Let me help you with this, as someone who grew up surrounded by older people and likes to read on sexual history.
- less effective contraceptives
A classic was the pull out method but, at large, women also kept a mental log of their cycle and knew the safer days. Menstrual and anal sex were more common practices than most suspect.
A curious thing I had to learn in my life: daily encounters acidify vaginal fluids, which is not a good thing for sperm. More sex can actually act as a mild contraceptive.
- lubes
Olive oil. Coconut oil. Various oils from various seeds and plants. In a pinch? Even butter was fair game.
- comfort
I like my comfort but I like my poon. If available and willing, if there is an oportunity, there is an event.
Remember that sex for pleasure, as we understand it today, only appears when we overcome the reproductive imperative.
As a species, we should be thanking every single day mother nature and women for evolving a pleasure oriented phisiology. Boobs have no need for being permanently enlarged. The clitoris exists solely for sexual pleasure. Women are permanently sexually available, even when pregnant; no estrous, no heat cycle.
What is comfortable for one is unappealing for another.
- gay relations
Same sex sexual activity has been a thing probably since mammals exist. There are plenty records of homosexual behaviour throughout history. Did it made sense for societies at large try to repress it? Yes. Infant and general mortality was high for a long period of time. Individuals not producing offspring would be detrimental for the tribe. But was that enough to cull it? No. Greeks almost made it an institution. In feudal Japan, it was well accepted for soldiers to engage in homosexual relationships, that would cease in times of peace. Cultures that kept harems often had all-female and all-male ones. The romans had male prostitutes, for male costumers.
The “modern” understanding and view of homosexuality stems mostly from religious precepts of abrahamic origin. And puritanism.
Strangely enough, female homosexual behaviour tended to be overlooked.
- patriarchy
Ah, what a sad lovely notion.
Yes, sadly, it is a well proven fact that women have been treated like property for most of human history. But it is often overlooked that this also created a shadow society where males were not allowed, protected by taboos and social norms. The more rigid the separation of roles, the more a separate culture would flourish.
The most hilarious example of how rigid societies crumble under their own weight? For centuries, it was a sin for a catholic man not to pleasure his wife (or mistress, concubine, etc) because otherwise could compromise conception.
Women, regardless of this, have been more powerful throughout history than aknowledged. Personally, I think the current understanding of how things happened in the past still passes through the lenses of 1800’s views.
- adults adultins
Kids saw animals rut in the field and easily made the inference something similar happened between adults. Sex was not public nor for show to children but it was considered a more integral part of everyday life.
How many recounts of people inadvertently peeking on their parents or adults being together exist on record and how it influenced their blooming as adults? Not few. It wasn’t about violence or abuse or suffering; those exist too but are considerably fewer and far between. It was about pleasure and intimacy and adulthood.
What modelled our current view on sex was not based on how peasants took to it but how the upper classes did. We’d be more at ease in a upper class home from the 1800’s than we’d be in a rural house of country workers. We emulated the upper class living manners and standards, as it was seen as better. More comfortable, no challenge on that, better is a subject for discussion. Upper classes tended to be more closed regarding sex and sexuality because there was an image, proper, to maintain. The peasants were rude, unsophisticated. Well, the peasants were having fun, while the rich people were developing manias and paranoias. Need a fetish? Go talk with a rich person.
I had one or two things posted on the old LemmyNSFW but it was getting so swamped with AI generated content that I lost interest.
The communities geared towards writen erotica also felt quite dead, so it doesn’t really add as an incentive.
If things were a bit different here, I might consider it.
Although my latest projects have been little more than stylized porn.