[multitaskmom]

They also believed that every time a man ejaculated, it hurt his health, his IQ-

Is that where the term dumbf**** comes from?

[christine]

lol! btw, great nick! ;)

[codebreaker]

Is that where the Austin Posers 'mojo' idea came from?

[kaylar]

Djkstra says that the expression "******* your brains out" really does date from the days when people quite literally believed that a man had only a certain amount of semen, and that once he 'used up' his portion, he was SOL. The scientists believed that both the brain itself and semen were purified blood, and that upon ejaculation, a little from the brain might be lost, if the man had been "overindulging" in sex. So every time a man ejaculated in a woman, he might lose a bit of his brain, and he automatically suffered in health (petit morte, literally) while the woman, who absorbed the semen into her bloodstream, was rendered healthier and smarter.

I cannot stress enough that these scientists weren't crackpots, they were internationally respected, influential theorists, and all this was 'common knowledge', taken for granted and believed by pretty much everyone in the health and science fields. And the whole 'woman as vampire' and sex as contaminating and weakening for men (and whole races) was picked up by artists and writers, and shows up in many books and paintings from 1890-1940. Both works considered masterpieces and potboilers show the influence of these theories.