Marguerite de Navarre: what crack was she on, and can we have some? And more about sex

[elettaria]

Somewhere between the Pyrenees and the Alps there once lived a nobleman by the name of Thogas. He had a wife, children, a fine house and so much wealth and pleasure that he had every good reason to be content with life. Apart from one thing. He was subject to great pain beneath the roots of his hairs. The pain was so severe that the doctors advised him to stop sleeping with his wife.

Marguerite de Navarre, The Heptameron, Story 54.

We're having quite an interesting discussion about a peculiar TV programme called "Virgin School" in king_laugh's journal here, if anyone wants to jump in. Topics for discussion here in mine, prompted by a variety of sources:

* Prostitution - should it be legalised?
* Sexual surrogacy - useful? creepy? unprofessional? a great idea?
* Virginity - what does it mean, and do we like the concept in the first place?
* Should vibrators be available on the NHS?

Comments

[ghost-of-a-flea.livejournal.com]

"If people are having sexual problems, are they entitled to medical help with those?"

Well, yes, really. Especially given the raft of social, physical and mental problems that could easily go alongside that. There's obviously still the condsideration of how you balance that against other illnesses, but initially, yes absolutely, and within that patients within that with clinically diagnosed problems related to sex should of course have access to viagra (if that's an appropriate treatment for their condition). I think you'd need to be careful how you distinguish the use of such treatments for genuine medical need and the sort of titillating tabloid-reports of "VICAR GAVE IT TO ME THREE TIMES A NIGHT AFTER NHS PRESCRIBED WONDER DRUG VIAGRA", and whether the latter is actually an accurate or unprejudiced look at the events. Maybe the Vicar in question wasn't just a randy bugger who wanted constant HARDCORE ACTION all the time but someone who wasn't able to function fully in an important part of his life and which in turn contributed to his frustration, depression and social exclusion...

The reduction ad absurdum of prescribing chocolate falls apart if you were to seriously compare the likelihood of choclate, wonderful thing that it is, being the most powerful, efficient, economical, lacking in side-effects treatment for an illness like depression and being clinically prescribed as such. Viagra, and very possibly other forms of sexual therapy, should be considered precisely on the basis of their fulfilling the demands of real medical need, unless there's a moralistic need to set sex aside from the list of things we expect people to be physically able to do where possible.

Not really looked into the sex surrogacy thing but doesn't sound that iffy - not sure you could really count it under medical need, but then the NHS doesn't run free classes in Tai Chi (so far as I know) for all-comers and you could certainly argue that would improve your health.

I'd be particularly interested in whether this was a service principally taken up by straight males, as the wording of the link suggested, as that would make the whole weighting of this a service a bit more questionable, and it's certainly what I'd initially suspect.