A Brief History of Blow Jobs
Eva Sless
on 23 June 2023
13 comments
Fellatio, head jobs, blow jobs, going down, sucking dick ... Whatever you call it, oral stimulation of the male genitalia is not only a fun way to pass the time or show someone that you really like them, it's also been an incredibly intimate and culturally significant practice within certain cultures.
Whether for pleasure or religious reasons, or sometimes a combination of both, head jobs can be both sacred or sinful depending on who you talk to, which culture you're a part of, and whose penis you're putting in your mouth.
The term fellatio, which is derived from the Latin word for suck, was used in a clinical piece by sexual researcher Havelock Ellis in 1894 and described the performers of oral sex as a fellator, or a fellatrice or fellatrix if female. It’s believed that the term “blow job” is from Victorian times where slang for a sex worker was "blowsy" and for ejaculation was "blow" leading to the phrase "blow job".
Blow Like an Egyptian
While there are some pretty raunchy cave drawings and prehistoric art from around 45,000 years ago, according to historian and author Thierry Leguay (speaking to Salon in 2000) "the first clear real traces of fellatio are from ancient Egypt. Osiris was killed by his brother and cut into pieces. His sister Iris put the pieces together but, by chance, the penis was missing. An artificial penis was made out of clay, and Isis 'blew' life back into Osiris by sucking it." There are quite a few hieroglyphics and sculptures showing this explicit scene, with large, or at least very hard, phalluses often attached to statues depicting Osiris. While there are some different schools of thought about exactly what Isis did or didn't do to the penis, and what originally happened to it (most stories say it was eaten by fish in the Nile) the story is part of that ancient culture's creation and subsequent religious myths.
It's All Greek and Roman To Me
Not to be outdone by the Egyptians, wall paintings in Pompeii showed both heterosexual and homosexual oral sex in a variety of positions and locations, often thought to be bath-houses or brothels. These paintings changed what the "modern" world had thought about the ancient Romans, but brought them far more in line with the very sexually open and not afraid to show it ancient Greeks.
Oh the Greeks! Art, sculpture, stories, and almost anything you can think of in an ancient creative world the Greeks wrote about and illustrated including explicit acts between young men. In ancient Greece, homosexual sex was a sign of strength and power, and sucking off your best mate was all a part of that. Boys with boys and men with men was an acceptable and inevitable part of "being male".
But there was a double standard because the Greeks also believed that a blow job was a waste of seed, and oral sex was seen as subservient, particularly women performing oral sex on a man. This is why calling someone a “sucker” is an insult even today.
Kama Sutra
Of course we couldn't talk about ancient depictions of sex without mentioning the Kama Sutra, the ancient Hindu text on sexual practices, positions, attitudes, and ways to be a great lover, which provided instructions, illustrations, and suggestions for excellent head job techniques to provide maximum pleasure of the male partner. It is usually referred to in the text as "oral congress" and is looked at as something beautiful, intimate, and necessary for good relationships.
Similarly, the ancient Chinese text known as "The Arts of the Bedchamber" offered detailed guides for the practice of oral sex, as well as sexual positions and meditation techniques.
Medieval Europe
I probably don’t need to tell you, but during the medieval period, sex was a Very Bad Thing for most people to do, and sex for anything beyond procreation was positively sinful and could have you in all sorts of trouble with the church.
This, of course, didn't stop people from doing it, but it was so secretive and so dangerous to one's morality that there are very few records of sex, and not a single thing about oral sex. Historian Katherine Harvey, author of The Fires of Lust: Sex In The Middle Ages says, “It may be that it seemed especially repugnant to a society that associated the upper body with God and morality, while the lower body was linked to filth and sin. To put the mouth in direct contact with the genitals was to defile an organ [the mouth] made for better things.”
Thank God for the Renaissance and Enlightenment
While yes, especially compared to the dour and dark medieval times, the Renaissance and Enlightenment periods created a newfound interest in pleasure and sex and sexuality, it was still quite taboo to openly talk or paint or write about it... But of course, that didn't stop some of the most prolific artists of the time from sticking it to the church in their own subtle ways.
Fruits and flowers and animals and all the metaphors and symbols you can imagine began to emerge, and by the time of the Enlightenment, when art had moved slightly away from Christianity there were all those wonderful, sexually suggestive artworks etc of ancient gods and goddesses known for their sexuality and hedonism, and of course more flowers and fruits and beasts with sensual, curvaceous women...
Modern Times
Oral sex didn’t leap from the brothels to bedrooms until the 20th century. It was considered taboo and a homosexual act. During the sexual liberation of the 1920s oral sex became far less taboo and far more acceptable as a normal practice between couples across most modern, westernised cultures. Moving into the 1960s and 1970s blow jobs were popularized through the novel The Godfather and the movie Deep Throat.
And then AIDs came. With the terrible education and low understanding around the disease, sex, and especially any sort of sex that wasn't "straight PIV sex between a man and a woman", was seen as dangerous and risky and probably shouldn't be done for the sake of your health.
These days, however, with far more understanding, education and acceptance of what HIV is and isn't, and what safe sex is, and of course the very important discussions we're now having about consent, oral sex is pretty much accepted as a mainstream sexual act. And while it is often regarded as an important aspect of foreplay, it is in itself a whole sex act by itself and can, and should, be enjoyed by all people involved.
I guess the main thing I took away from all the reading and researching I did for this piece is that no matter where you're from, and no matter whether it's looked at as a good thing or a bad thing, humans enjoy sucking each other's dicks, they always have, and they probably always will.
Until next time, happy fellating, my friends!
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