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Five Sex Experts Who Made the World a Worse Place
Thank you Vivianne’s Sex Carnival for pointing out a link to a very interesting article on cracked.com outlining in brief the lives of some of history’s most interesting sexologists and how their beliefs were just, well, messed up.
Obviously Tissout (masturbation gives you fur on your hands) and Graham (men should only have sex 12 times per year) were absolutely wrong on every front. The story with men like Havelock Ellis, however, gets a little more interesting. Havelock was a pretty liberal guy, for a virgin, and wrote about sex in ways that people hadn’t dreamed of until then. He also sheltered Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood and one of the leading fighters for birth control when she was run out of the United States by Anthony Comstock on obsenity charges. Yes, they both believed in population control but their stories are rich with complexity as they broke boundaries on many fronts, some of which we still believe in today and others that have fallen by the wayside.
Most interesting for me was the addition of Heba Kotb, a woman who has been hailed as the Dr. Ruth of Egypt. In fact, I have an old post stashed away that I never finished from when this story broke. I’m kind of glad I didn’t post it, however, because as much as Kotb is breaking boundaries by being a female talking about sex in an extremely conservative culture, Kotb is still a product of that culture (sound familiar?). She doesn’t believe in female masturbation and claims to have turned gay people straight. There’s only so much progress the cause of sexuality can make when the person in charge holds those beliefs.
I highly recommend the article - not only is it great to know a bit of the history of sexuality but you can impress your friends at parties by knowing why the Graham cracker was invented.
July 24th, 2008 at 10:48 pm
Interesting article, but I sure do disagree with including Havelock Ellis on that list. Wow. I’d put St. Augustine on there.
July 25th, 2008 at 11:29 am
I totally hear you - he’s not nearly as bad as the others although there is something to be said for dispensing advice about an activity you’ve never ever engaged in, especially when it’s something so intimate and personal.
St. Augustine should absolutely be on this - he might be worse than everyone else combined since he created the mindset that allowed Tissout et al to flourish.
July 25th, 2008 at 1:53 pm
Hello, Dallas!
I have to admit that I have a soft spot for Krafft-Ebing. It’s not because he made a lick of sense (hello, Victorian-era); rather, Psychopathia Sexualis has to be one of the most hilarious books I’ve had the pleasure of reading. The “case studies” are so off base that they’re worth their weight in comedy gold.
I think J.R. Kellogg should’ve been added to the list as well. His advice to parents whose children who masturbated were cringe-worthy. Of those, he recommended suturing the foreskin over the glans to prevent erection for boys, and pouring “pure carbolic acid to the clitoris,” for girls. That knowledge alone makes me think twice about enjoying a bowl of corn flakes.
July 25th, 2008 at 2:42 pm
Jennifer,
I hear ya - reading Krafft-Ebing and Sade back to back is one of my favorite things to do. Talk about stories…
The fucked up things people have done around masturbation could be its own blog post. In fact, I’ll have to write that up. I did a lot of reading this year on clitoridectomies and all sorts of other awful things happening in this country at the turn of the century. We’ve come an awful long way.