Sociocultural Considerations

Abstract

Since the 1970s the term “sexual medicine” has become common usage [1]. Interestingly and appropriately enough, the introduction of the 2012 ESSM Syllabus of Sexual Medicine [2] stresses that the use of the term “sexual”, understood, however, simply as an adjective referred to sexual or gender identity, was borrowed from studies of botanical taxonomy at the beginning of the nineteenth century [3]. And even after being transferred to the context of a discipline that analyzes human sexuality, the term was at first employed exclusively in the study of reproduction.

Ἔρoς δ᾽ ἐτίναξέ μoι

φρένας, ὠς ἄνεμoς kὰτ ὄρoς δρύσιν ἐμπέτων.

Saffo – Ereso – 630 avanti Cristo – Leucade 570 avanti Cristo

Eros shakes my mind

like a mountain wind falling on oak trees

Paul Julius Moebius −1835–1907

Über den phisiologische Schwachsinn des Weibes 1900

Nature holds the maiden in the obscure vision of her instincts. Her repugnance for men, the repulsion that inspires her sensuality, appears to the consciousness of the virgin as absolute, enduring feelings … The better a girl is, the more firmly she is convinced that she has no desire… and that her longings should be turned towards the ideal.

“The Mental Inferiority of Woman,” 1900, preface to the third edition

. .. yes and how he kissed me under the Moorish wall and I thought well as well him as another and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes.

from Molly Bloom’s monologue in James Joyce, Ulysses – Paris, 1922