Jill McDevitt explores why something as natural and necessary as sex is so taboo
I WAS in North Jersey this week for a sex ed conference (250 sexologists in a room – now that’s a party) and while I was in the area I had plans to stop by the Museum of Sex in NYC. It got me thinking of all the other museums and exhibits around the world dedicated to sex.
Museum: Sex Museum
Location: Amsterdam, Netherlands
Featured Exhibits: When I studied in Amsterdam, I spent several hours in the Sex Museum. It featured a section on the history of pornography, with porn photos since the invention of photography through today and artifacts of erotic stone carvings, pottery and statues, some more than 3,000 years old.
Museum: The Icelandic Phallological Museum
Location: Húsavík, Iceland
Featured Exhibits: As the title suggests, this museum is exclusively dedicated to phalluses. It features 276 penises from 46 species of animals, including some of the world’s largest and smallest, from a whale specimen that is 16 feet long and weighs about 350 pounds to a two-milimeter penis from a hamster. In 2011, the museum acquired its first human penis, donated by a 95-year-old man who died and left his penis to the museum in his will.
Museum: The Museum of St Andrew’s University
Location: Edinburgh, Scotland
Featured Exhibits: 17th-century Georgian Britain (the period before the Victorian era, known for it’s prudery) was apparently highly sexed and known for having lots of sex clubs and parties. This museum exhibits all the relics from those clubs. Most odd is a collection of pubic hair tufts from a long list of King George’s lovers and courtesans that he had collected as trophies.
Museum: Beate Uhse Erotic Museum
Location: Berlin, Germany
Featured Exhibits: Featuring a collection of erotic art from around the globe, not only is it the largest sex museum, but it was opened by the same woman who opened the world’s first sex shop.
Museum: Feminique
Location: West Chester, PA
Featured Exhibits: So maybe I’m a little biased because I own it, but at Feminique I think I have a pretty rad museum display on the history of the vibrator, which features an exhibit on the history of female masturbation, antique vibrators from the 1800s and other relics.
Jill McDevitt holds a Master’s degree in Human Sexuality and is currently completing her PhD, which will make her the only person in the world with three degrees in the field. She is the proprietor of Feminique Boutique on Church Street. Her book, Fighting the Crusade Against Sex: Being Sex-Positive in a Sex-Negative World, is available now.
