Esmé Louise James started her university studies in the lofty realms of religion, but then became sidetracked into studying human sexuality after being asked to write about the history of the dildo for a student magazine (there was one discovered in a German cave that’s about 28,000 years old). Now, with over three million followers on TikTok and 429,000 followers on Instagram, the timing seemed right to parlay her earthier interests into this non-fiction survey: Kinky History.
The subtitle is ‘The Stories of Our Intimate Lives, Past and Present’ and the debut book does indeed open up an eyebrow-raising conversation about sex, sexuality, gender and identity that may otherwise have been shrouded in shame and secrecy. She explores in detail how penetrative, heterosexual and procreative activity was regarded as a default setting, and considered normal by a range of thinkers, with the corollary that everything outside these categories was summarily regarded as kinky and deviant.
The book begins with an exploration of the concept of sin, then moves towards self-pleasure, gender identity, kinks and fetishes, and pornography. If we learn one thing reading this book, which is as heavily researched as it is lightly written, it’s James’ conclusion that ‘humans are contradictory, messy creatures and perhaps no aspect of our behaviours and identities better demonstrate that than our sexuality’. Interestingly, the author’s mother, Dr Susan James, a mathematician and statistician, also contributes, with her work on SexTistics, a TikTok series about the latest studies integrated into the book. (The pair surveyed over 14,000 Australians about their sex lives in 2022.)
Anyone who’s followed James on social media will know her exuberant, breezy personality and her writing has just the same timbre. There’s no deathly dry academic prose here, Kinky History is conversational in tone and a little breathless as James informs us that really nothing is new, with just about every fetish enjoyed for millennia.
Perhaps the most dinner party worthy snippets in the book are the sexual beliefs and proclivities divulged about famous people in history, from bizarre contraceptive methods proffered by Hippocrates (widely regarded as the “Father of Medicine”), to the delight that Mozart showed in composing a dirty ditty party piece to be sung by six voices in a round, or the joy James Joyce found in flatulence, particularly from his wife Nora. Chances are you’d have no idea that Jean-Jacques Rousseau liked flashing strangers or that Victor Hugo was ‘one of the horniest people in recorded history’. Apparently on the day that he died, ‘every single brothel in Paris closed for a day of mourning’. James notes, ‘The fact that the great figures of history enjoyed sex – let alone “kinky” sex is still often shocking to us.’ It reminds us though, she says, that they too were and are human.
So, yes, if you are after a book about the bedroom habits of the famous throughout the ages, James’ titillating work will not disappoint; if you’ve ever wondered about the etymology of the word “horny”, this book will also enlighten. But if you blush easily at even the mention of jade butt plugs, then perhaps avoid looking beyond the shocking pink cover with an eggplant held aloft.
Beneath the levity with which it’s been composed, Kinky History is undergirded by some serious research, with a long appendix to back up James’ comments. We may think that kink is a modern phenomenon but, as the author points out airily, ‘Long before people were buying the bathwater of their favourite internet gamer-girls they were buying the sweat of their favourite gladiators in Ancient Rome.’
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The book moves easily between past and present as James documents sexual practices, as well as the various cultural touchstones – like the height of the pandemic – that affected Australians’ sex lives (being restricted within the confines of your home apparently led to a commensurate increase in bondage products).
Written with obvious relish, Kinky History is fun and informative; you’ll never really regard the author of Ulysses in quite the same way again after you’ve read snippets of the “dirty letters” he wrote to his wife.
Kinky History, Esmé Louise James
Publisher: Pantera Press
ISBN: 9780645498585
Pages: 320pp
Publication Date: 3 October 2023
RRP: $34.99
