The VERY raunchy history of sex in the Middle Ages is revealed in a new book

From The Daily Mail:

From monks thought to have died from a lack of sex, to priests conjuring demons to lure women into bed, a new book offers fascinating glimpses into the history of sex in the Middle Ages.

Katherine Harvey's illuminating novel The Fires of Lust: Sex in the Middle Ages offers a peak into the bedrooms of ordinary mediaeval men and women living in western Europe.

Harvey is a London-based historian and author specialising in the medieval period and Honorary Research Fellow specialising in history, classics and archaeology at Birkbeck, University of London.

The book explains how the majority of ideas and attitudes towards sex and relationships were rooted in two dominant belief systems: Roman Catholic Christianity and Galenic medicine.

From women trying to reduce their breasts to look more virginal to drinking wine mixed with powdered hare testicles in a bid to conceive a son, the book reveals many astonishing practices.

As well as some surprises, like an emphasis on female pleasure when it came to reproduction, there are shocking anecdotes of brutal punishments for behaviour deemed immoral during the period.

read more here @ Daily Mail.

The Merryland books and other medieval 'obscene' materials have been digitised for archive

From Times of India:

Many libraries and such institutions have kept some material from public viewing because their content were considered obscene or too sexual. However many institutions agreed to have these collections digitised for the Archives of Sexuality & Gender, Part III: Sex and Sexuality, Sixteenth to Twentieth Centuries.

Archives of Sexuality & Gender is a series of old documents pertaining to gender and sexuality which have been collected for further study. According to their website, this "collection brings together approximately 1.5 million pages of primary sources on social, political, health, and legal issues impacting LGBTQ communities around the world. The first part was on LGBTQ history and culture Since 1940; the second part provided insight into underrepresented and often excluded communities; and third part includes materials from 1600-1940 and focuses on "fertility and sexual practice; prostitution, religion and sexuality; the medical and legal construction of sexualities and the rise of sexology." according to their press release. The newly digtised material was published in it's third section.

read more here @ Times of India

The Sex Toy Shops That Switched On a Feminist Revolution

The New York Times reviews of:

BUZZ - The Stimulating History of the Sex Toy  by Hallie Lieberman 

VIBRATOR NATION - How Feminist Sex-Toy Stores Changed the Business of Pleasure  by Lynn Comella 

The authors of “Vibrator Nation” and “Buzz” each put in time observing how sex toys are sold, so have firsthand insight into the industry. Whose take will hold more appeal depends on the reader’s interests,

In “Buzz,” Hallie Lieberman offers a broader view, taking us back some 30,000 years, when our ancestors carved penises out of siltstone; moving on to the ancient Greeks’ creative use of olive oil; the buzzy medical devices of the 19th century (disappointingly, doctors’ notorious in-office use of vibrators as treatment for female “hysteria” is urban legend); and the impact of early-20th-century obscenity laws — incredibly, sex toys remain illegal in Alabama — before digging deeply into more contemporary influences.

“Vibrator Nation” focuses more narrowly on women-owned vendors, wrestling with how their activist mission bumped up against the demands and constraints of the marketplace. Those early entrepreneurs, Comella writes, believed nothing less than that “women who had orgasms could change the world.” As with other utopian feminist visions, however, this one quickly splintered. 

‘Sex and the Constitution’

Geoffrey R. Stone, author of Sex & the Constitution, guest blogs at the Washington Post, discussing the attitude of Ancient Greeks to sex:

I thought it might it interesting in this piece to elaborate a bit on that observation and to give you at least a glimpse of that world. The following is a brief excerpt from the chapter in “Sex and the Constitution” on “The Ancient World” 

From the sixth to the fourth century B.C., Greek culture attained its most impressive achievements in literature, philosophy, politics, science and the arts. The Greeks of this era generally eschewed the legal enforcement of moral or religious notions of “right sexual conduct.” Classical Greek morality and law focused not on sexual sin, but on whether an individual’s conduct was harmful to others. To the ancient Greeks, eros was a primal force that permeated all facets of life.

read entire blog post here @ the Washington Post

About the Book:

Beginning his volume in the ancient and medieval worlds, Geoffrey R. Stone demonstrates how the Founding Fathers, deeply influenced by their philosophical forebears, saw traditional Christianity as an impediment to the pursuit of happiness and to the quest for human progress. Acutely aware of the need to separate politics from the divisive forces of religion, the Founding Fathers crafted a constitution that expressed the fundamental values of the Enlightenment.