History and Culture
The earliest literary reference to frenum piercings occurs in Die künstlichen Verunstaltungen des Körpers bei den Batta. Zeitschrift für Ethnologie (16:217-225, 1884), which states: "Amongst the Timorese of Indonesia, the Frenulum beneath the glans penis is pierced with brass rings...the function of the ring is to enhance stimulation during sex." Anecdotal piercing lore associates this piercing (along with many other male genital piercings) with various chastity devices that have been used throughout history, although there is little hard data to back up this claim.
In contemporary society, frenum piercings were primarily found amongst the members of gay BDSM subcultures, until body piercing became re-introduced to mainstream society in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
Frenum piercings are often intended to provide sexual pleasure to both the bearer and the person he is having sexual intercourse with. They may also be used to attach chastity devices to the bearer, denying them sexual pleasure.
Read more about this topic: Frenum Piercing
Famous quotes containing the words history and/or culture:
“There is one great fact, characteristic of this our nineteenth century, a fact which no party dares deny. On the one hand, there have started into life industrial and scientific forces which no epoch of former human history had ever suspected. On the other hand, there exist symptoms of decay, far surpassing the horrors recorded of the latter times of the Roman empire. In our days everything seems pregnant with its contrary.”
—Karl Marx (18181883)
“I wish to speak a word for Nature, for absolute freedom and wildness, as contrasted with a freedom and culture merely civil,to regard man as an inhabitant, or a part and parcel of Nature, rather than as a member of society. I wish to make an extreme statement, if so I may make an emphatic one, for there are enough champions of civilization: the minister and the school committee and every one of you will take care of that.”
—Henry David David (18171862)