No Sex Please, We’re British
Have our attitudes to doing the nasty, stayed the same through the centuries?
It is often said that Brits are quite sexually repressed.
But the truth is quite complex.
Queen Victoria, who lent her name to morality politics of her time, was a major freak (urban language for someone who’s mad about sex) and when her German husband died in 1861, she spent the rest of her life depressed.
And when you think of the countless euphemisms which we invented to describe sex —rumpy pumpy, getting the leg over, having your wicked way, a bit of crumpet, bit of the other, bonking, hanky panky, lie back and think of England, nookie and shagging — all reflect a certain (sometimes playful) unease with the three letter word.
For folks with very long memories, the Carry On series featuring Sid James and Barbara Windsor highlighted the degree to which humour and innuendos took the place of actual and frank conversations regarding desire.
And what’s extraordinary is that these attitudes found its way to the disparate territories which the Brits colonized.
The Puritans took this attitude with them to the United States of America and it is no exaggeration to state that their ideas on religion, capitalism and sex had the nation in a choke hold for a few centuries.