Cock Ring History And The Sexual Revolution
 | With cock rings being so widespread now (available in vast array at every sex shop on the planet) and with the state of the art in the field of cock ring science having come so far, as evidenced by this site and the amazing line of HARDWEAR Horseshoe Cock Rings… we thought it might be fun to take a stroll down memory lane and look at a little bit of cock ring history. Of course there is no such thing as a gay cock ring or a straight cock ring, the sexual orientation of your cock ring is all about you and who you use it with. But it may fascinate and surprise you to know that if we go back in time just forty years or so, say to the summer of love (1969) cock rings were largely unknown to heterosexual men and heterosexual couples, and at the same time cock rings were becoming all the rage in the gay community. Of course we don't call it the sexual revolution for nothing, American society was emerging from a time highly repressed sexuality and would take straight couples another twenty years to jump on-board the cockring band wagon.
Twenty Years Back – The Cock Ring Revolution
The me generation as it’s been called is when the cock ring went fully commercial and was embraced by heterosexual couples who, but for the truly adventurous, pretty much hadn’t realized what they’d been missing for roughly twenty years. The eighties were a season of self focus, men wanted to be fit, men wanted to enjoy sex more, and the popularity and acceptance of vibrators and dildos in the bedroom meant that women were open to toys between the sheets, and a toy that made a girl’s man perform better was something to be appreciated.
The materials that were available for the production of cock rings had expanded and they no longer had to be limited to the leather bar look of the late sixties and seventies. They could be made of plastics and elastomers and in a variety of styles that could appeal to a much wider audience.
Forty (plus) Years Back in Time – The Summer of 1969
Sex toy makers began making cock rings widely available for public consumption in the late sixties, and logically so, as it was the height of the sexual revolution. The materials and technology available to make these devices was not quite so revolutionary however. Most designs were leather cock straps that looked like miniature belts complete with buckles and tiny holes, etc, or they were alternative straps that featured rivets in the place of the buckle system and allowed them to be snapped into place. |
|
| The sixties was a decade of counter-cultural movements: anti-Vietnam, anti-racism, anti-segregation, anti-sexism, pro-hippie, pro-love, pro-sex. This climate, which ultimately gave rise to the breadth of freedoms we enjoy today across a number of dimensions, saw old restrictive ideas collapsing. The gay rights movement was able to take hold during this period as well. As laws that outlawed the sexual options available to gay people (yes, oral sex, anal sex, etc were labeled as sodomy and were largely illegal practices prior to the sixties) were repealed, gays also began to enjoy the sexual revolution and interestingly enough cock rings were a much bigger part of it in gay circles than in heterosexual circles.
Men have been looking for ways to heighten their sexual enjoyment and potency for years, and cock rings have been around for centuries but sex itself outside the man-on-top variety was seen as bestial and hedonistic in European derived cultures, so obviously a prudish perspective didn't give rise to the early adoption of male genital rings. In the Western world this slowness toward sexual freedoms carried out of the middle ages and into the mid-century era. The three most compelling reasons why cock rings were ablaze in the gay world during the sexual revolution but were barely smoldering in the straight world are fairly obvious: women, style, and anal sex.
Reason One: Women were fighting for sexual freedom equal to their male counterparts during the sexual revolution. You have to realize that women were completely denied this type of freedom in the years before. So, just having free uninhibited sex was a very big deal, and a very new experience. Introducing a kinky cock belt device to the bedroom, a room that prior to the sexual revolution might only have safely enjoyed missionary sex without fear of breaking some law, was probably just a bit more than most women of the day were ready to handle. Reason Two: Stylisticly the technology of the times aligned the cock ring with the leather movement. Just about every cock ring was some kind of little leather belt, and as the gay sexual revolution ushered in the popularity of the gay leather scene, so the simplistic cock rings of the day were a perfect style match for what was arguably the most popular gay fetish of the day (and indeed leather bars and the leather look remain a popular gay fetish to this day).
Reason Three: Anal sex requires a very hard cock—it’s as simple as that. And in all reality this is probably the biggest reason the cock ring caught on with the gay community during the sexual revolution. As laws fell away and gay men were no longer being persecuted for engaging in the only type of penetrative sex available to them, the demands of that kind of sex made cock rings an ideal fix yet again. No other sexual variation is more demanding of a man’s erection than anal sex—anal sex insists that a penis be fully hard in order for the sex to fly. On the flip side, let's face it, the sexual revolution for heterosexual couples was not an anal-sex revolution. Straight couples were just glad to be having sex outside, sex on LSD, sex in positions that were not missionary. Arguably the anal-sex revolution, if there is such a thing, is happening right now in the present day. Statistics tell us that never before has a larger number of women actually been willing to try anal intercourse than exists today, and this revolution is being ushered on by the mass popularity of porn and the popularity of anal sex within porn. But that’s a topic for another article. |
|
|
|