iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Jon Knowles @howsexgotscrewedup.bsky.social · 1h

DYK 12thC #HughOfStVictor, lover of #ClosetQueen #BernardOfClairvaux, warned that the penis was dangerous? It was the only part of the body untouched by the soul. People w/penises had to be very careful:

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Jon Knowles @howsexgotscrewedup.bsky.social · 1h

DYK medieval nuns & monks ate very little on their strict diets to keep themselves from #SexualDesire & fantasy? #AlbertTheGreat warned women who let themselves fantasize about sex: #HistSex

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Jon Knowles @howsexgotscrewedup.bsky.social · 1h

DYK Elizabeth Bisbee Duffey’s “What Women Should Know” of 1873 warned women that not only were men much stronger & lustier than they, many were brutes when it came to sex? Ghosts of #WmnHist still haunt. HowSexGotScrewedUp.com

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Jon Knowles @howsexgotscrewedup.bsky.social · 1h

DYK until 20thC, a woman had to marry whomever her master—father, brother, owner—wished? A wife had to have sex when her new master/husband wished & abstain when he did or when he wished to have sex w/someone else. HowSexGotScrewedUp.com #GenderHistory #MarriageHistory

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Jon Knowles @howsexgotscrewedup.bsky.social · 1h

DYK #MaryFrith (d.1659) married for cover when her exploits dragged her into court, but had no interest in conjugal sex? In her gentleman's life, she kept 3 maids & flocks of parrots & monkeys, paid fines to #CrossDress & identified as a #hermaphrodite. HowSexGotScrewedUp.com

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Jon Knowles @howsexgotscrewedup.bsky.social · 1h

DYK Christ never said a word about #homosexuality? Some people, including many in the middle ages, think he was gay & married to the apostle John. Bisexuality & #queer sex were norms in his day. Jesus did say #eunuchs/#transsexuals were welcome in heaven. HowSexGotScrewedUp.com

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Jon Knowles @howsexgotscrewedup.bsky.social · 1h

DYK “French” balls were held at NYC’s Metropolitan Opera House from 1888 to 1901? At “the naughtiest of the respectable masked balls”, 3,000 of the city’s best men consorted w/4,000 of its worst women! Comstock & others claimed each ball ended in an orgy. HowSexGotScrewedUp.com

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Jon Knowles @howsexgotscrewedup.bsky.social · 1h

DYK Plato’s Retreat opened in NYC in 1977? It was the city’s first public, clothing-optional, sex club for straight people & the nation’s foremost arena for public sex. It took over the former site of the gay Continental Baths in the basement of the Ansonia at 73rd & Broadway.

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Jon Knowles @howsexgotscrewedup.bsky.social · 1h

DYK 325 was the dawn of the #AgeOfIntolerance? #EmperorConstantine’s Council at Nicaea made nonCatholics homeless slaves & made sins & crimes of “sodomy”: #AnalSex, #OralSex, #QueerSex, #SoloSex, & #zoophilia. #DangerousChurchDoctrine Blog7 HowSexGotScrewedUp.com

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Jon Knowles @howsexgotscrewedup.bsky.social · 1h

DYK #ThomasAquinas (d. 1274) had limitations as a scholar: he taught #BirthControl, #SoloSex, #QueerSex & #bestiality were worse sins than #rape because they can’t make babies—breaking “Natural Law”—the idea that all animals marry! Still doctrine! Blog7 HowSexGotScrewedUp.com

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Jon Knowles @howsexgotscrewedup.bsky.social · 1h

DYK early 20thC doctors taught parents that #SoloSex/#masturbation led to disease & death? They scared kids off it, tied their hands to bedposts, even did #clitoridectomy & infant #circumcision to stop it. Result: guilt. Ghosts of #HistSex still haunt. HowSexGotScrewedUp.com

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Jon Knowles @howsexgotscrewedup.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

DYK it was 8thC Archbishop of Mentz, Boniface, “the Apostle of Germany,” who reaffirmed 4thC church law prohibiting women from singing in church? It would be 1940 before the Vatican allowed them to rejoin the choir. Ghosts of #WmnHist still haunt. HowSexGotScrewedUp.com

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Jon Knowles @howsexgotscrewedup.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

DYK many 9thC writers saw women’s love itself as a corrupting agent? Men who gave in to their wives' love became womanish themselves. Charlemagne’s favorite bishop, Theodulf (d.821), wrote a poem about it in his Poetae. It begins:

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Jon Knowles @howsexgotscrewedup.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

DYK early Catholics made rituals to seal #SameSex, spiritual marriages w/allegedly no sex? Spouses did live & sleep together & inherited one another’s property. Many had sex secretly because of harsh penalties against #QueerSex. HowSexGotScrewedUp.com #GayMarriage #HistSex

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Jon Knowles @howsexgotscrewedup.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

DYK #Gilgamesh & #Enkidu were lovers & their story, the world’s first epic, was about the civilizing effects of #queer love, its diminishment of masculine virility & rage & grief’s power at the death of a lover. HowSexGotScrewedUp.com #HistSex #manliness #QueerHistory

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Jon Knowles @howsexgotscrewedup.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

DYK orgies happen in the wild? Bonobo apes, for example, enjoy celebrating a good meal w/an orgy. Age, fertility status, gender, & social position don’t matter to them. The whole clan eagerly swaps partners. Everyone has a few good orgasms. Then they eat. HowSexGotScrewedUp.com

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Jon Knowles @howsexgotscrewedup.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

DYK #PopeInnocentII’s Fourth Lateran Council (1215) declared Jews couldn’t hold public office, go outdoors on Holy Week’s last days & had to wear special clothes to warn Christians against #HavingSex w/them? #Antisemitism is #Medieval. HowSexGotScrewedUp.com #history #HistSex

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Jon Knowles @howsexgotscrewedup.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

DYK 2,000 years of ruining people's sex lives should disallow tax exemptions to #KKKristian churches? Jesus didn't say a word about #BirthControl, #abortion, #QueerSex, #SoloSex or #zoophilia. Time to protect women & sexual minorities from religion. HowSexGotScrewedUp.com

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Jon Knowles @howsexgotscrewedup.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

DYK the fervor & power of the Vatican’s Holy Inquisition against #sodomites (anyone who ejaculated w/sex play outside of coitus w/#QueerSex or #bestiality) grew quickly in the first few decades after the Fourth Lateran Council established it in 1215? HowSexGotScrewedUp.com

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Jon Knowles @howsexgotscrewedup.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

DYK early 20thC doctors taught parents that #solosex/#masturbation led to disease & death? They scared kids off it, tied their hands to bedposts, even did #clitoridectomy & infant #circumcision to stop it. Result: guilt. Ghosts of #HistSex still haunt. HowSexGotScrewedUp.com

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Jon Knowles @howsexgotscrewedup.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

DYK #KKKristians still win battles in their long war on reproductive & #SexualRights? I detail the story in my book. We can’t let them force their religion on us, just vote straight Democratic ballot for a more evolved #Christianity. Blog8 HowSexGotScrewedUp.com

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Jon Knowles @howsexgotscrewedup.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

DYK women had a specific monetary value in the Middle Ages? Frankish King Guntram (d. 592) levied fines of 600 solidi for the murder of a pregnant woman & another 600 if the fetus was male. Murdering a girl under 12 cost 200 solidi, the same for a woman after menopause.

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Jon Knowles @howsexgotscrewedup.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

DYK men at the 19thC commune in Oneida NY had a strict training for coitus reservatus? They first had sex w/post-menopausal women until they got it right. All practiced “complex marriage” & could ask any woman to have sex w/ them. Women could not initiate, but could refuse.

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Jon Knowles @howsexgotscrewedup.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

DYK smiley #DwightEisenhower won WWII w/a team including #gay & #lesbian soldiers & sailors? After he won it w/them he took away their pensions & made it illegal for them to serve in the military or work for the feds or their contractors. HowSexGotScrewedUp.com #QueerHistory

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Jon Knowles @howsexgotscrewedup.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

DYK #HarryTruman made it illegal for queers to serve in the military AFTER they helped him win World War II? He also cancelled their pensions & access to unemployment benefits & barred them for working for the fed or its contractors. Not generous. HowSexGotScrewedUp.com

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Jon Knowles @howsexgotscrewedup.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

DYK Mexican President #SantaAnna (d.1876) wrote a guide to #amistad in his manual for elementary education? He urged young men to love fondly, as brothers, #SameSex best friends: sleep together, eat together & share clothing. Sometimes things got #sexual. HowSexGotScrewedUp.com

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Jon Knowles @howsexgotscrewedup.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

DYK #Charlemagne (d.814) had to double the fines for self-#castration? The Catholic church taught people to hate their bodies—a lot. Many were very eager to free themselves of the #SexDrive & become #eunuchs for the #KingdomOfHeaven. HowSexGotScrewedUp.com #doctrine #HistSex

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Jon Knowles @howsexgotscrewedup.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

DYK by 1929, 24 states had begun to #sterilize people to prevent alleged genetic defects? By 1958, they forcibly sterilized 60,926 people. By 1932, at least 26 states permitted #sterilization of “unfit” women & men for “… feeblemindedness, insanity, #epilepsy, idiocy,

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Jon Knowles @howsexgotscrewedup.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

DYK by the end of 18thC, some states took execution out of their #sodomy laws? Pennsylvania was one of them. Starting in 1786, it ONLY seized a man’s property & indentured him for up to 10 years for #QueerSex or #bestiality.

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Jon Knowles @howsexgotscrewedup.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

DYK Victorian mensaw “good” women as passive, passionless, & helpless, but put them in #SoftPorn? John Bell’s lion gives up raw sexual energy for love of Una’s chaste beauty. A hit at the Great Exhibition of 1851. Ghosts of #GenderHistory haunt. HowSexGotScrewedUp.com

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Jon Knowles @howsexgotscrewedup.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

DYK Pierre #Abelard & St. #BernardDeClairvaux, who condemned him for heresy, agreed that the mother of Jesus did not get pregnant immaculately & w/o original sin? They believed that run-of-the-mill conception would sanctify coitus in marriage. HowSexGotScrewedUp.com #HistSex

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Jon Knowles @howsexgotscrewedup.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

DYK even #StJerome approved of most #abortion & women who had them committed no crime. In a letter to Aglasia, Jerome wrote: “The seed gradually takes shape in the uterus, & it does not count as killing until the individual elements have acquired the external appearance & limbs.”

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Jon Knowles @howsexgotscrewedup.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

DYK some WWII veterans w/dishonorable discharge for being #queer, chose the gay life & left their parents & small home towns? They moved to more tolerant cities to be with others like them. One gay GI wrote this in 1946:

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Jon Knowles @howsexgotscrewedup.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

Pope #UrbanII refused to punish Ralph, Archbishop of Tours, for making his lover, John, “Flora”, Bishop of Orleans. In 1089, he declared sons of priests could no longer serve mass, & if a subdeacon refused to separate from his wife, she could be enslaved. HowSexGotScrewedUp.com

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Jon Knowles @howsexgotscrewedup.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

DYK most moms in the 1970s would give their kids info on sexuality, but only once? In 1978, Elizabeth J. Roberts, David Klein, & John Gagnon found this out when they formed the Project on Human Sexual Development & surveyed 1,400 parents of kids three to 11 in Cleveland.

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Jon Knowles @howsexgotscrewedup.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

DYK the first #SexEd curriculum to say that #QueerSex was natural was a religious one? The Unitarian church’s 1971 “About Your Sexuality” wanted gays & lesbians to be able to have sex w/o disapproval—legal or otherwise. Ghosts of #QueerHistory still haunt. HowSexGotScrewedUp.com

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Jon Knowles @howsexgotscrewedup.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

DYK in 1697, Plymouth Colony passed The Act for the Punishment of Buggery, which conflated #QueerSex & #bestiality: “…that every man being duly convicted of lying w/mankind as he lyeth w/a woman, & every man or woman that shall have carnal copulation w/any beast or

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Jon Knowles @howsexgotscrewedup.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

DYK only one position was tolerated for coitus in the 13thC? #ThomasAquinas & the Vatican decreed that the only allowed sex was the #MissionaryPosition for vaginal intercourse in marriage. A man had to lie, face-to-face, on top of his wife—& only when pregnancy was possible.

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Jon Knowles @howsexgotscrewedup.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

DYK Victorian men saw “good” women as passive, passionless & helpless? Any who enjoyed #SexPlay were sinners & needed a guy’s forgiveness? This is #MuscularChristianity’s Charles Kingsley’s (d.1875) sketch of himself w/wife as #Magdalene. HowSexGotScrewedUp.com #GenderHistory

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Jon Knowles @howsexgotscrewedup.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

DYK #MargaretSanger argued against involuntary #eugenics & #racism in many of her dozen or so books? In 1921, she published “The Pivot of Civilization”: “We should here recognize the difficulties presented by the idea of “fit” & “unfit.” Who is to doubt this question?

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Jon Knowles @howsexgotscrewedup.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

DYK #MargaretSanger held #eugenic ideals, but deeply believed that VOLUNTARY #BirthControl was the first step toward #EqualRights for all women: It would keep the population from growing too fast & help “breed” a healthier world & human race. #eugenics

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Jon Knowles @howsexgotscrewedup.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

DYK for every law passed to benefit women in late antiquity, kings & bishops passed another to keep them down? In 414, they declared all contracts made by women were binding & women could be sole guardians of their kids. But in 426, they subordinated women to husbands & fathers:

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Jon Knowles @howsexgotscrewedup.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

DYK our taboos against #menstruation are medieval? The Merovingian Council of Auxerre (561–605) declared women must wrap their hands in their skirts to receive communion. It forbade them from touching the host with hands that might be polluted by menstruation.

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Jon Knowles @howsexgotscrewedup.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

DYK #Ulpian urged Emperor Severus (d. 211) to outlaw #QueerSex? But Severus didn’t because he wanted to continue taxing male #SexWorkers. Until the 6thC of the #Christian era, emperors continued to tax male sex workers. HowSexGotScrewedUp.com #HistSex #hustlers #QueerHistory

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Jon Knowles @howsexgotscrewedup.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

DYK drowning/#keelhauling #queers was common in some navies? SouthAfricans were merciless w/men who had #AnalSex w/each other. From 1705–‘92, they tortured men to confess, bound them together w/weighted chains & drowned them. The Dutch did it in the 19thC. HowSexGotScrewedUp.com

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Jon Knowles @howsexgotscrewedup.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

DYK w/#Mary Calderone’s formation of SIECUS, opposition to #SexEd grew? Opponents, including Mothers Organized for Moral Stability & the #JohnBirchSociety, declared it was “smut,” “destructive of religious belief,” & a “filthy communist plot”.

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Jon Knowles @howsexgotscrewedup.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

DYK Sweden made #SexEd compulsory in 1964? Sex was not a secret. It taught the art of loving in its schools. Kids lived up to their government’s faith. By 1994, its rates of abortion & sex infections were lower than Australia, England, the U.S., & Wales. HowSexGotScrewedUp.com

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Jon Knowles @howsexgotscrewedup.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

DYK #AlfredKinsey had lots of strong opposition not only by religious leaders such as #BillyGraham but by anthropologists such as #MargaretMead, who claimed that his quantitative stats were not useful for applied research & ridiculed him for normalizing #zoophilia:

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Jon Knowles @howsexgotscrewedup.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

DYK #BillyGraham hated science & upheld medieval #KKKristian myths about #sodomy? He thundered at #AlfredKinsey for statistically normalizing #QueerSex, #SoloSex, #WomensSexuality & #zoophilia, damaging “the already deteriorating morals of America". Blog7 HowSexGotScrewedUp.com

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Jon Knowles @howsexgotscrewedup.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

DYK #Victorians enjoyed #SoftPorn while subjecting the #HardCore to #censorship? This frontispiece is from Emile-H. Meyer’s (d.1893) ‘Paradoxe sur l’Amour”. A manacled, naked woman, manacled to a post has exotic blossoms spring from her crotch. HowSexGotScrewedUp.com #HistSex

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