fandomhigh | Sex Thru The Ages, 9/08

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sex thru ages

Sex Thru The Ages, 9/08

The day after a holiday and one can only hope that people aren't hungover from celebrating. Well, if they were American. And from a time period that Labor Day is celebrated.

Look, it was an excuse for a day off for a lot of people. That's good enough for a party most of the time.

"Good morning class, today we'll be looking into another era in the history of sex. This time it will be ancient Egypt. Which, trust me, will hold your attention if you find prostitution and ritual virginity losing ceremonies to be just slightly interesting."

"Although," Algren noted, casting a sidelong look at Kirk, "prostitution seems a strong word. Considering the day and age, with medicine the way it was and the average life expectancy so much lower than it is now, the ancient Egyptians had sound reason for what they did."

Riiiight. Thank you for that bit of losing the interest of teenagers there.

"A more... enlightened view of sex then?" Jim suggested. "Where women who exchanged sex for monetary gain or religious purposes advertised their 'wares' as it were by wearing essentially fishnet dresses or tattooing their thighs and going nude."

Algren was a killjoy. He was not sorry for it in the least.

"The goal was to not only conceive a child, but to survive childbirth and bear healthy offspring," he noted, dryly. "If they managed to survive childbirth, then they would come to be seen as a desirable prospect as a future wife. They held elaborate ceremonies, festivals, if you will, which existed for the sole purpose of culminating in a mass..."

... He balked. Look, he was Victorian. There were some words that existed in his vocabulary well enough that were never going to leave his mouth.

"Orgy," Jim said for him, putting extra emphasis on it just to piss the man off.

"... Thank you, Jim." Algren did not look terribly thankful.

Jim gave him a pleasant smile. "No problem. If a woman survived childbirth, you had the opportunity to pick your husband. Polygamy was technically legal, but not engaged in for the most part mostly do to the inability to support so many wives and children."

"While we don't know the exact specifics of the customs involved in the 'act of' during such... events, we do know several key points about the ancient Egyptians." Algren straightened out his jacket. It was not an uncomfortable twitch, shut up. "We know that, for starters, they had absolutely no problems with nudity, in the day, and their paintings were abundant in sexual innuendo. They wrote graphic love poetry, and their sexual practices followed the lead of the Egyptian goddess, Hathor." Why yes, that absolutely was a handout or two, for the curious. "Their society was, in fact, highly centered around fertility."

"So, today we'll be having you try your hand at Egyptian poetry," Jim said, relaxing as he leaned against the teacher's desk. "Yes, love poetry. And we do encourage you to be as graphic as need be ~~keeping in mind this is an open comm~~."

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Oh, those Egyptians. Can they be wackier?

Helen thought that the practice of assuring one's fertility in such a society was understandable.

Tahiri spent a few minutes twitching over the tattoo thing, but got over that quickly enough.

Because there was a lot more to . . . well, the best way to describe it was pretty much this: O.O

Well this wasn't helping any hangover Bones might have had. He was not writing any damn poetry. Ever.

Emma was just going to look over the handouts, and try not to bang her head against her desk at the various mental flailings and/or images she was picking up from other people in the class.

There was not enough brain bleach in the world for this.

This was certainly a side of ancient Egypt that Hoshi had never heard about, and she paid careful attention to the lecture.

Alex was not taking notes but he was smirking like a champ while he twirled his pencil between his fingers. The Egyptians didn't sound too bad. They just sounded open and free. Mark of a good civilization, if you asked him.

Or maybe he was just thinking dirty thoughts. Could be either, really.

Thoughts that some people could hear, thank you, and eventually Emma threw a wadded up ball of paper at the back of his head.

Of course she could block him out on her own, but what would be the fun in that?

Alex was not expecting to take a wadded up ball of paper to the back of his head. He started to turn, ready to get his bitch on, when he saw who'd thrown it at him.

Well, that made more sense. She must have been listening in to those thoughts. He could certainly help her out there and just made his thoughts dirtier.

And he waved. Yep.

Edited 2009-09-08 14:27 (UTC)

Of course she'd been listening; she was Emma. What good was it having powers if you didn't use them?

But that? That meant it was on like Donkey Kong.

Emma beamed at him sweetly before throwing back an equally dirty thought or two. < Bring it. First one to blush loses, > she replied silently.

Oooh, a challenge. Those were always fun even if his smile went a little wobbly at her return of some equally dirty images. Hadn't expected that even if he should have.

< And what happens when you lose? >, he asked, taking a minute to adjust to conversation like that. And yes, that wording was deliberate. He had an ego.

< When you lose, you owe me a night at the bar, > Emma replied cheerfully. < I think that sounds fair, don't you? >

Alex laughed and shook his head, amused at her confidence that he'd be the one losing here. Not gonna happen!

< It does and I'll take the same thing when you lose, > he replied confidently. < I've been doing this dirty thought thing a lot longer than you. >

Or so he thought.

< You may have been 'doing it', darling, but I've got access to the Greatest Moments clips of everyone in this school right now, including the teachers. If it's anatomically possible, I'm willing to bet I can find it in first person perspective for you. >

Use her power for Great Evil? Oh hell yes.

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Dirty poetry writing. For class. She was actually getting credit for this.

This class was amazing.

Diana's brain went somewhere very weird, so she was now working on not cracking up laughing. No way was she writing poetry.

Karla was confused about the stigma that ritual virginity loss seemed to carry in this world. Perhpas not the brightest idea ever, but she decided to raise her hand and ask anyway.

"Excuse me?" she said, once they had finished the lecture. "Why is virginity so prized in this world anyway? It has an almost...talismanic significance that I don't understand. There seems a great emphasis is places on being or not being a virgin and when and why one loses one's virginity."

That was... a very broad, open sort of question, and it was going to take Algren a moment to piece together a reply.

"I believe the reasons for it have shifted somewhat over the years," he attempted, thoughtfully. "And they differ between cultures and even between individuals. I suppose the more common reasons in this day and age would be the possibility of pregnancy before marriage, and a fear of people who aren't mature enough to take care of themselves properly suddenly finding themselves responsible for a new life, completely dependent on its parent for survival."

He paused for a moment, and then pressed on. "There are illnesses as well, which can spread from person to person primarily through intercourse. If a potential 'mate' hasn't had sex yet, then it stands to reason that they have a very small chance of possessing such illness and passing it on in turn. That might be one of the more rational reasons for such, in this era."

This era that he wasn't from. He hoped that not too much of that sounded like speculation.

Edited 2009-09-08 18:56 (UTC)

"Well, then what's wrong with ritual virginity loss?" Karla pressed. "If people are worried about the consequences of losing one's virginity, doesn't having some kind of ritual where such outcomes could be controlled make even more sense, not less?"

Karla was going to be a very challenging student to have in this classroom, considering she was asking a man who was from an era where they still put skirts on piano legs, and all.

"I'm not going to go so far to say that there's anything wrong with it. I'm personally open to learning all I can about other cultures and their viewpoints on..." He quirked an eyebrow. "Well, not just their viewpoints on sex." He was digressing. "There have been eras where talk of sex at all has been considered highly taboo, for religious reasons or otherwise. Switching from that back to a more controlled method of... governing who loses their virginity and when... would probably be a jump that's entirely too large for most people here to make."

Yeah, Karla was probably going to be a bit of a handful, especially since she was now giving Algren a look that suggested that he was her brain on drugs.

She'd learned the look from Francine, who used it on her all the time.

"There was a time when just talking about sex was taboo? Are you serious?! That's just ridiculous! What kind of--" she swallowed back the word 'stupid' with difficulty "--religion would do that?"

"I wouldn't say the religion did that. More the people in charge of the religion at the time," Jim said, jumping into the conversation.

"But why would they do that? I mean, it's sex. Why stop people from talking about it?" Karla easily turned the focus of her question from Professor Algren to Professor Kirk. She didn't care who answered her question as long as it got answered.

Edited 2009-09-10 05:08 (UTC)

As Cal jotted down idle notes in his state of generic apathetic interest to keep from getting to thinking too much about stuff, he found himself wondering if, in every class, the only thing he was really going to care about was okay, that's nice, but what about hermaphrodites?

Leda supposed that it made sense when you lived in a hot area to not wear a lot of clothes. On the other hand, wouldn't you want to cover up to keep the sun off you?

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