Right! Slot B in my instruction manual appears with a one-way arrow out, so it must be an exit-only, and not an entrance.
As mentioned, one does suppose that back in times of a predominantly agrarian life, simple observation of the livestock would provide a degree of orientation. The disconnect would likely arise once a culture developed around preserving “innocence” or isolating some of the people from the hard facts. Or even assuming a cultural position of teaching “WE are NOT IN ANY WAY like ANIMALS!!”
Which suggests the flip side to the thread title question: how many people nowadays arrive at their first sexual relationship expecting that it’s supposed to go like in porn.
I don’t think it’s places so much as people. If I had moved in with a boyfriend, the only reason my mother wouldn’t have threatened to write me out of the will/not pay for my wedding was because she had nothing to leave me and couldn’t pay for a wedding if she wanted to. None of my friends lived with anyone of the opposite sex until they got married - at least not as far as their parents knew. This was NYC - but it was a working class, ethnic and Catholic neighborhood up until at least the late 80s/early 90s.
I may have posted this before. 1982, my girlfriend and I graduated from college and moved to a small city in NY state, where she did a graduate program and I got a job teaching in a small independent school. Our “outside activities” were mostly music and church, a liberal Episcopal church, but there were limits. We were not married (got married the following year) but we did live together, at a time when that was jusssst beginning to be acceptable, sort of, where we were. We did not hide the fact of our cohabitation.
The folks at school were cool about it, so were the people in her grad program, and the music people, and the people at church were generally welcoming. Times were clearly changing! BUT the church put out a new member directory that year, and they listed us separately and without even a cross reference. So there!
We were more amused than offended.
In HS, I met my girlfriend in Physics class. Once we got interested in each other, we spent 3 months studying The Joy of Sex so that we would be properly ready for the schtupping.
Did you read She Comes First?
Tab P into slot P.
Well, you were in physics together. That puts you way up in the nerdiness scale, you know, readers.
If that is not enough, later we were in Comp Sci together. And, we both liked programming the E4000 (though, admiitedly, the alternative was using the ASR to access the school district mainframe, which was not all that pleasant).
As a child, I was blessed with a father who left his copy of “Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex: But Were Afraid to Ask” along with his copies of Playboy hidden, but not too well hidden. At age 12 in 1969 it was a real education to discover those. As a result I was better prepared for what was to be than most of my peers. I didn’t begin to put even the most basic partnered stuff into practice until I was 15 but I sure was at least academically aware of the anatomies involved, and that the experience was supposed to be pleasurable for all involved, and that birth control was a MUST.
Thanks, Dad!!
My dad had that stuff, and my mom had lots of true romance magazines. However, the latter were rather vague about what occurred, “I fumbled with the light, and we fell into one another’s arms,” then awkward discussion follows, then a few weeks later, more awkward discussion about the pregnancy that resulted from that fall in one another’s arms. I found the Encylopedia Brittainica helpful; it was in my 8th grade library, and spelled it out. Falling Into One Another’s Arms, my eye! I know I know, it often began that way, but imagine being 12, and thinking that was all that needed to happen.
That sounds a lot like my experience, except it was my brother who graduated from college in 1967 and then went into the army immediately afterward. While he was gone, I started looking at some of his reading materials that he left behind, like a book on FORTRAN IV, from which I taught myself programming a few years later. I didn’t have access to a computer until I went to college a few more years later, where my professor was surprised that I already knew FORTRAN. My brother also left behind some Playboy magazines and books like EYAWTKAS:BWATA. As with FORTRAN, I didn’t have the means and opportunity to put my knowledge about sex fully into use until college.
You are lucky it was not a book on C***L. I had already learned some programming in HS when I picked up and read through that. I had nightmares for years after.
no wonder you all are fumbling around -
Tab P into slot V.
Not if they’re supposed to be the same letter.
Was it one of Dan McCracken’s books by some chance?
In the late '60s it seemed all the language books were his. I got to meet him once when I was in grad school.
As for Playboys, My father had some and the much more explicit Penthouse and Playboy’s version of it Oui, but though I appreciated them, they weren’t that much use in learning about sex.
ETA: And a thread about sex mentions Fortran. That’s what I love about this place.
but then again, there is always THAT guy who tries to get a square peg into a round hole …
I have a small collection of sex-related antique books from the last 120 years. If the 1910-ish books are any indication of 1910-ish knowledge, they can be quite revealing.
One book is a Boy Scout manual, intended for male teenagers. Sex is never mentioned, only hinted at. Boys are strongly cautioned against “self-pollution,” without any description of what that was. Self-pollution would sap all of a boy’s energy and leave him limp and unable to perform athletic tasks and even daily chores. And everyone would know what he was doing due to the color drained form his cheeks, the limp in his walk, the way he hung his head, etc. Talk about shaming the innocent.
Absolutely zero mention of birth control. It was assumed he would instinctively know what to do and what not to do, so why teach it?
I also have a “Husband & Wife Marriage Manual” from that era, for newlyweds. It included no pictures or drawings. Since it was written by a husband & wife pair, both doctors, this presumably made it educational, not titillating. It even cautions the reader that if they feel a stirring in the loins while reading, to put the book down for a while until that bad feeling goes away. And don’t be ashamed, folks – this is normal.
In the era before medical birth control, the only mention of this topic was a poor effort (because medical knowledge was grossly inadequate about some bodily function details) at the rhythm method. The book repeatedly tells the couple to find the wife’s “free time”, or the time of the month when ovulation was unlikely. Since it could not be determined accurately, this eliminated about 2 weeks of every month where you weren’t supposed to copulate. Few mentions of alternative sexual pleasures; oral sex was only described as “the genital kiss.”
The only way I could figure out from the book as to how you determined her free time was to have multiple babies and keep a detailed calendar at the same time. If I am baffled nowadays, think of how the 1910 couple must have felt.
I found this book, “Sane Sex Life and Sane Sex Living” in our basement. Inside the front cover was the owner’s name, my uncle, so it was probably his one and only sex book when he got married.
Uncle got his nickname from the fact that he always kept rabbits as pets. Perhaps that experience was more informative than the book.
Which is more information (even if bad information) than was in my Boy Scout Handbook from 1963 or so.
My girlfriend and I started living together when I started law school. Her mom was clearly less than thrilled but there were no threats of being cut out of the will. A year later, having decided we were well-suited for each other, we got married. It’ll be 33 years this August.
You inspired me to seek out old Boy Scout manuals.
From their first manual, back in 1911, there is this advice
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/29558/29558-h/29558-h.htm
Incidentally, the recommended reading - From Youth Into Manhood - can be found online, too.
Considering it was published in 1909, it’s surprisingly frank about male anatomy, but doesn’t seem to get into sex. But, it’s intended for the younger male, whereas the author references another book he wrote “Reproduction and Sexual Hygiene” for older readers.
That book is also online, and basically just relegates sex to a dangerous activity you should seek to minimize.
It then goes on to talk about how horrible it is to fulfill sexual desires through illicit sex (meaning done out of wedlock) or masturbating before recommending the solution to one’s natural sexual desire.
https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/24708/pg24708-images.html#Page_74
I note that there is precious little education on the mechanics of sex; really, just warnings about doing it too much.