Sex Files | Musiquarium | Feb 16 2011 |
A while back we promised to dig up some more info on Tijuana bibles, and today, prompted by an e-mail we received, we’ve decided to share a bit of what we learned. By at least one estimate, more than two-thousand different bibles were published in the U.S. between 1930 and 1950. They were copied and sold, spreading from city to city, distributed from dealer to dealer and dealer to customer in exactly the same fashion as illicit drugs. According to author and critic R.C. Harvey, many young men actually learned about sex from these books, or at least learned there were more variations than they had imagined. And cultural critic Gershon Legman believes that mainstream comic books evolved from Tijuana bibles.
In that e-mail we mentioned, we were asked about a bible cover we posted called Sex Slave. Would it be possible to post the entire book? Sure, no problem, we’ve posted it below. When was it made? No copyright, sorry, but since Elvis stars we can assume it was sometime after he achieved true fame, so let’s say post-1955. That’s also after the TJ bible heyday, which may be why Sex Slave deviates from the normal eight-page format. It’s also unorthodox in that it’s highly editorial, and doesn’t offer much in the way of clinical explicitness. In fact it’s almost chaste—well, as chaste as an x-rated tract about forced anal sex with the King can be. We will of course post another of these publications at a later date. In the meantime, click keyword “Tijuana bible” below to see our past offerings.