David Friedman usually blogs about economics, medieval cooking, or politics. His latest post carefully avoids (almost) all of that:
I didn’t have a convenient graphic to use for this post … but I know not to Google something like this.
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 20th 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.
