My sister, Anne, and I....

My sister Anne and I had a long discussion over the telephone this morning on the topic of sexuality. The discussion took several turns, as I think she feels (or argued) that sex is natural and good and I think it can be great, but it can be a very dangerous thing also--everything your mother warned you about and a whole lot more dangerous. She said "well, that might have been your experience." However, this is not experience speaking, but theory and evidence. When the homicide records were examined in Canada, as one example, it was found that many of them were related to sexual relationships, in the sense they were done out of sexual jealousy (killing her or the new "him") or rage or desire to impress, or whatever.

I wish I could remember the twists and turns of the argument, as they were quite interesting, but I do remember both of us agreeing that there are only a few ways that societies have devised to keep these strong emotions in check and that is restrain males, which is difficult and can be costly (requiring a police force, legislative system, judicial system, army, navy, marines, etc--you get the point, no?). Restraining females is much easier and certainly cheaper, probably because, at least at one time, we understood the necessity of such restraint, in that, in the end, it served our purposes and protected our fragile kin (children, elderly parents, grandparents)and kept men around who provided for us and our kin/children. The thinking that inspired the feminist movement was that such restraint of females, particularly of their sexuality, was "AWFUL" and that restraint would no longer be accepted. But, I digress. We did not talk about this.

Anne was telling me about visiting the art collection of the Mormon church in Salt Lake City and how she was a bit surprised to find many paintings of nude women, which she said the curator told her had been commissioned by Joseph Smith, who sent many morman boys/men to France to learn to paint nudes. She thought this was great, but I said he must have been a dirty old man and polygyny was not just an accident. The bottom line issue here is to ask what arouses men sexually. As biologists often argue, human males are hyper-sexual, they are fairly easily aroused. Most of the men we know were taught, as boys, to restrain themselves to some degree, at least in public. They are not aware of this, nor are women, but we as females reap the benefit of their restraint. The problem is that there are many men who were not so taught, or who rejected such teachings. These men are dangerous to us. They may not rape or kill the woman who is scantily clad, but they may well rape or kill the next woman they see (when they also see opportunity to get away with it). I said that an irony for me was the fact that the "restrained" males were the ones who fought for freedom of the press and freedom of expression, as they know that they can see explicitly sexual paintings (for men this may be a nude woman)and probably not rape anyone, although they may be hot to trot when the opportunity arises. They are not the dangers, the other males are.

She said that she bet that Mormon men, who she admires for their love of family, watch (and are not discouraged from watching) pornography (although we both rejected the argument that most horrible crimes are committed by restrained males who burst their bounds--where is the evidence?). This watching pornography argument may be true, but it seems to me that if you want to promote the spirituality of love, and devotion to family, you walk a risky path when you turn to eroticism. It seems dangerous that a male would have sex with his wife and just see her as a sexual object, not as a fragile, complex,precious person he loves. To me he should be conscious of her as a special person and pornography is not about that. This may be one of the dangers of pornography for men and perhaps even women--it is about sensation, not about social relationships that are committed. Yes, I can just hear the arguments fall down upon my head. Well, we watch....and we love each other. Well, I stand by my argument and if you are really honest with yourself you will see that I have a point. The emotions related to sex occur because sex is so important. They are powerful emotions. This does not mean that unrestrained they are necessarily good. At least females in other species have oestrus, limiting the sexual opportunities available to conspecific males.

This to me is the dilemma: restraint or freedom. We have a lot of freedom in this country. Woman and men are not very restrained. We have freedom of speech, sexual freedom, drugs, whatever and we wonder why we have problems. Those problems are probably the price we pay for the freedoms we think are so important. There are always consequences to every decision we make.

Now we should think of the counter argument to my own thinking. Any ideas out there?