Hello and welcome back to The Overthinker’s Guide To Sex, a sex and relationships newsletter by journalist Franki Cookney.
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Welcome to What Do You Think Of This? an occasional section where I put something to you — an idea, a story, an issue — that I don’t have fully formed thoughts on. It’s the kind of thing I might post in our group chat (if we were in a group chat) and invite you to hash it out with me.
You’ve probably seen this quote around. It gets bandied about on sex-positive social media a fair bit. I understand why. It’s punchy as hell. It feels subversive too. It seems to speak to something we instinctively know but haven’t quite grasped, let alone admitted. It feels true, on some level, maybe, but also shocking and, hold on, what exactly are we talking about here?
You may or may not know that the quote is from Cicero, the Roman philosopher, politician, lawyer, and scholar, which is the kind of portfolio career you could have if you were a wealthy man in Rome in 100 BC. So if you haven’t thought about the Roman Empire today, this is your cue!