Freedom of Sex

In the past few weeks, topics of relationships, adultery, marital fidelity and such have raised themselves in surprising ways. There were a number of movies I saw that dealt with these issues, and it came up in three unrelated discussions at work. In trying to order my thoughts about these subjects, I’m starting a series of posts about related freedoms. This first post delves right in by talking about the taboo subject of sex.

At its core, sex is there for procreation, to continue the existence of the species. I once read that we, humans, are really there as a mechanism for our DNA to reproduce itself. Of course, this is taking the evolutionary viewpoint to its extreme, but I felt it a sobering thought to realize that all our achievements, our history, are just ways for a couple of strands of DNA to reproduce themselves.

In animals, sex is almost entirely linked with reproduction. Studying animals, in particular mammals, makes it clear that copulating is usually a pleasurable experience for them, however that does not make them seek it outside of the reproductive experience.

Humans are fairly unique in that they have expanded their sexual behavior beyond the reproductive purpose. Performing sexual acts purely for the pleasure, without a desire or attempt to reproduce, has been part of human history since its oldest recordings. It can probably be argued that enjoying sex for itself is one of the things that make us different from animals.

It is not until fairly recently, though, that the connection between sex and procreation got entirely severed. The development of various reliable birth control tools in the latter half of the twentieth century, combined with medical advances in fertility treatment, has resulted in a situation where you can have sex without reproduction, and reproduction without sex.

Society has not kept up with these developments, however. Much of the mores of society are based on traditions that are thousands of years old. In order to understand society’s attitude towards sex, we need to take a look at the origins of these traditions.

One of the other ways in which humans are different from other animals is in the time it takes them to rear their young to adulthood. Human babies are born as entirely helpless creatures. Where other animals can walk or fly within days or weeks after birth, it takes humans more than a year before they even have independent locomotion. Where other animals can often take care of themselves within a year, human children remain dependent on their parents for fifteen years; in fact, in modern society when they attend institutes of higher education, the children may be economically dependent on their parents for the first twenty-five years of their life.

An investment into the raising of offspring of fifteen years or more cannot easily be supported by a single parent. Children supported by both of their parents would, on average, have a better chance to succeed in life; hence there would be an evolutionary force that would favor societies that encourage long-term bonding.

This puts in particular the male (but to a lesser extend also the female) of the species in a tug-of-war between conflicting goals. On the one hand, his DNA is trying to spread itself as far as it can, and encouraging the man to impregnate as many women as possible. On the other hand, society is pressuring him to provide his share towards the raising of his children. Perhaps it is not surprising that the 1950-era Kinsey Report found that half the American men and a quarter of the women had engaged in extramarital sex: over the thousands of years, society has evolved a don’t ask, don’t tell attitude to deal with its fundamental contradictions.

The introduction of reliable birth control, and thereby the severing of the connection between sex and reproduction, through a monkey wrench into this balance. For a while, the hippie culture tried to find a new balance in dealing with sexuality, but it was too different from mainstream society to become generally accepted. In fact, the backlash against the hippie culture of the 1960s seems to have driven American society backwards...

Conclusion: society’s attitudes towards sex are hopelessly outdated and can safely be ignored. The only value left in these attitudes is a an unspoken default, a baseline for expectations and interactions.