This is a nice text, but it's heavenly oriented to the very upper class society.
The author talk a lot about "sexual books" of the times, but you will certainly not find the "Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure" (Fanny Hill) in the hand of a proper young woman.
(this stuff where costly rarities for men too).
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.
As for books in the 1700's over 60% of women were not literate so if one happened on one of the books it couldn't be read - but the illustrations would have been interesting to them.
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.
Yeah. If anything, the 20th century was sort of a nadir for this sort of thing, as increasingly large portions of the population became more alienated from the natural world. That made it possible for young kids and teenagers to have no clear idea.
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.)
It also covers a long time period. The period of extreme prudishness was fairly short, and happened during the Victorian era.
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.
The article is --per usual-- not warranting the scope of the title. A more accurate title would be: Some literature possibly used in educating aristocratic English women about sex. The subtitle then would be: while simultaneously plugging my own book.
A lot of nonfiction writers only do interviews/podcasts when they have a book to plug. I don’t mind it, even though it’s kind of an ad, because the content is still interesting. I think the authors want to sell their books, but they’re typically very interested in the topics and like talking about them for the sake of conversation.
Absolutely fascinating. The deep history of obvious knowledge of reproduction side by side with astounding ignorance is palpable. Joseph Heller wrote about it in catch-22 and a parade of modern day unexpected pregnancy stories are testament to it's continuance.
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)
I think that is false, but struggle to explain my point without being excessively graphic. People get a lot of bad advice, that results in people being anxiously stuck in their head during sex, trying to "do a good job" and "pleasure their partner."
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.
Given that most animals get it done in under a minute for fear of predation or other violence, I'm guessing the author is male.
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.
I am a straight man, but talking from the perspective of what women partners have told me they enjoyed, and were interested in doing repeatedly- and it has consistently involved acting 'dominant/primal,' physically aggressive, and getting deeply into my body and out of my head. Not everyone likes the same thing of course, unlike animals consent, communication, and mutual understanding are key- and much more so than usual when trying things like this.
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.
Not at all- we're mammals but we're also humans, and you need to navigate both sides of that in a way other species never could or would. What I am talking about is essentially a form of BDSM that absolutely requires consent, deep mutual trust, and communication- even more so than usual when trying things like this together with a partner.
Anyone who has adopted a kitten too young to spay will know very well she knows what to do once her body develops. It's interesting humans know how to eat, drink and ablute but need to be taught in the most essential:reproduce.
This reminds me of the difficulties Louis XVI and his wife Marie Antoinette had in conceiving an heir:
> 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."
This is such a bizarre thing to do from a young man/evolutionary instinct standpoint. I wonder if his hormones were awry. I see speculation that he had hypogonadism or phimosis.
The crown prince of France spent his entire life surrounded by courtiers who would fulfill his every whim. He barely needed to lift a fork to his mouth himself.
Maybe he had depression from this kind of passive lifestyle.
"Important" people get trained into helplessness very quickly. They are the symbol that validates power, but any real action they take is a risk to the movers and shakers surrounding them.
Oh, Wikipedia is in the constant change of what do need an illustration and what does not or what type it should be. Back in 2009 the most pics in the sex and genital articles had a self-made pics, which even prompted this:
Internet access - $25
A digital camera - $250
Making the whole world see your vagina - priceless
For everything else there is MasterCard
And somewhere in 2018 I discovered what almost all photos in these articles (on the English Wikipedia, other languages didn't changed much) were replaced by the most basic pictures or the illustrations from 19th century anatomical atlases.
Basing one’s knowledge of history on Bridgerton is much like basing one’s knowledge of New York City on Metropolis in Superman comics. Bridgerton is completely and totally ahistorical. It’s cosplay.
Aicha Limbada in La nuit de noces. Une histoire de l'intimité conjugale (in French only) talks about the fact that this “education” was sometime done during the night after the wedding, when the bride was raped by her new husband.
I think the article fails to wonder sufficiently about gender differences in sexual education. In the milieu where my parents were brought up in, as well as presently in traditionally patriarchal cultures, a good deal of women weren't educated about periods and sex, not even by relatives. The men, on the other hand, received more "education"
When you mistake Bridgerton for anything but a funny dress-up for unrooted americans and attempt to legitimize printed porn addictions at the same time.
A mother of a teenage son is talking to her husband about introducing an important topic to their son. To make it less shocking, she suggests using an analogy like butterflies. So, the father goes to the son's room.
- "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."
"It's actually not that similar, since butterflies are oviparous, and have ZW sexual determination" - my nerdy high school self completely missing the joke.
I assume it's a relief for parents when their offspring realise a few sentences in that this is The Conversation and they cut to the chase. "Yes mother/ father, I do understand roughly how human sexual reproduction works, and I have been taught about consent, so we're all good right?"
When my son was in preschool, I went to pick him up one day and the teacher took me aside and said, "we were reading a story about a mom and how she had a baby in her tummy, and your son raised his hand and said, 'That's not true. It's in her uterus!'"
I've never had "the talk" with him, I talked to him continuously through his childhood. As he asked questions, I gave him answers.
Kids sometimes think they know something, but really don't. You get different stories from a friend's older brother, a coming of age movie, porn, etc. You can't make any assumptions or leave room for interpretation here, so you should still have "The Talk™".
> 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.
I don't follow your objection. Banning books on sexuality from public schools threatens sexual education in those same schools. That is true even if individual parents can purchase such books for their children on the open market.
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.
The point is that decisions made by schools about which books they use or not are not equal to legally enforceable book bans for the general public. The article commingles these two ideas. That is the objection.
The snippet you quoted does not support that objection, though. It is clear from context that the "book bans" referred to are in the realm of public education.
There are large groups of Americans who believe The Handmaidens Tale is a real potential future. The lack of perspective and melodramatic discord in political theater is exhausting.
Not the same. Public schools (and private schools, and any library) choose which books are on their library shelves. They have no control over what is published elsewhere.
The puritan moral codex we laugh about today, were actually- sex ed. In a time with unhealable venereal diseases, not going astray, was vital for survival. Stay true or die with syphilis. So- ironic as it sounds, most of the preacher preaching - was the sexed which was the style at the times.
Just arguing for GP. It may be post hoc; but other cultures did not have such trouble with STDs. England, as a naval power, was expected to have such a problem and thus the puritan's advice also had practical benefit.
Which other cultures were sexually liberated, and did not have trouble with STDs? Large cultures that is, as larger populations are more at risk of disease.
You short-change yourself. The article mostly consists of how false the Netflix depiction is. Though the author doesn't word it that way, it's a good reminder of how libelous films are of our history.
What prior ages had the sense to do was to confine the subject of sex to private discussion instead of flouting it in public. It also shows a greater reverence and respect for sexual intercourse and sexuality; it is not like having a glass of water, to cite Kollontai. Our unjust mockery and even caricature of previous ages reflects poorly on us.
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.
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.
This is a nice text, but it's heavenly oriented to the very upper class society. The author talk a lot about "sexual books" of the times, but you will certainly not find the "Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure" (Fanny Hill) in the hand of a proper young woman. (this stuff where costly rarities for men too).
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.
As for books in the 1700's over 60% of women were not literate so if one happened on one of the books it couldn't be read - but the illustrations would have been interesting to them.
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.
Yeah. If anything, the 20th century was sort of a nadir for this sort of thing, as increasingly large portions of the population became more alienated from the natural world. That made it possible for young kids and teenagers to have no clear idea.
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.)
It also covers a long time period. The period of extreme prudishness was fairly short, and happened during the Victorian era.
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.
The article is --per usual-- not warranting the scope of the title. A more accurate title would be: Some literature possibly used in educating aristocratic English women about sex. The subtitle then would be: while simultaneously plugging my own book.
A lot of nonfiction writers only do interviews/podcasts when they have a book to plug. I don’t mind it, even though it’s kind of an ad, because the content is still interesting. I think the authors want to sell their books, but they’re typically very interested in the topics and like talking about them for the sake of conversation.
Absolutely fascinating. The deep history of obvious knowledge of reproduction side by side with astounding ignorance is palpable. Joseph Heller wrote about it in catch-22 and a parade of modern day unexpected pregnancy stories are testament to it's continuance.
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)
For any society where breeding domesticated animals is a familiar aspect of life for most people, I would guess this isn’t obscure knowledge.
The subtleties of human courtship that enable bilateral pleasure and the principles of animal husbandry are quite orthogonal.
I think that is false, but struggle to explain my point without being excessively graphic. People get a lot of bad advice, that results in people being anxiously stuck in their head during sex, trying to "do a good job" and "pleasure their partner."
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.
Given that most animals get it done in under a minute for fear of predation or other violence, I'm guessing the author is male.
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.
I am a straight man, but talking from the perspective of what women partners have told me they enjoyed, and were interested in doing repeatedly- and it has consistently involved acting 'dominant/primal,' physically aggressive, and getting deeply into my body and out of my head. Not everyone likes the same thing of course, unlike animals consent, communication, and mutual understanding are key- and much more so than usual when trying things like this.
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.
You're assuming that if it's natural, it's good.
One glance at the animal kingdom - there are plenty of natural practices that will put you in prison for life.
Not at all- we're mammals but we're also humans, and you need to navigate both sides of that in a way other species never could or would. What I am talking about is essentially a form of BDSM that absolutely requires consent, deep mutual trust, and communication- even more so than usual when trying things like this together with a partner.
[flagged]
Yes, but TFA starts with questioning whether women knew about insertion.
Funny how the animals having no problems figuring it out.
Anyone who has adopted a kitten too young to spay will know very well she knows what to do once her body develops. It's interesting humans know how to eat, drink and ablute but need to be taught in the most essential:reproduce.
Note: true, teenagers! I completely forgot =/
Have you met/seen teenagers?
This reminds me of the difficulties Louis XVI and his wife Marie Antoinette had in conceiving an heir:
> 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...
This is such a bizarre thing to do from a young man/evolutionary instinct standpoint. I wonder if his hormones were awry. I see speculation that he had hypogonadism or phimosis.
The crown prince of France spent his entire life surrounded by courtiers who would fulfill his every whim. He barely needed to lift a fork to his mouth himself.
Maybe he had depression from this kind of passive lifestyle.
Reading this, it might be as likely that they didn't sufficiently like each other.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_XVI#Marriage_and_family_...
"Important" people get trained into helplessness very quickly. They are the symbol that validates power, but any real action they take is a risk to the movers and shakers surrounding them.
I think it follows that people who have everything given to them would turn out to be ungiving lovers, either out of ignorance or expectation.
Sure, but in this particular case he's not even being selfish.
He was also hella inbred. Look at a picture of him. Not too surprising he’d have a messed up endocrine system.
It could also simply have been impotence that he did not want to acknowledge.
Made perhaps even more likely with Antoinette's alleged proclivities, her children's questionable paternity, and so on.
Always leave them wanting more
I believe that’s called “soaking”
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soaking_(sexual_practice)
Someone decided that that article needed an illustration. Astounding the breadth and depth of things you can find on the internet.
Oh, Wikipedia is in the constant change of what do need an illustration and what does not or what type it should be. Back in 2009 the most pics in the sex and genital articles had a self-made pics, which even prompted this:
And somewhere in 2018 I discovered what almost all photos in these articles (on the English Wikipedia, other languages didn't changed much) were replaced by the most basic pictures or the illustrations from 19th century anatomical atlases.Basing one’s knowledge of history on Bridgerton is much like basing one’s knowledge of New York City on Metropolis in Superman comics. Bridgerton is completely and totally ahistorical. It’s cosplay.
Aicha Limbada in La nuit de noces. Une histoire de l'intimité conjugale (in French only) talks about the fact that this “education” was sometime done during the night after the wedding, when the bride was raped by her new husband.
Well that’s one step less bad than the German city states with Prima Nocte with the mayor.
Isn't that an urban legend? (We have the same kind of stories with lords and peasants in France, and here it's definitely an urban legend).
I think the article fails to wonder sufficiently about gender differences in sexual education. In the milieu where my parents were brought up in, as well as presently in traditionally patriarchal cultures, a good deal of women weren't educated about periods and sex, not even by relatives. The men, on the other hand, received more "education"
When you mistake Bridgerton for anything but a funny dress-up for unrooted americans and attempt to legitimize printed porn addictions at the same time.
A mother of a teenage son is talking to her husband about introducing an important topic to their son. To make it less shocking, she suggests using an analogy like butterflies. So, the father goes to the son's room.
- "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."
"It's actually not that similar, since butterflies are oviparous, and have ZW sexual determination" - my nerdy high school self completely missing the joke.
I assume it's a relief for parents when their offspring realise a few sentences in that this is The Conversation and they cut to the chase. "Yes mother/ father, I do understand roughly how human sexual reproduction works, and I have been taught about consent, so we're all good right?"
When my son was in preschool, I went to pick him up one day and the teacher took me aside and said, "we were reading a story about a mom and how she had a baby in her tummy, and your son raised his hand and said, 'That's not true. It's in her uterus!'"
I've never had "the talk" with him, I talked to him continuously through his childhood. As he asked questions, I gave him answers.
Kids sometimes think they know something, but really don't. You get different stories from a friend's older brother, a coming of age movie, porn, etc. You can't make any assumptions or leave room for interpretation here, so you should still have "The Talk™".
The best I've seen is "Son, do not create future obligations!"
This is about how I was told. “Do what you want but don’t make me raise another baby while you’re a teen!”
How do they learn it today? Hopefully not from the internet ...
The writing was somewhat interesting until this:
> 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.
I don't follow your objection. Banning books on sexuality from public schools threatens sexual education in those same schools. That is true even if individual parents can purchase such books for their children on the open market.
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.
The point is that decisions made by schools about which books they use or not are not equal to legally enforceable book bans for the general public. The article commingles these two ideas. That is the objection.
The snippet you quoted does not support that objection, though. It is clear from context that the "book bans" referred to are in the realm of public education.
There are large groups of Americans who believe The Handmaidens Tale is a real potential future. The lack of perspective and melodramatic discord in political theater is exhausting.
Did you see that absurd display yesterday?
See, the thing about Arsenal is they always try to walk it in.
First thing I thought of lol
> There are no bans on books discussing such matters.
contradicts
> Public schools may ban books
Not the same. Public schools (and private schools, and any library) choose which books are on their library shelves. They have no control over what is published elsewhere.
You are right. Edited in order to better express myself. Apologies; English is not my first language...
The puritan moral codex we laugh about today, were actually- sex ed. In a time with unhealable venereal diseases, not going astray, was vital for survival. Stay true or die with syphilis. So- ironic as it sounds, most of the preacher preaching - was the sexed which was the style at the times.
That’s post hoc rationalisation. Other cultures had basically the same outcomes without the oppression and obscurantism.
Just arguing for GP. It may be post hoc; but other cultures did not have such trouble with STDs. England, as a naval power, was expected to have such a problem and thus the puritan's advice also had practical benefit.
Which other cultures were sexually liberated, and did not have trouble with STDs? Large cultures that is, as larger populations are more at risk of disease.
Starting an historical article with Netflix.
No way I'm reading this.
You short-change yourself. The article mostly consists of how false the Netflix depiction is. Though the author doesn't word it that way, it's a good reminder of how libelous films are of our history.
Tech Circles Sex Ed is done on Tiktok. Prove me wrong.
What prior ages had the sense to do was to confine the subject of sex to private discussion instead of flouting it in public. It also shows a greater reverence and respect for sexual intercourse and sexuality; it is not like having a glass of water, to cite Kollontai. Our unjust mockery and even caricature of previous ages reflects poorly on us.
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.
> What prior ages had the sense to do was to confine the subject of sex to private discussion instead of flouting it in public
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".
Was there a rise in sexual abuse in the 20th century? Or did we just shine more light on an ongoing problem?
> it is not like having a glass of water
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.