Now, first let's make a few things clear. The whole "piggish deformed brutes" was a racial caricature back then, similar to racist pamphlets drawing depictions of hook-nosed Jews. It's true that orcs have skin tones in various shades of green, tusks, average around 7 feet in height, and are as a rule stronger then a human but otherwise very little of the classical depictions makes sense. It's true that in cases of incest an orc can look really damn ugly, but then again so do humans. It's also true that the average orc is as a rule a little dumber then the average human, but that's due to the different cultures and nothing to do with biology. Orcs tend to be a bit rough by human standards of beauty but both races consider the other at least good enough to fuck.
The warrior culture of old has changed a lot as well since the dark ages. It's true that strength and battle prowess are still prized, but this doesn't mean all orcs are berserk lunatics like many humans want you to believe. It's true that an orc tends to be a little dumber then a human, but only because of different cultural priorities. Being clever is all well and good, but if you can't defend your home from attackers what's the point? Most orc households train their children in some form of combat skill starting about the same time they enter school. There's the particularly nasty stereotype that orc men love to rape women until they break somehow, and that never was entirely true. There were some bad apples in the dark ages, but as a rule orc men don't try to rape human women any more then human men try to rape orc women. Granted an orc woman is usually at least as strong as a human man and a trained fighter so you don't hear about as many successful human-on-orc rapes, but that's neither here nor there. As for relationships with other races, they are surprisingly rare as orc women usually find males of other races too weak somehow while orc men are usually considered too insensitive for long term relationships. Good enough for flings, but not for marrying.
As for sexual attitudes, Orcs ironically took to female equality faster then humans did. A culture that truly prides itself on strength and battle prowess, they recognized that they were more powerful when the two genders worked together then just leaving the fighting to the men. It's true that in the dark ages orc women had the short end of the stick, but then again same with humans. For example, in the dark ages if an orc warrior wanted to breed another orc's wife there was a ritual duel in place- the idea being the stronger male would produce stronger children. Today this ritual has turned on it's head, monogamy is considered convenient but if an orc woman thinks a male other than her husband would give her a stronger child then she is the one that initiates the duel. Cheating on spouses is not nearly as looked down upon, and in some cases is actually encouraged. It is also true that in the dark ages chief's had their pick of the tribe's women, but what humans fail to mention is that the chief was usually the strongest fighting male of the tribe so usually the orc women saw this as somewhere between an honor to annoyance that would be good for the tribe in the long run. Nowadays tribal identity is academic and having a ring of "friends with benefits" that can include non-orcs is the norm, larger rings seen as signs of physical beauty and/or battle prowess. |