A Cross-Cultural Study of Modesty
- 1 February 1972
- journal article
- research article
- Published by SAGE Publications in Behavior Science Notes
- Vol. 7 (1) , 1-28
- https://doi.org/10.1177/106939717200700101
Abstract
This cross-cultural survey of sex customs treats sexual modesty in clothing and speech, privacy for intercourse, ceremonial license, and joking and avoidance. Sexual modesty is found to be uncorrelated with a number of sex taboos, but positively correlated with the attempt to confine sexual intercourse within marriage. This combination of sex restrictions, termed modesty-chastity, is very much the property of peasant societies, as opposed to primitice societies. The most sexually free cases in the sample tend to have a narrowly genital orientation to sex and to be preoccupied with sexual jokes and obscenity. The conclusion lists the full range of sex restrictions and sexual fears and proposes a germinal sex problem, best accounted for in Freudian terms.Keywords
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