# In olden days, how common was it for people to enter marriage with literally no clue what sex was? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [February 26, 2023, 1:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-olden-days-how-common-was-it-for-people-to-enter-marriage-with-literally-no-clue-what-sex-was/980395 "2023-02-26T13:22:10Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/qadgop_the_mercotan/32/83_2.png) [@Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Qadgop_the_Mercotan)\ **Post date:** [February 26, 2023, 3:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-olden-days-how-common-was-it-for-people-to-enter-marriage-with-literally-no-clue-what-sex-was/980395/21 "2023-02-26T15:29:29Z")
The Master spoke on this topic decades ago. > **[When did mankind figure out that SEX = BABIES?](https://www.straightdope.com/21341909/when-did-mankind-figure-out-that-sex-babies)** ---
**Author:** ![Toxylon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/f05b48/32.png) [@Toxylon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Toxylon)\ **Post date:** [February 26, 2023, 3:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-olden-days-how-common-was-it-for-people-to-enter-marriage-with-literally-no-clue-what-sex-was/980395/22 "2023-02-26T15:41:32Z")
> [@msmith537](#): > > I imagine that might scare a lot of people! FWIW, Madonna is the only celebrity I have ever had a sex dream about, and vivid at that. Mind you, that was in the 80’s. ---
**Author:** ![HeyHomie](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/heyhomie/32/207_2.png) [@HeyHomie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HeyHomie)\ **Post date:** [February 26, 2023, 3:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-olden-days-how-common-was-it-for-people-to-enter-marriage-with-literally-no-clue-what-sex-was/980395/23 "2023-02-26T15:54:18Z")
> [@LSLGuy](#): > > Almost makes me wonder if the _Sesame_ woman’s father’s wife was pregnant or if somebody else was. Which also leads me to some curiosity about the backstory of the person the _Sesame_ woman thinks of as her mother. Lots of ways for “non-traditional” family setups to be arranged and then need to be covered up when a socially awkward pregnancy results. I must confess that, until now, I had always regarded the story as a narrative about her father trying to shield her from the fact that her mother was pregnant, because whatever reasons made sense in Nebraska in 1920. Never occurred to me that it was to cover up a “socially awkward pregnancy,” so to speak. ---
**Author:** ![Si\_Amigo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/si_amigo/32/2877_2.png) [@Si\_Amigo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Si_Amigo)\ **Post date:** [February 26, 2023, 3:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-olden-days-how-common-was-it-for-people-to-enter-marriage-with-literally-no-clue-what-sex-was/980395/24 "2023-02-26T15:54:53Z")
Yeah, she was as hot as it gets back in the 80s. Not sure what to think about this internet thing that judges celebrities on how they look now instead of when they were on top of thier game. Some form of generational jealousy, I guess. Madonna definitely could have educated me. ---
**Author:** ![Napier](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ce73a5/32.png) [@Napier](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Napier)\ **Post date:** [February 26, 2023, 3:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-olden-days-how-common-was-it-for-people-to-enter-marriage-with-literally-no-clue-what-sex-was/980395/25 "2023-02-26T15:56:13Z")
> [@Toxylon](#): > > Madonna is the only celebrity I have ever had a sex dream about Huh. This raises an interesting question, and after some searching of the memory banks, I think I have never had a sex dream about a celebrity – even though I’ve noticed many. ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [February 26, 2023, 4:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-olden-days-how-common-was-it-for-people-to-enter-marriage-with-literally-no-clue-what-sex-was/980395/26 "2023-02-26T16:01:12Z")
> [@HeyHomie](#): > > Almost certainly apocryphal, but there’s more than one joke going around about a couple trying and failing to get pregnant, and then after some digging by the doctor that results in comic explanations, it turns out that the couple was doing it in the butt. Stranger things have happened. > **[Urethral intercourse](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urethral_intercourse)** > > Urethral intercourse or coitus per urethram is sexual penetration of the female urethra by an object such as a penis or a finger. It is not to be confused with urethral sounding, the act of inserting a specialized medical tool into the urethra (for both males and females) as a form of sexual or fetishistic activity. > The untrained insertion of foreign bodies into the urethra carries a significant risk that subsequent medical attention may be required. Documented cases of urethral intercourse ap... ---
**Author:** ![Dung\_Beetle](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dung_beetle/32/7945_2.png) [@Dung\_Beetle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dung_Beetle)\ **Post date:** [February 26, 2023, 4:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-olden-days-how-common-was-it-for-people-to-enter-marriage-with-literally-no-clue-what-sex-was/980395/27 "2023-02-26T16:05:17Z")
Well, I guess I’ve had enough internet for today. 😬 ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [February 26, 2023, 4:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-olden-days-how-common-was-it-for-people-to-enter-marriage-with-literally-no-clue-what-sex-was/980395/28 "2023-02-26T16:43:00Z")
> [@Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](#): > > The Master spoke on this topic decades ago. I think that article, even with its caveats, places outsized faith in the accuracy of twentieth-century anthropologists. I’m having trouble finding a cite, but there’s been a fair amount of work looking at paternalistic and racist beliefs among anthropologists that, coupled with language barriers and cultural taboos and mistrust of outsiders, led to a fair amount of absolute twaddle getting published, in which anthropologists took statements hyper-literally or out of context. ---
**Author:** ![fordgt100](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/5daacb/32.png) [@fordgt100](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/fordgt100)\ **Post date:** [February 26, 2023, 4:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-olden-days-how-common-was-it-for-people-to-enter-marriage-with-literally-no-clue-what-sex-was/980395/29 "2023-02-26T16:47:15Z")
I’m 71, so my olden days were the 60’s. Not one person got married w/o having sex first back then. Pre-herpes, pre-HIV, pre-all that. It was the wild west. That sort of thing ended a lot of marriages though. ---
**Author:** ![puzzlegal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puzzlegal/32/3827_2.png) [@puzzlegal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puzzlegal)\ **Post date:** [February 26, 2023, 4:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-olden-days-how-common-was-it-for-people-to-enter-marriage-with-literally-no-clue-what-sex-was/980395/30 "2023-02-26T16:49:20Z")
If some stranger started asking me weird awkward questions about where babies come from, i might very well tell him about storks and cabbage patches. ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [February 26, 2023, 4:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-olden-days-how-common-was-it-for-people-to-enter-marriage-with-literally-no-clue-what-sex-was/980395/31 "2023-02-26T16:50:22Z")
> [@Dung\_Beetle](#): > > Well, I guess I’ve had enough internet for today. 😬 The problem with the internet is the very small distance between “just enough” and “way too much”. And the lack of a guardrail 🚧 or obvious warning sign there. 🛑 🚦 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![kenobi\_65](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kenobi_65/32/13178_2.png) [@kenobi\_65](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kenobi_65)\ **Post date:** [February 26, 2023, 4:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-olden-days-how-common-was-it-for-people-to-enter-marriage-with-literally-no-clue-what-sex-was/980395/32 "2023-02-26T16:51:18Z")
Two of my best friends are a married couple, who grew up in Dublin, Ireland in the 1970s and 1980s. They were both virgins when they got married (around 1988, I think), and I don’t think that either of them had been exposed to much (if anything) in the way of porn or adult fiction. So, on their wedding night, while they understood the concept behind “tab A into slot B,” they had a bit of a time figuring out exactly how to make things actually mesh, as it were. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [February 26, 2023, 5:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-olden-days-how-common-was-it-for-people-to-enter-marriage-with-literally-no-clue-what-sex-was/980395/33 "2023-02-26T17:14:03Z")
[Moderating] > [@Si\_Amigo](#): > > Yeah, she was as hot as it gets back in the 80s. Not sure what to think about this internet thing that judges celebrities on how they look now instead of when they were on top of thier game. Some form of generational jealousy, I guess. Madonna definitely could have educated me. I think we’re getting pretty far afield of the question, here, and talk about what celebrities we are or have been sexually attracted to isn’t a good fit for Factual Questions. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [February 26, 2023, 5:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-olden-days-how-common-was-it-for-people-to-enter-marriage-with-literally-no-clue-what-sex-was/980395/34 "2023-02-26T17:15:44Z")
> [@fordgt100](#): > > Pre-herpes, pre-HIV, pre-all that. There was never any “pre-herpes”. Pretty much everyone who’s had sex outside of a mutually-monogamous relationship has herpes, and that’s probably been true for all of history. It might have been before there was widespread recognition of herpes, but that speaks to a lack of adequate sex education. ---
**Author:** ![mixdenny](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mixdenny/32/2962_2.png) [@mixdenny](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mixdenny)\ **Post date:** [February 26, 2023, 5:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-olden-days-how-common-was-it-for-people-to-enter-marriage-with-literally-no-clue-what-sex-was/980395/35 "2023-02-26T17:29:15Z")
> [@puzzlegal](#): > > I would have thought that anyone growing up around domestic animals would kinda know where babies come from. From “History of the World Part 1” or “Life of Brian”, I forget. A newlywed couple goes into their tent. Some frustrating sounds ensue. One of them says, “Just do as the sheep do”. Pregnant pause then, “Baaaaaa” ---
**Author:** ![snowthx](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/snowthx/32/10660_2.png) [@snowthx](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/snowthx)\ **Post date:** [February 26, 2023, 5:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-olden-days-how-common-was-it-for-people-to-enter-marriage-with-literally-no-clue-what-sex-was/980395/36 "2023-02-26T17:43:28Z")
> [@kenobi\_65](#): > > So, on their wedding night, while they understood the concept behind “tab A into slot B,” they had a bit of a time figuring out exactly how to make things actually mesh, as it were. Yeah, I would think even with two people of reproductive age with zero knowledge about doing the deed, laying in bed together, will eventually have hormones take charge, and the mechanics will somehow become very evident. I mean, other animals presumably are able to sort things out without prior knowledge. ---
**Author:** ![Procrustus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/procrustus/32/2994_2.png) [@Procrustus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Procrustus)\ **Post date:** [February 26, 2023, 5:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-olden-days-how-common-was-it-for-people-to-enter-marriage-with-literally-no-clue-what-sex-was/980395/37 "2023-02-26T17:45:29Z")
> [@kenobi\_65](#): > > So, on their wedding night, while they understood the concept behind “tab A into slot B,” they had a bit of a time figuring out exactly how to make things actually mesh, as it were. I had a girlfriend way back when who was a virgin. I was not far removed from virginity myself. She wanted to have sex, and we tried, but couldn’t get it to work. I won’t go into details. Looking back, I’m sure I’ve learned enough in the 40+ years since that would have been helpful that evening. ---
**Author:** ![kenobi\_65](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kenobi_65/32/13178_2.png) [@kenobi\_65](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kenobi_65)\ **Post date:** [February 26, 2023, 5:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-olden-days-how-common-was-it-for-people-to-enter-marriage-with-literally-no-clue-what-sex-was/980395/38 "2023-02-26T17:46:42Z")
> [@snowthx](#): > > Yeah, I would think even with two people of reproductive age with zero knowledge about doing the deed, laying in bed together, will eventually have hormones take charge, and the mechanics will somehow become very evident. They did eventually get there, but they both look back at the awkward start of that evening with amusement. ---
**Author:** ![suranyi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e36b37/32.png) [@suranyi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/suranyi)\ **Post date:** [February 26, 2023, 6:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-olden-days-how-common-was-it-for-people-to-enter-marriage-with-literally-no-clue-what-sex-was/980395/39 "2023-02-26T18:49:34Z")
Years ago my wife and I were dealing with infertility. One of the questions on the patient registration form for our first visit with the doctor was “Do you ejaculate into the vagina?” ---
**Author:** ![F.U.Shakespeare](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/aca169/32.png) [@F.U.Shakespeare](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/F.U.Shakespeare)\ **Post date:** [February 26, 2023, 7:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-olden-days-how-common-was-it-for-people-to-enter-marriage-with-literally-no-clue-what-sex-was/980395/40 "2023-02-26T19:17:26Z")
Around the turn of the millenium, one of the mainstream news magazines (U.S. News?) did an article featuring centarians’ memories of the distant past. One lady remembered that when she got married, she had no knowledge of the mechanics of intercourse: “I remember thinking it had something to do with the navel”. And in one of Bill Bryson’s books, he quoted a woman who on her wedding night during the Victorian era asked her mother about sex. Her mother replied, “Haven’t you seen statues and paintings in museums? Men and women are _different_!” That was the extent of her sex education. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-olden-days-how-common-was-it-for-people-to-enter-marriage-with-literally-no-clue-what-sex-was/980395.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-olden-days-how-common-was-it-for-people-to-enter-marriage-with-literally-no-clue-what-sex-was/980395.md?page=3)