Wikipedia and the history of the 'swingers lifestyle'

Factual Questions
1

So, as to what brought up this question, a buddy of mine tells me to check out the ‘casual encounters’ section of Craigslist. He has just discovered that there are lots of young horny women in his town looking for no strings attached monkey sex. I tell him that most of these postings are probably setups for webcam sites or some other gimick, and that if an attractive young girl was looking for some lovin, she would probably just head for the nearest bar. At any rate, I check out the site and start reading some of the ‘couples’ ads out of curiosity. Now I’m quite aware that there are some couples that like to ‘swing’ but these ads had some terms with meanings I didn’t understand, so I look up swinging at good old wikipedia.

Under history, the article admits that the Romans were into some kinky stuff, but goes on to claim that modern swinging came about with U.S. military pilots in WWII or shortly thereafter. Now, color me skeptical. Surely partner swapping has been around continuously forever right? It’s not really a high-minded advanced concept when you think about it. The cites wiki provides don’t back the claim IMHO. Can anybody make a case for the wiki article being true? Anybody know of any swapping going on in, say, the 30s?

(sorry if this post has bad spelling. I just got a new computer, and don’t have Word yet)

2

No. But my grandparents started having children in the 30s, and they had a sofa in their basement that I used to play on, and although I didn’t realize it at the time when I think back those must have been cumstains. Does that help?

3

Swinging is a form of wife swapping. Yes, orgies, wife swapping, etc. have been practiced in many cultures in many time periods, but the practices of the modern swinging sub-culture are sufficiently distinct to separate it from earlier forms.

4

My grandfather on Dad’s side was a piano player in a band the 1930s, and they often used to play for private functions, social events, and so on.

The stories I have heard from my Dad (grandad died before I was born) basically say that there was a lot of wife-swapping, orgies, and that sort of thing happening back then, but it wasn’t talked about outside the social circles of the people involved, for fairly obvious reasons.

I think “swinging” as a distinct sub-culture is a fairly recent (post-WWII) phenomenon, but wife-swapping and orgies certainly aren’t, as the OP correctly points out.