Was Cleopatra a nympho?

What was the sexuality of our ancestors and of the great figures of history like? What was the preferred position of prehistoric men? Was Cleopatra an obsessive? In their hilarious and expertly documented book Tell me the story of sexuality , Marine Gasc and Pauline Roland satisfy our curiosity with crisp sexual stories.

Incredible but true, between 1550 and 1791, the men passed in front of the judge following a complaint lodged by their wife for ... impotence ! Women thus had the power to annul a marriage with damages if the member of her husband was not sufficiently vigorous, supported by medical expertise. Basically, the law forbade men to bandage soft because the demi-soft was an offense to procreation and therefore to the Church . To check the words of the woman, the couple had to make love in front of a jury of fifteen people! Something to put the poor man at ease.

If a few erotic books have already been there, The Girls' School (author unknown, obviously) is the first porn book directly addressed to women. Around a love trio between Robinet, Fanchon and Suzanne, the book questions the transmission of sexuality from mother to daughter. If mothers hide sexual matters from their daughters, the latter suffer from a disconcerting naivety when the big moment arrives. The characters exchange around male and female pleasure: how to make a man hard ? What are the most effective positions to achieve enjoyment? How to use a dildo or just your fingers to make yourself cum? How to handle dirty talk wonderfully to excite your partner? Like any good feminist book that respect, the author already explained (in the seventeenth century !!), through the voice of Susan, the world would be better if women ran the C hurch and society.

Since Antiquity , doctors have been convinced that in addition to an erotic function, spanking has healing virtues. Thus, schizophrenics , bipolar or simply feverish were whipped to cure their ailments. Later, in the Middle Ages , spanking was considered a perfect remedy for " erotic melancholy ". It was from the 18th century ( Sade having been there) that erotic flogging became the practice of the century, for both men and women.

According to historical research, the earliest evidence of oral sex can be found in ancient Egypt . To find out what men should expect, fellatio prostitutes wore lipstick. Cleopatra herself was a follower of the practice: nicknamed Meriochane which means " open mouth ", the legend says that she would have performed blowjobs on hundreds of men on call ... In one night!

While fellatio was a common practice in Greece and ancient Rome , the Romans were only allowed to have a pipe cut by their wife, slave, or child (yes, pedophilia was perfectly normalized at that time). Men " fellators " (those who agreed to give blowjobs) were therefore particularly despised and even humiliated by the rest of the people. The followers of the practice were not better treated in the Middle Ages , since in Ireland, fellatio was punished with three to fifteen years of penance, the equivalent of a homicide!

To listen to scientists, the clitoris is not that old. However, from -300, Hippocrates and his clique took care of this organ which they thought necessary for procreation. This belief will have a hard tooth, and it was not until the middle of the 16th century that it was named for the first time! But even with a small name, this little enchanter of pleasure has not had an easy life: qualified as a woman's malformation that had to be removed, young girls undergo excisions galore (often resulting in death). 'at the beginning of the 19th century in Europe.

You know the rest: Freud passing by there will qualify in 1905 the clitoral sexuality of infantile, the sexuality of " real woman " passing necessarily by the penetration (of a man, necessarily). Once the usefulness of the clitoris has been clarified by twentieth century scientists (that is to say, pleasure for its sole function), it is of course put away in the cupboard and even ... withdrawn from the dictionary! Only supposedly " hysterical " women could benefit from medically assisted orgasms to calm their ardor ...

Masturbation , voyeurism , homosexuality and doggies galore ... Man did not wait for erotic novels or porn films to understand how pleasure worked. The woman either, moreover, as evidenced by the many phalluses of stone and wood looking like a dildo, or this statuette of Venus from Hagar Qim (3600-2500 BC) with a naughty hand between the legs.

At this period when the woman is perceived only as a simple detail of humanity, the sperm is considered as the purest extract of the blood, as " the life in the liquid state ": it would be enough a man ejaculates in a vase at the right temperature to father a child. No need to say that the clitoris does not appear in any writings of the time, the men being convinced that the pleasure of the woman was at the level of ... the cervix ! Religion having been there, too much sex was seen as a terrible danger capable of drying out the body, shrinking the brain, destroying the eyes or even making people stupid.

Tell me the story of the sexuality of Marine Gasc and Pauline Roland

Also discover: 7 things to know about zizi .