Vaginal Jade Eggs: Ancient Chinese Practice or Modern Marketing Myth?

OBJECTIVE: To identify evidence that vaginal jade eggs were recommended or used in sexual health practices or for pelvic muscle exercises in ancient Chinese culture. MATERIALS AND METHODS: A search of the online databases of 4 major Chinese art and archeology collections in the United States. RESULTS: More than 5000 jade objects were viewable in online databases. No vaginal jade eggs were identified. CONCLUSIONS: No evidence was found to support the claim that vaginal jade eggs were used for any indication in ancient Chinese culture.

Mirror rubbing: a critical genealogy of pre-modern Chinese female same-sex eroticism.

This article offers a critical genealogy of pre-modern Chinese female same-sex relationships. Through the analysis of the primary source materials in history, fiction, and drama, the author shows that female homosexuality is silenced and suppressed. To Confucianism, female same-sex relationships threaten to exclude men from accessing female sex and keep women away from participating in extending the family line. Even the Daoist theory of sex can be used to discriminate against female homosexuality by denying women the ability to initiate and maintain the cycle of yin-yang interaction in sexual intercourse. There are 2 recurring themes in the male writers' imaginings of female same-sex eroticism. First, heterosexuality is the preferred sexual order, and female same-sex desire arises due to the lack of sexual access to men. Second, heterosexual relationships and intercourse are the norm that female homosexuality aspires to imitate.

Influence of Tantra on ayurveda and Kamasutra.

A close study of ancient works of ayurveda and Kamasutra shows that the knowledge of anatomy and physiology of different parts of reproductive organs particularly of female genitals is lacking. Hymen, defloration and clitoris do not find any mention in earlier works. Works of medieval and late medieval period mention the different parts and their utility and function especially in the sexual enjoyment. Worship of vagina or Yonipuja was a common practice in some sects of Tantrists like Kaulas, Kapalikas and others. This practice resulted in the close observation of different parts and thereby knowing their importance and role in the sexual enjoyment, which was also a part of the practices of Tantrism. This knowledge appears to have been incorporated in works like Bhavaprakasa of ayurveda and Paururavamanasijasutra and others of Kamasutra. They describe three Nadis in the female genitalia and clitoris others.

Winckelmann divided: mourning the death of art history.

The discipline of art history is often said to have been invented in the writing of J.J. Winckelmann (1717-1768). In his Reflections on the Imitation of Greek Works in Painting and Sculpture (1754) and History of Ancient Art (1764), Winckelmann dealt with the homoerotic meanings of Greco-Roman arts in complex ways. To do so, he imagined a split between his subjective position as an observer with specific erotic and political interests and his objective position as an historian. His importance for art historians today derives from his own recognition and further elaboration of his "division," an awareness manifested in his principal metaphor for the status of the art historian as a "maiden" mourning her "lover," the "lost object" of her desire, namely, ancient representations of beautiful young men. This metaphor and related features of Winckelmann's texts situated the homoeroticism of art and of the art historian in mutual relations that enable the art historian to reconcile, if not to resolve, his fundamental "division." Winckelmann's image of art history presents a more adequate sense of the enterprise than the misleading polarization of "objective" history and "subjective" interpretation frequently encountered today.