The Museum of Sex

Dedicated to the exploration of the history, evolution and cultural significance of human sexuality, advocating open discourse and striving to present to the public the best in current scholarship unhindered by self-censorship. — The Museum of Sex

This is how the Museum of Sex, located in a relatively small building on a street corner in Manhattan, categorizes itself. Yeah, that’s right; it’s an entire museum devoted to the exploration of sex and sexuality.

Since the husband and I have been to the Big Apple several times, we have seen/done most of the touristy things; so this time, we wanted to embark on something out-of-the-ordinary. This museum definitely fit what we were after…

One of the exhibits on display at the time (March 2009) was entitled “The Sex Lives of Animals.” According to the evolutionary biologist from Stanford who is the exhibit’s content adviser, “Sex in the animal kingdom is just as complex and nuanced as it is for humans, and pleasure, it seems, is not restricted to the human realm.” This, I learned quickly while reading about and/or watching the sexual habits of snakes, pandas, monkeys, bats, deer, slugs, and dolphins.

It was all an eye-opening experience and not just because visitors are met with life-size sculptures of animals “in the act” (see right for Male-on-Male Dolphin Blowhole Sex) and video footage of chimpanzees engaging in a threesome. And it’s not simply because patrons discover that many individuals in the animal kingdom possess both male and female genitalia, that some species have three genders (or more), that female hyenas have a pseudo-penis, or that dolphins live in long-term, multiple-partner open relationships.

No, the enlightening moment arrives when you learn, as one Salon.com reviewer states, “We’re not the only species that has sex for nonreproductive reasons, and we are mistaken in our assumption that heterosexuality is the only ‘natural’ form of sexuality.” Indeed, lionesses, male grey-headed flying foxes, fruit bats, and male kangaroos participate in kissing, hugging, oral sex, and masturbation purely for the sake of pleasure — not procreation (e.g., evidently some dolphins emit sounds that vibrate the surrounding water and, in turn, one another’s genitals, a practice known as “buzzing”). Moreover, homosexuality has been documented in lions, giraffes, African elephants, American bison, and many other animals. (The only really troubling story in all of this was that of a necrophiliac duck on a “rape flight.”)

The other exhibit on sex and cinema was also interesting, but (aside from the section on pornography) it was mostly information with which I was already intimately familiar because I teach film courses. In any case, if you’ve already sailed out to the Statue of Liberty, peered off the top of the Empire State Building, and browsed paintings in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, you might take the train to Fifth and 27th for an experience that’s perhaps equally as, ehem, satisfying.

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