HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVES ON SEXUALITY
A major obstacle to understanding our own sexuality is realizing we are prisoners of past societal attitudes toward sex.
To understand the present, it is helpful to begin by examining the past. In certain respects, we are bound by a sexual legacy passed on from generation to generation, but in other ways modern views of sex and sexuality differ drastically from past patterns.
Although written history goes back almost 5,000 years, only limited information is available describing sexual behavior and attitudes in various societies prior to 1000 B.C. Clearly, a
prominent taboo against incest had already been established, and women were considered as property, with sexual and reproductive value. Men were free to have many sexual partners, prostitution was widespread, and sex was accepted as a straightforward fact of life.
With the advent of Judaism, an interesting interplay of sexual attitudes began to emerge. In the first five books of the Old Testament, the primary source of Jewish laws, there are rules about sexual conduct: adultery is forbidden in the Ten Commandments, for example, and homosexual acts are strongly condemned. At the same time, sex is recognized as a creative and pleasurable force, as depicted in the Song of Songs. Sex was neither considered inherently evil nor restricted to procreative purposes alone.
In ancient Greece, however, there was tolerance and even enthusiasm regarding male homosexuality in certain forms. Homosexual relations between an adult man and adolescent boy past the age of puberty were commonplace, usually occurring in an educational relationship where the man was reponsible for the boy's moral and intellectual development. At the same time, exclusive homosexuality and homosexual acts between adults were frowned upon, and homosexual contact between adults and boys under the age of puberty was illegal. There was a strong emphasis on marriage and family yet women were second-class citizens, if they could be considered citizens at all: "In Athens, women had no more political or legal rights than slaves; throughout their lives they were subject to the absolute authority of their male next-of-kin. ... As everywhere else in the first millennium B.C., women were chattels, even if some of them were independent-minded ones. To the Greeks, a woman (regardless of age or marital status) was gyne, whose linguistic meaning is 'bearer of children'.
As Christianity developed in its early forms, there was an intermingling of Greek and Jewish attitudes toward sexuality, In contrast to Judaism, which did not distinguish physical from spiritual love, Christian theology borrowed from the Greek and separated eros, or "carnal love," from agape, a "spiritual, non-physical love." The Hellenistic era in Greece was marked by a denial of worldly pleasures in favor of developing the purely spiritual. Along with the New Testament portrayal of the imminent end of the world, this led to
Christianity's placing a high ideal on celibacy, although St. Paul allowed that while "It is good for a man not to touch a woman ... it is better to marry than to burn".
By the end of the fourth century a.d., despite small groups of Christians whose views of sexuality were less rigid and constrained, the Church's negative attitudes toward sex were
dramatically presented in the writings of St. Augustine, a religious leader whose background included a vivid and varied set of erotic experiences before he renounced worldly ways. Augustine confessed in stark terms, "I muddied the stream of friendship with the filth of lewdness and clouded its clear waters with hell's black river of lust". He believed that sexual lust came from the downfall of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden and that this sinfulness was transmitted to children by the inherent lust that separated humanity from God. Thus, sex was strongly condemned in all forms, although Augustine and his contemporaries apparently felt that marital pro-creative sex was less evil than other types.
Elsewhere in the world, sexual thinking varied remarkably from that just described. In particular, Islamic, Hindu, and ancient Oriental sexual attitudes were considerably more positive. The historian Vern Bullough states that "almost anything in the sexual field received approval from some segment of the Hindu society" and that in China "sex was not something to be feared, nor was it regarded as sinful, but rather, it was an act of worship" and even a path toward immortality. The Kama Sutra, compiled at about the same time Augustine was writing his Confessions, is a detailed Indian sex manual; in ancient China and Japan, similar manuals were abundant and glorified sexual pleasure and variety. These divergent patterns continued, although our focus for now will remain with the history of sex in the Western world.
The early Christian traditions regarding sexuality became more firmly entrenched in Europe during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries as the Church assumed greater power. Theology often became synonymous with common law, and there was a generally oppressive "official" attitude toward sex except for the purpose of procreation. There was, however, a certain hypocrisy between professed Church policies and actual practices: "religious houses themselves were often hotbeds of sexuality".
During this era, a new style of living emerged among the upper classes that brought about a drastic separation between actual practice and religious teachings. This style, called courtly love, introduced a new code of acceptable behavior in which women (at least high-ranking women) were elevated to an immaculate plane and romanticism, secrecy, and valor were celebrated in song, poetry, and literature. Pure love was seen as incompatible with the temptations of the flesh, and sometimes this concept was tested by lovers lying together in bed naked to see if they could prove the fullness of their love by refraining from sexual intercourse. Needless to say, it is unlikely that courtly love was always the unconsummated romantic ideal portrayed in story and verse.
Not too long after the era of courtly love began, chastity belts made their appearance. These devices allowed husbands to lock up their wives just as they would protect their money; while they may have been originally designed to prevent rape, they also served to guard "property":
The belt of medieval times was usually constructed on a metal framework that stretched between the woman's legs from front to back. It had two small, rigid apertures that allowed for waste elimination but effectively prevented penetration, and once it was locked over the hips the jealous husband could take away the key.
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Men's Health Erectyle Dysfunction