This was a fantastically fun book and I would highly recommend it for most people. Of course, there is no way that one book can cover all of the history of sex, or even all of a single category. But the author takes you on a lively trip through time regarding some of the most scandalous aspects that humans have created. A few random bits to give you an idea of what to find in this book:
The word whore has only recently been associated with prostitution and for most of its existence simply meant a woman who had sex with anyone not her husband, but was still considered one of the greatest insults.
The word cunt is the oldest word in English for female genitals. It is believed to originate from the same root as the word cunning.
Women riding bicycles was considered the highest of offences during the Victorian era. You could see their ankles! They didn't squeeze themselves ill in corsets while riding! It gave them freedom where they couldn't be watched by society! Horrors!
People seem to have forgotten that if you don't have access to abortion and birth control, women will still get rid of unwanted children, including leaving them to suffocate in the outhouse.
Once upon a time, the worst thing you could say were things related to religion, like "God's teeth", then it switched to things related to sex, like "fuck", and today the worst cuss words are shifting to things related to racism. That's about 1000 years of bad word evolution right there. Very interesting because the shift was so fast that there are people alive today who remember how horrible it was to say "fuck" not that long ago while they heard things like the N-word pretty regularly. Those have now completely switched.
This book is littered with euphemisms for all manner of sex related acts and parts including the year they were first documented in print. I loved learning the dates of when such terms came into common useage.
No comments:
Post a Comment