Why sex=taboo?

[Zhavric]

Quote by: nerdvincent Hello people. I was wondering why sex is considered taboo. Is the human being ashamed of being unable to reproduce by parthenogenesis? Or is it for some weird, old forgotten reasons? Come and answer.

****!!!

Had a great response that got deleted.

To sum up:

1) You guys dispoint me for not mentioning the Puritans or discussing the acceptance of sex in a historical context.

2) Our taboo attitude of sex is rooted in the Jewish tradition of associating virginity with paternity and treating women as the property of their fathers / husbands.

3) Christianity needed to characterize sex as "sinful" in the early days to help it spread around the poor of Rome who didn't have the money to throw drunken orgies.

4) After the fall of Rome, when Christianity ruled Europe, the clergy saw women as tempters and did what they could ot ensure they were treated as second class citizens... this involved convincing women (and men) that their bodies were "sinful" and that sex was evil.

Western Culture never seems to be quite able to reject these idiotic Christian ideas. We seem doomed to pendulum back and forth between sexual freedom and sexual repression.The sexual repression of the 50's gave way to the free love of the 60's, which in turn saw the rise of conservative Christian groups in the late 70's and so on.

At the core, sex is taboo because keeping people married, having kids and teaching them to be Christians is the core of the Christian scam. Having sex just for fun and not having kids? Well, that doesn't further the scam so it must be "bad".

EDIT: Honestly, what can you expect when the dominant religion actually believes the most remarkable women ever was one who went from virginity to motherhood without having sex?

[Sonart]

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Quote by: nerdvincent Exactly. That's the reason why of course, but is it fair? Should we do so?

Sure, why not? Despite advances in contraception, incautious sex still results in pregnancy, which is still a big, big deal, not to be taken lightly.

Now perhaps at some point, given the human population explosion, the instinct to 'Be Fruitful and Multiply' may start to wane, a state of permanent contraception might become the norm - from which parents are "released" long enough to conceive - and thus the desire for sexual release becomes recreationally acceptable and less-verbotten.

Who knows... but until then, yeah, I think sex should be looked at as something for adults only. Not that kids will pay attention.

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[nerdvincent]

Quote by: Sonart Sure, why not? Despite advances in contraception, incautious sex still results in pregnancy, which is still a big, big deal, not to be taken lightly.

You got me wrong. Talking about sex include more talking about contraception and sexuality in general, not fucking while speaking. Plus, sex being taboo just make teens feel too shameful to buy condoms.

Quote by: Sonart Who knows... but until then, yeah, I think sex should be looked at as something for adults only. Not that kids will pay attention.

Well, exept all the [shitty] religious and traditional ''reasons'' cited below, I still don't see why...

[Sonart]

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Quote by: nerdvincent Plus, sex being taboo just make teens feel too shameful to buy condoms.

I suspect the idea was to make teens feel too shameful to have sex in the first place. Until, of course, they got married... then, Halelujah!!! ...sex is a GOOD thing.

I'm not defending Victorian repression of sexuality, vincent, I'm simply trying to explain why it exists. Hell, it could be a whole lot worse... you could live in Saudi Arabia.

And given the number of unwed, teenage pregnancies in this country, it strikes me as not completely wrong, although I suspect better sex education would probably go further then hysterically forbidding it... since nothing's more delicious than forbidden fruit.

Quote by: nerdvincent Well, exept all the [shitty] religious and traditional ''reasons'' cited below, I still don't see why...

Because careless and irresponsible sex DOES result in pregnancy, vincent, and that's the friggin' dictionary definition of teenager... careless and irresponsible.

That may not seem significant to you, but trust me, I've been through an unwanted teenage pregnancy and it really, REALLY SUX, for everyone involved.

And while I'm strongly pro-choice, I don't take abortion, or it's affect on young women lightly... it's not supposed to be an "Oops, silly me" easy out.

So until contraception becomes the majority state for girls and women, rather than the minority, the possibility of sex resulting in pregnancy should not be taken lightly. Ever. Period.

And THEN there's the whole hornets nest of STDs!!!

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[Zhavric]

Typical volconvo discussion: "Zhavric gave us gold? Lets see if we can turn it back into lead."

[loser]

Sex as taboo is DEFINITELY not a Biblical teaching. The Bible in places could be deemed as pornographic and it pulls no punches when expressing how sex indeed is a primal force of man that cannot be denied. Even the 'godly' heroes of the Bible succumb to their carnal desires. From Samson to David, or from Abraham to Joseph, it doesn't matter. Sex was the big motivator that changed history, time and time again. Lot, the man spared with his daughters from the destruction of Sodom, winds up sleeping with his daughters. Even more amazing, this is the very race (the Moabites) from which David and then Jesus are descended. A prude God is not!

[Compugasm]

Don't forget Cain and Able. [I just saw a History Channel show about it, now I have to spout off like I know something]. The first murder, with incest overtones.

[Jokerjdude]

As a Christian I feel compelled to say this whether it means anything or not. In my Church sex is not a taboo. In-fact when I was younger we talked about in Sunday School and they said even though in the Bible says no sex before marriage you must only have sex when you feel that you are with that special person and the time is right, because it is your choice and if there is a mistake there is no turning back.

About the Adam and Eve story. There is a common view that all Christians believe the whole Bible and what it says. I believe in evolution and the Big Bang (plus other common knowledge that people seem to think Christians don't believe) Of course there are stories that don't make sense, but of course the people who wrote it weren't scientists (although this could lead onto to say why didn't God tell them the truth). Well I'll go into that another time.

You may of heard this before but I believe that the Bible isn't a set of rules or a book that you should take everything word literally.... I see it has a a bunch of guide lines on how to live your life.

I seem to go off topic when I write (and it usually doesn't make sense)

[loser]

I seem to go off topic when I write (and it usually doesn't make sense

There are many here who would say that this fact is directly related to the fact that you are a Christian. :-)

I'm not one of those, however. Just think of me as the 'other joker dude'.

[iclaudius]

Quote by: loser Sex as taboo is DEFINITELY not a Biblical teaching. The Bible in places could be deemed as pornographic and it pulls no punches when expressing how sex indeed is a primal force of man that cannot be denied. Even the 'godly' heroes of the Bible succumb to their carnal desires. From Samson to David, or from Abraham to Joseph, it doesn't matter. Sex was the big motivator that changed history, time and time again. Lot, the man spared with his daughters from the destruction of Sodom, winds up sleeping with his daughters. Even more amazing, this is the very race (the Moabites) from which David and then Jesus are descended. A prude God is not!

But it is important to remember that how biblical teachings have been affixed to different models of organized religion is a function of many, many things, not the least of which is politics. Fortunately for the Constantines of this world, if thousands of Christian denominations have proved anything through the years, it's that you can find a verse to back up just about any agenda. Remember, the Roman Catholic Church only exists because its creation served a certain someone a significant political advantage about 1700 years ago.

Quote by: Zhavric 3) Christianity needed to characterize sex as "sinful" in the early days to help it spread around the poor of Rome who didn't have the money to throw drunken orgies. 4) After the fall of Rome, when Christianity ruled Europe, the clergy saw women as tempters and did what they could ot ensure they were treated as second class citizens... this involved convincing women (and men) that their bodies were "sinful" and that sex was evil. Western Culture never seems to be quite able to reject these idiotic Christian ideas. We seem doomed to pendulum back and forth between sexual freedom and sexual repression.The sexual repression of the 50's gave way to the free love of the 60's, which in turn saw the rise of conservative Christian groups in the late 70's and so on. At the core, sex is taboo because keeping people married, having kids and teaching them to be Christians is the core of the Christian scam. Having sex just for fun and not having kids? Well, that doesn't further the scam so it must be "bad". EDIT: Honestly, what can you expect when the dominant religion actually believes the most remarkable women ever was one who went from virginity to motherhood without having sex?

I don't disagree with most of your post, but I feel it is wrong to characterize Christianity as a conscious thing that adapts or "needs" to adapt to something. It did not, for example, "need to adapt" sex at all, and if it did, that's irrelevant, since it couldn't act on those needs, and nobody who could was considering them at the time. People needed to adapt sex, and if they used religion, it was they who did all the work, when they changed their religion. For example, how things were taught, what things like "purity" mean, etc.

Religion itself is very limited in its response capabilities. That is, it's a viral entity. It has the effect it does because of how it is used by people, which is mostly a consequence of what's going on around them. People change it. Things change it. It does not act on its own. To say something like, "Christianity had to adapt, because regular people were jealous of rich people and their crazy orgies" is more than a little misleading, since Christianity did not change itself, and to say (or imply) it does, or that its need to adapt to survive had any effect on anything, is to do a disservice to the surrounding influences that actually caused Christianity to change. TBH, I wonder if you are not attacking it just to attack it. Would you characterize Communism in the same way? I'd have a hard time believing you'd ever find any statements like yours in any scholarly text. "Some of the Russians were religious. Communism had to find a way to destroy this influence, and it adopted atheism in response." It would never happen because it's wrong.

I am more interested in what caused people to use Christianity to change things to how they are, and apparently so was the OP. Sonart has done a great job of addressing that, and that's probably why people ignored your post.

[Jayjhis]

Psychologically and physiologically, sex is our strongest instinct. It is one of our greatest and most deeply ingrained drives. Surrounding it with restrictions and rules automatically effects every other aspect of our lives as humans and so the Church used it as a means of control.

For instance, when teaching your children about "the birds and the bees", your own religious beliefs will certainly effect what you try to instill within your children, and inevitably the two concepts, sex and religion, will be bound together in the child's mind for the rest of their lives unless they seriously work to separate them. Even I, the complete atheist that I am, have some influence left in my sexuality that comes directly from my Catholic upbringing, to this day. Granted I ignore it, but it takes conscious thought to do so.

[nerdvincent]

Quote by: Jayjhis Even I, the complete atheist that I am, have some influence left in my sexuality that comes directly from my Catholic upbringing, to this day. Granted I ignore it, but it takes conscious thought to do so.

Tadam. And is there any reason why we should go on doing so?

[Sonart]

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Quote by: Zhavric 3) Christianity needed to characterize sex as "sinful" in the early days to help it spread around the poor of Rome who didn't have the money to throw drunken orgies.

I'll accept Zhavric's contention that institutionalized misogyny may have played a role in attitudes towards sex, but this is silly... Romans were actually rather sexually conservative and the mythology of a society of Baachus besotted serial orgieists is just that... mythology created to discredit the pre-Christian pagan Empire.

Quote by: Zhavric At the core, sex is taboo because keeping people married, having kids and teaching them to be Christians is the core of the Christian scam. Having sex just for fun and not having kids? Well, that doesn't further the scam so it must be "bad".

It's no scam, Zhavric, because until the invention of latex and the pill, "sex just for fun and not having kids" was an oxymoron.

You're inserting the changes in western mores of the last 40 years into tens of thousands of years of human social evolution.

Biological evolution designed our sex drive and the sex act into human physiology for only one reason... Reproduction ...and evolution made the human sex act extremely pleasurable for the same reason, so we would do it a lot and keep reproducing in numbers sufficient to maintain stable, if slightly growing, numbers... which it did for hundreds of thousands of years. Only in the last 200 years or so has human population lit off like a rocket.



That has to be understood first and foremost. Sex just for pleasure... and gawd knows I'm guilty of far more than my share of it... without the benefit of iron clad controceptive measures, is simply an irresponsible gamble that the very thing the sex act was designed to do won't happen. And THAT is why FORNICATION -- voluntary sexual intercourse between two unmarried persons or two persons not married to each other -- is considered taboo.

The reason religion has inserted itself is because religion -- for the evolutionary reasons I have submitted -- has interpreted itself to be the keeper of what is and isn't moral within a society... that is, the rules by which we insure a harmonious and cooperative social group.

Quote by: Jayjhis Psychologically and physiologically, sex is our strongest instinct. It is one of our greatest and most deeply ingrained drives.

There's a reason for that, Jayjhis... it's called "Propagation of the Species".

Quote by: Jayjhis Surrounding it with restrictions and rules automatically effects every other aspect of our lives as humans and so the Church used it as a means of control.

There's a reason for that, too... the disciplined limiting of reproduction to conditions optimal for raising the inevitable result of that deeply ingrained drive... children. And the optimal condition is within a nuclear family consisting of a monogamous (or polygamous, if he has the means) bonded pair... a married or otherwise committed mother and father.

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[kfinkelstein]

This is really a micro-sociological question more than a sociological question, as whether or not sex is "taboo" varies greatly from demographic to demographic, as well as culture to culture. Many natural things from sex to taking a piss can be considered taboo by some, and it may stem from anything from insecurities to religious and social upbringing. its simply a fact of life.

[Jayjhis]

I understand the reasons, really, but I disagree with you that society (church, government, our parents, etc.) merely wishes to limit reproduction. How do anti-sodomy laws and taboos against anal and oral sex limit reproduction? How does homophobia limit reproduction? How does the Catholic church's stand against contraceptives limit reproduction? And what of the people that want to overturn Roe v. Wade? Seems to me that they don't want to limit reproduction to ideal circumstances at all, but rather do just the opposite.

[Zhavric]

Quote by: Sonart . I'll accept Zhavric's contention that institutionalized misogyny may have played a role in attitudes towards sex, but this is silly... Romans were actually rather sexually conservative and the mythology of a society of Baachus besotted serial orgieists is just that... mythology created to discredit the pre-Christian pagan Empire.

Oh, the orgies happened. Also, the Romans had a very different ideas about sex than we do now.

In a Roman household sex was in plentiful supply. Except, so it seems, between the actual married couples. The existence of slaves in the house naturally mean that, particularly the men, but also the women (although with the risk of pregnancy and disgrace), had access to sex whenever they so required.
Roman sexuality in its pagan times is perhaps hard to understand by western society with its values heavily influenced by Christianity.
To a Roman sex did not create any kind of bond between two people. It created no obligation between one side and the other. And, for the man at least, there appeared no reason why he should not share many sexual partners, - as long as it didn't get him into any form of trouble.
What is peculiar though is that, whereas even the sharing of a meal created a form of social relationship with a person, having sex with them did not.

Household Sex

Also, the Roman attitude towards sex changes over time.

It's no scam, Zhavric, because until the invention of latex and the pill, "sex just for fun and not having kids" was an oxymoron.

Thank you restating the dogma of the scam. This is absolutely not the case. For one, the Romans had a very different idea of what sex was like. Furthermore, divorce yourself from this idea that the pill and latex are the only forms of birth control.

First off, the Romans had a plant called Silphium which allegedly stopped pregnancy. It worked so well, the Romans ate it into extinction.

About that herb. Long before hippies thought hemp could solve all the world's problems, Romans used an alleged wonder plant of the carrot and parsley family called silphium. It was a sort of giant fennel that grew wild near Cyrene, an ancient coastal city in North Africa. Silphium had many uses — perfume from its flowers, food from its stalk, and medicine from its juice (or resin) and roots. The Romans didn't discover the plant's properties — there's evidence the Greeks and Egyptians used it as a contraceptive as early as the seventh century BC on the advice of physicians, who recommended a monthly dose that mixed a lump of resin the size of a chickpea with water. The Roman scholar Pliny the Elder described use of the resin (called laser or laserpicium) "with soft wool as a pessary to promote the menstrual discharge." Menstrual discharge, of course, means no pregnancy. One physician in the second century AD named Soranus claimed a special recipe using silphium had been used to terminate pregnancies. In Contraception and Abortion from the Ancient World to the Renaissance (1992), medical historian John Riddle claims that modern studies show the recipe and others like it would work.

The Straight Dope: Did the ancient Romans use a natural herb for birth control?

Another school of thought is that wealthier Roman women would wait until their husbands would impregnate them and then go to town while knocked up. One cannot become pregnant out of wedlock if one is already pregnant.

Furthermore, as mentioned above, slaves provided a constant source of sexual gratification... and little care about any child that came from that union. And let's not forget the world's oldest trade:

We know that like the Greeks, Roman men frequently engaged in prostitution. From writings describing the living conditions of
Roman brothels, we know that they were extremely unsanitary and many prostitutes died living in the brothels because of their
unsanitary conditions. Roman men were also allowed to beat and rape prostitutes who didn't perform the services they wanted
for the prices that they wanted.

History of Sex: Roman Empire

You're inserting the changes in western mores of the last 40 years into tens of thousands of years of human social evolution.

Of course I'm not. Don't be silly. It's simple. The Christians had to convince a Roman population with a carefree attitude towards sex to embrace marriage and monogomy because the best way to gain converts to Christianity is to have parents make them for you.

Biological evolution designed our sex drive and the sex act into human physiology for only one reason... Reproduction ...and evolution made the human sex act extremely pleasurable for the same reason, so we would do it a lot and keep reproducing in numbers sufficient to maintain stable, if slightly growing, numbers... which it did for hundreds of thousands of years. Only in the last 200 years or so has human population lit off like a rocket.

1) Don't use the word "design" with evolution. Evolution doesn't "design" things. Rock slides aren't "designed" into the piles they randomly fall into (even if we can predict where some rocks will fall or what they pile may look like).

2) The sex act is pleasurable for men and has the potential to be pleasurable for women, but many women go their entire lives without experiencing an orgasm.

3) What does your above statement have to do with the taboo nature of sex?

That has to be understood first and foremost. Sex just for pleasure... and gawd knows I'm guilty of far more than my share of it... without the benefit of iron clad controceptive measures, is simply an irresponsible gamble that the very thing the sex act was designed to do won't happen. And THAT is why FORNICATION -- voluntary sexual intercourse between two unmarried persons or two persons not married to each other -- is considered taboo.

So, according to you, the sex act is pleasureable so we'll do it a lot, but we also consider it taboo. This is, of course, Christian inspired nonsense. All you're doing here is taking what you've been told to believe and inventing biological rationalizations for it. The truth is that sex is taboo because the inventors of Christianity needed it to be a taboo because they had to change the Roman attitude towards sex.

The reason religion has inserted itself is because religion -- for the evolutionary reasons I have submitted -- has interpreted itself to be the keeper of what is and isn't moral within a society... that is, the rules by which we insure a harmonious and cooperative social group.

Please.

To be sure, religions don't give us morality. Religions simply seek to take credit for morality. Breakthroughs in our civilization... such as basic human rights... have come from time periods where religion is questioned. Look at the conflict in the middle east. Look at how Islam can be easily used to get peaceful intelligent people to blow themselves up. It's not a force for morality within a society. It's simply a way of controlling people that bills itself as "moral and just".

Part of that morality has been to vilify sex because sex within a family because offspring are more likely to be indoctrinated into the religion that vilified sex in the first place.

Finally, did you honestly think anyone here buys the idea that religion and evolution are in any way linked? Come on.