# Casual Sex in a medieval setting?



## James Wilson (Jan 12, 2020)

One of the things that we read backward into earlier times, including data at settings, is a casual attitude toward sex.  

TV and movie versions of fantasy novels often add these elements where they didn’t exist (thought not GoT).  Why were sexual mores so much more strict in almost all earlier cultures?  

For a young woman, sex was a danger, both literal and cultural.  Until little more than a century ago a woman had a cumulative 10% chance per child of dying in childbirth..though some managed 12 or 13 kids without dying.  It was a literal physical danger, because medicine was...let’s just say not good...for ages.  So what would we think of a man who casually tossed women into the danger zone?  What would we think of a woman who took that chance casually, without any thought of the danger?

Perhaps in your fantasy world you’ve already arranged for that.  You have healing orders that know everything about prenatal care and childbirth, so the danger is vastly diminished (this is so in my world, the Sundered Spheres).  Do those attitudes instantly vanish because the danger suddenly is less?  Do all churches suddenly decide that their teachings are wrong and abandon them?  Obviously, from our experience in our own world, that’s not the case.

So was casual sex common in medieval times?  It was for the wealthy and powerful.  They could afford to pay off the mother of a bastard or indemnify her father if she died in childbirth.  The middle classes?  Rare.  What we call morality today largely grew from the middle class of artisans, soldiers and merchants.  Lower class?  Also rare, except when the lord was enjoying his droit de seigneur.  However prostitution was common and accepted, if officially frowned upon by the Church, but I once had the excellence and utility of prostitution explained to me by a very Catholic lady who went to mass twice a day.  Her husband looked quite shame-faced but she was burning with fervor.  

So casual sex between strangers was so rare as to be almost non-existent except among the most powerful.  Since a noblewoman would literally be tested for virginity on her wedding night in many cultures it wasn’t exactly something that she would casually toss away, unless it was the king or the price doing the seducing.  

This is not to say that there can’t be a rationale in your fantasy world for sexual casualness that mirrors our current culture (at least on campus).  But if you want to make your world plausible, you need to think of a rationale.  I was pretty excited to watch the Shanara series recently, and when they threw in a casual roll in the hay for two of the main characters, I was done.  It ruins the illusion to see modern mores in a non-modern setting.  

Don’t ruin the illusion.  Think it through first.


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## Insolent Lad (Jan 12, 2020)

Modern historians largely consider _droit de seigneur_ to be a myth, though I've no doubt the lord of the manor would have found plenty enough willing partners.

However, I consider the attitude to sex in the past to be more a matter of economics than aught else, directly related to a woman's value as a commodity. In a society of interlinking alliances and mutual obligations, marriage helped hold things together. That's not a resource to squander!


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## skip.knox (Jan 13, 2020)

>So casual sex between strangers was so rare as to be almost non-existent except among the most powerful.
I'm not entirely sure how sex between strangers can be anything other than casual. I suppose it could be quite earnest.

There's a confusion of terms here. There's simply no way to measure the frequency of sex between strangers. It's not the sort of thing that got recorded. Sex between strangers is not at all the same thing as extramarital or premarital sex. Those were not at all unusual at every level of society, right down to your local village. Emmanuel Leroy Ladurie's book _Montaillou_ has some examples, but there are whole books on medieval sexual practices. 

Prostitution is another whole field that has also had excellent research in the past forty years or so. People readily turn to cities for examples, but once you move outside the city, things get interesting. The whole matter is murky, but we can certainly say there was sex for recompense in rural areas as well as in urban. You can get an idea of the complexity by considering the wide range of sexual relations humans manage to get up to, versus the legal definition of prostitution and how that gets recorded in documents, and the social perception of prostitution and how that gets reflected in literature and other sources.

And yes, most fantasy novels don't venture into such matters, preferring to take the easy stereotypes and tropes. It's another area where much good writing could be done.


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## Radav (Jan 26, 2020)

Having children is a great way of making labourers for the fields without actually paying them. Children both had a great value and little value, depending on how useful they were. If you even had a child for long in the first place. The level of deaths among infants in the past, both far and recent, would be enough to bring our modern world to its knees in horror. To them it was the norm.

Basically what I'm getting at is a child was not the financial burden as might be thought of today by some. I don't think the risk of death of the mother was high enough to dissuade either. You go to the tavern. You get drunk. Things happen.


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## Pemry Janes (Jan 26, 2020)

skip.nox's knowledge on medieval matters is far greater than mine. But if I recall right, medieval bathhouses were seen as dens of sin. Apparently people liked to do more than just washing in them.


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## skip.knox (Jan 26, 2020)

>were seen as dens of sin.
Now, a bathhouse is right in my wheelhouse. Sorry, couldn't resist.

Bathhouses were seen ... ah, but by whom? That ol' passive voice, right?  Bathhouses were perfectly legitimate, often run by the city itself or at least licensed and supervised. Not dens of sin at all. Then along comes (drumroll, please) the Protestant Reformation. And _nobody_ expects the Protestant Reformation!

It's with the reformers that we move from the occasional huff or puff about bathhouses (the most common medieval complaint was about gambling) to a constant outcry about ... yes, about sin! Especially by the so-called Second Reformation (later 16thc), we get both Protestant and Catholic reformers on a campaign to discredit and shut down bathhouses. Given the lack of internal plumbing or even bathtubs at this point, it's hard to see this as a great leap forward in civic hygiene. But hey, you know: sin!


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## skip.knox (Jan 26, 2020)

Radav said:


> Having children is a great way of making labourers for the fields without actually paying them.


True, but they are not without cost. Every child grows up and must be settled. The girls married off (and a dowry provided), the boys given land or else sent out into the cold world with next to nothing. The trick was having the right number of children. Too few and you might have to hire a man. Too many, and you can't feed them all.

And the arithmetic was a bit different in the towns, where we have some actual statistics (at least by the 15thc). There Herlihy and others have shown that couples would have children later during hard economic times, mainly through the device of marrying later. We can see it in the countryside as well, but good demographic data don't come around there until the 17thc or so.

That said, I agree with Radav that modern notions about children and families in the Middle Ages are usually off the mark. The reality was more complex and way more interesting.

So now I have to wonder: how would this extend to non-humans in a fantasy world? We could have dwarves or orcs regard their children as little more than draft horses. We could have elves or trolls procreate so rarely that a child becomes a prized village possession. There's gotta be some story possibilities in there.


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## Pemry Janes (Jan 27, 2020)

skip.knox said:


> >were seen as dens of sin.
> Now, a bathhouse is right in my wheelhouse. Sorry, couldn't resist.
> 
> Bathhouses were seen ... ah, but by whom? That ol' passive voice, right?  Bathhouses were perfectly legitimate, often run by the city itself or at least licensed and supervised. Not dens of sin at all. Then along comes (drumroll, please) the Protestant Reformation. And _nobody_ expects the Protestant Reformation!
> ...


Yes, I wrote that and a minute later I realized I was way too vague. But I also misremembered, I thought the bathhouses were closed in the fifteenth century. I'd completely forgotten it was a consequence of the Reformation.

Maybe I should do some research and do blog post about it.


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## The Dark One (Jan 28, 2020)

Hmmm, as a devout medievalist I'm once again chafing against what I perceive to be uniform concepts of medieval practices when there was a full on spectrum both across Europe and across the millennium.

One very important thing to remember re sex is this: in an agrarian economy where fields and farming science were able to provide for a finite few, marriage was literally a licence to create new mouths, hence the hysteria (often) regarding bastards. Obviously, there were different rules re the bastards of nobles, but the bastards of the peasantry and middle class were despised.

Having said that, there were any number of exceptions to the general rule, not least after the great plague of the C14 when populations were decimated and new workers were needed to keep regions viable.

Ultimately though, men and women have urges and those urges will always be expressed. And sometimes, the very illicit nature of something makes it even more alluring.


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## Nighty_Knight (Jan 28, 2020)

I don’t see why there wouldn’t have been. Maybe not as much as our current time. But people like sex, regardless of the era. And uneducated, poor people have just as much as anyone else, and they end up plenty of unintentional children. 

Now, I’m sure plenty of people were weary of the consequences. But how many people never take those into account. Dumb people and smart but irresponsible people have been around since the beginning of mankind.


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## Miles Lacey (Jan 28, 2020)

In medieval Europe it was only the small elite who owned property who were actively encouraged - if not forced - to marry before having sex by the Church or by the laws of the land.  The key reason was that inheritance laws meant only legitimate children (i.e. those born within marriage) were allowed to inherit property.  People without property almost never married so the requirement to be monogamous simply did not exist. 

It also needs to be kept in mind that there were a lot of restrictions as to whom a person could have sex with and in many cases having sex with the wrong person could have deadly consequences.  These could include a woman during her menstrual cycle, a person from a different class or a person with a dormant or non-diagnosed disease.  Thus, the very notion of casual sex as we would understand it today would've been meaningless at the time.  A person couldn't just walk into a tavern and have sex with whomever they wanted, no matter what the average movie or fantasy video game would have you believe.

For non-property owning people having sex with more than one partner wasn't as foolish as it might seem.  Chances were very good that a woman would die in childbirth or shortly afterwards and the majority of children did not make it to adulthood (which was normally defined as 13 for girls and 16 for boys) so having sex with a multitude of people ensured at least some of the children would survive long enough to become a valuable asset on the landowner's property or wherever else they might've worked.

A useful guide to medieval society is provided by _The Fifteenth Century 1399-1485 _by E F Jacob (Oxford University Press, 1961).  It's particularly good in that it doesn't just focus on the top levels of medieval English society but also what life was like for the people at the very bottom such as the peasants.  Another useful book is Ian Mortimer's _The Time Traveller's Guide to Medieval England _(Vintage Books, 2009).


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## skip.knox (Jan 28, 2020)

>People without property almost never married so the requirement to be monogamous simply did not exist.
This goes against pretty much everything I've ever read. Do you have a source for this? I'm interested.

I'm not sure what the OP means by "casual" in this context. Perhaps James Wilson is still around and could elaborate. But I do agree that "casual sex" would have a different connotation in the Middle Ages. I don't know that this actual phrase, or even a cognate, ever appears in the texts.


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## Miles Lacey (Jan 29, 2020)

skip.knox said:


> >People without property almost never married so the requirement to be monogamous simply did not exist.
> This goes against pretty much everything I've ever read. Do you have a source for this? I'm interested.
> 
> I'm not sure what the OP means by "casual" in this context. Perhaps James Wilson is still around and could elaborate. But I do agree that "casual sex" would have a different connotation in the Middle Ages. I don't know that this actual phrase, or even a cognate, ever appears in the texts.



The term "casual sex" simply did not exist at the time.  There were various words used to describe sex outside marriage of which fornication was one.  However marriage among people who didn't have property or possessions to pass on was rare.  This was the case in 15th Century England.  .I cited the E F Jacob book as a reference.


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## CupofJoe (Jan 29, 2020)

Slightly off topic but my mother grew up in a rural part of Ireland in the 1930s. Her mother was very proud of the fact that all her children [my mother being the youngest] were conceived in wedlock. The same could not be said for the eldest child of most of the families around, if family lore was to be accepted as true. My mother thought it not unusual for a couple to get married after the woman was pregnant but before the child was born.


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## The Dark One (Jan 29, 2020)

Miles Lacey said:


> The term "casual sex" simply did not exist at the time.  There were various words used to describe sex outside marriage of which fornication was one.  However marriage among people who didn't have property or possessions to pass on was rare.  This was the case in 15th Century England.  .I cited the E F Jacob book as a reference.



I seriously do not know where you got this from, but marriage was a quintessential medieval institution - a sacrament - one of the pinnacles of life during the Age of Faith. There may have been occasional times and places over a 1000 years across Europe where it was less important (like post plague England for example) but for the most part it was something to which most adults aspired.

See above for my cognate comments on sex during the period.


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## FifthView (Jan 29, 2020)

Barbara A. Hanawalt's _The Ties That Bound: Peasant Families in Medieval England_ is a great resource for exploring sexuality, marriage, and other related customs/realities of medieval England. I'm not sure how well mainland Europe and other areas of the world hold up under this lens, but I'd bet it's probably close.

Unwed sex, the importance of marriage for peasants and nobles alike, etc. etc.


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## skip.knox (Jan 29, 2020)

It's been years since I read Jacob, but I just ordered it from ABE Books. I'll echo on Hanawalt; she has also _Growing Up in Medieval London_ which is quite good. I can cite a half-dozen other sources, for Italy, Germany, France, but I'm really curious to know what Jacob says on this. There's no sense in arguing until we have the cited source in hand. And I don't mean to argue to prove anything, but only because I know others come to these threads and wouldn't want to have anything too confusing to persist.

And I want to reiterate the central point here: the term "casual sex" is modern. One cannot apply it directly to the Middle Ages without some modifications and nuance. Sex out of wedlock is more easily defined, but the OP was asking about medieval attitudes, which is murky business all the way round.


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## Demesnedenoir (Jan 29, 2020)

Yeah, in one of my cultures, marriage is more likely the consequence of sex than anything else, except maybe for arranged marriages among the nobility. Sex before marriage is expected... sex before being WILLING to marry your partner would be frowned upon.  However you look at it, there’s no stigma attached to being pregnant before marriage or even having the child, but economics along with social pressure would push marriage.



CupofJoe said:


> Slightly off topic but my mother grew up in a rural part of Ireland in the 1930s. Her mother was very proud of the fact that all her children [my mother being the youngest] were conceived in wedlock. The same could not be said for the eldest child of most of the families around, if family lore was to be accepted as true. My mother thought it not unusual for a couple to get married after the woman was pregnant but before the child was born.


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## skip.knox (Jan 29, 2020)

>no stigma attached to being pregnant before marriage
This was, as near as we can tell, the case in much of rural medieval Europe, but not the having the child part. You got married before the child was born, to keep the child legitimate. Since civil marriages were both quick and easy, this could be done. Having the marriage sit well with family and community was the greater challenge. If all approved, then the marriage was simply the finishing touch. When the parish registers begin to speak, we can find plenty of examples of births happening well short of nine months after the marriage.


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## FifthView (Jan 29, 2020)

skip.knox said:


> And I want to reiterate the central point here: the term "casual sex" is modern. One cannot apply it directly to the Middle Ages without some modifications and nuance. Sex out of wedlock is more easily defined, but the OP was asking about medieval attitudes, which is murky business all the way round.



I think it is murkier because the OP specifically introduced the subject of secondary worlds and seemed to suggest that an entirely created world must resemble our own history—not only that, but presumably a medieval European history.

But I'm not sure that modern attitudes are less murky, tbh, so...


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## skip.knox (Jan 29, 2020)

To be fair to the OP, who really ought to stop by once in a while, I did not read the OP as suggesting an entirely created world needed to resemble anything at all. I read it as he had already made his choices but was curious about the historical reality. We've wandered around a bit since then.


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## FifthView (Jan 30, 2020)

skip.knox said:


> I did not read the OP as suggesting an entirely created world needed to resemble anything at all.



Skip, there were a few areas where the OP seemed to suggest this. Here's one:



James Wilson said:


> This is not to say that there can’t be a rationale in your fantasy world for sexual casualness that mirrors our current culture (at least on campus). But if you want to make your world plausible, you need to think of a rationale. I was pretty excited to watch the Shanara series recently, and when they threw in a casual roll in the hay for two of the main characters, I was done. *It ruins the illusion to see modern mores in a non-modern setting.*



The default had already been outlined. I.e., a default based on an understanding (however accurate or not; I'm not judging here) of medieval European culture. So to me this says that created fantasy worlds really _ought_ to resemble our own historical world _unless some rationale is created to justify the departure. 
_
There is also an assumption here that a created world _won't need_ a rationale for looking like our historical medieval Europe. In other words, the assumed default is self-evident? But I'm not sure it is self-evident for any other world but our own, heh. Behaviors, mores, customs, history, cultures and the like can be quite different in a created fantasy world, and the resulting attitudes towards casual sex may veer away from the general attitudes a medieval European culture had. I don't believe all these factors need explicating in fine detail within the story, as if to _justify_ the existence of those attitudes.



James Wilson said:


> Perhaps in your fantasy world you’ve already arranged for that. You have healing orders that know everything about prenatal care and childbirth, so the danger is vastly diminished (this is so in my world, the Sundered Spheres). Do those attitudes instantly vanish because the danger suddenly is less? Do all churches suddenly decide that their teachings are wrong and abandon them? Obviously, from our experience in our own world, that’s not the case.



"Do all churches...." —well, but maybe the fantasy world doesn't have churches, eh? At least, no Christian or Muslim or other Earthly churches? Perhaps the fantasy world has several different support layers—not only relating to health, but also economic—and various customs making unplanned pregnancies less dire a situation than may have been experienced by many medieval women on Earth? Or maybe the story taking place in the fantasy world is limited in scope, showing only _these_ few people engaged in various behaviors, and as there were exceptions  and variation throughout our own Earth history, these individual stories can take many routes?



James Wilson said:


> sexual casualness that mirrors our current culture (at least on campus)



Here is a place that points at the murkiness of sexual attitudes in our own world, after all. Campus culture is a very tiny portion of our larger culture. I'm assuming we are talking about Western cultures. While I do think that, thanks to various factors, attitudes are generally somewhat different now than even 60, 70 years ago, I'm not sure that our wider culture is _greatly_ more sexually casual than it was 60, 70 years ago—at least not as reflected in actual behavior. Attitudes might be a bit more relaxed, but actual sexual behaviors a little less relaxed than attitudes?  But if we are going to use college campuses as a guide, heh, then that's an unfair comparison unless the story takes place in some sort of similarly elite or special, limited milieu.

There's also the question of whether we should be striving for historical accuracy, historical fact, or striving for relatable stories. I mean we don't write in medieval English after all.


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## The Dark One (Jan 30, 2020)

Casual sex - in the modern sense - was made possible by the pill, the greatest change in male/female relations since the dawn of time.

But people have always been driven by their urges, it's just that there were (potentially) consequences in the past, hence the importance of marriage. There were plenty of times and places during the medieval period when a couple wanting to marry had to wait until a house became available because the village could only produce enough for a finite number of mouths. It was an economic driven morality.


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## Insolent Lad (Jan 30, 2020)

There is another factor here that hasn't been brought up, one that became of considerable importance largely after the close of the Middle Ages, and that is venereal diseases. Things certainly underwent some changes in Europe with the introduction of syphilis at the close of the 15th Century. If folks know sex might kill them they may be a little less likely to indulge in casual encounters. Obviously, this did not stop a great many, considering how widespread the infections were.

Anyway, the existence of venereal diseases in both real and fantasy settings would be bound to have some effect on the culture. I can't think of reading much of this sort of thing in fantasy however, though I believe Samuel Delany did some sort of Aids-like illness in one of the Neveryon books.


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## Miles Lacey (Feb 1, 2020)

The biggest problem with E F Jacob's book about the Fifteenth Century is the lack of an Index that lists anything other than places, battles and people.  While looking through Jacob's book yesterday  I came across an interesting thing: people were charged a fee or levy for getting married.  This would've almost certainly deterred many people from getting married, especially if they were poor.


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## The Dark One (Feb 1, 2020)

People still pay for a marriage license. it deters no-one.


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## Insolent Lad (Feb 2, 2020)

The cost of a license may deter the poor from having a legal/official marriage but they would go ahead and live together in a common law marriage.


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## skip.knox (Feb 2, 2020)

Miles Lacey said:


> The biggest problem with E F Jacob's book about the Fifteenth Century is the lack of an Index that lists anything other than places, battles and people.  While looking through Jacob's book yesterday  I came across an interesting thing: people were charged a fee or levy for getting married.  This would've almost certainly deterred many people from getting married, especially if they were poor.



Were charged by whom? Did it say? I'm pretty sure the Church did not charge, though tipping the priest (not to be confused with tipping the cow) has a long history. As for civil authorities, who in an isolated village would even be the authority? And how would they know? That goes even more for the urban poor. Maybe Jacobs has the particulars, but I'd bet a cup of tea he didn't provide them. I'm always suspicious of such generalities. The only time you should make a blanket statement is when it's about blankets.


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## FifthView (Feb 2, 2020)

skip.knox said:


> Were charged by whom? Did it say? I'm pretty sure the Church did not charge, though tipping the priest (not to be confused with tipping the cow) has a long history. As for civil authorities, who in an isolated village would even be the authority? And how would they know? That goes even more for the urban poor. Maybe Jacobs has the particulars, but I'd bet a cup of tea he didn't provide them. I'm always suspicious of such generalities. The only time you should make a blanket statement is when it's about blankets.



I've finally taken my own advice and skimmed through references to marriage in Hanawalt's book, heh.   I've learned a new word:  *merchet*.

Apparently the practice arose as a consequence of *manorialism*. The lord owned the land and also, by default, the peasant tenants who lived on the land. They were not slaves per se, but they had to pay the lord, often by their labor and products. Whenever a daughter was to be married, this represented a potential loss in labor for the lord, so someone would have to pay a merchet fee to the lord as compensation.  Hanawalt wrote this interesting tidbit:

The merchet payments from Ramsey Abbey's _Liber Gersumarum_ show the peasant marriage market at work. While the document does not record all marriages between 1398 and 1458, and is therefore not complete, the 426 merchet cases recorded present the broad outline of interested parties in marriages and the amounts they paid for merchet. The bride's father paid in 33 percent of the cases, and the bride paid the merchet in the same percentage of cases. The bridegroom paid in 26 percent of the cases, and another person, such as the bride's mother, paid in 8 percent of the cases. Four categories of licenses appeared in the records. The most typical (37 percent) was for a naif (villein) of the village to marry another naif of the same village. Licenses to marry people outside the village comprised 26 percent, and marriage to a freeman constituted 16 percent. In all these cases the groom was specified. But in 21 percent of the cases only a general license to marry was purchased.  [Hanawalt, Barbara. _The Ties That Bound: Peasant Families in Medieval England_. Oxford University Press, 1986. p. 200]​Incidentally, four pages before that, Hanawalt also suggests that teenagers were less promiscuous than in modern times, with premarital pregnancies and bastardy being "infrequent (13 to 26 percent of all marriages)"—at least in the sixteenth century. She mentions however that, often, premarital pregnancy might have been desired:

Later studies have also shown that for most of these women a premarital pregnancy was a prelude to marriage and that conception may, indeed, have been necessary for the marriage to take place. Children were so important to the economy that a couple wanted to be sure of fertility before entering into a marriage. But some women had two or more illegitimate children, suggesting that a small subset of village women routinely engaged in illicit sex. The stigma of an illegitimate birth for either the mother or the child need not have been very strong in peasant society. [Ibid., 196]​I find these things to be fruitful considerations.

Heh.

I mean, in the context of building a fanciful world for a fantasy story. Merchet is something I would never have considered using, because I had no idea it existed. Now I think it could add some great layers, if not only to the world building but also for the plot and character conflict.


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## skip.knox (Feb 2, 2020)

Wonderful! This is precisely why I keep writing about history for fantasy writers. There's a rich substratum of ideas across that thousand year span that goes unrecognized by most fantasy writers. It's not easy to get at and there aren't really any books that speak to it, and anyway it's hard to predict what will prove useful from one writer to the next. I'm very glad you found something worth considering.


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## James Wilson (Feb 3, 2020)

Many good points, but it must be stated that the European medieval period is a very solid convention for fantasy in general, so what’s important about that is to not test the suspension of disbelief too much.  If you push the idea of 70 sexes that is current in some places today backward into a medieval setting it’s just not going to make sense.  The cultural order of the tie, exists for a reason and when it is overturned (by magic, for example) the repercussions should be reflected everywhere.  A hierarchal religion is essential to making a medieval setting work, its one reason why despite hundreds of D&D novels none of them is great.  Having a medieval setting with a pantheon of choose your own deities simply doesn’t work.  If there’s no church, feudalism fails.  Despite all its bad points, feudalism was an extremely stable system that last hundreds of years in many nations.

While college culture is admittedly a tiny portion of II society, it is over represented in literature and especially in film, and it doesn’t question itself.  These self-righteous self-evident beliefs are often held uncritically and often just assumed to have always existed in all cultures.  Is not he existence of casual sex that breaks me out of the suspension of disbelief, but the lack of a rationale that takes time and place into account.  It’s like calling 20 men a brigade.  It just doesn’t fit unless it’s got a reason that is self-consistent with the setting.  

It's one of the things that bother me about the Game of Thrones series.  A gargantuan feudal system twenty times the size of Europe with nothing to hold it together.  Knights without any concept of chivalry, monks without religion, not even any cohesive morality allowing the practice of hypocrisy.  Doesn’t even have a Roman-style Pantheon.  Modern cynicism without anything to rebel against.  I mean where would we be without the Victorians to sneer at?


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## skip.knox (Feb 3, 2020)

I'm glad James Wilson has returned to the thread, having started it. Alas, he still hasn't said what he meant by "casual sex" in the first place, so it's hard to formulate a clear response. Even so, plenty of interesting ideas have been proffered.

I'm having trouble sorting some of the statements. For instance, "...the idea of 70 sexes..."  Do you perhaps mean the stereotype of sex during the 1970s? Another example is "The cultural order of the tie..."  That one has me stumped. But certainly if we make fundamental changes to human sexual relations and social values, the repercussions should be reflected everywhere. I'll drink to that, and I'll agree that many fantasy novels don't follow through on the implications of what sometimes look like arbitrary choices. That doesn't bother me too much. I look to the best for models, not to the mediocre.

As a medieval historian I have to disagree about the comments on medieval society. A hierarchical religion (a muddy phrase) is not essential to making a medieval setting work. Much of medieval life went on without reference to religion. The statement about a medieval pantheon will comes as a surprise to the denizens of Altearth, where the Roman pantheon persisted along with the Empire (it's my fantasy setting). Rather than stating that something simply doesn't work, I'd rather say it doesn't work for me, or that I've yet to see it work well. That leaves the door open for an aspiring author to surprise me.

And then there's feudalism again. It might turn into a hot button for me; I keep a spray bottle handy. But leaving aside the academic arguments about feudalism generally and feudalism as a system in particular, there's no case to be made for it to be dependent upon or derived from religion. It was secular in origin and expression.

I'll finish with my disclaimer: I make these points not to criticize the OP but with an eye to others who read these threads in the future. I feel obliged to offer another point of view on matters that touch close to my professional home. People are free to disagree, of course. The gods, all of 'em, know that historians disagree among themselves, perennially.


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## James Wilson (Feb 3, 2020)

By 70 sexes I mean the current list of sexes in addition to male and female.  I’ve read the list, most of which go from ridiculous to preposterous but some people believe and so long as they don’t try to force me to believe, I don’t really care. 

You’re right that feudalism as a system has many definitions and most of them aren’t extremely clear.  Feudalism as a overarching social order without the Roman and to a lesser degree Greek churches would not offer the social stability that made it work for so long.  I do not subscribe to the notion that economics rule everything.  A perfect economic system still would not solve almost any social problems.  So when I’m referring to feudalism I mean the culture, not just the economic system.  The church was integral to the system, in the same way the caste system keeps people in line in India (or did).  

When I use the term casual, I mean it literally: without definite or serious intention; careless or offhand; passing — seeming or tending to be indifferent to what is happening; apathetic; unconcerned — without emotional intimacy or commitment

All those things.

In our present time cynicism and outright nihilism are seen as smart, but in a time when demons stalk and priests declaim and knights fight and lords lord, it might be a bit of a bigger deal.  Treating WOMEN as mere nothings might be commonplace, but it doesn’t follow that the women in question agree and are reconciled to be treated with all the love and caring of a p-rn addict for his Kleenex box.  Would some be so?  Of course.  My Sundered Spheres has many places where women are treated as third class citizens after men and horses.  The city of Fenez is dedicated to the Rabbit God and is essentially a huge collection of temples where priestesses are really just prostitutes, and of course it’s very popular among sailors.  It’s not that sex shouldn’t exist in fantasy novels, or that casual sex shouldn’t, it just needs a rationale that fits time and place.  Of course a sailor that follows the Three Divined in the Sundered Spheres shouldn’t be messing with these ‘priestesses,’ because he took an oath at his Third Birth that he wouldn’t.  However if he does, he’ll try to keep it secret, a hypocrisy common to all religions, because he doesn’t want to be known as an oath breaker.  He didn’t want the church ladies sniffing at him.

I hope that clears it up a bit, at least what I was getting at.


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## skip.knox (Feb 3, 2020)

I'm unfamiliar with the list.

>The church was integral to the system, in the same way the caste system keeps people in line in India
Well the RCC (Roman Catholic Church) certainly did not keep people "in line". When one looks for very long at medieval religion it quickly becomes evident that the RCC was very far from being monolithic and usually had its hands full dealing with its own priests and monks. 

But I'm wandering away from the OP.

There certainly was casual sex in the Middle Ages. We can document it in a variety of ways, and scores of historians have done excellent work in the field since at least the 1970s. That said, medieval attitudes toward sex (note the plural) are not the same as modern attitudes. But fretting too much about that moves us into historicity rather than into writing fiction. I like to use the MIddle Ages for inspiration rather than something to adhere to. There are ways to thrust modern attitudes into past times--usually, but not always, for comedic effect. Everything from _A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court_ to the movie _A Knight's Tale_. 

For me, it's always story first. A well-told story can persuade me of anything, and leave me hungry for more.


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## The Dark One (Feb 4, 2020)

By and large though, keeping people in line is exactly what the medieval church did. There may have been occasional issues (schisms even) with the church's own officials and other adventurers, but for the most part this is simply explained by the usual rule - ie, the majority of people just want a simple life so leave leadership to those who are compelled to lead. Those who want to lead will always justify their strategies and treacheries - somehow - and the very small part of the truth that the little people ever get to see or hear is so full of spin that the little people either file it away with their media driven prejudices or simply don't care...as long as they can get on with what's left of their lives.

Looking back from the educated vantage of the present, we can easily see how the benighted hordes were manipulated into compliance. 

What will the elite historiographers of the C25 say about us?


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## Prince of Spires (Feb 4, 2020)

James Wilson said:


> it must be stated that the European medieval period is a very solid convention for fantasy in general, so what’s important about that is to not test the suspension of disbelief too much. I


It's not actually the European medieval period (whatever that is) that is the convention in fantasy. But rather, it is the Hollywood idea of what medieval Europe was like that is the convention. And there is a big difference between the two. The average reader will know little to nothing about real medieval life. They will have had a couple of history lessons in school which they slept through, which focused on the big events for their own culture (you find little about Byzantium in a lot of western europe history classes...). They talk about the wars, border movements, important battles and that sort of thing. They don't go into detail about what life like a peasant was like. Or how life differed between someone in southern Spain in 800 AD and someone in Scandinavia in 1300. In short, your average reader will have no clue about any of it, except for what they learned from movies and books.

So, as long as you don't go into detail about something, a reader will overlay the Hollywood idea on your medieval setting. Which means you can get away with a lot, including casual sex (as far as the average reader is concerned).

Which is not to say that you should. As everyone likes pointing out, there's a lot more to even just medieval Europe than just England from something like 1200-1400 overlaid with modern cultural ideas. But keep in mind that people will start from their Hollywood image. And anything that deviates from that needs to be "explained".


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## FifthView (Feb 4, 2020)

I tend to look at vertical vs horizontal "controls" and place much, much more emphasis on horizontal controls than on vertical controls—most of the time.

Vertical:  Top-down control; central authority has enforcers dispersed widely enough to maintain control over a single given aspect or many  aspects of society; the rules are established up top somewhere, e.g. a supreme leader or council/legislature of sorts.

Horizontal: While top-down controls might exist, they are not as strong as what amounts to _peer pressure_.  Using religion as an example, the public shaming or ostracism—or threat of these—acts as a control on the populace. The individuals doing this may feel strongly about whatever top-down controls exist, for instance concerning various dogmas and dictates an authority disseminates, or else they may not even think in those terms but habitually reinforce or police the attitudes and behaviors of one another. The point is that they are not official enforcers or members of that central authority. They're just other citizens living in that society.

There are places for both paradigms in stories. Sometimes creating a strong vertical control will be _the thing_ the story needs. Other times, simply having strong horizontal controls will build the world and the conflicts a story needs. And of course there can be both, heh. For instance, you might create a world with a strong central church theocracy but set it in a time period in which ascendant mercantilism is creating new "rules" and thus horizontal controls that come into conflict with those vertical rules of the theocracy.

Applying these ideas to the issue in this thread...I suspect that medieval Europe's churches wished for ever greater vertical controls but that most of that work had to be done horizontally. Sure, there were local parishes and the like; but I'm not sure how well they were designed to exert force over the populace except through the lord of the land (pun intended) who may have co-opted the church when not being co-opted himself, and anyway a lot of villages were simply very far removed from the center of societies (or wherever the main authority had established itself.)




The Dark One said:


> By and large though, keeping people in line is exactly what the medieval church did. There may have been occasional issues (schisms even) with the church's own officials and other adventurers, but for the most part this is simply explained by the usual rule - ie, the majority of people just want a simple life so leave leadership to those who are compelled to lead. Those who want to lead will always justify their strategies and treacheries - somehow - and the very small part of the truth that the little people ever get to see or hear is so full of spin that the little people either file it away with their media driven prejudices or simply don't care...as long as they can get on with what's left of their lives.
> 
> Looking back from the educated vantage of the present, we can easily see how the benighted hordes were manipulated into compliance.
> 
> What will the elite historiographers of the C25 say about us?


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## FifthView (Feb 4, 2020)

skip.knox said:


> For me, it's always story first. A well-told story can persuade me of anything, and leave me hungry for more.



For me, an awful lot doesn't need explanation or justification if the story is engaging. For instance, I enjoyed the two most recent Narnia movies, especially _Prince Caspian_, and I didn't need an explanation of why/how animals can talk in that world or why there should be multiple kings and queens—brothers and sisters!—in a single kingdom.

Different people will have different tastes, different expectations, and differing areas involving suspension of disbelief. For instance, I tried watching the new Dark Crystal show on Netflix and just couldn't get past the first episode. Too unreal-looking. Mostly, there was no dust or dirt anywhere, on any set; it was all pristine, owing to the way the movie was made. Also, I had a little trouble, though less, seeing the puppets talk but not seeing any part of the face move other than mouth and eyes heh.  Anyway.

Sex is a touchy subject for lots of people. I suspect that someone who believes there are only two sexes and/or genders will be troubled by any depiction to the contrary, or at least will require an explanation of the third and fourth, etc., sexes/genders...And I wonder once again whether differences in why we pick up a fantasy novel set in medievalish times, in the first place,  are differences that we have any hope of isolating and agreeing to recognize. Is it the desire to see ye old standards reborn? Dunno. I'm perpetually fascinated by this question.

All this said, however, I do agree that the story comes first. I also would admit that I have certain button issues, or reactions, that would prevent me from reading some stories. Casual sex in a medieval world is not one of those issues, although I suppose now that it is for others.


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## The Dark One (Feb 4, 2020)

Don't forget that people grew up during the Age of Faith in a milieu that would have seemed self-evidently just and correct to those who sucked in its tenets with their mother's milk. The vast majority would never have queried the Divinely Appointed Order - it would never have even occurred to them - as the parish priest reminded them of their faith and duties and village life was built around the Saints' festivals.

This is both a vertical and horizontal compulsion - the very same compulsion that all people feel growing up with the natural law / superego peculiar to their own cultures.

It is one of humankind's great tragedies that everyone can see the manifest prejudice and injustice in other cultures, but can never see the same injustice in their own.


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## FifthView (Feb 4, 2020)

Sure, I think a lot of people would have done this, and reacted to this, habitually, unquestioningly.

I do think a large number might have "slipped" quite a bit, much like modern Americans (or other Earthly inhabitants) occasionally driving over the speed limit, or drinking and driving, or fibbing on some tax form or on an employment application...

For me, the question of _whose_ eyes must be avoided is simply too full and powerful a prompt, heh, whether the control is horizontal or vertical.



The Dark One said:


> Don't forget that people grew up during the Age of Faith in a milieu that would have seemed self-evidently just and correct to those who sucked in its tenets with their mother's milk. The vast majority would never have queried the Divinely Appointed Order - it would never have even occurred to them - as the parish priest reminded them of their faith and duties and village life was built around the Saints' festivals.
> 
> This is both a vertical and horizontal compulsion - the very same compulsion that all people feel growing up with the natural law / superego peculiar to their own cultures.
> 
> It is one of humankind's great tragedies that everyone can see the manifest prejudice and injustice in other cultures, but can never see the same injustice in their own.


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## The Dark One (Feb 4, 2020)

FifthView said:


> For me, an awful lot doesn't need explanation or justification if the story is engaging. For instance, I enjoyed the two most recent Narnia movies, especially _Prince Caspian_, and I didn't need an explanation of why/how animals can talk in that word or why there should be multiple kings and queens—brothers and sisters!—in a single kingdom.


I was always creeped out by the kings and queens being brothers and sisters in Narnia, and yet the reality of royal incest in ancient Egypt doesn't bother me at all.

I guess it's the mores of the cultures in which those narratives were generated. The Egyptians prized the purity (as they saw it) of bloodlines, whereas CS Lewis created Narnia in the C20. I've only read the first book, in which there was no sex - I daresay it's all entirely innocent - and yet, I couldn't help but imagine all implications of his creation.

CS Lewis would probably roll in his grave to read this thread.


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## skip.knox (Feb 4, 2020)

There's a bunch of interesting points brought up here. At the center, I'd like to suggest thinking in terms of influence rather than control, and of multiple centers (centers of influence, of authority, of power, etc.). Doing so makes room for nuance, which is where the good stories lie.

So on this topic of compliance, one has to ask: compliance with what? What specific practices were intended to be enforced? Church every Sunday? Taking communion? Public testimony? Once we've identified a few, then the question becomes by what means were these enforced, and by whom, and how often? These are things that can be documented. That way, when we say the Church kept people in line, we'll know what that means.

Fifth View's approach of vertical and horizontal is a good one, but I go back to my suggestion about multiple centers. Thanks to those power pyramids we all learned in high school (and even in college), we have a clear and convenient picture of one king with nobles beneath and commoners under that, with a parallel power structure that started with the pope at the top. That's deeply misleading. It was an ideal promulgated by many writers over the centuries, and one which various individuals and movements strove to make reality, but they usually fell far short of the mark. What you had in any one place and time was layers of authority overlapping and competing and even contradicting one another, none of them terribly effective save by fits and starts.

To reply to something specific: FifthView, local influence was not at all what the bishop or Rome would have hoped. We have many complaints about the ignorance of the parish priest. There are examples of priests who did not know Latin, who recited Mass and even the Creed by rote and who got even that wrong, so that he was speaking gibberish. The well-meaning bishop might bring in an educated man to serve as priest, but he was an outsider, not of the _pays_, and was ignored or even reviled by the villagers. So, yeah, the local priest might be an influencer, but he might be influencing in unorthodox directions. Maybe the reforming bishop could exert some authority, but it might also be that the local baron told him to keep his hands off. And anyway he and the bishop were cousins. And reformers from Rome might look at this and call it corruption, while the locals called it just good common sense. All that might seem comparatively innocuous, but it's also how the Cathar heresy managed to take deep root in Languedoc.

Short version: if you want to write about top-down authority and struggles against oppression, go modern or future. We live in the age of authoritarianism and imposed consistency. If you want to write about messy, overlapping, and contradictory orders that are inconsistent even internally and are erratic externally, then go medieval. It's also the age when relations were more personal than impersonal. IMO, GRRM actually does rather a good job of this. I'm less enthused by his storytelling, but the world building is pretty solid.


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## Nighty_Knight (Feb 9, 2020)

Keep in mind. Orgies were a thing back then. (Not a casual regular thing, but they did happen)

That’s all I wanted to add, just thought of it recently and thought I would throw it out there.


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## The Dark One (Feb 9, 2020)

Orgies were a thing in particular cultures at particular times. Certainly a big thing among the Vikings (involving both consenting and non-consenting participants), and rumoured to be a thing in Wiccan and even some monastic communities.

Bearing in mind also that classical Rome was not part of the medieval period.

I would distinguish between recreational sex (which has been around forever) and casual sex, which I'd suggest is very much a post-pill thing.


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## skip.knox (Feb 9, 2020)

>Orgies were a thing back then
Back when? Not sure what time period you're talking about. 

I'd love to see some sources from The Dark One. Monastic orgies? Viking orgies? Give us a lead or two!


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## The Dark One (Feb 9, 2020)

OK, off the top of my head... the Malleus Malificarum spoke of orgies with Satan. Henry VIII's commissioners seeking evidence worthy of monastic dissolution uncovered (so they said) numerous accounts of orgies. Both of these come at the beginning of the early modern period and both are of questionable veracity but they are surely evidence at least of rumour within the relevant period.

A favourite anecdote I came across in my own studies was of a witch hunter (maybe this was in the MM?) who on several occasions came across groups of women lying stupefied with broom handles inserted...erm… Anyway, I had to wonder, is this where the idea of witches flying broomsticks came from? If the broomsticks were daubed with a narcotic potion it may well have been ingested that way. That also would count as an orgy.


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## skip.knox (Feb 10, 2020)

So, the Malleus Maleficarum (Hammer of Witches) was published in 1487 and Henry went after the monasteries in the 1530s. Taking the whole thousand-year sweep of the Middle Ages, that's a pretty narrow window and it'd be worth talking about why we get references to orgies in that particular era. In much the same vein we get condemnations of bathhouses as places for ... unregulated sex, with perhaps orgies implied. 

Those particular examples, though, aren't documented cases of orgies, but are essentially literary inventions for socio-political purposes. One has to define orgy before being able to say one has found an example in the sources, and I don't believe this is the place to explore those kinds of details. There has been a good deal of research on the topic of medieval sex, so I'll let interested parties explore if they wish.

But examples of Roman-style orgies in the Middle Ages? I don't know of any, which of course doesn't mean they didn't happen. I'd be glad to hear of references.  To go back to the OP, it is not a historical question. "Casual sex" isn't a term that was used in the Middle Ages.


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## The Dark One (Feb 10, 2020)

Now now Skip, I'm the one who has consistently reminded people the medieval period was very far from a monoculture, so no need to throw that at me.

You asked for sources, so given that the printing press was only invented at the end of the medieval period (indeed it was a major reason for the end of the middle and the start of the early modern) surviving sources will be few. I gave a couple of sources that supported my assertion of the _rumour_ of orgiastic behavior, which I'm contending were just formalisations of long standing rumour. There are plenty of accounts of the lengths to which some Abbots went to dissuade the randy monks from getting at each other (or sometimes at local nuns) so Henry's commissioners would have had no trouble convincing their audience. I also said myself that both documents had to be regarded with some suspicion given the purposes for which they were created.

Interesting side note on the randy monks... I've had it claimed to me (I'm a lawyer) by a disgraced priest (who is in prison for a long, long time) that the vow of chastity applies only to women (to prevent priests having children) and that anything goes among men. I'm not suggesting his view is universal but it does explain a bit...


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## skip.knox (Feb 10, 2020)

I didn't mean to be throwing anything at anyone! 

By sources I meant secondary sources which, if academic, are in turn based on primary sources. I had in mind publications by John Boswell on homosexuality, or on sex and law by James Brundage, or the works of Ruth Karras. Those are all rather dated now (as am I!), so here's a biblography for those of you following along at home.
ENG505 Working Bibliography (Medieval Sex)
I'd say there's easily fifty books listed, and that bibliography is a decade old. In short, we know quite a bit about medieval sexuality, especially from the later Middle Ages.

I should probably repeat that this isn't aimed at anyone in particular, but is offered mainly to let people know that if they want to puruse further, there are ample resources. Most, alas, available only at your university library, but that's where all the good work is anyway.


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## Prince of Spires (Feb 11, 2020)

I'm wondering if the discussion should focus just on the medieval period. Yes, the OP (and topic title) mention the medieval setting. But is there a big difference between periods in the consequences of sex before the invention of birth control methods? Romans got just as pregnant and had about the same healthcare (and as such the same risks in childbirth). Same with the early modern period. The OP focuses on the dangers of pregnancy as a reason why people would not want to get pregnant. But if those dangers are the same across different periods, then all those periods can be used as input for the discussion. 

People's attitude towards sex changed throughout the years. But that just shows that the consequences and dangers have little effect on how people actually approach it. And that it wasn't the consequences, but cultural factors that determined how people viewed sex (casual or not). 

Which means that as a writer you can do pretty much whatever you want, as long as there's a solid cultural reason for doing so. You can go full roman orgies or go with the most pious, monogamous no sex before marriage society you want. Though it should be noted that in the latter case, it will still happen (just look at deeply religious communities today where pre-marital sex is forbidden), it will just be more hidden.


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## FifthView (Feb 11, 2020)

Prince of Spires said:


> People's attitude towards sex changed throughout the years. But that just shows that the consequences and dangers have little effect on how people actually approach it. And that it wasn't the consequences, but cultural factors that determined how people viewed sex (casual or not).



I agree.

Also, there's the problem of looking at a single topic through a single lens. Attitudes and cultures are more complex than that. Earlier today I read an article online that explored the way medieval attitudes (or knowledge, such as it was) about healthcare influenced attitudes toward sex. For example, instead of looking only through the prohibitive lens of medieval Christian doctrine re: sex, which would seem to limit the sex that occurred, consider also some of the wacky ideas about healthcare that may have influenced attitudes:  celibacy was considered dangerous to your health!  So limiting sex could go _too far_. (Here's the link to the article, for anyone interested:  Getting down and medieval: the sex lives of the Middle Ages | Aeon Essays)

But this returns to my original thoughts on the subject. A culture and society are far too complex to reduce to any sort of single lens view. This goes for fictional as well as historical societies. Sure, some generality can be made. Plus, we normally need to spend far more time telling a story than simply world building a fictional world, so broad strokes are sometimes needed. But a fictional world that doesn't also have X, Y, Z in its history and cultural development need not strictly follow the historical world that had those things. Too many factors combine to shape societies.


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## Prince of Spires (Feb 11, 2020)

FifthView said:


> A culture and society are far too complex to reduce to any sort of single lens view.


You could take this even further, a single person is far too complex to reduce to his culture. Culture will affect how a person makes his actions visible to the outside world, but not if he does something or not.

Simple example. In certain religious communities in the Netherlands it is (or was) socially not accepted to watch tv on Sundays. So, people would simply close their curtains and watch tv anyway. Same with casual sex. Orgies are, in the USA, taboo, especially if you're married and your wife doesn't know about you being in them. So, Tiger Woods hid the fact that he had them a lot (and had the subsequent fallout when the news came out).


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