Is sexual harassment a product of a sexually repressive environment?
Would complete realization of the Sexual Revolution--complete liberation; complete openness --result in the end of sexual harassment?
Men are overwhelmingly the perpetrators of sexual harassment, and women are overwhelmingly the victims. Therefore, we are told that sexual harassment is a product of patriarchy.
Sexual assault, we are told, is not about sex. It is about power, we are told.
On the other hand, the recent tidal wave of sexual harassment accusations involves only the most powerful men in society. They already have power over most of the people in their lives, and that power is respected. It seems more like abusing power than asserting power.
Power is not enough, maybe?
The sexual rules, mores, beliefs, attitudes, etc. of conservative traditions make even the highest political and economic power useless, maybe?
What if all of those rules, mores, beliefs, attitudes, etc. were suddenly gone and the only limit on human sexuality was consent? Poof! They are all gone. Do we still have sexual harassment?
Then again, this recent tidal wave of sexual harassment accusations has mostly been against men in some of the supposedly most progressive/liberal places in society, such as Hollywood, the news media, and the Democratic Party.
Men are overwhelmingly the perpetrators of sexual harassment, and women are overwhelmingly the victims. Therefore, we are told that sexual harassment is a product of patriarchy.
Sexual assault, we are told, is not about sex. It is about power, we are told.
On the other hand, the recent tidal wave of sexual harassment accusations involves only the most powerful men in society. They already have power over most of the people in their lives, and that power is respected. It seems more like abusing power than asserting power.
Power is not enough, maybe?
The sexual rules, mores, beliefs, attitudes, etc. of conservative traditions make even the highest political and economic power useless, maybe?
What if all of those rules, mores, beliefs, attitudes, etc. were suddenly gone and the only limit on human sexuality was consent? Poof! They are all gone. Do we still have sexual harassment?
Then again, this recent tidal wave of sexual harassment accusations has mostly been against men in some of the supposedly most progressive/liberal places in society, such as Hollywood, the news media, and the Democratic Party.
Comments (51)
There are a plethora of avenues in which sexual exploration is possible, but if intended to be serious in nature would cross into a domain concerning mental health and sexual identity in a psychotherapeutic sense. How people form intimate relationships is pivotal in our understanding of behavioural disparities that ameliorate what is 'bad' and what is 'good' but this is social or environmental. If the environment is very anti-homosexuality, for instance, this can largely affect the mental health of gay men and women and how they approach sex and their sexuality and usually in the negative. I think it is not really about accessibility to programs, but rather a more holistic, sociocultural approach where we resist oppressive attitudes to all forms of consensual sexual behaviour as part of a positive psychology movement by avoiding discouragement of sexual exploration during development to prevent this 'unevolved sexual self-awareness' later in life and fostering better education on serious aspects to sexuality such as sexual health including pregnancy, sexually transmitted diseases, relationships etc.
I still think that we would still have sexual harassment, however, because this is largely about sexual objectification and motivated by equating worth to body (both for men and women) and while largely framed by acculturated perspectives, interventions would be much more complex. Ethical implications here are more difficult to counteract despite the interaction between the two domains.
Of course not.
It's not just about power.
It's about power and not just about sexual pleasure when let's say women are systematically raped in war. It's power when it's the boss doing it to his employee. Yet everything is not about the society we live in. In a nutshell, sexual harassment can be also the most simple thing: that one person wants to have sex with someone who doesn't feel the same way and the first person simply doesn't get the message and continues with the purposals.
And really, would complete openness make it go away?
SH is really about a power relationship, and complete liberation of sexuality would not change the fact that some men are in positions of power over women.
Quoting Joshs
Quoting ssu
If allowed, people will use other people without consideration for their well-being. That's a fact. Sweatshops use children's labor and destroy the children's lives; mine owner's send miners into dangerous mines to be crushed quickly or asphyxiated over decades, soldiers use rape as a tool of war, slavery has bee an institution far back into human history, cigarette companies sell their products long after it is well known they will kill those who use them.
Why? For just about any human benefit you can think of - money, sex, to promote a political program, revenge, the feeling of power, hatred, to form armies or police forces to give them more power over more people, punishment, money, money, money.
How? 1) Power. Whenever one person or group of people have power over another person or group, they will use them. Rob them, kill them, rape them, use them for free labor, pay them less than they need to live on, confine them, repress them, What's flabbergasting, what I have a hard time understanding, is that they will feel justified in doing so. 2) Dehumanization - lack of respect for the other person as a human being deserving treatment as such, kindness. Item 2) leads directly to Item 1).
The issue is power. Sex is just one of the possible benefits. If you want to stop sexual harassment, change the power relationships. I don't think education will do much. Maybe that's not true. Maybe education will have an effect on Item 2). Maybe it will provide a sign that Item 1) will no longer be tolerated.
Deal with the power. The rest will follow.
But some power relationships are personal: there will surely always be people who have more forceful personalities, who are more aggressive, or who are more willing to use people to get what they want than others. I'm reminded of the anarchistic hippy communes of the sixties, which had no power groups or hierarchies, but which apparently degenerated because certain individuals were able to bully others into submission.
Now of course it could be said, that in this case, the women involved in pornography are consenting (and I’m sure that’s true in many cases, although there is probably some coercion involved also.) But as the behaviours being modelled are often the same in both porn media and harassment cases, with the variable being ‘consent’, then I think society ought to consider whether the ready availability of material depicting such acts might be a contributing factor.
Sexual assault can be about sex. It's the type of dynamics of sexual exploitation, violence and repression that grows in an abusive couple that is generally refered to "not being about sex, but about power", as in asserting power in a manner that is, after all, proven to work most of the time.
The recent events in regards to sexual misconduct is notable because it aims at men in power. Men who until now could use their power and influence to silence the victims. The recent narrative that is springing out, where every men must now watch their every moves to make sure that nothing will be interpreted as misconduct is pure interwebs hogwash. Unless you previously had the power and influence necessary to convince, often by doing nothing whatsoever, often over a dozen of women that nothing good could come out of reporting what was clearly misconduct, then nothing has changed.
In other regards, I think the simplest way I can formulate what I see to be the problem underlying current sexual mores is that men need to stop thinking in terms of seeking to convince their sexual interest into having intercourses. In thinking that seeing an attractive women is in itself an invitation into flirtation. My personal experience is that male attraction signaling is very very obvious, while female signaling is much more subtle. Yet every man act as if they have to lay it incredibly thick or else the woman won't notice he's interested.
I think we might need to have a few weekly prizes awarded on the Forum.
This one gets my vote for "Bleeding Obvious Comment of the Week".
Sexual assault is what sex is most about.
Sex is a natural reward provided by evolves responses of survival, in that animals who seek out sexual pleasure are more likely to provide the species with progeny. Nature, being dispassionate and disinterested, cares not how and when such pleasure is gained, so much so that the link between reproduction and the pleasure of sex is not well forged.
To the degree to which the orgasm is accompanied with the production of the elements of preproduction (semen) is the limit of this connection. Many animals do this much better even than humans in that ejaculation and oestrus is also the stimulus for the pleasure. Most mammals have limited interest in sex and this is most expressed seasonally when at particular times the males and females are brought together with pheromones. Violence is the common outcome of such meetings, with males often forcing themselves on females often having fought off other males.
Sex then is naturally linked with violence, and pleasure.
For the primates this seasonality is less marked with several species demonstrating sexual behaviours which are not directly related to the fertilisation of the egg. But violence is a common accompaniment to these practices which also relate to hierarchy.
Culture prevents us from acting like animals, but this is a denial of our nature.
As i said above, every man wakes up every morning and has to deny his natural sexuality. There are two sides to every balancing act. On the one hand society provides us with rules of behaviour, and on the other there is man's natural tendency to insert his penis into something warm and soft to leave his semen, preferably a woman (in the case of a heterosexual).
Each man is his own unique set of scales.
For some, complete sexual repression would work to emasculate the individual completely, though i think the tension would emerge in other ways, such as rampant oppression of others. For others it would make them more devious to seek out others willing to participate willingly or otherwise in sexual practices. This is the Victorian model - every thing swept under the table; including covering table legs incase they inflamed the desire of men; apparel contra onanism were sold to prevent a man from touching his own genitals at night.
There again in a world were sexual repression were minimised or ended would work in a number of ways for different people. For the abuser it would be the licence they were always looking for to use their power to more freely impose themselves onto others. Although the wider knowledge would 'protect' some against the vile advances of a Weinstein, there would always be submissive females who would continue to be abused.
And those are among the power relationships I'm talking about. I didn't say get rid of power relationships, I said to change them. I am in all sorts of appropriate power relationships - I have a boss, I am a boss, I used to be a father with non-adult children, and so on.
My point, and I guess this might have gone over your head, is that the Duluth Model doesn't explain or apply to #MeToo. Weinstein doesn't need to force sex on the women in his surroundings to find a way to assert power, it's that he has power that he can get away with forcing sex on women.
Quoting charleton
Nope he doesn't. What you are doing right now, that is part the problem. Framing the situation in terms of repression of normal drives. Unspent libido is easy as fuck to channel away into something productive, and it could always be masturbated away. Sexual violence and domination can be sublimated in any number of ways, or framed as an accceptable game within willing partners.
If one truly wake up every morning feeling that you must somewhat adjust your behaviour in order not to assault someone today, sexually or otherwise, then I can only suggest that one seeks professional help.
It seems obvious to me that the power-over-other structure of sexuality goes deep in our, and a few too many other, cultures. The penis as a gun that shoots off bullets, as a sword that penetrates, etc. All these “fun” metaphors are inextricable from notions of non-consensual violence/harm on those that are penetrated. Furthermore, modern science has evidenced ( :-} ) that women too enjoy sex—though, most don't enjoy being shot at with bullets as a bad/nauty/dirty things, or else repeatedly stabbed at with a knife/sword for the same reason. (Though, we all adapt to the culture we have no choice (or virtually no choice) but to live in, emotively and cognitively.) But, fuck, "fuck" is understood and used by both men and women. And to say “fuck you” is most often not used to express “let’s have loving, rambunctious, passionate sex that brings both of us into closer proximity to ecstatic being of mind, spirit, and flesh” but, basically, to express “may you be brutally raped”.
Fuckin’ hell.
So my impression is that this equality of value/worth/respect between the sexes and their sometime unique ability to accomplish (aka, their unique power) is gonna take some time in actually manifesting, and this only at a progressive, step by step rate.
Still, in terms of the 70s-like notion of love = sex within the slogan of “free love”, I don’t believe that were (consensual) orgies to be the norm everywhere and at all times within the workforce, that, then, sexual harassment would miraculously begin to vanish. OK, me, I’m not an orgy guy. But even so, you can’t have orgies all the time while working. What about during the hours when orgies don’t occur. Would sexual harassment then be reduced? I think not.
Sexual harassment originates in attitudes that mark an attempt to transition from an older cultural, and more specifically psychological worldview, to one that involves greater mindfulness and body-mind connectedness, among other things. It goes well beyond simply transcending prejudices against gendered groups and has to do with intricate issues of what it means to connect intimately with others.The progress against sexual harassment is about t he progress of sexual self awareness, which is itself about the evolution of psychological self-understanding, which is at the same time a cultural development.Those of us here who see harassment in primarily moralistic, legalistic , power-related terms are not getting the psychological issue, Punishment and repression of the alleged power-hungry abuser will not make a dent in the prevalence of harassment, which is fundamentally not an issue of too much power but of the opposite, lack of psychological power in terms of self esteem, self-awareness, other directed awareness.
If you are a woman, I am sorry for whatever experience you had that made you feel this way. If you are a man, stay away from the people I care about. You should stay away from everyone.
But you are reducing nature to just an ejaculatory reflex, when I've made clear, had you read the whole of my post that violence and power-over is also closely linked to the male sex drive.
Wanking is not enough it's what chimps have to do when in captivity.
Stupid! I was talking about nature in the wider sense, and was a quip in response to the silly statement "Sexual assault can be about sex".
I've never assaulted anyone at anytime for any reason.
If you view sexual harassment as a result of sociopathology among certain individuals or merely the actions of people who do what they do because they can get away with it, then you have no recourse but to resort to power politics to cordone them off, Its power as criminal enforcement, and is not likely to have much of an overall effect on these behaviors. And it only makes sense as a sole strategy if you deny that sexual harassers reflect a stage in cultural understanding(perpetrated through media and figures like Hugh Hefner).
But the most interesting thing about the harassers currently being paraded in front the media for our entertainment is that they fall into a common psychological profile, they are mostly older men who feel emotionally isolated, are not comfortable with direct affective communication, and are blind to how their actions affect those they reach out to. What Im describing fits not just harassers, but to a large extent a whole generation of males. The difference between the harassers and this larger cohort isnt nearly as great as you might assume. It might be convenient to want to put them in a psychopatholgical box, but would be missing the larger picture. Focusing just on changing power structures so as to eliminate harassment would be like trying to eliminate homosexuality by punishing gay sex.
Doing so would be missing 90% of what it means to be gay.
In short, dealing with sexual harassment purely through changing power relations is succumbing to the same limited psycholgocial insight that harassers suffer from, in which case youre part of the problem rather than part of the solution.
Question 1: What were the goals of the Sexual Revolution?
Question 2: Was the Sexual Revolution planned?
Question 3: What was/is complete liberation?
1. The liberation of women's sexuality -- separation of sex and pregnancy with birth control pills
2. The entry of women into the workplace in peacetime to pursue careers
3. The freedom from financial dependency on men
4. Freedom from obligatory housekeeping and child rearing duty
Where were men in the SR?
Men didn't need to seek liberation (so they thought) because they didn't recognize male oppression, for the most part. The liberation of women's sexuality was enthusiastically endorsed by men because it meant more sexual opportunities. The cost of careers in corporate America, the burden of breadwinning, and the narrowness of male roles wasn't considered until decades later.
Gay men had more concrete goals in the SR: protection from blatant discrimination, equal access to civil rights, repeal of criminalization, and freedom to pursue sex without fear of prosecution.
To some extent the sexual revolution was successful. Birth control effectively separated sex and pregnancy (along with Roe vs. Wade). Large numbers of women entered the workforce--either for a career, to achieve financial independence, or to help the family financially (especially true after 1975). Many women found it possible to live independently of men.
The sexual revolution in the workplace didn't really change or improve the lives of men very much. It is likely the case that many men didn't perceive a need for change. It didn't change their social lives much either.
Family life did experience declines after the "decade of sexual revolution" and I would attribute some of the decline to the increasing independence of women, but primarily to the decline in income and purchasing power which commenced around 1975 and has continued since. The economic change has required parents to spend more time working to obtain or maintain living standards which have continued to decline. The result is increasingly stressful home and work lives for everyone -- parents and children together.
The SR delivered well for gay people. Civil protections and decriminalization were both gained, and eventually, even marriage. I wish the gay liberation effort had focused more on the collective sexual lives of gay men, and much less on the right to adoption and marriage. Under the cover of AIDS, there was an across the board suppression of the "sexual community". Institutions which had worked well to facilitate gay community (bars, baths, parks, adult bookstores, etc.) were closed -- totally, in some places, mostly in others.
The Sexual revolution wasn't planned, of course. It just happened at a certain time when circumstances were propitious.
Had the revolution gone further, deeper--especially for heterosexual men and women--we wouldn't be having all the perceived problems around touching, groping, assaulting, seducing, flirting with, and so on. The revolution could have led to much more equalization of power and sexual prerogatives among men, among women, and among men and women together.
But it didn't.
Patriarchy is an overused term in my opinion. The last patriarchies died out or are dying out with the last of the tribal societies. Hunter gatherer societies tend to be more egalitarian, but some could be classified as patriarchal I guess.
What we have here is a plutocratic oligarchy, built around an exclusionary male priesthood. This is directly reflected in the Hollywood scandals.
Again, I was replying to someone applying the Duluth model to something to which it is already considered external.
Quoting charleton
Your post is an exemple of everything I deem wrong with the understanding of sexual relations nowadays. As if it was relevant to note that, in nature, consent doesn't exist. That most events of sexual intercourse are violent (which happens to be b.s., every female mammalian has a set of signaling method she uses to draw the attention of potential mates).
Human evolution has deleted the main sexual signaling methods from human behaviour because we have no use for them. Language is where the sexual game is now located.
The body is still number one.
While you’re focusing on the power-over tendency in human males, I hold a different—what is to me, sad—reality to be true: it is the majority of women who select for these overly testosterone infused, power-over maniacal, human males to begin with. You’re forgetting that in Darwinian evolution, it is very often the female of the species that selects which males it copulates and reproduces with.
An unbiased look at other species reveals a wide array of more or less genetically hardwired heuristics of behavior. Them evil wolves (unlike the regal, good lions) are monogamous for life, else they—typically as immediate family members—serve the monogamous alpha mates of the pack. There is no power-over structure to this and like species’ relations between sexual partners. But I aim to keep this short.
Chimps are a notoriously aggressive species. Clincher is we’ve descended not from chimps but from a common ancestor to a) us, b) chimps, and c) bonobos. To those who give a rats’ behind (because they understand the deep neuro-psychological ramifications of this), unlike chimps, bonobos—as one measly but factual example—inherently smile like we do for all of the same reasons. Quite a commonality--which we do not share with chimps. So, via genetic resemblance, it seems we humans parted ways with something that then parted ways to result in chimps and bonobos in a manner that links us slightly closer to chimps than to bonobos. Nevertheless, the quantity of analogous evolution we share to bonobos by comparison to chimps is, for me at least, impressive—e.g., bonobos are known to walk for short distances, especially females with children on their backs while they carry stuff in their hands (this as another tell-tale indicator of our partial resemblance to bonobos … chimps don’t do this). But OK, keeping this short, bonobos are a wet dream for orgy-mongers. They do it anytime, anywhere, for pleasure, for comfort, for a banana they’d like but the other has—in heterosexuality and both male and female homosexuality … it doesn’t much matter to them. And none of it has to do with power-over: power-over being a typical chimp behavior, though not universal among chimps. (among my references are those of Frans de Waal’s published works … he’s both very esteemed and well known in the field).
For us humans, along with our massive cognitive abilities is also included an unprecedented amount of behavioral plasticity—including in our sexuality and in the cultural norms which affect our sexuality.
As to the gay thing: some of us have no choice because we're birthed 100% heterosexual or homosexual; most humans, however, are birthed (as I've learned at my university) with some degree of bisexual tendency ... which can adapt to whatever culture states ought to be (where the individual to so want).
Keeping this as artificially relevant to the nuts and bolts of basic sexual selection theory as it is known today: both males and females would like to successfully reproduce. The male has a basic choice between shooting out seeds like Rambo into whatever it can and, on the other side, doing everything he can to ensure that one or a very few seeds will out-compete all rivals when turned adult. First translates into promiscuity, for lack of a better term, and is normally benefited by power-over strategies/heuristics. The second variant translates into a life-long carrying, nurturing, father that safeguards the lives and welfare of his few progeny. Now, rape is rape, and it sometimes leads to pregnancy--this always being a result of the first male-type's heuristics. But abortions are not a new modern invention. Yes—and I very much stress this—males hold responsibilities for how they/we act toward women (or other men, when it comes to homosexuals). But then so too do women hold responsibility for the genotypes and phenotypes they select for in our species each time they chose a mate.
So long story short, no, it’s not in our genes—it’s not our “biologically” determined fate--to be power-over-other fanatics when it comes to sexuality. It’s in our upbringing, our culture, and in our individual choices as adult members of a collective regarding what the next-generation’s culture will look like … and when I assert "our", I’m asserting both males and females equally.
Pimping? Note how this slang affirms sexual power-over-other (namely, over the "bitch-hos") as good.
As a male addressing what I believe to be another male, what’s stopping us from affirming our male tool to be our “magic wand … that dreams up the dark how it pleases”—or something like this (I won’t be more explicit in what it could be; force is a natural aspect of healthy sex … but not non-consensual harm/violence)—this rather than addressing it as our “gun”, “sword”, “hammer”, etc.? Nothing. Nothing but our own sense of deviating from the flock, of not being cool, or fear of being strange. I say to hell with it. I say, what women wouldn’t want to have a wizard in bed? I’ll stop short. Point being, we human beings are evolved … to add a spiritual slant: into closer proximity to the purely abstract than any other lifeform we know of … this to the extent we can explicitly make our own moral choices and take the responsibility that follows suit.
Man, our global society is proliferating in sex-slave ownership, and for those in the dark, this in Europe, the USA, and doubtless other developed nations/places. Not cool.
I went back and reread your post. I think you are mischaracterizing what you wrote - it was explicit that it applied to humans as well as animals. The most charitable thing I can say about it is that it is wrong, that it shows a misunderstanding of human nature, and that it's bad science masquerading as hard-headed realism.
I don't think, and I didn't intend to imply, that you have ever or are you likely to attack someone.
In a sense, yes. But the reason why human sexuality is totes different then normal mammalian sexuality is, in large part, because primates are increasingly communicative animals. We don't need obvious markers like presenting positions. Sexual intercourses are negotiations, not overt coercions (well, hopefully)
:’(
Quoting Akanthinos
Need butt to talk about butt.
My perspective is mostly one of a neutral observer watching from the sidelines.
With that in mind, please consider this observation: the liberals/progressives championing the Sexual Revolution would probably say that the latter is in fact changing power relationships--by, among other examples, ending the monopoly that institutions like the Catholic Church have had on human sexuality.
Sorry?
The liberals/progressives championing the Sexual Revolution would probably say that it is the other way around: the character of the content of pornography is the result of a sexually-repressive culture.
In other words, if the only limit on / regulation of human sexuality was consent there would not be a subculture like the pornography industry and its consumers and/or pornography would be healthier and more realistic.
If people do not have a healthy, safe, legal, free outlet then the result is unhealthy outlets, the thinking goes.
Well I just think that is completely backwards. It pains me to side with conservatives on anything, but in this matter I do. Actually I am highly suspicious of the 'politics of identity' and the fact that sexual pleasure has now been declared a civil right, but I had better shut up before I get myself banned.
The liberals/progressives will probably say that they have science on their side.
The scientific evidence shows, they will probably say, that sexually liberated people have healthier relationships, lower rates of unplanned pregnancies, better mental health, etc. than sexually repressed people.
"To limit human sexuality in any way other than consent is harmful!", they will probably tell you. "All of the scientific evidence says so!", they will probably tell you.
If you present scientific evidence of harmful effects of pornography they will probably counter with, oh, "Sexually repressed evangelicals in the Bible Belt consume the most pornography".
The question is really aligned with why - despite the sexual liberation - does sexual assault or discrimination continue and the reasoning behind that is not necessarily about sex, but rather power-relations. Jamalrob is correct in saying that power-relations are personal and the question really is about ascertaining what is healthy - I, as a woman, like equality in power but do desire strong male partners and can feel rather repulsed by cowards as much as he might like an independent woman who is feminine or whatever each individual desires - but an unhealthy power-relation, such as victims of rape, or victims of war, vulnerable persons who are unable to look after themselves, these broader patterns exemplify extreme inequalities that transcend sexuality, but can be found in gender relations, politics, the workplace, or other hierarchical environments. It is sociopsychological. I completely disagree with the OP more so because this utopia simply does not exist neither is it likely to, but complete sexual liberation is clearly not the answer to our problems. If not, then what is?
Feminists in the 70s were mostly deeply anti-porn. A good number of feminists I've met still are today, and I certainly wouldn't be caught calling any of them "conservative".
Anyway, the conservatives could make the same recourse to science, and they certainly did for the longest time. "Don't masturbate or you'll go deaf!" If you think this is a joke, my big sister was actually taught that in her Sex Ed course (by a freaking nun, of all bloody inept they could've chosen). It was just shitty science.
That's not the lib/prog view, whatever that could be. For crying out loud that's what Saint-Augustin used to think. If anything could constitute The Lib/Prog view is that, in weird terms, self-objectification is a form of empowerement, in the sense that the commodification of a subject's performance, if the choice and dynamics of this commodification remains mostly in the hands of the subject, is a form of liberation. Baudrillard put this in very eloquent words in The system of objects.
In my interactions with liberals/progressives, it has been thinking that I frequently encounter.
Quoting Akanthinos
Maybe I am misunderstanding the meaning of all of that jargon, but it sounds close to what I have been saying for a long time: individuals should be encouraged to take complete ownership of their sexuality; and they should take that complete ownership at as early an age as possible.
I believe that neither liberals/progressives nor conservatives want that. Both groups want people to turn out to have certain attitudes, beliefs, etc. with respect to human sexuality. An individual deciding for him/herself how to feel about sex; the value of sex; the proper place of sex in his/her life; etc. threatens the ideology and agenda of both sides, I believe.
If everybody was truly honest and open about sex we might find, gasp, that it is not very important to a lot of people.
Social scientists studying human sexuality try to produce objective inquiries, I am sure. But the social sciences do not have the precision of physics, chemistry, etc. and, therefore, we may never know how people really, honestly--honest with themselves, not just others--feel about sex. There is a lot to gain politically by filling that void, and liberals/progressives, not just conservatives, aggressively work to make their ideology fill it and dominate every person's life.
Well, individuals should have complete ownership of their sexuality. I take that to mean, in a social vacuum, that individuals should be free to engage in whatever sexual arrangement they wish to engage, on the terms that they decide to engage them on. When I say "in a social vacuum", I mean that this is something that simply cannot be attained in a social context where sexuality is viewed with the gravitas it currently has.
In a sense, you are correct in saying that sexuality is, from a liberal point of view, something that belongs in the private domain. When the Liberal government of Canada removed all notions of illegality surrounding homosexuality, sodomy and etc, they did so by saying famously "the Canadian Government doesn't belong in Canada's bedrooms".
Liberals tend to say practically nothing about the age people should start engaging in sexual activities. Or, more accurately, just about everyone will have an opinion on when someone should start having sexual encounters. Deriding 40 years-old virgins didn't start yesterday.
Quoting WISDOMfromPO-MO
Sexuality can be studied scientifically as a domain of psychology, or as a domain of social interactions. The very ambiguity you refer to, the fact that people aren't honest about their own sexuality, can be quantified. It's been done already. There is something like 5 times more claimed protected sexual encounters in the U.S. than there are means of protection sold every year.
Obviously, tho, that people claim having sex about 5 times as much as they really do (in the States anyways) is not at all an indication that sexuality isn't really important. You don't consistently lie about something you don't care about, after all.
I am finding it difficult to ascertain what angle you are framing your argument and while I agree with you, you appear to reference that we are individuals and yet sexuality as understood by this individual is aligned with the culture. While this is indeed correct, I think pathology of a sexual nature is arguably the conflict between this and the individual' natural and instinctual inclinations. If you look at the Freudian tripartite psyche of the Ego, Id and the Superego as an example, healthy psycho-sexual stages are disrupted when there is a misunderstood conflict between the Ego/Id - the identity of the individual and the instinctual drives - with the Superego or the moral framework that the culture or environment educates the individual. If personality has this evolutionary or historical structure, the formation of an effective social movement that embraces a positive psychology by avoiding discouragement of sexual exploration while at the same time educating - particularly on sexual health - through perhaps sexual pedagogy within the curriculum, we could reduce the likelihood of this conflict and the eventual pathology.
As for contemporary discourse on sexuality, cultural attitudes - i.e. paternalistic cultures - largely challenge the prospect of offering informed approaches to sexual behaviour. Whether unconscious or not, society and culture influence our identity and indeed widely held beliefs that are 'desirable' shapes behaviour. For instance, I am heavily involved in human rights law at international level and have long held a disdain to multinational organisations that abuse indigenous communities, the environment and local laws for profit etc. The greatest impact that stopped or reduced this unethical behaviour was the wider public becoming conscious of it and together forming a movement that stopped purchasing the commodities from these MNCs that therefore made them implement better supply-chain methods.
If the paternalistic attitude changes it is usually because people are better informed. In Australia, we had a series of campaigns aimed at children, adolescents and adults and questioned a number of problems including things like 'excuses' or 'justifications' that make violence - in all its forms - justifiable and it was and continues to be very successful. You can see one of many ads here:
It is really striking that balance where it is not so much rejecting inappropriate behaviour but by taking a positive approach would mean to promote appropriate behaviour. This broad approach would then transfer to representatives in communities and families and eventually to the individual who will be better informed and less afraid. This is at an individual level.
This seems more a trope of sexual assault theology than anything grounded in evidence. Many rapes (e.g. those which occur during wartime) seem nothing more than opportunistic coerced copulation. It is highly dubious that a crime whose defining component is sexual has nothing to do with sexual gratification on the part of the attacker. (I am not denying that some attackers are excited, motivated, or even aroused by the thought of imposing their will on a less-powerful victim, only that this is the primary motivator in most or all male-on-female sexual assaults.)
I do think that male-on-male rape has a significant component of lording power over its victim, however, reducing them to a subservient role. I read a rather disturbing article some time ago which states that male-on-male rape can be used as a weapon in cultures with a high degree of "machismo" (during civil conflicts in Latin America or Africa, say, or inside of prisons), as being the male victim of a sexual assault in a patriarchal culture would be that much more devestating and painful. This is analogous to the way in which rape was used as a weapon of war against female Muslim populations in the former Yugoslavia.
Quoting WISDOMfromPO-MO
Not necessarily: I don't know that Matt Lauer, for instance, was especially liberal, despite being in the supposedly liberal news media. Fox News (not an overly liberal place) has also been struck by a number of such claims. And Roy Moore may be just a tad right of center :D.
But, yes, Al Franken was definitely a liberal politician, and Harvey Weinstein had historically aligned himself with Democratic candidates.
I agree too. Sexual assault continues because human nature remains fundamentally unchanged. Utopia achieved by humans is an impossibility, so there is no answer to your question.
I'm a therapist who deals with sexual issues, and while I don't deny the value of psychoanalytic tools,
I find the core sexual problems clients deal with arent a matter of needing to act more appropriately such as to conform better to social mores, and I dont see their issues in terms of a failure to be in touch with reality, but rather a need to understand themselves and others in their own terms more effectively.
I take a primarily constructivist approach, which sees the individual as constructing his or her own world via their intersubjective interactions in culture. There is no one way causal relation between self and world(the culture behaviorally determining personal belief, or the individual projecting their construals onto the world) .Gender roles arent simply imposed by culture onto individuals in a top-down fashion but also make sense to many of them relative to their own larger worldviews(female Trump supporters dont understand what the fuss is over harassment, since in their view men will be men. This patriarchal notion makes sense to them not simply because they were blindly, unconsciously inculcated with this idea, but because limited, rigid assignment of behavioral gender roles is a necessary starting point for the evolution of understanding of gender in general.
This movement from relatively less differentiated, and at the same time less integral, concepts of self and other to to progressively richer and more adaptive constructions is I think a general trajectory in cultural and personal development.
My parents' era, dominated by the messages of Hefner's Playboy, showed men how to enjoy sexual pleasure without religious guilt, but didnt provide any tools for how to engage intimately. The woman had to be an object, not because of simple patriarchy(the gay community shared this objectification of the sexual other), but because the intensely personal feelings of sexual pleasure were impossible to sort out such as to know how to achieve a more effective relationality with another.
This isnt a pathology except when viewed through the blinkers of historical hindsight. labeling it such, or as a psychodynamic issue of social maladjustment misses the crucial cognitive component.
Harassment is a symptom of limitations in mens' ability to read women, and themselves. This skill is a historically developing achievement alongside all other cultural achievements.
Slogans proscribing violence against women, using a voabulary of social appropriateness and norms, tend to essentialize an issue which needs a more relativistic approaches understanding. Such legalistic, moralistic approaches run the risk of being complcit in what they oppose, and may only perpetuate the problem by failing to grasp underlying causes.
A social constructionist psychologst by the name of Ken Gergen wrote about this issue 25 years ago. I think he captures some of what I'm trying to say.
"By and large identity politics has depended on a rhetoric of blame, the illocutionary effects of which are designed to chastise the target (for being unjust, prejudiced, inhumane, selfish,
oppressive, and/or violent). In western culture we essentially inherit two
conversational responses to such forms of chastisement - incorporation or
antagonism. The incorporative mode ("Yes, now I see the error of my ways.")
requires an extended forestructure of understandings (i.e. a history which legitimates
the critic's authority and judgment, and which renders the target of critique
answerable). However, because in the case of identity politics, there is no pre-established
context to situate the target in just these ways, the invited response to
critique is more typically one of hostility, defense and counter-charge."
"Constructionist thought militates against the claims to ethical
foundations implicit in much identity politics - that higher ground from which others
can so confidently be condemned as inhumane, self-serving, prejudiced, and unjust.
Constructionist thought painfully reminds us that we have no transcendent rationale
upon which to rest such accusations, and that our sense of moral indignation is itself
a product of historically and culturally situated traditions. And the constructionist
intones, is it not possible that those we excoriate are but living also within traditions
that are, for them, suffused with a sense of ethical primacy? As we find, then, social
constructionism is a two edged sword in the political arena, potentially as damaging
to the wielding hand as to the opposition."
I must disagree with this. I should first like to say, though, that it is good to have you here and a well-written post that I thoroughly enjoyed. I am quite keen on having more interaction with those that may possibly have some experience or interest in the philosophy of psychology. From personal experience, however, with regard to the above mentioned, I am confident that there certainly is an imposition from culture and/or social and familial environments that largely can - depending on the extremity of this environment - impact on a person' sexual development.
I grew up in a culturally paternalistic environment and it was reinforced rather violently that women were inferior for which all the women in my life accepted that thus normalised bad behaviour from men. There was always this conflict, so to speak, within me that resulted in my complete avoidance of intimacy and relationships with men because - while not conscious of it - I did not like this behaviour both from men and women that my environment reinforced. I unconsciously believed it was wrong, but since it was unconscious, I found myself having refused intimacy. My highly selective expectations were consistently not being met so that I could justify something was wrong with the men that I met and avoid relationships by remaining chaste, rather than acknowledging that something was wrong with me. Polar opposite to me was my sister who had a very promiscuous attitude and was attracted to bad men - likely because of this familiarity with bad behaviour - and believed that sex was a form of empowerment and already has had two (violent) husbands and children from each of them. She refuses to accept that something was wrong with our culture.
Several years ago, I was bullied at work by an aggressive man who presented all the qualities of this bad behaviour that was normalised during my childhood. I started to get ill, would find myself crying in the bathroom and not really knowing why, lost a lot of weight and told myself continuously that he 'had a chance' in that I believed he would become a better man and actually made an effort to do this or work with him as though my hope for him to be a good man would help me heal and recover. Wrong. When I concluded that he had no chance and that he was stuck and would never progress, I started to heal and when I saw him shopping or at the gym I became angrier and stronger because I started to consciously see the facts that what I was culturally taught to be 'normal' was not. That contrast enabled me to see what was actually normal and healthy. I am now open to men and the prospect of love because I now understand my sexuality, but it took a considerable amount of work to reach that.
So, how did this unconscious "protest" within me form and was it a signal of my own individuality? Australia is a multicultural society and so I was raised in a schism between my family' culture and the broader Australian culture where paternalism is not as strong as it was with my Mediterranean background. As a first generation migrant, the conflict was generated because I had two voices, the one that was reinforced so fervently by people that I loved and the one that educated me at school and through friends but was distant from me and not so emotional; one I knew was wrong but it just was, and the other I knew was right but it just wasn't enough. My identity was in conflict until I decided to face the facts; there was something wrong with my culture and my family and I left it completely to become 'Australian' or adopt that objective approach.
Quoting Joshs
I am not keen on relativism, but I do understand the necessity to think about cultural diversity; again, here in Australia, any legislation passed through parliament must be aligned with our human rights charter to avoid the potential controversy of being complicit to perpetuating problems. While each culture has a unique freedom to define their identity as they see fit, there are universal norms - such as the wrongness of violence against women - we we need to strike a balance and say that some of what one may view as culturally appropriate behaviour actually is not. If society largely influences behavioural norms then it is vital for us to ensure that these norms are aligned to these universal, righteous views of good behaviour.
Quoting Joshs
Wonderfully said! Erich Fromm stated that while Freud and others focused on serious pathological concerns, his endeavour - particularly in relation to love and sexuality as well as depression and anxiety - was really about 'normal' people with problems and who make up a vast majority.
The idea that sexual repression leads to sexual harassment comes from Frankfurt School twaddle, which in turn is partly based on Freudian twaddle (the school was generally speaking a fusion of Marx and Freud). All that stuff about "the authoritarian personality," the nuclear family leading to sexual repression and closet fascism, etc., etc,. is bunk. Generally, the "liberal" idea of the conservative is a complete fantasy (and partly a projection too).
At bottom, the idea is based on a sort of "hydraulic" model of sexual "pressure." (The notion that sexual energy can be "pent up", etc.) But in reality, the more you do of a thing the more you want to do it. The more people treat sex like a toy instead of the nuclear bomb it is, the more opportunities you'll create for mishaps, and for unwanted sexual encounters. It's rather analogous to the sugar problem: we're designed to want it, a lot, so if we're put in an environment where we have a lot of it, we overdo it.
If you want less sexual harassment, then you encourage males to treat females with respect - i.e. traditionally. You respect the things that follow from the relative rarity of eggs and the relative abundance of sperm, facts that are encoded in the rules that human societies developed over the course of thousands of years, in terms of religious ideas and mores. (Teenage celibacy, courtship rituals, limited opportunities for encounters that might turn sexual, avoidance of inebriation, etc.) How tight or how loose these mores should be is open to question of course (not too tight, not too loose is the ideal), but you can't get rid of them entirely without inviting problems.
Finding agreement with what you say, I’ll add to it:
I’ve read it that there are two types of power: power-over and power-with.
Power-over is about authoritarian control over that which is existentially divorced from us as selves, other as that which is or holds the potential to be possession, and to be done with as one pleases without any sense of compassion. While we all engage in such form of power in relation to inanimate givens, this form of power can also endow some people with pleasure precisely via its capacity to enslave other beings as puppets—to turn people into objects to be possessed as one would possesses any other inanimate object. A pleasure that increases with increases sensations of absolute control over another being’s very life and death. Whenever we deride, lie, thieve, threaten, and kill with pleasure in so doing, it stems from our gravitation to this type of power.
Power-with is about mutually shared goals. This leading into mutually shared degrees of compassion for the other, wants for the other to be successful, to be pleased, etc. It includes the ideal power relations between leader and willfully led—be this teacher and student, typically male dance leader and typically female dance follower, and, I very much uphold, sex … regardless if it’s lovy dovy or full-blown S&M.
I’m saying this with an implicit understanding that both men and women can engage in power-with behaviors. Just as they both can in their own ways engage in power-over behaviors.
Rape is a product of the pleasure and momentary happiness gained via greater power-over the person raped.
The label of sexual harassment can become less clear—especially in its subtler forms and at the very commencement—become here both forms of power can manifest with the same overall effects: those of romantic overtures. Power-over seeking its power over the other—often teasing out the degree to which it may so accomplish without getting injured. Power-with seeking to discover and encourage the possibility of a power-with relationship with the other. Of course, power-with gets the point when clearly told no. Thereby, I’d say, not being sexual harassment. But power-over just sees this rejection as a personal insult to be retaliated against—this so as better prove to oneself one’s capacities of power-over ... else such individual will often think of themselves as week.
So I agree: sex is about power. But I want to add that not all power takes the form of power-over.
I wonder how common the "pleasure in power over" actually is.
I would not deny that power plays a role in life, but it seems to me that there is an obsessive concern with power. Most people (like... 90% at least) men and women both are pretty much without power over others, however much they would like some power. Harvey Weinstein had some actual power over women who wanted to make it in the movies; he had little power, it would seem, over women who were not interested in making it in Hollywood.
The wave of denunciations directed toward men who behaved inappropriately is a case of mass hysteria. It is a crazy attempt by the powerless (which most of us are) to get even with someone who has power. Sex is as good a tool as anything else to exact revenge. #me2 has ended up poisoning the well--not for the small minority who have real power--but for all the other nobodies who perceive the normal efforts of the opposite sex to achieve intimacy as some sort of creepy deviance, or are unable to respond normally to a good-will invitation to spend time together and which might lead to sex.
Whatever the original intentions were, #me2 has gone astray--deeply into the weeds.
You’ve never heard of kids burning up ants with magnifying glasses? Without pride in so saying, I’ve done so as a kid, also pulled wings off of flies. I’ve heard of a whole lot worse (cats flung off of roof tops with tails on fire, etc. ... funny to some, not to others). Ones interest in doing so is always entwined with pleasure in holding power over other. In the world I live in bullying hasn’t receded but increased. My point is, power-over is rather prevalent. And often increases in sociopathic ways into adulthood rather than being regretted. One would like to think that it’s receded some since the time of the Colosseum, but it can always come back again if we all were so willing and wanting.
To be honest, I find it naive to believe that power-over is not an endemic aspect of what we are as humans. Though, of course, not the only aspect of our human species.
As to sexuality, sex-slavery—quite often of preadolescents—is on the increase in the West, this based on things I’ve heard and read. But of course accurate data is hard to obtain. Still, are you one to believe that children don’t get abused sexually? If so, we strongly disagree on facts.
As to the me2 movement. I don’t recall ever being pinched in the ass by a stranger while in public. I imagine that if this would have occurred back when my ass might of been worth pinching, at least one of us would have ended up with blood on his face. However, in the world I inhabit, this same power-over behavior toward women is quite common – ass pinching, etc.
BTW. I’ve had more than a few girlfriends who eventually told me that they, at some point in their lives, were or nearly were raped or sexually attacked in public places. Also personally knowing of one close female friend in high school who I later discovered was repeatedly raped during that time. Maybe my secondhand experiences are an anomaly. We’re after all on a philosophy forum where all possibilities can get dragged out ad nausium. But I can say with confidence that I choose to believe that they are not anomalies.
In short, we disagree.
Of course I have. Probably regretted such things and worse myself (though I didn't throw any cats off a roof, burning tails or not). But these are petits jeux de pouvoir, little power plays. These continue on in adults--like monopolizing the television remote or jockeying on the highway for first place at the next stop light. Annoying, but not a pathology.
Quoting javra
Call it naive if you want. What is bound up with power-over more than sex is economic interest. That's how I look at it, anyway. From the earliest indications that archeology can give us, economic interests have been paramount. One people didn't pull up stakes and move en masse, displacing and impoverishing another people, as an exercise in power-over. They were trying to survive economically. in 2018 we are collectively and individually struggling to survive economically. Power with or power over is a direct descendent of economic struggle.
On a person to person level, it often looks like crude dominance games. It's all against all, in some cases, so it can be too messy to easily perceive the common economic thread.
Sex slavery is a good example of Marx's dictum that [under capitalism] everything is reduced to its cash value -- including the lives of children. Countries didn't employ mass slavery as an exercise in power over: they used slaves because it was extremely profitable.
Quoting javra
I don't recall such a thing either. I've never quite gotten why straight men pinch women's derrières. Patting, squeezing, or stroking someone's derrière seems more erotic to me than pinching it.
I make a clear distinction between "inappropriate sexual behavior" on the one hand, and rape on the other. Rape, or its attempt, is clearly criminal. Unwanted, annoying, or inappropriate sexual behavior isn't the equivalent of rape. Between people in the same age group, a pass might or might not be welcomed, but it isn't rape. Suggestive words are not rape. Embarrassing sex isn't rape either -- who has not had a consensual sexual encounter which one would just as soon forget?
Quoting javra
I don't think we disagree all that much.
Quoting WISDOMfromPO-MO
The topic I find most interesting is the above, because it's a pet peeve of mine whenever we make overarching statements in that vein regarding what anything is "about," because those statements hinge on getting wrong what meaning is and how it works.
Pregnancy doesn't have a great effect on female primates activity, and after giving birth a non human female primates activity is still reasonably unaffected, the baby just clings to its mother's fur leaving the mother's hands free to gather food etc. A different situation with a human female, after giving birth a human baby has a strong and continuous grip, enough to support its own weight with one hand! Trouble is its mother has no fur, so her activities are severely curtailed by having to hold her baby, enough to threaten both their survival, the solution is to have someone to help by 'bringing the bacon home' so to speak, she has to be careful who she has sex with, therefore she becomes choosy and sexually exclusive to one male. Is this exclusivity the basis for sexual harassment? After all non human female primates are available to all, so every male always has access to at least one female.
Yes, in relation to your last post, we don’t disagree on a whole lot. :smile: :up: