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Ambiguity and [Un]healthy Sexuality in the World and in the Church [4]

| briansabey

PART 4: UNHEALTHY SEXUALITY IN THE CHURCH

http://blogs.hebronacademy.org/americanlitc/2017/05/24/sin-guilt-dimmesdale-essay/

While the World’s sexuality belongs properly to hell, the Church is too often caused to lift up its eyes in torment because of sexual guilt. If sexuality’s main effect in one’s consciousness is to cause guilt, it is not healthy, albeit still preferable to the drunken sexuality that is past feeling the tug of morality.

I have previously defined the Church broadly enough to encompass any religion that recognizes that God rightfully regulates human sexuality, and I assume that the experience of the practitioners of other religions is comparable. But I do not actually know that, and for the remainder of this essay, the Church will refer more specifically to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, where I know from personal experience and by report that the problems I identify are not uncommon. I will designate this as the (lower case “c”) church.

The prevalence of excessive sexual guilt is understandable, especially given the toxic cultural environment in which the church operates, where sexual desire is intentionally and incessantly stimulated by advertisers, media, and peers alike. Lucretius once theorized that the male sexual response to the visual stimulus of female bodies is a strictly automatic, glandular event. While I can positively affirm that this oversimplifies the matter, I see where he was coming from. It is perhaps strictly impossible for most men to avoid being attuned to the sexual. It is interesting as well as fraught—an object of curiosity as well as desire. While a man may be enabled to choose a chaste response to a beautiful woman immodestly advertising her availability, he cannot choose indifference. And yet those who align with the church are taught that they must not intentionally stimulate or condone the intentional stimulation of sexual feelings in their own bodies or those of anyone else except within marriage—and even then only when it edifies. Anything outside this context violates the law of chastity. Continue reading →

Ambiguity and [Un]healthy Sexuality in the World and in the Church [3]

| briansabey

PART 3: UNHEALTHY SEXUALITY IN THE WORLD

Hieronymus Bosch, Garden of Earthly Delights (triptych), c.1515

“The World” here is defined in contradistinction to “the Church.” The fundamental difference for present purposes is that the Church recognizes the authority of God’s commandments respecting sex while the World follows its desires regardless of God’s commandments. People do not divide neatly in the World and the Church, but at the same time the distinction is more than theoretical. I am sure that there are atheists who eschew sexual whateverism and, for their own reasons, promote faithfulness within loving dual gendered marriage as the only ethical expression of sexuality; but I cannot think of a single person I actually know who fits this category today. The vast majority of those who remain unmoved by the sexual and ideological revolutions of the last century are the religious–and most major religions (including at least Hinduism, Christianity, Islam, Sikhism, and Judaism) have historically spoken with virtual unanimity on the subject. Buddhism, of course, considers liberation from all desire and attachment the ultimate goal, and it therefore has perhaps an even less permissive stance towards sexuality than the other major religions.

While the nearly unanimous consensus of the world’s major religions is so strong an argument in favor of traditional sexual morality as to be, in my judgment, very nearly conclusive, I do not insist on traditional sexual morality for present purposes. What I insist on is that people must attempt to comply with a moral and philosophical system that is dictated by reason and conscience and not by desire. Desire must bow to Right (“as God gives us to see the right”), not Right to Desire. To the extent that a rigorous and conscientious atheist regulates his sexuality by the morality that seems to him correct and yet denies the authority of God’s purported commandments, he is outside the Church but also outside the World. Continue reading →

Ambiguity and [Un]healthy Sexuality in the World and in the Church [1]

| briansabey

PART 1: SEXUALITY AND AMBIGUITY

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ambigram_Ambiguity.png

Our actual experience of sexuality is full of ambiguities. There are at least three major sources of ambiguity that I can discern:

  1. The gap between reproduction itself and the bodily and mental processes associated with reproduction. 
  2. The slippage inherent in language.
  3.  Differing world views and philosophies of sexuality.

There can be no serious claim that sexuality lacks ambiguity, because intelligent people and cultures interpret it so differently. I am not an anthropologist, but I know just enough to know that anthropology furnishes precious few universals across cultures within the realm of sexuality. The few that do exist, according to Wikipedia’s page on cultural universals, include a prohibition on incest, some form of cultural dress code (sexual modesty is described as a “cultural universal” here), and some form of marriage. Continue reading →

Is It Possible To Transition Genders?

| briansabey

There are two competing claims in the debate on transgender issues. The first is the historical norm of Western culture: one’s gender should be considered the same as one’s objective biological sex. The second is the core assertion of the transgender movement: a person’s gender should be viewed by others and by the law as a matter of subjective identity. Both claims are defensible, but both cannot be right. I will refer to these two views as the objective and subjective views even though I admit these terms are problematic. My conclusion (spoiler alert) is that both views should be respected, since (among other reasons) there is no possibility of any public proof that either is right or wrong.

The clearest thinkers on both sides of the debate acknowledge a valid distinction between (1) the mere fact of biological differences between males and females and (2) the things that culture and psychology do with the concepts of “male” and “female.” This culturally and psychologically generated construct has come to be distinguished from biological sex and called “gender,” though the terms are still often used synonymously. Acknowledging this theoretical distinction, the practical issue of what to do about the possibility that an individual’s gender identity may differ from the individual’s biological sex remains entirely unresolved.

Continue reading →

The Inevitability and Potential Benefits of Gender Norms

| briansabey

The world turned upside down, by Israhel van Meckenem the Younger.

James Damore was fired from Google for saying that women are biologically less disposed towards engineering jobs than men. He then sued Google for discrimination against employees who were white, male, or conservative. Let’s take a moment to savor the craziness.

In a saner world, the layers of irony in the whole situation would prompt a serious discussion about gender norms across society. The question would be one of factual inquiry: are women in fact less predisposed to engineering jobs? If so, is the cause biological or something else?

Some (including the paid scientific experts) took the occasion to respectfully disagree with each other. But those phlegmatic conversations have been like the one remaining mobile home in the wake of a tornado. In general, the reactions were “hysterical” (CNN’s Kirsten Powers’ word). Various thoughtful persons across the spectrum deplored the ideological histrionics displayed by most the rest of us (see the excellent Wikipedia article).

A slight majority (55%) disagreed with Google’s decision to fire Damore, according to a Harvard-Harris poll. But that means that 45% did not disagree with it. Many in the 55% majority disagreed with Damore’s opinions about gender dynamics, but still felt he should not have been fired for expressing them at work. But to a full 45% of the polled population, the expression of such views is apparently so heinous that termination is the appropriate response.

Obviously, gender norms are rather unpopular nowadays. And not without reason. I admit that gender norms, mis-conceived or miscarried or related to in mal-adaptive ways, can and do injure people, whether because those people do not conform to the norm or because they do.

But I also submit that a society without gender norms is possible only in theory and that this theoretical society is not the one we should aspire to. Continue reading →

In Defense of Modesty

| briansabey

Modesty, Oil by William Adolphe Bouguereau

Modesty, like reverence, is becoming a forgotten virtue. Calls for modesty in dress in ultra-orthodox jewish neighborhoods are perceived by some as a violation of human rights. Others, less extreme, view codes of modest dress as stifling individual expression or as shifting responsibility for men’s sexuality from the men themselves to women. Now, it may or may not be a good idea to post signs in the hasidic neighborhoods. And codes of modest dress may indeed be misinterpreted by men as absolving them of responsibility for their own sexual behavior. But regardless, modesty is still a virtue–and one that deserves to be encouraged and inculcated.

We use the term “modesty” in the context of dress and in the context of personal achievement, but the core of the idea is the same Continue reading →