Saturday, July 05, 2008

Two-Hundred-One

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Sincerely.
Eve and JW3 and Mélisande
Dirty Girl Things ©
Unrepentant.  Unpretentious.  Unconventional. ©

Tuesday, July 01, 2008

Two-Hundred

Could sex save your life?
Making love doesn’t just help you feel good. It also burns calories, boosts your immune system – and can even reduce the risk of cancer By Dan Roberts, The Independent (July 2008)

Boosting self-esteem was one of the 237 reasons people have sex, according to a study conducted last year by researchers from the University of Texas and published in the Archives of Sexual Behavior. This is no surprise to Julia Cole, author of How to Have Great Sex for the Rest of Your Life. She is convinced that a healthy sex life with a loving partner does wonders for the way you feel about yourself. “After a bout of sex the body releases endorphins, which are known as ‘happy chemicals’ because they improve mood,” she says. “Purely from a physical point of view it’s similar to enjoying a good workout or going swimming – but if you’re having sex with someone you love it also makes you feel cared for and promotes self-esteem.”

The proviso, of course, is that if your sexual experiences are unhappy ones, they will have a similarly negative impact upon your psyche. But assuming the sex is good, it is thought to improve body image, as well as reducing anxiety and the incidence of psychiatric illness, depression and suicide. A 2004 study of men from four different cultures found that sexual satisfaction was directly associated with an increased frequency in sexual intercourse, as well as being inversely related to depression.

During orgasm the body produces oxytocin, which is a hormone linked to a range of positive physical and psychological effects. Chief among these is its beneficial impact on sleep. “There’s no doubt that sex is relaxing and so helps tackle insomnia,” says Dr David Delvin, a GP and specialist in sexual medicine. “Lots of people use sex, whether with a partner or on their own, as a way of getting to sleep. That’s down to the surge in oxytocin during arousal and orgasm, which is a natural sedative.”

This view is backed up by a US study carried out in 2000, which found that 32 per cent of the 1,866 female respondents who reported masturbating in the previous three months did so to help them sleep.

One of sex’s main health benefits is its positive impact on how we deal with stress. In a study published in the journal Biological Psychology, 24 women and 22 men kept records of their sexual activity. The researchers subjected them to stressful situations, such as public speaking and doing verbal arithmetic. Those who had intercourse had better responses to stressful scenarios than those who had either engaged in other sexual behaviours or abstained altogether.

According to Julia Cole, this could be down to the soothing effect another person’s touch has. She says: “A great deal of research has shown that touch has a naturally calming effect on human beings, whether it’s linked to sex or not. Of course, being touched by someone you care about will double the calming effect.”

Apart from the obviously pleasurable sensation of being touched or stroked, it is thought to have a biochemical effect, reducing the levels of cortisol – the hormone that is secreted when you’re under stress.

Having sex once or twice a week has been linked with higher levels of an antibody called immunoglobulin A, or IgA, which can protect you from colds and other sorts of infections. Scientists at Wilkes University in the US tested IgA levels in 112 college students who reported the frequency of their sexual activity. Those students in the “frequent” group had higher levels of IgA than those who were either abstinent or had sex less than once a week.

Paula Hall, a psychosexual therapist with Relate, also thinks that the impact of sex on our general wellbeing helps to boost immunity. “All the psychological benefits have an impact on your physical health, such as your immune system,” she says. “We know that when you’re feeling good about yourself your body fights off illness and disease better – so the healthier we are psychologically and emotionally, the healthier we are physically.”

Frequent ejaculations may reduce the risk of prostate cancer for men in later life, according to a study by Australian researchers reported in the British Journal of Urology International. When they followed men diagnosed with prostate cancer and those without it, the researchers found that men who had at least five or more ejaculations weekly during their twenties reduced their risk of getting prostate cancer by a third.

“The evidence is good that men who masturbated regularly in the past are less likely to get prostate cancer,” confirms Dr Delvin. “Nobody knows exactly why this is, but it does seem to be pretty cast-iron.”

Research also suggests that regular sexual activity could help women to avoid breast cancer. A study conducted in 1989 examined 146 French women and found a higher risk of breast cancer in those women without sexual partner or who had sex less than once a month.

Having sex and orgasms is a key part of improving intimacy and ensuring a healthy long-term relationship – which has been linked to a longer lifespan in a number of studies. It’s all down to oxytocin again. “Oxytocin, also called the ‘bonding hormone’, is released when women give birth, so it is part of the bonding process with their baby,” says Julia Cole. “It’s also released in people who are in secure or long-term relationships, as well as during sexual contact. This bonding effect is one of the reasons people continue to have a sexual relationship long after they have ceased to be fertile.”

This was backed up by a study conducted by researchers from the University of Pittsburgh. They evaluated 59 premenopausal women before and after warm contact with their partners ended with hugs. The study found that the more contact the women had, the higher their oxytocin levels were.

And studies in which couples were asked to go without sex for long periods found that their general relationship declined, indicating that sex has a powerful bonding effect for couples. “There’s also the slightly more indefinable feeling that you are thought to be attractive and someone your partner wants to be with and touch,” adds Cole. “That’s very important – often when I see couples who are in trouble they have stopped having sex, and one of them will say their partner no longer thinks of them as attractive.”

Sex has been linked with a pain reduction for a wide range of conditions, including lower back pain, migraines, arthritis and premenstrual syndrome symptoms. It’s all down to those hormones again. “Sex increases endorphins, the body’s natural painkillers,” confirms Dr Delvin. “So there is evidence that having sex eases period pain and PMS.”

Oxytocin is also linked with pain relief. In a study published in the Bulletin of Experimental Biology and Medicine, 48 volunteers who inhaled oxytocin vapour and then had their fingers pricked reduced their sensitivity to pain by half.

In 2001, two studies of orgasms and migraine headaches in a woman and man found that orgasm resulted in pain relief. And an earlier study of 83 women who suffered from migraines reported that orgasm resulted in pain relief for more than half of the group. Although this form of pain relief is less reliable and effective than the use of drug therapies, the effects of orgasm as an analgesic are more rapid.

Sexual activity, like other forms of exercise, burns both calories and fat. Thirty minutes of energetic sex burns 85 calories or more. Although this may not sound like much, it does add up – 42 half-hour sessions will burn 3,570 calories, which is enough to lose a pound. “Sex does burn calories, so it’s comparable to moderate exercise like doing the housework or going swimming,” says Dr Delvin. And it is, clearly, a great deal more fun.

But there is something of a chicken-and-egg element here, because people who lead more active sex lives tend to exercise more regularly and physical exercise improves sexual health. A 1990 study that followed 78 men over a nine-month period found that with consistent aerobic exercise, participants had an increase in frequency of sexual activity, improvement in performance and an increased ability to reach a “satisfying” orgasm.

One of the most extensive studies into the relationship between sex and mortality was carried out in Caerphilly, South Wales, from 1979 to 1983, with a 10-year follow-up. In the study, 918 men were given a physical examination and asked about their frequency of orgasm. After 10 years it was found that the mortality risk was 50 per cent lower among men who had frequent orgasms – which was defined as two or more per week. The study also found that, even when adjusting for age and other risk factors, frequent intercourse was associated with lower incidence of cardiovascular disease and stroke.

“There has been a great deal of research into whether people in relationships live longer,” adds Paula Hall. “We know that having a strong relationship is a good indicator of longevity – and a healthy sex life is a big part of that.”

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Sincerely.
Eve and JW3 and Mélisande
Dirty Girl Things ©
Unrepentant.  Unpretentious.  Unconventional. ©

Monday, June 30, 2008

One-Hundred-Ninety-Nine

Topkapi Palace in Istanbul: What really went on in the harem?
Nick Trend, The London Telegraph (June 2008)

At the Topkapi Palace in Istanbul, Nick Trend finds it hard to distinguish fact from erotic fantasy about life inside.

“This,” said the guide who was taking us around the Topkapi Palace in Istanbul, “is the Courtyard of the Concubines.” We blinked at the sunlight and surveyed the row of windows closed off with tight-slatted wooden shutters. We were right in the heart of the building from which successive sultans had ruled the Ottoman Empire for 400 years - from Mehmet II’s sacking of the city, then called Constantinople, in 1453, until the mid-19th century.

Our guide went on to speak of how the girls who served the Ottoman sultans were mostly beautiful Circassians from the North Caucasus. Muslim women were forbidden to be concubines, so these mainly white, Christian slave girls, were used instead. There could be up to 300 in residence within the complex at one time.

“Why does the path lead over to that door?” ventured one of our group, pointing at the cobbled walkway which led at an angle across the yard.

“Ah, yes, that’s the teacher’s room,” she replied almost without hesitation. “You know, all the concubines had to be properly educated before they were fit to serve the sultan.”

But as she spoke, I was reading the information board on the wall behind. According to this, we were not looking at the Courtyard of the Concubines, but the Courtyard of the Sultan’s Mother. The concubines’ court was at the other end of a short passage to our left.

I’m still not convinced as to which was right. But one of the perils of any guided tour is that you are never quite sure whether you are hearing fact or fiction, or most likely, a confused hybrid of the two.

After all, one of the temptations of being a tour guide is to tell a good story, rather than stick to the facts. And nowhere will they get a more receptive audience for a good story than in a harem.

So what could I believe on my tour of the Topkapi?

Were there really different orders of eunuch, who suffered different levels of castration, and some of which had their tongues cut out? Were unco-operative concubines really locked into that iron-barred cage? Was it true that the more rebellious girls were put into weighted sacks and thrown into the Bosphorus? Yes, serious accounts of the seraglio seem to back up most of the grimmer sides of harem life.

Did the sultan flick his handkerchief at his girl of choice for each night? Possibly. Did some have strange proclivities which tended in the dark and dreadful way that our guide seemed to be implying? I’m not sure I really want to know. But Sultan Ibrahim I, who died in 1648, certainly seems to have had an obsession with finding more and more obese women, and is rumoured to have ordered the drowning of his entire harem of 280 girls on a whim.

Now it is me who is falling into the trap of recounting apocryphal stories. But perhaps this sort of western fascination with the fantasy of harem life is just as much a part of the story. What we like to believe about harems tells us more about ourselves than about what really went on.

The fantasists go back a long way. Pop over to the new Pera Museum, on the other side of the Golden Horn in Istanbul, and you will find an early 17th-century Austrian painting - an imagined account of the life of Ottoman ladies, dancing, reading, reclining and making music in the privacy of their palace.

But it was in the 19th century, when P&O steamships and the Orient Express railway opened up the Near East to tourists, that the demand for a taste of this exotic, erotic world soared and the fashion for Orientalism took off.

In 1861, the French painter Henriette Browne, who had accompanied her husband on a diplomatic trip to Constantinople, caused a sensation when she exhibited one of her paintings, Harem Interior, in Paris.

It was a rather a tame account of veiled, long-robed ladies chatting below a row of Oriental arches, but it was considered the first eyewitness view of the inside of a harem.

It so excited, and frustrated, the French poet and critic Theophile Gautier, he wrote that only women should travel to the Orient, because only they could see what was really worth seeing.

It was clearly what the public wanted to see, and what many artists enjoyed producing. British artists either took extended tours of the Orient, or like John Frederick Lewis moved wholesale to Cairo or Constantinople, to ensure the authenticity of their work.

As you can see in the Orientalism exhibition at Tate Britain, dreamy paintings of odalisques, often semi-clad or naked, lounging on exotic day-beds, fiddling idly with flowers or fans, or washing each other in Turkish baths, became a significant theme in 19th-century art.

We contemporary tourists have to use our imagination in a slightly different way. Victorian men couldn’t get into the harem, but they knew it existed. We can get in, but since the Sultan’s seraglio was disbanded in 1909, we find only an empty stage set. But we still get a fascinating insight.

Even before you get to the main door of the Topkapi harem, the sense of enclosure and secrecy begins to grow. From the main gate in the palace walls, you have to walk a good 10 minutes and pass through courtyards that were once open only to the Grand Vizier and the most prominent diplomats.

These privileged visitors got only as far as the Gate of Felicity, the entrance to the third courtyard. Just inside is the domed Audience Chamber, a marble-floored pavilion with a dazzling scheme of patterned Iznik wall tiles, where they would have been received by the sultan.

The entrance to the harem is hidden away to one side of the gate. Inside here, the sense of enclosure grows. You are no longer progressing through open courtyards. This is an interior, inward-looking world of green and blue tiled corridors and tiny cubicles lined with sofas; of narrow spaces and inter-linking rooms.

Even though only about 20 of some 300 rooms are open to the public, it becomes impossible to retain a sense of direction. Only the occasional glimpse of distant minarets, or the glint of the Sea of Marmara, provides any hint of the outside world.

But the logic of the internal organisation is clear and reflected the principles of a power structure dominated by the sultan, his mother and the chief black eunuch who was responsible for the concubines.

The entrance corridors are overlooked by the eunuch’s watchrooms. The iron-barred punishment cage is displayed on one of the main communication corridors.

The apartments of the sultan’s mother, with cupboard doors inlaid with tortoiseshell and mother of pearl, are just a few steps away from his own. And the main communication corridor, dubbed the “Golden Road”, was the sultan’s short-cut between his mother, his chief eunuch and the innermost court of the palace, the Imperial Courtyard.

As I lost my sense of direction walking through the long succession of rooms I began to feel more and more disturbed by the remnants of this weird fantasy world.

Instead of the exotic lattice screens filtering the dazzling sunlight into soft, patterned shade that the Victorian artists loved to paint, I began to see the bars of a prison.

It wasn’t only the girls who were locked away. One of the sultan’s bathrooms - a sumptuous series of marbled chambers - had its own gilded iron gates, so that he could lock himself in while he washed, to protect himself from assassination attempts.

Even more sinister were the two rooms known as the gilded cage, or the twin kiosk. They are perhaps the most beautiful of all of the living quarters, with stained-glass windows surrounded by Iznik tiling, a huge sitting platform, elaborate gilded fireplaces, and spectacular painted dome over the innermost room.

But they too were a prision.

Until the 17th century there had been a brutal tradition that justified a sultan killing all his male relatives to ensure that the sultanate passed to a favoured son. So, for example, in 1595, Mehmed III’s 19 brothers were murdered at the instigation of his mother, while seven of his father’s pregnant concubines were put into sacks and drowned at sea.

Such brutality was ended in 1666 by Selim II, who decreed that all princes should survive, but be locked away from public life until the succession. This, of course was only to be another form of brutality, which hardly prepared the youths for good government. One, Suleyman II, spent 39 years in the gilded cage, and it was only with great difficulty that, in 1687, he was persuaded to leave and take up the sultanate.

But, for all the claustrophobia and sense of individual tragedy, you do also get an insight into the sumptuous side of harem life - of the fantasy world that fuelled the Victorian imagination.

Outside the pavilion of the gilded cage is the harem courtyard, overlooking a great bathing pool and box garden. It is blissfully still and peaceful and offers a sudden release from interior confinement. It is also the only point where you at last get a far-reaching view over the city and the Golden Horn.

Nearby, the Imperial Hall, or the Hall of Diversions, which was the main centre of entertainment, is the epitome of Ottoman opulence.

A great gilded dome spans the main part of the room, which is lined with panels of blue and white Delft tiles and mirrors of Murano glass. Harem musicians played in the high gallery, while the sultan could sit either on a throne-like, canopied sofa or retire to the cushions, which line the window bay. Here he could lie back and indulge his every whim in unparalleled luxury and with unfettered powers.

But was he happy?

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Sincerely.
Eve and JW3 and Mélisande
Dirty Girl Things ©
Unrepentant.  Unpretentious.  Unconventional. ©