SOME STRANGE PRACTICES

Homosexuality has prevailed in almost all countries from the very ancient times. Male prostitution has been common e1l over the world. We read in the works of Aristo­phanes: "And they say the boys do this very thing, not for their lovers, but for money's sake. Not the better part, but the sodomites ; for the better part do not ask for money."

Bancroft writes about the Red Indians of California that "when the missionaries first arrived in the region," men were "dressed as women and performing women's duties for unnatural purposes ......A Kadiak mother will select her handsomest and most promising boy, and dress, and rear him as a girl.,... Arriving at the age of ten or fifteen years, he is married to some wea1thy man who regards such a companion as a great acquisition."

Religious Prostitution

Able Dubois writes about certain parts of India during the middle ages: "While the image of Venkatesvara is bore through the streets on a magnificent car, the Brahmi ns who preside at the ceremony go about the crowd and select the most beautiful women they can find, demanding them of their husbands or parents in the name of Venkatesvara for whose service, it is asserted, they are destined."

love in Prisons

Joseph F. Fisherman states that "every year a large number of boys. adolescent youths and young men are made homosexuals, either temporarily or permanently, in the prisons of America.''

Medical Specimens

In the museum of the Pathology Depart­ment, King George's Medical College, Luck­now University, arc preserved two specimens, removed from the rectum of men, who had pushed these up through the anus. One of these is the stem of a young banana plant, mea­suring at the time of extraction ten and a quar­ter inches in length and three and a half inches in circumference. The history entered in the catalogue of specimens is that a man aged 30 years was advised by a quack to insert into rectum a part of the stem of a banana plant as a cure for spermatorrhoea (passing of semen in the urine)... The second article, removed from the rectum of another man, is what looks like a bottle of country liquor. The length of the bottle is nine and a quarter inches.

-GEORGE RYLEY SCOTT

Encyclopedia of Sex

Fetichism

Fetichism is a sexual perversion in which sexual desire is awakened only at the slighter touch of a certain article or form of dress, such as the shoes, gloves, lipstick, etc. There are men who are sexually attracted by women wearing excessively high-heeled shoes, a fact with which every experienced prostitute is thoroughly acquainted. Modi quotes the case of a young servant of a European lady "who on the pretext of cleaning and arranging her dressing room, would enter it every morning after she left it, and would use her pyjama for exciting his sexual appetite until he would discharge and wet it with semen. He was at last found out and dismissed from service."

Sadism

Some people obtain sexual pleasure through the infliction of cruelty. the witnessing of cruelty. or the imagination of cruel acts. This abnormal pleasure is known as sadism. The sadist loves to beat, bite, whip and torture his sexual partner in every possible way. Cruelty in itself docs not constitute sadism; there must be sexual pleasure associated with it. "Slaps and blows are accepted as caresses; scratches and bites form part of the love play", writes Kraffl-Ebing who coined the term "sadism" based on the novels of Marquis de Sade.

Eunuch

An eunuch is 11 castrated male. In olden days these were used in palaces as servants to preserve the chastity of the ladies. Hirschfeld refers to eunuchs in Indian cities as male prostitutes. He says, "They sit on the bal­conies by bright lamp-light just as the female prostitutes do, and they look exactly like women."

Right of the Wedding Night

Mackal gives some interesting examples of the right of the wedding night in Sexology. In the mountains of Turkey. after the wedding ceremony. When all the guests had departed. the priest cried out in a loud voice, U I am the. great but, not a fattened ox!" The girl stepped forward and said, "I am the young cow!'' The lights were extinguished, the defloration and the orgy began.

Among the Berbers of Morocco, "Some­times the bridegroom. accompanied by the members of his family and women. went to a neighbouring village to fetch a man to spend the first night with the bride." When they brought the man. the women sang, "Rejoice, O, lady, and continue to rejoice, for the per­forator has come to you."

Scientific Marriage

In 1838 John Humphrey Noyes started a "Society of Perfectionist," at Oneida in upper New York State. The members of the Oneida community practiced free love, complex, marriage) and male continence. Noyes stated: "We are opposed to involuntary procreation. We are opposed to . excessive, of course) op­pressive procreation, which is almost universal. We are opposed to random procreation, which is unavoidable in the marriage system. But we are in favour of intelligent, well-ordered procreation. We believe the time will come when scientific combination will be applied to human generation as freely and successfully as it is to that of other animals."

According to Allan Estlake, "This most remarkable departure from established custom constituted each male member of the com­munity to be the husband of all females) and each female the wife or every man. Each man assumed the responsibility and' protection of each and every woman as he would to a wife under the monogamic system,. and so sacred was this trust observed that during a period of over thirty years not a single instance occurred of rejection of it."

The community had a Stirpiculture Com­mittee which granted permission for sexual intercourse to the persons fit for it and debar­red others fron1 procreation. Permission was granted on the basis of medical examination and medical history of both the partners. Unsuitable persons were debarred from be. coming parents. They practised coitus reser­vatus or male continence.

This method, also called Karezza, is defined by Dr. Dickinson, in his Techniqucs of -Con­ception Control, as "prolonged intercourse accompanied by maximum and varied excite­ment, with orgasm for the woman if desired. with no seminal emission or rare external emission-but with the substitution of a gradual subsidence of fec1ine for the man' In the words of Dr. Alice Stockham-in her book Karezza-"The caresses lead. up to con­nection, and the sexes unite quietly and closely. Once the necessary control has been acquired, the two beings are fused and reach sub1ime spiritual joy. This union can be ac­comp:1I1icd by slow. controlled motion, so that voluptuous thrills do not over-balance the desire for soft sensation. If there is no wish to procreate, the stormy violence of the orgasm will thus be avoided''.

In this method, the m de is rather passive and nukes slow movements. When the mo­ment of orgasm is near, he becomes immedia­tely passive and stops all movements. This results in a marked diminution in sexual ex­citement. The strokes are resumed after a while and so on. In this manner, the sex act is prolonged and the woman may in the mean time have her orgasm while the man has not had it at all, though he has enjoyed himself considerably.

As Havelock Ellis has pointed out, this method may, in some cases, produce the same cases, produce the same degree as coitus interrupts or the withdrawal method. It is, however, l10tcwerthy in this context that it produced no ill effects in the members of the Oneida community where it was so widely practiced.

Urine as Medicine

Urine has been used as medicine from the earliest times Richard Neale, in the Practi­tioner of November 1881. mentions that in South America and Data via mine has a high reputation as a medicine. He S;1}S, "One of the worst cases of epistaxis (bleeding through the nose) ceased after a pint of flesh urine was drunk, although it had for thirty-six hours or more resisted every form of European medi­cine." And further. he says, "1 have frequen­tly seen a glass of a child's or young girl's urine tossed off with great gusto 3.Ild apparent benefit." In 1938 Cyril mentioned a York­shireman named Baxter who claimed "that he

had cured himself of a cancerous growth by applying his own urine in the form of compresses and by drinking his own urine."

Dangers or Kissing

Gonorrhoea cannot be acquired by kissing, but syphilis can. The germs of syphilis are present not only in the sexual organs but also inside the mouth. Hence, these germs can be easily transferred from one person to another.