That article kind of brushes off the History of the Swastika in Europe.
Swastikas were found all over Europe during archaeological digs, especially the dig in search of Troy.
I know of a lot of folks The Death Of Rats is zeroing in on.
Dan
Checking in Bob Adelman’s “Tijuana Bibles”, I see that oral sex, both ways, was featured in about half the comics. According to Adelman, these started up in the '30s, and were popular through the '50s. I haven’t broken them down to proportions (I tend to read for content, not for statistics) but with a little encouragement I might revisit my volume, since it’s been a few years.
Purely out of scientific curiosity, don’cha know?
Dan
You have to differentiate between general custom and specific mentions. The latter are easy to gather, but they don’t say much about the former.
Victorian pornography is remarkably similar to modern hardcore porn. Any random title might have not just het intercourse, but homosexual and lesbian sex, oral, anal, watersports, flogging, schoolboys and schoolgirls, orgies, public humiliation, and any other kink that modern porn caters to.
The big but (pun intended this time) is that this porn was not available in bookstores, but privately printed by “gentlemen” for other members of their elite clubs. This gave it no copyright protection so they were reprinted over and over in the 20th century. And the acts, when not wholly imagined, were based on experiences with prostitutes - often French - rather than with their wives. As your cite says, in the 19th century “fellatio was, and remains to some extent, a taboo.” That’s completely at odds with the statement that “By the end of the [20th] century oral sex had become an essential component of the sexual repertoire of even mildly adventurous heterosexuals.”
Don’t blame the Jews for that, that’s strictly a Christian hangup. Yes, we believe there’s a commandment to reproduce, and traditionally frown on sex outside of heterosexual marriage, but we’ve never held that every single ejaculation must have the potential to lead to reproduction; recreation is a perfectly acceptable motive.
Masters and Johnson famously completed a large study of mid-20th century American sexual practices. I’m not super familiar with their work, but that seems like it would be a good place to look for answers to this question.
So, this also means that you drink about a liter of saliva a day.
My wife doesn’t like when I introduce her as my ex-girlfriend.
Yeah, mine doesn’t like being introduced as my first wife.
I’ve heard the opposite. A quick Google yields this " Oral sex, up until ejaculation, is entirely permitted according to most Talmudic and halachic authorities. Ejaculation should take place within the vagina. " from Wikipedia.
Aw, man, I’ve been doing it wrong.
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Ignorance fought.
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Those people are weird. I refer particularly to paragraphs 3 and 4. I have personally known many Orthodox people who were apparently unaware of the prohibition against eating cheese and garlic in the evening.
People will say anything that comes into their heads and then justify it via religion.
Including America. My BIL collects pre WWII American swastikas. He has a lot of old greeting cards with swastikas and four leafed clovers, for instance.
I don’t know about Roman times, but i read somewhere fairly scholarly that the ancient Greeks, who routinely practiced anal sex, considered oral sex to be a disgusting act that only a pervert or a prostitute would perform. Yeah, i think regular showers have made a big difference.
The problem with saying “the ancient Greeks” did or didn’t do something is as time dependent as saying that modern Britons did or didn’t do something. Mores changed over time.
Although the Greeks certainly did not approve of oral sex in everyday life, some nuances arise. I’m putting a link for a wildly NSFW site called Sex in Ancient Greece into a spoiler box. It notes that earlier depictions of oral sex on surviving works are rare in the 6th century BCE but become more common later. Yet these were on special goblets made for the ritual symposia, or drinking festivals. These eventually depicted all the variations that later porn would feature, so they’re not what everyday sex would involve. Even so, an incredible number of ceramics depicting fellatio survive, mostly heterosexual. And the higher-class prostitutes called heterae apparently did it.
The Romans seemed to have continued these attitudes, and they washed a lot for ancient peoples.
From what I’ve read, Romans considered oral to be more taboo than anal. Roman sexual hangups were not about gender, per se, but they were mostly about power, and perceptions of power, and stereotypes about power.
Inserting your appendage into someone else’s orifice was active, and dominant, and manly. It was all good, and no one cared who or what you did it to. Allowing yourself to be penetrated was passive, and servile, and effeminate. Women and slaves were forced to endure it. What kind of deviant would voluntarily submit to such humiliation?
A person could be anally raped by simple brute force. But fellatio required a modicum of co-operation from the fellator. So “f#$%ing you in the mouth” was the ultimate act of dominance, while giving head was the ultimate act of submission.
I agree with everything you’ve said. But I don’t think it’s completely irrelevant that people’s asses and vulvas and penises were filthy, and it’s gross to put a filthy thing in your mouth.