WILL UNWOUND #695: “For Sex See Librarian – Parts 1 and 2 or What I saw at the Revolution”"
March 1, 2012FOR SEX, SEE LIBRARIAN …PART 1
The digital revolution is not the only revolution that has taken place in libraries during the careers of Boomer librarians. We have also had to endure the sexual revolution. To understand this you must first understand a little history. Prior to the late 1960s, sex was a semi-taboo subject in libraries. Typically books about sex were kept behind the circulation desk and patrons had to ask the librarian for them. Because of this it was common for libraries to have the following card in their card catalogs under the subject heading of sex…..FOR SEX, SEE LIBRARIAN. The most common titles kept behind the desk were: The Kinsey Report, Lady Chatterly’s Lover, Tropic of Cancer, Tropic of Capricorn, Ulysses, and a limited variety of marriage manuals (in some libraries you actually had to bring in a marriage license to gain access to the marriage manuals).
COMES THE REVOLUTION
Bestselling author John Updike in his sex romp Couples (published in 1968) coined the phrase “the post pill paradise.” What he was referring to was the invention of an FDA approved oral contraceptive commonly referred to simply as “the pill.” The pill went on the market in 1961 and by the middle of the decade its use was quite widespread. It changed sex from a procreative act to a recreational act, and the revolution was on! Updike’s novel is as good as any in narrating the instant liberation that the pill bestowed upon society.
FOR SEX, SEE LIBRARIAN….PART 2
The sexual revolution had an enormous impact upon publishing. Now that the sex act had been liberated as an act of pleasure, people wanted to know how to get more pleasure out of it. So they turned to how to books and publishers were quick to respond. By 1970, three books in particular had become instant bestsellers: Understanding Human Sexual Inadequacy by Masters and Johnson; The Joy of Sex by Alex Comfort; and Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex But Were Afraid to Ask by Dr. David Ruben. As with any bestsellers, patrons flocked to libraries to check them out. As you might expect, the success of these three books spawned a veritable flood of “do it yourself” sex books and librarians became the go to people in the sexual revolution. This short video clip nicely captures that new role for librarians: FOR SEX, SEE LIBRARIAN.
In preparation for a presentation I have been asked to make on this subject I pulled out all of my old reference notebooks (talk about ancient history) and extracted the following questions about sex that I had been asked “back in the day” on the reference desk:
Patron: “I read in the newspaper that our Congressman was arrested for committing an act of sodomy in a public bathroom. Can you tell me what animal was involved?”
Me: “Madam you are thinking of beastiality which is different from sodomy.”
Patron: “What is sodomy?”
Me: “Here’s the Unabridged Dictionary. Look it up.”
Patron on the phone: “I just had sex with my wife and was using a condom, but I can’t find it. What should I do?”
Me: “Call your primary care physician.”
Patron: “I find myself having random erections during the day. Is this normal?”
Me (after 5 minutes of research): “Yes. It is called the mental void syndrome.”
Patron on the phone: “My friend has never had a climax. She wants to know if every woman has a clitoris?”
Me (after 10 minutes of research): “Tell your friend yes.”
…5 minutes later the phone rings again:
Patron: “Do you have a book showing the exact location of the clitoris?”
Me: “Yes”
Patron at night on the phone: “Can sperm travel through cotton underwear?”
Me (after 30 minutes of research): “Under rare instances…yes.”
Patron (on the phone): “Will the pill work if my husband takes it instead of me? It gives me a rash.”
Me: No.
Patron: Can I get pregnant from oral sex?
Me: No.
Your turn, Unwinders!
I suspect there’d be a best seller if we compiled descriptions of what has gone on in the stacks and the buildings, and what goes on…pen names anyone?
There is actually a site which you might or might not find, about doing the deed in the UC Berkeley Library stacks…
There is also a site which basically says, “I don’t need sex UCB F***s me everyday.” LOL More about grades and tuition actually, but…
Sufficient unto the day on that topic.
Item, the first: After I got my degree, but before I got a professional job I worked as an Assistant Manager of a B.d\Dalton-Bookseller in Macon, Georgia. Because of a complaint from a constituent a City Alderman got the Macon Police department to raid our store, confiscate about 500 copies of the Joy of Sex, and arrest the manager. There was a trial. Eleven City of Macon housewives said the book was not obscene, but one old guy insisted it was, therefore it was a hung jury. We never got the books back, but every Macon cop got one for Christmas that year.
Item, the second. Rest assured that sex is alive and well. This law school stuident at Georgetown (http://cnsnews.com/blog/craig-bannister/sex-crazed-co-eds-going-broke-buying-birth-control-student-tells-pelosi-hearing) testified before Congress that taxpayers should be paying for her birth control because it was too expensive for her to pay on her own.
Item, the third. “ethicists” writing for the Journal of Medical Ethics have recently determined that “after-birth sbortion” is no different than before-birth abortion. They stated in their article, “what we call after-birth abortion (killing a newborn) should be permissible in all the cases where abortion is, including cases where the newborn is not disabled.”
Welcome to 21st century America.
Item the second: men can have Viagra and Cialis and Levitra but women can’t have birth control? Oh please. (no response necessary)
I don’t think so either, but I don’t think mandatory taxpayer-paid birth control for college students so they can have lots of sex to cope with the rigors of classes is indicative of a society that is not in self-destruct mode. And now we have “ethicists” telling us “after-birth abortion” is morally acceptable. It is just sickening to the core. I really don’t want to live in that kind of world.
mick,
1. Not all women take birth control so they can run around having sex. I have taken it for many years because of several problems. As a matter of fact, the most recent change in birth control has prevented me from having to have two major surgeries. There are at least 4 women I work with who use it for the same reason.
2. Since the same people want to eradicate Planned Parenthood, saying that they can get medication from Planned Parenthood doesn’t really work. The so-called young women are running around having all this sex, then how do they prevent unwanted pregnancy? You have a couple of choices:
a. Abstain completely from sex until you want to have children (Not going to happen. And to use myself as an example–I never plan to have children. Should the government enact a law preventing me from ever having sex because I don’t want to reproduce. Will I have to bring in the buckets of used feminine products to show that I actually need the medications for other reasons.)
b. Use condoms. Ok. They work, if used correctly, but even if used correctly, they can have problems. I’m sorry, I’d rather women and men be as careful as possible.
c. Use no contraceptive. Yeah right. People don’t want Planned Parenthood, they don’t want abortions, people are picky about adoption or refusing to adopt, and folks aren’t raising their children Why don’t we just increase the problem.
And another damn thing: Why is it that the people who complain about big government and people being in our lives are always the same people who find their way into what is going on in my uterus.
You cannot be serious. Women of college age should not have access to birth control? I’m guessing you are also one of those men who believed it’s all the woman’s responsibility and no man should be required to pay child support if he doesn’t want to – because it’s her “choice.”
Why are you asking yourself why, after over 50 years on the market, I just had to pay $90 for one month of birth control pills? (Severe health reasons so it was an unusual purchase for me.) My co-pay was $75. $900 a year for the pill WITH insurance. And the pharmacist couldn’t understand why I was so angry. Why aren’t you asking yourself why this product is so damn expensive? It’s been around forever and costs almost nothing to produce.
And the part about the “ethicists” is stupid. You read one far-out extreme article and suddenly America is going to be performing infanticide? Or that some percentage of people agree with the reasoning? I’m guessing less than 1% of Americans would agree with that statement. Far less than believe in flying saucers. This is just a straw man argument that has nothing to do with 25-year-olds getting appropriate health care.
I am so sick of misogyny being portrayed as “conservative” values. Unless you were a virgin at marriage and only practiced the rhythm method you are a hypocrite. Portraying law students, many, many of whom are in monogamous relationships and are at a point where they can’t have a child right now, as a bunch of sluts is gross. And the cost benefits to birth control cannot be measured. Unless of course you’re one of those fanatics who don’t give a damn if children starve or think all unmarried women should have a baby born out of wedlock ripped away from her and given to “responsible” parents. Good religious zealots who will raise their sons to hate women’s equality too.
I’m probably being overly harsh on you, but I read the comments in the article you linked and the hatred for women was very apparent. People are going to have sex. Deal with it, don’t deal with it, whatever. Regardless however, as a society we are better off helping younger people avoid parenthood until they are ready and can afford it, especially in this economy.
Whoa, this got harsh fast. No matter where you fall on the birth control spectrum, I think it’s fair to say that maybe just because this woman wants a lot of sex (and has decided to speak for all women at that institution, which bugged the snot out of me) does not mean it should be the government’s responsibility to supply birth control. Access does not equal free-of-charge. I want double chocolate chip cookies all the time, where’s my handout? Don’t I have a right to them? (And it’ll get uglier faster if you say I’m not entitled to my chocolate chip cookies.)
And I’m not sure that Viagra, Cialis or Levitra is any different; there’s a pretty hefty co-pay on all medications these days. At least that’s what my HCSA keeps paying out for other drugs, which apparently are optional in the eyes of the insurance company, and which is still being deducted from our paycheck, week after week. Oh, that’s right, I’m paying for it. Not the government.
This backlash against the Catholic Church and it’s institutions is ridiculous. If you didn’t want to adhere to their policies, why on earth would you attend their universities, work for their outreaches or go to their clinics? I mean, really. And no one has shut down Planned Parenthood yet. If it is too costly to pay your co-pay, go on down to PP. Oh right, you make too much money. So put up a couple of those double-lattes and you can pay for whatever you like. Just like I have to decide against that extra Tim Horton’s coffee so I can my cookies.
The saying was “You can have it all,” ladies. Just not all at once.
BTW, I’m not picky about adoption. I’m for it, and financially support it. I’m not picky about birth control, it’s your business, not mine. I don’t want in your bedroom. I’m not a misogynist and I didn’t raise my sons to be misogynists. But I’m not going to say it’s okay to kill a child because you didn’t want to have to pay for birth control. Sorry.
Lynne I.,
Viagra vs. contraception? Easy distinction: The former promotes normal healthy function, the latter inhibits normal healthy function.
Christy,
I don’t want you to pay for my birth control. I don’t want to pay for any abortion I would even consider. I know about adoption and its issues because I have worked for child services and am aware of the issues surrounding certain children that don’t get adopted and certain people who “can’t” adopt. And I think comparing chocolate chip cookies to my choice of not be in pain or bring a child into the world that 1. probably would not make it to term because of my health issues and 2. would possibly have severe health issues because of medications I take and 3. cause me to be institutionalized so I couldn’t take care of my child anyway is somewhat condescending. My insurance covers my birth control, and I work at a Christian university. If they did not, I would have two choices: pay out of pocket for birth control or leave the university. Considering that I use birth control for two main purposes, the most important is to actually be able to come to work, I would seek other employment, another insurance plan, or take on a second job because my medication is not inexpensive.
And I don’t buy lattes because I’m lactose intolerant, and don’t spend my money on such things. I believe in paying for necessities first, not chocolate chip cookies. And I’m sorry, my birth control is a necessity. It is either that or paying surgery, missing work for six weeks, and going through early menopause.
And as you said, no one is taken away Planned Parenthood…yet. But it seems to me that the people always yelling about freedom of religion (namely theirs) and little government (which means we want big government when it conflicts with our moral values) can’t make up their mind.
And as far as killing children (or zygotes, or fetus, or whatever floats your boat) goes, I would prefer not to have others ethics or religious morals affect or afflict my own. But since you brought it up, I wouldn’t have an abortion unless my mental or physical health was threatened (which would be the case)…but you know what, I don’t think it is anyone else’s business but mine and my conscious. Therefore, if you don’t want to “kill children”, don’t. But please don’t tell me taken the pill or preventing my own demise should be determined by someone else.
I’ve been frustrated at people on both sides of this argument all week. Actually, the human population has caused me to doubt that we should even be at the top of the damn food chain.
The chocolate chip cookies vs. birth control comments was not directed at your medically necessary need for birth control, and I’m pretty sure you know that.
Sorry about your frustration at the argument, and any perceived slight you feel about what I wrote. My response was to the nonsensical attack, which was not yours. I’m pretty sure you know that too.
I can’t let this slide though, but you don’t have to read. (Just close the browser.) Too bad children (“or zygotes or fetus or whatever term you feel comfortable with”) don’t have the voice to say “I prefer not to have others ethics or religious morals affect or afflict my own.” Oh, that’s right. They don’t have any, right?
When it comes to me, Christy, no they don’t. Anything that cannot survive without a host and cannot move independently of that host, cannot make a decision about that host. I know people will say it is an unborn child, but a completely formed infant or even a preemie for that matter is very different from a mass of cells.
I’ve been told by all of my doctors that if I every did become pregnant, they would seriously recommend termination. Actually, it would be their first recommendation. You may not like it Christy, but unless someone volunteers to carry an embryo that the gods forbid I become impregnated with, it will be a very real option for me and a number of women I personally know. I really like the idea that people feel like they should be the voice of cells that are parasitically living off my body and telling me I should carry something inside me which would be detrimental to my health, may not survive the first trimester, and that I know I would not want to raise. But I have come to the conclusion, after reading a number of post here, that idea will never change, even if it affects me. My sanity and health aren’t important of a group of cells that happen to be living in my uterus that people feel is more important.
And Christy, when you address people who take birth control, you are addressing a wide range of women who take it for a wide range of reasons. People frequently want to make broad statements but I have found in the last 5 years that when they do this, they forget about those that are encompassed in that statement. All of us. That’s why I stay away from political arguments. But provided I just watched a woman who is 26 have a hysterectomy, another woman who was put on birth control and had to fight her entire very Catholic family to do it, even though she had been bleeding for 4 months, and the fact that I have no leave left because I couldn’t walk before birth control, your statement and mick’s did bother me. You are including us in that number.
But like I’ve said, the last couple of years have showed me that political discussion no longer considers people or their lives, nor does it allow for decorous polemics.
A. E.,
Mick said “Rest assured that sex is alive and well. This law school stuident at Georgetown (http://cnsnews.com/blog/craig-bannister/sex-crazed-co-eds-going-broke-buying-birth-control-student-tells-pelosi-hearing) testified before Congress that taxpayers should be paying for her birth control because it was too expensive for her to pay on her own.”
Very clearly not your situation, and obviously not addressed to you.
I said “I think it’s fair to say that maybe just because this woman wants a lot of sex (and has decided to speak for all women at that institution, which bugged the snot out of me) does not mean it should be the government’s responsibility to supply birth control.”
Very clearly not your situation and not addressed to you.
A.E., I did know what segment of the birth control population I was addressing. And I suspect you knew as well. But you got to “clang your bell” and state your opinion, as did I. I am truly sorry for your medical situation. Mine was uncomfortable for many years as well, so I know of what you speak. And by all indications that I’ve read here, you are a very knowledgeable librarian. I read your posts with interest. But I also must say, I am very glad that your mother did not view you as a clump of cells.
If my mother would have had the chance or knowledge to abort her first child, which was stillborn, she would have. After that, if she had have known either one of her children had died in the womb, she would have had that option and would have taken it. I know this for a fact. If she had of aborted me, no one would have cared there wasn’t another “knowlegable librarian” in the world because I would have never existed and it would not have mattered. I have not sentimentality about that.
And having been without insurance for the majority of my life and having these problems for the majority of my life, and having been in situations where my insurance refuses to cover everything from birth control to my mental health meds, yes, mick was talking about people like me.
And saying any woman wants a lot of sex because she wants birth control paid seems to be an assumption of any woman who is on birth control, much less about the woman who was speaking. Furthermore, it is simply the virgin/whore dichotomy rearing its ugly head again. It’s saying that no one should be able to control their reproduction except through abstinence, which I’m not going to practice forcible. And, if you are at one of these institutions, you going to jump through a lot of hoops to prove you are not having sex to even get your medication covered.
And as far as clanging my bell, I will from now own keep my opinions and my comments to myself. I should not have even been involved in this conversation from the beginning simply because if my statements are seen as clanging a bell and not making sense or just me being loud and contrary, then I’m not very smart or knowledgeable, am I? I’m just another loud person entering a political conversation where no one is listening to opposing viewpoints and everyone is loud. I’m accustom to talking with people from very different backgrounds without feeling like I’m some how guilty of a great crime against humanity, even if the are anti-abortion or anti-birth control…don’t feel that right now. Right now I feel like this is the same argument I have with people who say, “Black people act ignorant, but I’m not talk about you. Your are not really black.”
I think it’s time for another long vacation from the Tavern.
I wish we could just agree to disagree. You would be missed, A.E.
Seriously? Of all possible news coverage of Fluke, you choose to link to a site that refers to female law students as “coeds”? And then you conflate “taxpayers” with “people who buy insurance plans through their employer or school to cover their medical needs”? Because, you know, taking the pill is the same as infanticide. Geez
Heh-heh….he said “hung” jury.
One of my very first reference questions was from a little girl who needed help determining the sex of her kittens. She had three. She thought two were girls and one was a boy. I found a few cat books, but none of them got quite up close a personal enough for the little girl to see the difference.
I eventually found a veterinary website with photos, with the pertinent areas circled (and I think arrows were involved, too). It was perfect. I printed the page and off she went, promising to let me know the verdict.
She came in later that day to report that she actually had two boys and one girl. I wonder what her thinking was when she made her initial determination?
That’s about as sexy as my career has gotten thus far. Oh, except for finding a condom wrapper in the public bathroom one night. A lucky coworker found its contents under the magazine racks a few days later.
I used to work at an animal shelter and you’d be surprised at how hard it is to tell if a kitten is a boy or a girl. I’m talking really young kittens — 4 weeks or less.
Ha, what a hoot! Since I came into the library field in the mid-eighties I missed most of this and honestly, I can’t say that I’ve ever had the challenge of fielding one of these questions.
The best I can say I’ve done is to put the books on sex back where they belong in the non-fiction section as they do seem to wander around the library!
One time many years ago we found a stash of high quality, very expensive porn magazines on top of some really high shelves at the back of the library. We left a note in their place saying that the owner could have them back by asking at the circulation desk, no questions asked, but they were never claimed.
One day a guy asked, in all seriousness, what was the ideal time of the year to conceive a child. When we asked whether he meant scientifically or astrologically, he wouldn’t say. Without more specific information, we couldn’t answer the question.
Then there was the time a local massage parlor was busted for selling pornography. I was subpoenaed as an expert witness (heaven knows why!) and in preparation to testify I had to look through the whole stack of porn magazines the police had confiscated. The idea of being required to go through a whole pile of porn as part of my job (I was about 30 at the time) still amuses me. If I wasn’t an expert witness before, I guess I was after that.
“Expert Witness.” Is this something that went on your resume?
I want to know what the heck they asked the “expert witness” in this case.
I’ve probably posted this anecdote before. Caller with either hearing loss, a noisy background, or a poor connection asks:
“My doctor told me to look up camidia, callidia, what is that?”
I had to shout the definition, spelling, and nature of chlamydia to the poor soul, with much repetition until she got it.
This experience convinced administration that it was a really bad idea to move the phones to the middle of the public service area. They were already picking out office partitions from a catalog. The phones stayed put in a staff-only area well out of earshot of the public.
And another one. I once had collection development responsibilities for the HQs and got great amusement from calling myself the sex librarian.
So, poking around Amazon during a lull at the reference desk for works for possible purchase, I spotted something with a title to the effect of The Atlas of Sexual Assault. Cool, I thought, thinking it was a statistical or geographic study of the subject. So I opened the Look Inside the Book feature, which was still new at the time, and up pops a color close-up of female genitalia. Like, filling my entire screen.
Whoa, Nelly! Close that window NOW! I do NOT need anyone accusing me of downloading porn on the job. We actually had a librarian who was caught doing that.
Turns out the work was a medical textbook for those who treat victims of sexual assault, with photographs of what kinds of injuries to expect.
Now I dare you to invite sex-in-the-stacks stories, Will. I know of a few, told to me by the participants.
They involved librarians, right?
Don’t forget the staff breakroom.
Last I checked, no one needs special certification to have sex. Though it did used to be criminalized outside of marriage.
Really kind of amazing, isn’t it, that in America we haven’t yet required a credential for it.
Only folks with the MLS degree should be allowed to have sex.
Walt, you get free drinks for a year. That may be the funniest thing ever said in the Unwinders Tavern!
“Only folks with the MLS degree should be allowed to have sex.”
Academic or public?
Public librarians will simply give you the sex; academic librarians will want to teach you how…
I suppose we must now brace ourselves for a flurry of “Librarians do it with…” jokes.
I speculated that it is surprising that Americans have not yet required a credential for sex, but once we have lost the last shred of our privacy and all of us are under 24/7/365 surveillance, we may very well be able to tax it.
Talk about a reliable revenue stream.
“Really kind of amazing, isn’t it, that in America we haven’t yet required a credential for it.”
And it’s about high time it was require!
“Only folks with the MLS degree should be allowed to have sex.”
At the rate library schools are pumping them out, that’s way too many people to start dealing with the overpopulation issue!
I had a patron ask for resources on how to responsibly add a fourth wife to her marraige. But nothing religious. everything acceptable was already checked out from local libraries.
Wow, Will, I never got asked questions like those. I must say a few of them would have definitely made the slow shift a little livelier and more interesting.
A nice history of The Pill may be found here.
It’s spelled “bestiality,” by the way. When I first encountered the word at some point in my early adolescence, I thought it must relate to the quality of being the best: “The bestiality of Lassie’s trainer’s methods is what makes him so successful with dogs.” The fact that the spelling of the root, “beast,” had been inexplicably altered is what threw me, of course. In due course, I looked it up. Oh my.
The Pill, besides ushering in worry-free sex (the side effects of the drug not being acknowledged until later in the 1960s), also finished off the Baby Boom. Births and birth rates plunged over a cliff. Thus we have ended up with a small number of Gen X-ers who will have to work extra hard to support all of us retiring Boomers. So get busy, keep paying FICA, and say hello to Charles Ponzi for me on your way to work. We got both the worry-free sex and the pensions. You guys get bupkes. Sorry.
Worry-free — at least free from worry about pregnancy — was not the same as guilt-free, and people programmed with the sexual ethics of an earlier age struggled with that for a long time. Making the guilt-free male’s case, Hugh Hefner published “The Playboy Philosophy” in his magazine, and the article was seriously discussed in college classrooms in the late Sixties.
(This reminds me of a joke of the time: “Whereas many people worry about how to have sex without guilt, Catholics worry about how to have guilt without sex.” For those who did not grow up with incense and the Rosary, I’ll explain: In Catholicism — at least in its repressive, Irish-American variant — there really were no sins other than those relating to sex. One could tolerate murder and genocide accompanied by repentance, but impure thoughts?)
As for the FOR SEX, SEE LIBRARIAN cross-reference card, I’m sure some wise-ass must have appeared at the desk card-in-hand (especially if its occupant was comely) and loudly announced he was ready for the sex. In fact, that wise-ass could have been me, because that is exactly the kind of thing I would have done in seventh grade — the kind of thing that always got me marked down in the Character tally on my Catholic-school report card.
The Joy of Sex was a pioneering effort (published forty, yes 40, years ago in 1972) in the fight to achieve sex without guilt. It is also an amazing cultural artifact. Go ahead (if you are a Boomer Unwinder) and dig your copy out. Is it still stashed behind the Webster’s Collegiate and the Collin’s French dictionaries on your living-room shelf where the kids won’t find it?
Look at the illustrations. Kind of amazing how hairy those young people are, eh? Sex in those days occurred in the midst of vast forests of afros, muttonchops, mustaches, unshaven armpits, male ponytails, waist-length female hair, and other rank pubescences. I don’t remember having to vacuum the bed après-Joy, but we must have had to. The pet-hair roller hadn’t been invented yet.
Despite the copious illus., one is struck by the clinical, mechanistic forced march through positions and techniques that the book presents. It was this aspect that inspired National Lampoon to publish a parody, The Job of Sex.
You younger Unwinders have no idea how revolutionary this all seemed at the time. In 1962, for example, the Phoenix Gazette had to eat crow and print a public apology because in their first-day-of-summer issue two days before they had published a photo of a girl in a bikini. Fast forward just ten years and the B. Dalton at the mall is carrying a how-to book filled with pictures of hairy hippies buck-naked. We’re not talking cultural shift; we’re talking cultural earthquake.
The resistance to joyfulness, to the “gourmet guide to lovemaking,” as the book subtitled itself, still lingers in some quarters. I found this in that font of the wisdom of crowds, Wikipedia:
“There has been much controversy over The Joy of Sex. Many religious groups have fought to keep it out of public libraries. In March 2008, the Nampa, Idaho public library board ruled in favor of removing The Joy of Sex and The Joy of Gay Sex from the libraries’ [sic] shelves, making them only available upon request in the library director’s office. The books were restored to shelves in September 2008 in response to ACLU threats of litigation.”
Those were hairy days…remember the rock opera “Hair?”
She asks me why, I’m just a hairy guy
I’m hairy noon and night, hair that’s a fright
I’m hairy high and low, don’t ask me why, don’t know
It’s not for lack of bread, like the Greatful Dead, darlin’
Give me a head with hair, long beautiful hair
Shining, gleaming, streaming, flaxen, waxen
Give me down to there, hair, shoulder length or longer
Here baby, there, momma, everywhere, daddy, daddy
Hair, flow it, show it
Long as God can grow it, my hair
Oh, and as for those questions, I wonder, Joe, if your library career had kicked in by the early 70s. It was a wondrous time…when sex was still a new thing that adults were discovering. They were like little kids unwrapping brightly colored birthday presents.
I took the long route to librarianship through two other careers, so I missed the Age of Discovery.
If you were on the desk in a certain southwestern city then, I may have been one of your callers. The nuns didn’t tell us much, you know, other than “don’t.”
Which reminds me that one of my friends who attended a well-known Catholic girls’ prep school in Phoenix told the story of the day in 1969 during which they received what we would now call a workshop in dealing with boys.
“Watch their hands,” the nun cautioned. “You must be sure at all times of what they’re doing with their hands.”
That, methinks, could be interpreted in two ways.
One other question, I have noted down in my old notebooks: “Does your library have a research study correlating sexual satisfaction and penis size for both men and women?”
Thankfully, oh thankfully, I have not yet encountered too many queries of this variety. I did have a student ask if I thought it would be immoral to write a love letter to a punctuation mark.
Still not sure why he was asking. For the record, I do not think such a thing would be immoral…Semicolons are very sexy.
I WILL say that the library’s resources were a good deal of help for me as someone who went through a public school system which didn’t really cotton to the new-fangled notion of sex ed classes. Thankfully by the time I was a young adult I had a good grasp of how libraries worked, since I would have been too shy to ask the librarians such questions (especially since they all knew me).
I once had a young woman (16, tops) ask me if we had the Kama Sutra on DVD. That was fun.
After charges were announced in a rape case, a woman called to ask what sodomy was. Since she was on the phone I didn’t have the luxury of handing the dictionary to her so I very professionally read the definition to her & hung up before she could ask very many questions.
There was a time when I had so many questions about Peyronie’s disease (curvature of the penis for those who haven’t been asked) that I was beginning to suspect there was an epidemic in this area.
The other questions that are legendary are the man who wanted to know which condom manufacturer had extra small sizes (he got points for bravery), the college student who wanted the Kama Sutra book for a Valentine’s Day surprise for his girlfriend, the man who wanted to know if Viagra contributed to his collapsed veins, & the young woman who was told by her doctor to come to the library to get a book that would tell her why she wasn’t interested in having sex with her husband (turns out she had a colicky baby at home & was exhausted; I almost asked her for both her husband & doctor’s phone numbers so I could explain the facts of life to them).
But with the Internet readily available, the sex-related questions have dwindled greatly.
Let me guess–the spate of Peyronie’s questions was around 1998.
Clinton?
Yep.
And on the TODAY SHOW today an in depth review of the new hot ticket:
55 Shades of Grey
I THINK that was the title. Will have to check to see if our library has purchased. The fun never really stops!
Make that 50 Shades of Grey.
I once had a student call and ask if we had The Joy of Sex. I told him that we did, but that he would have to use it here in the library.
(This was at a university library and The Joy of Sex was stolen so regularly that it had been moved to Special Collections and did not circulate. After I’d hung up the phone, I realized that I probably should have told him that would have to READ it in the library, not USE it in the library.)
Once at a public library where I worked a patron tried to steal the
Pop Up Kama Sutra. He hid it in his pants– I kid you not.
I’ve not had many of the sex questions, engineers tend to not ask questions at all so not too surprising. However when going to school in the south (LSU) the reference desk repeatedly got the question “where to I go to get my d*#$ cut off”. Seems there is a world famous sex change clinic in Baton Rouge (or there was at the time). Library students were soon given a phone number to recite and then hang up!
Anyone else have the whole Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue incident run through your mind while reading this? Sure, we’ve got sex in the library and often it comes once a year from the most popular sports magazine. What, a few years ago they decided to *not* deliver the issue to libraries because so many complained about it. Not as many as complained when it wasn’t delivered of course.
As an undergrad I worked in one of the Housing Division (dorm) libraries. Playboy and Playgirl were kept in the desk drawer and students had to ask the employee on duty for them. People seemed none too embarrassed to ask to peruse them. Of course, they were probably just interested in the articles.
I guess the extent of my exposure to this was when I was studying for my MLS at Indiana University. When I went on the tour of the Kinsey Library, they had just got the mail for the day so there were the latest issues of Playboy, Advocate, Hustler, etc. They also have, in the display case, a pop-up Kama Sutra book, among some other publications (e.g. calling cards from some New Orleans brothels from the 1950′s). What I found was interesting (although this fact isn’t brought out enough, in my opinion) was that it was at Herman B. Wells’ (I.U. president when Kinsey was teaching there) request that Kinsey did all of those sex studies but, naturally, Herman B. Wells came out of the controversy smelling like a rose (Alfred Kinsey was a bug expert, originally).
The other room I remember is the research room where the studies take place. I remember the girl who was the tour guide showing us “The Peter Meter” (ha, ha).
I will never forget working the reference desk (in the early 90′s) and a young (early 20′s) couple, holding hands, comes up to the reference desk. The guy says “I was wondering if you have any ummmm… instruction books…. for positions?”
I looked at him and said “you mean, physical positions?”
“Yes.”
“Sure. Let me look up the call number.” I then took them back to the proper shelving section, pointed at “The Joy of Sex” and the 2-3 other books that were shelved with it, and said, “if that’s not what you mean, please ask…”
They left about an hour later, without checking anything out, still holding hands.