Mel Hill's Response

• Shame, Sex, and Anthropology Thread by Vick Kelly, 10/29/97
  
  

Date: Mon, 20 Oct 1997 09:53:10 -0400

From: Melvyn Hill, Ph.D.

To: tomkins-talk@tomkins.org

Subject: sex, shame, anthro : sexture TT

Dear Bob Most,

I felt deeply moved by your posting about shame and our lack of response to Alex Bruzzone's thread on erections. I appreciate your willingness to consider these issues in the light of ideological scripts about sex as they occur in different cultures. It seems to me so important for us to realize how malleable sexuality actually is, and consequently how subject it is to influence by the affects as they are directed by any number of scripts.

Perhaps what is scariest of all is that there are no fixed biological norms for sex. There are, of course, biological requirements for sexual reproduction, but in the human species, at least, they do not translate into biological rules for having sex. Of course ideologies that declare that there is only one form of "normal" sex, which conforms to the so-called "law of nature," would shame everyone out of every other form of sexual connection. The appeal to "nature" -- whatever that may be -- serves to legitimize the ideological decree of what is normal. And "normal", of course, lacks any higher sanction than a consensus formed among a group of human beings. I suppose we are always looking for a consensus on this, and many other issues, so that we can feel secure in a way of life that we share in common. That seems to be the whole point of having an ideological script.

But each script depends on a process of selection from among memories and their attendant emotions in order to provide us with a guide into the future. It stands to reason, therefore, that no script can enjoy the kind of authority that religions claim for their revelations -- the law or the vision or the text revealed by a transcendent deity. In other words, an authority that lies beyond any human right to question it. Even though it becomes subject to the all too human faculty of interpretation!

I suspect that ideological scripts, more readily than others, often come into question because, at best, they are a rather loose fit. They often suggest their opposite -- think of our ongoing shuttle between believing in the universal validity of the free market, and our belief in the intervention of government to moderate its abiding effect, the maldistribution of wealth and income -- and they usually provide thinking people with far less comfort than those who are simply content to conform and feel safe. I am reminded of Dostoevsky's wonderful story The Grand Inquisitor which he included in The Brothers Karamazov, where he sets this issue in terms of a debate between Jesus, who has returned to earth for the Second Coming, and the Grand Inquisitor, who decides to execute him again, because he provides the people with the feeling of safety in conforming to his rules, whereas Jesus will only terrify them with his gift of a free conscience.

You have raised a couple of issues about sexuality : are we promiscuous "by nature", and are we bisexual "by nature", and you also suggest that we are homosexual "by nature" too ( Can all of this be by virtue of one "nature"? And if that is so, what does the concept mean? ) Here, I believe, you may be looking for the kind of reassurance that "nature", viewed as a transcendent authority ( in the guise of a scientific rather than a transcendent source ) might allow. I think, however, that you have also made a powerful case to the contrary, that we are sexual "by culture". And you mention Don's discussion of our being bisexual in potential, until the affects come into play that guide our sexual preferences. I would suggest that we need to put these two considerations together : culture and affects. Apparently the ideological script of the culture directs sexual preference and choice and behavior by means of powerful affects. And, of course, there is the reward of sexual pleasure that follows in a successful negotiation of this rite of passage. I am suggesting the neologism of sexture to refer to this mixing in of sex and culture.

From a variety of anthropological and animal studies, as you point out, we know that the ideal of heterosexual monogamy in this culture is not a universal norm either in terms of sexual preference, or of object constancy, or in terms of marriage as a social institution. For example, there are other cultures beside the ancient Greeks that include homosexual and heterosexual relationships within the norm. ( See, for instance, the work of Gilbert Herdt : Guardians of the Flutes : Idioms of Masculinity or his study Sambia : Ritual and Gender in New Guinea ). Even among the Greek city-states these sexual norms varied a great deal. Spartan warriors, for instance, were expected to take male lovers, because they believed this encouraged the noblest impulses of both men on the battlefield. ( Compare with the recent debate about gays in the military that issued in the current formula of "don't ask, don't tell ". Meanwhile it is on the heterosexual side of things, and not among the men, that the much prophesied distracting sexual chaos has emerged. The homophobic obsessions about gays recruiting straight soldiers turned out to be the merest veil for what was already happening, the harassment of female soldiers by straight males. And nobody seems to be pointing out this hypocrisy. ) The Athenians -- to get back to the ancients -- saw the love between an older and a younger man as instrumental to the process of bringing out the best in a young man's potential -- his education, or paideia. And that, indeed, forms the core of Plato's concern from his early dialogues to the Republic : his Socrates opposed the sexual expression of this homosexual love, but nevertheless considered it essential to the pursuit of an ideal education.

The scandal of these other cultures -- you mention the ancient Greeks make you feel weird -- has to do with our affiliation with our own culture and the way it has organized our sexuality to fit its imperatives. And here, I suppose, the larger issue arises, that I believe makes the discussion of sex feel rather threatening : it is impossible to discuss sexual arrangements without becoming aware of the fact that they are "only" norms, and by no means either "natural" or descended from "on high". Taking on the topic of sex, therefore, involves taking on the topic of our social and cultural "norms", that is, it involves some form of critique of the present ideology.

Those who have engaged in this critique have largely addressed the kinds of sexism and homophobia that our culture has generated as a corollary to its chief sexual ideology, which some people call heterosexism. These critics tend to overlook the negative impact of the culture on the lives of white heterosexual males because they are viewed as the ones who are the beneficiaries of heterosexism and therefore responsible for this whole state of affairs. In fact, that seems to me to be a rather simple-minded view of how ideologies come into being, and stems from a bias that separates out different classes of people into victimizers and victims. Then we have to believe that the whole blame belongs to the victimizers, while we have to give the victims permission to indulge in a self-righteous rage. The result of this kind of binary opposition is that both classes of people get stuck in self-defeating patterns of thinking and feeling.

Perhaps Alex Bruzzone's contribution has given us the chance to understand one area where males also suffer under the present ideology. If men have to feel ashamed of their erections, then how can they feel good about being males? And that, in turn, leads to the various hopeless attempts to override feelings of humiliation and shame by resorting to the scripts that occur at one of the various points along Nathanson's compass of shame. Here we see the effects of the oppression of males with the culture. And, of course, these include sexism and homophobia, even if they do not preclude some glancing forms of homosexual activity.

But the broader question you have raised has to do with what position do we take on the issue of sexuality and the various ways in which sexual preference and sexual choice can be directed into social arrangements? It seems to me that here, as therapists, we are up against the reality of a process of cultural change that we may only facilitate in so far as we offer a non-judgmental support to our patients' search for a life that brings their heart and their eroticism together. But, in my own opinion, it is not within our power, nor should it be, to determine the outcome for an individual or for a culture. Rather it is up to the creative process that comes into play in our lives when we are released from the grip of powerfully negating affects and scripts, to gradually bring a resolution for each of us, and for our society. And no doubt, if we came back at the end of the next century, we would find something different had swept away these hard earned resolutions. For I think it is probably the biggest illusion of all to think that our present sexual "norms", such as they are, have been handed down "through the centuries", or that they conform to a "law of nature". Like so many other social arrangements -- economic, political, educational, the arts, spirituality --we create sexuality according to the possibilities and limitations that we find in our bodies, our emotions, our minds, and our environments when we explore them. And so the process of change goes on in history, if not always evident in the life span of an individual human being.

Perhaps this is an overly large perspective to introduce into the discussion of sexuality. But frankly, I believe it gives us the freedom in which to think without shame or disgust or dissmell about these fundamental issues, experiences, emotions, and desires that accompany whatever we have established as the sexual "norms" in our own lives. Unless we prefer to remain blind to them.

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