Empedocles missed his chance at greatness when he failed to give sex a place in his group of basic elements — earth, air, water, and fire. True, sex isn’t an element, but I don’t disqualify it on that account. It occupies our thoughts far more than earth, air, water, and fire combined.
The omnipresence of sex was probably best recognized by Cole Porter when he wrote, “Birds do it, bees do it, even educated fleas do it.” That scope is well beyond what I could manage in a hundred blog posts, and besides, my obsession with sex isn’t quite that strong. Dealing only with human sexuality is more than enough, and even then, quite a lot remains on the table. There’s the plethora of how-to manuals, moral diatribes, boorish humor, titillating fiction, scholarly research, manifestos of grievances, legal argumentation, and social history to consider — enough to inundate the world’s largest library. And you’d still have to dedicate another city block to a library for porn videos.
I can come to grips with this agglomeration only by focusing on social history, and here I discern two distinct eras of human sexuality, the Primitive Era and the Modern Era. The Primitive Era of sexuality began with the early hominins — like Homo erectus, obviously — and ended late in the last millennium, when denunciations of homophobia and misogyny began to multiply in the Western world.
The very fact that the Primitive Era coincides with 99% of human existence has made our thinking about sex rigid. Its duration gave credence to the assumption that everything believed to be true about human sex — the normal, the abnormal, and the abominable — will always be true. Unfortunately, this means the Modern Era is destined to take root clumsily, with grudging acceptance, occasional regressions, and some pendulum swings into dubious territory.
As you’d expect, the Modern Era dawned as our understanding of the Primitive Era came into sharper relief. We know now that same-sex sexual behavior occurs among all the great apes and a number of other primate species. Bonobos, who share 98% of their DNA with us, are especially noteworthy in this regard. About 60% of all bonobo sexual activity occurs between two or more females. Bonobo sex is casual and playful in both same-sex and opposite-sex pairings. It’s common, for example, for males to dangle from a tree, upside down and face-to-face, and rub their genitals together. Bonobos don’t merely engage in sex; they celebrate it.
Perhaps the most significant thing about primate sex is that anger and shunning have never been observed as a response to same-sex couplings. The same is true in a larger context. Homosexual behavior has been documented in hundreds of animal species with no mention of social abhorrence. This fact raises an essential question: Where does our revulsion and hatred for homosexuals come from? If it isn’t genetically determined, there’s just one other possible answer. It’s cultural.
Finding the cultural source isn’t difficult. The Torah is awash in sexual prohibitions. Mosaic law specifies 36 crimes that are punishable by death. Not a particularly high number as ancient codes go, but of that number, half the crimes involve sexual activity! The ancient Jews viewed nudity and the sex organs as shameful, unlike the Egyptians, the Greeks, and other contemporary civilizations. In Exodus, nakedness is forbidden within the precinct of a temple, and priests are compelled to wear linen breeches. In Leviticus, 12 prohibitions are about nakedness. It meant death to “uncover the nakedness of thy father.” A number of relatives are called out, including “thy aunt” and “thy step-mother.” It may be that the Jews were using “uncover nakedness” as a euphemism for “having sex with.” In any case, they stopped short of mentioning second cousins.
Scholars have speculated that Hebrew homophobia may have been a reaction to the religious practices of their enemies. It was common for Assyrian high priests to be naked or put on women’s clothes to acquire the powers of Ishtar, the Mother Goddess. Lower priests would prostitute themselves to male visitors to collect money and symbolically collect semen from the god Attis. The Babylonians and Egyptians adopted the god Baal, a phallic deity whose worship included homosexual rituals. The ancient Jews were revolted. They described themselves as a proud people. As monotheists, they were a singularity, and Yahweh demanded singular behaviors. He made a covenant with them, and in return he asked for laws that guaranteed the Jews’ piety, cleanliness, and purity. That was reasonable; an uber-God would ask for no less.
What Hebrew prophet could have guessed that the laws of their people would beget nearly three millennia of virulent homophobia? Virtually all of them scolded the Israelites for impiety. Imagine their pride and amazement had they foreseen the seminal power of Hebrew law! It spread to an outlaw sect, the Christians, and thence to the Romans, who dominated every civilization in Europe and the Near East, and thence to the Muslims, who pushed it deep into Asia, and thence to European missionaries and colonialists, who spread the virus around the world. Only now, in an age of scientific and historical inquiry, has the fever begun to break.
Misogyny is even older than homophobia. It didn’t originate in Canaan, but close by in the Fertile Crescent. The Agricultural Revolution was underway. People began to settle down and become homesteaders. Fear of starvation receded somewhat as people began to produce a surplus of food. They could store or trade what they didn’t consume. The population grew even though the need for farmers decreased. Towns arose, and much of the populace pursued trades. Some towns grew into cities. It was the first time in history that people accumulated wealth, and with it came leisure, art, science, and philosophy — civilization. It seems a rosy progression of events, but there were innate problems. What one civilization saw as its wealth, another saw as potential plunder, and so a warrior class became a necessity. Further, it was not enough to have a fierce army of protectors. They must have the favor of the mightiest forces of nature, the gods. Therefore, a priesthood evolved. With these additions, a civilization can become riven with complexities and lose its sustainability. Yet another class was needed to keep order, the elite. They were a natural extension of the warrior class. Their function was so critical to survival that they became objects of worship in their own right.
This progression, from hunter-gatherer clans to food-producing civilizations, wrought a societal transformation. Hunter-gatherer clans had usually been matrilineal, ancestral descent and inheritance followed the maternal line. But food-producing civilizations became patrilineal, just the opposite. This shift in sexual dominance was simply the result of acknowledging where the power lay. It was clearly with the men, who were stronger and more aggressive by nature. They were by far the more capable defenders and attackers. The viability of civilizations rested on their shoulders.
It’s a truism that those in power act to increase their power or at the very least perpetuate it. This was certainly true of the Primitive Era. Men formalized sexual relationships by inventing the marriage contract. Married women effectively became slaves and targets of abuse. Men took over the rearing of their sons and often took pains to make them tough, overbearing, and disdainful of women. Men no longer feared legal consequences for sexual assault. Men minimized women’s roles in any institution that wielded power — the military, the church, government, law, banking, the arts, science, and medicine. Men denied them the knowledge and power that a higher education confers. Men denied them the right to inherit, own land, buy on credit, earn an income, and retain money for personal use. In the Greek and Roman democracies, men denied them the right to vote. Millennia would pass before a wave of social enlightenment and women’s activism began to turn the tide.
Early this month, Roseanne Barr, who had transformed herself from a socialist into a Trump rooter, tweeted that Trump has been saving hundreds of children a month from sexual bondage. Out of the sight of the press, he’s been busy breaking up sex trafficking rings!
I’ve been reading about a phenomenon that occurs between people who think almost alike. The “almost” distinction is critical. A narrow gap often gives rise to feelings of dislike, even stronger than the hostility between people whose worldviews have nothing in common. Freud gave this phenomenon a label, “the narcissism of small differences.” (Boy, did that guy have a way with a phrase!) These days, it’s often referred to as “horizontal hostility.”
My thesis is this: People make these connections in ways that are explosive and bound to blow modern civilization to bits.
When I opened my email inbox the other day, there, among the flotsam, was an ad from Amazon. Usually I zap spam the moment I see it, but this item had a title that pressed a button: “Get Ready for St. Patrick’s Day for Your Home.” I had to see more. The ad showed trays and dishes, both bearing a four-leaf-clover design; green dishtowels, body towels, and shower curtains; and a table runner also in a clover motif. Even a metal sign reading “Irish Parking Only” was featured. Obviously Amazon and other retailers think the whole public, not just the Irish, wants to bask in Irish pride, if only for a little while each year.
These contrasts bring a movie to mind—The Martian. On the surface, it seems to be no more than a high-tech suspense story, but I think of it as a modern-day parable. It skillfully dramatizes the virtues of knowledge, resourcefulness, and cooperation. A team of astronauts assumes that one of their party has died in a Martian dust storm. They reluctantly leave the planet, and then we learn their colleague has survived. He lives by his wits, but without a continual source of food, his days are numbered. How to rescue him? He struggles with helplessness, as do NASA and his Earth-bound comrades. As this ordeal plays out, not once do any of the characters call on God for help. It’s all knowledge, resourcefulness, and cooperation (extraordinary teamwork and an assist from the Chinese). In the climactic rescue attempt, we see scenes of people all over the globe waiting for news, in agonizing moments of empathy. The attempt succeeds, everyone rejoices, and the audience learns a lesson about values. Or so I hope.
The Scratching Post 