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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   27219 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 28, 2025

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So... Instead of the sloppy but intuitive test of "does she look old enough" one would now have to literally ask if she has a license?

We used to have fucking licenses, it was called “marriage”

And people used to fuck before marriage anyways. The puritans commonly had premarital pregnancies. Covered up by rush marriages.

Fornication was indeed a crime. Like smoking weed today. Illegal and popular.

Fornication was usually punished with a fine, though it could be punished with whipping when the fine was too far out of reach. Both men and women were prosecuted, with an exception that took me embarrassingly long to understand: When accusing a married couple (for conduct before the wedding, naturally), it was common to prosecute only the groom. This is an unspoken discount for the couple out of respect for their subsequent marriage, without having to admit it and undermine the social norm.

Even if we assume that most fornicating couples got away with it (a fair assumption, I think), it still reflects a very different set of norms than those of modern dating.

Fornication was usually punished with a fine,

Fornication was usually covered up (if no pregnancy resulted) or "punished" with a shotgun wedding (if it did). Actual enforcement of the laws against it was vanishingly rare.

When accusing a married couple (for conduct before the wedding, naturally), it was common to prosecute only the groom.

I wouldn't say it was common to prosecute anyone at all for pre-marital sex leading to a shotgun wedding. I can believe it was an order of magnitude more common to prosecute the groom than the bride.

undermine the social norm.

Given the actual customs in cisHajnal Europe and Colonial America between about 1600 and the Industrial Revolution, I strongly suspect the actual social norm was "maintain plausible deniability and don't complain if you end up shotgun-married".

I was replying in the context of Puritan Massachusetts, which @TIRM alluded to.

As I said, I suppose that most folks got away with it even there. But the Puritans were aware that they were doing something weird and difficult with the society they were trying to build, so they were willing to do some things differently. Their courts were way more willing to get involved in family matters than most, for good or for ill.

If you haven’t read it, I recommend Edmund S. Morgan’s book The Puritan Family. It’s very readable and very interesting.

Puritan Massachusetts

The home of bundling. Sure looks like a way of allowing pre-marital sex with plausible deniability (admittedly in a relationship which is well on the way towards marriage, but lots of short engagements and premature births expected).

Now that's interesting. I would have assumed married couples would get a free pass for possible past fornication. Sometimes the first baby comes a bit quicker than normal for some young married couples.

Seduction laws, on the other hand, were enforced. It’s probably impossible to have this setup without them- get married and hope for the best is a great alternative to getting prosecuted.

Is that any different from checking a girl who looks questionable's ID to check the age?

Very

  1. I can with a great degree of safety (90%? 95%?) avoid questionable girls right off the bat by sight.

  2. I can avoid places where underage girls hang out pretty easily and costlessly

  3. No one actually checks their dates ID.

I can't avoid places "people who didn't take or can't pass the sex test" hang out. I can't read it at a glance. I'd HAVE to actually check.

I can't avoid places "people who didn't take or can't pass the sex test" hang out

I mean, yes you can.

This allows any venue to directly filter out people that haven't passed the maturity test.

Go places that bounce anyone that isn't 'sexually mature' from entry.

I'd HAVE to actually check.

I'm unclear why this seems like an ardurous burden to you.

I'm unclear why this seems like an ardurous burden to you.

Perhaps he believes that having to assess documentation to ensure that the state has allowed you and the young woman in question to bang is going to be deeply unsexy. Not unlike mandating STD test results or consent forms beforehand.

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