Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
Discover the Largest Sex Library in the World
90 Plays5 months ago
Discover the largest sex library in the world: The Carter Johnson Library!
In episode 2 of the Pleasure Science Podcast, I’m joined by “Mama” Vi Johnson, the historian and curator of the library with the biggest collection of kink history, sex history, and LGBTQ+ history in the world.
Right about now you’re probably wondering two things: how did this library come to be and why haven’t I heard about it?!
Well, be prepared to find out:
- The inspiring true story behind the Carter Johnson Library
- What spicy historical facts Mama Vi is currently researching
- How you can help preserve sex history
- And so much more!
Viola Johnson, affectionately known as Mama Vi, is a leatherwoman, activist, motivational speaker, and author who has been active in the leather BDSM scene for five decades.
Her story, and the story of the Carter Johnson Library, is profound. It will make you gasp, laugh, cry, and leave you filled with hope.
I am so excited to share this episode with you.
Episode website: https://pleasurescience.com/s1e2-sex-library
Show Notes
Pleasure Science Courses - Use pleasuresciencepod at checkout to receive 10% off!
WEB • www.pleasurescience.com
BLOG • Pleasure Science on Medium
@PleasureScience on Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube
Carter Johnson Library on Instagram and Facebook
To donate to the library -> info@leatherlibrary.org on PayPal
Info about Magnus Hirschfeld and the Hirschfeld library
People to check out that Mama Vi mentions:
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to the Pleasure Science Podcast
00:00:00
Speaker
That is self-love, that is the person in the mirror, that is love of body, that is love of everything that is natural to you, including your orgasm.
00:00:22
Speaker
Welcome to the Pleasure Science Podcast, a podcast all about making you feel healthier and empowered in your sexuality.
Who is Vi Johnson and what is her role?
00:00:30
Speaker
Today, I am so excited to share with you amazing information about the biggest sex library in the world. And today, I have no one other than Vi Johnson, the creator and curator of this library,
00:00:46
Speaker
with us today. I am just so excited because Vi, you are... Well, first off, you go by Mama Vi, even though you're a historian, even though you're an archivist, even though you're a curator of the biggest sex and BDSM and LGBTQ history library in the world. You go by Mama Vi Johnson, which is just so beautiful. But Vi Johnson is an author, an activist, and again, the curator of the Carter Johnson Library.
00:01:13
Speaker
Hello, Vi. How are you doing? Welcome. My scholar, how are you? Your exploits are more exciting than mine at this point. What about yours, and actually? Well, you know, before we start off with any of the fun exploits, we always ask a yummy question to all the guests coming. So my yummy question for you is, what is your definition of sex?
00:01:43
Speaker
I'm going to assume you are not referring to the genetic marker you know that that lets us reproduce.
What is Vi Johnson's personal definition of sex?
00:01:51
Speaker
o If I were going to define sex, I would say it is an intercourse between one person and themselves to two, three, four, five, or more that can be spiritual, physical,
00:02:10
Speaker
Yes, personable, pleasurable, but emotional. It can be an emotional and physical mix of things that carries us somewhere that we normally couldn't reach. Or as my mother would have said, there's a reason we say, oh God, when we come.
00:02:34
Speaker
Ooh, love that. That's so beautiful. And so with that delicious definition to kick us off, let's talk a little bit about your story because the Carter Johnson Library didn't come out of nowhere. You're someone who's proudly in their 70s living your best life ever, getting books from across the globe, meeting sexy people, um getting information from them, scholarly or fun or otherwise, but Where did this all begin? Well, see, once upon a time when God was young and dinosaurs roamed the earth. And I was in graduate school and assigned it to keep one woman out of the hair of the dean of women, the dean of students, and the president of our university. That woman's name was Jill Carter.
00:03:31
Speaker
And 50 years and seven months later, I'm still with her.
How did the Carter Johnson Library begin?
00:03:38
Speaker
Aw, so Jill Carter is the Carter of the Carter Johnson Library. They're the Johnson of the johnson the Carter Johnson Library.
00:03:48
Speaker
I love that. So it started with you two meeting in graduate school and you making sure that Jill was a good girl, it sounds like.
00:03:58
Speaker
And so how did just this this care and love for history and sexuality begin? Because I think, I mean, the library obviously didn't start in graduate school. And I don't even think you knew what you were doing when you started to They care about all of this stuff. So what made you care enough about literature and books and history to start even collecting things? like Where did that impulse come from? There are a lot of elements of that that are all mixed up. um First and foremost, the state of New Jersey spent a lot of money putting me through school to become a history teacher.
00:04:42
Speaker
I grew up in ah an old house with three or four generations, all of whom loved books. My mother's library was extensive. But I also grew up in a town that had dared to burn books. So let's put a pin in that one.
00:05:01
Speaker
as Jill and I discovered this wonderful world of sexuality not exactly on the correct side of the sexual norm because let's face it we were two women in the very early 70s who would fall in love and then two women who had fallen in love based on what would today be called the kinky fantasy trying to find out what the heck we were doing led us on a couple of different jaunts to try to find anyone, anything, a newspaper, a book, whatever. That jaunt led us to Eulenspiegel when it was a very, very young group.
00:05:50
Speaker
But from that group that embraced us as family, there were those few individuals who either traveled back and forth to Europe or out of the United States, who had connections for books and newspapers that were very rarely found in the United States. And I'm not even talking about the things you would find in an X-rated bookstore. The beautiful work of, God, Gene Bilber.
00:06:20
Speaker
or some of the earlier work of Charles Guyette. These were the things that weren't common in the United States, so they were passed around like treasures.
Why is preserving LGBTQ and kink history important?
00:06:30
Speaker
And as the older Kingsters taught us, they gave us things to read. Now, some of it was a loan, some of it was a gift, and a lot of it, unfortunately, did what a lot of one-handed reading does. You saved some, you probably discard most. Well, in various moves around the country for Jill's jobs, corporate moves,
00:06:59
Speaker
We ended up in Oklahoma about 30 years ago with maybe five or six boxes of the treasures that we had been given that we had kept. And Oklahoma, being a state that was just recovering from their first wave of AIDS, didn't have a lot of teachers, so the kinklings kind of gravitated around Jill and me.
00:07:26
Speaker
And they asked about stories and you know who was doing what. And whenever I traveled or Jill traveled, we would bring things back, a newsletter, a leather journal, a new book. But in going through those boxes of stuff we just hadn't bothered to throw out, they found their history. And they taught us that our old stuff the stuff we really were disregarded was the history that they were hungry for. So we started to save it. And the five or six boxes grew to 10. And then to the 10 grew to 15 and the 15 to 20 until by the time we left Oklahoma,
00:08:12
Speaker
almost 30 years ago and moved to Pennsylvania. Those boxes were hidden in the closets in behind the sofa. They were doubled down in the bookcases. 12 of them became the sidebar and I put a tablecloth over it and so on. And in traveling as a presenter, I used to do a workshop, so to speak, called Leather History Show and Tell.
00:08:40
Speaker
And I would drag a suitcase full of books with me and tell stories about it the same way we didn't show and tell in elementary school. And um anything from the 1870 history of Iran all the way up to present day leather journals and newspapers and the things that most of my next gen, thinking late 80s, early 90s, have probably never seen.
00:09:10
Speaker
A gentleman asked me in, I think, 98 or 99, he said, I've taken this class five times and I've never seen the same thing twice. How much of this do you owe?
00:09:25
Speaker
um That was a startling revelation, actually, because I actually had to think about it. You know, I'd go off to an event, grab two or three programs from my club brothers and my next generation, and when they got tired of that, that went into a box, and we were off to the next event, so picking up the newspapers, until, as I said, there were boxes all over the house. But I had never really thought of how much of it there really was.
00:09:54
Speaker
He and his wife said they were putting on a brand new event in South Carolina. And would I just bring it all? Well, by the time, much to Jill's horror, oh there were boxes all over our living room, piled three and four high before we loaded them into a van and took them down there. By the time we took it all out, stole some bookcases from a couple of vendors who thank God loved me.
00:10:23
Speaker
um It filled the 10 by 15 room, and it absolutely surprised me. The second surprise for everybody, including the two people putting on the event, were that half of his attendees were in this newly created library, reading, being able to touch, thumb through,
00:10:49
Speaker
fantasize. Occasionally do a little bit more than that under the table, which, by the way, is why there are paper towels in the library.
How does the library prevent the destruction of LGBTQ history?
00:11:00
Speaker
Your mama may be here, but I'm not cleaning up after you.
00:11:06
Speaker
And it just grew, fade out, about almost 20 years ago now.
00:11:18
Speaker
I ran into a book burner. And then a few weeks after that, at an event, I ran into a young man who needed to talk to me about the fact there had been a book burning in front of his store. That day, and the event was Southeast Leatherfest, I went up to my hotel hotel room, had a screaming match with God that probably still has a hole in the ozone over the hotel.
00:11:47
Speaker
and vowed that if I had to beg it, steal it, whatever it took to preserve it, you don't get to burn my family's history. Thank God my extended leather family loves me because they know I am as crazy as a loom.
00:12:06
Speaker
um It's gotten bigger since then.
00:12:11
Speaker
That's how it happens. I love that, though. You know, decades of work, decades of love. And I can feel your passion when you're talking about the book burning. And it reminds me of the slogan of the Carter Johnson Library today. Do you want to share what the slogan is? And just even more about like the heart that you have behind each word of that slogan. The library slogan is never again landfill.
00:12:39
Speaker
never again flames. Landfill, and forgive me because this still makes me emotional, because during that first wave of AIDS, and Jill and I were both North Jersey babies, so hopping in and out of Manhattan was at best a 20 minute drive to all of our extended family. When that first wave of AIDS hit in 81,
00:13:09
Speaker
And we began losing the people we loved, sometimes two and three a week. And so fast that a lot of times you didn't have time to react. Families would come in, put a lover out and clear out everything because to them it was sick or dirty and it there wasn't even a chance to look. Pictures, photographs, the memorabilia of loving couples ended up in garbage bags, it ended up in the landfill in Staten Island. We eventually, the entire leather and gay community of New York, figured out a ah method to kind of delay the process just a little.
00:13:57
Speaker
um A lot of us girls went in for a day or two and pretended to be the girlfriend. You know, throw up a few pictures on the wall or whatever it took so that we could slow the families down by ah a day or two so that the partners could get in and try and pick up the things they love to avoid landfill. Now as to flames, most people know the history of the Library of Alexandria.
00:14:28
Speaker
it was built, or the Hirschfeld Library in Germany, in Berlin, that was absolutely destroyed during Kristallnacht and other book burnings that unfortunately we are seeing coming back again. I am reminded as both a lover of history and a reader of the work and words of a German philosopher of ah easily a hundred years before Hitler. Badly paraphrased, he said, any civilization that will burn a book must ultimately burn its writer. Because a book isn't dangerous, the idea is.
00:15:18
Speaker
Now, since you're stuck with a storyteller, I grew up in an era where critical thinking was mandatory for getting through school. We were taught Hillel's philosophy that said a student isn't judged by the caliber of their answer, but by the caliber of their question, which means discourse, conversation, agreements, disagreements are all part of the advancing ideas that take us forward. You don't burn it.
00:15:54
Speaker
You don't have to agree with it. You have to learn how to create better solutions. And as you've heard me say, I wouldn't use mine comp for toilet paper, but I wouldn't let you burn it either. Because we learn not just, we don't learn from our successes. They boost our ego.
How has the library's mission expanded globally?
00:16:19
Speaker
And they help us gain confidence, but we actually learn from our failures.
00:16:24
Speaker
earn the failure of the evidence of the failure. And you can't march forward. But just as important, that same philosopher also said, if I can destroy the history of the people or the works of the people, two generations later, they'll never know you existed.
00:16:49
Speaker
What does that do for my LGBTQ youth who are already going through trauma? When someone can actually convince them, no one was ever here before you. So you must be sick. You must be a pervert. There must be something wrong with you. Whereas putting a book, a magazine, a souvenir from an event that their grandparents might have gone to shows them that not only are they not alone, they never were. So you don't get to burn it on my family's watch. No, you do not. And now what's beautiful is there are chapters and annexes of your library all over the world.
00:17:43
Speaker
I mean, what you have done is truly incredible. Do you know how many annexes there are now? Because there are therere quite a lot. It's very impressive. This is like a parent trying to remember the names of all their children. Hold on there. Again, if you have like a lot of children. We begin in Boston with a library that is run by a Stephen Dew and his family. That is the Boston annex. Sliding down next is Mid-Atlantic.
00:18:14
Speaker
ah And Mid-Atlantic and Atlanta argue actually about which one was first. Between Mid-Atlantic and Atlanta is Hampton Roads. Going down the coast is Florida.
00:18:28
Speaker
Moving west is Texas. Moving slightly northwest is the bouncing baby of the family. They're here now signing their paperwork and leaving with seven boxes of books. They're threatening to tie one of the members on the roof because they're out of space. That is Four Corners. Detroit has just signed their paperwork and we're about to send them books.
00:18:56
Speaker
or actually I think they're coming out to also raid the mothership and pick up bookcases. Moving farther west is um Crossroads. Sliding into l LA, which was birthed just about this time last year and their specialty is going to be Old Hollywood LA and they're concentrating more on recordings.
00:19:22
Speaker
um getting the stories of the area and the places. And then sliding up the coast is Northwest. Their specialty is actually graphic novels, although they have everything that every Carter Johnson has.
What role does the library play for LGBTQ individuals?
00:19:40
Speaker
Now sliding down, we have two in Costa Rica, because the girl said they didn't like half the books the guys had, so they wanted their own library. um Our first
00:19:54
Speaker
Foreign Library was a small one in Singapore. We are working now with Ontario because we're dancing around some Canadian laws. So that one's a little awkward. And then not to be left out, the Athenaeum, which is its own little island, is in Second Life.
00:20:19
Speaker
I mean, that's incredible. So truly chapters for just, and it was so important for me to ask that because I'm sure there are people listening who are like, I want to have access to this information or, or just see the proof of it. And you can go to these chapters and you can reach out on the Carter Johnson library.org. Cause something that you say that's so beautiful is you're the curator of this library, but you don't own this library. This library is for the community. Yes.
00:20:49
Speaker
Technically, and only technically, are Jill and I its owners because we're the ones who buy a lot of it. The community donates more. As more and more of us old dogs are realizing we have to downsize, and I may be the only exception to that rule, um a lot of the books and magazines that were part of their youth are coming here.
00:21:14
Speaker
ah We just got for instance three huge boxes from Tomo from South Plains and the baby Four Corners happens to be here right now and they're going through boxes going mom. Can I have well? There's three of them. Yes So all of those donations are also helping to see it other libraries oh There's one thing and this is probably a political statement that I want to add to this and The libraries, those who are foolish enough, crazy enough, or loving enough to buy into the Carter-Johnson concept, also accept the fact that they're not just havens for the books in the words of the ancestors. They're also havens for those of us who may need to run. And in this time and this place,
00:22:13
Speaker
Having a haven where if something happens you can go to is part of what it means to be a Carter-Johnson. So those who say, mom, I would like to have a library, not only do we talk about it, we talk about the responsibilities, not just to those who walk before you, but to those who are young and whose very existence may be threatened.
00:22:41
Speaker
And are you willing to harbor them? Because if you cannot harbor tomorrow, you also cannot harbor yesterday. Hmm. Wow. That's, I mean, and it's true. It's very true. And speaking of, you know, what is going on right now with the way we are with sexuality, with gender, with love and relationships, something that is so beautiful about having this library is the more educated people are, the less radical we become.
00:23:14
Speaker
From your life to God's ears. Well, the problem is, right? People aren't educated about sex, you know they or queer history, or BDSM. like They don't know where to go for this information if they're even looking for it. The information that's spewed out is very biased and extremely uneducated. Only 18 states require sex education to be medically accurate.
00:23:38
Speaker
right So we're not getting the education we need. And so you as someone who has really been around knowledge, history, queerness, sexuality for all of these decades as a thought leader, how do you feel that we can reduce the radicalism around sex? Loaded answer.
00:24:05
Speaker
The library's obligation is to tomorrow. Because at some point in time, the old, the racist, the prejudiced, the biased, the possessive are going to die out. If you are teaching my next generation, you notice that's possessive because you are all mine. If you are teaching my next generation,
00:24:33
Speaker
that who they are and how they love in any way, shape or form is natural because love has no boundary. When you strip away this ugly bag of mostly water, what is leftist spirit and love? The job is to teach, I believe my opinion only, the next generation to love themselves first.
00:25:00
Speaker
in any way, shape, or form that comes. That is self-love. That is the person in the mirror. That is love of body. That is love of everything that is natural to you, including your orgasm. When it is no longer necessary to teach because it's natural, no one would dare to even think about, well, what do you mean? I'm not supposed to love myself.
00:25:30
Speaker
when that is natural and we are at ease with who we are. The rest of it's mechanical. Hi, this is how you have an orgasm. This is how you stay safe. This is how you have a baby. This is what you do when you're in polyamorous relationships. This is what you would do when it is solo sex. This is what you do when it is group sex. That part is mechanics. A book can teach them. A person. And Nadezh, you and I have talked about this.
00:26:07
Speaker
You have to teach them love. You told me what your name meant. And it's the first time I've actually believed in hope. But whether I like it or whether you like it or not, that responsibility to teach simple, basic, these three faith, hope, love, above all, love is your job.
00:26:37
Speaker
The mind is to provide the material to allow the mind to make their own decision. Our job is to teach them to make good decisions.
00:26:50
Speaker
I'll take up that mantle. Absolutely. And, you know, for anyone who doesn't know what my name means, my name means Hope. And Mama Vi and I were talking a couple of months ago at the Indiana location, the kind of mothership of the Carter Johnson Library, where you have the rare book room where I got to hold books about flogging and sex that date back, I kid you guys not, the 15th century, the 17th century.
00:27:18
Speaker
the 18th century. And Mama Vi and I were talking and she was saying, you know, ah faith is one of your biggest words of your life, but you don't like the word hope. And I was like, well, that's really fascinating because my name is hope. And that's what my name means. And I feel like I was put on this earth to give people hope. I think that is a subconscious gift that I have. And we had a really emotional moment about that because you were explaining how Well, you explain it in your own words. What is the difference between faith and hope? you know I had said to you that your Greek ancestors would have considered hope an evil o because hope requires nothing from the person who is wishing it to you. It takes no effort on my part to hope you have a nice day. All the responsibility is yours.
00:28:15
Speaker
It takes no effort on my part to hope that the house ripped up by a tornado is put back together. I don't have any skin in that game. Hope is easy because I don't have anything to do with it. All of the responsibility is when the person I'm suddenly wishing hope to. Um, one of the running memes after most natural disasters is I will give you an eighteen-wheeler full of hopes and prayers, or I will give you an eighteen-wheeler full of generators and diapers and water and food. Which do you really want? And because hope requires nothing from me, I've never liked it. But I also
00:29:11
Speaker
because of you have accepted that hope is a beacon.
Who inspires Vi Johnson in sexual history preservation?
00:29:16
Speaker
And at some point in time, we must all walk toward the light. So maybe it's better to do it while I can still see my legs than before I become a living bundle of energy.
00:29:35
Speaker
I mean, I love that. And I think that's what's so beautiful also about creating community and bringing us together and something that you do at the library. And you had said something earlier that I thought was really moving and I want to circle back to about how you don't want queer youth or even just all youth to feel like they're history, like they're weird or they're strange because they can't look through history and see representations of them themselves, whether that's people who are kinky, people who are asexual, people who are queer, people who are trans.
00:30:08
Speaker
And when I was hanging out with you, one of my favorite questions, I'd like wake up in the morning, get coffee. Mama Vi would come into the library and be like, OK, so tell me about a historical figure. Tell me about a historical fact. And Mama Vi has so many just just stored. And so I'd love to know, are there any historical figures, maybe they were kinky or queer, that you are really loving right now or or that's frame of mind for you right now?
00:30:39
Speaker
One that I'm the most focused on because he is the person that keeps popping into my brain, and one of many that ultimately when I stand with the ancestors I am hoping will come up and say well done, is a man named Magnus Hirschfeld.
00:30:59
Speaker
For those who are not familiar with his name, Hirschfeld was the powerhouse behind the Hirschfeld Library in Berlin, which in the 30s and into the 40s, before Hitler destroyed it, was the largest human sexuality library in the world. The work that Hirschfeld did to make just sex Whether it be the marker, the way we perceived ourselves and gender, how people pleasured themselves, all of it. Hirschfeld did.
00:31:33
Speaker
um There are a lot of people who say his greatest achievement was the library. There are a lot who say that his greatest achievement was working with the Berlin police to create cards and identification that allowed someone to appear in their gender rather than their sex. Hirschfeld did all of that. So that when someone was asked to present their cards of identity, which was normal long before World War II, if they identified as female, regardless of how they were born, that's what their identity card said, and it was accepted. the That's all heartfelt work. I think about um an exhibit that I believe is right in front of where the old library was. It was created by an artist about, I guess, about 18 years ago.
00:32:34
Speaker
If you look down and it's about two foot, I think by two foot, you can stand on the plexiglass and look down. And it appears to be miles and miles and miles of empty bookshelves representing everything that was destroyed that night.
00:32:56
Speaker
I want with the family to create a library that Hirschfeld would be proud of. a place that, because unlike my forefather in that sense, I'm not putting all my eggs in one basket. If they destroy one, they're not going to get them home. And to build that haven again that Hirschfeld had created in the 30s and the early 40s, where human sexuality was just a given.
00:33:31
Speaker
It was no big deal. You're gay, you're straight. You identify as how you identify. It simply is. So, oh after all of that protracted tale, Hirschfeld is the one that is on my mind most.
00:33:49
Speaker
Oh, I love that. And it reminds me of something that you kept saying to me on repeat as because I am the scholar in residence this year of the Carter Johnson Library. I'm going to be producing research for the library, original research about the history of kink and BDSM and power. And one question I kept having for you, because it's a question that comes up for me and people in my community, is how do we find queer and trans people throughout history when the markers and the identifiers for queerness are different or people had to hide themselves? And we see cisgendered white heterosexual male historians, you know the people who
00:34:30
Speaker
created the history genre as we see it today in the canon, they'll always say, you know oh, we can't prove that those people were trans or queer because they're waiting for some sort of obvious marker. like someone And by marker, people, I don't mean like a marker on a board. I mean a symbol of of queerness. like They wore a badge or they wore you know different things. um And we don't necessarily have these markers, and yet,
00:34:58
Speaker
it is completely possible to be like, wait, I can see that this person was a queer figure in history or a trans figure in history. And something you would always say is putting things in the historical context. And so how do you as a queer historian and kinky historian go through history and identify and say, oh, I can see trends of queerness. I can see these figures. What does that process look like for you?
00:35:25
Speaker
it We require you to go back and look at the history of the era. Let's talk about the term Old Maid. More than likely, the Old Maid was living with another Old Maid because neither had married or one was now a widow. Were they really just living together to share expenses or were they living together for other reasons? That's when you start to dig.
00:35:54
Speaker
You look at other markers of men together, um whether it be battlefield photographs or the letters they would have written, and we miss little things like names. We assume that Francis is a girl's name, not everywhere.
00:36:23
Speaker
We assume that letters from a man were always written to a woman if it starts with darling. That's not always true. Not only do you have to read the letter, you've got to go back and look at the history of the man. We go back farther into history when we realized that men took lovers when they went to war. So did women, by the way.
00:36:52
Speaker
More often than not, there was more going on in the harem between the women there than was ever going on with the Sultan and the women there. You need to understand the history surrounding it. Things like the endings of names in their original language.
00:37:16
Speaker
While I will not get controversial with this statement, look at the word Shekinah. Nah in Hebrew is a female ender. Look at other names. Look at historical practices of what the women of Rome were doing with their slaves when their husbands were away at war.
00:37:44
Speaker
And even then, you start to look at clothing and little things. Women who wore spats.
00:37:57
Speaker
Something that simple. Okay, she's daring enough to wear pants and a frilly blouse and a well-cut blazer, but she also has spats on it.
00:38:12
Speaker
You begin to listen to the stories that the elders told and kind of insinuated, you know, gee, she never married and she really loved that motorcycle.
00:38:32
Speaker
And go back and look at non-traditional history.
00:38:39
Speaker
I can think of stories my mother told me about the Harlem Renaissance when they talked about Mr. Moms. Well, those of you who followed black comedy on the Chestnut Circuit knew Moms mably as a woman. Most of the lesbians of Harlem knew Moms mably as a pretty, daggone, good-looking stud who was always in a dapper three-piece suit and a bowler.
00:39:10
Speaker
The men never saw her that way, but the women did. And the stories for Mr. Moms are notorious. oh It's looking at the time and it's listening for the clues and then being willing to pursue the clue. Something is simple, something we would bypass would be the color of a man's handkerchief in the early 1800s.
00:39:40
Speaker
Sometimes it meant he was a dandy. Sometimes it meant he was looking for a man and not a woman. So first the scholar must study the times because the things that we don't even think about that mean nothing to us at all were major references 100, 200, even 300 years ago.
How is queer history identified in non-traditional ways?
00:40:07
Speaker
And that is why it's so important to have your library. like it's Because so many, I mean, as someone who's also an academic, There are so many teachers and professors who have these unconscious biases who are not wrong or bad people by any means and who are not out here trying to you know push an agenda down someone's throat, or at least that's what I choose to believe. I don't think most academics are here to to say they're doing one thing or another, but they're operating within their biases. And then when we have people like you creating these libraries, creating these resourcess this type of research, we can see that there are trends we have ignored because the dominant culture has so powerfully shaped the way that we learn, what we learn, and even created things like the scientific method that try to tell researchers, well, this is the right way to research and the wrong way to research.
00:41:04
Speaker
Um, which is, I mean, every time you speak, I, I just, my mind opens up and, and so we've talked about, you know, queerness transness through history, but what are some things about sex that you're geeking out
What challenges does Vi Johnson pose to societal norms?
00:41:19
Speaker
about right now? Is there anything or maybe even like kink that you're geeking out that you just saw through in the library or, um, or even just in your personal life? Cause I feel like you as this curator of the library, your personal life is this mixture of.
00:41:34
Speaker
fun, but science.
00:41:38
Speaker
Nadesh pleasure is pleasure. However you seek it. And mine is pretty long and you are way too young to hear those stories. But when I think about just the joy of sex, the person that always comes to my mind first is my mom.
00:42:03
Speaker
Aside from, you know, the fact that she was in Harlem during the Harlem Renaissance, remembering that I'm 70 and I was a change of life baby. So my mother had me at 40, would she tell you something about her age?
00:42:18
Speaker
oh Mom was the one who, you know, she looked at me when I found some of her sketches that were, oh my God, and she looked at me very casually and went, how do you think you got here?
00:42:32
Speaker
There are certain things girl children don't necessarily want to know about their mothers but None of us were born from the great office egg in Delphi. Hi, we came from parents who had sex and Celebrate that which is something that in all when once upon a time when I was still a member of LSM, an active. Another active member was a woman who was a cornerstone of the woman's sexual movement, and that was Betty Dotson. And Betty not only taught classes on how to have an orgasm, but she also taught ah most of the women of LSM, hi, there's no shame in looking down there. Tell me about your vagina. Tell me about your vaginal lips. What does it look like?
00:43:24
Speaker
How big is your clitoris? Celebrate it. Enjoy it. It's there for a reason. And it's not just to have reproductive sex in the missionary position for the purpose of having a baby only. Because if it were, this would be a very, very small population. As Whoopi Goldberg once said, and I'm not sure where I can go with language,
00:43:52
Speaker
we because it feels good. The baby is kind to secondary. The pleasure is the first instinct. It's normal. So why are we fighting something that is absolutely normal? Why are we legislating something that is absolutely normal? Why are we trying to control our pleasure of all things. You want to control something, control the speed of a car on the highway. You want to control something, control the amount of money that is given to millionaires. You want to control something, open up the floodgates for the amount of food that is given to poor children in school. That's what you should be controlling, not something that is natural as breathing.
00:44:48
Speaker
If you inhale and then exhale and drink a glass of water because you're thirsty, why shouldn't you have sex for the same natural reasons? For God's sakes, you know, everything else in nature does it except us. We're trying to control it.
00:45:12
Speaker
So, hi. I'm well over 70 and, you know, aside from my husband's money, my boyfriend, Mr. Itachi, is also very close to me. and On what hour I may wake up and need to scratch an itch. I'm not always going to wake Jill up at about a clock in the morning, although half the time she is awake at that hour. um You know, when it happens, deal.
00:45:41
Speaker
Are you really going to intake a breath and go, I can only exhale once every half hour?
00:45:50
Speaker
It's as natural as breathing. Have at it. And since you don't mind me being controversial. Oh no, we love it. This podcast is all about encouraging people to think. um great A great poet once said, make a joyful noise unto the Lord. What is more joyful?
00:46:10
Speaker
than the sound made at orgasm, and what is more natural from the universe, however you see it, than pleasure. Right about there, you will probably bleep out that.
00:46:28
Speaker
No, we're not bleeping out. You can even say the F-bomb. Listen, i I'm a a bunny who curses, so, you know, it's... I come back to what my mother said. There's a reason you say, oh God, that when you come. Make a joyful noise.
00:46:48
Speaker
It's natural. And that is another thing I love about you and the way you approach this research is you're so well versed in the Bible. You're so well versed in a lot of these historical um documents because they are some of the oldest documents that we have. And so again, like thinking back to what you say of putting things into context,
00:47:11
Speaker
It's so helpful to be well versed in scripture, regardless of your religious beliefs, because it can help us put things in place.
00:47:24
Speaker
yeah Oh, I love it. This has been just such an incredible conversation. And it always is because you just have such a wealth of knowledge. um But how can our listeners find out more about you and
How can you support the Carter Johnson Library?
00:47:39
Speaker
the library? Maybe they want to donate. Maybe they want to visit. What would that look like? We're putting up a brand new website, um trying to move away from wherever it was that it was, into our own server. i If you would like to donate, it's info at leatherlibrary.org at PayPal, ah or going to our Facebook pages because not only does the mothership, the Carter Johnson, have its own Facebook page that tells what we're doing and who we're talking to, so do most of the annexes. And you can see where they are, what we're doing.
00:48:17
Speaker
um You know, the places we're going to and why, who we're talking about, we like sharing those pieces. And, you know, hi, bop on over to the new website, donate some money, donate a book, donate a magazine, donate your time, donate love to someone who needs it, donate a cup of coffee to a kid that's lost, donate a book,
00:48:48
Speaker
Donate spirit. It's not just us. It's everybody. Do I hope that everybody buys into the Carter Johnson concept and this decides that pleasure is a whole lot more fun than war? Yes. Do I hope that everybody buys someone's book and gives it to a kid that can't afford it? Yes.
00:49:13
Speaker
Do I hope that every everybody embraces who they are, how they choose to be, and the gifts that are part of them? Yeah.
00:49:25
Speaker
Now, like I said, those are the donations to your community and to the spirit that is all around us. They're the most important. But if you happen to have a million dollars and you're looking for a tax deduction, I wouldn't mind that. Hey, you know, I need more space. I need more gardens for people to come and sit in. I need, you know, I'd like a bigger building. Why? Because if I don't do something, Jill will throw me out of the house yet again.
00:49:55
Speaker
um so you know any lottery winner out there hi i'm a worthy cause and yes i am a 501 um but other than that love it's what we put on this earth Hmm. Oh, well, I love that. And we are going to make sure to have all those links in the show notes as well. So that way you can contribute to the Carter Johnson Library, whether you want to give love or a book or a million dollars.
Conclusion and teaser for future episodes
00:50:28
Speaker
That is it for this week's episode of Pleasure Science. Please join us next week. If you liked this episode, you're going to love the next one because I do a crash course on the history of sex. We're going to go deeper into some of the historical figures we mentioned today, and I'm going to explain how we went from worshipping sex to feeling like we need to hide it. It's a really empowering conversation.
00:50:53
Speaker
Now, in the meantime, you can follow me on Instagram and TikTok at Pleasure Science. And please remember to subscribe to this podcast wherever you listen, leave a rating or review, and share these episodes to help us spread the word, again, not just about Pleasure Science. like If you follow us, that's beautiful. And I think you should, because we're fun over here. However, when you contribute anything, whether it's a rating, a review, or sharing about the Carter Johnson Library, about Pleasure Science, about s sex education in general, You're actually showing the globe how important it is for people to care about this, right? We live in a consumer culture. So pressing these little buttons are so helpful. Leaving a review is so helpful because it shows the entire global community that we're paying attention to these issues and we want more of them.
00:51:41
Speaker
Now, you can also watch these episodes on the Pleasure Science YouTube channel. I recommend it because Mama Vi is so cute and I see your Pleasure Science hat in the corner. I am loving it. You can also, of course, see me. I always dress up really nice and pretty for all of you guys. So come and hang out with us at the YouTube. And because you listened to this podcast, you actually get a 10% discount on all of the Pleasure Science courses. We go over communication, we go over empowered healing, we go over how to flirt, and BDSM as well. We have courses for a lot of yummy things, and you can get 10% off by using the code PleasureSciencePod. Just a big thank you for listening.
00:52:26
Speaker
So thank you for joining us this week. I am Nadezh, your resident sex scholar, and I just also want to remind you to go out and experience pleasure in the next 24 hours. Let's take Mama Vi's advised heart and ask your heart right now, what kind of pleasure do you want?
00:52:43
Speaker
Do you want to go to the grocery store and flirt with that cute cashier that you just keep noticing? Do you want to go out and get a new shirt? Do you want to, I don't know, sometimes I like doing the dishes. It's a pleasure because afterwards everything is so clean. What is a pleasure for you? And go out and do that for yourself in the next 24 hours. I'll see you next week. Bye.
00:53:09
Speaker
This podcast is a Pleasure Science production hosted by me, Nadej, your resident sex scholar. The Pleasure Science podcast is produced by Laura Moore and edited by Camille Furman-Cullough. Our music is by Octasound and is licensed under the Pixabay content license. To find out more about Pleasure Science and to sign up for our online courses,
00:53:34
Speaker
please visit www.pleasurescience dot.com.