Irrumatio also known as irrumation or by the colloquialism face-fucking is a form of oral sex in which someone thrusts their penis into another person's mouth, in contrast to fellatio where the penis is being actively orally excited by a fellator.
The difference lies mainly in which party takes the active part. By extension, irrumatio can also refer to the sexual technique of thrusting the penis between the thighs of a partner intercrural sex. In the ancient Roman sexual vocabulary, irrumatio is a form of oral rape os impurum , in which a man forces his penis into someone else's mouth, almost always another man's.
Butrica, in his review of R. Hooper's edition of The Priapus Poems , a corpus of poems known as Priapeia in Latin, states that "some Roman sexual practices, like irrumatio , lack simple English equivalents". As the quotation from Butrica suggests and an article by W. Krenkel shows, irrumatio was a distinct sexual practice in ancient Rome. Adams states that "it was a standard joke to speak of irrumatio as a means of silencing someone".
Thus, to penetrate the mouth could be taken to be a sign of massive power differential within a relationship. Erotic art from Pompeii depicts irrumatio along with fututio , fellatio and cunnilingus , and pedicatio or anal sex. Craig A. Williams argues that irrumatio was regarded as a degrading act, even more so than anal rape. Tarkovsky states that, despite being popular, it was thought to be a hostile act, "taken directly from the Greek, whereby the Greek men would have to force the fellatio by violence".
In modern English, the term "fellatio" has expanded to incorporate irrumatio , and the latter has fallen out of widespread use. In modern English, especially in a non-rape context, the term "face fucking" is often used. Another synonym for irrumatio is Egyptian rape or simply Egyptian ; this goes back to the time of the Crusades when Mamluks were alleged to force their Christian captives to do this.
