It was far more simpler than this, no need for books.
Every rural girls and boys, and women and men living in a city did know, without any books, what there is to know simply by looking at the animals in the farms or the horses and dogs in the streets.
There was also the "education" at the wash-houses... The hubs to know everything there is to now at the time.
I think that many of the poor lived in habitations where they all slept in one, unlit, room where they would get hints about sex from childhood.
Sex and reproduction was no mystery to almost anyone historically. No doubt people, then as now, maintained various superstitions that coincidentally involved rationalizations for what they wanted to do anyway, but that's not really a matter of ignorance, so to speak. ("Come on, it's your first time, it will be OK, nothing will happen...whoops!" is not a matter of ignorance generally, but willful ignorance.)
I have a book from the 1850s that was meant to (mis)inform on this topic. The whole masturbation makes people go blind nonsense. For people raised on this kind of book, I can believe that they would not understand sex. For people a few decades earlier, it would be a different story.
What's equally fascinating is the equally dichotomous side by side knowledge of STDs and their effect on pregnancy. You get a lot of it in "who do you think you are" ancestry type shows, when there is the massive family lots of children dead quickly story.
I do love a good bodice ripper. Dorothy Dunnett was my stand out historian author, maybe I have a (-substantially more fruity) alternative to explore.
(Bridgerton was fun but I find Georgette Heyer just as fun, and you can't beat her on the peninsular wars or Waterloo alongside the heaving bosoms)
The reality is mammals have instincts that make sex pleasurable both both parties, and it is usually shockingly aggressive, even violent seeming. If people could get out of their head and into their body and primal desires- and quite literally act more like an animal, they'd have much better sex.
Chimps and bonobos, our nearest cousins, do have a pretty spectacular sexual toolbox of course that acts as a kind of social lubricant. But it's not all about reproduction, or even pleasure, and quite a lot of what they get up to will get you jailed in most countries.
Counter-intuitively, getting into this headspace makes sex last much longer, not shorter- I suspect human bodies and minds are different from a lot of other mammals in this regard. It is more often that anxiety, tension, and over intellectualizing causes issues with men not lasting long enough.
One glance at the animal kingdom - there are plenty of natural practices that will put you in prison for life.
Note: true, teenagers! I completely forgot =/
> In a letter to his brother Leopold, Grand Duke of Tuscany, Joseph II described them as "a couple of complete blunderers."[50] He disclosed to Leopold that the inexperienced—then still only 22-year-old—Louis XVI had confided in him the course of action he had been undertaking in their marital bed; saying Louis XVI "introduces the member," but then "stays there without moving for about two minutes," withdraws without having completed the act and "bids goodnight."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marie_Antoinette#Motherhood,_c...
Maybe he had depression from this kind of passive lifestyle.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_XVI#Marriage_and_family_...
Made perhaps even more likely with Antoinette's alleged proclivities, her children's questionable paternity, and so on.
Internet access - $25
A digital camera - $250
Making the whole world see your vagina - priceless
For everything else there is MasterCard
- "Son, do you remember last year when we went camping?"
- "Yeah, I remember that."
- "And do you remember when we set up the tent by the river?"
- "Yeah, I remember."
- "And do you remember when those two women set up their tent next to ours?"
- "Yeah, I remember."
- "And do you remember that one night when they visited our tent and what we were doing with them?"
- "Yeah, I remember."
- "Well, you see, butterflies do it in a very similar way."
I've never had "the talk" with him, I talked to him continuously through his childhood. As he asked questions, I gave him answers.
> I found myself confronting the rise of bans on books that discuss gender identity and sexuality. Today, sexual education in public schools grows increasingly under threat in places like Florida
Please. There are no bans on books discussing such matters. You can purchase them from Amazon and other booksellers, while in 19th century England there were civil and criminal penalties for book publishers for the mere act of publishing. That's quite different. Public schools may ban books only for their own institutions, never for the general public. Any "school ban" does not prevent any parent righteously concerned with censorship to provide their child a copy of such banned book.
The point of universal education is to provide for all students, _especially_ those whose parents are unwilling or unable to provide a quality education independently.
contradicts
> Public schools may ban books
No way I'm reading this.
Public indecency, both in speech and behavior, is a disaster. It has a horrible effect on human relations.
1. It causes scandal in the traditional meaning of that word. That is, is creates precedent that people will copy, lowering moral standards and causing the spread of bad behavior.
2. It titillates and exploits the effect sex has on human beings in order to manipulate and evade reason. Why do you think sex appeal is such a big part of marketing?
3. It stands behind the rise in sexual abuse we say in the 20th century. When decency is normal, the fear of social consequences of being indecent keeps would-be abusers in check. It gives potential victims an easy way to defend themselves. When indecency is normalized, we become desensitized to sexual mistreatment. Protestations are viewed as unreasonable or prudish, and sexual misconduct is even viewed as funny. These accusations have been used to pressure victims into sex.
That being said, not everything was well in the past. I would also not exaggerate how common or popular some of the literature mentioned in the article was (assuming the interpretations are correct; we tend to read our own presuppositions into history, producing anachronism). Pornography also existed back then, but it was not something most people ever came across. It was mostly the product and province of seedy segments of society.
Citation, as they say, needed.
Counterexamples:
The Romans.
The Greeks.
The Babylonians.
The New Kingdom of Egypt.
Most of the Indian cultures prior to the British invasion.
> When decency is normal, the fear of social consequences of being indecent keeps would-be abusers in check.
That would depend strongly on what each culture meant by "decency" and "indecency".
Sometimes I wish it was. Putting it on too high of a pedestal also has negative effects, including introducing unwarranted guilt and getting into irreversible bad relationships simply because you want sex. I would say has more negative effects thnan being open and honest about it.
1. Scandals are bad due to dishonesty and violated trust in authority, not necessarily talking about sex in public. Societies that repress sexual expression will always treat sexual scandals with more intrigue simply due to repression.
2. People who are easily manipulated will at some point succumb to some type of manipulation including easier-to-do ones like fear-based manipulation.
3. Was it a rise in sexual abuse or a rise in talking about sexual abuse?
> When indecency is normalized, we become desensitized to sexual mistreatment.
When "decency" as you describe is normalized, we simply don't hear about sexual mistreatment. The social consequences can work both against and for an abuser.