ABSTRACT
Alex Comfort M.D. names his bestselling Joy of Sex (1974) after the classic American cookery Bible, Joy of Cooking (Rombauer and Rombauer Becker 1931). His subtitle-A Gourmet Guide to Lovemaking-continues the culinary metaphor. And he even orders his chapters like a menu: ‘Starters’, ‘Main Courses’, ‘Sauces and Pickles’, and so on. Comfort thus perpetuates ‘a universal tendency to make ritual and verbal associations between eating and sexual intercourse’ (Leach 1964:53), explanations for which commonly focus upon some equivalence of our biological imperatives:
Traditionally, hunger is seen as a basic drive for survival of the individual whilst sex is a basic drive for survival of the species. It might be expected that there could be found some parallels and interactions between these fundamental activities.
