You really think the Kinsey report was indicative of wider society? His methods were widely criticised for his questionable data collection methods.
That’s not really the issue. Kinsey’s samples may have been biased and his methodology not up to modern standards. However, the reports changed the perception of various kinds of sexual activity in the US. If people believed that a lot of other people were doing it, they became more interested in trying it themselves.
Even if there were times and places where oral sex (also homosexual sex) was subject to opprobrium, it seems that such practices have always been common. It’s just hard to come up with accurate survey statistics from various pre-historic times.
I’m sure people have always engaged in oral sex. But coming of age in the 70s or 80s, I thought it was a mildly kinky thing that you might do with someone you were having “normal” sex with. I probably got that impression from “Everything You Always Wanted to Know about Sex But Were Afraid to Ask”
Now, I think it’s thought of as something you might do with someone you aren’t quite ready to have PIV sex with.
That seems like a major change. And I wouldn’t be surprised if in the 50s it was a kinky thing that lots of couples didn’t do, because it was kinky. (I’m sure lots of couples did it, too, of course.)
Also, I have to think that hot running water makes oral sex more appealing.
1994 Miami, story told before in longer version.
Hispanics of both sexes saw it as the first (I have friends whose first BJ to the husband was on a special occasion). Anglas just out of the prairie saw it as the second (lit: “well, I’m a good girl, I don’t have sex on the first date, but he’d been so nice, so I went down on him”). Talk about extreme misunderstandings.
Or, as I’ve been saying for over 20 years “oral sex IS sex!”
I’m guessing since man evolved too stiff a spine to do it to himself. Cmon, guys, the question should be when did things like pederasty, fellatio, and cunnilingus become proscribed at least among major cultural groups, and when did (are) they making a come back of sorts.
Sex education has something to do with it.
The HIV epidemic that started in 1980s certainly modified peoples behaviour. Sexual practices were graded according to risk. Penetrative sex was seen as too risky. Oral sex was easier to make safe.
I repeat everybody’s previous: Humans have been going down on each other since humans have existed. Period. Full stop. Anybody who thinks otherwise is mistaken. It may have fallen in and out of fashion over the centuries, but it has always been a part of human sexual activity.
I don’t know. Back when hygiene consisted of wiping your ass with a handful of leaves I can’t imagine a lot of enthusiasm for oral sex.
No. He’s just brushing up a Little Danish.
Come on, the typos could even be funny. The one I liked most was ‘public’ instead of ‘pubic’ hair.
Someone might correct me but in a report on Edward VIII (the British king who abdicated in 1936), it said that good old Eddie was mostly infatuated with Ms Wallis Simpson because of her fantastic fellatio ability. He must have even bragged before other men with this. I really wonder, was Wallis blowing his sceptre really better than him holding the one of Great Britain? Hm.
But it’s not like we’re guessing. There is oral sex in cave paintings. One of the biggest discoveries at Pompeii was that ancient Romans loved porn, and their porn had a lot of oral. There’s oral in Chaucer and Shakespeare and Victorian porn.
So the state of head was more important than being head of state?
You win the Internets.
Tell that to the bonobos.
Fastidiousness is a much more recent invention than oral sex.
Napoleon supposedly wrote “Je reviens en trois jours, ne te laves pas” (“I’ll be back in three days, do not wash”) to Josephine prior to returning home although a similar quote has also been attributed to Henry II.
Modern Westerners, and especially Americans seem to be obsessed with hygiene. It was not always so.
A better question might be to ask why American “marriage guides” avoided oral sex for so long.
Using the French as a reference point for standards of hygiene and sexual practice is setting the bar pretty low.:dubious:
“Puritanism - The haunting fear that somebody, somewhere may be happy.” H. L. Mencken