Challenge: Islamic World sexually revolves before the West

Societies of abrahamic religious background are known to have (had) very rigid standards on sexual morality. And as many of you know, Catholicism is at least in theory the most rigid. True, 99 whips for fornication in Islam are still more than just slightly rigid, but Islam has never had a problem with contraception per se, much in contrasts to Catholicism. Once in a while, I also saw a chart covering the no-nos and permissions regarding sexuality in various branches of religions. While possibly selective in showing Catholic prohibitions first, most other religions seemed to be at least more permissable in various, though not all circumstances, than Catholizism.

Curiously, it's been the West to (mostly) shake off the Abrahamic baggage of sexuality rigidity.

So how do we get history to have at least central parts of the Islamic World develop a 20th-century-OTLesque sexual revolution first and having the Occident struggling with adopting "near eastern decadency" at the same time?
 

Teleology

Banned
Difficult, not due to some sort Western cultural superiority, but because the Black Plague and the dark ages in general made things more equitable for women in medieval Europe. It wasn't until the late medieval and the Renaissance that there was a major counter-reaction.

Since a plague might destabilize the Islamic world, that's probably not a viable option for this premise.
 
I think it should be more how do you get it to stick and continue, Islam at various times and places in the past was'nt that particularly strict
in general, I mean heck Homosexuality was at times generally accepted, for instance a few of the Ottoman sultans had male lovers and it
was present in various societies in parts of North Africa and the Fertile Crescent, and of course quite a bit of Islamic poetry would easily
qualify as written porn.

I think the best way for it early, early is to keep the Islamic Golden Age from ending.

A later one could be the Ottoman Empire surviving and going down the path of Über-liberalization and Secularism (let's beat the West at liberalism!)
and thus having a sexual revolution a decade or so before the West.
 
There were gay discotheques in Iraq in the 90s.

Yeah. Until fairly recently, most strains of islam weren't terribly strict on matters such as these. Not necessarily ideal conditions, but i don't think that the puritanical ideals that are often associated with the muslim world today really become entrenched until the 20th century (exact point is variable, depending on location), usually as some sort of reaction to western culture or some such occurance.
 
temuchen gets sick and dies when he is exiled from his tribe, the mongol tribes never unite and the middle east isn't ravaged by the mongol horde. The caliphate remains and the middle east is most likely more advanced and cosmopolitan than europe.
 

Goldstein

Banned
Difficult, not due to some sort Western cultural superiority, but because the Black Plague and the dark ages in general made things more equitable for women in medieval Europe. It wasn't until the late medieval and the Renaissance that there was a major counter-reaction.

Since a plague might destabilize the Islamic world, that's probably not a viable option for this premise.

Excuse me? Except for literary matters regarding a young and beautiful woman (and that was present in the medieval islamic culture as well, which was much more sensual in that time, by the way), things didn't become equitable for women at all. We can know, for example, that until late in the Rennaisance, the old women were absolutely despised, and there were plenty of poems mocking them as bitterly as possible, for they were deprived from beauty, and hence, what was conceived as their only inherent virtue. And if you're talking about the sexual mores, the Middle Ages were very promiscuous, even if the official discourse was rigid and homophobia was rampant (and it was not nearly as rigid as the Victorian one, by the way). But I can see the point of sexual liberation and women's liberation being close, for when sex stops being an institutional instrument of dominance for both women and the general poplace, things tend to go in that direction.

If you think about it, the three waves of feminism were associated to three fundamental changes in the life of the Western woman.

-In the first one, the liberal ideas started to see convenient for bourgoise women to receive a basic education. The result was that they started to have a wider scope and wonder why they couldn't vote, and as there was no real reason, female suffrage spread and women were legally
emancipated.

-In the second one, as ugly as it sounds, electrodomestic machines spread. That made housewifes to have more free time and share their problems with their female neighbours, so they realized that most of their problems and worryings were common, and started to demand the same oportunities and treatment as men.

-The third one is a result of the success of the second. When women incorporate to the professional world, are able to have total control over their sex lifes, are able to have a fully independent life and start to receive an equal consideration, then the residual stereotypes and attitudes start to look blatantly absurd.

So, in short? If you want sexual liberation to start in the Islamic world befor the Western world reaches it, just make them to develop a scientific method before the West, and make the idea of universal education more commonplace, so feminist ideas can gain momentum. As Islam is not particularily more sexuallly repressive than other religions, and it is by far the most sensualist religion between the mainstream ones, everything else will shortly follow.
 
This is not a topic you can easily discuss. First of all, once again, I see we're going to compare rural Saudi Arabia to the most progressive Western societies. Second, there are many branches of Islamic jurisprudence. Islam is generally pretty tolerant of "private" sin; in order to convict someone of "fornication", you need four adult witnesses to the act, and if you can't produce them, you get punished for making the accusation.

The point is to keep everyone out of each other's bizness, if you know what I mean.

In any case, there are plenty of Islamic societies where standards are not that much different from the West.

And finally, Islam in general is way more pro-enjoy sex than Christianity. Men are legally obligated by marriage to sexually satisfy their wives. In many Christian societies, women's orgasms are optional, if not frowned upon.

And post-finally, in Christianity, one unrepented sin and it's off to Hell with you. In Islam, your good deeds only need have outweighed the bad. Plus, there's a lot of negotiation: masturbating is a sin, but OK if it will help you avoid a worse one.
 

Skokie

Banned
You'd need a revival of humanism leading to an "Enlightenment" in which cultural norms were treated as non-absolute and were tested against reason or questions of individual autonomy. As in Western Europe, it would initially be limited to men; but if it developed, the contradictions would be laid bare and women (the poor, gays, minorities, etc.) would start thinking dangerous thoughts concerning their equality and liberation from capricious traditions.

Córdoba would be a good place to start.
 
We can know, for example, that until late in the Rennaisance, the old women were absolutely despised, and there were plenty of poems mocking them as bitterly as possible, for they were deprived from beauty, and hence, what was conceived as their only inherent virtue.

Martial wrote of "fetid hags" in his Epigrams. Yet his vulgar depictions countered the Roman idea of the univira that remained loyal to one husband (literally "man", vir: no word for husband) after death. A man did not change societal status upon marriage like a woman did when she assumed the title uxor. Hence, Romans observed the double standard of the honorable matron of the family hierarchy and the "ugly old woman". Certainly these stereotypes were well in place before the Christian era.
 
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