How dirty was sex in medieval times from a hygiene standpoint? #medievalsex #hygieneperspective #grossnesslevel
Hygiene Practices in Medieval Times
– Lack of understanding of germ theory
– Limited access to clean water and soap
– Chamber pots and lack of indoor plumbing
Impact on Sexual Practices
– Potential for infections and diseases
– Limited hygiene rituals before and after intimacy
– Cultural norms surrounding cleanliness and intimacy
Curiosity Inducing Question
Do you think medieval lovers had to navigate through a sea of filth for the sake of pleasure? #NastyMedievalSex
By exploring the hygiene practices of the medieval era, we can gain a deeper understanding of the challenges and potential risks faced by those engaging in intimate activities during that time. Let’s dive into the dirty details together!
Doesn’t matter, had sex!
The medieval world was a place of big contrasts when it came to sex. Sometimes and in some places, people were open-minded about sex and sexuality, while at other times it was a topic and practice that was shunned or even made illegal.
People also bathed. It is a myth that people were constantly dirtied, granted our habits differ widely today, but cleanliness still existed.
Many texts from the Middle Ages talk about sex and how to do it better. These would be written for men, and include details on methods and products to improve your sexual ability (think of medieval versions of Viagra). There is even an Encyclopedia of Pleasure, which dates from the tenth century, giving advice that is salacious to say the least.
Source: medieval historian
Edit: Sex wasn’t all bad. To quote, “there is no greater human pleasure than that of sexual intercourse.” Nasir al-Din Tusi, middle eastern philosopher
Probably not that much more gross. Without high sugar processed diets of today, oral hygiene might not be as bad as you think. BO is harder to manage without antiperspirant, but you can tolerate more if you’re socialized to it. It’s kind of a learned behavior to hate it in modern society because it’s so avoidable.
Humans are animals that like to groom themselves. People didn’t just go around with mudbutt.
I think you’re wildly lowballling just how “dirty” medieval people were. The Monty-Python style caricature of the serfs rolling in excrement is not what the real middle ages were like. People took baths, they made their own soap from rendered fat and ashes from cooking fires. If you were poor, you might have bathed at a public bath-house instead of at home.
They washed a lot more than people think. They associated bad smells with disease, so if you were stinky people wanted the hell away from you.
I just saw a documentary about Versailles and they said people urinated and presumably pooped … on the floor or some brought their own buckets to use but the smell was so atrocious that King Louis had perfumes handed out to guests at some point before they came in. And this would have been the most rich and privileged folks in the 18th c. Hard to imagine what it would have been like before. And one can only imagine how gross sex would have been between anyone.
Eating ass was probably a test of bravery
This is a Hollywood fake. They make everyone pre America look dirty, with ragged dirty clothes. No basis in fact. They often did not have more than two changes of clothes, but there are many references to washer women, clothes lines etc.
Eating ass would’ve been a real killer
Not gross enough to keep people from fucking cuz here we all are.
I think about this whenever I watch Old West cowboy movies. How like, everybody stank like BO because there wasn’t air conditioning and everybody had wool clothes and nobody brushed their teeth and dudes would wear the same pants for a month before getting to wash them, and how people just shit in holes right outside saloons and such. Tombstone probably smelled fuckin atrocious
If I was a medieval person I wouldn’t think it was gross at all.
If I go back in time I’d probably think it is gross.
I’m not sure most people understand just how lengthy a time period the Middle Ages was. The Medieval era began in the 5th century and went until the 15th century – that’s a thousand years. A lot has happened since 1024. Imagine someone attempting to draw comparisons between practically ANYTHING that was normal back in 1024 and what is normal today.
Moreover, the world is a big place and variety abounds. Not everyone in the year 750 A.D. was living the same sort of lifestyle, nor was life in 1500 A.D. uniform or 1800 A.D. and there’s still plenty of variation today. One thing that hasn’t evolved much however since the earliest dawn of man is sex – there is practically nothing that we have today that was unknown to the ancients, so ultimately while the way sex has been seen and dealt with at the societal level has changed dramatically with time, and while different cultures around the world have held a variety of different points of view about it, it’s never really been all that much different from the sex we have today.
Regardless of how clean they were, infections and sexually transmitted diseases were brutal, and they didn’t have many effective remedies.
Urinary tract infections, yeast infections, these were not easily dealt with. Not to mention the dangers of pregnancy.
And once syphilis started spreading widely, it was really a living nightmare for massive portions of the population.
It definitely smelt like a turtle tank when uglies started bumping.
Profanely less gross than in the 16th and 17th century nobility.
Despite Hollywood telling us that in medieval times people didn’t bath … that is very much untrue and towns had public bath houses and often times buildings were not built as close as in later centuries so it probably often smelled like agriculture… dirty trades were usually banned into certain areas… and bath house culture was a thing. So pretty much a mixed bag. Simply because people didn’t know many things we know.
Medieval washing was not most commonly by baths or showers – they did exactly what we might do if we were camping, or away from showers a while – they used a handcloth and bowl, and washed “face, pits and bits”. When it comes to hygiene, it’s really only the crevices of the body that get stinky, no-one’s walking around with stinky shins. They also used perfumes / dried flowers.
They took cloth/sponge baths pretty often actually. Also, the clothing they wore back then was usually linen, which is very cooling. Soap isn’t difficult to make either – lye from hardwood ash and an oil or fat. It won’t smell like Sicilian Citrus, but it does the job.
Of course the wealthy could afford better bathing accommodations and Sicilian Citrus soap, but most people think of the lower classes when they think of “grimy dirty medieval Europe.”
I went down on my girlfriend after we’d been camping for 3 days. Being horny helps get over things being less than pristine. Also being high helped in my case.
I mostly think there was a lot less mouth stuff and a lot more hand/penetration stuff
Didn’t Stormy Daniels just testify to having to endure something similiar?
Every bit as bad as you’re imagining by today’s standards
This is my Roman Empire. Do you think anyone voluntarily did oral?
SMEGMA
I wonder about the UTIs. A UTI is agony, actual hell on earth. How the fuck did the women deal with them??