{"id":161,"date":"2020-11-01T06:31:37","date_gmt":"2020-11-01T06:31:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/stories.mysecretdrawer.co\/2020\/11\/01\/on-your-knees-sinner-how-the-blowjob-found-emancipation\/"},"modified":"2020-11-01T06:31:37","modified_gmt":"2020-11-01T06:31:37","slug":"on-your-knees-sinner-how-the-blowjob-found-emancipation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/espressoblues.com\/stories\/on-your-knees-sinner-how-the-blowjob-found-emancipation\/","title":{"rendered":"On Your Knees, Sinner: How the Blowjob Found Emancipation"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\u201cGood head comes from the fact that you love cocks,\u201d asserts the writer, Callie Press, in her self-help book for women, Give Good Head<\/em>.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

As confronting as this sentence might still <\/em>be for some, it wasn’t so long ago that the author would have been jailed for daring to put such a thought into print! <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gradually, as if by osmosis, the blowjob has gained a place in the human sexual repertoire as respectable and perfunctory as vaginal penetration and masturbation. But that was not always true.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Happily, most – but not all – of us have accepted that sex, in all forms, is not be celebrated, not demonised.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Undoubtedly with considerable hypocricy, well-mannered society saw the humble blowjob as something rather wretched \u2013 even criminal, both for the donor and the recipient.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"The
The blowjob has gained a place in the human sexual repertoire as respectable and perfunctory as vaginal penetration and masturbation.
(Photo: Mikey Barrata\/Wikimedia Commons)<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

On Your Knees, Sinner!<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Medieval Christians were not shy in expressing their distaste for fellatio. To be sure, oral sex figures prominently among the list of forbidden acts in medieval penitential literature, which were aimed mostly at monks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But even under these monastically severe circumstances, penalties for blowjobs were harsher than those given for similar sexual offenses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For instance, one medieval penitential document, from Ireland, recommended “four years penance” for cunnilingus \u2013 but, quite tellingly, five for fellatio.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

While one might argue that the monks were actually penalizing homosexuality more than anything else, history is replete with accounts of medieval bishops and vicars who kept mistresses. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Who is to say that these women were oblivious to what gay monks knew?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Given the rampant bigotry of the time, one can assume that any nun caught on her knees before a vicar would have suffered the same fate \u2013 possibly worse. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"One
One medieval penitential document, from Ireland, recommended “four years penance” for cunnilingus \u2013 but, quite tellingly, five for fellatio.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

A Different Kind of Godhead<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

The fact that medieval monks knew about fellatio at all should dispel remnants of the once popular notion that blowjobs were invented in the 1972 movie, Deep Throat<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That said, nobody quite knows how long human beings have been doing it, but scholars suggest that we\u2019ve been mouthing each other\u2019s crotches all along.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The French paleontologists Yves Coppens surmises that the famous Lucy – the first prehistoric woman – practiced a sort of \u201cpaleo-fellatio.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The French scholar Thierry Leguay nonetheless tells us that the first definitive mention of fellatio in history is found in ancient Egyptian mythology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After the green-skinned god Osiris was deceived and killed by his brother, Set, his body was cut into pieces to build a column. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Osiris’ beloved sister and wife, Iris, put his pieces back together but discovered, by chance, that the penis was missing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAn artificial penis was made out of clay, and Iris ‘blew’ life back into Osiris by sucking it,\u201d Leguay told Salon<\/em> in 2000. \u201cThere are explicit images of this myth.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"The
The French scholar Thierry Leguay tells us that the first definitive mention of fellatio in history comes to us from ancient Egyptian mythology.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Blowjobs in Antiquity<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Obviously, the Egyptians were far from being the only people in the ancient world who knew the life-affirming pleasures of oral sex. Indeed, some of the most captivating relics from antiquity have gods and mortals, prostitutes, satyrs and nymphs engaged in all manner of sexual activity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Pompeii, archeologists have uncovered erotic frescoes portraying such scenes, and some of them quite candidly depict fellatio.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the East, the original Sanskrit text of the Kamasutra, from Northern India, contains descriptions of blowjobs in various, sometimes complicated, positions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"In
In Pompeii, archeologists have uncovered erotic frescoes portraying fellatio.
(Photo: Edouard Henri Avril\/Wikimedia Commons)<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Certain Islamic schools of thought such as Shafi’i and Hanbali considered fellatio between man and wife permissible, as well, provided no bodily secretions were swallowed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Ancient Rome, fellatio was considered profoundly taboo when it involved two men of the same social status. But then a Roman senator need not hang his head for receiving oral sex from any woman (or a man of lower status, for that matter.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In fact, it became customary for Roman prostitutes vying for high-born customers to wear bright red berries crushed on their lips to announce their oral skillset.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But the years between 400AD and 1000AD saw Christian morality gain a grip on Western thought; and, at least in the West, the blowjob went completely underground.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
The original Sanskrit text of the Kamasutra includes descriptions of blowjobs in various, sometimes complicated, positions.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

\u201cActs of Gross Indecency\u201d<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Medieval Christianity turned sex into a sacrament – and as such, sex was free of sin only when it was as barren of carnal pleasure as possible. Fellatio \u2013 along with anal sex – was especially sinful as it entailed a waste of masculine seed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These medieval notions about sex and sin lasted for centuries. And such beliefs weren’t just held by monks, nuns, and clerics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Right up through the 19th-century, public policy throughout Europe was to channel sexual activity, as much as possible, in the direction of marriage and procreation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So much so, in fact, that the moral reformers of the Victorian era quite actively banished fellatio into the exclusive province of criminals, prostitutes, and gay men.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 1885, British Parliament passed the Criminal Law Amendment Act, which criminalized – and implicitly linked – both female prostitution and “acts of gross indecency” between males.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"The
The idea of sex for the sole sake of pleasure was frowned upon in polite Victorian society. (Illustration: Welcome Images\/Wikimedia Commons) <\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

A Princely Preoccupation<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Of course, a Victorian man who wanted a blowjob would not be denied one \u2013 if he was willing to go through the necessary lengths. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

He could visit London\u2019s teeming red-light districts – or, if he was a nobleman wishing to avoid scandal, he could go to France.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"The
The Prince of Wales, Albert Edward, was an avid fan of oral sex.
(Photo: Wellcome Images) <\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

The Prince of Wales, Albert Edward, eldest son of Queen Victoria, was an avid fan of oral sex. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some suggest this is at least part of the reason why he made France his adventure playground in the waning decades of the 19th<\/sup> century.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When he wasn\u2019t playing musical bedrooms in English country houses, Edward was \u2018gadding about\u2019 – as his mother put it \u2013 with the cr\u00e8me-de-la-cr\u00e8me of French whoredom.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The English prince was so besotted with French prostitutes and their mouths that he had his very own room in one of Paris\u2019s poshest bordellos.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Historians claim the lavish, ornately decorated chamber came equipped with a custom-designed fellatio chair<\/a> which, at least by some accounts, the prince himself had designed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

All that Jizz?<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Meanwhile, the humble blowjob wasn\u2019t fairing any better on the other side of the pond. In fact, the consequences of America\u2019s Anglo-puritan beginnings might help explain why oral sex didn\u2019t make the transition from brothels to bedrooms until the 20th century.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The very word \u201cblowjob\u201d doesn\u2019t come into the American idiom until the 1940s. Even then, the term was coined during an era when most of America considered fellatio a taboo, homosexual act, illegal in every state until 1950.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In explaining the word\u2019s origins for Vanity Fair<\/em> in 2006, Christopher Hitchens suggested a connection between America\u2019s illicit gay culture and the trumpets of its underground jazz scene.   <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nevertheless, a condescending attitude toward something so exquisitely pleasurable could not last long in a country that had made cultural icons of pinup girls and gangsters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"A
A condescending attitude toward something so exquisitely pleasurable could not last long in a country that had made cultural icons of pinup girls and bootleg whisky.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Out of the Closet and Into the Bedroom<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

One might say that fellatio finally blew its load in the face of polite society in the early 1970s. That was when some amateurs managed to pull together $25,000 to shoot a porn movie that would eventually gross in the order of $600 million.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Deep Throat<\/em> is probably one of the trashiest, crudest, most exploitative<\/a> screen classics ever made. But most experts agree it brought the blowjob out of the metaphorical cupboard and into the cultural mainstream.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt is a crime that movie is still showing,\u201d Linda Lovelace, the star of the film, told the Toronto Star in 1981. \u201cThere was a gun to my head the entire time.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yet from then on, people\u2019s views on fellatio began to change. The blowjob was re-energized, re-packaged, and re-exported into Europe – and Lou Reed was soon singing about it on \u201cWalk on the Wild Side.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Deep
Deep Throat<\/em> is probably one of the trashiest, crudest, most exploitative screen classics ever made, but most experts agree it brought the blowjob full into the mainstream.  <\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Today, every person with a penis can be thankful that we are living in an era when the blowjob is seeing a kind of cultural rebirth. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

People are happily going down on each other in leafy suburbs and cities, in offices, universities, libraries, restaurants, bedrooms, and cars.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are self-help books, videos, and films about the subject \u2013 and, yes, the American presidency\u2019s Resolute desk will forever be stained by the juicy Clinton-Lewinsky scandal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even Christianity appears to be softening its stance on the once maligned sex act \u2013 provided it\u2019s performed within a mutually-consenting marriage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI don\u2019t think oral sex is explicitly prohibited in any biblical command,\u201d muses John Piper, chancellor of Bethlehem College and Seminary in Minneapolis, Minnesota, in a 2014 podcast. \u201cIf the Bible proscribes it, it would have to be by principle, and not by an explicit command.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Go ahead, sinner, say what you will. We still think that doesn\u2019t suck half as bad as five years\u2019 medieval penance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What’s your story? Do you really believe ‘good men and women’ abstained from giving head in past eras? Or is it more likely that they just didn’t discuss it at dinner parties?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Why not share your thoughts by reviewing this article below…<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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