is too small and requires a minor surgical procedure to open it enough to allow for menstruation blood to pass out of the vagina....
by yoursl | Mar 10, 2016 | Sex and Culture, Sex and History, Taboo Topics |
Derived from the Greek word eugenes or “good birth,” eugenics is a set of beliefs and practices that aim at improving the genetic quality of the human population or the science of improving a human population by controlled breeding to increase the occurrence of desirable heritable characteristics. If those definitions sound familiar, they should. Adolf Hitler and his fellow Nazis used the concept of eugenics to persecute and murder Jews, Roma (Gypsies), Poles (people from Poland), Soviet prisoners of war, Afro-Germans (people of African descent living in Germany), Jehovah’s Witnesses, homosexuals and people with disabilities in their quest for racial superiority during Hitler’s reign from 1933 to 1945. The persecution of homosexuals by the Nazis is the topic of a previous Your Sexy Librarian blog, The Persecution of Homosexuals in the Holocaust. Eugenics did not start with Hitler or his henchman Dr. Josef Mengele. The Nazis were inspired mostly by America’s history of successfully using eugenics to keep certain populations from reproducing. The term “eugenics” was coined by Englishman Francis Galton (1822-1911), who was a half-cousin to Charles Darwin (1809-1882), the father of evolution. In Galton’s first academic study of eugenics, he analyzed the characteristics of England’s upper class and concluded they were hereditary and could be passed down from generation to generation. In 1869, Galton published a book called Hereditary Genius in which he advocated a selective breeding program for humans akin to the breeding programs used by pedigree dog and horse breeders. The English eugenics movement focused on selective breeding for positive traits while the American movement focused on eliminating negative traits. The American eugenics movement...
by yoursl | Dec 17, 2015 | Sex and History, Sex and Science, Sexually Transmitted Diseases, Syphilis |
Mankind was wrecked by the sudden appearance of syphilis in the late 1490s. At its onset and for centuries later, this new disease caused widespread epidemics throughout Western Europe and would eventually threaten nearly the entire world’s population at one time or another. Syphilis is a sexually transmitted infection caused by the bacteria Treponema pallidum, which is a corkscrew-shaped spirochete (a phylum or category of double-membrane bacteria). The exact cause of syphilis, Spirochaeta pallida, was co-discovered in 1905 by German zoologist Fritz Richard Schaudinn and German dermatologist Erich Hoffmann while the pair were working at the Berlin Charité, a large teaching hospital. When syphilis first appeared in the 15th century, its symptoms were much more severe than those of present-day syphilis. The early symptoms included genital ulcers followed by fever, general rash and joint and muscle pains. Weeks or months later, symptoms included large, painful and foul-smelling abscesses and sores, or pocks, all over the body. These sores would become ulcers that could eat into bone and into the lips, nose and eyes as well. Sometimes sores would appear in the mouth or throat and death would occur. People afflicted with the disease suffered from extreme bone pain, especially at night. Immunity to disease occurs after exposure to the disease, whether it be from exposure to the disease itself or to dead or weakened disease cells found within vaccines. Because the 15th century population had yet to develop immunity to syphilis, the disease spread quickly and had a much higher and quicker rate of morbidity than its present-day version. There are two theories as to how syphilis came into...
by yoursl | Dec 3, 2015 | Dating/Relationships, LGBT, Sex and Art, Sex and History, Sexual Discussion, Sexual Exploration |
People have been fascinated with movies for more than a century now. The first movie theatre devoted to showing moving pictures was the Nickelodeon, which opened on June 19, 1905, in Pittsburgh, Penn. The name Nickelodeon was a combination of the price of admission, a nickel, with the ancient Greek word for theatre, odeon. The theatre’s owner Harry Davis, a vaudeville impresario, bought a machine called a cinematograph from a Frenchman named Lumiere and set up a storefront theatre where everyone could afford the admission price. Davis showed a 10-minute thriller, The Great Train Robbery. A bonus scene at the end of the short film featured the film’s bandit, actor George Barnes, pointing his revolver at the camera lens and shooting point-blank directly into the camera. Audiences were terrified, but the love of movies was born as a result of this unexpected drama. Davis’ low overhead meant he could show the movie several times a day to thousands of people. Within months, Davis had opened more than a dozen Nickelodeons throughout Pittsburgh. Movies are magical in that they allow us to trade our own realities for new ones, even for just a few hours, and that they can give us a different perspective of the world around us and of other people in lifestyles different than our own. Currently showing in theatres is The Danish Girl, which may make some people uncomfortable due to its controversial subject matter. The Danish Girl, released in the United States on November 27, is about artist Einar Wegener (Eddie Redmayne), who prepares to undergo one of the first sex-change operations with...
