Erotic massage has likely been around as long human beings have walked on two legs. In practice, everyone has seen or experienced moments where someone hugs a loved one and strokes his or her butt with no intent of initiating sexual intercourse. What could this be but the origin of erotic massage? Erotic massage as a “thing”, though, likely began during the Victorian Era in Europe.
During this period, medical knowledge was in its infancy and the medical community espoused many ideas that a modern person would find laughable. The idea that bleeding a patient by applying leeches could possibly help an anemic person is ridiculous. That a woman with “the vapors” had an actual medical condition instead of a problem caused by the fact that her corset was squeezing her 30″ waist into a 16″ area seems doubtful.
Another of these ideas that we find so wrong was “female hysteria”, a condition that seemed to encompass every personality or physical trait not considered appropriate in women of the time. One of the primary symptoms of female hysteria was high sex drive. Somehow, the doctors of the day decided the solution to high sex drive was stimulating the patient to orgasm.
When women were diagnosed with female hysteria, one of the popular treatments was for the doctor or a midwife to manipulate her genitals until she had an orgasm, referred to in the procedure as an “hysterical paroxysm”. The idea was that the paroxysm released negative energy that was causing the female hysteria – kind of like exorcising an orgasm out of someone.
Since its dubious medical beginning, erotic massage has encompassed many forms and enjoyed varying levels of social acceptance.
In the modern world, erotic massage is viewed as anything from a bonding experience between lovers to a seedy activity in which only prostitutes engage. It is likely this will continue to be true as humans are a judgmental animal and any activity in which we do not engage ourselves, we tend to look down on. In the end, such judgment is a losing cause because those who judge can shut down every massage parlor on the planet and pass laws dictating what people do in the privacy of their bedrooms, but unless their goal is to end the human race, they will never stop that most basic erotic massage – the suggestive stroke between lovers who care about each other.
