Personally, I think those are a kind of “kinkwashing” that goes on in museums. It might upset conservative donors if you straight up labeled objects as “Masturbation aid, 100 BCE” or “Sex toy, possibly used for pegging, 800 CE”.
There’s also a level of “there isn’t actually a written record of the obvious use for this so we can’t responsibly call it a dildo” and ritual being an incredibly vague descriptor. It might be an overcorrection to the long history of wildly inaccurate fetishization of “exotic” cultures in anthropology.
Personally, I think those are a kind of “kinkwashing” that goes on in museums. It might upset conservative donors if you straight up labeled objects as “Masturbation aid, 100 BCE” or “Sex toy, possibly used for pegging, 800 CE”.
There’s also a level of “there isn’t actually a written record of the obvious use for this so we can’t responsibly call it a dildo” and ritual being an incredibly vague descriptor. It might be an overcorrection to the long history of wildly inaccurate fetishization of “exotic” cultures in anthropology.