The Puzzle of Oral Sex

enough about politics

My picture of sexual behavior now and in the past is based on a variety of readily observable sources — free online porn for the present, writing, both pornography and non-pornographic but explicit, for the past. On that imperfect and perhaps misleading evidence the pattern of when oral sex was or was not common in our society in recent centuries is the opposite of what one would, on straightforward economic grounds, expect.

Casanova’s memoirs provide a fascinating picture of eighteenth century Europe, including its sexual behavior. He mentions incest, male homosexuality, lesbianism, which he regards as normal for unmarried girls:

Marton told Nanette that I could not possibly be ignorant of what takes place between young girls sleeping together.

"There is no doubt," I said, "that everybody knows those trifles…

I do not believe he ever mentions either fellatio or cunnilingus. Neither does Fanny Hill, published in London in 1748, when Casanova was twenty-three.

Frank Harris, writing in the early 20^th century, is familiar with cunnilingus, uses it as a routine part of his seduction tactics, but treats it as something sufficiently exotic so that he had to be talked into trying it by a woman unwilling to risk pregnancy. I do not think he ever mentions fellatio.

Modern online porn in contrast treats both fellatio and cunnilingus as normal parts of foreplay, what routinely  comes between erotic kissing and vaginal intercourse.

One online article on the history of fellatio that I found dated the change in attitudes to after the 1976 Hite Report, which found a strongly negative attitude among women to performing it. In contrast:

Today, the act is something more like bread before dinner: noteworthy only if it’s absent. (Fifty Shades of Grey and How One Sex Act Went Mainstream)

And from another, present behavior:

Oral sex precedes and often replaces sexual intercourse because it's perceived to be noncommittal, quick and safe. For some kids it's a cool thing to do; for others it's a cheap thrill. Raised in a culture in which speed is valued, kids, not surprisingly, seek instant gratification through oral sex (the girl by instantly pleasing the boy, the boy by sitting back and enjoying the ride). A seemingly facile command over the sexual landscape of one's partner is achieved without the encumbrances of clothes, coitus and the rest of the messy business. The blow job is, in essence, the new joystick of teen sexuality. (Salon)

Contrasted with:

When I was a teenager, in the bad-taste, disco-fangled '70s, fellatio was something you graduated into. Rooted in the great American sport of baseball, the sexual metaphors of my generation put fellatio somewhere after home base, way off in the distant plains of the outfield. In fact, skipping all the bases and going directly to fellatio was the sort of home run reserved only for racy, borderline delinquents, who enjoyed a host of licentious and forbidden activities that made them stars in the firmament of teen recklessness.

The Puzzle

Oral sex, like other forms of non-vaginal sex, is a way of getting sexual pleasure without risking pregnancy. One would therefor expect it to be more common in societies without reliable forms of contraception. But the observed pattern, at least for western society in recent centuries, is the opposite.

The invention of vulcanized rubber in the 19^th century made condoms inexpensive; the invention of oral contraceptives in the  mid-20^th century provided a much superior substitute. The result was a change in sexual behavior and norms, the shift from a society where for a woman to be known to have had intercourse with a man she was not married or engaged to was shameful, with multiple men worse, to one where, for large parts of modern western society, both are pretty much taken for granted.

And yet the availability of good contraception was also followed by a striking increase in the acceptance and practice of what had been, in the past, arguably the best substitute for contraception.

That is the puzzle.

Solutions?

One possibility is that oral sex is a technology for sexual pleasure whose its advantages only became clear in a society much more open about sex, as ours became due to the effect on norms and behavior of good contraception. There are apparently a fair number of women who cannot achieve orgasm by intercourse, can by cunnilingus. But that does not explain the increased acceptance and practice of heterosexual fellatio.

An alternative explanation is that AIDs and the messaging around it had a strong role in promoting alternatives to penetrative sex. Condoms provided protection against AIDS and other venereal diseases but at a cost in reduced pleasure; oral contraceptives provided no protection at all. That makes sense if, as the Salon article implies, oral sex is a substitute for vaginal sex but not if, as current online pornography implies, it is a complement, a routine preliminary.

When I raised the question online on DSL, I got a one word answer:

Showers

I don’t find it convincing. Lots of past societies, including western societies in recent centuries, had adequate hygiene.

How Might We Find Out?

While heterosexual oral sex may have been uncommon in western society in recent centuries, that is only a small part of human history. There is evidence that both fellatio and cunnilingus were practiced in Roman antiquity, Imperial China and (at least fellatio) in pre-Columbian South America. None of those had reliable contraception generally available,¹ which fits my initial argument but does not explain the modern case.

Syphilis in Europe in the late 15^th century was, like the AIDS epidemic in the 20^th, a new and lethal venereal disease; it was more frightening than AIDS because more easily transmitted.² If the increasing use of oral sex was motivated by the desire to avoid penetrative intercourse, it should have happened in the sixteenth century. My sources start in the 18^th century, by which time Syphilis, while still dangerous, had become considerably less virulent.

Which suggests an interesting line of research for someone with relevant 16th century sources. The first thing I could find was the Wikipedia article on I Modi, the 16th century collection of obscene engravings commonly associated with Aretino’s Sonetti lussuriosi. None of the ones shown in the article appear to show oral sex. But the Sonetti are webbed and although my Italian is pretty bad I have Google translate. Sonnet II has one line that appears to refer to oral sex, but that is it.

The next step will require a careful reading of Aretino’s Ragionamente, dialogs concerning the three careers open to a woman: wife, nun or prostitute. Available online to anyone with access to JSTOR.

1. With one possible exception; there is some evidence, how good I am not sure, for the existence of a contraceptive herb in classical antiquity, now extinct.

2. AIDS transmission by vaginal intercourse is possible but uncommon, with the result that, at least in the US, AIDS was a serious threat only to homosexuals and people routinely using injectable drugs, legal or illegal. I interpret the attempt to portray it as an ordinary venereal disease, reported by my elder son from his high school in suburban Philadelphia, as due to an alliance of conservatives trying to scare teenagers away from sex and liberals trying to keep AIDS from being identified as a gay disease.

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