“Exploring Human Sexuality: From Research Methods to Taboo Practices”

2023-05-28 19:00:00

Even today, sexual practices are studied with difficulty.

The first place dedicated to this research was founded in Berlin in 1919. Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld, nicknamed the Einstein of sex, draws up anonymous questionnaires which he distributes to students or workers. Its statistics then make it possible to establish that the population counts approximately 1.5% of homosexuals.

Fellatio, a banal practice

The institute of sexology will be destroyed by the Nazis, but this method will inspire Alfred Kinsey, thirty years later in the United States. It collects, between 1948 and 1953, 18,000 interviews of men and women, on their sexual practices. Their answers reveal the banality of taboo practices at the time, like fellatio. The Kinsey report will be landmark.

Sexuality enters the laboratory

Less than ten years later, sexuality enters the laboratory. Over 10,000 sexual acts will be performed under the eyes of gynecologist William Masters and his secretary Virginia Johnson. The participants are covered with electrodes; pulse, blood pressure, temperature… Masters has even developed a Plexiglas cylinder capable of recording orgasm “from the inside” in women.

From now on lab sex have been strictly regulated for several years, a question of ethics. The participant is alone. Sexologists have a range of tools to study their physiological and cognitive reactions. I’eye tracking follows the gaze during the broadcast ofpornographic pictures, the vaginal photoplethysmograph, a tampon-shaped sensor, measures female sexual arousal, a thermal camera reveals the temperature of the genitals. And still the good old method of the questionnaire.

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⋙ Clitoris, orgasm, bend… Where do the words of sex come from?

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#Sexuality #sexual #relations #laboratory #supervised

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