We are no longer prudes, we are delusional.
If I had a nickel for every time someone has found my vibrator, I’d have two nickels, which isn’t a lot but it’s weird it happened twice. Picture this: you are sitting, thinking about what on earth are you going to write for the first print edition of The Glasgow Guardian when you get a text from a friend. They have recently moved into your boyfriend’s old room. They have sent a photo. It’s a photo of your vibrator. You text back: “that’s crazy, my boyfriend totally must have another woman. Anyways, how is the move going?”
Should I feel ashamed about it? Probably. Do I? Yes and no. I am embarrassed not because I think masturbation or sex is shameful but because a person found evidence I do indeed masturbate and have sex. Isn’t this bizarre? The last thing I want to think about is a friend having sex, but are we completely unable to objectively understand sex in a way that makes any contact with the reality of it utterly reprehensible, foul, and unspeakable? We love to talk about the idea of sex but as soon as we are faced with the reality of it, we curl up and cringe. Billboards of supermodels in lingerie plastered everywhere – I’m happy with that. An STI outbreak in a care home – I genuinely can’t even comprehend. In a desire to not be prudish we have backslid into the realm of delusion.
Perhaps I am so blasé because the worst person who possibly could have found my vibrator already did – you’ve read the title, it was my mother. She found it, took it as a personal attack, and confronted me. I said I had hidden it, she said not very well – play silly games, win silly prizes. Now stay with me: I exist, therefore my mother had sex. I am physical evidence that my mother has had sex in the same way my vibrator is evidence I have sex. Why does this feel so different? Maybe we need distance from the situation – let’s go back to Medieval England.
Most of the sources that survive from the medieval period come from the catholic church, but as Historians, Dr Kate Lister and Dr Eleanor Janega discuss in their documentary ‘Medieval Pleasures’ there was a lot more going on than the church would like us to know. Back in the day, sex was a much more public affair – Dr Lister notes that most people didn’t have their own room to privately retire to and most lived in shared bedrooms. So, people had to risk someone walking in or take the matter outdoors, find a dark corner. People would have grown up with sex just sort of being ‘around’. Not this strange sort of everywhere yet nowhere existence of sex today.
We aren’t even comfortable with the idea of a naked body these days. When was the last time you had a bath with your friends? If you lived in medieval times your answer would be once a week. Medieval bathhouses were communal spaces where men and women would bath together – and it wasn’t weird. The likelihood is that you are a massive prude but don’t even know because we are rarely asked to confront the reality of nakedness, in the same way we never really confront the reality of sex.
Amongst the medieval period’s varied sex attitudes, sex work was one persistent and accessible way to make a lot of money in a short amount of time. Sex work was visible, prevalent, and monitored through zoning. Streets used to be named so you knew where to go for what you want. It wouldn’t be more explicit: Backside Lane in Oxfordshire, Cock-A-Dobby in Sandhurst and Bell End in the Black Country. Nowadays our streets are named after colonisers.
People love to say sex is everywhere nowadays, but sex actually isn’t. Movies where characters kiss and moan and the camera pans away. Not sex. Vape shop signs with cartoons of women with massive honkers. Not sex. Hearing your flatmates bed squeaking and seeing a stranger in the kitchen the next morning looking frazzled as they scoff down toast. That’s sex. It’s time to stop being delusional about it.
