Betwixt The Sheets: The History of Sex, Scandal & Society - The Most Feared Sex Act In History

Episode Date: May 26, 2026

It’s got many names: giving head, going down, eating out, dining at the Y, muff diving.Why has cunnilingus been stigmatised and feared so consistently throughout history?! When the Kama Sutra is turning its back on it, you know something is up.Today is a special solo episode where Kate takes you through the history of cunnilingus, to find out why this sex act has been so insulting, demonised and feared.This episode a special celebration of Kate's new book, Flick: The Story of Female Pleasure, which is published on May 28th. Pre-order your copy here: https://linktr.ee/FlickDrKateLister.Edited by Hannah Feodorov. Producer by Stuart Beckwith. The senior producer was Freddy Chick.Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe.  You can take part in our listener survey here.All music from Epidemic Sounds.Betwixt the Sheets: History of Sex, Scandal & Society is a History Hit podcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Sign up to join me in locations around the world and explore the past. Just visit historyhit.com forward slash subscribe. Hello, my lovely Bertwixters. It's me, Kate Lister. Welcome back once again to Bertwicks the sheets. Hello. How are you doing? Long time, no see.

Sit your fine ass down. But before we can go any further together, I do have to tell you once again, this is an adult podcast spoken by adults to other adults, bad adulty things, an adulty way covering range of all subjects, and you should be an adult too. And we're actually being extra spicy today

because we're talking about an obscene sex act. get your pearls ready to be clutched. Right, let's get on with this, shall we? It's got many names, giving head, going down, eating out, dining at the Y, muff diving, and my most, most favourite, sneezing in the cabbage. I am, of course, talking about cunnolingus. And I have spent an eye-watering amount of time researching this particular sex act for my new book, Flick, The Story of Female Pleasure,

specifically looking at why this particular act has been such a taboo, why it's been so demonised and ultimately became the sex act that is most feared under the patriarchy. What have people said about it in history? And is this a fear that is consigned to the past? Or are we still a bit icky and weird about cunolingus today, particularly in the manosphere? Well, in today's episode, I am going to be flying solo in celebration, of my book launch, which will be available in all good bookshops and probably the bad ones too

on May the 28th, and you can pre-order yours now. Right, I think it's time to dive in and find out more. Welcome back to Betwixt the Sheets with me, Kate Lister. Today I'm talking all things Cunnelingus, because I happen to have a whole chapter on that very subject in my new book. Just as you heard, it has many names, and for all you etymologists out there, Cunnelingus actually comes to us the Latin, combining cunnis, which means vulva, and lingare, which means to lick. But it's not a Roman word, it comes from my most favourite people, the Victorians, and it literally translates to one who licks the vulva. But why do we have so many names for it, perhaps to make light of it, to denigrate it, to delegitimize it even? But why has this most fantastic and fun and frankly

beautiful expression of pleasure been so, I don't know, uneasy for men throughout history? Why, are they so afraid of people having a good time sneezing in the cabbage? Well, I'll give you a quick hint, everybody. It's because that is an act that doesn't require a penis or even a man. This is an attitude that runs deep, my friends, so prepare to be taken through all the sordid details. On with the show. Before I take you back through the history of Cunnelingus,

I think it's very important that we established, the tragic fact that this fear has not been consigned to history. It is still very, very much with us. One piece of research published in the Canadian Journal of Human Sexuality in 2016 found that more women, 59% than men, 52%, reported giving oral sex to their partner and that more men, 63% than women, 44% reported receiving oral sex. This is what is known as the oral sex gap. Another piece of research carried out on sexually active men from 2012 found that when it came to hook up sex, straight men reported giving their partner's oral stimulation

55% of the time, but received oral stimulation 90% of the time. That is a hell of a gap. The researchers then compared this to gay men who participate in non-relationship sex, who received oral sex 79% of the time, and gave oral stimulation to their partners 81% of the time. And would anyone at all be surprised that when women have sex with each other,

oral sex is the second most practiced sex act after fingering? No, I thought not. So women just aren't getting enough head these days. That is beyond dispute, it is in the literature. And to give you an idea of just how taboo Kunal Ingus has been until very recently, there are still states in America that have laws against oral sex on their books. They've been unenforceable since 2003 when the Supreme Court ruled, that Texas's anti-sodomy law, which included oral sex, was unconstitutional. But still, it's there in black and white. So if women aren't getting enough head today, just what were women in the past dealing with? Unsurprisingly, the ancient Romans piped up on this subject quite a few

times, so back we go. Cue pretty harp music as we transcend. The Romans were not fans of Cunalingas. In fact, they don't seem to have been fans of vulva's. in general. Cox, they absolutely love. They plastered them on everything. If you go to Pompeii, it's an absolute cock bonanza. But trying to find a vulva is incredibly difficult. And this attitude extended to their attitude on cunnelingus, which they are very, very down on. In fact, you see it turning up in insults all over the place. In the fourth century BCE, when Seneca the younger wanted to publicly challenge the senator Mamicus Amelius Scarus, he dispensed with any kind of fancy rhetoric

and straight up accused him of going down on enslaved women while they were menstruating. And I'm quoting here, were you not aware that he used to swallow up the menstrual blood of his slave girls open-mouthed? He himself didn't try to hide it, did he? He didn't even want to seem pure, did he? And it seemed to do the trick as well,

as Scaris' career ended in shame and suicide. As well as providing ample material for political insults, Cunnelingus was also a great source of humour to the Romans. And the thing that they found funniest of all about it was that it was an emasculating act. In much the same way as in modern heterosexual male culture, gay sex and anal sex is often the subject of panicking jokes around masculinity. The Romans made jokes about muff diving, and they make them a lot.

The graffiti on the walls of the Roman town of Pompeii is an absolute gold mind for this. Their go-to insult seems to be somebody who gave head. Cunt liquor, or saying that somebody licks cunt, is a particularly common insult for a man. Civilius, go lick cunt. Copious, senior, licks cunt. Satinus, don't lick cunt, etc. Written on the wall of a shop, other words,

Martimus licks cunt for four asses. An ass was a copper coin, which is likely the Roman equivalent of writing your mate's phone number on the walls of a public toilet underneath the lines, get it here. The only possible evidence that we have of a Roman woman writing about cunolingus is found scratched into the walls of Pompey's only known brothel. I went to a state school, so I didn't learn Latin, but what's written translates to,

please elect Isidorus as the Edel. He is the best cunt liquor. An Edel was an elected Roman official, and Isidorus was likely an enslaved person. And his name actually turns up a few times on the brothel walls. Now, we have no idea who wrote those words. We don't know if they were written by a woman, if they were written by a man, if they were written by a woman who was working at the brothel, or a woman who visited the brothel and employed Isidorus for this particular reason,

but the possibility that Roman women were sneaking off to the brothel to pay for head is an enticing one. Although, knowing what we know about the Romans and how strictly they policed their gender divide, it is unlikely. However, those tiny, faint, scratched words symbolise so much more, and the possibility that it was written by a woman really is incredible. For the Romans, Cunalingas was a deeply unmanly act, and this is all rooted in their veneration and celebration of the almighty schlong. I mean, really, what kind of man would go down on his wife when he had such a fine weapon at his disposal?

Obviously, only an impotent one would do that, So you can see the connection there. Only impotent men who can't use their penis would be going down on their wives, or anyone else for that matter. So we see it turning up in insults and in humour across the Roman Empire. So perhaps it's little wonder that there's still stigma around it today, but what underpins stigma is often fear? And why would we be scared of a vagina?

Well, for this, we need to look at folklore and mythology to stories of the, The vagina dentata or the toothed vagina, because these stories can be found in almost every culture and every time period around the world. What is the vagina dentata? The vagina dentata is quite literally a vagina with teeth in it. And in these stories, there is often a male hero who has to vanquish it and literally save the damsel from her own vagina. In most of these legends, you get a young male hero who has to vanquish it. the vagina dentata and reassert his masculinity. In fact, everyone's masculinity. You can find these kind of stories in Russia, New Zealand, China, India and Japan. The Native Americans have a lot of them, as well as African creation myths. I'm telling you, this image of the snapping, biting, castrating

vagina is everywhere. This is what Freud himself called castration anxiety. Now, if you ask me, it's perfectly fine to be anxious about castration, but Freud got in. to some serious psychoanalysis with this. What he theorised was that a boy child sexually desires his mother and fears that his father will castrate him if his feelings are discovered. This is all subconsciously done. And Freud believed that the child would see his mother's vulva as an absence of a penis, but more particularly as the wound where a penis used to be. In fact, he would believe that his mother had been castrated and then suddenly becomes terrified, he would also be castrated. So in Freud's view, the vulva represents castration to the male.

And that might sound completely backcrap crazy, but given the amount of vagina dentata mythology that is around the world and general fear of the vulva, I don't think this can be dismissed entirely, can it? One of my favorite examples comes from Polynesian mythology. Any fans of the Disney movie Moana will know all about the boisterous demigodembourg. Maui. Maui is a hero and occasional trickster figure within Polynesian mythology, but there is one Maori legend of how Maui tried to make humans a mortal that certainly didn't make it into that Disney film. In this story, Maui tries to reverse the birthing process by walking into the vagina of the goddess Hainui Tipo and leave via her mouth. This sounds difficult enough, but it's made

particularly challenging by the fact that she has sharp teeth of obsidian and greenstone deep inside of her vagina. But being a very clever demigod, Maui waits until Hainui Tipo falls asleep, and then he turns himself into a caterpillar, which will make it easier to creep into her vagina and avoid the teeth. He nearly succeeds as well, but a group of birds who are watching find the whole thing so funny that they start to laugh and they wake the goddess up. And as you might expect, Hainui Tippo is very, very angry about this. In her rage, she crushes Maori to death, and that is why human beings are mortal. This tale is relatively unique, as in most Vigina Dentata stories,

the hero vanquishes the terrible toothed monster and marries the woman he has freed it from. The sheer volume of Vigina Dentata myths is actually quite dizzying. They reappear throughout different times, cultures, places, and frequently in isolation from one another. The myth of the Vagina Dentata taps into a primal male fear that the vulva can somehow deplete or even vanquish his penis, and by extension, masculinity itself. That is largely what is.

underpinning the misogynistic narrative that performing cunolingus is somehow unmanly. But Kate, Kate, I hear you cry. What about the Karmus Sutra? Surely, surely, they dined at the Y there. I mean, one historical text that you would hope, you would really hope, would be pro-Kunalingas is the Kama Sutra, right? Written sometime during the third century CE by the philosopher Vatsyana, and while yeah, there is a lot of sexy stuff in there, it was largely written as a guide to living well.

And you'd hope, you'd really hope, that Cunnelingus was part of living well. But no, it isn't. It's weird, but the Kama Sutra is surprisingly anti-oral sex. Vatsyayana includes an entire chapter on Fallacio, which he concludes is only performed by promiscuous women, loose women, servant girls, and masseuses.

But he gives barely two lines of that text to Cunalingas, writing that sometimes men even perform this act upon women, transposing the procedure for kissing a mouth, and that certain women in the harem unable to get any tools, by which he means dildos, will excite one another with their mouth on the vagina. This was clearly an act that Vatya Yayana finds unseemly, as he states that a wise Brahmin or a minister of state or any man on whom the king depends,

or any man in who people confide, should not indulge in oral sex. And that's all he has to say on the subpoena. That is it. In fact, he gives more space to writing about gardening than he does to Kunalinguis. Which is rather disappointing to say the least, but again, that is a text that is caught up with the idea that the penis should be enough to provide pleasure to women. So no wonder, it is very dismissive about any sex act that doesn't require one. And if the Karma Sutra is barely interested in Kunalingu's, then any hopes of pro-pussy eating in the medieval period is going to be slim. Depending on who you ask, the medieval period starts roughly round about 500 CE, basically after the last gasps of the Roman Empire.

And it lasts all the way up until Henry VIII dissolved the monasteries. It is a thousand years of history. And whilst few cultures have expressed quite the same levels of revulsion around cunnelingus as the Romans managed to, the West never really shook off the idea that it is an amasculating and deviant act. One strange example from the medieval period is found in the marginalia of a French book of hours, which dates to some time around 1320. Now, a book of hours is a private devotional book that contained prayers and biblical texts for the owner to read throughout the day. Quite why these religious texts so frequently have obscene images in the margins as well is not fully understood.

But they turn up all over the place. There are pictures of women putting penises in trees, there are monkeys having sex with these, other, there are people fingering one another, they really go to town on it. And it's not just a case of doodling a cock and balls. A lot of work goes into this art. And in this French book of ours, we have an image of cunnelingus. We have a man who is going down on a woman, and then to make the act even more bizarre, there is a bird with a beak up his bum while he's doing it. Now, some historians have looked at this and said that it's not cunolingus, it's an image of the man trying to climb back into the woman's womb, but I don't think that that is quite

right because the bird with his beak up his bum is symbolising sodomy, which is what oral sex was regarded as in this period, being that sodomy was any act that didn't produce a baby. So I think that this is a depiction of cunnelingus, and it's done to represent sodomy or sexual sin. The drawing raises so many questions. For starters, we know that this book was actually commissioned by a woman and drawn by a man, but what we don't know is did she ask for that little sodomy scene? make her laugh. She must have signed off on it. She must have had some say in it because it

wouldn't be there if she didn't like it. I'd love to know what she saw when she looked at that. Did she see a scene of Sotomay? Did she see a funny scene? Or did she just see a weird picture of a man with a bird up his bum? We will never know the answer to such questions. But what's really important is by the time you get to the medieval period, you do start to have women's voices being recorded. There's not many of them, but there are a few brave, pioneers. And one of the best in my book is the Welsh poet Gwerfel Meckin, who writes fairly unashamedly about sex and how much sex is to be enjoyed. One of her most famous poems is known now as ode to pubic hair. Sometimes it's known as ode to cunt. And it was written in her native Welsh

in the 15th century. The poem takes male poets to task for writing songs about the beauty of women, in fruitless praise all day long, but never admiring the quim beneath the cloth, which she describes as being full of passion. Mecken doesn't explicitly mention cunnelingus, but in Ode to Pubic Hair, she does scold male poets for their tongue-giving fruitless praise, and the tongue might be a reference to cunolingus, or we might be reaching just a bit there. But what's so remarkable about Meckon's work is that she wasn't presenting women as insatiable strumpets or demonising sex and celebrating virginity. She was simply writing about women's desire as being natural, healthy and fun.

I mean, she even makes jokes about women who love big cocks. Go, Gwerfel. Do you know, not much is known about her life, actually, outside of her writing, which was considered so shocking that it wasn't printed in its entirety until 2001. I'm actually a huge fan of Gwurfel Mecken, but even I have to concede that she is a rarity. There were other women who stepped up and challenged medieval misogyny, but nobody else did it by celebrating women and pleasure quite as.

as defiantly as Gwerful Mecken. I'll be back after the short break. A really bizarre and unexpected source of Cunalingas in the early modern period comes to us from the witch trials of all places. In particular, the cheaply printed pamphlets that accompanied the witch trial. that raged across Europe in the 16th and 17th centuries. As one witch trial historian Charlotte Rose Miller noted, of the seven popular witchcraft pamphlets published in England

between 1606 and 1635, all but one of them described Familias sucking the thighs or on the secret parts of their mistresses. Familiers were believed to be the demonic spirits that Satan gave to his disciples to do his evil bidding. One way witch hunters identified the guilty was to strip the accused naked and search their body for so-called witch's teats, which was said to beware the familiar suckled its mistress's blood.

Any mark on the body at all could be a potential teat, a mole, a birthmark, a cyst. And once it was discovered, the witch would be tortured into confessing all manner of acts, often highly sexual in nature, and it's here that cunnelingus keeps cropping up. In 1590, for example, Agnes Sampson, a quote-unquote elder witch from East Lothian in Scotland was tortured into confessing that the devil doth lick her with his tongue in some private part. In 1618, Margaret Flower, a former employee at Belvoir Castle in Leicestershire, was accused and then tortured into confessing that a black familiar spirit had suckled upon a teat in the inward part of her secrets. And in 1645, Anne Leach, a widow from Miss Lee in Essex confessed that she had allowed black imps

to suckle those teats which are found about the private parts of her body. In Berry St Edmonds in 1662, Rose Cullender, an elderly widow, was found to have three teats in her vulva. One, it appeared unto them as if it had been lately suckled, and upon straining of it, they're issued out a white, milky matter. All of those women were executed for witchcraft. It's hard to know what to make of that, isn't it? I mean, it would be forced to try and extrapolate sexual norms at the time from the tortured confessions of terrified women. and these documents aren't anything approaching reliable journalism, but it does seem to be significant that of all the sex acts

that could have been evoked on the page to really emphasize the demonic nature of the witch, Cunnelingus was the one that was chosen. As we move out of the early modern period and into the beginnings of the Industrial Revolution, the belief and persecution of witches fell away, but the suspicion and general revulsion around Cunnelingus did not. And one thing you can rely on any advancement in technology to bring with it is pornography. When printing became cheap in the 18th century, it bought with it a booming porn market. And it's here that we can finally begin to glean a little bit more information about how sex was understood.

It's still rich white men doing most of the writing, but at least there's more evidence for us to work with, even if that work was written by an asshole. The French libertine-pervert par excellence, the Marquis de Sard, was one such, asshole. His work heavily features acts of cunnelingus as well as acts of incest, necrophilia, bestiality and just about any awful thing that you can think of. For example, in 120 days of Sodom or the School of Libertinage in 1785, he writes, much heated by this performance, the Duke laid hands on Augustine and frigged her clitoris with his tongue until he had elicited several solid discharges from her, full of fire and blessed with some metalsome spirit that little minks

shot them off in short order. Only, you know, he wrote it in French. Sexual excess and debauchery are the point of Sade's work. Cunnelingus is being shown here, not because he thinks that pleasuring a woman like this is particularly important, but because he wants to create a scene of moral carnage. He wants to show you the most debauched, the worst and the most morally questionable sex acts imaginable.

And one of those is Cunalingas. Perhaps it was the proliferation of pornography, but by the 19th century, we do seem to get a softening of attitudes around Cuddolingus. Victorian erotic art and literature by and four men continue to flourish, and it does show men going down on women and women going down on each other. The Pearl was a British pornographic magazine that was produced between 1879 and 1880. It was privately issued by known pornographer William Laysenby for an elite clientele, and it shows us ample evidence of Cunnelingus being.

practiced. Such as in this marvellous quote. By love, my life, I must kiss you there and taste the nectar of love, I exclaimed as I snatched my lips from hers and reversing my position, buried my face between her unresisting thighs. I could go on, but if you're listening

in public, I wouldn't want to create an embarrassing situation for you. Just take my word for it. There is a lot of giving head in Victorian porn. But again, this is erotica, and unlikely to translate to the lived experience of the average Victorian woman, but even so, the fact that Cunalingas is being depicted not as a morally degenerate act is a shift in

attitude. By the early 20th century, we really start to see a notable change in the way Cunalingas is being discussed and portrayed, probably because this is the first time that women's voices start entering the fray en masse. And one group of women who were very outspoken about sex and pleasure in this period were the American black blues singers who helped to pioneer a tradition that came to be known as the Dirty Blues. The Queen of the Dirty Blues has got to be Alabama-born Lucille Bogan, along with Bessie Smith and Mar Rainey.

Bogan is considered one of the big three women of early blues music, and in 1935, she recorded one of the most sexually explicit songs ever committed to vinyl, Shaveham Dry. Shaveam Dry was first recorded by Mar Rainey in August 1924, but Bogan changed what were already pretty spicy lyrics

into something that would have made the Marquis de Sard blush. I mean, the song starts with the line. I got nipples on my titty's big as the end of my thumb. I got something between my legs I'll make a dead man come. You go for it, Lucille. Bersie Smith was known as the Empress of Blues and she made her name singing about poverty, racism, women and sexual liberation. In Empty Bed Blues from 1928, she sings about Cunalingas. And I quote, he's a deep-sea diver with a stroke that can't go wrong, he can touch the bottom and his wind holds out so long. It is suggestive rather than explicit, but this is most certainly oral sex. The popularity of the dirty blues peaked in the 1930s,

but waned after the Second World War when the American government cracked down on the publication of anything remotely sexual. The music industry had to clean up its act, and alas, the dirty blues and its spicy women were no more. Fast forward to the 21st century and portrayals of cunnelingus in popular culture have come on leaps and bounds, but there are still those who are ready to, ready to denounce it. In 2020, rap artist Cardi B and Megan the Stallion released Wap, an acronym for wet-ass pussy, a song that contains multiple references to oral sex and a pussy so sweet that anyone who tastes it will become diabetic. I was rejoicing, but there were American politicians

saying things like Cardi B and Megan the Stallion are what happens when children are raised without God and without a strong father figure. But I didn't see that. I saw history in the making. It's taken tens of thousands of years for women. to finally step into the public space and openly demand the kind of sex that they want. For most of our collective history, the act of Cunalingas has been stigmatized and shamed as a threat to masculinity, but WAPP showed us two women confidently demanding it from their lovers. The question is, how ready is the world now for women asking, no, actually demanding Cunnelingus from their lovers? Our modern attitudes to Cunnelingus are still beholden to the misogynistic

narratives of the past, and they do still rear their ugly heads. For example, in 2015, DJ Khalid appeared on the New York-based radio program, The Breakfast Club, during which he happened to share his thoughts on straight men going down on women. And when Angela Yee asked Khaled, are you saying that you don't go down? He replied, nope, never. Hell no, I don't do that. He then justified his position by arguing that he provides for his partner financially rather than sexually, and that this should be enough. He said, There are just certain things I don't do. I believe a woman should praise the man, the king. If you're holding it down for a woman,

I feel like a woman should praise, by which he meant giving head. The host then pointed out the hypocrisy of expecting head, but refusing to give it, and Khalid replied, it's different rules for men. You've got to understand, we're the king. There are some things that y'all women might not want to do, i.e. give a blow job, but it got to be done, you know what I'm saying? I just can't do what you want me to do, by which he meant performing cunolingus.

Now, what was kind of nice about this is the back. backlash around the world was almost immediate, and lots of straight men took to social media to call this out, including Dwayne the Rock Johnson, who jumped on Twitter and wrote, Ahem, Claire's throat, as a man I take great pride in mastering all of my performances. Understanding the oral sex gap is complicated. I mean, obviously, we're carrying the historical heft of a thousand years of people telling us that it is an emasculating, abominable act. To try and understand what's going on, in 2023, research team from the University of Toronto set out to get some answers in their paper, men's engagement and enjoyment of cunnelingus. The research team expected to find a whole fleet

of Cullid's who shunned Cunnelingus because they thought that it was unmanly, but that wasn't the case. Of a data set of 1,235 sexually active men of various ages, racism backgrounds, they found that 89.09% of the sample had performed cunerlingus at least once, and that 94.47% of those had enjoyed the experience. Of the men who didn't engage in cunnelingus, 73.53% said that they didn't have the opportunity, and 13.73% said that they thought that it was gross. 5.8% said that their partner wasn't interested, and 2.94% said that it was because of religious reasons. The emerging research on oral sex behaviour shows that while straight women do not get as much of it as straight men, most men no longer view it as something to be avoided or something emasculating.

And that is a notable shift in sexual scripts. And I really hope that we're now moving towards a place where if a man doesn't go down on his partner, it's no longer read as some kind of signifier of his masculinity. It just means that he's shit in bed. Thank you for listening. I hope that you enjoyed my solo journey through the history of Cunalingas. And if you like what you heard,

be sure to pre-order a copy of my new book, Flick the story of female pleasure before its release date on the 28th of May. And if you're listening after then, well, what you're waiting for? It's out there in the shops. Go and get it right now. Coming up, we've got episodes on how to get cancelled in the Tudor Court and Sex and Pleasure in the Ancient World all coming your way. And if you'd like us to explore a subject or if you'd just like to say hello, then you can email us at betwixt at history hit.com.

This podcast was edited by Hannah Theodore of and produced by Stuart Beckwith. The senior producer was Freddie Chick. Join me again, Betwixt the Sheets, The History of Sex Scandal and Society, a podcast by History Hit. This podcast contains music from Epidemic Sound.