Critical Introduction - The Meaning of Sexual Health

What is Sexual Health?

Example: The sexual health of women - Male fears

Women who insisted on their sexual satisfaction were often considered "nymphomaniacs", subjected to medical treatments designed to dampen their desires or were even committed to insane asylums. On the other hand, the sexual pleasure potential of women - denied and feared at the same time -  caused a great deal of anxiety among men. This became evident in many literary, artistic and musical works until well into the early 20th century. Plays, treatises, and novels by Strindberg, Weininger, Wedekind and Heinrich Mann testified to this overwhelming male fear. They described "vamps", i.e. women who, like insatiable vampires, sucked the life blood out of men, ruined and destroyed them. Women like Salome in the play by Oscar Wilde and the opera by Richard Strauss, Lulu in the play by Wedekind and Alban Berg's opera, but also Marlene Dietrich's "Lola" in "The Blue Angel" embody this male nightmare. Officially, however, female sexual health consisted in "modesty" , i.e. lack of sexual desire - the very same condition that today is believed to require treatment.

Oscar Wilde’s play “Salome” (1891) was set to music word for word by Richard Strauss (1905). Salome loves John the Baptist who rejects her. However, once his head has been cut off, she succeeds in kissing him. Scene from the film “The Blue Angel” (1930), based on a novel by Heinrich Mann (1905). Marlene Dietrich plays a nightclub singer who ruins the life of her husband, a formerly respectable teacher (Emil Jannings), by always “falling in love again” with other men, because she “can’t help it”.