Put What Where? (15 page)
Authors: John Naish
EDWARDIAN ENJOYMENT
Towards the end of the Victorian era, the authorities’ killjoy sexual grip began finally to weaken and a new idea began to gain public acceptance: enjoyment was not only for the wicked and the weird.
In marital advice books around 1900, sexual pleasure started to become actively promoted rather than merely permitted. The march of ‘social progress’, of women’s rights agitation and growing medical knowledge of sexual mechanics seem all to have played a part in fostering awareness of female sexual desires in the Western world. The long era of ‘Brace thyself, wife’ was finally ending, too: after 1910, the idea of foreplay makes a widespread comeback, having been largely absent for centuries. Women suddenly became creatures who could be turned on – but only by their husbands, and only if those husbands had learnt the secret skills.
Keep those revolutionary banners furled, though. It was hardly a free-for-all. The Viennese psychiatrist Richard Krafft-Ebing’s scientific work on sexual aberration,
Psychopathia Sexualis
, was published in
1886 but not allowed into Britain until it had reached its tenth edition in 1899. Even then, the publishers would only sell it to doctors and lawyers, and some of it – the sex stuff, predictably – was printed in Latin, so that less-educated people would not understand terms such as
libido sexualis
and
frigidas uxoris.
Krafft-Ebing detailed real-life eccentricities in hundreds of case histories – the engineer who got turned on by slaughter-houses, the cobbler who stole women’s clothes, the woman who thought she was a man, the merchant obsessed with self-abuse. The author was hardly a proud advocate of fetishism, though, and even attempted to cure homosexuality using hypnosis. This did not stop the
British Medical Journal
getting so angered by all the book’s ‘nauseous detail’ that it suggested it should be ‘put to the most ignominious use to which paper could be applied’. How uncomfortable.
But where mainstream, traditional, monogamous hubby’n’wifey were concerned, the whole subject of sex was becoming increasingly important – to the point where it was even acknowledged as crucial to their relationship. William J. Fielding wrote in
Sanity in Sex
in 1920 that marriage ‘is fundamentally a sexual union and its success or failure, all things considered, is largely determined by considerations arising from the actual problems of sex’. The same year, Salomon Herbert warned in
Fundamentals in Sexual Ethics
that ‘Woman’s innate coyness keeps her from giving way to her natural impulses which often need the active stimulation of a lover before they are brought into conscious evidence.’
But how do you do that? The majority of books remained coy about the actual physical procedures which husbands needed to learn to pleasure their women. The manuals were like car-repair guides that daren’t publish pictures of open bonnets or, God forbid, a lubrication system, for fear of causing shock or inviting prosecution. Many a young man would have been left scratching his head – seldom a satisfactory method of foreplay.
Physical Difficulties
Too big? Get a long wife
Giovanni Marinello,
Medicine Pertinent to the Infirmities of Women
(Italy, 1563)
Long penises mean the sperm will get too cold before it enters the woman. The answer? Pick a tall bride, so her long uterus will keep the sperm warm on its journey.
Proceed, but with caution
Theodoor Hendrik Van de Velde,
Ideal Marriage, Its Physiology and Technique
(1928)
On the whole, a phallus of unusually large size must be more agreeable to women on account of increased pressure and friction in coitus. But men who know themselves to be unusually well endowed by nature should exercise particular care till they are quite sure that they cause no harm to their wives.
Problem? Wot problem?
John Marten,
Gonosologium Novum, or a new system of all secret infirmities and diseases, natural, accidental, and venereal in men and women
(1709)
As for the bigness of a man’s Yard, it very rarely happens that any woman complains of it, or is in any ways incommodated by it.
Oh dear!
Nicholas Venette,
The Mysteries of Conjugal Love Reveald
(1703)
The members of generation on the man’s side should not be too diminutive, in such case neither having proper force to eject the seed, or capacity to fill the pudenda in such a manner as it should be.
How you can tell
Serat Candraning Wanita
(
Book of Descriptions of Women
) – traditional Javanese folklore
The shape and size of a man’s penis can be deduced from his thumb.
Straighten it with ants
The Secrets of Mrs Isabella Cortese
(Venice, 1561)
To repair a bent penis, you will need:
Quail testicles
Oil from the inner bark of storax and from the elder tree
Large-winged ants
Musk
Amber from the Orient
Mix together and apply to the bent area as needed. Consider it straightened.
The perfect percy
Perfumed Garden
of Sheik Nefzaoui (16th century), translated into English by Sir Richard F. Burton
The virile member, to please women, must have at most a length of the breadth of twelve fingers, or three handbreadths, and at least six fingers, or a hand and a half breadth.
There are men with members of twelve fingers, or three hand-breadths; others of ten fingers, or two and a half hands. And others measure eight fingers, or two hands. A man whose member is of lesser dimensions cannot please women.
- and if it’s too small
Rub it before copulation with tepid water, until it gets red and extended by the blood flowing into it, in consequence of the heat; then anoint it with a mixture of honey and ginger, rubbing it in sedulously. Then let him join the woman; he will procure for her such pleasure that she objects to him getting off her again.
Your fate in your pants: penis reading
Ananga Ranga of Kalyanamalla
(
Stage of the Love God
), by the Indian poet Kalyan Mall (16th century)
The man whose Linga is very long will be wretchedly poor.
The man whose Linga is very thick will ever be in distress.
The man whose Linga is thin and Lean will be very lucky.
And the man whose Linga is short will be a Rajah.
That bothersome little button
Ida Craddock,
The Wedding Night
(1900)
A woman’s clitoris is sometimes hooded, which, of course, is an unnatural condition, and is apt to result in sexual coldness on her part, or, at best, in a stunted sex desire. Here a physician should be appealed to, as the clitoris can be freed from its hood by circumcision; and the earlier that this is done in a girl’s life the better for her health. Many a girl infant, it is now maintained by some physicians, is nervously deranged by the existence of such a hood, and would be restored to health by its circumcision.
Some women have an abnormally long clitoris, which it is impossible not to engage during coition, and such women are usually sensual, and lacking in the ability to prolong the act. In extreme cases the excision of such a clitoris may be beneficial; but it would seem preferable to first employ the milder method of suggestive therapeutics, and for the wife to endeavor to turn her thoughts from the sensation induced at the clitoris to that induced within the vagina, which is the natural and wholesome sensation to be aroused in a woman.
... If s somewhere down there
Encyclopaedia of Sex and Love Technique
(1941)
Many men are not able to find this tiny organ.
But probably best ignored
Edward Podolsky,
Sex Technique for Husband and Wife
(1947)
The clitoris, while important, is not nearly as important as many of us have been taught or led to believe.
TEE WOELD’S DULLEST SEE BOOK
If Otto Weininger achieved nothing else, he can justifiably claim to be among the earliest pioneers of the James Dean/Marilyn Monroe/Sid Vicious effect – i.e. if you really want to sell lots of product, you’ve got to kill yourself first.
And how else, in Weininger’s case, could you ever hope to flog huge numbers of the world’s most boring book on sex?
Written at the dawn of the twentieth century,
Sex and Character
managed to avoid anything erotic, exotic or even particularly interesting in favour of a morass of neo-Freudianism, middle-European angst, anti-Semitism and obscure metaphysics inspired largely by the philosophers Kant and Nietzsche, neither of whom is known for their comic repertoire. Weininger’s tract on sexuality was only good for the bedside table if you suffered from insomnia or premature ejaculation. He started with the premise that individual men and women exist at various points on a spectrum that runs from masculinity to femininity – and in the middle there is no real difference at all. He then proceeded to
create mathematical and logical formulae to explain the rules of sexual attraction, namely: ‘For sexual union always a complete man (M) and a complete woman (W) strive to come together, even if, in every given case, [sexual identity] is distributed upon the two different individuals in varied proportion.’ Indeed.
Then there are also, apparently, things called detumescence and contrectation drives and, ‘While M in fact possesses both, detumescence and contrectation drive, in W a genuine detumescence drive is not present at all. This is already given by the fact that, in the sexual act, W does not deposit something to M, but only M to W: W retains the male as well as the female secretions.’ And so it goes on, with few opportunities for light relief, bar the odd strange assertion such as, ‘Woman is nothing but sexuality, she is sexuality itself, and falls into two classes: the maternal type and the prostitute.’
Weininger, an Austrian Jew who converted to Christianity, wrote the book at a tender 21. He was convinced that his genius was just waiting to be discovered. Soon after the book’s publication he went to Italy to await news of its inevitable blockbuster success. But neither the sales nor the resulting adulation seemed forthcoming. Over the ensuing months he went into a deep mental decline, described by friends as ‘a too grave sense of responsibility’. On 4 October 1903, aged 23, he shot himself in the house in Vienna where Beethoven, the man Weininger considered one of the world’s greatest geniuses, had died.
In publicity terms, at least, it proved a shrewd move. News of the tragic young writer’s death quickly spread and Weininger became a cause célèbre, inspiring several imitation suicides.
Sex and Character
began to sell. August Strindberg gave it an effusive review, saying it ‘probably solved the hardest of all problems’ – the ‘woman problem’. Unlikely, but nevertheless the book ran through printing after printing. It was translated into numerous languages, and in a few years his publishers declared that no scientific book in the history of publishing had achieved greater success. If heaven has a corner reserved for posthumous achievers, Weininger will be there now, swapping hard-luck stories with Van Gogh and Buddy Holly.
Crisis Talks
How to recognize a female orgasm
Mawangdui medical manuscripts (200–300
BC
)
The nose sweats and the lips are white: the hands and feet all twitch; the buttocks do not adhere to the bed mat, but rise up and away. When she becomes relaxed there her sexual essence spreads out. At this point the chi expands in the uterus. Essence and spirit enter and are deposited, then spiritual enlightenment takes place.
Girls: how to fake it
Ovid’s poem,
Ars Amatoria
(
The Art of Love
) (
c.
I
BC
)
Feel the pleasure in the very marrow of your bones; share it fairly with your lover, say pleasant, naughty things the while. But if Nature has withheld from you the sensation of pleasure, then teach your lips to lie and say you feel it all
Unhappy is the woman who feels no answering thrill But, if you have to pretend, don’t betray yourself by over-acting. Let your movements and your eyes combine to deceive us, and, gasping, panting, complete the illusion.
Men: how to stop it
Fang-nei-pu-l
(
Healthy Sex Life
), by the Taoist physician Sun Szu-mo (
AD
601–682)
Every time a man feels he is about to emit semen during the sexual act, he should close his mouth and open his eyes wide, hold his breath and firmly control himself. He should move his hands up and down and hold his breath in his nose, constraining the lower part of his body so that he breathes with his abdomen.
Straightening his spine, he should quickly press the P’ing-I Point [a point at the perineum, twixt scrotum and anus] with the index and middle finger of his left hand, then let out his breath, at the same time gnashing his teeth a thousand times. In this manner the semen will ascend and benefit the brain, thus lengthening one’s span of life.
Delay it with monkeys
Koka Shastra
(
The Scripture of Koka
), by the Indian poet Kokkoka (12th century)
Direct your thoughts to rivers, woods, caves, mountains or other pleasant places, and imagine proceeding through them gently and slowly. If you imagine a particularly nimble monkey swinging on the branch of a tree, you will not ejaculate even though your semen is already at the tip of your penis.
An old boy-scout trick
Giovanni Marinello,
Medicine Pertinent to the Infirmities of Women
(Italy, 1563)
If the man orgasms before the woman does, she cannot get pregnant. So tie string around the husband’s testicles so sperm cannot escape. When the wife feels ready to orgasm, she can untie the knot.
Or consider cannabis
Castore Durante,
New Herbarium
(Rome, 1585)
How to delay climax: try cannabis ... Or if you can’t get that, wild mint?