Episode 13: Oral sexual norms in history

0:04 Speaker 1: Hey there, it's your girl, k Love and welcome to

0:08 Speaker 1: another episode of Taboo, Fetish or Kink. Today, we're taking

0:14 Speaker 1: you on a wild ride through time and across cultures

0:16 Speaker 1: to explore how sexual norms, particularly around oral sex, have

0:20 Speaker 1: shifted and evolved. Trust me, you don't want to miss

0:25 Speaker 1: this one, all right. Let's kick things off with ancient

0:31 Speaker 1: societies spanning from the prehistoric era up to five hundred CE.

0:38 Speaker 1: So picture this cave art and venus figurines. Yep, even

0:45 Speaker 1: our prehistoric ancestors. We're all about that fertility and sexual expression.

0:51 Speaker 1: It's crazy to think, but oral sex probably emerged naturally

1:00 Speaker 1: during this time, even though direct evidence is pretty scarce.

1:05 Speaker 1: Then we move on to ancient and me y are

1:11 Speaker 1: show or Nia or and I's get out had stop

1:21 Speaker 1: as these folks they had text like the about gods,

1:24 Speaker 1: like about specially got including oral sex. You often t

1:27 Speaker 1: her uh thank festa or yard or shaher who Statia.

1:49 Speaker 1: Next stop is ancient Greece and Rome, where sexual norms

1:53 Speaker 1: we're super fluid. I think Sappho's poetry and those raunchy

2:00 Speaker 1: pompey frescoes. Oral sex and same sex relations were common

2:09 Speaker 1: and totally accepted. Greece had this socially regulated practice called pederisty,

2:15 Speaker 1: while Rome tied sexual roles to power dynamics. Being the

2:18 Speaker 1: active partner was like, yeah, I'm the boss, while the

2:24 Speaker 1: passive role not so much. In India, the Kammasutra wasn't

2:30 Speaker 1: just a manual, It was a whole philosophy of pleasure

2:35 Speaker 1: and love that normalized a bunch of sexual practices, including

2:40 Speaker 1: oral sex. Now let's fast forward to the era of

2:44 Speaker 1: big religious influences from five hundred CE to fifteen hundred CE.

2:50 Speaker 1: Here comes Christianity, Islam, and Judaism, introducing stricter sexual norms. Christianity,

2:57 Speaker 1: for instance, was a zee was all about pro creation

3:05 Speaker 1: and often slammed non procreative acts like oral sex as sinful.

3:13 Speaker 1: That being said, enforcement was kind of all over the place,

3:15 Speaker 1: and secular practices often did their own thing. In the

3:20 Speaker 1: Islamic world, those hadiths and some Persian poems hinted at

3:25 Speaker 1: sensual pleasure, but modesty and procreation were still the big deals. Meanwhile,

3:33 Speaker 1: in East Asia, especially China, Taoist texts considered sexual practices,

3:38 Speaker 1: including oral sex, part of health and spiritual balance. In Japan,

3:43 Speaker 1: Shunga art Wow it showed a diverse range of sexual

3:51 Speaker 1: acts as totally unnatural. Jumping to the medieval to early

3:59 Speaker 1: modern periods. Between fifteen hundred and eighteen hundred, the Catholic

4:04 Speaker 1: Church really tightened the screws on sexual norms in Europe.

4:07 Speaker 1: Anything outside marital procreative sex labeled as sodomy. But don't

4:14 Speaker 1: be fooled, people were still getting down behind closed doors.

4:17 Speaker 1: Renaissance art and literature, like Boccaccio's a crutch was to Cameron,

4:25 Speaker 1: kept the freak flag flying, showcasing all kinds of sexual diversity.

4:30 Speaker 1: Colonization also played a huge role here, with Europeans imposing

4:34 Speaker 1: their rigid norms on more permissive indigenous cultures. Some Native

4:40 Speaker 1: American tribes, for instance, had these fluid gender roles and

4:48 Speaker 1: sexual practices that colonizers tried to squash over. In Asia

4:54 Speaker 1: and Africa, local traditions stayed alive despite the growing influence

4:58 Speaker 1: of global trade. Moughal, India's art still celebrated eroticism, and

5:05 Speaker 1: African sexual customs were all over the map, from extremely

5:11 Speaker 1: permissive to highly regulated. Let's roll into the modern era

5:19 Speaker 1: from eighteen hundred to the present ah the nineteenth century

5:26 Speaker 1: Victorian Europe was pretty much the definition of sexual repression.

5:32 Speaker 1: Modesty and heterosexual marriage were the names of the game,

5:36 Speaker 1: and oral sex pathologized by emerging medical discourses thanks to

5:43 Speaker 1: folks like Freud. Yet underground subcultures and racy literature like

5:50 Speaker 1: Fanny Hill show that people were finding ways to keep

5:54 Speaker 1: their sexual practices alive. Then we hit the twentieth century

6:00 Speaker 1: and boom the sexual revolution of the sixties and seventies.

6:06 Speaker 1: Contraception and feminist movements took center stage, normalizing all sorts

6:11 Speaker 1: of sexual practices, including oral sex, as part of personal freedom.

6:17 Speaker 1: Kinsey's reports were eye openers, documenting widespread non procreative behaviors

6:24 Speaker 1: and blowing up taboos left and right. Globally, post colonial

6:30 Speaker 1: societies mixed traditional and Western norms. In Japan, for instance,

6:36 Speaker 1: modern cultures stayed pretty open about sexuality, while some Middle

6:40 Speaker 1: Eastern countries stuck to strict religious codes. Though private practices

6:47 Speaker 1: they varied a lot. So what about the late twentieth

6:53 Speaker 1: to twenty first century? Globalization? Media and the Internet spread

6:59 Speaker 1: all kinds of sexual norms around the world. LGBTQ plus

7:05 Speaker 1: rights movements made huge strides in accepting diverse sexualities, though

7:14 Speaker 1: there's still backlash in more conservative regions. Oral sex it's

7:21 Speaker 1: largely normalized today, popping up in media and getting openly discussed.

7:28 Speaker 1: The bottom line, what's taboo in one culture might be

7:32 Speaker 1: sacred in another. It all reflects power dynamics, religious influences,

7:41 Speaker 1: and the ebb and flow of secular movements. That's it

7:46 Speaker 1: for today's juicy historical romp through sexual norms and how

7:50 Speaker 1: they've evolved, especially when it comes to oral sex. You've

7:54 Speaker 1: been listening to Taboo, Fetish or King with Me Girl

8:00 Speaker 1: k Love. Don't forget to check the show notes for

8:03 Speaker 1: any links or articles we mentioned in today's episode. Catch

8:07 Speaker 1: you next time and keep it spicy.