sexuality - Articles - Just Human?2024-03-28T13:45:41Zhttps://just-human.net/articles/feed/tag/sexualityIdentity - who are we?https://just-human.net/articles/identity-who-are-we2024-02-28T14:49:06.000Z2024-02-28T14:49:06.000ZMark Collinshttps://just-human.net/members/MarkCollins<div><img src="https://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/12401663872?profile=RESIZE_400x&width=400"></div><div><p style="text-align:center;">[Back to <a href="https://just-human.net/articles/human-identity">Human Identity</a>]</p><p>There is so much talk these days about identity, arguments about whether people should be able to identify in ways that feel natural to themselves, even when it challenges the norms that the majority of society has evolved to accept. I’m thinking here of gender identity. However, perhaps our reactions, positive, negative or ambivalent are merely the tip of the iceberg in terms of how we are as human beings.</p><p>What is our identity? Is how we see ourselves the same as how others see us? Or something else? Does identity have any meaning out side of relationship? Identity is certainly a major way in which we describe belonging to a community; to be part of one we need to see our identity reflected back by others. We need to feel part of the social order rather than excluded from it.</p><p>Is identity synonymous with how we present ourselves, how we are identified by others? If so then we could postulate that our identity is in a constant state of flux, depending on who we are with and all sorts of extraneous factors that could affect how we are perceived and how we perceive ourselves. Or is there a ‘core identity’ that is immutable and perhaps hidden by a glass darkly, something beyond even our own capability to assimilate and understand? <br /> <br /> Advertising agencies build identity profiles of their target audiences, using various techniques to try and ensure the maximum return on investment, which clearly shows a form of categorisation into 'identity types'. Various personality tools have been developed over the years, such as the well known Myers Briggs Type Indicator, all seeking to pin down which category people fit into, albeit with well publicised questions regarding their usefulness or accuracy.</p><p>I think it is beyond reasonable doubt that who we are is shaped, perhaps dominated by our genetic inheritance, our experience of life, the people, events and circumstances we have encountered along the way. How we see ourselves is perhaps only meaningful in the context of how we think other people identify us, and conversely how we identify others. A sort of categorisation which helps us to make sense of the world and our interactions with others. This is also subject to subjugation by circumstance; if our home is burning down we listen to the firefighter not our best friend, we don’t care about any other aspects of their identity only their special skill.</p><p>I’m sure I’m not alone in realising that we consciously and unconsciously decide how to present ourselves depending on who we are with. We don’t launch into a big discussion on philosophy with a person in the checkout queue in the supermarket, but we might with a friend over a glass of wine. We often find ourselves performing to the audience, hoping to leave a good impression. Of course we all know that communication is not just about outputs, but largely inputs, listening is crucial. However do we make more of an effort to listen if the person(s) we are with are more important to us?</p><p>Should we be concerned about how others see and perceive us? If we are seeking to effect and model changes in attitude and mindset, I suggest that how we are perceived is of vital importance, and so we have to make sure we tailor how we present and what we say in order to attempt resonance with those we are communicating with; understanding how that person categorises themselves is perhaps vitally important.</p><p>How we are perceived by others has a very large influence on how what we say and do is received; we all bring baggage into our interactions with others.</p><p>So should we seek to present ourselves in ways that makes us more appreciated and heard, or should we be completely honest (even if that’s only about the things that we can verbalise, for example our sexuality, skills, interests as examples) and just be ourselves and leave other peoples’ reactions to them?</p><p>Our answers to these questions have huge implications.</p><p>In extremis a religious believer, to whom faith and belief is a central part of how they may identify/describe themselves, honesty could result in persecution and even death in a community hostile to that religion, or an LGBTQ person who is honest in a harsh fundamentalist community would also likely pay a high price.</p><p>So does pragmatism require us to be dishonest or at least discreet?</p><p>Of course this isn’t just about ourselves and how we choose to protect ourselves.</p><p>Many times, if we consider ourselves to be a decent human being and we hope our identity is rooted in a care for others, compassion and a sense of justice, being true to that will, and perhaps should, cause us to be at risk of at best ridicule, or at worst serious physical harm if we seek to come to the defence of others.</p><p>So who are we? The person we think we are, or the person that others see us as? Or maybe we are different things to different people (including ourselves), because we are perceived differently by different people depending on their world views.</p><p>Those who subscribe to a theist faith may believe we are something beyond our own experience, made in the image of God for Abrahamic religions. But in many ways this is a sidestep because few believers can agree on what God is like except in vague terms (e.g. omniscient, all seeing, all knowing) – and humans are certainly not any of those things. Many would fall back on the similarity being consciousness, some may say our identity is founded around free will, and in that way we are in the image of God. Yet even that is open to foundational challenge by our modern understanding of how brains operate and human psychology.</p><p>There is also the very dangerous contention that how we perceive others, and how that perception can be manipulated into tribalism and fear/hate/resentment of whole groups of people whom are identified as belonging to different tribe/caste/race/political party/social class, which if allowed to persist can do tremendous harm not just to those who end up being the persecuted, but also I think to the nature of humanity itself. As a friend observed when she kindly read this short essay “<em>The similarity between both nationalism and populism is the need to divide between ‘us’ and ‘them’. In populism the person is either the ‘elite’ or ‘every man’ and in nationalism the person is either a ‘citizen’ or the ‘outsider’. Each is imbued with certain qualities like threat and hate or safety and like-mindedness. Does this speak to how our identity only appears relative to an (imagined or real) other?</em>”.</p><p>It is interesting, for example, how easy the victors found it to punish those found guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity after WW2, yet the much longer, and hugely damaging crimes against enslaved African people in the USA resulted in no bringing to justice of those guilty of them. Even after slavery was abolished, people still got away with lynchings and other appalling treatment of those they considered lesser creatures. Indeed the compensation was paid to slave owners rather than the slaves themselves.</p><p>So what is it about human beings that means it is so easy for unscrupulous people to manipulate whole populations into treating others so appallingly based on caricatures of identity, which we can probably, if we are honest, see in ourselves, even when we try not to. Whether that’s based on a person’s appearance, their politics, the way they speak or anything else.</p><p>Identity, and who we are, has some physical features (colour of the skin being an obvious example, but how we speak, how we dress are others). Some we are born with some we have learnt.</p><p>So I don’t think identity is the key moral and ethical issue here, it is how we treat other people irrespective of the way they appear to us (which as I’ve already suggested, is both how we perceive them and how they are seeking to present). Do we treat a black person differently because they are black, do we treat people differently based on their sexual or gender identity? Do we respond to an aggressive looking shaved headed teenager differently to a mild mannered youth you meet in the fish & chip shop? Clearly the answer is yes we do, it is probably impossible not to. But should we also try to see through the subconscious and conscious perception barriers?</p><p>I think we can change how we behave by exposing ourselves to different ideas and thinking, being willing to become more self aware, and conscious of how others are perceiving us and how our perceptions of them, whether true or not, could be affecting them. Our background and life experience will certainly influence how we leap to judgment, but we can consciously challenge that in ourselves.</p><p>So I’d rather focus on how we behave when we are challenged by how others identify. Why people may adopt a particular identity can and should be discussed in order to further understanding, both scientific and social, but using it as a reason to segregate, treat differently or at worst persecute can never be right. And challenging the legitimacy of how a person chooses to identify is always counter productive. Seek understanding rather than judgement.</p><p>It may be that the way we use identity now has become highly individualistic, the categorisations can be claimed or assigned in ways that share little in terms of wider social shared understanding, but are embraced by those who share significant emotional resonance. The loyalty to a particular understanding (or the perceived threat by others of that understanding) can have the very real capability to generate hostility and hold back a wider social understanding. It is important not to confuse disagreement for disloyalty.</p><p>As a friend who kindly reviewed this document for me put it, “<em>Gender is a major issue not because civil principles are unclear but because the core thinking, the complex amalgam of science, medicine, social contract, moral philosophy, personal choice and so on is nowhere near mature. We are not really clear about the extent to which personal choice can be defining at anything much deeper than a stylistic level. It has some level of aesthetic sense but it is going to take a lot more work and mutual honesty before it becomes a moral definition any higher than baby-morals (don't be nasty to others because they are different). Unfortunately the political and legal pressures are combining to shut down the very conversation we need to be having</em>”.</p><p>I absolutely agree we need to be having the conversation, but would probably not go as far as him in suggesting “<em>My guess is that we are fifty years too early in our politicisation of the issue</em>”, as I don’t think we can choose when politicisation happens, nor do I think we should tolerate laws that make people’s lives worse for no reason. The law surely needs to reflect the Golden Rule; there can be no justification for inflicting legal constraints on people when there is no adverse harm inflicted by not doing so. I’m not sure anything we could learn could improve ‘moral definitions’ or even mature our understanding. Yes, the understanding needs to be socialised, but I am reminded that there were many similar objections to the various stages in the legalisation of gay relationships; people saying we are unsure whether you are born gay, choose being gay or have been made gay. Is our understanding any different now? Has the change in the law had any adverse affects? There are clear moral questions around things such as gender reassignment for those below the age of consent, particularly irreversible interventions, but no different than the serious questions raised by horrific genital mutilation of both girls and boys in various religious faiths and cultures around the world, when parents are seeking to impose their identity on their children. However when interventions are sensitively and carefully managed by caring and compassionate people, much anguish can be avoided. Denying any intervention at all when a person is clearly needing help is far more of an ethical affront than assisting with appropriate reversible means supported by the law and the various health services.</p><p>However, the morality of law is a different big discussion, perhaps for another time.</p><p>It seems to me that often times the issue comes to the fore when people seek changes in the law in order to legally recognise identity paradigms. Gender identity is a clear modern example, but the same social conflict was there when people rightly tried to get equality for women, black people, gay people. The politics of identity is central to how we should approach so many (perhaps all) areas of public policy including immigration or whether and how we approach armed conflict.</p><p>So much of our society is structured around identity (political parties being a good example), that seeking to find collaborative and sustainable fair ways forward in so many arenas is hamstrung from the beginning.</p><p>Historical legacy is also hugely important in understanding how we have arrived at this point. Law is based around heteronormative ideas; racial subjugation is baked into our understanding of gender. So much was imposed on other cultures through colonisation, e.g. the relationship between men and women, heterosexuality, the ‘family unit’. There are many examples where prior to colonisation understandings and practices were very different.</p><p>Recognising our own limitations (which is also part of our identity!) as well as the limitations of others would be a good starting point. Embracing the generic traits of human beings before isolating specific differences would make a huge difference.</p><p>So the socialists could admit that human nature means that socialism has an inherent flaw – when people get power they often cease to be as concerned for the common good. Those who believe that capitalism is the answer could also recognise the same trait, that power often brings greed and selfishness and that for every winner, there has to be a loser. Pure ideology is nearly always self corrupting.</p><p>Recognising and embracing identity difference could and should be our biggest defence against fundamentalism and conflict.</p><p>Mark Collins<br /> 28th February 2024</p></div>Three Kinds of Sexhttps://just-human.net/articles/three-kinds-of-sex2022-12-31T01:23:03.000Z2022-12-31T01:23:03.000ZPaul Hazeldenhttps://just-human.net/members/PaulHazelden<div><p style="text-align:center;">[Back to <a href="https://just-human.net/articles/sex-sexuality">Sex & Sexuality</a>]</p>
<h1>Introduction</h1>
<p>When we talk with someone else about sex, one of the basic problems we face is that we may be trying to talk about vastly different things. At the very least, we can distinguish between three kinds of sex: they are quite different, but they affect one another in complicated ways.</p>
<ul>
<li><strong>Physical</strong> mechanism: the process of reproduction.</li>
<li><strong>Social</strong> roles and relationships: how we relate to and communicate with others.</li>
<li><strong>Personal</strong> experience: identity, feelings and desire.</li>
</ul>
<p>Sometimes people use 'sex' for the physical aspect, 'gender' for the social aspect, and 'sexuality' for the personal aspect, but there is no generally accepted terminology here, and people can argue for a long time about the 'correct' definition of these terms. If it is successful, this article will help us move away from arguments about the meaning of words, and towards a more productive discussion.</p>
<p>(It is probably fair to see in this three-fold division an echo of the basic <a href="https://just-human.net/framework">Framework</a> we are using on this site, dividing all of reality into three parts; we use "particles, people and purpose" as a description, identifying one recognizable example from each part.)</p>
<p>The intention of this article is to provide a framework within which the difficult conversations around sex, gender and sexuality can take place and be productive. I am deliberately not going into the difficult issues here, partly because it would be much better if they came from someone with a lived experience of the various struggles, and partly because I want to check that this framework is considered to be valid and helpful by the (potentially) affected parties before attempting to use it to address the struggles we face. If we don't get the foundation right, what we build is unlikely to be robust.</p>
<p>Of course, like all articles on this site, this is only a suggestion - a possible starting point. If you can suggest any improvements, or would like to offer an alternative framework for consideration, please do!</p>
<h1>Some Basics</h1>
<h2>Physical Mechanism</h2>
<p>There are two sexes in almost all multicellular animals, humans included. In order to reproduce, individuals produce specialized cells called 'gametes', which each have half the usual amount of genetic information, then two gametes need to combine to produce a new individual. The female produces the larger gamete (often called an 'egg'), which is not mobile, and the male produces the smaller gamete (often called a 'sperm'), which is mobile.</p>
<p>Every human who has ever lived had a mother and a father: human reproduction always involves combining an egg from a female with a sperm from a male. Modern technology now enables this to take place in a test tube, and the resulting fertilized egg can then be transferred into a female, where it can grow and develop into a new human being. Even in the laboratory, producing a new human involves the genes from both a female and a male.</p>
<p>Whether your body produces eggs or sperm is determined by your genes, which are contained in chromosomes. Most healthy humans have 46 chromosomes, 23 from each parent. Two of these - one from each parent - are the sex chromosomes, which come in two types, called 'X' and 'Y'. Normally, females have two X chromosomes (they are 'XX') and males have one X and one Y chromosome (they are 'XY'), so females always pass on an 'X' to their children, and males will either pass on an 'X' (producing a daughter) or a 'Y' (producing a son) - assuming that it all works as it should. But this is a complicated business, and things can go wrong at every stage.</p>
<p>There are many different genetic problems, with very different consequences. Some humans do not have the usual 46 chromosomes. There are numerous possible problems. For example, three copies of chromosome 21 causes Down Syndrome; XXY males (males with an additional X chromosome) have Klinefelter syndrome; and women with a completely or partially missing X chromosome can have Turner syndrome.</p>
<p>Other genetic problems are caused by a problem with individual genes. There are a great many rare genetic problems, and most of them are fairly minor, so around one person in five is affected by some kind of genetic problem, and many of these people are unaware of it, but very few of these conditions affect the person's sex. And a very few people are, genetically, two people (the technical term is 'chimera') - their body is formed from the fusion of two embryos at a very early stage in their development.</p>
<p>The vast majority of people have a clear genetic sexual identity, and possess the corresponding physical attributes. In babies and children, the obvious indicators are the genitals; as the child moves into puberty, other 'secondary' sexual characteristics appear. These characteristics can vary significantly from one person to another: for the majority of people, these changes increase the appearance of difference between the two sexes; a few people continue to look comparatively androgynous, but this does not affect their sexual function. When archeologists and others examine human skeletons, they can easily tell which sex the person was.</p>
<p>For a small minority of children (probably between one in 2,000 and one in 4,500) the genitals do not clearly identify which sex, and these people are usually described as being 'intersex'. But there are many different conditions which can be described this way (the term 'intersex' has no clear definition), and many people who are intersex (according to the broad definitions) manage to live and die with no idea that they may be intersex - the condition is only discovered when they are autopsied. So the claim that around 2% of people (which would be 40 in 2,000) are intersex is probably true, if you adopt a broad definition, but it can be rather misleading: it is not the case that 2% of people believe or understand themselves to be intersex - the real figure is something under 0.05%.</p>
<p>Of course, these are the figures for people at birth. For a long time, people have been modifying their bodies (and other people's bodies) in many different ways - the most obvious example is male castration. This produces something very similar to the result of many genetic problems - a male body which does not develop normally and is unable to reproduce. Modifications with the aim of 'changing sex' are very recent, and will need to be discussed in a different article: partly because it seems impossible to talk about it without using language which at least some people find deeply problematic or offensive, and partly because the purpose of this article is to establish a clear understanding which everybody can agree about, and upon which such discussions can be held.</p>
<p>With few exceptions (such as gametes and red blood cells), every cell in our bodies has a complete set of genetic material. This can be medically significant: women were excluded from clinical research in the USA until 1993, and even today women are under-represented in many drug trials (partly from fear that the female monthly cycle may affect the results, and partly from fear that the subject may be pregnant and the test may harm the developing embryo in some way) - and the trials therefore miss the ways in which female and male bodies respond differently to drugs. The argument used here is quite frightening: we do not test the drug on females because we are afraid they will respond differently, but when it is approved, we allow it to be used on females because we now believe they will respond the same - after all, there is no evidence to the contrary.</p>
<p>There are numerous differences between the two sexes: some obvious, some less so. An obvious difference is that human males are, on average, taller and heavier than human females. A less obvious difference is that you can distinguish a person's sex from the sweat secreted by their hand, with 97% accuracy.</p>
<p>The physical differences between the sexes have numerous consequences. To give two obvious examples: it is possible for a male to have hundreds of children, while a woman can normally have at most only around 20 (although it is claimed that a Russian woman gave birth 27 times, and produced 69 children); and (until very recently) every new born child has needed its mother's (or a mother substitute's) milk for roughly the first year.</p>
<p>In summary, physical sex is almost entirely binary: there are two sexes, and they are clearly different.</p>
<h2>Social Roles and Relationships</h2>
<p>Possibly the majority of what we think of as sex is a social construction, often called 'gender', which can refer to all the behaviour shaped and influenced by sex, and all the objects we associate with sex and sexual identity.</p>
<p>We often struggle to distinguish between secondary sexual characteristics and gender, and this frequently generates heated arguments. The discussions are further complicated by the fact that most of these characteristics are variable, existing on a continuum, and the normal ranges for each sex overlap: the most obvious example is height - on average, in any given population, males are taller than females, but the average male will be shorter than many females, and the average female will be taller than many males.</p>
<p>These discussions are also complicated by the common cultural assumption that the male perspective is the correct or normal one, so if anyone says that men are taller than women, some people will deny it because they know a tall woman, and some people will criticize you for claiming than men are better than women.</p>
<p>Another complication is the way explicit structural power is often held by men and denied to women. Until very recently in Western societies, the men owned almost everything - husbands took ownership of everything their wife brought to the marriage, and even the wife herself was considered to be the husband's property. More recently, women needed their husband's permission to open a bank account - or their father's permission, if they were unmarried. And in other countries, things are much worse for women: as this is being written, universities in Afghanistan are being closed to women. </p>
<p>The height difference between the sexes is fairly straightforward to deal with, but many other characteristics are more difficult. Most engineers are male, but is this because of a lack of female role models, because engineering is portrayed in the media as a male activity, because it is seen as a profession where physical strength is sometimes an advantage, because girls are encouraged to take up other jobs, or because of some other socially created reason? Or is it because of some genetically hardwired reasons? Or is it a combination of the two, both the social and the genetic - and, if so, how significant is each aspect? We have not been able to obtain solid evidence (we are not allowed to conduct random controlled trials on people's lives) so we are free to believe whichever reasons we prefer; some people see it as a problem which needs to be fixed, and some people see it as a valid outcome in a society where people are free to choose their career.</p>
<p>Every society controls who can have sex; every society provides signals for each sex to indicate to another person that they are open to having sex. And in every society, sex is more than 'just' the means by which humans reproduce: it is used to form alliances, demonstrate power, strengthen relationships, and much more. And because every society controls who can have sex, there are always individuals who rebel against those constraints.</p>
<p>In Western societies, sex plays a complex and inconsistent role. On the one hand, we are expected to be gender-blind in almost all public situations, pretending that we do not know know or care about the sex of the people concerned; on the other hand, it is considered to be deeply offensive if we fail to relate to someone in a way which is consistent with their gender. On the one hand, sex is constantly present in broadcast stories and public advertising; on the other hand, we are very concerned that children should not become aware of any explicit reference to sex.</p>
<p>As far as we can tell, pre-industrial societies had differentiated roles for men and women: somethimes this was a clear and rigid division, sometimes the boundaries were more flexible. In hunter-gatherer societies, the men typically go out hunting and the women gather nuts and berries while they care for the children; every adult spends the majority of their waking hours mainly with members of the same sex. This is why boys in these societies generally have a coming-of-age ceremony, marking the transition from spending their days as a child with the women to spending their days as a man with the other men. Of course, the men may also forage, and the women who are not heavily pregnant or caring for children may also go out hunting: these sort of details vary with the tribe's culture, but invariably it is the women who care for the sick, the young and the elderly, and these responsibilities inevitably reduce the opportunity they have to hunt or explore a long distance from the camp. </p>
<p>Until the Industrial Revolution, this segregation and distinction of roles was almost universal; afterwards, new jobs were created, providing limited opportunities for women to take on roles which could also be done by men. In Europe, women only entered many parts of the workforce in significant numbers during World War I, when the men were off fighting. Many were laid off when the men returned at the end of the war, but the shortage of men forced employers (often very unwillingly) to continue to employ women. And in the UK employers were allowed to pay women less then men, even if they did the same job, right up to (and sometimes after) the 1970 Equal Pay Act.</p>
<p>In Western societies, there is one exception to this universal division of roles: Christianity at the very beginning was about breaking down all divisions between people, and this included opening up traditionally male roles to females: against all the cultural expectations, women were accepted as both disciples and apostles, and 'in Christ' there is neither male nor female. The institutional church soon moved back to a more traditional division, but through the subsequent centuries, many reform groups have allowed women the freedom to perform roles normally restricted to men, and many denominations allowed women in leadership much earlier than was permitted in secular organisations.</p>
<p>It is still the case that many occupations are strongly gendered: men still work with things, and women still work with people - essentially the same division of activity as we see in hunter-gatherer societies. This is despite considerable effort in recent years - employers struggle to recruit women to STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) jobs, and they struggle to recruit men for jobs in caring and teaching.</p>
<p>It's not just occupations which are gendered: many of our individual attributes are significantly gendered. Take a list of personal characteristics, such as rational, emotional, brave, caring, strong, compassionate, ambitious, beautiful, good with words and good with numbers: if you ask people to put them into one of two columns, headed 'Female' and 'Male', you will find near-unanimous consistency for many items. Each of us will display each of these characteristics to some extent: some of them will probably correspond to what is expected for our sex, but this is unlikely to be true for all of them: very few of us are 'typical' of our sex in every aspect.</p>
<p>The question is whether these associations are hard-wired into us genetically, or are a result of individuals learning to conform to society's expectations. Clearly, both things happen, and it is very difficult to distinguish between them: we are social creatures, and naturally conform to the expectations of the society in which we grow up, so some of our behaviour will be performative but feel natural, and some of it (whether innate or learned) will feel wrong or unnatural because we have learned the 'wrong' things or do not naturally conform to the expectations of our society. These things were always difficult, but were probably easier to address when almost everyone grow up in a single culture; today, most of us grow up in a multicultural world in which we can pick up behaviours and expectations which are distressing or offensive to the people around us.</p>
<p>Traditional female and male roles and behaviours continue to dominate, despite some concerted efforts to disrupt or undermine them, and despite much disagreement about how far they originate from nature and how much from nurture. But it is hard to miss the way many of these characteristic match what would be useful in the traditional hunter-gatherer roles. It is also hard to miss the way that many people subvert these traditional expectations - women who enjoy engineering and racing motorcycles and men who are sensitive, caring and compassionate - but the exceptions do not undermine the common expectations.</p>
<p>Gendered attributes are not only found in humans: if you give human toys to young primates, the females will play more with the dolls, and the males will play more with the trains. This is despite them having never seen the toys before, or anything like them, so they are not following any examples or conforming to social conventions.</p>
<p>And is it still the case that people tend to socialize in single-sex groups; a common topic of conversation, in both groups, is how incomprehensible and unreasonable the members of the other group are. The question raised in 'When Harry Met Sally'' (can women and men be friends?) seems to have an answer: yes, it is possible, but it is difficult. Most people report that they are much more relaxed when in the company of like-minded people, and this generally means people of the same sex.</p>
<p>Marriage, in one form or another, has been practiced in almost every society throughout time. Marriage is a social construct, formed partly through custom and habit, and partly through the law. Sex within marriage is universally accepted and expected, but societies vary greatly in their attitude towards sex outside marriage. Until very recently, marriage has been universally restricted to a different-sex couple, but same-sex marriages are legal in an increasing number of countries, and in almost every culture there have been occasional examples of same-sex households through the centuries.</p>
<p>In every country, the law restricts who is allowed to have sex, but the details vary a great deal. In some countries, there is a legal requirement that both parties to any sexual activity must be willing participants (see <a href="https://just-human.net/articles/consent">Consent</a>), but not in all - in some countries, rape is acceptable as long as the rapist marries his victim.</p>
<p>Societies do not only control who is allowed to have sex: they also control how and where sex is expressed - in part through explicit laws, and in part through social norms. In every society, there are some things which are socially acceptable, and some things which are socially unacceptable. They are rarely spelled out, and a newcomer to the society may only discover a boundary when they cross it.</p>
<p>What is normal and what is acceptable changes slowly with time, so sex outside marriage and people living together without getting married is now common and generally accepted in Western societies, in a way that a generation or two ago would have been unthinkable. But the fact that some things change does not mean that everything will change: every society needs to have norms and standards, unreasonable and irrational though they may appear sometimes, and these help it identify who belongs and who does not, who is willing to fit in and who refuses it fit in, so societies reward and punish people accordingly. Sex (and the more general expressions of sexuality) is just one aspect of the many ways every society seeks to control its members.</p>
<p>In summary, social sex starts with the binary division of female and male, but these can be seen as the two poles of a sexual continuum: we recognize a few people, some occupations and some personal characteristics as being very male, and a few people, occupations and characteristics as being very female. A very few people, a few more occupations and a good number of personal characteristics are seen as essentially sexless, at the 'mid-point', but most people and most occupations are somewhere else on this continuum. They are non-binary, in that they have attributes which are characteristic of both sexes - even though their culture can often make it difficult to recognize or admit this.</p>
<h2>Personal Experience</h2>
<p>There is an incredible amount of variety in the area of personal sex. People differ in their experiences, feelings, desires, expectations, activities, hopes, fears and preferences. For some people, sex is very important; for others, it is less important; and for a few, they have no discernible interest in sex. For most people, sex is an enjoyable activity; again, for some, it is the thing which gives them the greatest pleasure in their lives, for others it provides so little pleasure that is it really not worth the effort (and yes, sometimes that is because they have 'not yet met the right person', but sometimes it is simply because they do not enjoy it), and for many it is somewhere in the gaps between those three points.</p>
<p>Because physical sex and social sex are both so important, sex is often a central feature of our sense of identity. 'Identity' is a tricky concept, a statement of what I am, or what I believe and understand myself to be, and it feels like a solid and permanent aspect of who I am, but sometimes we feel that things are unchangeable when we can't imagine them changing - until they do. Introspection is a very unreliable way or finding out what we are made of.</p>
<p>So people can believe themselves to be entirely heterosexual, right up to the point when they find themselves attracted to someone of the same sex. And it can work the opposite way as well, with confirmed homosexuals being surprised by attraction to someone of the opposite sex. Of course, neither of these events happens very often - but the fact that they happen at all means that the certainty most of us feel about our sexual identity should be tempered with humility.</p>
<p>We are tribal creatures, so we understand ourselves, to a large extent, through the groups we belong to, and the ways in which our groups relate to other groups. On the other hand, we can only live in specifics, and the specifics don't always match what the groups say they should be. Many people have had the experience of being certain they knew what sort of person they were attracted to, only to find themselves falling in love with someone who, in some significant aspects, is very different from the person they thought they were looking for.</p>
<p>Whatever group or groups we belong to, it is almost certain that there will be some expectations concerning sexual behaviour and activity. It seems to be the case that many people, perhaps the majority, feel that their personal desires and preferences are in conflict, to some extent, with these expectations. Some people accept the tension, some attempt to live a 'double life', and some change their social group - which can be very difficult, and sometimes involves a significant distancing from the old group. When people join a new group with is better aligned with their desires and preferences, there is often a strong feeling of belonging and 'coming home'. But it is sometimes the case that the new group is still not a perfect fit, or the individual continues to change and develop, and after a year or two the new group's norms generate different tensions.</p>
<p>Group norms can be damaging and contradictory, and this can often be clearly seen in the way that female sexuality is policed. Girls are expected to avoid being labeled as a 'slut' or a 'prude', and the gap between these categories is often very small - and be quite different in the different groups an individual belongs to. For a very long time, it has been socially acceptable for boys to experiment with pe-marital sex with girts, but not acceptable for the girls to participate. In the UK, children cannot be exposed to advertising of period products (all advertising was banned before 1972) in the name of 'child protection', despite there being no evidence that such adverts are harmful to children, and there being considerable evidence that some children are harmed emotionally by their ignorance of female periods, and of the ready availability of products to deal with them.</p>
<p>Sex and love are both complex aspects of human life, and they interact in many complicated ways. We experience and express love in many different ways and love, or the lack of it, drives much of our personal lives. Physical sex as an activity occupies a very small part of our lives, but our sex, gender and sexuality affect almost all our relationships in ways we are mainly unaware of.</p>
<p>All kinds of sexual activity can be found on the Internet, and it is easy to find sites which will provide subscribers with material meeting a wide range of criteria. But almost every object or situation is found to be sexually stimulating by some people, and the Internet has also enabled those who share rare and obscure fetishes to find one another.</p>
<p>Some marriage preparation courses encourage people considering marriage to complete a long questionnaire detailing what sexual activities they enjoy, or dislike, or are willing to explore. Many people find it very difficult to participate in clear and honest conversations on the subject, but the details are important, and the commitment to participate in the course can help people overcome their reluctance to talk openly and honestly about sex.</p>
<p>The implicit aim of such questionnaires is partly to aid communication - to help one partner articulate to the other that 'I really enjoy <em>this</em>', or 'I would very much like to try <em>that</em>'. It is also partly to help them consider expressions of sexuality which they had not previously thought about participating in, or had rejected because they didn't think they would enjoy it, but would be willing to try for their partner's sake. And the accounts of people who, as a result, try things they had previous rejected, tells us that sometimes their expectations are proved right, they don't enjoy it; but sometimes they are surprised, and what they were reluctant to try turns out to be far better than expected, maybe even something they wish to continue to engage in. As a result, their understanding of their own sexuality and sexual preferences has changed.</p>
<p>In summary, the personal experience of sex varies massively from one individual to another, in many different ways. We differ in who we want (or could want) to have sex with, the circumstances in which we want to have sex, the things we find sexually stimulating. We differ in our sexual fantasies, and in which of them we would be interested in turning into reality. We differ in what we believe to be moral, and in what we believe should be legal. If physical sex is essentially binary, and the various aspects of social sex can be placed on a sexual continuum, then the personal experience of sex is more like a multi-dimensional kaleidoscope of different colours and shapes, with no two people being exactly the same, and everybody's desires, preferences and practices constantly changing - generally in small ways, but occasionally in significant ways.</p>
<h2>In Short</h2>
<p>Whatever someone tells you that sex is like, they are right. Sex is fluid, and it is fixed. It can be anywhere on a continuum, female, male, sexless, or anywhere in between. Or it can be a thing of infinite variety, where no two people are the same, where it is hard to even draw a map of the possibilities, let alone say where you are on it. Sex - that it, a kind of sex - can be any of these things. But each kind of sex - physical, social or personal - can only be itself. Much of the confusion and conflict around sex seems to arise from a confusion between these distinct kinds of sex.</p>
<h1>Reading and References</h1>
<p>Here are some links.</p>
<ul>
<li>New Scientist: <a href="https://www.newscientist.com/article/2364272-women-show-signs-of-cellular-ageing-at-19-that-hit-men-at-age-40/">Women show signs of cellular ageing earlier than men</a></li>
<li>New Scientist: <a href="https://www.newscientist.com/article/2381196-men-and-womens-hands-can-be-distinguished-just-from-their-scent/" target="_blank">Men and women's hands can be distinguished just from their scent</a></li>
<li>Different:<a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Different-What-Teach-About-Gender/dp/1783787309/ref=sr_1_1" target="_blank">What Apes Can Teach Us About Gender</a>, by Frans de Waal.</li>
<li>Wikipedia: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intersex" target="_blank">Intersex</a></li>
<li>Grid: <a href="https://www.grid.news/story/science/2022/11/25/dna-showed-a-mother-was-also-her-daughters-uncle-how-scientists-solved-this-medical-mystery/" target="_blank">DNA showed a mother was also her daughter’s uncle</a></li>
<li>The Tech Interactive: <a href="https://www.thetech.org/ask-a-geneticist/imprinting" target="_blank">Can you generate offspring from two eggs?</a></li>
<li>Guardian: <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/science/2023/mar/08/scientists-create-mice-with-two-fathers-after-making-eggs-from-male-cells" target="_blank">Scientists create mice with two biological fathers</a></li>
<li>NPR: <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2023/07/05/1185988683/intersex-documentary-every-body-julie-cohen-alicia-roth-weigel" target="_blank">For the intersex community, 'Every Body' exists on a spectrum</a></li>
</ul>
<p> </p></div>Sex & Sexualityhttps://just-human.net/articles/sex-sexuality2021-09-02T21:18:19.000Z2021-09-02T21:18:19.000ZPaul Hazeldenhttps://just-human.net/members/PaulHazelden<div><p style="text-align:center;">[Back to <a href="https://just-human.net/social-challenges" target="_blank">Social Challenges</a>]</p>
<h1>Introduction</h1>
<p>This is, for many people, a very difficult area to talk about:</p>
<ul>
<li>people have very strong and entrenched views;</li>
<li>it triggers strong emotions;</li>
<li>it connects private choice and public policy;</li>
<li>the language we use is often problematic for one group or another; and</li>
<li>various groups are frequently advocating deliberately inconsistent principles and strategies.</li>
</ul>
<p>If we can agree even a framework in which conversations can be held, this could be seen as a considerable achievement. One attempt to provide a framework can be found here: <a href="https://just-human.net/articles/three-kinds-of-sex">Three Kinds of Sex</a>.</p>
<p>There are some obvious conflicts - not just differences of opinion, or disagreements about the principles which should be applied, but conflicts about how to understand the basic concepts we have to use when we talk about these matters.</p>
<ul>
<li>There is a conflict between many feminists and most trans people about what it means to be female, the use of language and the availability of public facilities.</li>
<li>There is a conflict between those who reject the traditional binary male-female divide, and people who affirm it as a fundamental distinction but wish to change from one to the other.</li>
<li>There is a fundamental disconnect within our society concerning sex - specifically, concerning the physical act of sex. On the one hand, we have cast off the antiquated religious taboos: sex outside marriage is no longer sinful and shameful, and rules about who is allowed to have sex with who are seen as laughable, maybe even harmful; the boundaries of what is acceptable are extending all the time. But, on the other hand, rape and sexual assault are still seen as wrong - and the rules of acceptable behaviour are getting clearer and more restrictive all the time.</li>
</ul>
<h1>Questions</h1>
<p>Here are some questions people may want to explore.</p>
<ul>
<li>What is homophobia - and, just as important, what is it not?</li>
<li><a href="https://just-human.net/articles/consent">Consent</a>. The principle that sex should be consensual is a good one, but what does this mean in the real world? In the messy details of human relationships, things are rarely clear-cut. We have pressures, preferences and obligations, we make assumptions about other people, their actions, beliefs and motives. Ignorance, awkwardness, social baggage and embarrassment frequently interfere with clear communication, especially when it involves sex.</li>
<li>Consent is not the only moral principle - so what else should limit sexual activity? (For example, most people feel that cheating on your partner is immoral, but should not be illegal.)</li>
<li>What is (and what should be) the role of the law in determining valid sexual activity? (It has been argued that the law should "stay out of the bedroom", but most people seem to feel that sex with a minor should be illegal, even if there are arguments about how to determine the age of consent.) </li>
<li>How should societies decide on the age of consent?</li>
<li>At what age should puberty blocking hormones be given to young trans people, and under what circumstances?</li>
<li>What is the morality surrounding BDSM sex, what should public policy be?</li>
<li>Are arranged marriages acceptable? And, if they are not acceptable, how arranged does it have to be in order to become unacceptable? (And, when thinking about this, where do television programs which arrange and broadcast marriages between people who have never met fit into this picture?)</li>
<li>What is (should be) the role of a parent when a child is struggling with their sexual or gender identification? </li>
<li>How should pornography be regulated - if at all?</li>
<li>Should prostitution be legal; how should it be regulated or punished?</li>
<li>How much is the sex industry (roughly: pornography, prostitution and strip clubs) exploiting women, and how much is it empowering them and providing a valid source of income?</li>
<li>Do the same issues apply to male workers in the sex industry, and, if not, what should be the differences?</li>
<li>What regulation should limit the location and activities of shops selling 'adult material' and venues offering 'adult entertainment'?</li>
<li>Is nakedness really a sin? (The simple answer is that nakedness in the Bible is clearly not a sin, but many Christian groups have subsequently chosen to treat it as one; other religions vary considerably in their attitude to the human body. In any case, discussion of nakedness does not really belong in this context.)</li>
<li>Male-dominated societies tend to ignore the female sex drive, and seek to control female bodies - what happens to them and what they are allowed to look like. What, in practical terms, can be done to change this? And females often seem to be as keen on controlling other females as the males are, so it seems to be more than just a problem caused by male domination (see <a href="https://www.nakedfeminism.com/" target="_blank">Naked Feminism</a> for more on this).</li>
<li>How do we distinguish sexual harassment from normal flirting between grown ups? </li>
<li>Where does Female Genital Mutilation fit into this area?</li>
</ul>
<h1>Personal Views and Background</h1>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/2019/15-february/features/features/jesus-holding-my-hand-has-been-the-most-powerful-force-in-my-life">Church Times article</a>: "Jesus holding my hand has been the most powerful force in my life" Two gay priests of different generations talk about the challenges that they have faced in their ministry.</li>
<li><a href="https://time.com/6076606/chimamanda-adichie-akwaeke-emezi-trans-rights-essay/">Time article</a>: "'Stories Can Be War.' How Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Viral Essay Has Implications Far Beyond the Literary World" (July 2021)</li>
<li><a href="https://bigthink.com/the-past/pederasty-homosexuality-ancient-greece/" target="_blank">Big Think</a>: "How the ancient Greeks viewed pederasty and homosexuality"</li>
</ul>
<p> </p>
<p> </p></div>