David T. has commented on my post on January 18th. Below is my response to his comment.
David,
Thank you for your comment. Monogamy and the nuclear family are often bound together in our culture, and, as you point out, children’s loss of stable relationships within the fragile nuclear family can be very hard on them. Of course, the more complex webs of adult relationships you write of are a good remedy for the shortcomings of the nuclear family and probably reflect to some extent the relationships within our ancestral foraging bands. In the case of my own family, my children had extended relationships. This was especially true of my younger son who found great strength within the family of his best friend, whom he met in second grade. My son and his friend initiated this relationship, and all that the rest of us needed to do was to encourage it. I think that families would do well to be on the lookout for the possibilities of such ad hoc extended families and then to foster them.
What can be said about fundamentalists? Not much except to emphasize that if you start with a false premise, you get a bad outcome. The rest of us have to keep on offering other positions in contrast to this lust for certainty. One good alternative is Cupitt’s solar living: Give yourself away like the sun, shining for all, doing your best without regard for reward or the assurance of success. This is difficult, but it is a lot of the reason why Jesus is such a compelling figure. As Cupitt points out, his “…almost existentialist ethic of open whole-hearted expression, and freedom from anxiety or calculation” (p82 in “A Great New Story,” 2010) can be found in some of Jesus’ sayings in the Sermon on the Mount, (Matthew 5:13-16, 38-48, and 6:25-34) but not in other passages (5:17-33, and 6:1-20 and 24), which are mixed in with the other sayings. These “…take for granted the value of a strictly-interpreted religious Law, and a piety of secret good works and hidden inwardness which pursues and expects a heavenly reward after death.” (p81, 82, “A Great New Story”) Cupitt draws attention to the fact that “…the conflict between the original outlook of Jesus himself and the remodeled Jesus of the emergent Church is already deeply embedded within the best texts we have, making it very difficult in all periods for people to hear Jesus’ own voice. (p 81, “A Great New Story”) Obviously, these two opposing views are still with us. No wonder we struggle to follow Jesus. It’s either extremely difficult or just a matter of “faith.” May the Spirit be with you in your struggle.
Tuesday, January 25, 2011
Tuesday, January 18, 2011
My Response to Bob Y’s comment on “Sex at Dawn”
Bob,
Thanks for you comment on my post on "Sex at Dawn" (December 18, 2010). Here is my response.
Yes, modern sexuality is complex and bewildering, because, as “Sex at Dawn” maintains, we don’t recognize that we are apes, or, more to the point of your comments, we are still apes. Sexually, we tend to act like apes, specifically our closest ape cousins, chimpanzees and bonobos, and we chafe at the restrictions of monogamy. We and these two other species evolved to live in foraging bands, in which all is shared: food, sex, and the perils in the environment. Before the rise of agriculture about 10,000 years ago, our ancestors had to depend for survival on the other members of the band with what Ryan and Jethá call fierce egalitarianism. Nothing like that exists today in our agricultural or post-agricultural world. We left interdependent foraging bands behind for the advantages of agriculture, namely a steady food supply and a settled existence that in some ways was less dangerous than foraging, which necessitated fending off predators.
However, agricultural societies have features that can be viewed as disadvantages, especially compared to the dynamics of foraging bands. Perhaps most important is the loss of equality between the sexes. Although equality in the bands is not complete, males and females have sex with many partners within and outside the band. As a result, the paternity of offspring is both not known and not an issue; the offspring are members of the band and are raised communally by the band.
However, with agriculture came the concepts of paternity and of private property. Farm land is possessed and passed down from father to son. The land becomes the most important possession the father has, and he wants to be sure that it is passed down to the one who is without doubt his son. Paternity must no longer be unknown, as in the band, and, in order to insure that the son has one father, known without doubt, the mother must have only the father as a sex partner. In order to enforce this arrangement, the woman becomes the father’s property, controlled as strictly as the land.
Also, with agriculture, came produce. With excess produce came trading, and with trading came trading centers that became cities. Cities developed a ruling class of administrators to regulate trade and priests to mediate between man and a distant, exalted God who was worshipped in the hope of ensuring good crops and peace. Or not. Because land was of ultimate value, agriculture also led to armies that waged war to defend property or to gain more. So, agriculture has much to answer for: patriarchy, monogamy, private property, cities, armies, and war, for starters.
However, as you point out, today most people live in post-agricultural, urban societies, but these are still defined to a large extent by private property and war. Although you’re correct that in many societies, especially outside the U.S., traditional extramarital arrangements have eased the strictures of monogamy, this easing chiefly benefits males without much disturbing the primary monogamous marriage. What clearly threatens monogamy, as you also point out, is the rise of women’s sexual liberation. At least in theory, women need no longer be dependent on men for support, nor do they need husbands to have children. Moreover, as with men in modern urban societies, their work outside the home can become their primary focus, and their relationships with their colleagues may become more important to them than their relationships with members of their families. With these changes, the important question today becomes how do these changes affect children? Most studies point to the advantages to children of parents who are present for their children throughout their lives. How do we insure continuity for our children while the traditional structures of patriarchy and monogamy are disappearing, and while wars continue unrelentingly? Going back to foraging bands clearly is not the answer, but in our post-agricultural, “liberated” societies, what is the way forward?
Thanks for you comment on my post on "Sex at Dawn" (December 18, 2010). Here is my response.
Yes, modern sexuality is complex and bewildering, because, as “Sex at Dawn” maintains, we don’t recognize that we are apes, or, more to the point of your comments, we are still apes. Sexually, we tend to act like apes, specifically our closest ape cousins, chimpanzees and bonobos, and we chafe at the restrictions of monogamy. We and these two other species evolved to live in foraging bands, in which all is shared: food, sex, and the perils in the environment. Before the rise of agriculture about 10,000 years ago, our ancestors had to depend for survival on the other members of the band with what Ryan and Jethá call fierce egalitarianism. Nothing like that exists today in our agricultural or post-agricultural world. We left interdependent foraging bands behind for the advantages of agriculture, namely a steady food supply and a settled existence that in some ways was less dangerous than foraging, which necessitated fending off predators.
However, agricultural societies have features that can be viewed as disadvantages, especially compared to the dynamics of foraging bands. Perhaps most important is the loss of equality between the sexes. Although equality in the bands is not complete, males and females have sex with many partners within and outside the band. As a result, the paternity of offspring is both not known and not an issue; the offspring are members of the band and are raised communally by the band.
However, with agriculture came the concepts of paternity and of private property. Farm land is possessed and passed down from father to son. The land becomes the most important possession the father has, and he wants to be sure that it is passed down to the one who is without doubt his son. Paternity must no longer be unknown, as in the band, and, in order to insure that the son has one father, known without doubt, the mother must have only the father as a sex partner. In order to enforce this arrangement, the woman becomes the father’s property, controlled as strictly as the land.
Also, with agriculture, came produce. With excess produce came trading, and with trading came trading centers that became cities. Cities developed a ruling class of administrators to regulate trade and priests to mediate between man and a distant, exalted God who was worshipped in the hope of ensuring good crops and peace. Or not. Because land was of ultimate value, agriculture also led to armies that waged war to defend property or to gain more. So, agriculture has much to answer for: patriarchy, monogamy, private property, cities, armies, and war, for starters.
However, as you point out, today most people live in post-agricultural, urban societies, but these are still defined to a large extent by private property and war. Although you’re correct that in many societies, especially outside the U.S., traditional extramarital arrangements have eased the strictures of monogamy, this easing chiefly benefits males without much disturbing the primary monogamous marriage. What clearly threatens monogamy, as you also point out, is the rise of women’s sexual liberation. At least in theory, women need no longer be dependent on men for support, nor do they need husbands to have children. Moreover, as with men in modern urban societies, their work outside the home can become their primary focus, and their relationships with their colleagues may become more important to them than their relationships with members of their families. With these changes, the important question today becomes how do these changes affect children? Most studies point to the advantages to children of parents who are present for their children throughout their lives. How do we insure continuity for our children while the traditional structures of patriarchy and monogamy are disappearing, and while wars continue unrelentingly? Going back to foraging bands clearly is not the answer, but in our post-agricultural, “liberated” societies, what is the way forward?
Saturday, December 18, 2010
Bob Y.'s comment on my post on "Sex at Dawn"
Below I'm showing Bob Y's comment on my post on "Sex at Dawn", because I can't get it to go into the comment box. I'll comment on his comment as soon as possible.
PeteM
Dear Peter,
I read your blog while taking a break from a major task/chore. You have certainly put a great deal of effort and thought into it. And that sti9mulates serious thinking on the part of the readers. I think, however, that sexuality particularly in the modern context is a much more complex and bewildering subject. Let me share my impressions albeit it is from the perspective of male-female interactions.
Culture: this is perhaps one of the most important variables in defining sexuality. In many societies in Asia and the Mediterranean, sexuality can occur in two different contexts. One is directly linked with marriage, family, and social stability. That sexuality is monogamous and is directed towards having children. At the same time, and socially acceptable, there is sexuality that exists outside of the marriage and is cemented by emotion, personal feelings, and a broader freedom in selection of mates. And it may turn out to yield a true companionship, but does not have to lead to children.
Modernity and change. There are major trends that affect how sexuality is expressed. Among others:
Urbanization: your thesis is grounded on the ideas of an agricultural society. However, UN statistics indicate that this year, more than 51% of the world's population will be urban and that this will increase rapidly beyond that. Besides that, multimedia technology now has introduced rural communities to the values of an urban society. So increasingly, the definitions of sexuality will be increasingly that which exists in the cities.
Science: we have done well in expanding the frontiers of reproductive medicine. For one, we can now routinely make use of contraception to avoid having children, i.e., self-standing yuppie couples. Alternatively, you can have children without necessarily having a relationship or even intercourse - in vitro fertilization, surrogate parenthood. So sexuality can be detached from the bearing of children.
Workplace: the explosive growth of women in the skilled and professional workplace. This allows women to be financially independent which can lead to the choice of being single mothers. Again we see the separation of a sexual relationship from having children. But perhaps what I find most interesting is the development of workplace relationships where a man and a woman will spend most of their time and a great deal of their emotional and intellectual energies in shared efforts to the degree that they have more in common with each other than with their formal partners. This can occur even in the absence of a sexual affair which makes it interesting that it can be seen as sexuality without sex.
So changes in sexuality are likely to accelerate driven by the forces sketched above. Yes, Peter, sex and sexuality are a complicated business.
Best, Bob
________________________________________
PeteM
Dear Peter,
I read your blog while taking a break from a major task/chore. You have certainly put a great deal of effort and thought into it. And that sti9mulates serious thinking on the part of the readers. I think, however, that sexuality particularly in the modern context is a much more complex and bewildering subject. Let me share my impressions albeit it is from the perspective of male-female interactions.
Culture: this is perhaps one of the most important variables in defining sexuality. In many societies in Asia and the Mediterranean, sexuality can occur in two different contexts. One is directly linked with marriage, family, and social stability. That sexuality is monogamous and is directed towards having children. At the same time, and socially acceptable, there is sexuality that exists outside of the marriage and is cemented by emotion, personal feelings, and a broader freedom in selection of mates. And it may turn out to yield a true companionship, but does not have to lead to children.
Modernity and change. There are major trends that affect how sexuality is expressed. Among others:
Urbanization: your thesis is grounded on the ideas of an agricultural society. However, UN statistics indicate that this year, more than 51% of the world's population will be urban and that this will increase rapidly beyond that. Besides that, multimedia technology now has introduced rural communities to the values of an urban society. So increasingly, the definitions of sexuality will be increasingly that which exists in the cities.
Science: we have done well in expanding the frontiers of reproductive medicine. For one, we can now routinely make use of contraception to avoid having children, i.e., self-standing yuppie couples. Alternatively, you can have children without necessarily having a relationship or even intercourse - in vitro fertilization, surrogate parenthood. So sexuality can be detached from the bearing of children.
Workplace: the explosive growth of women in the skilled and professional workplace. This allows women to be financially independent which can lead to the choice of being single mothers. Again we see the separation of a sexual relationship from having children. But perhaps what I find most interesting is the development of workplace relationships where a man and a woman will spend most of their time and a great deal of their emotional and intellectual energies in shared efforts to the degree that they have more in common with each other than with their formal partners. This can occur even in the absence of a sexual affair which makes it interesting that it can be seen as sexuality without sex.
So changes in sexuality are likely to accelerate driven by the forces sketched above. Yes, Peter, sex and sexuality are a complicated business.
Best, Bob
________________________________________
Saturday, December 11, 2010
“Sex at Dawn: The Prehistoric Origins of Modern Sexuality”
God wants abundance for all, says Isaiah: “On this mountain the Lord of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of rich food, a feast of well-matured wines, of rich food filled with marrow, of well-matured wines strained clear.” (25:6) Luke tells us Jesus says that the basis of abundance is sharing: “Give and gifts will be given to you; a good measure, packed together, shaken down, and overflowing, will be poured into your lap. For the measure with which you measure will in return be measured out to you.’’ (6:38) Sharing also precedes the feeding of the multitude in all four Gospels (Matthew 14:13–21, Mark 6:31-44, Luke 9:10-17 and John 6:5-15). In these stories, Jesus takes the disciples’ little bits of bread and fish, blesses them, and, lo, everyone has more than enough: “And all ate and were filled; and they took up what was left over of the broken pieces, twelve baskets full” (Matthew 14:20).
In other words, sharing is God’s way. At least when it comes to food, but most definitely not when it comes to sex, according to the Bible. For example in Matthew 19:4-6, Jesus is quoted as saying: “…Have you not read that the one who made them at the beginning ‘made them male and female,’ and said, ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.” No sharing here. As the traditional marriage ceremony says: “…and forsaking all others, (will you) be faithful to him (her) as long as you both shall live?” According to Christian tradition, monogamy in committed relationships is God’s way.
But, it is not evolution’s way. As Christopher Ryan and Cacilda Jethá write in their new book, “Sex at Dawn: The Prehistoric Origins of Modern Sexuality”, “We didn’t descend from apes, we are apes.” And we are closely related to two other apes, bonobos and chimpanzees, because just five million years ago (an evolutionary blink), they and we shared a common hypersexual ancestor, making bonobos, chimps, and, yes, us, horny and ready for sex with multiple partners all the time. Remember, a genius is someone who thinks about sex only 95% of the time.
Up until about 10,000 years ago, we, like bonobos and chimps in the wild, lived in small foraging groups of about 100 to 150 individuals who moved around to find food and who shared almost everything, including food, shelter, protection, child care, even sexual pleasure. (p6) Although romantic love was not unknown in prehistoric communities, with or without love, a casual sexuality was the norm for our prehistoric ancestors.
However, about 10,000 years ago, human life changed profoundly. We discovered farming and we settled down to farm and raise domesticated animals. We no longer foraged over large areas, but settled down and farmed. Agriculture could, in good seasons, produce food surpluses and allow more people to survive, but it also led to: “…hierarchical political structures, private property, densely populated settlements, a radical shift in the status of women, and other social configurations that together represent an enigmatic disaster for our species: human population growth mushroomed as quality of life plummeted. The shift to agriculture, wrote author Jared Diamond, is a ‘catastrophe from which we have never recovered.’ (p9) Before agriculture, our “…ancestors lived in groups where most mature individuals would have had several ongoing sexual relationships at any given time. Though often casual, these relationships were not random or meaningless.” (p9) “An individual male’s parental investment,…the core element of the standard narrative (supporting monogamy), tends to be diffuse in societies like those in which we evolved, not directed toward one particular woman and her children…” (p13) Instead hunter-gatherer societies are characterized by their fierce egalitarianism. “Sharing is not just encouraged; it’s mandatory. Hoarding or hiding food, for example, is considered deeply shameful, almost unforgivable behavior in these societies.” (p11)
Sharing, however, became a casualty of agriculture. “…it became crucially important to know where your field ended and your neighbor’s began. Remember the tenth commandment: ‘Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's house; thou shall not covet your neighbor's wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his donkey, nor anything that is thy neighbour's.’ (Exodus 20:17) Clearly, the biggest loser (aside from slaves, perhaps) in the agricultural revolution was the human female, who went from occupying a central, respected role in foraging societies to becoming another possession for a man to earn and defend, along with his house, slaves, and livestock.” (p14) “Land could now be possessed, owned, and passed down the generations. Food that had been hunted and gathered now had to be sowed, tended, harvested, stored, defended, bought, and sold. Fences, walls, and irrigation systems had to be built and reinforced; armies to defend it all had to be raised, fed, and controlled. Because of private property, for the first time in the history of our species, paternity became a crucial concern.” (p 14, 15) So, perversely, agriculture, which increased food production, also restricted access to food and, because women became property, to heterosexual sex as well. Furthermore, Ryan and Jethá quote Timothy Taylor, author of “The Prehistory of Sex”: “While hunter-gatherer sex had been modeled on an idea of sharing and complementarity, early agriculturist sex was voyeuristic, repressive, homophobic, and focused on reproduction.” “Afraid of the wild, farmers set out to destroy it.” (p 14) Farming, which increased food supplies for those lucky enough to own land, also introduced scarcity for all those who were landless and poor.
Also, the focus on paternity and keeping the private land in the family in agricultural societies set us on the road to monogamy, always unlikely, because we evolved to want multiple partners, which minimizes the genetic perils of interbreeding. Even today, which after all is only 10,000 years since our foraging days, many men and women want multiple sex partners. However, “…the true story of human sexuality (is) so subversive and threatening that for centuries it has been silenced by religious authorities, pathologized by physicians, studiously ignored by scientists, and covered up by moralizing therapists.” (p2)
Monogamy is difficult and usually boring. The “bloom is off the rose” too soon, and many husbands and wives stop having frequent sex. Men can develop a roving eye and indulge in extramarital activities, leaving their wives neglected and angry. It’s not that men no longer love their wives, but rather they begin to love them as their “best friend” or “sister,” a sure sign that the incest taboo has become active. Furthermore, male and female orgasms are very different. Men can usually be aroused and ejaculate quickly. Too quickly, women complain. They often take longer to become aroused, but once they are, they want many more orgasms. And often they let anyone in earshot know their desire for more by their female copulatory vocalization (FCV). These sounds in other primates are invitations to males outside their own troop to come and mate, thus increasing the chances that their eggs will be fertilized by sperm from males unrelated to the males in the female’s group. (p257) It’s a good bet that these sounds in women evolved to serve the same purpose. Ryan and Jethá write: “This symmetry of dual disappointment (of men and women in monogamous relationships) illustrates the almost comical incompatibility between men’s and women’s sexual response in the context of monogamous mating.” If men and women evolved to be monogamous, why are they so incompatible? Ryan and Jethá suggest: “…isn’t it time to accept that our ancestors evolved along a sexual trajectory similar to that of our two highly social, very intelligent, closely related primate cousins (who evolved in promiscuous groups)?” (p245) They continue: “Perhaps the far-fetched denial of our promiscuous sexual prehistory expresses a legitimate fear of social instability, but insistent demands for a stable social order (based, as we’re often reminded, upon the nuclear family unit) cannot erase the effects of the hundreds of thousands of years that came before our species settled into stable villages.” (p246)
Furthermore, whether we’re for or against monogamy, it is failing, and with this failure, “the nuclear family unit” is disintegrating. Ryan and Jethá write: “In 2008, almost 40 percent of the mothers who gave birth in the United States were unmarried.” However, two parents are better for children than only one. Ryan and Jethá quote Caitlin Flanagan in Time magazine: “On every single significant outcome related to short-term well-being and long-term success, children from intact, two-parent families outperform those from single-parent households.” The outcomes included longevity, drug abuse, school performance, dropout rates, teen pregnancy, criminal behavior, and incarceration. (p302, 303)
The village that Hillary Clinton writes about in her book, “It Takes a Village,” can help relieve the pressure on the nuclear family and provide needed support for single parent families, but it wouldn’t restore us, our families, and our sex lives to Edenic bliss, where food and sex partners were readily available for all. A village is basically an agricultural settlement, and with the rise of villages, our foraging days ended. Moreover, improved agriculture has increased the earth’s population to unsustainable levels. In just the last 2000 years, population has grown from 170 million to nearly 7 billion. (p156) With all these people, there is no longer room to roam and forage.
We need to discover new ways to be sexual and familial in this post-foraging, post-monogamous world. As we struggle with the knowledge of our sexuality and the failure of monogamy, will the church help or hinder our efforts? It’s all too easy to dismiss the church as an impediment to sexual progress, but the Gospel is ever calling for us to be true to ourselves and thus to God. Remember John 8:31, 32: “Then Jesus said to the Jews who had believed in him, ‘If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples; and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.’” One “word” attributed to Jesus, quoting Deuteronomy 6:5 and Leviticus 19:18b, is: ‘“…you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.’ The second is this, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”’ (Mark 12:31, 32) If we embrace the “truth” that we are sexual beings who seek multiple partners, we may also begin to experience these partners as “neighbors.” It worked for our foraging ancestors; can it work for us, their descendants?
To read more comments on “Sex at Dawn,” go to: http://www.google.com/search?q=Sex+at+Dawn+%2B+reviews&sourceid=ie7&rls=com.microsoft:en-US&ie=utf8&oe=utf8
In other words, sharing is God’s way. At least when it comes to food, but most definitely not when it comes to sex, according to the Bible. For example in Matthew 19:4-6, Jesus is quoted as saying: “…Have you not read that the one who made them at the beginning ‘made them male and female,’ and said, ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.” No sharing here. As the traditional marriage ceremony says: “…and forsaking all others, (will you) be faithful to him (her) as long as you both shall live?” According to Christian tradition, monogamy in committed relationships is God’s way.
But, it is not evolution’s way. As Christopher Ryan and Cacilda Jethá write in their new book, “Sex at Dawn: The Prehistoric Origins of Modern Sexuality”, “We didn’t descend from apes, we are apes.” And we are closely related to two other apes, bonobos and chimpanzees, because just five million years ago (an evolutionary blink), they and we shared a common hypersexual ancestor, making bonobos, chimps, and, yes, us, horny and ready for sex with multiple partners all the time. Remember, a genius is someone who thinks about sex only 95% of the time.
Up until about 10,000 years ago, we, like bonobos and chimps in the wild, lived in small foraging groups of about 100 to 150 individuals who moved around to find food and who shared almost everything, including food, shelter, protection, child care, even sexual pleasure. (p6) Although romantic love was not unknown in prehistoric communities, with or without love, a casual sexuality was the norm for our prehistoric ancestors.
However, about 10,000 years ago, human life changed profoundly. We discovered farming and we settled down to farm and raise domesticated animals. We no longer foraged over large areas, but settled down and farmed. Agriculture could, in good seasons, produce food surpluses and allow more people to survive, but it also led to: “…hierarchical political structures, private property, densely populated settlements, a radical shift in the status of women, and other social configurations that together represent an enigmatic disaster for our species: human population growth mushroomed as quality of life plummeted. The shift to agriculture, wrote author Jared Diamond, is a ‘catastrophe from which we have never recovered.’ (p9) Before agriculture, our “…ancestors lived in groups where most mature individuals would have had several ongoing sexual relationships at any given time. Though often casual, these relationships were not random or meaningless.” (p9) “An individual male’s parental investment,…the core element of the standard narrative (supporting monogamy), tends to be diffuse in societies like those in which we evolved, not directed toward one particular woman and her children…” (p13) Instead hunter-gatherer societies are characterized by their fierce egalitarianism. “Sharing is not just encouraged; it’s mandatory. Hoarding or hiding food, for example, is considered deeply shameful, almost unforgivable behavior in these societies.” (p11)
Sharing, however, became a casualty of agriculture. “…it became crucially important to know where your field ended and your neighbor’s began. Remember the tenth commandment: ‘Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's house; thou shall not covet your neighbor's wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his donkey, nor anything that is thy neighbour's.’ (Exodus 20:17) Clearly, the biggest loser (aside from slaves, perhaps) in the agricultural revolution was the human female, who went from occupying a central, respected role in foraging societies to becoming another possession for a man to earn and defend, along with his house, slaves, and livestock.” (p14) “Land could now be possessed, owned, and passed down the generations. Food that had been hunted and gathered now had to be sowed, tended, harvested, stored, defended, bought, and sold. Fences, walls, and irrigation systems had to be built and reinforced; armies to defend it all had to be raised, fed, and controlled. Because of private property, for the first time in the history of our species, paternity became a crucial concern.” (p 14, 15) So, perversely, agriculture, which increased food production, also restricted access to food and, because women became property, to heterosexual sex as well. Furthermore, Ryan and Jethá quote Timothy Taylor, author of “The Prehistory of Sex”: “While hunter-gatherer sex had been modeled on an idea of sharing and complementarity, early agriculturist sex was voyeuristic, repressive, homophobic, and focused on reproduction.” “Afraid of the wild, farmers set out to destroy it.” (p 14) Farming, which increased food supplies for those lucky enough to own land, also introduced scarcity for all those who were landless and poor.
Also, the focus on paternity and keeping the private land in the family in agricultural societies set us on the road to monogamy, always unlikely, because we evolved to want multiple partners, which minimizes the genetic perils of interbreeding. Even today, which after all is only 10,000 years since our foraging days, many men and women want multiple sex partners. However, “…the true story of human sexuality (is) so subversive and threatening that for centuries it has been silenced by religious authorities, pathologized by physicians, studiously ignored by scientists, and covered up by moralizing therapists.” (p2)
Monogamy is difficult and usually boring. The “bloom is off the rose” too soon, and many husbands and wives stop having frequent sex. Men can develop a roving eye and indulge in extramarital activities, leaving their wives neglected and angry. It’s not that men no longer love their wives, but rather they begin to love them as their “best friend” or “sister,” a sure sign that the incest taboo has become active. Furthermore, male and female orgasms are very different. Men can usually be aroused and ejaculate quickly. Too quickly, women complain. They often take longer to become aroused, but once they are, they want many more orgasms. And often they let anyone in earshot know their desire for more by their female copulatory vocalization (FCV). These sounds in other primates are invitations to males outside their own troop to come and mate, thus increasing the chances that their eggs will be fertilized by sperm from males unrelated to the males in the female’s group. (p257) It’s a good bet that these sounds in women evolved to serve the same purpose. Ryan and Jethá write: “This symmetry of dual disappointment (of men and women in monogamous relationships) illustrates the almost comical incompatibility between men’s and women’s sexual response in the context of monogamous mating.” If men and women evolved to be monogamous, why are they so incompatible? Ryan and Jethá suggest: “…isn’t it time to accept that our ancestors evolved along a sexual trajectory similar to that of our two highly social, very intelligent, closely related primate cousins (who evolved in promiscuous groups)?” (p245) They continue: “Perhaps the far-fetched denial of our promiscuous sexual prehistory expresses a legitimate fear of social instability, but insistent demands for a stable social order (based, as we’re often reminded, upon the nuclear family unit) cannot erase the effects of the hundreds of thousands of years that came before our species settled into stable villages.” (p246)
Furthermore, whether we’re for or against monogamy, it is failing, and with this failure, “the nuclear family unit” is disintegrating. Ryan and Jethá write: “In 2008, almost 40 percent of the mothers who gave birth in the United States were unmarried.” However, two parents are better for children than only one. Ryan and Jethá quote Caitlin Flanagan in Time magazine: “On every single significant outcome related to short-term well-being and long-term success, children from intact, two-parent families outperform those from single-parent households.” The outcomes included longevity, drug abuse, school performance, dropout rates, teen pregnancy, criminal behavior, and incarceration. (p302, 303)
The village that Hillary Clinton writes about in her book, “It Takes a Village,” can help relieve the pressure on the nuclear family and provide needed support for single parent families, but it wouldn’t restore us, our families, and our sex lives to Edenic bliss, where food and sex partners were readily available for all. A village is basically an agricultural settlement, and with the rise of villages, our foraging days ended. Moreover, improved agriculture has increased the earth’s population to unsustainable levels. In just the last 2000 years, population has grown from 170 million to nearly 7 billion. (p156) With all these people, there is no longer room to roam and forage.
We need to discover new ways to be sexual and familial in this post-foraging, post-monogamous world. As we struggle with the knowledge of our sexuality and the failure of monogamy, will the church help or hinder our efforts? It’s all too easy to dismiss the church as an impediment to sexual progress, but the Gospel is ever calling for us to be true to ourselves and thus to God. Remember John 8:31, 32: “Then Jesus said to the Jews who had believed in him, ‘If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples; and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.’” One “word” attributed to Jesus, quoting Deuteronomy 6:5 and Leviticus 19:18b, is: ‘“…you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.’ The second is this, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”’ (Mark 12:31, 32) If we embrace the “truth” that we are sexual beings who seek multiple partners, we may also begin to experience these partners as “neighbors.” It worked for our foraging ancestors; can it work for us, their descendants?
To read more comments on “Sex at Dawn,” go to: http://www.google.com/search?q=Sex+at+Dawn+%2B+reviews&sourceid=ie7&rls=com.microsoft:en-US&ie=utf8&oe=utf8
Thursday, October 7, 2010
The Bullying of Gay Youth: What Can be Done to Stop It?
What can be done to stop the bullying of gay youth? The horrible deaths of the young men reported recently in the media are very disturbing. What can we do to stop this bullying? Below are some suggestions.
1) Keshet (http://www.keshetonline.org/), the organization that works for full inclusion of sexual minorities in Jewish life, suggests:
Ten Things You Can Do Today to Strengthen Our (LBGT) Community
1. Find truth in the Torah. Ask your rabbi to give a Dvar Torah (or write your own) about the tragic events of the past month and our responsibility as Jews to speak out and work to end homophobia and transphobia. Here's a beautiful example from Rabbi David Mitchell, Radlett & Bushey Reform Synagogue, UK.
2. Speak out. The next time you hear someone say "That's so gay," tell that person why those words are hurtful and can have disastrous consequences.
3. Make your support visible. Post a Jewish GLBT Safe Zone sticker in your synagogue, classroom, camp bunk, office, or website.
4. Take action for equal rights. Contact your legislator to support ENDA, the Employment Non-Discrimination Act that prevents people from being fired or discriminated against at work for being gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender.
5. Keep youth safe and supported. If you are a Jewish educator or administrator at an educational institution, provide training and resources for your staff on how to create safe, inclusive spaces for GLBT and questioning youth. Help start a Gay-Straight Alliance.
6. Come out as an ally. October 11 is National Coming Out Day. If you are a straight Jewish community leader, let people know that you are an ally to GLBT people and keep the messages of support coming.
7. Come out. If you identify as gay, lesbian, bisexual, trans, and/or queer, come out and keep coming out. This simple act will help others.
8. Talk to your children. Middle and high school students witness homophobic and transphobic bullying and teasing every day. Tell your children you support them and that all kids deserve to be treated with respect and kindness.
9. Tell your story. Whether you are queer or a straight ally, upload a video to the It Gets Better Project" and share your story with young people who need to hear your message. Visit the Make it Better Project to see powerful stories about what young queers and allies are doing right now to improve their schools and communities.
10. Seek support/give support. If you or someone you know is struggling with issues around sexual orientation and/or gender identity, know that you are not alone. Crisis support is available 24/7 through The Trevor Project, 1.866-4.U.TREVOR.
Do Not Stand Idly By: A Jewish Community Pledge to Save Lives. Go to the Keshet website to sign it Now!
2) From the news website, 365Gay, John Culhane suggests many avenues of action. See his column at: http://www.365gay.com/opinion/culhane-what-can-be-done-about-bullying/
May we find truth in the Torah!
1) Keshet (http://www.keshetonline.org/), the organization that works for full inclusion of sexual minorities in Jewish life, suggests:
Ten Things You Can Do Today to Strengthen Our (LBGT) Community
1. Find truth in the Torah. Ask your rabbi to give a Dvar Torah (or write your own) about the tragic events of the past month and our responsibility as Jews to speak out and work to end homophobia and transphobia. Here's a beautiful example from Rabbi David Mitchell, Radlett & Bushey Reform Synagogue, UK.
2. Speak out. The next time you hear someone say "That's so gay," tell that person why those words are hurtful and can have disastrous consequences.
3. Make your support visible. Post a Jewish GLBT Safe Zone sticker in your synagogue, classroom, camp bunk, office, or website.
4. Take action for equal rights. Contact your legislator to support ENDA, the Employment Non-Discrimination Act that prevents people from being fired or discriminated against at work for being gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender.
5. Keep youth safe and supported. If you are a Jewish educator or administrator at an educational institution, provide training and resources for your staff on how to create safe, inclusive spaces for GLBT and questioning youth. Help start a Gay-Straight Alliance.
6. Come out as an ally. October 11 is National Coming Out Day. If you are a straight Jewish community leader, let people know that you are an ally to GLBT people and keep the messages of support coming.
7. Come out. If you identify as gay, lesbian, bisexual, trans, and/or queer, come out and keep coming out. This simple act will help others.
8. Talk to your children. Middle and high school students witness homophobic and transphobic bullying and teasing every day. Tell your children you support them and that all kids deserve to be treated with respect and kindness.
9. Tell your story. Whether you are queer or a straight ally, upload a video to the It Gets Better Project" and share your story with young people who need to hear your message. Visit the Make it Better Project to see powerful stories about what young queers and allies are doing right now to improve their schools and communities.
10. Seek support/give support. If you or someone you know is struggling with issues around sexual orientation and/or gender identity, know that you are not alone. Crisis support is available 24/7 through The Trevor Project, 1.866-4.U.TREVOR.
Do Not Stand Idly By: A Jewish Community Pledge to Save Lives. Go to the Keshet website to sign it Now!
2) From the news website, 365Gay, John Culhane suggests many avenues of action. See his column at: http://www.365gay.com/opinion/culhane-what-can-be-done-about-bullying/
May we find truth in the Torah!
Tuesday, August 17, 2010
"A Huge Loss of Belief in the Fundamental Narratives of Christianity and Judaism"
The letter below, published in the "New York Times" on August 14th, describes in a few words the challenge facing all religious organizations today: How do people view the relationship between divinity and humanity? Our search today is for a way of talking convincingly about this relationship, if it exists.
In his latest book, "Theology's Strange Return" (London: SCM Press, 2010), Don Cupitt writes about how talk about that relationship is evolving. He points out "... that a surprising amount of traditional Christian belief - including a new Grand Narrative, and a non-metaphysical theology - is currently returning to us in secular form." How will this play out? Our search continues.
Re “Congregations Gone Wild” (Op-Ed, Aug. 8):
Although G. Jeffrey MacDonald’s essay about the congregational ministry is on the mark in many ways, the real issue is much deeper than “congregational pressure to forsake one’s highest calling.” It is a huge loss of belief in the fundamental narratives of Christianity and Judaism, the biblical concepts of divinity in relation to humanity. The crisis of the ministry is theological.
During the many years I served in the congregational rabbinate, I witnessed the radical changes taking place in the beliefs or nonbeliefs of both professionals and congregants. Nothing will solve this problem except radically revised theological perspectives in response to radically new conditions, if that is even possible.
Jack D. Spiro
Richmond, Va., Aug. 8, 2010
In his latest book, "Theology's Strange Return" (London: SCM Press, 2010), Don Cupitt writes about how talk about that relationship is evolving. He points out "... that a surprising amount of traditional Christian belief - including a new Grand Narrative, and a non-metaphysical theology - is currently returning to us in secular form." How will this play out? Our search continues.
Re “Congregations Gone Wild” (Op-Ed, Aug. 8):
Although G. Jeffrey MacDonald’s essay about the congregational ministry is on the mark in many ways, the real issue is much deeper than “congregational pressure to forsake one’s highest calling.” It is a huge loss of belief in the fundamental narratives of Christianity and Judaism, the biblical concepts of divinity in relation to humanity. The crisis of the ministry is theological.
During the many years I served in the congregational rabbinate, I witnessed the radical changes taking place in the beliefs or nonbeliefs of both professionals and congregants. Nothing will solve this problem except radically revised theological perspectives in response to radically new conditions, if that is even possible.
Jack D. Spiro
Richmond, Va., Aug. 8, 2010
Tuesday, August 3, 2010
History Ain't on Your Side
I found the Blog post below on CCBlogs. It's by Marvin Lindsay whose blog is called Avdat. The URL is: http://marvinlindsay.typepad.com/avdat.
I'm glad someone else has read Peter Brown. I wrote about his treatment of sexual renunciation on my blog in a post called, "The Curse of Virginity." It's at: http://churchofnon-realism.blogspot.com/2007/09/curse-of-virginity.html
27 July 2010
History Ain't On Your Side
by Marvin Lindsay
My next contribution to the peace, unity and purity of the church will be to teach a course on early Christian sexuality. If we're condemned to fight over sex ad infinitum, I want both liberals and conservatives to know that neither has history on its side.
Imagine a time when substantial numbers of Christians regarded procreation as a great evil. Imagine a time when the counter-cultural "left" practiced sexual renunciation. It's not some science fiction future. We've been there and done that.
As part of a directed study on monasticism I read Peter Brown's The Body and Society and Susanna Elm's Virgins of God. Both are excellent historical works. Brown's book could just as easily been titled All the Reasons Why Primitive Christians Quit Having Sex.
There were practical reasons, to be sure. Given the appalling levels of infant and childhood mortality, Roman women needed to give birth to six children just to maintain the population level. The Caesars pressured them to do just that, for the ruling class needed offspring to inherit all that upper crust wealth. Patriotism asks a lot of its soldiers, but Roman patriotism asked even more of its women. Six kids! In fourth world squalor! No wonder many Christian women found celibacy appealing.
But a purely materialist explanation won't suffice. It was the power of an idea that drove many Christians, male and female, to renounce sex.
Origen's ideas, especially. Origen theorized that before we were born, our souls had rebelled, and we fell into material bodies. Origen did not regard the body as evil, as Gnostics did, but as God's tailor-made tool to instruct the soul on how to return to God.
Sexuality then, was not part and parcel of our identity, for sexuality belongs to our material existence in this world. Didn't Jesus say that in heaven they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels? Origenist thought held out the possibility that here and now one could transcend one's embodied and thus sexual nature.
Renouncing sex was one means. Fasting was another. A diet of one loaf of bread a day will, over time, cause your period to dry up and your breasts to shrivel. Women went into the Egyptian desert and passed for male monks. Origen's notorious act of castrating himself did not prevent him from having sex, but it did diminish his secondary sexual characteristics, most notably the philosopher's beard his competitors would have grown in Alexandria.
For other Christians, celibacy was tinged with apocalyptic fever. Tatian's disciples in Syria wondered why anyone would have children, because procreation just fed the death machine. Quit reproducing, and the kingdom will come.
The non-canonical Acts of Thomas, to which we owe the legend that Doubting Thomas preached the gospel in India, contains a similar idea. On the way to India, Thomas ruins a royal wedding when he convinces the bride and groom make a chaste marriage because kids are more trouble than they're worth. The King was not amused when he realized this stranger had cheated him of grandchildren.
In the early fourth century, this stew of ideas had generated bands of mixed sex, wandering prophets whose women cut their hair short, ridiculed marriage in general and married clergy in particular, and showed no interest in settling down and leading orderly lives, much less begetting offspring for the good of the Empire.
Other Christians were appalled, and as the fourth century unfolded, it would prove to be a decisive one not only for doctrine and church-state relations, but for sexual ethics. The misogynist Jerome and monastic architect Basil insisted that the body could not be transcended but only transformed. They developed a two-tired system of clerical celibacy and strictly monogamous lay marriage, with monastics separated into male and female houses--not over against pagan hedonism, but over against celibate Christian "extremists," whom they regarded as the real enemy.
This is why I love history; it scrambles your categories.
If conservative means preserving the past, then today's conservatives are holding on to a rather thin slice of it. Where are the conservatives who dare to proclaim the old time religion of: celibacy good, childlessness better, androgyny best?
Likewise, while critiques of empire are here, there and everywhere on the Christian left, I am unaware of any that make celibacy a core practice of imperial resistance. Today's feminists would liberate women from gender discrimination and for orgasm. But the feminists of old secured the former by turning their backs on the latter.
Neat, huh?
I'm glad someone else has read Peter Brown. I wrote about his treatment of sexual renunciation on my blog in a post called, "The Curse of Virginity." It's at: http://churchofnon-realism.blogspot.com/2007/09/curse-of-virginity.html
27 July 2010
History Ain't On Your Side
by Marvin Lindsay
My next contribution to the peace, unity and purity of the church will be to teach a course on early Christian sexuality. If we're condemned to fight over sex ad infinitum, I want both liberals and conservatives to know that neither has history on its side.
Imagine a time when substantial numbers of Christians regarded procreation as a great evil. Imagine a time when the counter-cultural "left" practiced sexual renunciation. It's not some science fiction future. We've been there and done that.
As part of a directed study on monasticism I read Peter Brown's The Body and Society and Susanna Elm's Virgins of God. Both are excellent historical works. Brown's book could just as easily been titled All the Reasons Why Primitive Christians Quit Having Sex.
There were practical reasons, to be sure. Given the appalling levels of infant and childhood mortality, Roman women needed to give birth to six children just to maintain the population level. The Caesars pressured them to do just that, for the ruling class needed offspring to inherit all that upper crust wealth. Patriotism asks a lot of its soldiers, but Roman patriotism asked even more of its women. Six kids! In fourth world squalor! No wonder many Christian women found celibacy appealing.
But a purely materialist explanation won't suffice. It was the power of an idea that drove many Christians, male and female, to renounce sex.
Origen's ideas, especially. Origen theorized that before we were born, our souls had rebelled, and we fell into material bodies. Origen did not regard the body as evil, as Gnostics did, but as God's tailor-made tool to instruct the soul on how to return to God.
Sexuality then, was not part and parcel of our identity, for sexuality belongs to our material existence in this world. Didn't Jesus say that in heaven they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels? Origenist thought held out the possibility that here and now one could transcend one's embodied and thus sexual nature.
Renouncing sex was one means. Fasting was another. A diet of one loaf of bread a day will, over time, cause your period to dry up and your breasts to shrivel. Women went into the Egyptian desert and passed for male monks. Origen's notorious act of castrating himself did not prevent him from having sex, but it did diminish his secondary sexual characteristics, most notably the philosopher's beard his competitors would have grown in Alexandria.
For other Christians, celibacy was tinged with apocalyptic fever. Tatian's disciples in Syria wondered why anyone would have children, because procreation just fed the death machine. Quit reproducing, and the kingdom will come.
The non-canonical Acts of Thomas, to which we owe the legend that Doubting Thomas preached the gospel in India, contains a similar idea. On the way to India, Thomas ruins a royal wedding when he convinces the bride and groom make a chaste marriage because kids are more trouble than they're worth. The King was not amused when he realized this stranger had cheated him of grandchildren.
In the early fourth century, this stew of ideas had generated bands of mixed sex, wandering prophets whose women cut their hair short, ridiculed marriage in general and married clergy in particular, and showed no interest in settling down and leading orderly lives, much less begetting offspring for the good of the Empire.
Other Christians were appalled, and as the fourth century unfolded, it would prove to be a decisive one not only for doctrine and church-state relations, but for sexual ethics. The misogynist Jerome and monastic architect Basil insisted that the body could not be transcended but only transformed. They developed a two-tired system of clerical celibacy and strictly monogamous lay marriage, with monastics separated into male and female houses--not over against pagan hedonism, but over against celibate Christian "extremists," whom they regarded as the real enemy.
This is why I love history; it scrambles your categories.
If conservative means preserving the past, then today's conservatives are holding on to a rather thin slice of it. Where are the conservatives who dare to proclaim the old time religion of: celibacy good, childlessness better, androgyny best?
Likewise, while critiques of empire are here, there and everywhere on the Christian left, I am unaware of any that make celibacy a core practice of imperial resistance. Today's feminists would liberate women from gender discrimination and for orgasm. But the feminists of old secured the former by turning their backs on the latter.
Neat, huh?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
