2023-09-16 16:09:00
“It’s a pleasure of all devils / To take a blow as a kid / In the grocer or doggy style. » These few lines taken from the poem, with an unambiguous name, Surrender by Paul Verlaine summarize well the glorification of this position. On the duvet or in a field of wheat, doggy style is now part of our daily sexual life. Belgian journalist, columnist for seven years in the sexuality section of the Brussels supplement The eveningDidier Dillien recounts, in an instructive work, this Fabulous History of Doggystyle.
If there was light at the beginning, the greyhound soon followed. Theologians still do not know how Eve ate the apple. Paleontologists also don’t know how Mrs. and Mr. Cro-Magnon copulated. “It’s a question that has long intrigued this scientific community,” smiles Didier Dillen. The oldest depiction of a couple in doggy style action dates back 12,000 years. » This is an engraved schist plaque discovered in Ariège.
Honest women and courtesans
Since the Mesopotamian civilization, via Rome and ancient Greece, the “Tonkinese wheelbarrow” has been going well. It’s a golden age for sexuality on the back side. Among our ancestors, doggy style refers to an erotic catch-all. “Doggy style is the sexual position most represented on Greek ceramics,” points out the writer.
The Romans favored it as much as their Hellenic neighbors, but sometimes with a keen sense of subtleties. In The Art of Loving, Ovid establishes a distinction between honest women and courtesans. Matrons are asked to engage in the knee-pectoral posture passively.
READ ALSO “The Kamasutra”, manual of love in IndiaThe prostitutes can speed up the tempo by rolling their buttocks and hips “so that the clients finish more quickly,” explains the Belgian journalist. Peripatetics are specialized in doggy style and sodomy. » The position called by the Russians “the crayfish” is in its firmament until it is caught by one of those ideological reversals which make the salt of history.
Be more fertile
Neither Jesus nor the apostle Paul spoke of doggy style. The fact remains: the Christianization of the West marks a halt. The Gregorian reform in the 11th century notably intended to bring some order to the bed of the faithful. “The Church favors abstinence. She tolerates sexuality half-heartedly, only between married couples, for procreative purposes and only by using the missionary,” notes the man who is also the author of Sex’traordinaire: a thousand and one surprising, strange or hilarious facts about sexuality and love (Pandora’s Box, 2019).
READ ALSO Alain Corbin: “We had to control desires and moderate impulses” In the Middle Ages, the Church considered the sin of lust to be the work of the devil. Beware of anyone caught in the act! “As with anal penetration, you could be condemned and even burned,” reports Didier Dillen. Paradoxically, while condemnations and anathemas put the position in an uncomfortable situation, medicine comes to its aid.
In the midst of the Renaissance, the Italian doctor Girolamo Mercuriale recommended it in his medical treatise Of Gymnastics Art. “The idea that rear coitus would promote fertility was already present during Antiquity,” notes the journalist. The Italian’s recommendation is in no way a call to voluptuousness. This is definitely doggy style to practice to have children. »
Misogynist
With libertinism, retrocoitus begins to get out of the rut. Sade and Crébillon fils sing his praises. Licentious writings are a genre of literature that can be purchased covertly. Between the twisted metaphors and the oxymorons, the greyhound becomes a real figure of speech. In the smoking embers of the Revolution, the crime of sodomy was abolished. The moralistic corset of the 19th century is no longer as restrictive as the medieval chastity belt and the doggy style continues its conquest, as evidenced by Verlaine’s verses.
The sexual liberation after May 68 and then the development of pornography made it commonplace. Doggy style even becomes a feminist argument. “Sexologists Masters and Johnson recommend it for women who do not experience pleasure when accompanied by clitoral stimulation,” analyzes Didier Dillen. This does not prevent the fact that even now, there are certain currents of feminism which consider it misogynistic and retrograde. »
READ ALSO In what positions to make love when you have back painSome women do not like it, too, for anatomical reasons. Those who have had an episiotomy may experience discomfort. The open angle of penetration will, in some cases, hit the cervix. “This depth is also a reason for its success among women,” puts Didier Dillen into perspective.
But actually, why is doggy style so successful? If its bestial, unnatural dimension is a strong argument to explain it, its immodest character is just as much. It is one of the rare positions where the person in action embraces both the partner’s penis and what Arthur Rimbaud and Paul Verlaine called “the purple carnation”.
Alas, this comfortable situation will perhaps come to an end. “Very serious scientific theories hypothesize that, in a few thousand years, women’s genitals could be located at the level of the navel,” announces Didier Dillen. If this were confirmed, it would be the end of doggy style and it would be very sad! »
The Fabulous History of Doggy Styleby Didier Dillen, La Musardine, April 2022, 302 p., €18.
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