Common for mothers to have sex with their sons in 0 AD britain?

[AK84]

@Dr.Drake

Yes, sexual intitation isn’t uncommon. What I’d like a cite for is an example of culturally sanctioned parent-child sexual initation, which I do not believe occurs among humans. I’m prepared to be wrong, but I’ve never seen a reference to it.

Agreed.

@Martin Bigfoot

One of the first things you’ll notice when you read Herodotus, is how every culture in the world, apart from the Greeks (funny, that), practices some variation of pimping out their daughters.

Then again, Herodotus also explains that the Persians had learned the much more vanilla and non-deviant sexual practice of man-boy action from the Greeks. At least there’s some hope for the barbarians.

As for Romans and incest: As mentioned upthread, that’s an accusation that Romans tend to throw at other Romans that they don’t like.

Incest, and baldness. At least that’s the impression I get from Suetonius. The baldness thing is a bit weird, actually. According to Suetonius, Caesar was bald, Caligula was bald (despite being in his mid-twenties), Domitian was bald… Then you look at portraits of these guys, and they don’t look very bald. Historians will say: Aha! That means that they didn’t want to be depicted as bald, which proves that they were very vain, which proves that they were bald! I dunno. I don’t want to knock professional historians, but it seems a bit odd that we’re just taking Suetonius’s word for this stuff, considering that he’s also accusing people of bonking their sisters and mothers. But anyway, I digress…

Don’t need to read the classics. Just read this forum threads where people quite openly and credulously state that xyz culture (never their own for some reason) has this weird sexual practice. Everybody else is guilty of sexual debauchery and prudishness (ideally at the same time). We on the other hand, have gotten human sexuality

[John_Mace]

@PSXer

I read somewhere that sine schools in Japan are so competitive, Japanese moms fellate their sons to relieve stress before big exams, and so they won’t waste time with girlfriends instead of studying.

We’ve all read a lot of BS in our days, but most of us don’t bother posting it as if it were factual.

[John_Mace]

@Atamasama

Even in modern-day US, it’s not outlandish to hear about a father taking his son to a professional woman to “make him a man” at a certain age. That would be the equivalent of a sexual rite of passage.

But not to the kid’s mom though, unless you’re watching a Jerry Springer rerun.

Imagine what would be thought of our culture if some future anthropologist found only the recorded episodes of Jerry Springer and nothing else.

[dtilque]

@md2000

Also a lot of questionable slanders about various groups are usually political or xenophobic motivated slanders propagated by their enemies. From what I understand, slurs like this were common in roman times. (Wasn’t there something about Herod and his sister?)

Also Lot and his daughters. The issue of which unions supposedly went on to found neighboring nations of the Hebrews.

@PSXer

I read somewhere that sine schools in Japan are so competitive, Japanese moms fellate their sons to relieve stress before big exams, and so they won’t waste time with girlfriends instead of studying.

The Master has a word about this. Perhaps that’s where you read it.

@Cecil

Lurid tales occasionally do surface. Reports of mother-son incest were briefly faddish in Japanese magazines in the 1980s. These stories played off the unflattering Japanese stereotype of the mother obsessed with getting her son into a top school, suggesting some “education mamas” would violate the ultimate taboo to help their horny pubescent boys stay relaxed and focused on studying. A few Westerners have taken these urban legends at face value. Lloyd deMause, founder of and prolific contributor to a publication called the Journal of Psychohistory, cites the Japanese mother-son stories as prime evidence in his account of what he calls “the universality of incest.” It’s pretty clear, however, that incest inspires as much revulsion in Japan as anywhere else.

[coremelt]

@PSXer

I read somewhere that sine schools in Japan are so competitive, Japanese moms fellate their sons to relieve stress before big exams, and so they won’t waste time with girlfriends instead of studying.

If you poke around on the seedier less reputable boards than this one (eg 4chan), you’ll see a lot of hentai , perverted manga comics. Mother / son incest is a pretty common theme, of course the mother is always portrayed as unrealistically young and hot. So in other words, nope, just fantasy material for people that are into that kind of thing.

[BigT]

This long and you guys still don’t get PSXer’s style of humor? He’s riffing on the joke that this is just literotica that the OP has accepted as fact.

[Elemenopy]

@John_Mace

We’ve all read a lot of BS in our days, but most of us don’t bother posting it as if it were factual.

Hey.

Some things I distinctly remember from a Sociology 101-type class about 20 years ago:

There are cultures in which mothers and other caretakers orally stimulating their infant/toddler sons is considered par for the course. (obligate "eww!)

Onset of menarche for adolescent girls is premature when a stepfather is present, in any culture (think about that one, and why that might be…:eek:)

Some cultures find relations between (say) aunts and nephews taboo, but not uncles and nieces. Or vice versa, I forget.

Similarly, there was a strong cultural impetus in early Jewish culture for a man to marry his brother’s widow, especially if the original marriage was without issue (children).

Historically, right after a war, more boy babies are born. Also, there seems to be a trend of daughters being born when a couple has lots of intercourse, but sons born when intercourse is seldom.

[TriPolar]

@Elemenopy

Some cultures find relations between (say) aunts and nephews taboo, but not uncles and nieces. Or vice versa, I forget.

That one is true. I live in that culture now.

[Lamia]

No cite, but I remember seeing a museum exhibit on Ancient Egypt – I think at the Chicago Field Museum – that said 19th century Egyptologists had been horrified to learn from surviving Ancient Egyptian documents that brother/sister incest was apparently incredibly common. And not just in the royal family either, seemingly everyone was getting it on with their siblings.

Then they figured out that the words they were translating as “brother” and “sister” were also used as romantic endearments and didn’t mean the people were actually related.

This may seem odd until you think about how future anthropologists might react to contemporary pop song lyrics. For instance, Sir Mix-a-Lot’s “Baby Got Back” is not about being aroused by infant backsides, and when he sings “Give me a sister, I can’t resist her” he doesn’t mean that he’s overcome with lust for his female siblings.

Even legitimate primary sources can lead scholars to erroneous conclusions.