Forbidden Words: Taboo and the Censoring of Language

Sex and bodily effluvia 151
3. contact between the genitals or anus of the person and any part of another person’s body.
‘Contact’ means intentional touching, either directly or through clothing. (http://www.
washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/special/clinton/stories/clintondep031398.htm.
Accessed October 2004)
In a 1991 survey, 60% of 599 undergraduates at a midwestern university in
the United States would have agreed with Clinton’s assessment. Stephanie
Sanders and Julie Reinsich 17 found that what counts as having sex is penile–
vaginal intercourse for 99.5% of this population, penile–anal intercourse for
80% of them, oral sex for 40%, genital fondling for 15%, and breast/nipple
fondling only 3%.
Speaking of orgasm
The purpose of masturbation, oral sex and, of course, copulation is usually to
achieve orgasm (orthophemism). Orgasm was once viewed as the shaking forth
of seed (for both sexes) and is now perceived as the climax to a journey, hence
Are you there? The alternatives are climax, spend oneself, the big O (euphemisms),
coming, seminal discharge, come or cum – the latter two being nouns for
the vaginal secretion of a sexually excited woman, as well as a man’s ejaculate
or seminal fluid (orthophemism), his seed (euphemism) or (the dysphemisms)
spunk, spoof and gis(su)m/giz(zu)m. 18 This sense of the term spunk possibly
arises from the sense ‘man of spirit, mettle’ (mettle is an archaic term for
seminal fluid), which has now been extended to ‘sexually attractive man or
woman’ as in s/he is a spunk. A man may also spit white, get his rocks off, spend
himself, drop his load and shoot; the latter links the action with the weapon
metaphor for penis. Hyperboles like die, explode, etc. describe the effect of
orgasm. Men occasionally fake orgasm to save face and women frequently do it
to please their partner. 19 It is well known that women can out-orgasm men:
[T]he highest number of female orgasms recorded [during one hour] in a laboratory
setting was 134, whereas the top score for men in the same length of time was sixteen.
(Blackledge 2003: 275)
Such feats put quite a gloss on the orthophemistic phrase multiple orgasms.
The comparative inadequacy of the poor male is nicely captured in
Rochester’s long poem The Imperfect Enjoyment, which recounts a mutually
successful first love-making, then
Smiling, she chides in a kind murmuring noise,
And from her body wipes the clammy joys,
When, with a thousand kisses wandering o’er
My panting bosom, ‘Is there then no more?’
She cries. ‘All this love and rapture’s due;
Must we not pay a debt to pleasure too?’