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The expression "sexual behavior" does not appear in any language until modern times. It is not used anywhere in the Bible or in the Koran, and it was unknown to the classical Western writers from Homer to Dante, Shakespeare, Cervantes, Voltaire, and Goethe. As a matter of fact, even the word "sexual" alone, which by now dates back several hundred years, only gradually acquired its great variety of present meanings. At first, it was not applied to actions or feelings but simply referred to the condition of being female or male.
We know, of course, that in ancient and medieval times people had dozens or even hundreds of words for the male and female organs and for the act of copulation. We also know that they talked about being fruitful and reproducing their "own flesh and blood." They knew what was meant by kissing, embracing, or fondling another person. They were familiar with sensual pleasure, physical stimulation and excitement. They spoke proudly of love, desire, affection, tenderness, passion, minne, amour, Cupid, and Venus. Some men and women enjoyed “dirty language” or obscene pictures, sculptures, or spectacles. Some loved to display their nude bodies or to observe nudity in others. Others tried to suppress their "concupiscence" and spoke with disgust of wantonness, lechery, lewdness, lust, or temptation by the devil. They praised chastity, modesty, continence, innocence, and virginity while condemning carnal impurities, abominations, sins against God, and crimes against nature. Still, as a closer look reveals, our distant forebears had not yet summarized all of this in the single, purely descriptive, morally neutral term "sexual behavior".
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