Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id OAA10597 (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 14:14:39 +0100 Message-ID: <2D1C159B783DD211808A006008062D3101745926@inchna.stir.ac.uk> From: Vincent Campbell <v.p.campbell@stir.ac.uk> To: "'memetics@mmu.ac.uk'" <memetics@mmu.ac.uk> Subject: RE: Memes and sexuality Date: Fri, 14 Jul 2000 14:12:45 +0100 X-Mailer: Internet Mail Service (5.5.2650.21) Content-Type: text/plain Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
Isn't that one of the famous cases where the natives were playing tricks on
the investigators?
> ----------
> From: Aaron Lynch
> Reply To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
> Sent: Friday, July 14, 2000 1:45 pm
> To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
> Subject: Re: Memes and sexuality
>
> 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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This was distributed via the memetics list associated with the
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For information about the journal and the list (e.g. unsubscribing)
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