Learn all about the History of Sex: A Variety of Topics from Activists through Vibrators
History Hysteria
The history of Sex, Pleasure and the Social Politics related to those issues is long and complicated... and often fascinating! Check out the historical tidbits below:
hys·te·ri·a
"A psychological disorder (not now regarded as a single definite condition) whose symptoms include conversion of psychological stress into physical symptoms (somatization), selective amnesia, shallow volatile emotions, and overdramatic or attention-seeking behavior. The term has a controversial history as it was formerly regarded as a disease specific to women."
Vibrators were invented in the Victorian Era as a treatment for Hysteria (needless to say, it was VERY popular!)
Historical Penises
Big penises are en vogue right now, that is to say they are trendy. There have been times in history where small penises and testicals have been popular. For example in Ancient Greece large genitalia on a man implied he was “animalistic” or non-intellectual, versus small genitalia which implied intelligence and control. This is why many Ancient Grecian art portrays the Hero with smaller genitalia (Think of the Junk on Michelangelo’s David). Many people insist race has something to do with penis size. Here’s the facts folks: Race has NO relation to penis size! This anatomical racism has many roots. A classic example is the myth of Asian men and small penises. It just isn’t true! The myth comes from the wave of Asian migration into San Francisco at the turn of the century, it started in the Bay Area and spread to Hollywood. San Francisco was a booming trade depot and a lot of trades-folk, especially from China and Japan, were doing quite well financially. And all the Caucasian well-to-do women in the Bay Area were beginning to take notice, and finding these successful foreign businessmen quite attractive. Well, what do you think happened next? A huge backlash in white media portraying Asian men as effeminate and woman-like is what happened. Asian men were portrayed as waif-ish and weak, and this demasculinization was extended to portrayals of their genitalia. This has been perpetuated for a long time, thus resulting in the myth of Asian men having small penises. Racially-based anecdotal evidence is very pervasive. During slavery in America enslaved Black men were compared to livestock. How do you think this relates to the still pervasive myth that Black men have huge anatomy?
The Kinsey Reports
The first, and last, University Sex Study was The Kinsey Reports written by Alfred Kinsey, Wardell Pomeroy and others at Indiana University in 1948. From this the report the Kinsey Scale of Sexual Orientation and Attraction was created and so was the introduction of the normalization of queerness into academic studies because Kinsey discovered a larger percentage of his participants did not identify as 100% heterosexual.
The Kinsey Scale: “The Kinsey scale is used to measure a person's overall balance of heterosexuality and homosexuality, and takes into account both sexual experience and psychosexual reactions. The scale ranges from 0 to 6, with 0 being completely heterosexual and 6 completely homosexual. An additional category, X, was mentioned to describe those who had "no socio-sexual contacts or reactions," which has been cited by scholars to mean asexuality. The scale was first published in Sexual Behavior in the Human Male (1948) by Kinsey, Wardell Pomeroy and others, and was also prominent in the complementary work Sexual Behavior in the Human Female (1953).
Introducing the scale, Kinsey wrote: Males do not represent two discrete populations, heterosexual and homosexual. The world is not to be divided into sheep and goats. It is a fundamental of taxonomy that nature rarely deals with discrete categories... The living world is a continuum in each and every one of its aspects. While emphasising the continuity of the gradations between exclusively heterosexual and exclusively homosexual histories, it has seemed desirable to develop some sort of classification which could be based on the relative amounts of heterosexual and homosexual experience or response in each history... An individual may be assigned a position on this scale, for each period in his life... A seven-point scale comes nearer to showing the many gradations that actually exist.”
Good Vibration's Antique Vibrator Museum: A Historical Sexual Treasure
Good Vibrations' founder, Joani Blank, collected antique vibrators for over 20 years and now they display these treasures at their online antique vibrator museum and in the San Francisco Polk Street store.
“The vibes in our collection date from the late 1800s up through the 1970s. Dozens of styles of electric vibrators, just like those in our exhibit, were available to the discriminating medical professional -- and very shortly thereafter, to home consumers as well.”
Check out the FREE Docent Tour Every 3rd Sunday of the month at 3:00 pm at the Good Vibrations on Polk Street. Learn more information about the Museum here!
AntiqueVibratorMuseum.com
28,000 Year Old Dildo
Ancient Dildos? Are those real? YOU BET! Dildos are not a recent invention, in fact there are sex toys that have been discovered in archeological excavations of every era of human existence. The Egyptians, the Mayans, the Greeks: they all had dildos. The term dildo was first coined in around 1400 AD and originated from the Latin for ‘dilatare’, which means ‘open wide’, and the Italian for delight, which translates as ‘diletto.’
Recently an ancient phalluses made from stone and dried camel was discovered in Germany and carbon dating verified it as over 28,000 years old. “A 7.8-inch (20cm) long, 1.1-inch (3cm) wide stone object (pictured) was found in the Hohle Fels Cave near Ulm in the Swabian Jura. The prehistoric ‘tool’ is made from 14 fragments of siltstone and dates back 28,000 years”. It has been hailed as the oldest sex toy ever discovered!
Two-Spirit Folks
“The two-spirited person is a native tradition that researchers have identified in some of the earliest discoveries of Native artifacts. Much evidence indicates that Native people, prior to colonization, believed in the existence of cross-gender roles, the male-female, the female-male, what we now call the two-spirited person. In Native American culture, before the Europeans came to the America's, "two-spirit" referred to an ancient teaching. This type of cross-gender identity has been documented in over 155 tribes across Native North America...the term two-spirit refers to the concepts of gender variant people in Native America traditions. Early explorers of North America referred to this concept as berdache. Two-spirit is preferred as it emerged from Native American people whereas berdache was imposed upon Native American's by the colonial explorers.”
Learn more at: DancingToEagleSpiritSociety.org
Marsha P. Johnson
Marsha P. Johnson (August 24, 1945 – July 6, 1992) was an African American drag queen, sex worker, and gay liberation activist. She was the first person to throw a brick and is credited with beginning the Stonewall Riot in New York of June 28, 1969. These riots are widely considered to constitute the single most important event leading to the gay liberation movement and the modern fight for LGBT rights in the United States. Once, appearing in a court the judge asked Marsha, "What does the 'P' stand for?", Johnson gave her customary response "Pay it No Mind.” This phrase became her trademark.
“Johnson was a popular figure in New York City's gay and art scene from the 1960s to the 1990s. Later in life Johnson became an AIDS activist with ACT UP. One of the city's best known drag queens and street queens, Johnson has been identified as one of the first to fight back in the clashes with the police amid the Stonewall riots. In the early 1970s, Johnson and close friend Sylvia Rivera co-founded the Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries (STAR); together they were a visible presence at gay liberation marches and other radical political actions. In 1974 Marsha P. Johnson was photographed by famed artist Andy Warhol, as part of a "ladies and gentlemen" series of polaroids featuring drag queens.
In July 1992, Johnson's body was found floating in the Hudson River off the West Village Piers shortly after the 1992 Pride March. Police ruled the death a suicide. Johnson's friends and supporters said she was not suicidal,and a people's postering campaign later declared that Johnson had earlier been harassed near the spot where her body was found. Initial attempts to get the police to investigate the cause of death were unsuccessful.”
Harvey Milk
Harvey Milk became the first openly gay person to be elected to public office in California, when he won a seat on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in 1977.
“Milk moved from New York City to settle in San Francisco in 1972 amid a migration of gay men to the Castro District. He took advantage of the growing political and economic power of the neighborhood to promote his interests, and three times ran unsuccessfully for political office. His theatrical campaigns earned him increasing popularity, and Milk won a seat as a city supervisor in 1977, his election made possible by and was a key component of a shift in San Francisco politics. Milk served almost 11 months in office and was responsible for passing a stringent gay rights ordinance for the city. On November 27, 1978, Milk and Mayor George Moscone were assassinated by Dan White, another city supervisor who had recently resigned.” Dan White was found guilty of only manslaughter and served a mere seven years for these two murders. Less than two years after his release from prison, White committed suicide.
Milk was well aware his activism actions were upsetting some member of the San Francisco community, and he even recorded a tape that was intended to be plated publically if he was assassinated:
“This is Harvey Milk speaking on Friday November 18, 1978. This tape is to be played only in the event of my death by assassination. …I fully realize that a person who stands for what I stand for—an activist, a gay activist—becomes the target or potential target for a person who is insecure, terrified, afraid or very disturbed…. Knowing that I could be assassinated at any moment, at any time, I feel it’s important that some people know my thoughts, and why I did what I did. Almost everything that was done was done with an eye on the gay movement. …I cannot prevent some people from feeling angry and frustrated and mad in response to my death, but I hope they will take the frustration and madness and instead of demonstrating or anything of that type, I would hope that they would take the power and I would hope that five, ten, one hundred, a thousand would rise. I would like to see every gay lawyer, every gay architect come out, stand up and let the world know. That would do more to end prejudice overnight than anybody could imagine. I urge them to do that, urge them to come out. Only that way will we start to achieve our rights. … All I ask is for the movement to continue, and if a bullet should enter my brain, let that bullet destroy every closet door…”
Despite his short career in office, Harvey Milk has become a San Francisco Icon and a martyr in the gay community. In 2002, Milk was called "the most famous and most significantly open LGBT official ever elected in the United States".
Dr. Ruth
Ruth Westheimer (born June 4, 1928), better known as Dr. Ruth, is an American sex therapist, media personality, and author. The New York Times described her as a "Sorbonne-trained psychologist who became a kind of cultural icon in the 1980s.… She ushered in the new age of freer, franker talk about sex on radio and television—and was endlessly parodied for her limitless enthusiasm and for having an accent only a psychologist could have."
Westheimer earned an M.A. degree in sociology from The New School in 1959[15] and an Ed.D. degree from Teachers College, Columbia University in 1970. She completed post-doctoral work in human sexuality at New York-Presbyterian Hospital, training with pioneer sex therapist Helen Singer Kaplan.
She began her media career in 1980 in New York radio with a program called “Sexually Speaking”. Dr. Ruth", Westheimer became a national personality after several appearances on Late Night with David Letterman in the early 1980s. She became known for being candid and funny, but respectful, and also for her tag phrase, "Get some". She has written several books on human sexuality, including Dr. Ruth's Encyclopedia of Sex and Sex for Dummies.
She is adorable, educated and honest and she also happens to be one of my personal heroes. Learn more on her website: DrRuth.com
May is Masturbation Month
Surgeon General Dr. Joycelyn Elders prepared and presented a report at a United Nations conference on AIDS in 1994 in which she had condoned the idea of teaching schoolchildren to masturbate as a way of avoiding the spread of the AIDS virus. An audience member asked Elders about masturbation’s potential for discouraging early sexual activity. She answered,“I think it is something that is part of human sexuality and a part of something that perhaps should be taught.” That was the end of Elders' career as America's first black Surgeon General, but the spark for National Masturbation Month. In 1995 President Bill Clinton fired the Surgeon General Joycelyn Elders.
Offended by Elders' ouster, the ever progressive, pro-sex staff of San Francisco's sex toy and education company Good Vibrations decided to find a way to keep the focus on Elders' unjust firing, and to bring talk about masturbation into the mainstream in just the way Elders had envisioned. Realizing that large number of folks lacked support and advice to help them enjoy the simple, basic act of masturbation. Good Vibrations and other Like-Minded, Sex-Positive Adult Stores sought to provide support, advice, and reassurance for people looking to open their own personal sexual horizons. And so was born National Masturbation Month.
The month of May has been growing for nearly two decades and the movement has blossomed into a worldwide event. In an era of repression and what some have called a war on women and sexual freedom, maybe events and movements like Masturbation Month will help us to get back to things that are good for us, feel good, and help us better understand each other and ourselves.
MoVember
What is MoVember? The name comes from mixing the nickname for mustaches (“Mo”) with “November”. Also known as “No Shave November” this modern annual event involves the growing facial hair (or avoiding all shaving) during the month of November to raise awareness of men's health issues related to prostate and testicular cancer. Since 2004, the Movember Foundation charity has run Movember events to raise awareness and funds for men's health issues, such as prostate cancer and depression, in Australia and New Zealand . In 2007, events were launched in Ireland, Canada, Czech Republic, Denmark, El Salvador, Spain, the United Kingdom, Israel, South Africa, Taiwan and the United States. The popularity and success of this event continues to grow!
Learn more from the Movember Foundation
World AIDS Day (December 1st)
World AIDS Day is held on the 1st December each year and is an opportunity for people worldwide to unite in the fight against HIV, show their support for people living with HIV and to commemorate people who have died. World AIDS Day was the first ever global health day, held for the first time in 1988. World AIDS Day is an opportunity to show support to and solidarity with the millions of people living with HIV. Wearing a red ribbon is one simple way to do this!
Find out where you can get a red ribbon and learn more at: WorldAidsDay.org
Roe v. Wade (1973)
“The Court ruled 7–2 that a right to privacy under the Due Process Clause of the 14th Amendment extended to a woman's decision to have an abortion, but that this right must be balanced against the state's interests in regulating abortions: protecting women's health and protecting the potentiality of human life. Arguing that these state interests became stronger over the course of a pregnancy, the Court resolved this balancing test by tying state regulation of abortion to the third trimester of pregnancy.
In June 1969, Norma L. McCorvey discovered she was pregnant with her third child. She returned to Dallas, Texas, where friends advised her to assert falsely that she had been raped in order to obtain a legal abortion (with the understanding that Texas law allowed abortion in cases of rape and incest). However, this scheme failed because there was no police report documenting the alleged rape. She attempted to obtain an illegal abortion, but found that the unauthorized facility had been closed down by the police. Eventually, she was referred to attorneys Linda Coffee and Sarah Weddington. (McCorvey would give birth before the case was decided.) In 1970, Coffee and Weddington filed suit in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Texas on behalf of McCorvey (under the alias Jane Roe). The defendant in the case was Dallas County District Attorney Henry Wade, who represented the State of Texas.
The Court deemed abortion a fundamental right under the United States Constitution, thereby subjecting all laws attempting to restrict it to the standard of strict scrutiny. Advocates of Roe describe it as vital to the preservation of women's rights, personal freedom, bodily integrity, and privacy. Advocates have also reasoned that access to safe abortion and reproductive freedom generally are fundamental rights.” - Wikipedia
Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1992)
“A United States Supreme Court case in which the constitutionality of several Pennsylvania state statutory provisions regarding abortion was challenged. The Court's plurality opinion reaffirmed the central holding of Roe v. Wade stating that "matters, involving the most intimate and personal choices a person may make in a lifetime, choices central to personal dignity and autonomy, are central to the liberty protected by the Fourteenth Amendment." But the case was a turn from the Roe decision to tie an abortion's legality to the third trimester, associating the legal timeframe with fetal viability. The Court's plurality opinion upheld the constitutional right to have an abortion while altering the standard for analyzing restrictions on that right, crafting the "undue burden" standard for abortion restrictions. Applying its new standard of review, the Court upheld four regulations and invalidated the requirement of spousal notification. During initial deliberations, an initial majority of five Justices (Rehnquist, White, Scalia, Kennedy, and Thomas) were willing to effectively overturn Roe. Kennedy changed his mind after the initial conference, and O'Connor, Kennedy, and Souter joined Blackmun and Stevens to reaffirm the central holding of Roe. Only Justice Blackmun would have retained Roe entirely and struck down all aspects of the statute at issue in Casey. Scalia's dissent acknowledged that abortion rights are of "great importance to many women", but asserted that it is not a liberty protected by the Constitution, because the Constitution does not mention it.
Viability of the fetus: Although upholding the "essential holding" in Roe, the O'Connor-Kennedy-Souter plurality overturned the Roe trimester framework in favor of a viability analysis. The Roe trimester framework completely forbade states from regulating abortion during the first trimester of pregnancy, permitted regulations designed to protect a woman's health in the second trimester, and permitted prohibitions on abortion during the third trimester (when the fetus becomes viable) under the justification of fetal protection, and so long as the life or health of the mother was not at risk. The plurality found that continuing advancements in medical technology had proven that a fetus could be considered viable at 22 or 23 weeks rather than at the 28 weeks previously understood by the Court in Roe.The plurality thus redrew the line of increasing state interest at viability because of increasing medical accuracy about when viability takes place. Under the new viability framework, the plurality held that at the point of viability and subsequent to viability, the state could promote its interest in the "potentiality of human life" by regulating, or possibly proscribing, abortion "except where it is necessary, in appropriate medical judgment, for the preservation of the life or health of the mother."
The undue burden standard: In replacing the trimester framework with the viability framework, the plurality also replaced the strict scrutiny analysis under Roe, with the "undue burden" standard previously developed by O'Connor in her dissent in Akron v. Akron Center for Reproductive Health. A legal restriction posing an undue burden is one that has "the purpose or effect of placing a substantial obstacle in the path of a woman seeking an abortion of a nonviable fetus." An undue burden is found even where a statute purports to further the interest of potential life or another valid state interest, if it places a substantial obstacle in the path of a woman's fundamental right to choice.” -Wikipedia
Lawrence v. Texas (2003)
“A landmark decision by the United States Supreme Court. The Court struck down the sodomy law in Texas in a 6-3 decision and, by extension, invalidated sodomy laws in 13 other states, making same-sex sexual activity legal in every U.S. state and territory. The Court, with a five-justice majority, overturned its previous ruling on the same issue in the 1986 case Bowers v. Hardwick, where it upheld a challenged Georgia statute and did not find a constitutional protection of sexual privacy. Lawrence explicitly overruled Bowers, holding that it had viewed the liberty interest too narrowly. The Court held that intimate consensual sexual conduct was part of the liberty protected by substantive due process under the 14th Amendment. Lawrence invalidated similar laws throughout the United States that criminalized sodomy between consenting adults acting in private, whatever the sex of the participants.” -Wikipedia
Obergefell v. Hodges (2015)
“A landmark United States Supreme Court case in which the Court held in a 5–4 decision that the fundamental right to marry is guaranteed to same-sex couples by both the Due Process Clause and the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. Decided on June 26, 2015, Obergefell overturned Baker and requires all states to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples and to recognize same-sex marriages validly performed in other jurisdictions. This legalized same-sex marriage throughout the United States, and its possessions and territories. The Court examined the nature of fundamental rights guaranteed to all by the Constitution, the harm done to individuals by delaying the implementation of such rights while the democratic process plays out, and the evolving understanding of discrimination and inequality that has developed greatly since Baker. Prior to Obergefell, thirty-six states, the District of Columbia, and Guam already issued marriage licenses to same-sex couples.” -Wikipedia
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