A Brief History of HIV

How racism is a sex ed issue

The Power of Sex: Lessons from a Courtesan

“When we too are armed and trained, we can convince men that we have hands, feet, and a heart like yours; and although we may be delicate and soft, some men who are delicate are also strong; and others, coarse and harsh, are cowards. Women have not yet realized this, for if they should decide to do so, they would be able to fight you until death; and to prove that I speak the truth, amongst so many women, I will be the first to act, setting an example for them to follow.”
—Veronica Franco, from Lettere Familiari 1

I recently came across a movie on Netflix called “Dangerous Beauty.” Now, I can’t say it was the highest quality film I’ve ever watched but it introduced me to the story of an amazing woman named Veronica Franco.

Veronica was the definition of a badass—she grew up in Venice in the mid 1500’s, a time when women were meant to be silent, submissive housewives with little to no access to education, politics, or financial (or otherwise) independence. Yet, Veronica found a way to become educated and influential, becoming an outspoken, famed poet and a female icon of her time.

See, Veronica was a courtesan, or high-end sex worker.

Trained by her mother to be a courtesan, Veronica enjoyed a wealthy, privileged life, owning property, moving freely, and gaining access to some of Venice’s top political and literary figures. Courtesans were encouraged to educate themselves, becoming fully versed in matters of art, science, music, and politics. While bedding Europe’s top politicians, courtesans played an important role in providing advice and guidance on political issues of the time. In fact, one of Veronica’s clients was King Henri III of France, and some attribute Veronica’s influence to the king’s eventual approval to send much-needed troops to Venice’s aid during an Ottoman threat.

Veronica was also able to develop her skills as a poet, becoming involved in a famous literary salon in Venice in the 1570s and positioning herself amongst the region’s most talented poets. The Netflix movie shows Veronica using rhyming and word games to entertain male guests at parties, showcasing her wit and knowledge of the spoken word. She also embraced her talents in the written word, publishing a book of her own poems in 1575, at the age of 29. These poems described her life as a courtesan and normalized prostitution, highlighting the wealth, influence, and knowledge that that lifestyle could bring a woman. Certainly an early feminist, her poems defended women against unwanted advances and abuse and implored women to speak up. She even opened a charity for courtesans and their children and propositioned the city to open a center for poor women, which was unfortunately unsuccessful.

What is striking about Veronica was her unabashed positioning of the erotic and sexual as valuable assets demanding honor and attention. The arts of seduction and passion and pleasure are often undermined at best or considered sinful and “wrong” at the worst. In Veronica’s poems, she is openly, unflinchingly erotic and celebrates her skills to pleasure a man and satisfy his desires. She famously said, “I wish it were not a sin to have liked it so.” Her open exaltation of these skills demand recognition for the female body (and sex workers!) and the value of pleasure and sensuality.

Around the time of the plague outbreak in 1545, Veronica was put on trial before the Inquisition on charges of witchcraft. During a time full of superstition and limited knowledge of diseases, sorcery and witchcraft were the only feasible explanations for such bold, empowered female presence. Veronica defended herself and won her trial, but her reputation was tarnished and she lost much of her wealth when she fled the city to avoid the plague.

Over the course of her life, she had six children from different men, but only three survived past infancy. She died at the age of 45 in 1591.

We still have a lot to learn from Veronica and I believe her story is a powerful one. In this age of the #MeToo movement and the continued attacks on women’s reproductive rights, women still have to convince others that “we have hands, feet, and a heart like yours”. Our bodies deserve recognition. Let’s follow in Veronica’s example and continue defending women’s rights here in this country and worldwide.

If you want to learn more about Veronica, check out “Dangerous Beauty” on Netflix (for a bit of oversimplified eye candy) or if you want a deeper analysis, read Margaret Rosenthal’s “An Honest Courtesan.”

Sources:

https://www.lib.uchicago.edu/efts/IWW/BIOS/A0017.html

https://awomensthing.org/blog/womens-history-month-courtesan-veronica-franco/

The Orgasm that Created a Lake

From 2017-18, my partner and I spent some time in Rwanda and it was a year full of cultural lessons. One of my favorite moments in Rwanda, being a sex ed teacher, unsurprisingly had to do with the topic of sex.

The scene: I’m at a yoga retreat far from the city, sitting on top of a hill surrounded by rolling tea plantations and hills that disappear into the distance. The sun is shining, we started the day with several hours of great yoga, we’re surrounded by beautiful nature—we’re feeling good.

I’m shelling peas with a group of fellow yogis, retreat staff, and yoga instructors—a good mix of foreigners and Rwandans, men and women. We have a huge pile of bean vines in front of us, ripped directly from the center’s garden plot, and the locals have taught the foreigners how to shell the peas that we’ll be eating for dinner. Relaxed by the simple, repetitive act, we begin the most candid conversation about sex I’ve had in Rwanda. It began with this story about Lake Kivu, the huge lake guarding Rwanda’s western border with Congo:

“Does anyone know the story of how Lake Kivu was formed? No? Well, long ago, the king and queen ruled this land. They were happy enough but the queen was never quite satisfied with their sex life. One day the king went off to war, leaving the queen alone. The queen gave into her curiosity and slept with one of her servants she’d had her eye on for awhile. To her surprise, the servant gave her the biggest orgasm she’d had in her entire life, so big that it created Lake Kivu.”

This was confusing to us westerners (how does an orgasm create enough liquid for a lake, even in a legend?) until we found out that female ejaculation—known as kunyara in the local language—is common and expected throughout Rwanda, at least according to this crew.

We found this quite interesting since Rwandan culture also has well-known proverbs stating that men have complete power over their wives and can do whatever they want, whenever they want. Yet somehow, this culture also has a prioritization for female orgasms. In fact, we were told that there’s a word in the local language, Kinyarwanda—gifubwa—that is used to describe the action of a woman finding another man to “finish” her if the first man has a consistent problem with pre-ejaculating. The exact translation of gifubwa is when you’re cooking and the electricity goes out yet the food still needs to be finished.

We also found out that it’s much easier to use English or French when talking about sex than Kinyarwanda. There aren’t as many direct translations in Kinyarwanda for anatomy (like the word for a woman’s private parts is agapipi—sound it out to hear “pee pee”. Aga is added to make a word pejorative, like little or small. So the word in Kinyarwanda for a woman’s vulva is literally “that little place where pee comes out”). Also, Kinyarwanda is meant to be a more reserved, polite, traditional language—not to be used describing sexual acts—making it a difficult language to use when wanting to teach sex ed.

While teaching youth in Rwanda about their reproductive health, I also learned about a practice called gukuna when I was asked by a student “Why do women pull their lips?” My translator had to help me culturally interpret that one, and I found out that vaginal lip pulling is a common practice for Rwandan girls going through puberty. Gukuna imishino or guca imyeyo literally means ‘to cut brooms’ – girls used to go out in the bushes in a group, and when asked where they were going they would reply that they were going out in the bush to look for grass, which they would turn into brooms. This was because men were not supposed to know what they were actually doing.

An example of the broom, not an example of a girl who necessarily practices labia elongation.

The actual process involves a girl gently pulling her inner labia outwards so that after awhile, the general shape remains unchanged but they protrude down, away from the body. This practice is done to create more pleasure for the woman during sexual intercourse; larger labia are easier to find/touch and can cover more of the penis to experience increased sexual pleasure for both partners.

Turns out I wasn’t the only person interested in these cultural practices: a movie has been produced highlighting the practice as well as discussing the emphasis on female orgasm and ejaculation. Little did I know that traveling to Rwanda would introduce me to more sexually progressive practices than found in most of America!