Dr. John Money, who was a major sex psychologist and researcher, and was one of the first to break down sexual taboos and make sexual research and findings public, especially as it relates to gender identity, has died today.  He was 84 years old, God bless him.  He died of complications from Parkinsons Disease. 

He conducted research for about 50 years at Johns Hopkins University, where he was a professor of medical psychology.

Dr. John Money believed that a person’s gender identity is determined by a combination of biological factors and environment (nature vs. nurture), or the person’s personal upbringing. This revolutionary thought had represented a departure from past schools of thought on sexuality, where gender identity was thought to mostly be biological in nature, and not really determined by one’s environment. 

Now, here’s the really interesting part.  Dr. Money advised parents and counseled them on how they should raise hermaphrodites, or children who were born with sets of both male and female sex organs. 

This was a first, and he was unabashed in his counseling as well as breaking the boundaries of what was once considered a very taboo sexual subject.  He never had any children of his own, and was only briefly married in the 1950’s.  Now, for the more interesting part….

Dr. Money was part of a highly controversial court case of a man who was raised as a woman after suffering a seared penis after circumsision in 1966.

The patient of Dr. Money, David Reimer was raised as a female called ”Brenda” after Money advised his parents to remove the rest of his male genitalia and also recommended female hormone treatment to complete his transformation from a male to a female.

The patient was only 15 years old when he learned he was actually a man biologically, and he declined further treatments to continue being a woman.   The controversial part is, he committed suiced in 2004 after he had made a string of failed investments, and he was only 38 years old. 

Recently the high court reversed a huge ruling against the tobacco industry on behalf of all consumers who are smokers, which awarded a large class action group an amount of $145 billion. Seemed a little excessive to me, especially when these people obviously chose to smoke, even knowing the health hazards smoking causes.

So what about smoking and sexual health? Is there any real impact to a man’s sexual health if you smoke?

As a matter of fact, it does affect male sexual health, and not in a good way (I know, what a shock!). It actually affects both male and female sexual behavior and their reproductive systems adversely.

In men, a cigarette smoking habit can have a profound impact on their sex lives. It can actually decrease both the quality and quantity of sperm production, and can also (drumroll please), cause erectile dysfunction - which we all know, is a consistency of inability to sustain an erect penis which can be deemed sufficient enough for reasonably sustained sexual intercourse).

Not only that, the ejaculate of smoking men vs. non smoking men is considerably less, which means usually less intense orgasms. So, yes, I’d say that cigarette smoking definitely impacts the quality of sex for men as well as women.

Smoking also adversely affects the hormone production in men, which is a direct cause of less sexual satisfaction and low sexual desire, which are both linked to cigarette smoking.