Sex Education

NOTE: Some of the notes for this session have been lost, meaning this blog is a little stunted until I can find them again. This was compounded due to personal and organisation problems before the show. Apologies for the lack of information. This post will be updated in the future with some better information.

Educating people about sex is a tricky subject. Previously information was passed down through generations, mother to daughter, father to son, vicar to couples, midwives to mothers.

The main problem with understanding sex way back in the day was that humans were very hairy and you couldn't see where anything went. This is part of the reason why we believe that humans have retained pubic hair: as a big arrow.

The sex education we receive currently focuses on the physical mechanical details - although with much more clarity than in the past as attitudes toward educating young people change. There is very little mentioned on the experience of sexual excitement or arousal.

In a 2000 study, the University of Brighton showed that a high percentage of 14-15 year olds were disappointed with the content of their sex education lesssons. And that's teenagers talking about sex!

The Ancient Greeks were a lot less prudish about it. Quite often young boys would learn from older men about the birds and the bees. They took it quite far, though, and many would actually get a physical demonstration. Especially as their believed this is the way that virility was passed on.

Ovid, a Roman writer, also writes rather wryly: "I abhor intercourse that does not relieve both parties. Which is why I receive less pleasure in the company of boys." Cutting.

Willheim Reich had some interesting theories on how our libido works. The libido is a word we've kept from Reich, although many on knowing its true meaning probably wouldn't use it. Reich developed the orgone theory, that the libido was actually a physical thing. He built machines to improve and measure it (called Orgone Event Accumulators). He was exiled from Nazi Germany for his beliefs. And for publishing quite explicit pamphlets on the subject.

His work was so controversial even the US government organised a state-sanctioned burning of his books. He was, to no one's surprise, a friend of Sigmund Freud.

So orgone is sexual energy or libido. If you're curiously you'll be pleased to know it's blue. That's what Reich said. It's blue. Which is also why the sky is blue. Because the sky is sexually aroused when it's sunny. In fact when the sky is cloudy or it's raining, that's a form of astronomical sexual frustration, and Reich even evented machines called cloudbusters (giant metal phalluses, natch) to focus the sexual energy here on earth and use it to blast away the clouds.

William Burroughs, Jack Kerouac and JD Salinger were all big fans of his orgone accumulators. Which is basically just sitting in a big box.