Sex life of modern youth

Appeals to the past, to brighter times when everything was different, and people were cleaner, better and behaved differently than now, are found in any society and at any time. Ours is no exception - here and there there are messages and comments that earlier, supposedly, young people were not so depraved, and that our grandparents first heard about sex no earlier than they got married.

Like, there were no clubs, there were no discos, sex drag rock and roll had not yet been declared the main universal values, hippies still promoted free love, and that’s why our grandparents were blameless, and like bucolic shepherdesses and shepherdesses they lived in a world filled with exclusively by building a bright future and reading the classics in reading huts under Ilyich’s light bulbs.

Let's see if this is really true? Fast forward to 1924. My great-grandmother, a revolutionary born in 1903, was exactly 21 years old at that time, and the great-grandparents of those who are now reading this text are about the same age. Well, some of them were a little bigger then, some were a little smaller.

Our time machine today will be the sexological study of I. Gelman, published by the Krasny Proletary publishing house in Leningrad in the aforementioned 1924. By the way, the second and supplemented.

The study is called “The Sex Life of Modern Youth” and is dedicated to, what do you think?

Right. Her own sex life. These very young people. In their inextricable, so to speak, connection. The author of the study was then concerned with a number of questions, and we will consider them gradually, during the post.

But first, let’s dwell a little on materials and methods. The author conducted a survey during which questions were asked about certain aspects of the respondents’ sexual life. The target group of the survey were, for the most part, workers and peasants, builders of the revolution, and a small part of people from the bourgeoisie.

The author collected 1615 questionnaires and analyzed 1552 questionnaires. Among those who completed the questionnaires, there were 77.9% men and 22.1% women. The respondents were divided into three age groups: from 16 to 21 years old (37.1% of respondents), from 22 to 26 years old (42.4%) and over 27 years old (20.5% of respondents). Thus, about 80% of respondents were between 16 and 26 years old.

In terms of social composition, 1,215 respondents (83%) were from the worker-peasant environment, and 242 (17%) were from the petty-bourgeois environment. 23.2% of respondents were married at the time of the survey.

When did our great-grandmothers and great-grandfathers experience their first sexual sensations?

And it's quite early. About 15 percent are between 5 and 10 years of age, 31% are between 10 and 14 years of age, and 54% are over 14 years of age. The two right columns are devoted to similar results in other questionnaires. Doctor Zhbankov’s data is the data of a similar survey conducted among women of the upper and middle classes, students of the Moscow Higher Women’s Courses before the very first world war. The Breslau questionnaire is data from a survey of physicians at the Breslau Clinic in Vienna; 101 students and 77 doctors were interviewed. As you can see, the data of the female students and doctors differ somewhat from the worker-peasant group in the direction of the earlier appearance of the first sexual sensations.

But these differences are not very significant, it seems to me. I was too lazy to calculate the power of the studies and the statistical significance of the differences, to be honest, but just by eye, it seems to me that there will be no significant differences.

Did our great-grandmothers and great-grandfathers engage in masturbation? Oh horror, yes. And how...

Among workers and peasants, more than half of the men confessed to the sin of fornication... and less than 15% of the women.

But the female students were either more frank or more sexual. 52% of female students answered positively to this question - they say, yes, it happened. Well, among students it is even higher - 64% were sinners among Kharkov students and 73.4 among Moscow ones.

Well, the leaders on the list, you won’t believe it, were Viennese doctors! Ahead of the rest of the planet, as many as 80% are onanists. Here it is, the influence of medical education in all its glory.

But, frankly speaking, I think that the workers and peasants were disingenuous and underestimated the numbers. Prejudice in the working class was strong. Here is how one of the respondents answers this question in two ways:

Well yes, of course. I practically didn’t do any work.

At what age did our great-grandfathers and great-grandmothers begin to have sex?

Yes, about the same as us. Most are over the age of 17. Among workers and peasants, this onset of sexual activity is typical for 58.7% of men and 87.4% of women. And among Viennese doctors, as many as 90% are men over the age of 17! Something is still wrong with these doctors... either they are working like hell, or there is some problem - widespread masturbation in the absence of sex life.

But with all this, there were cases of earlier onset of sexual activity. 30-40 percent of men began sexual activity between the ages of 14 and 16 (of course, we exclude Viennese doctors, everything is already clear with them), and 7-10% were under the age of 12, oh how... Among women this percentage less: about 3%, but the onset of sexual activity occurs as early as five years of age, which indicates that pedophiles are not a discovery of our time. Alas, they seem to have always met.

What influenced the onset of sexual activity among our ancestors? Most answered “internal motives.” Which is interesting, since it is not clear where these inner urges arose. Some inner impulses prompted half of them to rush into the abyss of sexual life, but what about the other half? Well, the second one is that we started doing this quite traditionally under someone’s influence. Comrades and girlfriends. Under the corrupting influence of literature (yeah, porn films were still hard to find back then), as well as under the influence of games between boys and girls (what did they play, Lord?). Well, some of the respondents, quite traditionally, according to the scheme - “got drunk, woke up, bitches...”

But with whom exactly did our great-grandfathers begin their laborious sex life, full of hardships and dangers? Who were the fairies who took their virginity before marriage? Let me remind you here, just in case, that only about 23% of those surveyed were married.

30% - with prostitutes. And there were people like that back then. Only 3.7% had it with their beloved girlfriend or wife, and this figure is only slightly higher than those who experienced sex for the first time with a young girl or student - there were 2%. But 65% of respondents began their sexual life with some “other persons.” What are some other persons? But in general, they are the same as ours - peers who are not “favorite girls or boys,” but with whom the whole process begins.

And there is another category of “other persons,” but it is represented to a greater extent in the Moscow student questionnaire and the same questionnaire of Viennese doctors. There, respondents deciphered the concept of “other persons” a little differently, calling servants that way. Yes, boys from class families often began to have sex with maids. Mothers, knowing that boys in a third of cases go to brothels to experience the first joys of carnal love (well, maybe they didn’t know the percentage, but they guessed that it’s not just bad Vovochka from the next door who goes there). And the mothers hired young maids precisely for the purpose that the child would learn everything at home, without leaving the cash register, and would not end up in a terrible brothel. There was no penicillin then, syphilis was a terrible curse, mothers were worried and preferred it better that way.

But then the sex life of our great-grandfathers returned to normal. The percentage of those who used only the services of prostitutes decreased, there were only 6.2%. But those who resorted to their services periodically, and also had sex with other women, were already a third. About 60% answered “with other women” and only 5% make love only with their wife. Eh, our great-grandfathers walked to the left, walked...

Unfortunately, the last points of the questionnaire were given only to men, and with whom our great-grandmothers started, and how things turned out for them in the future, we do not know, and we will probably never know.

But let's go back to our great-grandfathers. They did not do without deviations either. The war left its mark on many, causing deviant forms of sexual behavior:

How long were the connections between our ancestors?

Women were more likely to have long-term relationships—almost half of their sexual encounters were long-term. Well, men have traditionally been prone to short-term relationships - the share of such relationships among men was close to 60 percent. Doesn't remind you of anything?

It is interesting how respondents assessed the impact of the revolution on their own sexual desire. Women in most cases did not notice any changes, but men noted a decrease in libido in 53% of cases. Those who hunger for revolution, think about this...

The revolution is stressful for men, and maybe everything will be taken away completely, men in this regard are not stress-resistant, like some kind of stress - once they have it, “autumn has come.”

And finally, about what aspirations our great-grandfathers and great-grandmothers had in this regard. What would they like their sex life to be like?

Interestingly, only 14 percent of great-grandmothers saw her in marriage versus more than 20% of great-grandfathers. What this is connected with is not entirely clear. Perhaps because marriage at that time was sometimes considered a regressive institution, associated with house-building - after all, this questionnaire was for respondents from the worker-peasant environment. Probably, the girls didn’t really want to sit in a hut, cook cabbage soup, and be subjected to traditional domestic violence, but just wanted something big and clean.

That’s why they probably answered this way: 67.3% of respondents preferred long-term love relationships instead of traditional marriage. Only 7% of women would then like to see their lives in the context of short-term relationships, and 1.7% liked casual relationships.

The men were somewhat different. As I wrote above, most of them wanted a life in a traditional marriage. This is understandable; traditional marriage to men has always been more humane. Only half wanted long-term love relationships, and as many as 12 percent were inclined towards short-term relationships. 10% would like to see their relationship free, without a clear term, and very few, only 2 people, 0.1% would like to use only the services of prostitutes throughout their lives.

Well, I guess I'll end here. As you can see, our great-grandfathers and great-grandmothers were not very different from today’s youth, they were not some kind of ideals, everything was about the same, about the same, and there is nothing new under the sun, as usual.

There is no need to blame the current time for debauchery and the decline of morals; nothing has changed much.

I wish everyone to enjoy their own life while it lives and boils, and has not turned into dry historical tables for historians and archaeologists!

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