Re: Orlanthi sex customs

From: Alex Ferguson <abf_at_yeats.ucc.ie>
Date: Wed, 27 Jan 1999 02:12:33 GMT


> Seriously I think while sex before
> marriage isn't frowned upon by the Orlanthi it isn't common. I think
> that most of the women marry before they have sex not vice versa.

I wasn't even going to get _on_ to sex, but since you insist... ;-)

I think this may be in general true (or at least, to steal a line from some hoary old sitcom, "It's not sex _before_ marriage I object to, as much as _instead of_."). What sort of 'experimenting' behaviour young Orlanthi get up to is a subject too prurient for eve-- eh, for me to get into, but the practicalities are that most child-rearing relationships are exogamous, and that brings The Law into it. "Consensual sex" is a practical impossibily if you have to clear it with both clan rings, two chiefs, and a clear majority of fractious parties who'd take exception to such things going on.

If your clan allows endogamous marriage, though, the legalities are almost an irrelevance. You're married if you say you are, and Everyone Knows how marriage works in our clan. It's only when we let other clans marry in, that we have to get all formal about it. (This is partly why endogamy is a 'blurry' question, IMO, provided you don't commit strictly legally defined incest in the process.)

> Call me a fool but I think that most Sartarite women are heavy romatic
> and would want a marriage and of course a proper courtship before. I
> think this is even something that Orlanthi men would want.

Note that Orlanthi stereotype (and therefore, true of 6 out of 7, as regulated by strict law) is that males are the "romantic" sex. (As in, a cynic would say, "likely to do stupid things for emotional reasons".) Lengthy digression about the origins and original nature of Western romance ruthlessly deleted.


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