Let’s imagine that our time traveler goes back to, say, the Middle Ages and soon enough attracts the attention of some random medieval Joe/Jane. Yes, that kind of attention. They find a place where they can be alone and… would they have the same expectations as to what comes next, apart from the obvious ?
For the past few decades, porn has been easily available. So, our time traveler has, like most of us, at least heard of, probably seen and perhaps tried many sexual activities and positions. Let’s imagine that they spontaneously decide to give their new love interest some oral stimulation. Would medieval Joe/Jane be absolutely disgusted ? Completely confused ? Pleasantly surprised ? Totally blasé ? Same thing with positions. In my experience, missonary is probably the one that comes the most naturally at first. Then, you can spice things up from there. What if our time traveler suggested they tried from behind, or woman on top, or anything else, really ?
Just to be clear, the question is not whether these practices existed centuries ago. They did. The question is whether the average medieval Joe/Jane would have had as much knowledge of/experience with them as the average 2022 Joe/Jane.
The closest thing I can think of is some more primitive or conservative societies today. I’ve heard of a Muslim man who was enraged when his wife suggested oral sex, thinking she must have learned it from doing it with some other man before.
It would be interesting to know how very primitive societies today look at the act of procreation. I would guess that, for the most part, they would do the same things modern societies do concerning positions and oral gratification, etc. (paging Margaret Mead). Remember, the Greeks and Romans had some pretty wild orgies back in the day.
The most significant difference between medieval folks and us would be hygiene. I don’t think they looked at bathing the same way we do, which might be off-putting to some. Meh.
If you have seen the stone carvings at Indian temples, then you know that in ancient times, they knew all the combinations and permutations and all the positions.
That’s not meant as an insult of any kind. I was referring to tribes living in the deepest jungles with little or no contact with the outside world. I know they are studied when encountered, but I doubt researchers watch them 24X7 to see how they interact sexually, but I bet it’s not that different from us.
Lima, Peru, has a Museum of Inca History, which houses the Sala Erotica-a building with pornographic pottery. Sex acts in every permutation you can think of, both real and imagined. Some of it is pretty out there even by today’s standards.
Don’t know about medieval.peasants but Inca sculptors would not be surprised by your time traveller’s proposals.
Medieval people did the same things people today do. How do we know? Because the Church issued edicts prohibiting most of them.
One big problem would be hygiene. Different cultures had different standards. Nomads in regions where water was scarce didn’t bathe as often as we do. (On the other hand, they were more willing to bathe in cold water than most modern folk.) During the late Medieval and early Renaissance, bathing took a nosedive. But it was never completely out. We know this because churchmen wrote numerous sermons against the fornication that took place in bathhouses.
Another problem was the lack of birth control. You would have to convince the woman that a roll in the hay was worth the risk of dying in childbirth. Also that an out-of-wedlock child would not condemn her to a lifetime of poverty.
If you look at churches from the middle ages, you’ll see all sorts of raunchy carvings. They’re intended to show the mundane, sinful, carnal world for which the Church is the cure.
It’s a mid-seventeenth-century source rather than a medieval one, but Samuel Pepys’s diary provides a fair amount of detail about his various extramarital affairs, and his preferred sex act seems to have been mutual masturbation – at least, with women who were not already married to someone else and would have had a hard time explaining how they got pregnant. (Pepys was probably sterile, and probably suspected as much, but he wasn’t taking any chances.)
The premise of the question reminds me of an objection raised to a proposed amendment to the Victorian-era British law against homosexuality to specify that the prohibition also encompassed lesbianism:
…you are going to tell the whole world that there is such an offence, to bring it to the notice of women who have never heard of it, never thought of it, never dreamed of it. I think that would be a very great mischief.
–the Earl of Desart
In earlier eras, it was far more common for entire households to sleep in one room, or even share a bed. Plus, these people tended to live in closer contact with animals than today. In both situations, we might expect an exposure to sexual activity (I.e. a couple getting it on in the same room, however quietly that may be, plus seeing the animals fornicating in the field) that young people don’t often have today.
So, even without pornography, I fully expect these people to be familiar with sex. And I would expect that certain “animalistic” positions would be mundane.
Given hygiene issues, I’d expect oral sex to be more rare, but their standards of what is tolerable cleanliness is undoubtedly different than what we’d expect today.
