When a scientist who studied gall wasps was asked to teach a class on marriage—that is, sex—at Indiana University in 1938, he was shocked at what his students knew and believed. Popular marital guides of the time warned against oral sex and called masturbation “an extreme sexual perversion.”
Kinsey challenged these ideas. He published a book on the subject that made waves.
Magnus Hirschfeld
During the late nineteenth century, Hirschfeld pioneered new theories of sexuality. He was interested in the study of same-sex love and desire, challenging the common idea that homosexuality was a pathological perversion or a sin. He also argued that sexual orientation was innate, just like being left-handed or right-handed.
His groundbreaking ideas were controversial in his time, but they were influential in changing the way people thought about gender and sexuality. They were particularly popular in Germany, where he wrote pamphlets and books that promoted sex reform and the rights of gay men and women.
One of his most famous achievements was the Scientific-Humanitarian Committee, the world’s first gay advocacy group. Hirschfeld founded it with Max Spohr, Franz Josef von Bulow, and Eduard Oberg in 1897 to fight against Paragraph 175, a section of the German Imperial Penal Code that punished homosexual acts.
After the First World War, he established the Institute for Sexual Science, a large villa in Berlin that served as a research center and clinic. It had medical examination rooms, a library, and even a sex museum. His research led him to become interested in transgender people, and he was known for depathologising most cases of transvestism and transsexuality. He also performed one of the world’s first gender reassignment operations. Eventually, his research and advocacy efforts made him a target of Nazi propaganda.
Karl Giese
In 1919 Hirschfeld founded the world’s first institute for sex research, called the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft (Institute for Sex Science). It was housed in an elegant neoclassical mansion that once belonged to violinist Joseph Joachim. It had consulting rooms, an auditorium for public lectures, and a huge library. It also served as Hirschfeld’s home and Giese’s apartment. Although Hirschfeld never made his own sexuality a part of his public profile, it was known that he was in a committed relationship with Giese for most of his life.
Hirschfeld and his work were controversial. Many Germans opposed the idea of public discussions of sex and homosexuality, and viewed it as decadent and immoral. For this reason, he was regularly attacked in the press.
He traveled widely, and observed gay subcultures in Paris, Chicago, and Berlin. He wrote articles on his observations, and developed theories of sexology that were revolutionary in his time.
Hirschfeld entrusted Giese with the administration of the Institute when he went on a world tour in 1930. While he was away, Giese lived with his lover, the 23-year-old Chinese medical student Li Shiu Tong. Despite some initial jealousy, the three lived together in a menage a trois. Giese later relocated to Vienna and was able to continue his studies thanks to private benefactors, including Hirschfeld and Norman Haire.
John Long
In addition to writing, Long is an accomplished musician who has performed with many of rock’s biggest names. He is also an actor, having played roles such as Mr. Bow-Tie of ‘Game Time’, Ronald Mattingly of ‘FBI: Most Wanted’ and Joe in ‘Implanted’. He is a native of New York and has been in the business for over 30 years.
According to fresh research published in Nature this week, sex as we know it began some 385 million years ago. It was pioneered by a pair of long-extinct armour-plated fish called placoderms that were the closest ancestors of all jawed vertebrates. The scientists discovered that these fossils contained structures they interpret as bony ‘claspers’, the male organs that penetrate the female to deliver sperm. This was the first example of penetrative sex ever found in the fossil record and is likely the very earliest stage of evolution for our species.
It was an awkward affair, they say, and certainly not poetic or touching. “Rather, this was done sideways, sort of square-dance style,” explains Australian paleontologist John Long. He was the team leader who found fossils in Scotland, Estonia and China of what he describes as the “world’s first sexual position” – an appendage on the antiarch placoderm that looked like Velcro with plates sticking out. It allowed the sex organ to be locked into place and, with a bit of a jig, the male could thrust his claspers through the female’s body to penetrate and fertilize her eggs.
Holly Dunsworth
Holly Dunsworth is a biological anthropologist who researches the evolution of our species, with a special focus on human physiology and reproductive behavior. She has spent many years digging at fossil sites on Rusinga Island, Kenya and other locations around the world in search of ancient fossil apes and their remains, but now focuses her work on living primates such as humans. Dunsworth teaches at the University of Rhode Island, where she uses new and original approaches in her classes designed to overturn the evolutionary misconceptions that students bring with them to college. She works to dispel myths about sex and human evolution that support sexist and racist views of the natural world and reinforce status quo inequity.
In the book Been There, Done That: A Rousing History of Sex, Dunsworth describes how some of the most common sex acts were not only legal in the 19th century but also widely accepted as part of life in general. These included prostitution and sexual abuse of children.
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