Fitting in

This is my third post in this little mini-series on the subject of sex & sexuality in general, and this time I would like to focus on the place that sex has in our society. I mean, on the face of it, we as a culture appear to be genuinely embarrassed by its existence a lot of the time, rarely being referred to explicitly if at all (at least certainly not among ‘correct’ and polite company), and making any mention of it a cause of scandal and embarrassment. Indeed, an entire subset of language has seemed to develop over the last few years to try and enable us to talk about sexually-related things without ever actually making explicit references to it- it’s an entire area where you just don’t go in conversation. It’s almost as if polite society has the mental age of a 13 year old in this regard, and is genuinely embarrassed as to its existence.

Compare this to the societal structure of one of our closest relatives, the ‘pygmy great ape’ called the bonobo. Bonobos adopt a matriarchal (female-led) society, are entirely bisexual, and for them sex is a huge part of their social system. If a pair of bonobos are confronted with any new and unusual situation, be it merely the introduction of a cardboard box, their immediate response will be to briefly start having sex with one another almost to act as an icebreaker, before they go and investigate whatever it was that excited them. Compared to bonobos, humans appear to be acting like a bunch of nuns.

And this we must contrast against the fact that sex is something that we are not only designed for but that we actively seek and enjoy. Sigmund Freud is famous for claiming that most of human behaviour can be put down to the desire for sex, and as I have explained in previous place, it makes evolutionary sense for us to both enjoy sex and seek it wherever we can. It’s a fact of life, something very few of us would be comfortable to do without, and something our children are going to have to come to terms with eventually- yet it’s something that culture seems determined to brush under the carpet, and that children are continually kept away from for as long as is physically possible in a last-ditch attempt to protect whatever innocence they have left. So why is this?

Part of the reasoning behind this would be the connection between sex and nakedness, as well as the connection to privacy. Human beings do not, obviously, have thick fur to protect themselves or keep them warm (nobody knows exactly why we lost ours, but it’s probably to do with helping to regulate temperature, which we humans do very well), and as such clothes are a great advantage to us. They can shade us when its warm and allow for more efficient cooling, protect us from harsh dust, wind & weather, keep us warm when we venture into the world’s colder climates, help stem blood flow and lessen the effect of injuries, protect us against attack from predators or one another, help keep us a little cleaner and replace elaborate fur & feathers for all manner of ceremonial rituals. However, they also carry a great psychological value, placing a barrier between our bodies and the rest of the world, and thus giving us a sense of personal privacy about our own bodies. Of particular interest to our privacy are those areas most commonly covered, including (among other things), the genital areas, which must be exposed for sexual activity. This turns sex into a private, personal act in our collective psyche, something to be shared only between the partners involved, and making any exploration of it seem like an invasion of our personal privacy. In effect, then, it would seem the Bible got it the wrong way around- it was clothes that gave us the knowledge and shame of nakedness, and thus the ‘shame’ of sex.

Then we must consider the social importance of sex & its consequences in our society generally. For centuries the entire governmental structure of most of the world was based around who was whose son, who was married to who  and, in various roundabout ways, who either had, was having, or could in the future be having, sex with whom. Even nowadays the due process of law usually means inheritance by either next of kin, spouse or partner, and so the consequences of sex carry immense weight. Even in the modern world, with the invention of contraceptives and abortion and the increasing prevalence of ‘casual sex’, sex itself carries immense societal weight, often determining how you are judged by your peers, your ‘history’ among them and your general social standing. To quote a favourite song of a friend of mine: ‘The whole damn world is just as obsessed/ With who’s the best dressed and who’s having sex’. And so, sex becomes this huge social thing, its pursuit full of little rules and nuances, all about who with who (and even with the where & how among some social groups) and it is simply not allowed to become ‘just this thing everyone does’ like it is with the bonobos. Thus, everything associated with sex & sexuality becomes highly strung and almost political in nature, making it a semi-taboo to talk about for fear of offending someone.

Finally, we must consider the development of the ‘sexual subculture’ that seems to run completely counter to this taboo attitude. For most of human history we have comfortably accepted and even encouraged the existence of brothels and prostitution, and whilst this has become very much frowned upon in today’s culture the position has been filled by strip clubs, lap dancing bars and the sheer mountains of pornography that fill the half-hidden corners of newsagents, small ads and the internet. This is almost a reaction to the rather more prim aloofness adopted by polite society, an acknowledgement and embracing of our enjoyment of sex (albeit one that caters almost exclusively to heterosexual men and has a dubious record for both women’s and, in places, human rights). But because this is almost a direct response to the attitudes of polite culture, it has naturally attracted connotations of being seedy and not respectable. Hundreds of men may visit strip clubs every night, but that doesn’t make it an OK career move for a prominent judge to be photographed walking out of one. Thus, as this sex-obsessed underworld has come into being on the wrong side of the public eye, so sex itself has attracted the same negative connotations, the same sense of lacking in respectability, among the ‘proper’ echelons of society, and has gone even more into the realms of ‘Do Not Discuss’.

But, you might say, sex appears to be getting even more prevalent in the modern age. You’ve mentioned internet porn, but what about the sexualisation of the media, the creation and use of sex symbols, the targeting of sexual content at a steadily younger audience? Good question, and one I’ll give a shot at answering next time…

Advertisement

The Power of the Vote

Winston Churchill once described democracy as ‘the worst form of government, except for all the others that have been tried’, and to be honest he may have had a point. Despite being championed throughout modern culture and interpretations of history as the ultimate in terms of freedom and representation of the common people, it is certainly not without its flaws. Today I would like to focus on just one in particular, one whose relevance has become ever more important in today’s multi-faceted existence: the power of a vote.

Voting is, of course, the core principle of democracy, a simple and unequivocal solution of indicating who most people would prefer as their tyrannical overlord/general manager and representative for the next five or so years. Not does it allow the common people to control who is in power, it also allows them control over that person once they are in that position, for any unpopular decisions they make over the course of his tenure will surely come back to haunt them come the next election.

This principle works superbly so long as the candidate in question can be judged against a simple criteria, a sort of balance sheet of good and bad as directly applicable to you. As such, the voting principle works absolutely fine given a small enough situation, where there are only a few issues directly applicable to the candidate in question- a small local community for instance. Thus, the performance of the incumbent candidate and the promises of any challengers can be evaluated against simple, specific issues and interests, and the voting process is representative of who people think will do the best for them.

Now, let us consider the situation when things get bigger- take the electoral process for electing a Prime Minister, for example. Now, a voter in Britain does not directly elect his or her PM, but instead elects a Member of Parliament for his area, and whichever party he is in affects who will get the top job eventually. The same thing actually happens in the US Presidential elections to help prevent hung parliaments, but the difference in Britain is that MP’s actually have power and fulfil the roles of Representatives/Congressmen as well. Thus, any voter has to consider a whole host of issues: which party each candidate is from and where said party stands on the political spectrum; what the policies of the various competitors are; how many of that myriad of policies agree or disagree with your personal opinion; how their standpoints on internet freedom/abortion/whatever else is of particular interest to you compare to yours; whether they look like they will represent you in Parliament or just chirp away party lines, and what issues they are particularly keen on addressing, to name but a few in the most concise way possible. That’s an awful lot of angles to consider, and the chance of any one candidate agreeing with any one voter on every one of those issues is fairly slim. This means that no matter who you vote for (unless you run for office yourself, a tactic that is happily becoming more and more popular lately), no candidate is ever going to accurately represent your views of their own accord, and you’ll simply have to make do with the best of a bad job. The other, perhaps even more unfortunate, practical upshot of this is that a candidate can make all sorts of unpopular decisions, but still get in come the next election on the grounds that his various other, more popular, policies or standpoints are still considered preferable to his opponent.

Then, we must take into account the issue of ‘safe seats’- areas where the majority of voters are so set in their ways when it comes to supporting one party or another that a serial killer wearing the appropriate rosette could still get into power. Here the floating voters, those who are most likely to swing one way or the other and thus affect who gets in, have next to no influence on the eventual outcome. In these areas especially, the candidate for the ‘safe’ party can be held responsible for next to nothing that he does, because those who would be inclined to punish him at the ballot box are unable to swing the eventual outcome.

All this boils down to a simple truth- that in a large situation involving a lot of people and an awful lot of mitigating factors, one candidate can never be truly representative of all his constituents’ wishes and can often not be held accountable at the ballot box for his more unpopular decisions. Sure, as a rule candidates do like to respect the wishes of the mob where possible just on the off-chance that one unpopular decision could be the straw that breaks his next re-election campaign. But it nonetheless holds true that a candidate can (if he wants) usually go ‘you know what, screw what they want’ a few times during his tenure and get away with it, particularly if those decisions occur early in his time in office and are thus largely forgotten come the next election- and that can cause the fundamental principles of democracy to break down.

However, whilst this might seem like a depressing prospect, there is a glimmer of hope, and it comes from a surprising source. You see, whilst one is perfectly capable of making a very good living out of politics, it is certainly not the best paid career in the world- if you have a lust for money, you would typically go into business or perhaps medicine (if you were really going to get cynical about it). Most politicians go into politics nowadays not because they have some all-consuming lust for power or because they want to throw their country’s finances around, but because they have strong political views and would like to be able to change the world for the better, and because they care about the political system. It is simply too much effort to try and work up the political ladder for personal and corrupt reasons when there are far easier and more lucrative roads to power and riches elsewhere. Thus, your average politician is not simply some power-hungry arch bureaucrat who wishes to see his people crushed beneath his feet in the pursuit of making him more cash, but a genuine human being who cares about making things better for people- for from this pursuit does he get his job satisfaction. That, if anything, is the true victory of a stable democracy- it gets the right kind of people pursuing power.

Still doesn’t mean they should be let off the hook, though.