Is sex a big thing?
Mar. 31st, 2013 12:24 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
avevale_intelligencerThis is a question I've not seen brought up in all the variably heated discussions on why some people feel the need to tell other people with whom they can have sex, whom they can marry, and so on. I've seen some opinions expressed in the past which suggest that to some people it isn't a big thing at all, just two or more people taking pleasure in each other's bodies and gratifying their natural urges, and as long as it's fully consensual at all times everybody should just, you know, go for it.
I can just about see that point of view from here, but I don't share it. Not that I think people shouldn't have sex, given the givens above and as long as they're very sure, but I do believe it is a big thing, possibly even a Big Thing. For women, indeed, it has the potential to be a Very Big Thing even if nothing goes wrong, so I think it should be for men too. I think it's the most intimate and vulnerable two (or more) people can be to each other, and I think the offering of that intimacy, that vulnerability, especially for the first time, deserves some respect, perhaps even a little mystique. YMMV.
Talking (as many have done) about marriage in down-to-earth, no-nonsense, speak-as-I-find terms as a business contract tends to marginalise the meaning that it has at some points in the past had as the gateway to this very special mystery. I'm not going to contend that it always has had that purpose, or that it necessarily should, but I think something should, at least as an option.
I speak here as a bloke who didn't actually lose his notional virginity till he was well past his peak and who is looking dismally forward to realising at some point that the last time he did it was, well, the last time he ever would. I see the climate of permissiveness, or of "Fancy a shag?" "Yeah, orright" as one might put it, as less than ideal for anyone, paradise though it might have seemed to your basic hormonally deranged teenage boy. Some things in life shouldn't be too easy, even if we really really want them to be. Some things in life men at least should have to work for. And there should be some sort of ritual recognisance, I think, especially if the act is part of the building of a lasting relationship. Call it marriage, call it handfasting, jumping the broomstick, pair-bonding, unifying the odyllic force (or forces), whatever; but don't call it civil partnership. That's just wrong.
Am I saying the churches are right to try to control who can do what to whom? No, of course not. Leviticus and his ilk were writing in a different time, for reasons which (I think) had nothing to do with anything God had told them and much to do with exercising power and exorcising their own personal demons. Unfortunately the Bible doesn't come labelled with handy hints such as "genuine revelation" or "self-serving propaganda" and we have to sort it out for ourselves, or throw out the whole book. But one thing they did understand, in hedging the act about with these draconian regulations and penalties and exclusions, is that sex is, and should be, significant, and not to be entered into lightly. (And then they go and spoil it all by saying something stupid like that stuff about Lot offering his daughters to the mob to save his own skin. Truly, there's something for everyone in the Bible. Which by definition means it's a rare skill to be able to swallow the lot.)
But what makes me sad is that in adopting this position, in not being flexible on this point, the churches are throwing out the baby with the bath water. If religious marriage (which can be quite beautiful--mine was, even though I couldn't sustain the religion) remains mired in long-dead prejudice and misunderstanding, then it will be abandoned. Equality under civil law is a good and noble thing to strive for and achieve, but it isn't the whole story. By insisting on controlling sex, the churches are forfeiting the right to celebrate it. Which I think is what they should have been doing all along.
Comments?
I can just about see that point of view from here, but I don't share it. Not that I think people shouldn't have sex, given the givens above and as long as they're very sure, but I do believe it is a big thing, possibly even a Big Thing. For women, indeed, it has the potential to be a Very Big Thing even if nothing goes wrong, so I think it should be for men too. I think it's the most intimate and vulnerable two (or more) people can be to each other, and I think the offering of that intimacy, that vulnerability, especially for the first time, deserves some respect, perhaps even a little mystique. YMMV.
Talking (as many have done) about marriage in down-to-earth, no-nonsense, speak-as-I-find terms as a business contract tends to marginalise the meaning that it has at some points in the past had as the gateway to this very special mystery. I'm not going to contend that it always has had that purpose, or that it necessarily should, but I think something should, at least as an option.
I speak here as a bloke who didn't actually lose his notional virginity till he was well past his peak and who is looking dismally forward to realising at some point that the last time he did it was, well, the last time he ever would. I see the climate of permissiveness, or of "Fancy a shag?" "Yeah, orright" as one might put it, as less than ideal for anyone, paradise though it might have seemed to your basic hormonally deranged teenage boy. Some things in life shouldn't be too easy, even if we really really want them to be. Some things in life men at least should have to work for. And there should be some sort of ritual recognisance, I think, especially if the act is part of the building of a lasting relationship. Call it marriage, call it handfasting, jumping the broomstick, pair-bonding, unifying the odyllic force (or forces), whatever; but don't call it civil partnership. That's just wrong.
Am I saying the churches are right to try to control who can do what to whom? No, of course not. Leviticus and his ilk were writing in a different time, for reasons which (I think) had nothing to do with anything God had told them and much to do with exercising power and exorcising their own personal demons. Unfortunately the Bible doesn't come labelled with handy hints such as "genuine revelation" or "self-serving propaganda" and we have to sort it out for ourselves, or throw out the whole book. But one thing they did understand, in hedging the act about with these draconian regulations and penalties and exclusions, is that sex is, and should be, significant, and not to be entered into lightly. (And then they go and spoil it all by saying something stupid like that stuff about Lot offering his daughters to the mob to save his own skin. Truly, there's something for everyone in the Bible. Which by definition means it's a rare skill to be able to swallow the lot.)
But what makes me sad is that in adopting this position, in not being flexible on this point, the churches are throwing out the baby with the bath water. If religious marriage (which can be quite beautiful--mine was, even though I couldn't sustain the religion) remains mired in long-dead prejudice and misunderstanding, then it will be abandoned. Equality under civil law is a good and noble thing to strive for and achieve, but it isn't the whole story. By insisting on controlling sex, the churches are forfeiting the right to celebrate it. Which I think is what they should have been doing all along.
Comments?
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2013-03-31 05:25 pm (UTC)And an ideal, a meanibg to strive for, avrespect to hold, tought by church.
no subject
Date: 2013-03-31 08:57 pm (UTC)sex is a big thing... as a female that waited until her fiancée cheated on her to decide that virginity itself was a barrier... I at least wait until in a commited relationship to take that last plunge but I no longer believe that marriage needs to be involved.
no subject
Date: 2013-04-04 12:43 am (UTC)(Also, in re the thing about Lot offering his daughters to the mob: he is castigated for that by generations of commentators, some of whom say that he reaped what he sowed when those same daughters later got him drunk and date-raped him.)