“Men never lose an atavistic appetite for license – the release of social and temporal constraints and ecstatic abandon. Seductresses were mistresses of misrule, carnival queens who cast off repressive shackles and declared a public holiday. The goddess Inanna decreed, “Let all of Uruk be festive!” Once a year, at the sacred marriage ceremony, she ordained a gala free-for-all of feasting, cross-dressing, game playing, and promiscuous fornicating. We cannot bear too much reality; bound, gagged, and led in chains by custom and civic authority, we demand that eros set us free. Love guides since antiquity have urged women to loosen up, “be festive,” and provide “moments of organic relief.” The French cocottes at the turn of the century were maestras of disinhibitionand unbuttoned frolic. With quid nihi (to hell with it) for their motto, they lit cigarettes with bank notes, talked dirty, threw ‘transvesti’ balls, and danced with pet pigs. Among the many other tunes in their songbook, sirens sang of parties – of frolic, joy, masquerade, and anything goes abandon. Love jumps the turnstiles. In Shere Hite’s study of male sexuality, men said that what they valued most about sex was being allowed to be “totally out of control, to release the pent-up emotions they were taught they should repress at all other times.” Here, they echo their prehistoric male ancestor, homo festivus, who cut loose when he worshipped the sex goddess: cross-dressed, caroused, and let the deity take possession of him.”
– Betsy Prioleau, Seductress: Women Who Ravished the World and Their Lost Art of Love; (Festivity, Non-Repression)
