What's with upstate NY and multiple sex partner cults?

[_DarkHelmet]

I had never heard of these guys. Shortly after the Mormons moved their operation West, this guy started his own brand of a swinging marriage system. Was there something in the water in Upstate New York that led to the breeding of these types of guys?

http://news.yahoo.com/remembering-oneida-where-everyone-married-everyone-else-114500443.html

[_lulu]

I had never heard of these guys. Shortly after the Mormons moved their operation West, this guy started his own brand of a swinging marriage system. Was there something in the water in Upstate New York that led to the breeding of these types of guys?

http://news.yahoo.com/remembering-oneida-where-everyone-married-everyone-else-114500443.html

It wasn't the water, check out Munster, completely different water system.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%C3%BCnster_Rebellion

When social conditions are just so, certain norms get pushed, including sex, marriage and familiy norms.

Its been said, upstate New York was the California of its day. Think California more in the 1960's & '70s.

There had just been a successful political Revolution, sealed by the War of 1812, upstate New York was a slightly aging frontier, the Erie Canal was being completed and ideas, however different, flowed with the water. This instalment of the Industrial Revolution and the canal worked together as the patriarchal farm family model broke down as children left the farm and women's home manufacture slowed. Some people thought up new ways (or perhaps they were old ways) to do family.

I think part of what was happening in Mormon polgyamy was an attempt (among other things) to preserve the patriarchal farm family as men left the house for factory work (giving them less control at home which women picked up) and the 2nd Great Awakening was giving women in religion more power as they were "moved by the spirit." Bizarrely, Mormon polygamy was partly reactionary at the very beginning, trying to keep the economic system agrarian as much as possible with the patriarchal father clearly in charge of as many women as possible. But then those women had their ways, as women always do.

So it wasn't the water. Don't think it was the beer either. Upstate has horrible beer but I can't speak for Munster.

[_Blixa]

So it wasn't the water. Don't think it was the beer either. Upstate has horrible beer but I can't speak for Munster.[/color]

Genny Cream Ale is fine when you are a starving grad student. Sort of.

[_cinepro]

If they were half as good in bed as they were at making china and silverware, it must have been one heck of a community.

And it only makes this unintentionally ironic.

[_cinepro]

I also enjoy listening to some of "The Great Courses" series from The Teaching Company. In their course on American Religious History, they group the Mormons and Oneidans into the same lecture:

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is one of several new religions founded in America. Facing intense antipathy at first (in part because it blessed polygamy), it eventually established itself as a permanent and respectable part of the American religious landscape. Less enduring was the "Perfectionist" community of Oneida, New York, which also held unusual views of sex and marriage.

http://www.thegreatcourses.com/tgc/cour ... px?cid=897

[_lulu]

If they were half as good in bed as they were at making china and silverware, it must have been one heck of a community.

And it only makes this unintentionally ironic.

Men had to demonstrate that they were good in bed, but in a particular way.

Men were not allowed to ejaculate. So before a man was allowed to have sex he had to prove that he was good at not ejaculating.

As one might imagine, the men who were best with this were the ones with the most experience, and the ones with the most experience tended to be the older men.

So when it came time for young women to have their first sexual experience, they were most likely to have it with an older man. The younger men having not yet demonstrated their ability to have sex and not ejaculate.

Some of the young men objected to all of the young women going with the older men while they, how should I put this, got nothing.

Yes, in ways, that was different from Mormon polygamy, but you can also draw your own parallels.