dearmrj: Slut Shaming, Promiscuity, and Healthy Sexuality for Homo sapiens, pt. 1 This is part 1 of
dearmrj: Slut Shaming, Promiscuity, and Healthy Sexuality for Homo sapiens, pt. 1 This is part 1 of a two-part article on slut shaming, promiscuity, and my views on healthy human sexuality. This writing was inspired by THIS anon question from a few days back. It is my attempt to reframe a problem that I have dealt with in my personal life, in the lives of those close to me, and in questions here on Tumblr. The basic issue is a phenomenon known as “slut shaming.” It’s the social practice of shaming people (almost always females) for having too much sex. “Too much” often refers to having casual sex or having too many partners over a certain period of time, though it can also mean having certain kinds of sex that mainstream culture isn’t comfortable with. There is a growing cultural backlash against slut shaming, which is definitely a good thing. However, one of the primary counter-arguments to slut shaming promotes promiscuity, casual sex, and other serial-sexual behaviors, so long as they are done “responsibly.” The idea seems to be that there is no risk of harm in any kind of sex any person may want to have, so long as it is consensual. While everyone should be free to choose such behaviors if they wish, it is my opinion that promoting them does a serious and insidious type of harm to the very people we should be liberating. In a nutshell: Problem: Slut shaming is an unhealthy practice. It is no business of yours or mine what anyone else does with her (or his) sexuality. The practice of slut shaming is hurtful, leads to all sorts of emotional scarring, and is usually downright misogynistic. It is unconscionable. Conflict: Many of the serial-sexual behaviors advocated by the anti-shame movement are—broadly speaking—unhealthy. Universally unhealthy? I can’t say. But I have never encountered a person who did not seem to be somehow negatively affected by engaging in serial-sexual behaviors such as promiscuity, casual sex, and serial-monogamy. Disclaimer: Let’s be clear about what I’m not discouraging. I’m not discouraging lots of sex. I’m not discouraging females from having as much sex as males. I’m not discouraging sex with multiple partners or in as many creative ways as you can imagine. Seriously, go wild. So, if we advocate an extremely active, adventurous, experimental sex life as part of a healthy human existence, how do we resolve the above conflict? I’m going to use Evolutionary Theory and Buddhism to help explain my answer. First, remember that we, as human beings, are social animals. We developed from primates by spending millions of years in small bands of our own kind. Even as Homo sapiens, we have spent 99.8% of our entire species history in small, tightly knit groups (sometimes called tribes) of people who know us and care about us deeply—and we’ve had lots of SEX with those people. We thrive upon social connection and trust. Although we can continue to function biologically in diverse living conditions, we cannot expect to be emotionally and psychologically healthy outside of a social setting of loving trust. (The fact that, today, most of us do not live in such conditions is a whole other series of articles.) In the pre-human primate bands and human tribes, sex within the group was almost always a way of promoting unity and commitment. Mating bonded the group. And not just mating to produce offspring, either. There’s a wealth of research about homosexual behavior in primates (which is very common, by the way) being used for social bonding, as well. When sex in these groups was used for other reasons, such as to invade or change the leadership of the group, it could certainly be hurtful and disruptive. However, once the group recovered from such a shakeup, sex would always go back to being a unifying force within the community. This is no longer true in contemporary culture. As a result of modern cultural views on life, family, community, marriage, love, and sexuality, sex has been pushed away from its unifying, edifying roots. Sex has come to be about getting our pleasure from someone, or possessing someone, or getting someone to like us and feed our ego, or any number of other goals that involve exploiting others. What it doesn’t involve is bonding people together. (There are some very insidious reasons for this change. They date back thousands of years, but that’s another entry. Understand that we have a lot of authorities in place (the Government, the Church, etc.) telling us who and how we’re allowed to love.) Because of these changes in the role of sexuality, our perfectly normal, natural desire for lots of sex in many ways with multiple people has come to be expressed in very destructive behaviors. To have a truly healthy sex life, we need a loving, trustworthy support network in which to have sex. THIS DOES NOT MEAN YOU HAVE TO BE MARRIED AND/OR MONOGAMOUS TO HAVE HEALTHY SEX!!! For some people, monogamy and marriage work very well. For others, they’re terrible ideas. We must figure that out for ourselves, and leave everyone else alone about it. Regardless of the details, sex is intensely personal. It is one of the most meaningful, vulnerable, beautiful parts of the human condition. And no matter what anyone tells us or what we tell ourselves, we cannot have sex in a way that is meaningless or that doesn’t make us vulnerable, physically and psychologically. This goes for people who have been married for 50 years and people having one-night stands.When we have sex, we open ourselves to our partner(s), whether we mean to or not. That is our sexuality’s purpose! We can fool ourselves into believing that we’re not being hurt by having “unattached” sex. People do this every day. I have yet to meet one of them who has escaped without physical and emotional scars that continue to affect them. The important thing to remember is that sex itself is not hurtful. Sex outside of marriage is not hurtful. Non-monogamous sex is not hurtful. Threesomes are not hurtful. Nothing about sex is inherently hurtful to you or anyone else EXCEPT when done outside of a caring and supportive network of loved ones. For a lot of folks today, this network is as small as two people: ourselves and our partner. For others, this might be a network of three people, or six, or ten. It doesn’t matter. The beauty of this support network is twofold. First, when we have sex within it, we can be pretty certain that the people with whom we are involved hold us and our vulnerability in the highest respect and care. Second, on the rare occasion that we are hurt by sex, the people in our network can be there to cover for our vulnerability, protecting us from further damage and helping us to heal quickly. That’s why sexual problems in monogamy are often so rough: usually, we’re being hurt by the only other person in our network, leaving us to deal with the problem alone. There are many problems with slut shaming and other practices that discourage people from enjoying their sexuality. They make us ashamed of one of the most basic parts of being human. They encourage callousness and judgment and discourage love and community. They promote misogyny, when the truth is that the behaviors we shame in women are just as unhealthy for men; the only difference is that we’ve come to expect less of men when it comes to emotionality. But most of all, slut shaming causes us to misidentify the real problem with sexuality. We think that the problem is how we have sex: how often, how many partners, how the relationship is defined, etc. We overlook entirely the most fundamental function of sex for humans: bonding. Within a bonded group of people (be they two or fifty), almost any kind of sex can be great, healthy sex. In the absence of such a group, almost no kind of sex can be healthy. In part 2 of this article, which you can find HERE, I use the principles of Buddhism to explain how to achieve the definition of healthy sex that I’ve outlined above. In the meantime, my ask box is open! Stay tuned! ~J -- source link
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