The History of Intimate Study
From the Kama Sutra to Playboy Magazine views about sex are always shifting. You need only to cross borders or jump a few decades to see that the natural enjoyments of one society are often taboo crimes of another. Sex, except for the purposes of reproduction, has been taught to be taboo. To be more open to discuss it, understand it, and ourselves, we need to learn more about biology and pleasure.
Sex is controversial because it is right where power, identity and existence of life intersect. It is a timeless subject that is never exhausted. Philosophers and scholars, like Plato, saw the sex drive as a mad subconscious effort to reunify humanity’s fractured soul while, for St Augustine, the genitals’ persistent demands were God’s retribution for the sins of Adam and Eve. Sex and the investigation of sexuality have been vital and critical.
What is Sexology?
Britanica defines sexology as an interdisciplinary science that concentrates on diverse facets of human sexual behavior and sexuality including:
sexual development
relationships
intercourse
sexual dysfunction
sexually transmitted disease
and pathologies such as child sexual abuse or sexual addiction.
Sexology has a rich and complex history. The work of Renaissance pioneers, such as Leonardo da Vinci , were a revolution in the field of human anatomy. There were new discovers into the nature, characteristics, and organs of human sex and sexual behavior. The 19th century represented an important period in the development of sexology and was marked by several significant discoveries and innovations. The second half of the century saw a proliferation of works on same-sex attraction, beginning with the work of the German lawyer Karl-Heinrich Ulrichs.
Histories of same-sex erotic desire began to appear in medical and scientific journals in the 1870s. The first decades of the 20th century also saw the appearance of Sigmund Freud’s Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality which remained influential throughout the 20th century. The last decades of the 20th century there was a great variety of approaches in the study of gender and sexuality.
The study of homosexuality, bisexuality, and transsexuality-transgenderism, encompassed under the umbrella term queer studies, became an established subject field in academia. A huge contributor to enlarging knowledge on various forms and aspects of sexuality was feminist scholarship, cultural studies, and developmental research.
The Subject of Sex
Sex drive and sex have not evolved over time, but views about what it means are always shifting. Sexuality, and sex, are conduits of power that have been manipulated, shamed, and discouraged throughout history so that the discussion around the subject seems taboo. Tight, normalizing controls have been placed on the discipline of the body and the regulation of population. The more we discuss sex and the more open we are about our sexuality, the more power and understanding is gained to the end of pleasure.