Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id NAA10524 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Fri, 14 Jul 2000 13:50:06 +0100 Message-Id: <4.3.1.0.20000713091550.020beb10@popmail.mcs.net> X-Sender: aaron@popmail.mcs.net X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Version 4.3.1 Date: Fri, 14 Jul 2000 07:45:55 -0500 To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk From: Aaron Lynch <aaron@mcs.net> Subject: Re: Memes and sexuality In-Reply-To: <396B2965.78B96AB3@qssmeds.com> References: <Pine.OSF.4.21.0007110839110.2376-100000@koko.umd.edu> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
At 10:04 AM 7/11/00 -0400, Lise Maring wrote:
>Hmmm. Touchy subject here. Possibly it needs to be remembered that for
>most 'animals' sexual activity is seasonal whereas for humans (and possibly
>most primates?) it is....well, not necessarily so. I have a feeling we
>wouldn't get much else done if we didn't repress our 'natural drives' to
>some extent and had males constantly fighting over females? Very
>disruptive in your average business office.
>
>Just a quiet, in-the-background member of the list who couldn't resist
>putting in her two cents worth on this one,
>
>Lise
Lise,
It's easy to frame the issue in terms of 20th century concerns such as
office productivity. And office productivity does seem to be one of the
reasons that office romances and flirtations have been discouraged at
times--not to mention the liability issues that have arisen in the US over
sexual harassment. But sexual repression goes back much longer than humans
have been working in business offices.
It seems to me that one of the key events in the development of sexual
repression may have been the discovery some time in the past 100,000 years
that sex causes pregnancy and childbirth. The connection sounds quite
obvious to us today, but Malinowski and others have documented a
long-isolated society that apparently did not know about the connection
(See Malinowski's _The Sexual Live of Savages_, 1932, Beacon Press.).
Pregnancy only sometimes results from sex, and then is only apparent after
a considerable delay. In early "primitive" societies such as the one
Malinowski studied, there would have been no "control group" for one to
observe either: children began a sexual free for all within full sight of
adults starting long before puberty. Nudity taboos were also a "recent"
development in evolutionary terms.
But now, suppose that a mother and father several thousand years ago had
the knowledge of what causes pregnancy. They consider the possibility of
their own children following their "natural drives," and can foresee
reproductive consequences for it. Do they have any reasons to want to
regulate or delay or prevent reproduction by their own children? Can those
preferences lead parents to want to repress their children's sexual
activity? If so, will they want to repress the daughter's and son's
activities equally, or do they have a stronger desire to teach repression
to one sex or the other?
--Aaron Lynch
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