A forum that I frequent has welcomed a member that is making some pretty big waves, and she’s not getting a whole lot of popularity votes, either. She is arguing (passionately but poorly) that contraception has been the bane of our current American culture, and that if only we were to see sex as “how it was designed” – which is within a church-sanctioned heterosexual marriage purposefully for the act of procreation – we wouldn’t be in the shithole we are today.
Somebody please go and pinch her nose for me. I’m still in recovery right now. ;-D
What bugs me the most about arguments like this is that the intention of returning sex and sexuality to a procreative act that is seen as more sacred backfires horribly. You reduce sex to a mechanistic function and actually DE-sacralize sex into a baby-making operation. I have no doubts that the people who make these arguments truly believe that placing arbitrary boundaries on sex down to our pensises and vaginas will help us, but they are profoundly ignorant that sex starts in the mind, not between the legs.
And besides, if we really want to be technically correct here, procreation isn’t really about penises and vaginas, it’s about a union between a sperm and an egg. Our external reproductive organs are multi-functional, thank you very much.
No, what really gets me is the notion that if you take away by threats of physical or psycho-social punishment contraception, pre-marital sex, extra-martial sex, masturbation, erotic art and literature, pornography, etc. What is to stop us from demanding women have cliterodectomies? Millions of girls around the world are subject to that every year, and WE not long ago practiced the same damned thing. Women have a clitoris, which has but one purpose – sexual ecstasy. Not procreation. Soooooooo, explain that ya mindless-establishment pinheads.
Why have a menses cyle? Why not just devolve back into mammals that only have estrus cycles where we were in heat for a period of time – we released phermones that the males picked up on, mounted us, and we reproduced. Damn, we were efficient back then, weren’t we? [/sarcasm]
After I pinch this woman’s nose (wait, whoops, you pinch her nose for me), I want to point her toward the possibility that our menses cycle, the development of the clitoris, and the fact that we can have frontal-facing sex as well as the development of subcutaneous fat in our breast tissue (which helped our curves become even more aesthetically pleasing)………..all this physiologically implies that sex is here MORE for pleasure than it is for procreation. In fact, ovulation provides such a small window during our cycle that a successful union between a sperm and an egg is actually pretty slim.
I can’t argue this point enough, y’all. Sex and sexuality is the culmination, practice, study, and exploration into the art of pleasure and ecstasy. It is an opportunity for us as a species to realize what is our true Buddha nature – the one of bliss and interconnectedness. To reduce sex into that baby-making mechanistic function only serves to protect the sad isolated idea that is the nuclear family. No grandmama or paw-paw, aunts, uncles, or cousins to help around the house or provide income, love, structure, and guidance. Hell, it’s horrific not having our elders so near us when we need them the most……….
But I digress. I do that when getting on preliminary rants and my thoughts aren’t completely cogent quite yet.
OK, bottom line, blissful orgasmic ecstasy is the law. It is our true nature. THIS is sacred, and it is what makes us supremely humane. To nurture ourselves and others into this state of being is what we ought to elevate to, not to how many babies we can pop out while only two adults are around to welcome the new life into the world. And screw the idea that menopause is a death sentence for women’s sex lives because she isn’t “fertile” anymore (BTW, a hearty “fuck you” not only goes out to all the religious institutions that suggest that, but a hearty “fuck you” also goes out to evolutionary scientists who suggest that as well)………on the contrary, my dear friend, give me a sexually-liberated silver-haired woman, and I’ll show you Wisdom that is red-hot and that can perhaps show us all how to really live.
I’m done rambling for now. I need to go take a relaxing bath after that rant.
Hi Thalia, you wanton wholesome whore! It seems to me you’ve done a great job here arguing against the “purpose of sex is for procreation” nonsense.
I’d like to add, though, that the whole notion sex has any intrinsic purpose(s) can be challenged. That is, one can assert that sex has multiple functions, but still lacks purpose, since purpose seems to imply some kind of intentionality.
If sex is or was intended for some purpose(s), then who or what did the intending? It surely couldn’t be nature. Nature doesn’t intend anything, and has no purpose or intelligent design. It just is. So, it seems we’re the one’s who create purposes, while nature just creates functions.
Put differently, the clit is not intelligently designed for the sole purpose of giving pleasure — it’s sole natural function is to give pleasure.
Again, the tongue is not intelligently designed for the purposes of speech and manipulating food — it functions to aide speech, manipulate food, and sexually stimulate a partner. A different structure might prevent it from functioning in any one or more of those ways.
If you take purpose out of the mix, you cut off the “sole purpose of sex is procreation” argument at its knees.
Thanks, Paul! As usual, you present a good argument in a snarky way. ;-D
I might not have has much experience in this world as the both of you. But I agree with you both because it actually makes sense.