INTRODUCTION
Oral-genital intercourse has been practiced since primeval times. In
the Orient, thousands of years of oral-genital activity have resulted
in the development of fellatio as an art. African natives, at least
those as yet untouched by all of “modern” society’s mores, find great
interest in all forms of sexual stimulation and gratification, with the
exception of the universal incest taboo. This applies as well to their
counterparts in all the less “civilized” areas of the world.
However, members of civilized society indulge in oralism as well,
and in a few countries in the Western world can do so freely. According
to the laws of the United States, however, oral-genital sexual activity
is strictly illegal, and, therefore, unethical and immoral. Morality is
certainly not something which can be legislated, and oralism between
consenting sexual partners cannot be termed unethical. That such laws
have been established is proof of the horror with which many members of
our society, composed of various ethnic groups, view oral sexuality, and
this horror can no doubt be traced to guilt feelings resulting from
inhibited sexual development. In Three Essays on the Theory of
Sexuality, Freud points out the remarkable dichotomy regarding the use
of the mouth as a normal sexual variation:
“The use of the mouth as a sexual organ is regarded as a perversion
if the lips (or tongue) of one person are brought into contact with the
genitals of another, but not if the mucous membranes of the lips of both
of them come together.”
Those people who would experience real disgust at the thought of
giving or receiving fellatio or cunnilingus, an act between two mucous
membranes, in this case the mouth and genital, would think nothing of
giving or receiving a passionate mouth-to-mouth kiss, which is a purely
conventional meeting of two mucous membranes.
Subjectively, sexual activity, both infantile and mature, is
connected with pleasure sensations which are different, in kind and
intensity, from any other forms of gratification. And the very earliest
pleasure sensations came from the mouth. The forerunner of fellatio was
the mother’s breast, and, when the breast was removed, the thumb filled
the void nicely, and baby was a self-contained sexual being,
simultaneously self-stimulating and self-satisfying.
This satisfaction from sucking is removed from the first use of the
mouth and tongue, namely nourishment, and becomes sensual for its own
pleasure alone. It is a pleasurable enough experience to repeat often
throughout life, and is obviously a universal characteristic.
While the openness with which people discuss their sexual activities
and preferences varies from society to society, the activities
themselves do not. Ethnic differences have as far as can be determined
by the statistics at hand, no bearing on the relationship between sexual
activity and oral-genital sexuality.
Religious differences, however, most certainly serve to influence
sexual practices. The Amish and Quaker people are raised to view sexual
activity as an adjunct to procreation only. Foreplay and sexual
variation are unthinkable.
Conversely, Buddhists and their cultures arising there from pay
special attention to schooling woman to serve man sexually to the best
of her ability. It is a logical progression that fellatio is a learned
skill in these cultures. In Japan, sexual attitudes have become so
liberalized that, for the past twenty years, no stigma has attached to a
bride for having formerly been a prostitute.
Muhammed, founder of Islam, so idolized woman that he attempted to
raise her to a pedestal above man. However, in reality, the Islamic
woman is regarded as little more than a sex object, and no concern is
shown for her sexual enjoyment. Richard von Krafft-Ebing, in
Psychopathia Sexualis, notes that:
Above all things Islamism excludes woman from public life and
enterprise and stifles her intellectual and moral advancement. The
Mohammed-an woman is simply a means for sensual gratification and the
propagation of the species.
There is no doubt that oralism fulfills many sexual desires.
Oral-genital contact provides sexual pleasure from the stimulation of
two erogenous zones. Additionally, the close contact of face-to-genital
proximity gratifies even the most ardent of voyeurs.
The oral stage of development is a natural stage for mankind. No one is ever taught to suck. It is a phylogenetic acquisition.
The early oral phase is accompanied by feelings of total pleasure.
It nearly recapitulates the womb situation, where satisfaction was
simultaneous with desire. The breast is perceived by the child, at this
time, as a part of the child’s body and not a part of the mother.
Gradually, however, the infant learns the law of reality, deferred
gratification. Initially, he won’t accept this situation and looks upon
his mother as a punishing figure, the one who holds back the breast. But
the situation progresses and eventually the breast is recognized as an
object exterior to the self. In his attempt to interject this once
greatly prized possession, he passes through a stage of oral
“cannibalism”. Then, when the child grows his first teeth, weaning is
made necessary and the breast is withdrawn forever. The normal child is
able to overcome this “weaning trauma” and proceed to the next stage of
psychosexual development, the anal-sadistic phase.
People who cling to the infantile sucking stage are always seriously
hampered in the maturation of their sexuality. The instincts of
nutrition and of sexuality remain connected to each other. The libido
remains fixated and the primary esoteric zone is not transferred to
complete concentration on genitality, the stage necessary for the
propagation of the species.
To these oral-regressed and oral-fixated individuals, narcissism is
the primary character trait. There is no exterior love object, and oral
reincorporation of the longed-for breast and its contents remains the
principal concern.
Sucking is a component instinct of the fully developed sexual
organization. As such, it can be enjoyed as a sexual adjunct leading to
the fulfillment of coitus. Only when it becomes the primary erotic zone
do we speak of perversion.
Perversion is the psychodynamic opposite of neurosis. As the
individual develops and matures, he learns to sublimate his desires. In
other words, he displaces them onto other gratifying activities of a
nonsexual nature. For example, one’s original bisexuality may be
sublimated into the love for mankind in general or one’s desire for the
mother may be displaced by various distracting activities. But the
pervert has never learned to renounce one — if not more of his component
instincts. In the case of orality, the punitive sucking and biting
levels have been hard to renounce.
In the majority of instances the pathological character in a
perversion is found to lie, not in the content of the new sexual aim,
but in its relation to the normal. If a perversion, instead of appearing
merely alongside the normal sexual aim and object, and only when
circumstances are unfavorable to them and favorable to it — if, instead
of this, it ousts them completely and takes their place in all
circumstances if, in short, a perversion has the characteristics of
exclusiveness and fixation — then we shall usually be justified in
regarding it as a pathological symptom.
Possibly, this fixation may be caused by a trauma or a regression
precipitated by an external and internal shock. Weaning itself comprises
both of these types of trauma; the breast is removed externally, but it
is considered as an internal loss. The trauma may even be provoked by a
newly born brother or sister. The new addition to the family is viewed
as a threat because of the envy created by the new child suckling on the
much-desired breast. Normally, however, these traumas are overcome.
It is only when we find a strong fixation and a lack of inhibition
together that we encounter a perverse personality. These fixated
individuals are sometimes incapable of coitus.
In this book, we are basically dealing with oralerotic perversions.
We must not forget that this type of individual is not only fixated upon
the breasts and the nuclear element of non-separation of nutrition and
sexuality, but the individual is also fixated upon the mother, with all
that implies.
Additionally, mother-fixation develops passive identification with
the mother. Primarily, the oral zone is passively structured, in a
biological sense. It seeks to incorporate the breast which is a feminine
or masochistic trait. Thus, we have said that the orally perverse
individual is both masochistic in his incorporative function and
sadistic in his cannibalistic function. This is seemingly a paradox. But
the contrast between activity and passivity which lies behind them is a
universal characteristic of sexual life. As Freud notes, in his Three
Essays on the Theory of Sexuality:
… the most remarkable feature of this perversion is that its active
and passive forms are habitually found to occur together in the same
individual. A person who feels pleasure in producing pain in someone
else in a sexual relationship is also capable of enjoying as pleasure
any pain which he may himself derive from sexual relations. A sadist is
always at the same time a masochist, although the active or the passive
aspect of the perversion may be the more strongly developed in him and
may represent his predominant sexual activity.
But most importantly, what is normal or perverse is determined by
the moral standards of the society in which we live. The social
environment we live in is constantly changing and shifting. How far does
this affect our ideas about normality and deviant behavior? One need
not quote Kinsey to establish the fact that our aims and needs are
largely conditioned by culture and social structure.
Is it a perversion when a man embraces and kisses another man? Or
when a brother and sister perform sexual intercourse? Are they behaving
in a perverted manner even though they are simply talking to each other?
The answer is to be found, at least in part, in the relationship
between the acts and the cultural environment in which they take place.
When the president of the French Republic embraces and kisses the
recipient of a military honor, it is hardly regarded as an act of
homosexual intention. Yet in other cultures, it might be a suspicious
sign of asocial tendencies if two men merely touch each other. If a
Japanese couple, proud of their ability to please each other with
oral-genital sex, come to the United States, can they rightfully be
arrested?
Similarly, it has frequently been pointed out that, in certain
societies, brother-sister incest belonged to a particular institution
within the socio-religious system. In sharp contrast, any sort of
physical contact between male and female siblings is met with disgust,
or even punishment, by a number of primitive people.
What often seem to be contradictions are actually culture-bound
adaptations, rooted in the interaction between physiological,
psychological and environmental forces. That is why normality is
traditionally considered to be whatever the traditional behavior pattern
in a culture dictates.
In view of the hundreds of cultures in the world, all exercising
sexuality in whatever form the society considers normal; it is certainly
difficult to ascertain what place oral-genital sexual activity would
have in each. Many potentialities are molded by the cultural
environment.
Warner Muensterberger summed it up well, in his Perversion, Cultural Norm and Normality, determining that:
We assume that our biological inheritance contains elements which
decide certain behavioral tendencies. As these potentialities vary, it
seems conceivable that any reaction type might be found in any ethnic
milieu.
And of most importance, even in the most unified ethnic group,
individual sexual behavior will in part be determined by the personal
experience and erotic preference of each of its individuals,
individually.
In the case histories which follow, it will be noted that only the
places and incidental circumstances actually change. Whether we deal
with a Negro female in Chicago or an Italian boy living in the sticks,
we find that the same human impulses drive them, altered only by certain
generational and ethnic characteristics of upbringing..."
Anon
The Many Tongues of Love
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