Maybe you think you know your dildos. Maybe you do. But maybe, you don’t know this…
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05.02.2025

Maybe you think you know your dildos. Maybe you do. But maybe, you don’t know this…

Kinky History
Esmé Louise James brings Kinky History to life with the Eggplant Tour in February
Words by Joshua Jennings

The oldest-known dildo – a 20-centimetre instrument of siltstone – is getting really old. So old, in fact, it’s reportedly 28,000 years old.

Award-winning sex historian Dr Esmé Louise James, creator of sexuality education smash Kinky History, has this tidbit to share while she prepares for a live-stage performance of Kinky History (James has Berocca, caffeine, and just hours).

Kinky History, which you can rightly call a brand, is a podcast, best-selling book, and wildly popular educational content series on James’ Tik Tok channel.

Explore Melbourne’s latest arts and stage news, features, festivals, interviews and reviews here.

James clarifies that dildos have evolved considerably since the days of the original phallus, which showed up in Germany only recently.

“The one thing we’re very grateful for today is that we have bodysafe objects, so a lot of our sex toys and dildos today will be made out of silicone. 

“That was actually a fantastic invention from the 1960s, from a guy called Gosnell Duncan (a man who changed the sex toy industry after becoming a paraplegic).”

James is currently touring Kinky History’s Eggplant Tour. The Eggplant Tour, which is James’ debut live tour, takes the fun facts, stories, and insights James shares in Kinky History and transforms them for a stage show.

Fans of the podcast will know it covers a wide range of sexuality topics: the history of the foot fetish; the polyamorous life of Albert Einstein; the first pornographic novel, Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure, are among them.

One of James’ many fascinating stage stories touches on the impotency trials that happened in 16th century France. Men were essentially court-summoned so they could demonstrate their capacity to stage an erection.

James brings the documents that evidence this. They reveal anecdotes including a man’s defence that “bad eel pie” was to blame.

The Eggplant Tour is also an interactive experience that invites audience members to act out parts of these trials.

“These courtroom trials would get quite rowdy,” says James. “People would gather outside and treat it like a sports game of who would come out victorious – the husband or the wife.

“And they’d come up with chants, basically guessing whether or not the husband could get an erection in the courtroom.”

James, whose PhD thesis investigated the emerging genre of the pornographic novel in the eighteenth century, and its connection to the aesthetic discourse of the time, was listed in the Top 30 Emerging Writers by SBS Australia in 2020.

Her published poems, short stories, and non-fiction articles have appeared in publications including Hardie Grant Press, The Conversation, The Age, and Archer Magazine, and her debut novel became an Amazon bestseller within a month of its release.

In 2022, she gave her popular TEDx talk, Writing kinky sex back into the history pages, and received a nomination as one of Australia’s Best Digital Creators at the Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts (AACTA) Awards.

Today, as an educator, public figure, and sexuality content creator with millions of social media fans, she says it’s truly wonderful to deliver valuable education that can improve lives (and population health). 

“I see that organisations of people are using my videos on trans history or the history of contraception – and so many various different topics – and they are using that to inform dialogues today.

“One of the most beautiful messages that will ever come through are people saying, ‘I used your video on the history of homosexuality to come out to my parents.’”

James is in the unique position where she marries her knowledge of sexuality history with the statistical expertise of her mother, Dr Susan James, outreach fellow in the school of mathematics and statistics at the University of Melbourne.

They created the hit TikTok-exclusive mini-documentary series SexTistics to create a snapshot – past and present – of gender, sexuality and identity within Australia. They use statistics to understand sex in the modern day.

After The Eggplant Tour, they’ll be launching a second season of SextTistics, with support from Screen Australia.

“We’ve completed a global study of people’s sexual desires and behaviours….

“I think my favourite episode we have planned is called Down Under, and it’s about comparing the sexual behaviours of all the big Australian cities, and that’s been hysterical to look at.”

Kinky History’s Eggplant Tour continues in Brisbane, 14 February, at The Triffid, and Melbourne, 15 February, at the Capitol Theatre. Get tickets here.