A graphic history of sex: ‘There is no gene that

drives sexuality. All sexuality is learned’

Changes in sexuality over time have made the modern family what it is. What next? Homa
Khaleeli asks the authors of a groundbreaking graphic guide, The Story of Sex

The Story of Sex … some images from the book. Illustration: Laetitia Coryn

Homa Khaleeli
Saturday 29 October 2016 16.00 AEDT

P
hilip Larkin famously announced that sexual intercourse began in 1963 (“Between
the end of the ‘Chatterley’ ban / And the Beatles’ first LP”). Being French, and a
psychiatrist to boot, Philippe Brenot takes a rather longer view. In his latest book, The
Story of Sex, a bestseller in France, he runs an anthropological eye over the sexual
mores of human societies from prehistoric times to today. Yet Brenot believes that the
sexual revolution did spark a dramatic change, creating the modern couple, which is the
basis of our families today. Now, however, he thinks this partnership of equals is under
assault from all sides.

The academic, who has the wonderful title of director of sexology at Paris Descartes
University, has spent his life studying sexuality. The Story of Sex is an irreverent, graphic
novel (in both senses), filled with fascinating – if alarming – history. Cleopatra used a
vibrator filled with bees; the word “trousers” was considered to be positively pornographic
in Victorian England. Illustrator Laetitia Coryn’s extremely cheeky, but never sordid,
pictures liven up the page and keep the narrative zipping along. The book was a real
collaboration, says Coryn, who says it was made easier by Brenot’s firm ideas – and the fact
he liked her jokes.

The illustrator admits she hesitated slightly over collaborating on the book. “I told my
publisher we have to be careful with the drawings and with the jokes – we have to be
sensitive,” she says, because she wanted the book to have as wide an audience as possible.
“I didn’t put any porn in it!” As a reader, however, the frankness of the pictures still shocked
me (you, er, might not want to whip out the book on public transport or in the office).

Talking to Brenot over the phone (through

charmingly accented English that becomes
somewhat eccentric as he struggles with the
complexities of his ideas) it’s impossible to
escape the psychiatrist’s anxiety about our
attitudes to love and intimacy today. We
have never been freer to define our own
relationships, and follow our own pleasure,
he says, but despite this we are far from
satisfied; and the modern couple is looking
dangerously fragile.

“It’s incredible the difficulties couples

have,” Brenot declares, in a tone that makes
me imagine he is throwing his hands in the
air in despair. Of the couples he sees in
therapy, he says, “there is nothing wrong
with them psychologically, but still they
cannot communicate quietly, live calmly
and have sexual fulfilment”.

While we think of lovers as a timeless

Philippe Brenot and Laeticia Cory. Photograph: Pierre relationship model, it has been the family
Hybre/MYOP that has been paramount in society for most
of history, the 68-year-old says. “The couple
used to get together for the sake of the family,” he explains. And the idea of equality in long-
term pairings is even more recent, with “traditional” marriages putting men firmly in charge
of their spouses.

“Love marriages have only been widespread for a century or so, and homosexuality was
condemned until very recently,” Brenot notes.

“Since the 1970s, we have begun to invent modern couples with respect for each other and
equality between the sexes,” he says. “This only came about after ‘marriage’ as a concept
began dying out. Not because people stopped getting married, but because marriage
stopped being seen as a sacred union – couples instead started developing on their own
terms.”

Yet the rise in divorces since the 1970s and breakups of long-term relationships shows that
the modern couple is not surviving, Brenot argues. In part, he says, this is because we are
demanding more than ever before.

“It is difficult to live intimately, because we want perfect love and perfect sex and that is
very difficult in a long-term relationship. We want a lot more than a reliable person to raise
kids with.”

The solution, he says, is for us all to learn more about sex – which is where his book comes
in. “It’s not possible to understand our intimate sex lives without looking at centuries of
history, and even the origins of human life,” he says. “We understand what we live today if
we understand from where we came.”

For instance, he says, if we look at the way relationships were formed in early human
societies we can see echoes of our own problems. “We came from primates, but in chimp
society there are never couples or families. There are lone males and females with children.”
It was only as our brains evolved and emotions developed – including love – that
monogamous relationships set in. For the first time (“somewhere between 1 million BC and
100,000BC”), it was possible to know the paternity of a child.

While the beginning of family life may sound like a wonderful moment, Brenot argues that
it was also the start of women’s subjugation, with men taking possession of their female
partner and offspring – which traditional marriage legalised. “Paternity is the beginning of
male domination,” says Brenot simply. “The day that happened, men took possession of
women.”

In the animal kingdom, Brenot argues, there is none of the domination of female partners
that has been a hallmark of human societies through history, nor is there domestic violence.
Instead, among animals “males fight against other males and females fight with other
females,” he says.

“Violence between men and women is only in humans – because of marriage, which puts
men above women.”

During antiquity, meanwhile, a woman’s role was to provide a child – and female sexual
pleasure was dismissed. But this role was also a dangerous one. “There were so many
impediments to female pleasure. In the 18th and 19th centuries, one in six pregnant women
died in childbirth. Then there were the infections and sexual violence.”

For men, of course, things were different. “Men have always done what they wanted,” says
Brenot.

Even for men, sex for pleasure was something that happened “outside the home – for
instance with prostitutes. Women were seen either to provide offspring or pleasure.” In
ancient Rome, these rules were so strictly upheld that women could take their husbands to
court for ejaculating anywhere but inside her body during intercourse, “because sex within
marriage was for procreation, and the wife’s role was to receive sperm”.

Even during periods that today we think of as being golden ages for same-sex relationships,
such pleasures were “reserved for the elite” – and the reality was often less accepting than
we think. In ancient Greece, for instance, it was only the man who was “receiving” who was
not stigmatised in a pairing. Similarly for the libertines in the 18th century, “there was a
fluid sexuality, but it was also the top end of society – the intelligentsia and aristocracy.
Throughout the centuries and the world’s rural populations, to be gay – or for women to
have control of their own sexuality – has always been frowned upon.”

Today too, Brenot argues, while much has been written about more people exploring fluid
sexualities, entering polyamorous relationships and breaking down gender norms, “we
shouldn’t make the mistake of thinking that this is trickling down to all sections of society”.
And he warns too about a backlash from “new moralists” who oppose gay marriage, and
will, no doubt, do the same for trans rights and alternative relationships as they gain more
legal rights. Coryn says this is one of the reasons she enjoyed creating the book. “In France,
people who don’t want gay people to be married, is a huge phenomenon. It’s awful. We say
in the book this is a misunderstanding of sexuality; homosexuality is normal. I hope this is
one topic on which people will change their mind in reading the book.”

For heterosexual couples, relationships

began to look up about the time of the
Renaissance and Enlightenment. Up until
this period, “men were having fun outside
the home – hunting animals or chasing
women. While women were always at
home,” says Brenot. But the new spirit of
education and the pursuit of knowledge
changed this. Finally, says Brenot, men and
women could be friends and even have
platonic love.

Yet it took contraception for men and

women to gain a semblance of equality.
Previously “women were immobilised by
marriage. They can’t get out of it, they don’t
have the possibility of working or being free.
The story of sex is, first of all, the story of
marriage and the difficulties [it creates] for
women.”

To start combating the problems that these

historical inequalities have left us with, the
psychiatrist insists, we need better sexual
The Story of Sex … The Great Change 1960-1970. Illustration:
Laetitia Coryn
education, and one that starts at an early
age. “People think sexuality is just an
instinct,” he says, “that it is natural like eating and drinking. No. There is no gene that
drives sexuality. All sexuality is learned.”

Because of this, says Brenot, the models for

our sexuality are very important. Today,
talking about sex is still taboo, and the
dissemination of pornography has filled the
void. “People say pornography changes
adolescent life. But it changes everyone’s
sexuality,” he says. “We have sex differently
now; we try to imitate what we see [on our
screens]. People feel bad and say, ‘I can’t do
what they do.’”

To displace this dangerous model, “sexual

education should teach the rules that should
govern relationships; it should teach us
about communication, about consent and
respect. This is not natural [to us]. We have
to learn this.”

Coryn says that while the Story of Sex is not

a sexual education manual, “we wanted it to
be uninhibited”, to make talking about sex
seem as natural as it should be.
The Story of Sex … Between War and Peace. Illustration: Laetitia
Coryn “From the time children are little girls and
boys, we have to teach them that everyone
should be respected and to start accepting difference,” says Brenot. But, he says, while men
and women are equal, that does not mean that they are the same. Railing against the
teaching of “gender studies” departments, he says that a refusal to admit this difference is
allowing gender inequality to become entrenched.

“They say, ‘Don’t speak of differences – a man is the same as a woman. Society is guilty of
making differences, but underneath we are the same.’”

Unpicking these ideas, he says, is the only way to combat our most pressing problems. For
example, “physical strength is different from a very young age. So [children] need to
understand boys are stronger and take that into account – because that is the start of
domestic violence, which is a real problem.”

If we leave this teaching too late, he says, the battle is already lost: “In children’s fairy
stories it is the boy who seduces the girl, so there is power play early on.” Then there is the
fact men have always been free to have multiple partners throughout history, because men
don’t get pregnant. It is only by introducing the idea early on that “contraception is a joint
responsibility” that we can challenge this.

Today’s modern couple, he points out, faces new challenges from the rise in options for
dating to “new forms of relationship,” says Brenot. Yet Coryn stresses, as does Brenot, that
there has never been a better time for people to live in terms of sexuality. Yet one thing has
not changed, says Brenot – everyone still wants to find somebody to love. “People are afraid
to be alone at the end of their life. They are afraid not to find the perfect person to live with.
It is a difficult problem for everyone today.

“We have to learn how to live together anew.”

•The Story of Sex: From Apes to Robots by Philippe Brenot and Laetitia Coryn is published by
Particular Books, £20. To order a copy for £16.40, go to bookshop.theguardian.com or call the
Guardian Bookshop on 0330 333 6846. Free UK p&p over £10, online orders only. Phone
orders min. p&p of £1.99.

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The Story of Sex … the 21st century. Illustration: Laeticia Cory