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Sex manuals are books which explain how to perform sexual practices; they also commonly feature advice on birth control, and sometimes on safe sex and sexual relationships.
In the Graeco-Roman era, a sex manual was written by Philaenis of Samos, possibly a hetaira (courtesan) of the Hellenistic period (3rd–1st century BC). [1] Preserved by a series of fragmentary papyruses which attest its popularity, it served as a source of inspiration for Ovid's Ars Amatoria , written around 3 BC, which is partially a sex manual, and partially a burlesque on the art of love.
The Kama Sutra of Vatsyayana, believed to have been written in the 1st to 6th centuries, has a notorious reputation as a sex manual, although only a small part of its text is devoted to sex. It was compiled by the Indian sage Vātsyāyana sometime between the second and fourth centuries CE. His work was based on earlier Kamashastras or Rules of Love going back to at least the seventh century BCE, and is a compendium of the social norms and love-customs of patriarchal Northern India around the time he lived. Vatsyayana's Kama Sutra is valuable today for his psychological insights into the interactions and scenarios of love, and for his structured approach to the many diverse situations he describes. He defines different types of men and women, matching what he terms "equal" unions, and gives detailed descriptions of many love-postures.
The Kama Sutra was written for the wealthy male city-dweller. It is not, and was never intended to be, a lover's guide for the masses, nor is it a "Tantric love-manual". About three hundred years after the Kama Sutra became popular, some of the love-making positions described in it were reinterpreted in a Tantric way. Since Tantra is an all-encompassing sensual science, love-making positions are relevant to spiritual practice.
The earliest East Asian sex manual is the Su Nü Jing . Probably written during the Chinese Han dynasty (206 BC – 220 AD), the work was long lost in China itself, but preserved in Japan as part of the medical anthology Ishinpō (984). It is a Daoist text purporting to describe how one might achieve long life and immortality by manipulating the yin and yang forces of the body through sexual techniques, which are described in some detail. [2] The Yufang mijue (Chinese :玉房秘訣), translated into English as Secrets from the Jade Chamber, [3] Secret Formulae from the Jade Alcove, [4] or Secret Instructions from the Jade Chamber, [5] is a Chinese sex manual composed during the Han dynasty.
Medieval sex manuals include the lost works of Elephantis, by Constantine the African; Ananga Ranga , a 12th-century collection of Hindu erotic works;Ratirahasya,a medieval Indian sex manual written by Koka and The Perfumed Garden for the Soul's Recreation , a 16th-century Arabic work by Sheikh Nefzaoui. The fifteenth-century Speculum al foderi (The Mirror of Coitus) is the first medieval European work to discuss sexual positions. Constantine the African also penned a medical treatise on sexuality, known as Liber de coitu. The medieval Jewish physician and writer Maimonides is author of a Treatise on Cohabitation.
Despite the existence of ancient sex manuals in other cultures, sex manuals were banned in Western culture for many years. What sexual information was available was generally only available in the form of illicit pornography or medical books, which generally discussed either sexual physiology or sexual disorders. The authors of medical works went so far as to write the most sexually explicit parts of their texts in Latin, so as to make them inaccessible to the general public (see Krafft-Ebing's Psychopathia Sexualis as an example).
A few translations of the ancient works were circulated privately, such as The Perfumed Garden ....
In the late 19th Century, Ida Craddock wrote many serious instructional tracts on human sexuality and appropriate, respectful sexual relations between married couples. Among her works were The Wedding Night and Right Marital Living. In 1918 Marie Stopes published Married Love , considered groundbreaking despite its limitations in details used to discuss sex acts.
Theodoor Hendrik van de Velde's book Het volkomen huwelijk(The Perfect Marriage), published in 1926, was well known in Netherlands, Germany, Sweden and Estonia. In Germany, Die vollkommene Ehe reached its 42nd printing in 1932 despite its being placed on the list of forbidden books, the Index Librorum Prohibitorum, by the Roman Catholic Church. In Sweden, Det fulländade äktenskapet was widely known although regarded as pornographic and unsuitable for young readers long into the 1960s. In English, Ideal Marriage: Its Physiology and Technique has 42 printings in its original 1930 edition, and was republished in new editions in 1965 and 2000.
David Reuben, M. D.'s book Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex* (*But Were Afraid to Ask) , published in 1969, was one of the first sex manuals that entered mainstream culture in the 1960s. Although it did not feature explicit images of sex acts, its descriptions of sex acts were detailed, addressing common questions and misunderstandings Reuben had heard from his own patients. Most notably, Reuben dismissed popular medical-psychiatric notions of "vaginal" vs. "clitoral" orgasm, explaining exactly how female physiology works.
The Joy of Sex by Dr. Alex Comfort was the first visually explicit sex manual to be published by a mainstream publisher. It was followed by The Joy of Gay Sex and The Joy of Lesbian Sex . Its appearance in public bookstores in the 1970s opened the way to the widespread publication of sex manuals in the West. As a result, hundreds of sex manuals are now available in print.
Sex manuals and works of the sort became so popular during the sexual revolution of the 1970s that even religious groups developed their own manuals. [6] Most notably, the book The Act of Marriage by Christian Baptist authors Tim and Beverly LaHaye has sold over 2.5 million copies. [7] While they began with the prerequisite of a heterosexual, complementarian relationship, the behavior they suggested went far beyond standard Christian teaching at that time. [6] They suggested role play, experimentation with sex devices, masturbation to ensure climax and many other practices that were considered taboo up until the 1970s in Protestant bedrooms. [8] Other manuals such as Marabel Morgan's The Total Woman emphasized the importance of the female orgasm. While they all required marriage, heterosexuality and complementarianism, they did push the bounds of accepted practice within their respective spheres of influence. [6] Today, Christian authors continue to produce similar manuals and guides to their constituents in search of appropriate, fulfilling behavior. Books such as Mark and Grace Driscoll's Real Marriage encourage Christians to experiment in the bedrooms with their spouses, even encouraging acts that have long been rejected by Protestant tradition such as anal sex.
One of the currently most well known in America is The Guide to Getting it On! by Paul Joannides. Now in its tenth edition, it has won several prestigious awards and been translated into 12 foreign languages since appearing in 1996. [9]
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Fellatio is an oral sex act consisting of the stimulation of a penis by using the mouth. Oral stimulation of the scrotum may also be termed fellatio, or colloquially as teabagging.
The Kama Sutra is an ancient Indian Hindu Sanskrit text on sexuality, eroticism and emotional fulfillment. Attributed to Vātsyāyana, the Kamasutra is neither exclusively nor predominantly a sex manual on sex positions, but rather a guide on the art of living well, the nature of love, finding partners, maintaining sex life, and other aspects pertaining to pleasure-oriented faculties. It is a sutra-genre text with terse aphoristic verses that have survived into the modern era with different bhāṣyas (commentaries). The text is a mix of prose and anustubh-meter poetry verses.
A sex position is a positioning of the bodies that people use to engage in sexual intercourse or other sexual activities. Sexual acts are generally described by the positions the participants adopt in order to perform those acts. Though sexual intercourse generally involves penetration of the body of one person by another, sex positions commonly involve non-penetrative sexual activities.
Doggy style is a sex position in which one participant bends over, crouches on all fours, or lies on their abdomen, for sexual intercourse, other forms of sexual penetration or other sexual activity. Doggy style is a form of a rear-entry position, others being with the receiving partner lying on the side in the spoons sex position or the reverse cowgirl sex position. Non-penetrative sex in this position may also be regarded as doggy style.
Mammary intercourse is a sex act, performed as either foreplay or as non-penetrative sex, that involves the stimulation of a man's penis by a woman's breasts and vice versa. It involves placing the penis between a woman's breasts and moving the penis up and down to simulate sexual penetration and to create sexual pleasure.
Vātsyāyana was an ancient Indian philosopher, known for authoring the Kama Sutra. He lived in India during the second or third century CE, probably in Pataliputra.
In Indian literature, Kāma-shastra refers to the tradition of works on Kāma: Desire. It therefore has a practical orientation, similar to that of Arthashastra, the tradition of texts on politics and government. Just as the latter instructs kings and ministers about government, Kāmashastra aims to instruct the townsman (nāgarika) in the way to attain enjoyment and fulfillment.
Kama is the concept of pleasure, enjoyment and desire in Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism. It can refer to "desire, wish, longing" in Hindu, Buddhist, Jain, and Sikh literature, however, the term also refers to any sensory enjoyment, emotional attraction and aesthetic pleasure such as from arts, dance, music, painting, sculpture, and nature.
The social construction of human sexuality and sexual behavior—along with its taboos, regulation, and social and political impact—has had a profound effect on the various cultures of the world since prehistoric times.
Ideal Marriage: Its Physiology and Technique is a famous popular scientific treatise and self-help book published in London in 1926 by Dutch gynecologist Theodoor Hendrik van de Velde, retired director of the Gynecological Clinic in Haarlem, and "one of the major writers on human sexuality during the early twentieth century". It was the best-known work on its subject for several decades, and was reprinted 46 times in the original edition. After World-War Two, it sold over a half-million copies. A revised edition was published in 1965. and a subsequent one in 2000.
Fingering is sexual stimulation of the vulva or vagina by using the fingers. Vaginal fingering is legally and medically called digital penetration or digital penetration of the vagina. The term "digital" takes its significance from the English word 'digit', which refers to a finger, thumb, or toe. Fingering may also include the use of fingers to stimulate the anus.
Forster Fitzgerald Arbuthnot was a notable British Orientalist and translator.
India has developed its discourse on sexuality differently based on its distinct regions with their own unique cultures. According to R.P. Bhatia, a New Delhi psychoanalyst and psychotherapist, middle-class India's "very strong repressive attitude" has made it impossible for many married couples to function well sexually, or even to function at all.
The Ratirahasya is a medieval Indian sex manual written by Kokkoka, a poet, who is variously described as Koka or Koka Pundit. The exact date of its writing is not known, but it is estimated the text was written in the 11th or 12th century. It is speculated that Ratirahasya was written to please a king by the name Venudutta. Kokkoka describes himself in the book as siddha patiya pandita, i.e. "an ingenious man among learned men". The manual was written in Sanskrit.
Margot Anand is a French author, teacher, seminar leader and public speaker. She has written numerous books including The Art of Sexual Ecstasy; The Art of Everyday Ecstasy; and The Art of Sexual Magic. Her mother was Protestant, and her father was Russian Orthodox and she was raised in Orthodox religion.
Pompoir is a sexual technique in which the woman uses her vaginal muscles to stimulate the man's penis. Both partners remain still, while the woman strokes the man's erection using rhythmic, rippling pulses of the pubococcygeus muscles, so this practice is best performed in a woman on top position.
Philaenis of Samos was supposedly the author of a famous ancient sex manual. According to a surviving fragment of a treatise which claims to have been written by her, she was from Samos, and her father was called Ocymenes. However, many modern scholars consider "Philaenis" a fictional character whose persona may have been adopted by a variety of erotic writers. Two satirical Greek epigrams from the Palatine Anthology by the poets Aeschrion of Samos and Dioscorides purport to defend Philaenis's reputation by insisting that she did not write the treatise attributed to her. Aeschrion instead insists that the treatise was written by the Athenian sophist Polycrates. The reputed writings of Philaenis were well known throughout classical antiquity and scholars believe that they may have influenced Ovid's Ars Amatoria.
Ava Cadell is a former actress, writer, producer and currently a therapist and speaker on issues of sexuality.
Indra Sinha is a British writer of Indian and English descent. Animal's People, his most recent novel, was shortlisted for the 2007 Man Booker Prize and winner of the 2008 Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Europe and South Asia.
Human sexuality is the way people experience and express themselves sexually. This involves biological, psychological, physical, erotic, emotional, social, or spiritual feelings and behaviors. Because it is a broad term, which has varied with historical contexts over time, it lacks a precise definition. The biological and physical aspects of sexuality largely concern the human reproductive functions, including the human sexual response cycle.