A little delayed due to other matters, but without further ado, here we go!
The votes are in!
This month /u/yodatsracist took top honors from both the Flairs and Users for answering "I saw an article today claiming that the "missionary" position derives its name from Native Americans/Africans who saw missionaries having sex. How true is this?"
In a very close second came /u/FlavivsAetivs, who tackled "I'm a Roman foot soldier at the battle of the Catalaunian fields (AD 451), what would I have been my arms and armour? How would this compare to my compatriots in the Eastern Empire?".
Taking the "The Dark Horse Award", recognizing the top voted non-flaired answer, is /u/erissays who answered "I've heard the Disneyified versions of Grimm's Tales Americans are familiar with are highly sanitized (RRHood and Grandma are eaten by the wolf,Snow White is about necrophilia,it's Cinderella's family, not steps- tormenting her, that kind of thing).Is this true? Were children the target audience?", no to mention some enlightening back-and-forth below.
And finally, this month's Excellence in Flairdom award goes to /u/Bentresh! You might recognize this username from answers on the Hittites...or Egyptians...or Israelites...or Babylonians...or all of the above in a single answer! Bentresh is one of the flairs who absolutely pounces on threads, and to stretch the jungle cat metaphor way too far, you've never seen paws like their command of primary sources and ability to pull out exciting quotes. Thanks, Bentresh!
The winners each receive a month of reddit gold in recognition of their accomplishment!
So as always, a big congratulations to the winners, and a big thanks to everyone who contributed to the subreddit in the past month! Also a reminder, if you want to nominate answers for the monthly awards, the best way to do so is to submit your favorite posts every week to the Sunday Digest!
For a list of past winners, check them out here!
Man, sex sells, I guess.
I do appreciate that the question made me find this one article and check the primary sources that the author cites but doesn’t quote. I’ve been working on a sociological paper about sexual positions/acts and some of Bourdieu’s theories and this question made me get a little more active on it!
The summary is in most things—art, music, film, etc— we see a certain “taste” structure associated with class, as Bourdieu describes in distinction. As far as I’ve been able to see, we do not see exactly the same structure with sexual taste. The latest data I’ve been able to get my hands on, which is from before the ubiquitous era pornography of internet pornography but also the after the sexual revolution was consolidated, suggests that the only pattern we see is “elite tolerance”, where higher status people are on the whole more open to almost all kinds of everything in the sexual realm. It’s led me into a lot of things that surprised me. Did you know before the sexual revolution, in Britain at least, “wet” [French?] kissing seems to have been rare? Obviously, oral sex was almost non-existent, being done in a very small minority of couples. That’s what the oral history Sex Before the Sexual Revolution: Intimate Life in England 1918–1963 by Kate Fisher and Simon Szreter argues, at the very least. This project has led me down all sorts of very weird rabbit holes. If anyone knows any historical articles about how people have sex outside of the Anglosphere, please let me know.
For an another answer in the same vein, see my posts about how the romantic kiss (wet or dry) is not universal, here and here.
Edit: someone asked me discreetly how Melanesians do have sex, so I have added a section on that.
Congratulations to all.
Oh hey my post came in second, awesome. Congrats all!
I'm honored! It's been fun diving into so many interesting questions.
Thank you so much for the votes, everyone! Congrats to the others who won as well!