Smells and Bells

Religion in itself is a set of guidelines for proper behavior within society, family and friends and even in our most intimate relationships.   Religion, regardless of which one, provides us with stories and reasoning to follow specific guidelines and the consequences that will ensue from not following these guidelines.   Religion also provides the answers to the most difficult questions that cannot be satisfactorily answered by science and it gives its followers the feeling of belonging and reason to exit. What Happens When, like religion, carried a message of guidelines involving our behavior towards sexual encounters and activity occurring on this college campus. Like religion, it provided a story with a narrative that we could all relate to and apply to our own behavior and experiences. And, like religion it explained the consequences that result from behavior that does not follow the specific guidelines for sexual activity without consent.    ...

Last night, Tuesday March 31st, I had the pleasure of attending sex week’s talk given by our very own professor, Jonathan Brumberg-Kraus. The presentation was called, “Doing it Orally: The Connections of Eating and Sex”. Eating is seen as something so intimate because one places something in their body, crossing a barrier, unlike other senses, and in that way is much like sex. The main theme of the talk, or at least what I took away was that how intimate eating and having sex are, and how many similarities there are between the two. Professor Brumberg-Kraus drove home the point that eating and sex really do connect to every sense, even the ones you would not think of. At one point stating that eating is hearing because we as humans have evolved the parts of our ears that now attached to our jaw, so we would be able to eat and talk at the same time. He also went on to cite the story of Adam and Eve where eating is seeing, Eve eats the fruit from the tree, therefore it causes her ...

The incredible inequality of the sexes is revealed in this week’s reading of the Aroma of righteousness by Deborah Green. It is not only that women are not equal to men but that women are practically a different species. According to R. Joshua, the Bible states that Adam was created from the earth while Eve was created from the bone. Therefore, women slowly decay over time and must cover up their putrid smell by using different unguents (137). Throughout this chapter, Green gives instances in which women would purposefully adorn themselves or their garments with perfume. It was believed that the women used the smell of spice to keep their husbands interested for the forty years of wandering through the desert (136). It is as if the only reason to keep a woman around is to entice her husband to have sex with her and that she has no other purpose or used expect to take care of the resultant children. Green also mentions several times how it was Eve who sinned and got Adam kicked o...

As Valentine's Day is approaching, our attention turns to the sensual side of our senses. Ackerman states on page 130, “Sexual hunger and physical hunger have always been allies.” Restaurants are currently preparing their menus full of foods to be served called aphrodisiacs. Newspapers and magazines are publishing articles about what to whip up for your loved one in the kitchen this February 14th with tips on using aphrodisiacs to set the mood. Foods like oysters, champagne, asparagus, strawberries, cherries, blueberries, bananas, avocados, blowfish, eels, cucumber, tomatoes, honey, coffee, cinnamon, chilies, ginger, garlic, figs, caviar, chocolate, and the list goes on. Aphrodisiacs have been used throughout history from Elizabethan brothels offering prunes to Marquis de Sade lacing his bon bons with spanish fly that he served to his friends and prostitutes, reported by Ackerman on page 131. But what makes these rumored foods so sexual and what exactly are they doing to our...