advice, or at least built it on a very limited number of predecessors: the Kama Sutra, maybe Marie Stopes’ 1918 Married Love and the 1970s The Joy of Sex. But in fact today’s maelstrom of lovemaking manuals, videos and DVDs has a far richer and more twisted heritage than that. The genre is way older than the novel, and takes us right back to an ancient Chinese tomb-hoard of books first written in 300 BC.
Every era has had its Dr Ruths dictating to us the correct way, the right place, the essential time, the appropriate shape, the perfect partner and, of course, the ultimate naughtiness. And what a proud parade: they feature, to mention but a few, Roman poets, medieval woman-haters, Victorian adventurers, astral travellers, gay sandal-makers, dope peddlers, racial-purity fanatics, wholewheat snack-makers, an impotent love guru, a divorced virgin and a toga-wearing erectophobe. If these self-appointed sexperts share one common characteristic, it’s a special strain of eccentricity. Along with the throng of plain charlatans came the freaks, geeks, dreamers, anarchists, rebels and lost souls who were so out of kilter with society that they felt driven to preach about a legally perilous subject in a manner almost guaranteed to offend those in authority, scandalize friends and families, and frequently land them behind bars.
One of their great motives was, as usual, power – the power to tell people what they should and should not do in their most private moments. But they were also driven by a streak of evangelism, the messianic eye-gleam of people convinced that they had found the sexual solution to life’s miseries. In many ways, the old advice books were not actually about sex itself, but alchemy: promising to reveal secret formulae for the perfect existence, the greatest happiness, and to open up a conduit to divine wisdom. Some even claimed that secret bouts of ritualistic congress could grant you magical powers and immortality.
Despite (or because of) this legion of advisors, sensible sex advice was a long time coming. It was only very recently that we finally learnt the precise mechanics of reproduction. This information gap didn’t stop the experts, though. They simply made it all up, using as their guide a hodge-podge of previous books, current fashion, a bit of fieldwork and their own deep personal prejudices. But if old sex books can’t help us much with the art and science of lovemaking, they do open for us a new window on to history’s lurid mosaic of obsession, fear, lust, hatred, fantasy and insanity. Welcome to the human condition.
So much for the writers, but what about us, the readers? Why do we spend precious money and time on sex manuals? Bonobo monkeys are our closest primate cousins, and although you wouldn’t catch a bonobo monkey with his nose stuck in a mating manual, they enjoy a sexual repertoire – multi-positions, group sex, lesbianism, etc. – that is at least as complex, acrobatic and experimental as most human couples ever sample. True, bonobos have sex in public, which humans mostly don’t – so their young get an education that consists of ‘watch it, learn it and try it’. Then again, the human imagination, and the ample amount of time it dedicates to sexual fantasy, can generally be trusted to work out all the physical permutations on its own. But there is something else about the private nature of human sex: it plants nagging questions in people’s heads – am I normal; am I doing it in a way that is correct, fun, efficient and legal; and, of course, can I do it better?
Education aside, one can’t ignore the titillation factor associated with anything to do with sex, particularly in decades past when such information was heavily censored and even the most straightforward information could be considered hot stuff – although much of it came across as a mix between an engineering treatise, a lengthy sermon and a wholefood cookbook. That sort of illicit thrill scores bulls-eye on the brain’s reward centre – which responds by sending the message, ‘That was good, let’s do it again, it might be better next time’. Thus, sex manuals throughout history have elbowed hot cakes into second place on the sales charts. The books have frequently used the same sales lure – there’s an amazing secret regime revealed inside that will truly change your life. Today the same trick is used to sell diet, exercise and psychological self-help books. The song remains the same: our modern era is remarkable only in the sheer, overwhelming volume of sex advice being churned out and avidly consumed. One in four British women says they own a sex manual, according to a survey by the publishers Dorling Kindersley in 2003. Writers and publishers are putting out new sex books every month. Everyone is at it, from former porn stars to the car-workshop manual maker Haynes. Then there are DVDs, videos, websites and mass advertising – the Sunday Telegraph carries adverts for a ‘clitoral stimulator’ and none of its readers’ horses bolt.
We’ve become saturated with sex advice. That should, in theory, make for bookshelves crowded with surprising, amazing and revelatory material. In reality, though, it doesn’t. Now that medicine has sorted out the science and most of us share a liberal sense of morality, the texts all tend to say rather the same thing, albeit in a variety of permutations. Ho hum. That’s why, if you still fancy a spot of true variety and spice between the covers of a sex manual, there’s only one place to go – back in time, to where all the strange folk and their peculiar practices lie quietly waiting for you. Just one word of warning, though: please don’t try any of it at home.
Caution! Before You Start Sex, Remember...
Tight buns and corsets cause nymphomania
Dr John Cowan, The Science of a New Life (1888)
The constricting of the waist and abdomen by corsets, girdles and waistbands prevents the return of venous blood to the heart, and the consequent overloading of the sexual organs causes the unnatural excitement of the sexual system.
The majority of women, adoring followers of the goddess Fashion, wear their hair in a large, heavy knot on the back part of the head, and when their own is insufficient to make a roll enough, false hair is added. This great pressure on the small brain produces great heat in the part and causes an unusual flow of the blood to the area of amativeness and, if persisted in, a chronic inflammation of the sexual organ, and a chronic desire for its sexual exercise ... It is almost impossible that she should lead other than a life of sexual excess.
Sexual jealousy can ruin your skin
Fang Nei Chi (Records of the Bedchamber), Sui Dynasty (AD 590–618)
A woman should not allow herself to become jealous or sad if she sees her man copulate with another woman, for then her yin essence will become overexcited. She will be afflicted by pains while sitting and standing, and the vaginal emissions will flow spontaneously. These are ills that will cause a woman to wither and age before her time. Therefore she should guard against this.
Never share a bedroom
Marie Stopes, Married Love (1918)
It may enchant a man once – perhaps even twice – to watch his goddess screw her hair up into a tight and unbecoming knot and soap her ears. But it is inherently too unlovely a proceeding to retain indefinite enchantment ... So far as is possible ensure that you allow your husband to come upon you only when there is delight in the meeting. Whenever the finances allow, the husband and wife should have separate bedrooms, failing that they should have a curtain which can at will be drawn so as to divide the room they share. No soul can grow to its full nature without its spells of solitude. A woman’s body and soul should be essentially her own, and that can only be so if she has an inviolable retreat.
Ejaculating may repel your partner
Theodoor Hendrik Van de Velde, Ideal Marriage, Its Physiology and Technique (1928)
After mental and emotional excitement the smell of the semen is more acrid, after muscular exertion, more aromatic and, after several repeated acts of coitus in rapid succession it becomes fainter, but stale and unpleasant.
