Rabbitholes

[caitri]

Because reasons I've ended up in a rabbithole for Sappho and am reading chunks of a book on the history of sex in America and there is a WILD chapter about the Oneida Perfectionists that were this free love community in the 1840s and their thing was "complex marriage" where monogamy was discouraged

and like ejaculating was considered not good unless explicitly for procreation so basically it was a thing to just practice edging all the time??? And it was discouraged for women to have kids with only one guy and the community would react if people got too exclusive. And APPARENTLY they had rules that men with men was okay but they didn't mention women with women.

BUT GET THIS

THE KICKER

IS ONEIDA IS THE SAME FAMILY THAT GOES ON TO FOUND THE SILVERWARE COMPANY

But what absolutely fries my brain is like meanwhile Emily Dickinson is in Amherst and arguably wildly in love with her best friend/ future SIL or just SUCH GREAT PALS and blahblah New England Evangelism and literally if she had just gone up the eastern seaboard a bit more there would have been wild fucking orgies to say nothing of the Mormons

Anyhow where's the AU where Emily Dickinson goes to join a free love cult pls??

Comments

[minoanmiss]

Did the Oneidas fall apart because all the men onl wanted to fuck the youngest women? I remember one of those communes falling apart that way.

[caitri]

So APPARENTLY was that after like a generation and change of this the rebellious youngins wanted monogamy and so the radicalism fell apart and they sold off a couple of the businesses and just got REALLY into cutlery for the next century and change.

[caitri]

SERIOUSLY CUTLERY IS WHAT REMAINS OF FREE LOVE