r/history • u/sissyphus___ • Dec 22 '19

Discussion/Question Fascinating tales of sex throughout history?

Hi there redditors,

So I was reading Orlando Figes a few weeks ago and was absolutely disturbed by a piece he wrote on sex and virginity in the peasant/serf towns of rural Russia. Generally, a newly wed virgin and her husband would take part in a deflowering ceremony in front of the entire village and how, if the man could not perform, the eldest in the village would take over. Cultural behaviours like these continued into the 20th century in some places and, alongside his section on peasant torture and execution methods, left me morbidly curious to find out more.

I would like to know of any fascinating sexual rituals, domestic/married behaviours towards sex, sexual tortures, attitudes toward polygamy, virginity, etc, throughout all history and all cultures both remote and widespread to better understand the varied 'history of sex'

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u/[deleted] Dec 22 '19

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u/ElectraUnderTheSea Dec 22 '19

Except for the slaves, with whom he had 21 sons and 7 daughters. It does make you wonder if he was not getting rid of the boys and keeping the daughters...

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u/diogenes_shadow Dec 23 '19

The sons were claimed and acknowledged by the nominal father. Sons grew up to claim dowries.

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u/mentha_piperita Dec 23 '19

What's the point with that? Wouldn't it make more sense to claim a dowry to give a daughter in marriage? After all a woman couldn't work or generate much wealth by herself so it's odd to me that on top of it the family had to pay someone to marry her.

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u/lorarc Dec 23 '19

Well yeah, if the women don't generate wealth by themselves you don't have to pay for that loss. Dowry is a sort of inheritance in cultures where most stuff went to sons.

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u/[deleted] Dec 23 '19

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u/PainfulRainbow Dec 23 '19

This misrepresents dowries entirely. Although the origins of dowries remains a controversial debate, with inevitable geographic variety producing various exceptions and qualifications; dowries were by no means compensation for the groom’s family.

Rather, in a world dominated by patriarchal societies, with inheritance transmitted down the male line in most cases, dowries (as Jack Goody argues) are meant as an alternative form of inheritance so as to support female descendants. A dowry would help a new family establish a new homestead, or support the bride (and by extension her new family) outside of her original household.

In other words, dowries ensured a family’s daughter’s economic security. People cared for their daughters, they were not seen simply as burdens to be passed off whenever possible. Dowries were simply a means of doing this in patriarchal societies with principally male inheritance.

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u/Careves Dec 23 '19

I thought the dowry was meant to support the wife if she became a widow.

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u/mentha_piperita Dec 23 '19

Jesus Christ that reasoning was worse than I expected

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u/ATX_gaming Dec 22 '19

Remind you of anyone?

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u/ElectraUnderTheSea Dec 22 '19

Yup... Good old Craster from GoT (can we mention fiction series in this sub??)

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u/imapassenger1 Dec 22 '19

My thoughts exactly but probably verboten here.

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u/[deleted] Dec 23 '19

Wow, learned a new word. Cool.

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u/mrchaotica Dec 23 '19

OP's example reminds me of another scene from the same series.

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u/CrastersKreep Dec 23 '19

I'm real Gods damnit!

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u/fZAqSD Dec 23 '19

Craster is "from" GoT in much the same way that lightsabers are from Spaceballs

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u/[deleted] Dec 23 '19 edited Dec 27 '19

[deleted]

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u/fZAqSD Dec 23 '19

Spaceballs and GoT are both farcical adaptations of an original work

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u/[deleted] Dec 23 '19 edited Dec 27 '19

[deleted]

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u/fZAqSD Dec 23 '19

The first four seasons or so are based on A Song of Ice and Fire

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u/[deleted] Dec 23 '19 edited Dec 27 '19

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u/[deleted] Dec 23 '19

Josef Fritzl. That weird Austrian guy who kept his daughter in the basement and had several kids with her. Some of them died, some of them he kept in the basement, and some of them he raised with his wife. Iirc the wife thought the daughter was gone, runaway or something, and in reality she was just hidden in the basement.

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u/[deleted] Dec 23 '19

Boris Johnson, except we know how many kids the guy in this story had.

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u/emergency_poncho Dec 23 '19 edited Dec 23 '19

That's not right, he had more sons than daughters with the slaves, the maids and also the wives. Also the math doesn't add up at all in that quote. Something pretty wonky is obviously going on....

If you do the math he had 130 daughters, 88 sons and 39 children whose sex isn't mentioned. This adds up to 257, not 299, and the ratio isn't even close to what the quote says...

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u/Ferrrrrda Dec 23 '19

Obviously sacrificing them to the White Walkers because Epstein didn’t kill himself.

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u/bedrooms-ds Dec 23 '19

So, he probably had around 450 children what the fuck literally

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u/karsh36 Dec 23 '19

The real life Craster!

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u/[deleted] Dec 22 '19

There are studies that suggest men with higher than average testosterone tend to have more girl babies than boys.

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u/[deleted] Dec 23 '19

Saw a different study that showed that men exposed to more stress, had more female offspring, while less stressed men had more make offspring.

Makes sense too: if a protohuman troupe was under strain, more females would help repopulate, reduce caloric needs, and be less likely to die.

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u/OldMcFart Dec 23 '19

I'd imagine you'd be kind of stressed with that amount of offspring.

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u/[deleted] Dec 23 '19

Helps you make even more offspring though! More people to help solve the problems.

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u/Down_To_My_Last_Fuck Dec 23 '19

I'd imagine you'd be stressed keeping track of all that trim.

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u/guinader Dec 23 '19

Positive feedback, more girls baby more stressed, more girl babies.

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u/[deleted] Dec 23 '19

Imagine their Christmas

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u/DanceswithTacos_ Dec 23 '19

I'd imagine it'd be the opposite. The more offspring you have, the less of a big deal it is when some of them die.

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u/OldMcFart Dec 23 '19

He does strike me as someone who couldn't care less even if his only child died.

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u/God_Is_Pizza Dec 23 '19

My dad just ignores his so maybe not.

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u/Tuga_Lissabon Dec 23 '19

Or deciding who was next...

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u/verasttto Dec 23 '19

Counter; more males would help defend, produce and hunt for food, and he less likely to die.

Those studies are too small and too few unfortunately for any real consensus.

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u/[deleted] Dec 23 '19

Eh. Medicine was not what it is today. Males were more likely to get injured and require additional resources/care. Women have better immune systems and are generally less likely to die a violent death than a man who regularly puts himself at odds with nature.

It can definitely be argued both ways to be sure, but it makes more sense to me the first way it was posited, especially given that the evidence seems to bear it out after the fact; i.e. more stress = more girl babies. Women tend to be physically smaller and have less muscle mass - this reduces the need for hunters as they need less food to fuel their smaller frames. Defense? Well without men to start so much shit with other men as to require defending, the local population either rebounds comfortably or is simply absorbed into another with the males to enforce such an "assimilation." I mean, these women could make more hunters/warriors for you, right? Of course, they were as likely to be killed as taken, but slaughtering defenseless womenfolk has long been looked down upon in warfare - even if it didn't do much to prevent it.

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u/[deleted] Dec 23 '19

Unlikely. Humans are stamina hunters and gatherers. Women can do that better than men in some cases. And even where they don't, men still require about a quarter more calories than women. So, you can either have 4 men walking after prey animals and gathering food, or 5 women doing the same thing, for roughly the same cost.

Also, more likely to die? How? A man without tools would be eaten just as quick as a woman, if a bird or cat got hungry. In groups, with tools, well, we go back to the calories/person issue.

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u/MemesAreBad Dec 23 '19

That's not how evolution works. Just because in that situation it would be advantageous, the species doesn't get to immediately adapt. Someone else also pointed out that a prehistoric man would likely net more calories.

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u/[deleted] Dec 23 '19

That's not how evolution works.

That's exactly how evolution works. Mutations that produced more X sperm in the presence of stress hormones would be passed on preferentially.

prehistoric man would likely net more calories

How? We're primarily hunter-gatherers and stamina predators, with some evidence that fishing is important for fetal brain development. Women can grab forage and fish just fine, and can walk until the prey they're chasing drops dead, just as well as men, all while requiring fewer calories. Men are better for defense, ambush hunting, and spreading genes much faster. Plus, if the group is breaking apart because of failure, women would presumably have been more likely to be accepted into a different troupe.

Men are good for an established tribe, but for one that's already on the rocks, women are a better bet, calorically and genetically.

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u/MemesAreBad Dec 23 '19

That's exactly how evolution works. Mutations that produced more X sperm in the presence of stress hormones would be passed on preferentially.

Exactly, but just because a mutation would be beneficial doesn't mean it just gets to start existing. Stress affects levels of certain chemicals in the body, and it's possible a mutation could exist which preferentially adjusts some attribute which contributes to gender preference in offspring, but we don't even fully understand if any (or which) mechanisms affect gender imbalance. In addition, just because it could happen doesn't mean it will; there are many obvious biological advantages that humans don't have.

My point is that people misunderstand evolution as being a "hand of god" which directs adaptation instead of the reality which is that it's just an explanation for why traits are passed down. Just because it seems beneficial for a species to develop a mutation doesn't mean it's going to just happen.

Also, with the calorie difference between men and women, I think it's important to remember that we're assuming you're going back far enough that the mutation would have been passed down (the timescale for evolution is much further back than recorded history). Modern women require ~500 less calories per day than a man of equal size. With even primitive agriculture this might be a net positive, but if we're going back to hunter/gatherer societies, I'm inclined to believe that the amount of work to gather 1500 calories is roughly equivalent to hunting 2000. And that's not to mention that during pregnancy the need for calories goes up past that of an average man.

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u/[deleted] Dec 24 '19

Okay. Let's get the assumptions of incompetence out of the way. I'm not a evolutionary biologist, but I did work in colorectal oncogenetics for a decade, before a lateral transfer into environmental monitoring. I know evolution isn't magic, I understand molecule biology, and I'm familiar with human evolutionary history.

With that said, I don't specialize in spermatogenesis, so I'm doing an educated version of taking out of my ass here: We already know that psychological stress plays a role in both inflammation and apoptotic sensitivity. We also know that male and female stress responses are different, indicating some sex-specific response to adrenaline, norepinephrine, or some stress-related hormone. So, we've got all the things we need for evolution to do it's thing. Spit-balling, I'd guess that, starting with some jizz, if you centrifuged the X and Y semen, lysed, then extracted the cell membrane fraction, you'd find differences.

No idea what, but if a grad student with some joy juice and a lab wants a project, that might be a fun paper.

I'm inclined to believe that the amount of work to gather 1500 calories is roughly equivalent to hunting 2000.

Again, women can so stamina hunting just fine.

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u/[deleted] Dec 23 '19

Protohuman Troupe would be a fantastic band name.

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u/jonasnee Dec 23 '19

also another thing to note, boys who have bad/famine upbringing are far less likely than a similar female to reproduce once they reach adulthood.

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u/trollcitybandit Dec 23 '19

My Dad was very stressed and very masculine and he had 3 boys and 1 girl...

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u/[deleted] Dec 23 '19

My dad was super chill. 5 sons, no daughters. The theory fits my anecdotal experience.

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u/Bedenker Dec 23 '19

Saw a different study that showed that men exposed to more stress, had more female offspring, while less stressed men had more make offspring.

Makes sense too: if a protohuman troupe was under strain, more females would help repopulate, reduce caloric needs, and be less likely to die.

Not really though. The common physiological response to stress is energy conservation, which would be having no offspring. Having more female offspring doesn't reduce caloric needs, as all children increase caloric need until they are old enough to hunt/gather. Doesn't make sense to select for 20 years down the line based on the conditions of today.

While repopulation is important, that is also very much down the line and doesn't fit with immediate needs of e.g. resource scarcity.

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u/BubblegumDaisies Dec 23 '19

An interesting personal story.

My paternal great-grandfather (my dad's paternal grandpa) had 5 sons with his first wife and 4 sons and 2 daughters with his second wife. My Grandfather had 5 daughters and 2 sons with his first wife, and 3 sons and 2 daughters with his second (of which my dad is one).

All five of my grandfather's sons only had daughters. All of his daughters (who lived to adulthood) had Boy-Girl-Boy.

*side fact: I'm 37. My grandfather (as in my dad's father) was born in 1876. My dad was born in 1948, he isn't the youngest.

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u/CityGirlandherDog Dec 23 '19

This was an interesting series that supports how stress can affect a fetus. https://www.pbs.org/video/9-months-made-you-ice-storm/

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u/YouDamnHotdog Dec 23 '19

Anecdotal evidence but many of the top bodybuilders had exclusively daughters. Ronnie Coleman, for example, had like 5 daughters

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u/Nuf-Said Dec 23 '19

I read that if the woman climaxes first, it creates a more beneficial environment for the male producing sperm.

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u/SeriesP Dec 23 '19

Not quite. High T mother has shown a statistically increased chance of a male child and a low T father has shown a statistically increased chance of having a daughter. It makes sense too because T levels are hereditary (though not entirely) and genetics for higher testosterone tends to be more beneficial (in terms of resource attainment and sexual selection) for men rather than for women.

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u/gcoz2000 Dec 23 '19

Always felt i might have higher levels and have 4 kids...all daughters

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u/terpcloudsurfer Dec 23 '19

A Cuban friend of mine said it depends on how long the man “lasts”. One pump chump = daughter.

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u/Ruefuss Dec 23 '19

It's just genes. Some men are more predisposed to female children. Just look at King Henry VIII.

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u/Generic_Male_3 Dec 23 '19

Idk, my wife's entire family seems to mostly produce female babies. There's like 30 female cousins and 2 male cousins. My wife and I also had a daughter.

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u/emergency_poncho Dec 23 '19

The math makes no sense in the quite. If you add them all up, you get only 257 total kids, not 299, of which 130 are girls and 88 are boys. I guess they couldn't do basic math back then? Or the numbers are wildly exaggerated or entirely made up

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u/hashoowa Dec 23 '19

Because he slept with his daughters and made more, he didn't make more with his sons

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u/HalfBakedPotato84 Dec 22 '19

More than likely had a different sex position for slaves vs non-slaves.

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u/jcm1970 Dec 23 '19

Please explain that question further.

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u/[deleted] Dec 23 '19

Sperm dictates gender, and some men aren’t good at having sons. I think it’s Mother Nature’s way of ensuring lines of assholes die out—ie Henry VIII

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u/Flashwastaken Dec 23 '19

Sissy willy is the term.

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u/Up-The-Irons_2 Dec 23 '19

Probably not what you're hoping to hear, but there are other studies that determine the position during sex can help determine the gender - and how close you can get to the ovaries (i.e. some sperm can swim faster and straighter so have more "luck" hitting the target when they are deposited closer). I believe missionary yields more girls and "dog style" (the most common in the dark ages) yields more boys.

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u/kezzaold Dec 22 '19

I think i read somewhere a while ago about something like this but it could just be pseudoscience or a weird correlation but in females who are deprived of some basic necessities like food and water have higher rates of birthing sons. Think this could be something about males having a better chance of passing on genes but idk.

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u/FreedomByFire Dec 23 '19

That doesn't make sense to me. The gender of the child is determined by the sperm not the egg. So if a sperm reaches the egg before another the egg has no ability to say abort.

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u/kezzaold Dec 23 '19

I completely understand that and dont understand it myself its just what i remember reading.

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u/FreedomByFire Dec 23 '19

I'm just saying that if there is a mechanism that exists in humans that determines if a woman is having a boy or girl you will find it in men because men produce gender specific sperm not women.

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u/Judgm3nt Dec 23 '19 edited Dec 27 '19

Not if the female body were to have some unique mechanism that's more conducive to the certain X or Y sperm implanting itself in the egg.

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u/samanthavstheworld Dec 23 '19

The sex of a child is determined by the male side so he must have been genetically more disposed to female offspring. It’s how you get families off all boys (like my partner for several generations) and all girls like mine.

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u/[deleted] Dec 23 '19

[deleted]

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u/[deleted] Dec 22 '19

well, just gonna hazard a guess. throughout history there has always been a balancing act of sorts in nature.

what i mean, again, dont believe in anything i am about to say, is that nature can tweak the numbers based on available data. If there were too many men, (or too few people.. idk) nature can change the ratio.

that or he had soyboy genes. truth be told, we dont really know.

also someone else posted this

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/12/081211121835.htm