Unread postby Jolly Joker » 10 Jun 2007, 07:54
It gets even stranger. Now people seem to think that religion shouldn't be discussed.
@Corribus, mostly, it seems
Anyway, the question was why in the 21. century our society in general still puts sex into a very strange corner. Note, that the fact that you will stumble about more or less explicit sexual display on each corner is PROOF for that not a point against it, because that is the consequence of the connection between capitalism and that strange difference between the role sex actually has in life (it's a necessity) and what has been made out of it.
The reason for the deep-rooted taboo is to find in the Church dominated pastimes in combination with the rules they mostly had for themselves.
1) Clerics were not allowed to marry from a certain point ( for the simple reason that the Church owned the land of the grounds the clerics lived on, but if they would have married and then died their widows would inherit it; the same was true for rich clerics which would inherit the church their wealth if they died).
2) At the same time Jesus (and after that the Curch of course), and not him, in his time said that only married people should have sex. The reason for this was very straightforward and simple: if you had sex, unmarried, the result tended to be geting pregnant for the woman which led inevitably to a mother-with-child who did not get any financial help from the father (or anyone else) and would live in poverty (with the child) and/or sell herself and so on. So for Jesus (and for the Church as well, initially) the rule was: don't have sex before marriage, simply to avoid children that no one would take responsibility for.
But now look at 1 and 2 in combination. IMPLICITELY (although not clearly formulated) it meant that clerics couldn't have sex anymore because they were not allowed to marry anymore. However, since that wasn't what the Church had in mind with their rule, it was handled rather lax. Of course clerics would have sex even though they were not allowed to married.
However, this would lead of course to unfortunate situations sometimes. Clear was that sex for clerics (not to mention monks in monasteries and so on) existed only in a grey zone and clear was for the public that it wasn't EXACTLY legal.
On the other hand you have to keep in mind that the vast majority of the population was illiterate and pretty naive in terms of what was possible and what not, what could be believed and what not and so on, while the Clerics had the monopoly on books and education in general (they had to be copied per hand which was done in monasteries, mostly).
Now consider this situation. What developed over a course of, well a few hundred years, until a pattern had been found, is, that all those who should not have been indulging in sex but still did AND WERE CAUGHT (or exposed) (and that would later involve not only clerics, but "normal" folk as well who might be rich and have a mistress or two) had to find a way to put the blame for their behaviour on someone or something. Because the Church would tolerate most anything, provided the lid could be kept on it (remember, they didn't intend to ban sex for their prieshood).
That blame was easy to find: temptation to sin by seductive women or The Devil made me do it.
You can imagine that in a society like they had then everyone grasped for that explanation who could make use of it. Then things ran its course over the Middle Ages and over time sex as such become something tainted - something the devil would use to tempt the righteos and put into desaster. Imagine what this meant for women: if you had good looks and were the forthcoming type, but didn't want to do the cleric of your village a certain favor, you might end at some tribunal explaining exactly how the devil had made you to be his willing helper. Imagine the pressure that put on the women as such and how it became "unsafe" to be alluring. From then on it went downhill fast. Sex became something that should be done mostly to have children, not for lust, because lust was what gave the devil and his minions an opening to get to you and make you do evil things. That made it possible for women to turn the table, mind you. There was a time when women could say that their husband would want too much sex from them (for lust only) and they'd fear the devil would be in him and so on and so forth.
It's a rather sad story, actually, but one that makes perfect sense. Note that this "system" was already fully established in the beginning of the 16. century when Luther came. Luther himseld married in (just another) breach of what was allowed by the Church), but the general damage was already done because sex (or sex done with lust) already had the taint.
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