Two characteristics of female reproduction have particular significance for sexuality.  First, girls can get pregnant from two weeks before menarche.  This happens on average as early as the age of 12.  The normal range of variation is 9 – 15 years of age.  The trouble is girls can safely give birth at the earliest when they are 14 – 15.  Before this their hips are too narrow which makes it more or less dangerous without modern medical help.  Most girls don’t want to have sex before they can give birth safely.  Sexuality in this meaning may develop later too.

Second, having a child means a great biological investment for the woman.  Not only is it she who is pregnant which is more or less handicapping.  Under pre-modern conditions she has to nurse her child too.  Otherwise the risk is overhanging the child dies from malnutrition.  The result is women on average being pickier than men about who they have sex with.  Reliable contraceptives have existed for too short time for sexuality to adopt.  Same applies to wet nurses which neither is a simple solution.  However, that is another story.

Now imagine a society in which dads have legal right to kill their children.  Even if they don’t formally have they can delude their children into believing this.  Then the children will live in fear of a dad with absolute power.  This leads to children usually not daring to be honest to him.  Let us say such a condition lasts for many generations.  Within a century the knowledge of them at all having wishes different from their dad is lost.  In other word dads take it for granted they see things in the same way as him.  Something they don’t at all need to do.

Unlike girls pubescent boys are more or less sex-obsessed.  A man unaware of his daughters’ points of view can then believe pubescent girls are.  At the same time he thinks of women and girls as a resource which should be exploited.  At worst this result in girls being handed over to men to sexually exploit shortly after menarche.  At best girls are forcibly segregated from boys as soon as they start developing breast.  Which makes boys continue to take it for granted girls are as sex-obsessed as them.

The best for a gal is not always the same as the best for her dad.  Oftentimes she has a different point of view.  A gal chooses a guy she perceives as the best possible.  Her dad may then perceive him as exactly anyone.  Say he is unaware of this difference for the reasons mentioned above.  Then he can believe she is unable to choose her husband herself.  Enough numbers of such cases creates the myth of women and girls being willing to have sex with anyone.  No woman at the accuracy of her senses would voluntarily do so.  But men unaware of their points of view can believe they normally would this.

This type of misconceptions has historically been strengthened by polygamy.  Wealthy men have appropriated several women simultaneously.  Say a man is married to four women at the same time.  On average each of them just gets 1/4 as much sex as him.  Since he can’t satisfy them the risk of unfaithfulness becomes overhanging.  Add him marrying them only for economic and/or political reasons.  Then there is nothing telling they even like him.  The risk just gets higher from that.  What does he do to ensure their children being his too?  He lock them up at home and refuse to let them out alone.  Monarchs and maybe the wealthiest have appropriated dozens of women.  They were locked up in special buildings which were guarded by eunuchs.  These were gays which balls had been surgically removed making them sterile.  Anyway, the ideas of the rich and powerful tended to spread.  If nothing else because they historically had opportunity to.

These misconceptions of female sexuality create needless fear in the men of some countries.  They live in fear of what their female relatives would do in moment off-guard.  This is the cause of the extreme sexism prevailing in those countries.  In historical times such misconceptions has been even more widespread.  I think they are reduced by modern education.  Unfortunately, there are still men willing to beat rape victims to death.  This is because they can’t imagine a woman or even a pubescent girl ever might be unwilling to have sex.  They are so unaware of the points of view of others that victims are mistaken for perpetuators.

Uploaded on the 1st of February 2024.