IN ABOUT ONE CENTURY WE WENT FROM VICTORIAN STYLE HYPOCRISY TO ANYTHING GOES CASUAL APPROACH . Let’s embark on the trip that took us where we are.
THE VICTORIANS. While strictly speaking the Victorian era took place in the 19th century, my home country Hungary used to be several years behind the West, so my grand parents behaviour would quite correspond to this cliché.
As for sex education of proper young ladies, the Victorians would say : “On your honeymoon night you will experience something very degrading. Close your eyes and think about Great Britain”.
Indeed, proper young ladies did not think of sex as a source of pleasure, which they never got nor received. They submitted for the sake of providing descendants to the family, and sometimes, very seldom, they had out of wedlock affairs which allowed them to discover an unimaginable universe. However most of time they just commented negatively on the women who had fallen into a “vice”.
As for the men, according to their status in society they were expected to patronize professionally expert women, from actresses to street-walkers. . Sometimes they had mistresses whom they installed in an apartment and whose favours they were supposed to enjoy exclusively. The wives considered this normal, and would avoid mentioning this subject.
A famous example is Emperor Franz Joseph, whose wife Queen Elizabeth hated making love with her husband and selected the actress who would tend to this chore.
FIRST WORLD WAR.
The world changed after this cataclysm and the attitude to sex was no exception. Both men and women started multiplying “affairs” but they tended to be very discreet about it. The advice was “SEX ? that is something you might do but should never speak about !” A woman who was known as an “easy deal” was also spoken about as a “tart”. For men, it was a source of pride to have multiple conquests whether married or unmarried .
However since there was no sex education, the quality of those affairs varied enormously. While sex with various partners became biologically more frequent, the mentalities did not change that fast. Women did not confess to themselves the pleasure they felt and considered it somewhat shameful. And men did not necessarily know how to provide that pleasure. Sex was an individual discovery journey with various results. As for homosexuality, not only it was hidden and occasionally punished, but often the people concerned did not confess it to themselves.
SECOND WORLD WAR
A milestone in this history were the Kinsey reports on “the human male and the “human female”. Since the data resulted from interviews with thousands of respondents one interesting item was that men pretended more frequently making love to women than the other way around. Obviously hypocrisy was not dead or women did not owe up to their own behaviour.!
It is the attitude towards homosexuality that constituted the greatest discovery of these studies. It turned out that males and females do not represent discrete populations, heterosexual and homosexual. The world is not to be divided into sheep and goats. The living world had to be considered as a continuum in each and every one of its aspects.
As for sado-masochisme whether in acts or in phantasies, it’s frequency was not limited to an infinitely small minority as was believed when the Marquis de Sade was jailed in the Bastille for his scandalous writings.
BEFORE THE BIRTH CONTROL PILL
Birth control has always been a controversial subject. Both Catholic and Muslim religions discourage it, while the modern attitude is that women should have the freedom to choose if and when they want to become mothers.
However before the 1960’s, when the pill became available, pre-marital sex was a frustrating subject. Young men and women experienced sexual desires, just like nowadays, but the danger of an possible unwanted pregnancy dominated the situation. Dating meant petting, light or heavy, possibly mutual masturbation…and only seldom more.
THE 1960’s and BEYOND
The hippies of the 1960’s changed it all.The youth suddenly was liberated…and at the same time protested against the Vietnam engagement. However sexual liberation went way beyond those groups.
Wife swapping became the “in” thing to do. People joined swapping clubs…California led the way, and like all fads it swept across the world. That was a brief
moment of “free lunch” a fashion that seemed to have no down-side. It all ended with
THE 1970-1980’s AIDS EPIDEMIC
Ever since the plague of the Middle Ages no disease had a casualty rate of almost 100 % with no known medical remedies. While progressively the disease was ever better understood and medicinal solutions appeared the effect on mentalities cannot be overstated. Once they reach puberty, all young people are constantly exposed to pictures showing condoms, the way to use them…At the same time freely available pornography shows all possible sexual practices, the message being that between consenting people every approach is permissible. As a matter of fact, social media and group influence tend to pressure all teens to try out everything.
CONCLUSION Sex used to be the forbidden fruit, while economic opportunities seemed to be available galore. Now, for many people, it’s the other way around.
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