Historical Slut: I know this may come as a shock but..
People in Medieval Europe liked sex! They had sex! They created art with sexual themes. They were not a bunch of prudes who just prayed to Jesus and the virgin Mary all day.
Books on sexuality:
- Sexuality in Medieval Europe: Doing Unto Others by Ruth Mazo Karras
- Common Women: Prostitution…
Most ideas we have about medieval sexuality come from what was written about it by the prudes in the victorian era. So of course they just wanted everyone to be as prudey as them.
Victorians were more obsessed with sex than people in the Medieval Europe…
Obsessed? Sure. But upper middle class types, the types who would have the luxury to study history and write their ideas about people of the past were prudes, at least in public. They’re the ones that imposed the idea of the innocent virgin and the chivalrous knight on the people of medieval England.
Sexuality was a lot more free 1000 years ago than it was 200 years ago.
The innocent virgin and chivalrous knight was around long before the Victorian era. You do see that going back to Medieval Europe. The Virgin Mary, while a fertility saint for some folks, was actually someone women were supposed to aspire to be… Virginity has been hurting women for thousands of years. The elites in victorian soceity actually did talk about sexuality. They were not less sexual in public, they just created neat ways to talk about sex without actually saying the word “sex.” We make the Victorian Era more oppressive and assbackwards than it really was to make us seem more “enlightened.”
Also I feel like the end point of all these arguments of “No this era was really obsessed with sex!” and “no this era glorified virginity!” is that those two outlooks can easily and usually do coexist within the same culture.
Almost like … our culture…
(Source: lipsredasroses)
