Virginia Johnson, renowned sex researcher, dies

[SecularMotion]

Source: Associated Press

ST. LOUIS (AP) — Virginia Johnson, the Missouri farm girl who helped redefine the understanding of human sexuality as half of the husband-wife team whose taboo sex studies in the 1960s turned them into worldwide celebrities and best-selling authors, has died. She was 88.

The pioneering sex researcher died at an assisted living facility in St. Louis on Wednesday after suffering complications from various illnesses, her son Scott Johnson told The Associated Press on Thursday. He said the family was planning a private funeral.

Johnson was in her 30s, a twice-divorced mother of two children, when she went job-hunting at Washington University in St. Louis in the late 1950s, seeking work to support her young family while she pursued a college degree.

She was hired as a secretary at the university's medical school but soon became the assistant and lover of obstetrician-gynecologist William Masters, then co-collaborated on a large-scale human sexuality experiment — a subject all but taboo at the time.

Read more: http://www.masslive.com/entertainment/index.ssf/2013/07/virginia_johnson_renowned_sex.html#incart_river_default

[Spitfire of ATJ]

1. Republicans would love to burn her books.

[Tx4obama]

2. An additional article from CNN

Virginia Johnson, pioneering sex researcher of Masters and Johnson, dies

(CNN) -- Virginia Johnson, the pioneering sex researcher who was part of the groundbreaking team Masters and Johnson, has died at age 88, her son, Scott Johnson, told CNN on Wednesday.

Johnson died Tuesday morning in St. Louis of natural causes, though she had some complications from heart disease, he said.

Masters and Johnson conducted the first modern research on sexuality and the treatment of sexual dysfunction that paved the way for the sexual revolution.

The pair wrote several books, starting with "Human Sexual Response" in 1966, a landmark work discussing the physiology of sex. Their second book, "Human Sexual Inadequacy," published in 1970, detailed how to treat sexual dysfunction.

"The first research on 'sexual response' was unique and surprising," Dr. Julia Heiman, director of the Kinsey Institute, said in a statement. "No one had, with a fairly large number of men and women in a laboratory setting, tried to measure a number of physical responses (heart rate, lubrication, blood pressure, penile and vaginal size charges) during sexual stimulation and orgasm.

"Then the second book, on 'treatment for sexual dysfunctions,' used a very non-medical approach (no drugs, physical aids, or surgery), incorporating behavioral treatments for sexual dysfunctions in men and women. And doing so within two short weeks of daily treatment," Heiman said.

-snip-

Full article here: http://www.cnn.com/2013/07/25/health/virginia-johnson-obit/index.html?hpt=hp_t2

R.I.P.

[Behind the Aegis]

3. What sad news.

There is an upcoming series about her coming out soon (on Showtime?).

[TM99]

4. What sad news.

My mentor worked with Masters & Johnson on one of their S&M sex studies in San Francisco. I had a chance to get to know them both a bit over the years due to my interaction with him.

Brilliant couple who really woke us all up to the myriad degrees to which human sexuality can and does express itself. It saddens me daily to see how repressed and puritanical, Americans still are. We are afraid of ourselves in the bedroom and therefore are afraid of what we might learn about other's sex lives in their bedrooms as well.

The Weiner drama is a perfect example.

Virginia will be missed.