A little of what you fancy...

LADIES, are you getting enough you know what? I only ask because academics at the University of Basel have managed to decipher an ancient papyrus found in Egypt with mirror writing in the Greek alphabet. As it has taken 500 years to figure out what it was all about it’s fortunate that it’s not deadly dull. It turns out to be a manuscript from the 2nd or 3rd centuries AD detailing how women’s health suffers when they’re not getting enough sex. In the worst cases this leads to “hysterical apnoea” which means you stop breathing. And that’s never good. The idea that women go barking mad without sex was not new either. For Hippocrates, the Greek “father of medicine”, had said in the 5th century BC that female hysteria was occasioned by lack of sex (the word hysteria having – as every schoolboy knows – the same Latin and Greek roots as the word meaning womb). “Of the so-called women’s diseases, the womb is cause of all,” he declared. Without frequent sex it dried up, he said, causing fainting, loss of breath, dumbness and hysteria. Dear me. And with all respect to Hippocrates (a great man and especially sound on haemorrhoids) how unlikely. Sex is jolly nice of course but one doesn’t go in for it solely in the interests of keeping the old uterus hydrated. The uterus is a very robust organ, though in the past doctors had their doubts about this. Nineteenth century medical opinion said excessive exercise could lead to it falling out, perhaps landing on your shoe like a deflated beach ball. And as recently as 2010 the president of the International Ski Federation said that the female uterus might burst from doing a ski jump.

But back to sex. This age-old idea that men are doing women a gigantic favour by giving them a good seeing to has led to nothing but trouble yet it persists in what President Trump would no doubt call lockerroom talk. It persists in the notion of deranged, dried-up spinsters who could have been saved from themselves if only they’d had a man. It persists in the idea of “cougars” pawing the ground, flaring their nostrils and prowling the streets in search of a waxed toy boy. W OMEN collude in this nonsense too unfortunately. The cult of the ladette has waned a bit but there are still young women who think they have to behave like one of the boys and go after no-strings copulation because you “need” sex if you’re going to claim to be cool. Look at any hen do yelping at the sight of a male stripper as if they’re overcome with lust at the sight of a man in pants and need to be held back. It’s all a complete pretence. Harmless enough but still linked to women being predatory and “sex mad”.

Of course true desire can make you a little breathless and weak at the knees. But that’s a different matter entirely.