24 June 1999, 819 words
Sex is not a moral issue. It is a social, economic and political issue. Those who make moral pronouncements about sex are merely trying to wield power over other people (in other words, their aims are political). That is why the people who lay down moral rules are mostly individuals who have no real investment in sex - i.e. they are usually old, and frequently ugly.
The problem with moral pronouncements is that they mislead people about the central issues surrounding sex. Take, for example, the message that pre-marital sex is wrong because God says so. Either young people ignore the message, or they come to believe that sex is wicked, leading to unsatisfactory sexual and marital relations.
But why does society really frown upon teenage sex? It is not because we think teenagers are emotionally unready. For most of human history, people have been getting married and bearing children in their teen years. But, whereas in traditional societies bearing children early has social and economic benefits, in modern societies the same habit has socioeconomic penalties. Hence the new disapproval of teenage pregnancy, which is perfectly rational, but which moralists confuse by voicing disapproval of sex.
It is quite obvious that the disapproval of old and ugly people is not going to make teenagers stop having sex. On the other hand, objective education about the consequences of sexual activity, free of religious dogma or threat, could persuade teenagers to wait until they're older or, at least, ensure that they take precautions. But here again, the moralists' irrationality often prevents effective action. No reasonable person could accept the argument that ignorance is better than knowledge. Yet this is exactly what the moralists assert when they oppose sex education. And the fact that they make such an argument shows that their central concern is not really the welfare of young people, but self-aggrandisement.
When the philosopher Bertrand Russell offered the following advice in1936, he was vilified by the same sort of people who pose as moral exemplars now: "There is no sound reason, of any sort or kind, for concealing facts when talking to children. Their questions should be answered and their curiosity satisfied in exactly the same way in regard to sex as in regard to the habits of fishes, or any other subject that interests them...The child who is told what he wants to know, and allowed to see his parents naked, will have no pruriency and no obsession of a sexual kind."
This eminently sensible doctrine has no foothold in our society. Worse yet, religious groups like fundamentalist Muslims and Maha Sabha Hindus give tacit approval to child sexual abuse by their approval of the marriage of nine- or 14-year-old girls. Such approval shows that it is not a moral component which defines marriage. Traditional marriage has everything to do with preserving male rights of ownership over women. That is because marriage, far from being a spiritual covenant, is an economic and political arrangement. In most societies, marriage is a transfer of ownership of the female from father to husband. (The bride's father "gives her away" and the woman becomes "Mrs.", short for "mistress of".)
Thus, as women have become men's economic equals, marriage has declined. Nor is it coincidental that, with that closing of the gap, women's sexuality should become more overt. Beauty is also a form of currency and not, as some feminists claim, an objectification of women. Cognitive scientist Steven Pinker explains it beautifully: "Women in open societies want to look good because it gives them an edge in competing for husbands, status, and the attention of powerful people. Men in closed societies hate beauty because it makes their wives and daughters indiscriminately attractive to other men, giving women a measure of control over the profits from their own sexuality and taking it away from the men." That is the real reason religious fundamentalists always insist that women should dress "modestly".
Because men now outnumber women in Trinidad and Tobago, women's value should rise. But, as long as the moralists wield influence, women paradoxically will continue to bear the brunt of social ills. (A good example is the Catholic Church's opposition to the legalisation of abortion. Middle-class women in this country can get safe abortions from qualified doctors any time they want. The Church's opposition thus only ensures that poor women will continue going to back-alley abortionists.)
Our moral spokespersons, therefore, help perpetuate much evil. That is because they consider suffering, poverty and disease to be less wicked than sexual pleasure. Of such persons, Russell wrote: "It would be well if men and women could remember, in sexual relations, in marriage, and in divorce, to practise the ordinary virtues of tolerance, kindness, truthfulness and justice. Those who, by conventional standards, are sexually virtuous, too often consider themselves thereby absolved from behaving like decent human beings."
Truer words were never spoken, boy.
Copyright ©1999 Kevin Baldeosingh