Muslim Sex Shop

(photo courtesy of yaznotjaz)

How patriotic of them!  Sex does, indeed, cross party lines.  Here are the details from msnbc.com:

“Babeland spokeswoman Pamela Doan told msnbc.com in an interview that the promotion is a first for the company, which she describes as “a sex-positive, women-friendly retailer for sex toys and accessories.

The rewards are no-so-subtle reminders of this year’s campaign rhetoric. For men, it’s the “Maverick,” a “sleeve” for self-pleasuring. According to a press release, “He’s always there to lend a hand, he works for every man, and he bucks the status quo.” Women can choose the “Silver Bullet” mini-vibrator, which is “a magical solution to difficult problems” and “a great stress-reliever during these troubled economic times!” The promotion lasts through Nov. 11.”

So, head on over to Babeland, and show off your “I voted” sticker proudly.  They have stores in New York, Los Angeles and Seattle.

“In fine literature, though, old fragile men still engaged in erotic affairs are sometimes made the target of mockery.  Of a senile wooer unable to consummate the marriage, the great Sa’di says:

‘That old man who cannot rise without a stick,
How should his stick rise?’”

Society and the Sexes in Medieval Islam edited by Afaf Lutfi al-Sayyid-Marsot, P. 90

(photo courtesy of yaznotjaz)

“Suffice it to say that the view of Galen and other Greek physicians was that a man’s abstinence from sexual intercourse as a rule results in his becoming melancholic, as soon as the putrid matter of the retained semen reaches his head.  This was then the medical explanation of why so many great lovers went insane, though it accounts only for the male. Rumi alludes to it in a great poem on the benefits of motion and on the damage of the lack of it, making use of the double meaning of hawa, air and concupiscence, in the following verse:

‘The air becomes putrified if closed up in a pit,
Look at separation, what damage the dirang-i hawa,
it caused by protraction of carnal desire!’”

- Society and the Sexes in Medieval Islam edited by Afaf Lutfi al-Sayyid-Marsot, p. 89

“”The Muslim view that the male semen was nothing until united with the woman’s to form an embryo was basic to the permission of contraception.  If contraception is permitted because it does not tamper with human life, then abortion of the pre-ensoulment foetus can be permitted on the same grounds.  Zaidi Islamic jurisprudence explicity stated that since the “unformed” foetus, like the semen, had no human life, abortion, like contraception, was unconditionally permitted.”

Also,

“This conclusion gains indirect support from the contemporary medieval Arabic secular literatures.  Medicine, materia medica, and popular literature all treated contraception and abortion as if they were two aspects of the same process: birth control.”

- Sex and Society in Medieval Islam, Basim Musallam, pp 58-59.