[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MakIB_IJnu0?wmode=transparent]
Beyond the normal considerations when taking on a new sexual partner, would you go home with someone if you knew their apartment was infested with bed bugs?
Bed bugs have taken over New York, impacting every strata of society. While bedbugs have nothing to do with cleanliness, we have a long history of associating "cleanliness and godliness" and in turn the converse, "dirty" and "sin." The idea of cleanliness has been the center of tremendous academic thought, particularly in the ongoing conversation of social hierarchy/reform and the idea of being "civilized. Clean: A History of Personal Hygiene and Purity by Virginia Smith is a great guide through the history of clean, which has some very direct relationships with the history of sex.
Intimate spaces, such as a bed, the prime location for the bed bug's infestation has brought up interesting dialogues on how this epidemic will impact the politics of casual sex. Whose apartment will become the location of a sexual rendezvous? Will public sex be on the rise?
To watcg a CNN video on the topic visit:
http://www.cnn.com/video/data/2.0/video/us/2010/10/24/roth.bed.bugs.sex.cnn.html