Sexuality in relationships during the first wave of COVID-19

Since the beginning of 2020, COVID-19 pandemic and the restrictions, such as lockdown and social distance) have had an impact on people’s lives. In this paper, our aim is to analyze how the lockdown (restrictions) in the early stage of the outbreak had an impact on sexuality in intimate relationships among the people in Poland and Japan. Online surveys were conducted in both countries. For this purpose, measurements were performed using the quantitative method with the use of an online questionnaire by Barbara Rothmüller adapted to the requirements of the study. Then comparisons were made between the Polish and Japanese groups. The results were compared to the existing knowledge in the field of the studied phenomenon. The observations made allowed to note several statistically significant differences between the studied groups and the areas in which the subjects from the Japanese and Polish samples did not differ significantly from each other. The observed differences mostly concerned the dynamic of the declared changes in the area of sexual behavior, which turned out to be higher in the Japanese group. The theoretical depiction refers to the differences between eastern and western cultures and the specificity of Poland and Japan, which, being culturally homogenous, function in the era of globalization.

Sexuality of the inhabitants of 12th-century Ruthenia in the light of “The Life of (St) Moses the Hungarian”

As a research issue, sexuality of Ruthenians in the Middle Ages has not aroused special interest of medievalists. In historiography, considerations of the mentioned issue appeared marginally in works devoted to the institution of marriage, and in studies on the development of canon law. The aim of the article on „Sexuality of the inhabitants of 12th-century Ruthenia in the light of »The Life of (St) Moses the Hungarian«” is to analyse intimate life in Ruthenia in the pre-Mongol period in the light of „The Life of (St) Moses the Hungarian”. The juxtaposition of the mentioned hagiographic work with its plot almost entirely set in the context of sexual behaviour, with other Old Russian writings (both normative and narrative in nature) has led to a conclusion that Old Russian customs were not only the result of local tradition and the effect of adopting Byzantine legal norms, but that contacts with Latin Europe also played an important role. The close family affinities of the Rurikids with other European dynasties, the influx of people from the Latin cultural milieu into the local elite, were conducive to the persistence of phenomena considered in literature on the subject to be typical of the Latin culture.