Basic Trope: A work set in the past, or in a very conservative present-day culture, has very liberal attitudes towards sex and sexuality.
- Straight: In A Story from the Middle Ages, Alice has sex with several different men, and faces no scorn from other characters for doing so. In Real Life, Slut-Shaming would have been the least of her worries.
- Exaggerated: Alice openly carries on a lesbian relationship with Christine and no one blinks.
- Downplayed: Alice's marriage to Bob consists of her moving into his home, with little to no pomp and circumstance. (i.e. what we today would call "cohabitation," or perhaps "common-law marriage.")
- Justified:
- Alice is lower-class, and nobody cares about some random farmer/townswoman as long as she does her job.
- Alice is extremely high-class and her reputation is the Elephant in the Living Room. While people are seen gossiping about it behind her back, actually confronting her would mean retaliation from either herself or her family. Alternately, she's constantly seen paying her servants to keep quiet.
- The culture talks a lot about staying "pure" and religious, but it's mostly lip-service and everyone just does what they want outside of the actual church.
- This particular time and place in history really did have such attitudes about sex.
- perhaps it predates all civilization. (EG: a story about Homo Erectus)
- The culture does not worry too much about whose children are whose; every man who could even potentially be a father takes responsibility for the kids, and inheritance is through the mother's lineage, not the father's.
- Or, perhaps marriage as we know it doesn't exist, and couples go their separate ways after doing the deed.
- Or, maybe there's a way to find out exactly who a given child's father is.
- In this setting, some kind of reliable birth control exists, even if it did not exist in Real Life. Therefore, Alice does not have to worry about getting pregnant. (And either there's STD Immunity, or some way of preventing STIs other than abstinence or monogamy, so Alice doesn't have to worry about that, either.)
- Inverted:
- In A Story from America 20 Minutes into the Future, Alice is facing the possibility of execution for having engaged in premarital sex.
- In A Story from 1980s America, the sexual attitudes are depicted as equivalent to Victorian Britain.
- Alice lives in the year 3000, and it's a Free-Love Future.
- Subverted:
- Alice becomes pregnant as a result of her having had sex outside of marriage, and her community begins to scorn her.
- Alice and Bob have a Shotgun Wedding, and Bob makes restitution for the bride price Alice's father would have received if Alice was married off as a virgin.
- The story begins with a depiction of Alice and her wife Christine participating in normal society. However, this was just a Dream Sequence from Alice. The story then shows how she and Christine must keep their relationship hidden for fear of ostracism or worse.
- Double Subverted:
- Alice has an abortion or a Convenient Miscarriage, and regains her standing in the community when people eventually forget about the pregnancy.
- The shotgun wedding was actually part of Alice and Bob's plan to get married by choice in a culture where Arranged Marriage is the norm.
- Parodied: In A Story from the Middle Ages, Alice is chosen as the first pansexual popess, and celebrates with a ten-day orgy. No one even bats an eye to this.
- Zig Zagged: Different cultures in the setting have different sexual mores.
- The culture had a sexual Blue-and-Orange Morality compared to today.
- Averted: Shown Their Work, Deliberate Values Dissonance
- Enforced: Politically Correct History
- Lampshaded: When Alice marries Christine, they have their wedding in a Church and it's officiated by a Bishop. The narrator ends the scene by stating "this is so historically accurate!"
- Implied: Sexual artifacts were found widely distributed throughout archaeological sites.
- Invoked: The Libertine Towns were founded by malcontents and exiles from more sexually repressive neighbors.
- Exploited: Alice becomes The Mistress to King Robert, and increases her status in society.
- Defied: When word gets out that Alice has been sleeping around, her village (or her family) has her burned at the stake.
- Discussed: "You know Alice, when you traveled back in time I thought for sure you'd get arrested by the inquisition or thrown in prison. But it seems like nobody minds."
- Conversed: "Isn't it a bit unrealistic that she doesn't face any consequences for sleeping around before marriage? Doesn't the movie take place in, like, the Middle Ages?"
- Deconstructed: Sure, there may be more sexual freedom in this portrayal of the Middle Ages, but they still lack the effective contraceptives and STI treatments of the modern day.
- Played For Laughs: When traveling through time Alice is puzzled to always see the same three sleazy buildings adapted to the time period.
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