Back to my favourite social anthropologist Kate Fox (by the way, shameless plug, if you are not British you must read 'Watching the English' which made what seemed like a peculiar mess crystal clear – suddenly I understood. If you are British you should read it and you might understand yourself and fellow Brits too!).Kate Fox specialises in watching people and discerning the underlying social rules by what people do. So being a sexpertly type of course first thing I did was turn to her section on what are the rules in the British Bedroom.
Now let me say that before this I hadn’t really thought about how there were different rules in different nationalities bedrooms. Of course everyone is an individual, but there are definitely national differences. For instance, I realised (from anecdotal and personal experience) that the Australian rules in the bedroom for men were essentially meat and two veg. Basically Australian men stick to the basics and might throw in a bit of oral as a really special flourish.
What is really interesting about the Brits is that even though they are so polite on the outside, they stand in line and love to stick to the rules, in the bedroom there are no rules. The bedroom is the one place in Britain where you can pretty much do anything you want and it is ok. As long as you don’t have an embarrassing conversation about it in the morning. This was a very surprising aspect of the British persona, and seems to be backed up by the proliferation of Kinky stuff that the brits tend to get up to in the bedroom. I was pretty surprised when I came to London to find how common BDSM and swinging was, and even that there are whole brothels devoted to men dressing up as babies. What a contrast to the stiff British upper lip! You wouldn’t find that in Sydney, as far as I know anyway!
Maybe its all those rules that make Brits want to have a place where there are no rules – look at the Japanese. They have in many ways a very similar, highly polite, socially controlled society, but man are they Kinky! Have you seen their Manga? And as Al has been pointing out they are the world leaders in producing new and innovative sex toys.
So what have your experiences of the rules in the British bedroom? And for our international readers what are the rules in the bedroom of your country?
8 comments:
We here in America don't seem to follow rules in or out of the bedroom.
Girls here (Japan) are most likely to wail and moan as if they're in horrendous pain and also terribly humiliated, while at the same time squealing, "that feels so great." It's really pretty unpleasant to listen to all round (I hear my neighbours and friends at it and it's ALWAYS like that - check Japanese porn for more details).
And guys like to finger girls almost more than they have sex with them, sometimes, it seems! Not that I am complaining.
As an Australian I was initially offended by the comments about "meat and two veg"... and then I became embarassed when I realised that they are fairly accurate. :-(
I've been fortunate enough to be fuck some very satisfyingly adventurous men! But then there have been one or two boring ones as well, and social discussions would seem to indicate that my adventurous men are the exception rather than the rule. Damn.
I'm shagging a German at the moment though, and while it's not especially twisted or unusual, it is loads of fun! :-)
I'm a British girl living in the USA, and, well, talking about it afterwards certainly isn't ruled out here.
I'm not sure I'm willing to agree with your summary of Ozzies (I'm a Kiwi). There are plenty of interesting tastes catered for in Sydney (Mistress Servalan -> Google her), one just has to actively look for them.
In NZ there's quite a mixture of bedroom behaviour, which I don't find surprising. We're not exactly like the Brits in that we will talk about it a little bit outside of the bedroom, but there are obvious rules relating to one's social sphere.
A woman at work said a young lady in her previous work place surprised her: demure sweet little office worker by day, dominatrix by night. Came as quite a surprise! Just look in the right places, and they're there. :)
I've been living in NZ for 4 months and I have to disagree with Saffron and say that Kiwis don't talk much about sex in its various forms; at least students won't anyway. Very disappointing!
Students are too young! Young people have such crap sex in comparison to how good it gets, the older you get! (That's what I reckon anyway...)
And, I have to say, with most other NZ people the conversation usually takes between 7-10 minutes before it comes to sex. Do we talk about anything else??
Indian girls (at least the ones I have known) are quite prudish in bed, and sex has been very much meat and veg types. Oral is okay with some, variety in positions is fine mostly, but even anal is a big no for most. Even the relatively harmless kinks such as voyeurism, exhibitionism, sex in places other than the bed (forget in public) are not hot items on the menu. As for even kinkier stuff, forget it. Give me a Brit lass anyday (I must confess, I have more than a passing fancy for British women!)
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