Flirting in China, sex work in Australia, dangerous liaisons in Nigeria – intimate relations vary wildly around the world, as I discovered while compiling a global special of the Guardian’s This is how we do it column
A friend of mine moved to the UK recently, and tells me English men are bad at foreplay. It’s a culture shock. She’s Spanish, and insists that oral sex is – for a Spaniard – second nature. Whereas English men rarely attempt it, and when they do, she wishes they would stop.
Does where you are born determine how you will have sex? Perhaps this seems like a stupid question. We tend to see sex as being unlearned and instinctive; something humans around the world do in a relatively similar way – with slight adjustments according to taste and sexuality. There is no global “oral sex satisfaction” survey I can find to verify what my friend told me. If you try to define the sexual character of a whole country, you will resort to stereotypes. “Continental people have sex lives; the English have hot-water bottles,” the Hungarian-born George Mikes wrote in 1946. This is a sweeping generalisation, but I can’t entirely dismiss it.
Login
