A couple of months ago, our cable service expanded and we started getting the "History Channel." At first I was nonplused, thinking it would be like a High School class 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. As it turned out, I was very pleasantly surprised and now watch it frequently.
They have regular shows that each highlight some theme or time in history. Shows like "Military Blunders" and "Secrets of the Third Reich" focus on the military and war (obviously). But others cover a very wide range of topics. This week, they're doing a five-part story on the history of sex. I enjoyed last night's episode, which focused on the 20th century.
Although they featured comments by people who have had an influence on sex in the last few decades like Hugh Heffner and Helen Gurly Brown, none of them impressed me with the magnitude of her impact like Margaret Sanger. Ms. Sanger worked tirelessly to advance the cause of women's right by trying to give them some measure of control over their own bodies and when (and how often) to bear children. Ms. Sanger founded the organization that eventually became "Planned Parenthood." The conditions she experienced and her amazing devotion to her fellow woman was truly spectacular although it didn't get nearly enough coverage in last night's story.
But there was a lot more covered in the episode than just birth control. The show talked about the various periods of this century and discussed several topic that I had previously been unaware of. For one, they explained that during WW1, our military preached abstinence to the troops and tried to scare them away from sexual contact. This was an abysmal failure, and our forces ended up loosing more man-hours to treatment of "social-diseases" than to enemy wounds. During WW2, the military actually gave out a "ration" of 8 condoms per soldier per month!. This, combined with sex education and several years later, penicillin, resulted in dramatically lower "downtime."
I was also interested by the stories of the tribulations of homosexuals during this century. There were several times when they were able to live nearly normal lives. Contra-wise, under people like President Eisenhower, gays and lesbians were investigated, humiliated, and denied employment by the government and virtually any company doing business with the government! Wow, what an asshole!
Well, I'll let you watch and form your own opinions. Tonight, and the rest of the week, the story delves progressively farther into history...
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