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The science of arousal and nosebleeds.




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fstony



Joined: 05 Dec 2010
Posts: 10
PostPosted: Thu Sep 08, 2011 7:34 pm Reply with quote
While reading Bonk, I encountered something that reminded me of anime: a description of the nose's erectile tissue. A brief summary can be found here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honeymoon_rhinitis

Basically, certain part of the nasal passages engorge with blood during sexual arousal. This happens to males and females, so hopefully we don't have to worry about whether it's a malady typical of Japanese schoolgirls.

Of course, to get a sanguinary flood typical of anime, you'd probably have to jab your engorged membranes with a penknife several times.

PS I would have tacked this onto the end of the appropriate thread, but a forum search for "nosebleed" gave me ten pages of results. What have we done with our lives?
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dtm42



Joined: 05 Feb 2008
Posts: 14084
Location: currently stalking my waifu
PostPosted: Thu Sep 08, 2011 8:10 pm Reply with quote
"Nasal congestion" does not mean "nosebleed".

Nosebleeds from sexual arousal is just a silly Japanese old wives' tale that is used in Anime as a running gag or a crutch for humour. It has no scientific basis. It is no better than "getting wet equals getting a cold", (sometimes instantly), which is also highly prevalent in Anime and also completely unscientific.
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Key
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Joined: 03 Nov 2003
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Location: Indianapolis, IN (formerly Mimiho Valley)
PostPosted: Thu Sep 08, 2011 8:40 pm Reply with quote
fstony wrote:
Basically, certain part of the nasal passages engorge with blood during sexual arousal. This happens to males and females, so hopefully we don't have to worry about whether it's a malady typical of Japanese schoolgirls.


You do see female characters suffer from this from time to time in anime, though. The most notorious is the title character from Maria Holic, but it's also been not that unusual in otaku girl characters who have popped up over the past few years. Then there's the title character of Karin, but her nosebleeds have to do with an entirely different kind of arousal.

Quote:
PS I would have tacked this onto the end of the appropriate thread, but a forum search for "nosebleed" gave me ten pages of results. What have we done with our lives?


Nosebleeds get mentioned commonly because they're one of anime's most frequently-used cliches, but threads actually devoted to discussing them are few and far between. Starting up a new one for this is fine.
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Errinundra
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Joined: 14 Jun 2008
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Location: Melbourne, Oz
PostPosted: Thu Sep 08, 2011 9:25 pm Reply with quote
The theory isn't just Japanese. A colleague of Freud's, Wilhelm Fliess, believed that a woman's nose was intimately connected with her genitals and that sexual disorders could be cured by operating on her nose. Freud referrred a patient, Emma Eckstein, to him and he almost killed her. You can read more about it from this transcript of an episode of the Science Show: here.

This is the most pertinent section.

The Science Show wrote:
...It is bizarre and it is very telling because I think it really lies at the centre of what it was that led Freud to change his mind. She [Emma Eckstein] was young and beautiful, she was an early feminist, she came from a prominent socialist family. Freud obviously enjoyed working with her, and she was one of Freud's first patients to lead him to believe that women were being assaulted sexually in childhood in large numbers. She talked about this with Freud and he believed her. But unfortunately at the same time he was very close to Wilhelm Fliess, his only colleague and friend, who was an ear, nose and throat specialist in Berlin who held very strange beliefs. Among these were that there is an intimate connection between a woman's genitals and her nose, and he called this the 'nasal reflect neurosis'. He believed that the only way to treat women who had such things has menstrual problems-dysmenorrhea, amenorrhea, various forms of menstrual complains-was to operate on the nose. When he came to Vienna in 1894, he visited Freud and Freud introduced him (tragically, as it turns out) to Emma Eckstein. When Fliess met her, he told Freud, 'I think she has a very suspicious nose. Does she by any chance masturbate?' And Freud said, 'Why, yes. How did you know that?' He said, 'It confirms my belief in the connection between masturbation and nasal problems.'...


She almost bled to death because of Fliess's incompetent surgerry and, to top it off, Freud blamed her "hysteria" for the the bleeding, not the incompetence of his friend.
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vashna



Joined: 19 Feb 2010
Posts: 1313
PostPosted: Fri Sep 09, 2011 1:55 am Reply with quote
I've been very curious about the connection myself, though I am familiar with Freud's concepts. Is it true, however, that this cliché in anime and manga stems originally from the aforementioned old wives' tale? I suppose that's quite believable, since the idea connecting sneezing and being spoken about comes from a similar story.
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Key
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Joined: 03 Nov 2003
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PostPosted: Fri Sep 09, 2011 10:03 am Reply with quote
Actually, ANN had a feature piece on this very topic last year which I'd totally forgotten about.
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vashna



Joined: 19 Feb 2010
Posts: 1313
PostPosted: Fri Sep 09, 2011 1:28 pm Reply with quote
I'm actually sort of shocked that I missed this a year ago. Thank you for that; it pretty much answers the entire question of the thread! So it was a folk tale after all, then? If it is fair to respond to that link, though, in the original Dragon Ball series, elderly Master Roshi is the one with the nose bleeds as opposed to young and innocent characters.
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