Saturday, February 26, 2011

Cleaning out the garage

It fascinating what you can come across when you are cleaning out the garage. We were recently going through some old boxes of my grandparent's.  In one of the boxes were a bunch of books. One of the books peaked my interest for purely anthropological reasons. It is titled: "Sex Life in Marriage" and was written in 1946 by Oliver Butterfield, PhD.

It is obvious that this subject was somewhat taboo because in the very beginning of the book the author cites Federal court decisions regarding sex education.  Federal Judge Augustus N Hand said: "The theory that information about sex matters should be left to chance has greatly changed... It may reasonably be thought that accurate information, rather than mystery and curiosity, is better in the long run."

Can you even imagine a court case about whether a sex book would be allowed nowadays?  There are so many books about sex now that it ridiculous.

I haven't read the book, but I find it very interesting to see how differently sex was looked at back then just by looking at the table of contents. It is also interesting to see how many of the topics touched upon are still relevant today.

Here are some of topics: Sexual Attitudes and Emotions, The Technique of Sexual Intercourse, Frequency of Intercourse, Children (and for those of my IF friends there is a section on infertility), and Overcoming Sexual Maladjustment.

Most of you probably don't care about my little discovery, but I thought it was interesting and wanted to share it.

2 comments:

Melis.sa said...

oo, i'd actually love to read that. Just to see what the author says about sex in the 1940s :)

Lindsay Logic said...

You should read it! It might be fun to read an outdated sex book. :)