Women’s lib comes alive in Berlin’s sex museum

Sex is great. I love it. Say this to a chauvinist and chances are he’ll react with an alienating silence or call you a slut. More than a century since sexual ignorance was regarded as a female virtue, aftershocks of Victorian repression still choke women who like to believe that they now have the freedom to express their sexuality without thinking that someone would make them feel like seducers, soiled doves, or sexual freaks. Puritan notions

My recent visit to a European museum is a case in point. Two of my 30-something foreign male classmates made an agreement with me days before the end of our online media management seminar at a journalism institute in Germany: That by hook or by crook, we will go to Beate Uhse’s Erotik Museum, the only one among Berlin’s 172 museums that is dedicated to the topic of sex. However, at the end of our two-week seminar, around the time when we were supposed to go to the museum, my classmates suddenly disappeared on the street minutes before we reached the place. What happened was strange. We had cell phones. I called them up but they did not answer. They had my email address and knew my Facebook and Twitter accounts. But I heard nothing from them. They did not attempt to explain their disappearing act until I came back to Manila late last month. It maybe too harsh if I say that they backed out because they thought I was a deviant. But their disappearance made me paranoid. Nakakalalaki ba ko? I asked myself if I had made them feel less of a man because I insisted in going to a place where “normal" or “good" women would not risk a chance to be seen. Thanks to another classmate and our seminar assistant, my paranoia got worse. “Maybe they chickened out because you came out too strong or too aggressive," said Kat, my male Indian classmate the night before I left Berlin. “Maybe they were embarrassed," Antonella, our Italian seminar-assistant, told me hours before I got on my connecting flight to Amsterdam. Lustful museum At any rate, I forgot my earlier worries the minute I stepped into the museum. There was nothing fascinating on the first floor of the museum where sex toys, videos, books, perfumes and lotions were sold. But the exhibits on the second and third floors were exhilarating, especially to women who have no hang-up about sex. Sex paintings, installations, and statues from different historical eras all over the world filled the place. Pre-colonial Asian and African erotic miniatures and phallic symbols reminded me of Frederick Engels’ The Origin of the Family, Private, Property and the State. The book was required reading during my college days. It taught me about the overthrow of matriarchy that led to the “world historical defeat of the female sex," according to Engels. There was an array of chastity belts used as anti-sexual intercourse devices during the religious Crusades in Europe. The belts were also used to prevent masturbation, widely believed as harmful in Western medicine until the 1930s. There were also numerous collections of impressive Japanese shunga art or erotic hand-painted scrolls depicting the sexual fetishes of the chonin, the society that emerged during the early years of the Tokugawa period in Japan. Woman of substance The extraordinary museum was founded by a woman who was always ahead of her time. Beate Uhse (1919-2001) was a World War II pilot who later became a sex entrepreneur at a time when Germany was still mired in patriarchal philosophies, all rooted in the Middle Ages and reinforced during the Nazi regime. Sex education was part of young Uhse’s daily life. Her mother, one of the first female doctors in Germany, openly spoke to Uhse about sexuality and even taught her the Swiss Knaus-Ogino contraceptive method, or what is now known as the rhythm method. Uhse, once described in an article as a “wild child," would later tell how she learned about sex while living with her family on a farm in Wargenau, East Prussia. “We had 140 cows," she revealed. “The bulls climbed on top of the cows, and sometime later, a calf appeared. So we experienced sexual contacts in nature totally differently to that which town children knew." She began her sex business a few years after the war. The idea of selling leaflets about the Swiss Knaus-Ogino contraceptive method came to her when poor pregnant female neighbors in the north German village of Bradup sought her advice about unwanted pregnancies. In the 1950s, Uhse started a company in Flensburg that delivered affordable contraceptive devices and literature on marital hygiene by mail. The shop— touted as the world’s first sex store—later sold Parisienne lingerie as well as concoctions like Cythera Cocktails, the Nous-Deux-Spezial Praline, and the bath potion Ariadne H6 for couples. Crackdown craze Although thousands of people patronized Uhse’s products, the business failed to escape the ire of authorities. Police launched crackdowns in Uhse’s store, which allegedly “inflame(d) and satisf(ied) desires…contrary to decency and morality." Nazi teachings about the evils of contraception lingered even after the war. Selling condoms to unmarried couples in Germany was illegal in the 1950s and the sale of potency devices was banned until 1967. The obstacles did not stop Uhse, even when the number of indictments against her store reached more than 2,000 by 1992. Four years and 80 sex shops in Germany later, Uhse was able to fulfill her dream. She opened the erotic museum on Joachimstaler Strasse 4, which claims to be the world’s largest. In 1999, her company, Beate Uhse AG, was listed on the German stock exchange, its brand recognition in the country comparable to that of BMW and Mercedes. In July 2001, Uhse died of lung infection at the age of 81. Until her death, she was criticized by detractors as a bad and immoral woman, but praised by her supporters as one of the most valuable people in Europe who promoted sexual liberation in Germany. Bad is good On the flight back to Manila, my paranoia returned. Perhaps, my classmates thought I was a bad woman, too. I recalled an article written by Sri Lankan woman rights activist Sunila Abeysekera describing “bad" and “good" women. She wrote, “The bad woman is usually the one who is free with her sexuality, and sometimes with her sexual favors; she is sexy, while the good woman is chaste, virginal and asexual." I may not be that open when it comes to sexual favors, but most of the time, I enjoy the orgasmic act without the guilt. I can even “clinically" share the beauty of the experience, especially to open-minded listeners. I believe that sex is not self-surrender but self-assertion. And yes, perhaps my classmates are right. I’m bad. But who cares when being bad feels so good? - FI/YA, GMANews.TV