It might be argued that this pornographic attitude illustrates a very real difference between East and West, a difference not in the expressed but in the secret sexual attitudes of the two cultures. A Western male might masturbate, but he would rarely admit that he did so out of choice—nor would many sexologists advocate masturbation as a substitute for coitus unless the latter were unavailable for the time being. Thus a Western male would hardly ever consider going to a prostitute for “mere” masturbation—unless he were a sexual deviate with a particular fetish demanding such treatment. His attitude would more likely be that he could masturbate all by himself and that such activity would be an inferior substitute for coital, oral, or anal sex.
(This is not to say that any number of males do not prefer to masturbate, frequently so doing in preference to seeking coitus. But they generally camouflage their reasons to themselves as well as to the world, supplying some convenient rationalization—that coitus is not available, that they are afraid of catching a venereal disease, etc.)
In vast sections of North Africa and the Middle East, however, the fricatrice is a common creature on the sexual scene. She specializes exclusively in masturbating her clients and has raised the manual stimulation of the male genitalia to a high degree of technical perfection. Nor do her clients feel they are settling for an inferior substitute for sex when they patronize her. On the contrary, the ministrations of the fricatrice are thought of merely as something different, with its own values to recommend it, occasionally less desirable than coitus, occasionally with special recommendations all its own.
Eros and Capricorn
Pluralistic Sexual Practices
The term “pluralism” is commonly employed to describe sexual acts involving three or more persons. A substantial—not to say endless—variety of sexual practices may be found under this general heading. All manner of sexological literature, from the erotic texts of other cultures to the gutter pornography of our own, makes extensive reference to such phenomena. Whether in the form of a ménage à trois or a full-fledged orgy, pluralistic practices have existed from time immemorial in every society. And there is strong evidence that pluralism is becoming increasingly “popular” in our own time—and that it does in fact serve as one of the major attractions of that peculiar mid-century extravagance colloquially known as wife swapping.
Anthropologists have frequently been puzzled by edicts in the legal and/or religious codes of certain cultures by which bigamy was seemingly forbidden when multiple marriages flourished openly and drew no discernible disapproval from authorities or peers. This was occasionally explained in terms of a gulf between the existential and the normative mores of the culture. Surely descendants of ours will find many instances of laws and moral restrictions to which we barely give lip service. It seems conceivable that a similar gap between the endorsed and the existing prevailed in these cases.
But additional evidence often proved this hypothesis false, as in cases in which bigamy was discussed (and tacitly approved) in the writings that simultaneously appeared to condemn the practice. Clearly a misinterpretation was to blame—and often it lay in the misunderstanding of a phrase like “No man shall have two women” or “No woman shall go off with two men,” etc. The actual meaning, it seemed, was not that no man should have two women as wives but that no man should have sex with two women at the same time. Bigamy was allowable; troilism (the sexual union of three individuals) was not.
Pluralism of any sort is hardly ever standard sexual fare, either for the individual or for an entire group. There are exceptions to this rule, of course; occasional individuals and occasional cults make sexual activity in which “any number can play” the dominant form of sexual activity for themselves. But this is extremely rare. In the overwhelming majority of instances, pluralism represents something very special in the way of sexual activity—a special thrill, a special violation of mores, a special sensual treat, and so on.
The appeals of pluralism, are fairly numerous and not too difficult to discern. On a purely physical level, an increase in the number of sexual partners with whom one is involved is invariably equivalent to increased possibilities for sensory response. One can do more and have more done to oneself. Furthermore, the possible combinations and permutations of sexual congress increase geometrically as the number of participants is increased. If two persons can find a dozen ways to make love, three people can find a hundred.
On a psychological plane, pluralism has an even greater basis for appeal. A wide variety of deviant impulses may find expression in sexual activity of this sort. Homosexuality is one such impulse, the one at which sexologists are most apt to point an accusing finger. When two males share a female sexually, they are in essence making love through the medium of the female, or so the argument goes. Unequivocal application of this theory seems unwarranted; our psychologists have the tendency to attribute almost as much to latent homosexual impulses as to toilet training, and often this prima causa theory leads to distortion. But in any event homosexual impulses are only one of many types of aberrant drives that may be indulged in this fashion.
In The Sexual Deviate, Dr. Morse explains this aspect of pluralism—which he places under the orgy heading—in the following fashion.
Any number of aberrant and deviant impulses may similarly find unconscious expression in the orgy. Those desires which the individual holds to be inherently bad, and which he can neither recognize in himself nor gratify sexually, may find expression in the wild and uninhibited sexuality of the orgy.
For example, a man might have strong voyeuristic impulses… yet his inhibitions in this area might prevent him from peeping at windows or from hiring persons to perform sexually for his benefit. Such direct voyeurism could not be indulged without his seeing himself as a voyeur, and hence as a sexual deviate.
In an orgy, however, this man could satisfy this main urge of watching other persons engaging in sexual activities without facing the fact that this voyeurism was his chief source of sexual pleasure. Because he also participates in coitus in addition to observing others, he need not admit that it is his role of watcher which makes the experience so exciting.
Hardcore pornography, whether verbal or graphic in type, almost inevitably works its way up to pluralistic acts after beginning with the standard coital scenes, moving through extracoital and homosexual episodes, and finally culminating in the full-fledged orgy. This is perfectly consistent with those elements of pornography which we have discussed elsewhere—the need to increase excitement, the need to move further and further into forbidden territory, etc. Almost every sort of pornographic work follows this formula, and pluralistic practices are almost invariably the dominant motif in the final portions of the work. Pornographic “novels” operate on this principle. Pornographic films and stage shows do so. Pornographic photographs and drawings often portray pluralistic activities, and those which do command a generally higher price than those demonstrating two-person sex.
The pluralistic episode appeals in pornography for much the same reasons that it does in real life. It provides variety. It facilitates more extensive combinations within the framework of a single act. It panders to all manner of deviant drives. And, finally, it is profoundly forbidden. The incorporation of other ultra-taboo elements into such scenes, notably in the forms of incest, bestiality, interracial relations, homosexuality, and sadism, accentuates and confirms this last-mentioned aspect of these scenes.
Legitimate sex manuals, whether of our own or other societies, rarely spend much time on pluralistic activity. Those erotic treatises which do examine pluralism at length are often spurious works written more to arouse than to inform. It is standard practice for original works of pornography or erotica to be palmed off as “translated from the French,” or “written by the guard at the harem of Ibrahim el-Rashid,” or otherwise to wrap their literary efforts as works of foreign or antique origin.
In many instances, the deception of one generat
ion becomes the scientific gospel of another. For example, in The Cradle of Erotica, Edwardes and Masters cite a work they know as the Bah Nameh, or Book of Lust, ostensibly by a Turk named Shaykh Sabiq bin Tebib el-Isfahani. Several of the passages they quote are nothing but verbatim transcriptions of a work published by the famous pornographic publisher Dugdale in 1850 in London, and there published as a posthumous work of Voltaire! The work is very obviously of English authorship and never saw any Turkey aside from the one on the table at Christmastime in a London drawing room.
The work, known as The Battles of Venus, is incidentally interesting in that it contains one of the few known descriptions of troilistic activity in which two males have intervaginal coitus simultaneously with a single female.
The performance would, doubtless, require an extension of parts; but whoever reflects on their proverbial extensive quality, will not doubt of their admitting with ease two guests, after a trial or two, and with sufficiency of natural or artificial lubrication, provided themselves could accommodate their entrance to the convenience of each other.
And… I am confident that might be effected. The woman must lie straight, on either side, and the man who attacks her in front must, after entering her, lift her uppermost leg on his buttock. The antagonist in the rear must then accommodate himself to her posture, and glide in likewise.
The men may knock her as hard as they will; so as the woman is careful to keep herself exactly straight, and not to withdraw from one or the other, their violent shocks will only serve to make her more fixed and steady.
In the course of many pirate editions, it is likely that some publisher or other thought to bring this book out in the guise of an Oriental sex manual. Scholars coming across the work later on might presume it to be what its title page claims, although it is hard to imagine anyone taking this for a translation rather than a very well-written and certainly original work of English erotica, which it is. But it is in this fashion that the whole history of erotica and sexology becomes hopelessly confused, the work of such erudite bibliographers as the pseudonymous Pisanus Fraxi notwithstanding.
—♦♦♦—
Troilism
The passage from The Battle of Venus that appears above is an example of troilism, or three-person sexual relations. Although it might seem odd at first glance to distinguish between pluralistic sex limited to three persons and sex involving more than that number of participants, there does seem to be good reason for the differentiation. The special combination of two men with one woman, or of two women with one man, is infinitely more prevalent than sexual contacts involving a greater number of participants. In addition, this three-way sex is apt to be found in the form of an actual relationship prevailing between the parties involved. The French phrase “ménage à trois,” though loosely applicable to any troilistic incident, refers specifically to a quasi-marriage of three individuals; the temporal dimension is very much present. When four or more persons participate in sex together, their involvement is most often of a hit-and-run nature.
Vatsyayana makes a distinction between troilism and other forms of pluralism, although he devotes relatively little space to the entire subject. “When a man enjoys two women at the same time,” he reports, “both of whom love him equally, it is called the united congress. When a man enjoys many women altogether, it is called the congress of a herd of cows.”
In their extensive treatment of troilism, Carlson Wade and Dr. Edward Podolsky postulate four major categories of troilistic sexual activity. First of all, there are two classes, one in which two males and a female are involved, the other in which two females and a male are involved. Each of these classes is further divided into two subclasses—those in which exclusively heterosexual activities are performed and those in which homosexual activities are performed as well. In this sense, the excerpt from The Battle of Venus would exemplify exclusively heterosexual behavior, and an affair in which a male had coitus with a female while he was simultaneously enjoyed per anum by another male would be an example of homosexual and heterosexual troilism.
There is a certain logic to this distinction, but there would appear to be little point to it. Homosexual elements are present in virtually all troilistic activity.
Podolsky and Wade have attempted an exhaustive catalog of the various modes and postures of troilism. Such scholarly devotion is admirable, but the task at hand is only slightly less burdensome than the Tibetan chore of transcribing the five billion names of the deity. The twenty or thirty separate ways of troilistic copulation they enumerate do not begin to serve as a complete listing of all possible variations.
The following selection does not pretend to be complete. Such an attempt, in addition to being foredoomed, would be more “A Guide for Three Persons in Search of Amusement on a Rainy Day” than anything of lasting value. At the same time, it does seem very much to the point to furnish a sampling of various troilistic practices that have been recorded in one fashion or another in the annals of erotica.
The types of troilistic activity that appear below are simply a sampling, arranged in no particular order and selected with no particular theme in mind. The sources from which they have been derived include both written and visual material and range from Japan and India to England and the United States, from subtle quasi-scientific erotica to rank, artless filth. The purpose here—a modest one—is twofold: to give an idea of the possibilities of troilism as recorded in these several sources and to illustrate the uses of troilism in erotic art and literature.
(From the writings of the French novelist Colette and also mentioned in innumerable other sources, most commonly in Arabic sexological texts)
1. The sandwich. Two men and one woman. One man performs vaginal coitus from the front, while the other performs sodomy upon the woman from the rear.
(From a German pornographic work published in 1875 in Berlin, reported by Pisanus Fraxi to be an autobiography of “the celebrated and notorious Frau Schroeder-Devrient”)
2. Two men and a woman. The woman, kneeling, performs fellatio upon the first man while the second “enjoys her from behind, each hole alternately, until she is so exhausted that she has to be put to bed.”
(From the erotic sketches and watercolors of Thomas Rowlandson 1756-1827, an exceptionally talented English artist who devoted his energies largely to the production of pornographic paintings and the illustration of pornographic books)
3. Two women and a man. The man lies on his back. The first woman sits astride him in coition; the second sits upon his face so that he may perform cunnilingus. The two women are kissing, and the first woman is manipulating the breasts of the second.
4. Two old men and a young girl. The men kneel on either side of the girl, who is seated. She masturbates them both manually while one handles her breasts and the other touches her pubis.
5. Two men and a woman. One man kisses the woman, who is reclining, upon the mouth, while she masturbates him with her hand. The second man performs cunnilingus upon the woman.
(From The Lascivious Hypocrite)
6. Two women and a man. The mother lies supine and holds her twelve-year-old daughter prone upon her belly so that the two are performing à la soixante-neuf. The man deflowers the daughter via rear-entry coitus.
(From The Sultan’s Wives)
7. Two men and a woman. The woman performs fellatio upon both men simultaneously.
8. Two women and a man. The three lie in a triangle, so that the man performs cunnilingus upon the first woman, who performs the same upon the second woman, who in turn performs fellatio upon the man.
9. Two men and a woman. The first man sodomizes the second man, while masturbating him. The woman meanwhile performs anilingus upon the first man.
(From De Sade’s Juliette)
10. The woman and a man. The first woman, Clairwil, performs repeated fellatio upon the man while masturbating herself with a dildo. Juliette sits upon the man’s face so that her anus covers his nose and her vulva covers his m
outh, thus preventing him from breathing and causing his death by suffocation.
(From The Rosy Crucifixion, by Henry Miller)
11. Two women and a man. The women position themselves so that the head of the first is between the thighs of the second. The man inserts his penis alternately into the vagina of the second woman and the mouth of the first, with the first woman periodically bestowing oral genital caresses upon the second woman.
(From a group of erotic temple sculptures still in existence in India)
12. A woman, a man, and a child. The woman and the man perform front entry coitus in a standing position, with the woman’s thighs fastened around the man’s hips. The child stands between their legs and caresses them both, orally and manually.
(From a Japanese pillow-book)
13. Two women and a man. The man has anal intercourse with one woman while gratifying the other orally.
(From a contemporary American paperback novel)
14. Two women and a man. A variation of 1, with the man having a vaginal connection with the first woman from the front while the second woman performs sodomy upon the first with the aid of a dildo strapped to her loins.
(From the Memoirs of Casanova)
15. One man and two women. Casanova has coitus with one woman while kissing and caressing her sister, whereupon the two sisters change roles and the performance is repeated a second time.
Eros & Capricorn: A Cross-Cultural Survey of Sexual Attitudes and Techniques (John Warren Wells on Sexual Behavior Book 1) Page 15
