Sexual Healing Through Monogamy
In light of my two recent posts, I think it's obvious that I favor monogamy for heterosexual men for the purposes of societal stability.
We've had a similar discussion here before, namely whether monogamy is our natural inclination as humans and whether so-called 'polygamous marriage' should be a social and civil rights issue in the same vein as gay marriage (for my commentary on polygamous marriage, see here). Let me set aside the legal questions and narrow the scope to male behavior.
Genetically, it is clear that the human male is physically well-equipped for polygamy in a way that the human female is not. A man (through some exertion!) can reasonably impregnate a half-dozen or so women in the course of a single day. Women, on the other hand, can only bear the child of one man, and that over a period of nine months.
But this physical predisposition also assumes intense and violent competition between men for available women. Competition which is individually unhealthy - save for those who win - and unhealthy for social organization between men. That is, monogamy may not be the inherent preference of all unrestricted men, but it is socially preferable to the alternative and less risky for the individual male.
Interestingly enough, a recent study has shown this is no mere sophistry on my part: marriage also leads to an improved mental attitude (Let me modestly second this conclusion from my own brief experience - thus far - with the institution!). Combined with my own recent posts about terrorism and sexuality, it makes all the sense in the world to encourage strict monogamous behavior among men. So how do we do that?
posted by Joshua @ 7:39 PM
8 Comments:
Firstly, if you want to encourage "strict monogamous behaviour," you'll probably want to stop calling it that. I agree with most of your assessments here, but you can't really steer the national attitude, which is becoming less accepting of infidelity than it was in the eighties anyway.
As I've said before, I'm a huge proponent of monogamy, detest infidelity, and all that. Provided that the person we're expecting and encouraging to remain monogamous has had a chance to learn what they will from their wild days and know what they're getting into a monogamous relationship for, anyway. Generally, I'd guess most kids between, say, 16 and 22 are ready for love and sex but not for a real relationship. Their hormones are raging, but they don't know exactly what they want. They're capricious, but every new boy or girl is the end of the world. They wear their hearts on their sleeves, but are still stuck in that ultra-defensive grade-school mentality. And on and on.
What I'm saying is, this is a demographic for whom strict monogamy probably shouldn't be encouraged. But when we're talking about marraige, sure.
"Generally, I'd guess most kids between, say, 16 and 22 are ready for love and sex but not for a real relationship."
Here, I think, is the crux of our disagreement. I think these hormone-addled stages - and earlier! - are when we have to teach 'the kids' the importance of restraint as well as the (societally) appropriate conduit for sexual love: a stable relationship.
What you're saying, I think, is analogous to saying people are ready to eat before they are ready for proper nutrition: "Eh, let them eat whatever they want for a few years to get it out of their system."
Having been a supremely hormonally-charged young man (weren't we all?), I do appreciate what you say about the desire to be wild. We all felt it in our teens; that what our hormones were telling us young lads: populate the known universe! But why can't this wildness of desire be channeled into a sexual relationship with one person, even at a young age?
This is where I think sexual education is missing the point: promoting abstinence with silly little pacts and clubs is a lost cause (as we've discussed), but promoting safe monogamy seems to come closer to satisfying young desire and society's best interest. Thoughts?
Yeah, Tac. I agree that kids should be encouraged towards monogamy, I suppose, but now I'm not sure what monogamy means in this discussion. Based on recent events (Congrats again) I'm guessing by your language that you don't mean marriage specifically. In which case my previous comments were misdirected, but I'm so used to arguing against the strawman of the cult of virginity that it's just about reflex by now.
Without clarification, we can only assume that Tac meant one of two things. One, that people should find their mate, and stick with them through thick and thin, and that my demographic isn't exempt from that. The second, more likely interpretation is that we should be faithful to our significant others, and that it does no one - including ourselves - any good to cheat on them.
The first one is problematic for many reasons. It plays into the cult of virginity, leaving young people to either be terrified of sex, or to assume that when they give into their desires in their teen years, that sex must equal love. This of course means lack of knowledge and lack of protection and greater eventual heartbreak. There's another, bigger issue, but I'll get to that.
The second interpretation, well, I agree whole-heartedly, but good luck with the teens. You're essentially talking about teaching teens not to be assholes, and if you have a method, let us know, because it could be used on a broad range of issues. But no, teens will remain assholes, because they're (and we were all) hormonal, selfish, self-conscious, and defensive. The boys among us were anxious for sex not just for the experience but for the cache, and the girls among us were anxious for it but scared of the lable. Surely yours is a worthwhile effort, but you're holding back the ocean.
The bigger issue I mentioned is this, and it might be at the heart of all of it: the idea of "the one."
Now Tac (and Boudicca!) Hopefully some big part of you sees each other as "The One," but I almost hope you don't. It's a beautiful, romantic concept, certainly, but it isn't true. I know. I work for the industry that promotes this propoganda and it just doesn't hold up.
Love isn't that feeling you get in the pit of your stomach, and it isn't the look on a newborn baby. It isn't even seeing your new bride in a wheelchair.
However, it is finding the way to dance with your new bride in the wheelchair. It is everything you do to raise and protect the newborn baby. It is what you do about that feeling in the pit of your stomach.
Modern culture has us believe that Love is a noun, instead of a verb. There is no such thing as "the one," because that makes us look for someone to match up with us like a puzzle piece. But none of us match up perfectly, and we love by finding compromise, because it would never occur to us to do otherwise. You never find the one who you'll never argue with. For my part, I'd never want to. We find the person whom we're willing to love, which takes all the effort we have to give but will always be worthwhile.
I don't think that most teens truly know how to give love in that way, nore do they have enough experience to find someone worthy of it. Monogamy - in marriage - often means giving up sex because your spouse doesn't feel like it, or can't for some reason. And so you abstain, because of love. But for an age-group that can't really differentiate between sex and love, and where the ones who can are often predatory, I think some sort of a pass is in order.
I must disagree that 'some sort of a pass is in order.'
I was referring above to monogamy among precisely the sort of young men (in high school) who can monopolize the most desirable women among themselves. I said this was roughly analogous (though not to the same degree) to polygamous societies where a larger number of men than otherwise remained single. These single men are precisely the fodder for Islamo-fascism, in much the same way alienated single males in high school seem to be prey for white supremacist-Nazi ideologies.
My prescription, then, was for the young men who cite the maxim "don't hate the playa, hate the game." This is functional polygamy, and on this count I agree largely with Kelly's comments here: there must be reasonable guidelines. In the absence of them, a 'catch as catch can' standard will lead to the type of alienation and radicalization I cited.
I think I may have a metaphor that can bring the two sides of this argument a little closer together.
Drivers' Ed.
I believe this to be a particularly apt metaphor since it deals with the demographic that's been discussed until this point.
When we were in Drivers' Ed., we were taught the rules of the road, and how to be courteous of other drivers. And then we were taught how to drive, safely and courteously. Then, after all was said and done, after we had that card with the dreadful picture of ourselves in our hot little hands, we were free to make our own decisions—within reason and the bounds of any applicable laws.
I think sexual education could take a similar approach—but leave out the hand-on training part… gross.
Anyhoo… Think about it. We were taught about driving, but we still had to learn how it really works outside of the confines of the instructional framework. Also, most of us didn’t have a high-quality, dependable automobile to guide us along our way to wherever it was we were going. We drove s**tboxes.
In sexual education, kids should be taught the pros and cons of monogamy and infidelity. They should be taught why the pros are pros and the cons are cons. We should teach them about safe sex, and what should be done in the case of an “accidental” pregnancy (“Be a man, and take responsibility,” or something like that.). We should teach them how to be courteous of the opposite sex, and about any idiosyncrasies that have been well documented among either sex.
But, when all is said and done, they still have to go out into the world and “drive around” for a while, to get a handle on things.
Sure, some people marry their high school sweethearts. Some live entire lives together, and some end up divorced. Either way, I hardly think this is a common occurrence anymore. I know it scared the hell out of me… having doubts about being with only one woman… especially when things got tough. How was I to know if she was right for me, when I’d never been with anyone else?
Relationships are hard work. Some people think that they shouldn’t be. Some people are born knowing that they are. The rest of us, which I believe to be the vast majority, need to learn that through real-life experience.
The only way to do that is to get behind the wheel.
Nice metaphor and nice rhetorical flourish at the end there, too.
I think you're pretty much on target with the Driver's Ed. comparison, in that D.E. (in my personal experience, so likely yours too!) differs from Sex Ed. as currently construed in one major facet - the discussion and learning of 'rules.'
That is, while both courses explained a lot, S.E. is more descriptive and D.E. is more prescriptive (again, all in my experience). I'm not saying that S.E. should revert to the pre-1950s-style "Do this and you'll die and go to Hell!" sermonizing, but I think a bit more than "You're going through changes now..." is in order.
Of course, this is all something of a pipe dream because sexual education at public schools is commonly the hottest of political potatoes. I think my ideal S.E. class would be condemned by social conservatives for (say) its total acceptance of homosexuality, and also by social liberals for its emphasis on (and promotion of) monogamy at the expense of so-called 'experimenting.'
That said, I don't expect anyone to be perfect. I just think the job of society is, to borrow Gaufridus's metaphor, make clear the rules of the road.
Some thoughts here on how culture and sexuality in the Third World relates to the AIDS crisis.
One thing I forgot to mention in my first comment, above, was the concept of "serial monogamy," which I think has been mentioned before, here in Opti-Land.
I think it fits into my metaphor, as well, as we drove beaters, we didn't have a new one every week. We drove it until it wouldn't work anymore.
This applies to youth, in that—as people have mentioned in comments, already—most of them are not capable of carrying out healthy, long-term relationships. Some are, though. And others can maintain relationships until certain issues come up or there are doubts, or life intervenes (sexual identity or infidelity, uncertainty about lack of life experience, or enlisting in the armed forces or going away to college, repsectively).
I think this would be a nice compromise for the youths as the "learn the rules of the road," to borrow my borrowed metaphorical phrase back from Tacitean.
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