prevalent among better-educated and younger people.
This willingness among the better educated to engage in oral sex has come about, one would imagine, as a result of a modern intellectual rejection of what are seen as overly strict hygiene obsessions. Progressive twentieth-century thinkers on sex from D.H. Lawrence to Dr Alex Comfort have despised hygiene at the expense of sexual rapture as suburban and
petit bourgeois
. As for prehistoric humans and their take on oral sex, there is obviously a dearth of evidence in the form of cave paintings or artefacts, but informed guesswork rather suggests that both Mr and Mrs Ug will have discovered it one way or another, in the absence of any hygiene hang-ups over bringing the excretory organs into close proximity to the organs of breathing and eating. It is probably only when religion began poking its snout into human groins that taboos against oral sex took root.
There may have been isolated taboos concerning wastage ofsperm, but this again is improbable since it is not likely that prehistoric people were aware that sexual intercourse and child production were connected. Surviving primitive peoples often still do not acknowledge any relationship between the two.
Above all, prehistoric humans will have had time in abundance to discover oral sex. Prehistoric nights were long and dark, and there is no reason to suppose that couples did not sleep in a huddle together, if only for warmth. It is beyond contention, surely, that at some stage man realised that the mouth on a face bears a distinct similarity to the mouth of a vagina, and then had a hunch that it might be interesting for woman to apply her mouth to his penis, and vice versa.
It has been suggested that proximity to animals, if nothing else, will have prompted a curiosity about oral sex in early man. Paul Ableman postulated that: âa relatively common way in which children discover the possibility of pleasurable contact between mouth and genitalia, is through accidental contacts with animals. This form of initiation is much more common to girls than boys, the obvious reasons being that a dog or cat may perform cunnilingus spontaneously but not fellatio.â
A less obvious form of orgasmic pleasure via oral sex occasioned by the proximity of animals was the subject of a slightly shocking speech in the British House of Lords one June evening in 2003. Lord Lucas of Crudwell and Dingwall, a conservative peer, proposing an amendment to a new Sexual Offences Bill brought their Lordshipsâ attention to an old agricultural practice he knew of called avisodomy. This is sex in which a chickenâs anus is employed as a makeshift receptacle, or the still nastier practice of using a decapitated chickenâs throat. His description, as chronicled by
Hansard
is something of a collectorâs item. Avisodomy, he told the hushed benches, is âthe practice of breaking a henâs neck at the moment before penetration so that you benefit from the spasms that the animal undergoes afterwards.â Lord Lucas professed himself against avisodomy, but was concerned that it might avoid beingoutlawed because the chicken was clinically dead at the time its conspirator was enjoying his orgasm.
The probability of prehistoric cunnilingus having existed or not might be more problematic. Cunnilingus would not seem to be an obviously instinctive behaviour, and neither is it as immediate an option as fellatio. But knowing as we do that the prehistoric female probably owned a working clitoris, we can assume that she discovered how manipulating it can be highly pleasurable. Transmitting that information to men will not have stretched rudimentary communication skills too far (even if it does for some couples today). And the non-existence of knowledge about either hygiene or conception will, arguably, have made it still more likely that men and women would ultimately have put two and two together.
Whether the pleasurable diversion of
This willingness among the better educated to engage in oral sex has come about, one would imagine, as a result of a modern intellectual rejection of what are seen as overly strict hygiene obsessions. Progressive twentieth-century thinkers on sex from D.H. Lawrence to Dr Alex Comfort have despised hygiene at the expense of sexual rapture as suburban and
petit bourgeois
. As for prehistoric humans and their take on oral sex, there is obviously a dearth of evidence in the form of cave paintings or artefacts, but informed guesswork rather suggests that both Mr and Mrs Ug will have discovered it one way or another, in the absence of any hygiene hang-ups over bringing the excretory organs into close proximity to the organs of breathing and eating. It is probably only when religion began poking its snout into human groins that taboos against oral sex took root.
There may have been isolated taboos concerning wastage ofsperm, but this again is improbable since it is not likely that prehistoric people were aware that sexual intercourse and child production were connected. Surviving primitive peoples often still do not acknowledge any relationship between the two.
Above all, prehistoric humans will have had time in abundance to discover oral sex. Prehistoric nights were long and dark, and there is no reason to suppose that couples did not sleep in a huddle together, if only for warmth. It is beyond contention, surely, that at some stage man realised that the mouth on a face bears a distinct similarity to the mouth of a vagina, and then had a hunch that it might be interesting for woman to apply her mouth to his penis, and vice versa.
It has been suggested that proximity to animals, if nothing else, will have prompted a curiosity about oral sex in early man. Paul Ableman postulated that: âa relatively common way in which children discover the possibility of pleasurable contact between mouth and genitalia, is through accidental contacts with animals. This form of initiation is much more common to girls than boys, the obvious reasons being that a dog or cat may perform cunnilingus spontaneously but not fellatio.â
A less obvious form of orgasmic pleasure via oral sex occasioned by the proximity of animals was the subject of a slightly shocking speech in the British House of Lords one June evening in 2003. Lord Lucas of Crudwell and Dingwall, a conservative peer, proposing an amendment to a new Sexual Offences Bill brought their Lordshipsâ attention to an old agricultural practice he knew of called avisodomy. This is sex in which a chickenâs anus is employed as a makeshift receptacle, or the still nastier practice of using a decapitated chickenâs throat. His description, as chronicled by
Hansard
is something of a collectorâs item. Avisodomy, he told the hushed benches, is âthe practice of breaking a henâs neck at the moment before penetration so that you benefit from the spasms that the animal undergoes afterwards.â Lord Lucas professed himself against avisodomy, but was concerned that it might avoid beingoutlawed because the chicken was clinically dead at the time its conspirator was enjoying his orgasm.
The probability of prehistoric cunnilingus having existed or not might be more problematic. Cunnilingus would not seem to be an obviously instinctive behaviour, and neither is it as immediate an option as fellatio. But knowing as we do that the prehistoric female probably owned a working clitoris, we can assume that she discovered how manipulating it can be highly pleasurable. Transmitting that information to men will not have stretched rudimentary communication skills too far (even if it does for some couples today). And the non-existence of knowledge about either hygiene or conception will, arguably, have made it still more likely that men and women would ultimately have put two and two together.
Whether the pleasurable diversion of
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