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The History of Love and Sex
Where does man stand today relative to love and sex? Where is he going?
The answers to these questions come into clearer focus if one knows where
man has been and the direction he is now moving. By objectively analyzing
and studying the fascinating and sometimes startling history of love and
sex, one can learn where man has been personally and sexually. Examining
this history reveals the gradual but definite progress man has made toward
identifying and developing rational and objective views of himself and of
interhuman love and sexual relationships. The progress over the past 3200
years is outlined in Table H-1. This table indicates that concepts such
as love within marriage, the equality of women with men, and the mutual
enjoyment of sex were unknown throughout most of recorded history. In fact,
the concept of romantic love as the basis of sex and marriage has fully
evolved only within the past century.
Although the course of progress zigzags dramatically over the centuries,
progress of man toward fulfilling his physical, psychological and sexual
needs has generally held an upward course throughout history. This progress
closely follows his degree of freedom from the oppressive forces of government,
the church and mysticism. Each major decline in human progress (such as
the Dark Ages) occurred during periods when mysticism and religion dominated
man's thought and crippled his rationality, which in turn allowed the government
or church to oppress and diminish individual freedom and happiness.
Why is the history of love and sex important? Why should one be aware of
where man has been and how his views on love and sex developed? This historical
knowledge provides a helpful perspective for the objective validation or
rejection of current views of love and sex. In addition, a person gains
a clearer reflection of his own views when his position can be compared
and contrasted to the undeveloped and erroneous views and positions of past
history. Similarly, to fully know and understand what is right and good,
one must know and understand what is wrong and evil. With a voyage through
history, one can view the transformation of various undeveloped, erroneous,
irrational, and invalid views on love and sex to the currently unfolding
valid, rational and healthy views.
From a knowledge of history, a person can look optimistically into the future
and predict that man will continue his climb toward more rational and healthier
views about freedom,
love and sex. Someday, in perhaps the not too distant future, most people
will be sufficiently free from political, mystical and religious oppression
to discover and apply the Advanced Concepts of Romantic Love. All people
will then be free to exploit their potential for happiness through their
own productivity and sexuality. This goal is not some distant, impractical
Utopia. Quite to the contrary, this goal is now approaching as man, for
the first time in history, has both the knowledge and the opportunity to
break forever the dark grip of religious and political oppression and their
destructive ethics of human sacrifice and altruism. Of more immediate importance,
this goal, this freedom, this happiness can be experienced today by any
productive individual in the Free World by applying the Advanced Concepts
of Romantic Love .
Only by breaking the hoax of mysticism and altruism can men and women function
in accordance with their own nature and objective reality. When the frauds
of mysticism and altruism are exposed and rejected, the individual is then
free to pursue psychuous pleasures, romantic love and long-range happiness.
Reviewing the history of love and sex in context with today's new and unfolding
knowledge will help diminish the destructive influence of mysticism and
altruism. Two well-researched and well-written books provide enlightening
and fascinating reviews of love, sex and marriage from the Greco-Roman period
to the present. One book is The Natural History of Love, written by Morton
M.Hunt, an astute journalist who combines objective scholarship and in-depth
research with an engaging style. Morton Hunt's book provides knowledge and
insight into the evolution and development of the man-woman relationship
in the Western world over the past 2500 years. Hunt's book is supplemented
by Sex in History, written by G. Rattray Taylor. This book traces man's
attitude toward love and sex from Grecian times to the present. Both Hunt's
and Taylor's books vividly demonstrate the disastrous roles that mysticism,
government and especially religion have played throughout the course of
history in undermining man's means to his own well-being and happiness.
Hunt's book, The Natural History of Love, and Taylor's book, Sex in History,
are reviewed in Book Analyses 64 and 86, respectively.
The following Table H-1 provides a summarized history of Western love and
sex from 1300 B.C. to the present day.
TABLE H-1
THE HISTORY OF WESTERN LOVE AND SEX
FROM 1300 B.C. TO THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
HISTORY TABLE
Ancient Greece
(1300 B.C.-450 B.C.)
- Homeric women (1300 B.C.-l 100 B.C.) were relatively free and exercised
considerable influence over men, but remained virtuous and on double standards.
With the high standard of living in later Greece, women became idle and
lost their importance.
Golden Age of Greece
(450 B.C.- 27 B.C.)
- Wild bisexual love life of Alcibiades (450 B.C.), a student of Socrates
and raised by Pericles.
- High class prostitutes and courtesans were held superior to wives and
"virtuous", women.
- Greek men wanted faithful love, but tried to obtain it by gifts and
trickery.
- When Greek men actually did fall in love, they considered themselves
as sick.
- The Greeks never connected love with marriage. They found love either
an amusement that quickly faded or a god-sent affliction that lasted too
long.
- Wives were considered only as housekeepers and mothers, not as lovers
Roman Empire
(27 B.C.-385 A.D.)
- Pagan love in Rome was guilt-free, lusty, unfaithful and deceitful.
- Unlike Greeks, the Romans preferred sex without philosophy or significance.
- Abortion and contraception were common. Babies were often discarded
as garbage.
- Octavian (Augustus) Caesar sought unsuccessfully to restore family
unity and sexual "morality" via government force and the Julian
laws . . . all were failures, even with death penalties.
- Poet Ovid (2 B.C.) wrote a manual for sex and adultery, The Art
of Love (Ars Amatoria), a brilliant, modern, fun, deceptive, cheerful
and humorous book:
.Modern grooming tips.
.Sanctioned the use of tears by men.
.Sexual positions described that stressed mutual orgasm and satisfaction.
- Most "liberated" Roman feminists failed to find emotional
satisfaction.
Decline of the Roman Empire
(100 A.D.-385 A.D.)
- Roman empire (100 A.D.-300 A.D.) started surrendering to a bizarre
new religion . . . Christianity. Rome then plunged into an asceticism of
joyless and guilt-laden sex.
- Christians linked all Roman evils to sex and pleasure.
- Jovinian in 385 A.D. was excommunicated by the Pope for arguing that
marriage was superior to celibacy.
Rise of Christianity and the Dark Ages
(385 A.D.-1000 A.D.)
- Rise of the unwashed hippies in Egypt. They developed and implemented
the concepts of Christian sacrifice, self-torture and denial (e.g., St.
Simon).
- People became preoccupied with sex as Christians malevolently turned
sex into a guilty and sinful activity (e.g., some burning off fingers to
resist temptation). Neurotically inflamed eroticism continually increased
with increased Christian condemnation of sex.
- St. Augustine (born 354 A.D.)--promoted Christian guilt through his
books: (1) Confessions--self-accusations of his personal dissipation
during his pagan and lustful youth. He was converted to a Christian in
386 A.D. and turned his hatred against the goodness and pleasures of man.
States we are born between feces and urine. (2) The City of God--his
major work, speculates on how babies might be born from women untainted
by sex. Demonstrates his hatred for human life.
- In 585 A.D., the Catholics argued that women did not have a mortal
soul.
- By the 5th Century, marriage came under clerical domination.
- The rise of Christianity brought the dark ages for civilization, love
and happiness. Under Christian degradation, 6th Century Rome was repeatedly
ravaged and looted. One million population was reduced to 50 thousand.
The city lay in rubble and ruins. The hygiene, science, and culture of
Rome was abandoned as Christianity and selfless altruism did their relentless
destruction.
- Christianity reduced sex to an unromantic, harsh and ugly act. Penance
was cynically performed as often as required. Women became pieces of property.
- Clergy turned to keeping mistresses. Scandal-ridden popes reigned (e.g.,
pope of 904 A.D. practiced incest and was a lecher with children).
- By the 9th Century, Christianity dominated. Women were wasteful property.
The church sanctioned wife beatings and leveled only relatively light fines
for killing women. Noblemen had the "natural right" to ravish
any peasant woman on the road and to deflower brides of vassals.
- St. Jerome stated that he who too ardently loved his wife was a sinful
adulterer.
- Christian marital sex was performed only in one position and never
during penance nor on Sundays, Wednesdays, Fridays, holiday seasons, and
then only to conceive a child.
Pre-Renaissance Rise of Courtly
Love
(1000-1300)
- The start of courtly love and the creation of the romantic ideal began
in the 11th Century. In Southern France, noblemen developed a completely
new set of love concepts from which a unique man/woman relationship arose
that was previously unknown to Western civilization.
- April 25, 1227, Ulrich von Lichtenstein started his incredible journey
from Venice to Austria dressed as the female goddess Venus, challenging
in a jousting battle every man enroute. He did this in the service of a
woman who continually scorned him. Three centuries later this journey served
as the basis for the satire, Don Quixote de la Mancha.
- Courtly love or "true love" was a clandestine, bittersweet
relationship of endless frustrations. Such a relationship was supposedly
spiritually "uplifting", making the knight a better man and warrior.
No love existed in marriage, but the pain of frustrated courtly love was
considered uplifting, delicious and exciting.
- The sex act was considered false love, but "true love" was
kissing, touching, fondling and perhaps even naked contact.
- Troubadours believed that unsatisfied passion improved one's character.
They also believed that love could not exert itself between married people.
They could give freely only without the compulsion of necessity (e.g.,
the compulsion of married people who were duty-bound).
- For the first time, love was combined with character ennoblement (except
to some degree with Greeks in their homosexual and courtesan relations).
- Troubadour poets begged their ladies not to grant them sexual favors
under any conditions (e.g., Dante's love for Beatrice in Vita Nuova
who was a source of spiritual guidance rather than a sexual female)
- In France, William II, Duke of Aquitaine (born 1071 A.D.), was the
first of the troubadours. He introduced a new life style, love lyrics and
social manners. His courtly-love concepts swept across Europe and are still
with us today.
- In 1122 A.D., William's granddaughter, Eleanor, became Queen of both
France and England. She set up cultured courts and established the Court
of Love, which codified and promoted courtly love. In Eleanor's court,
a cleric named Andre wrote a love manual, Tractatus de Amore et de Amoris
Remedio (Treatise on Love and Its Remedy). This was a serious exposition
on courtly love and its rules.
- Eleanor's court held that love should be an equal relationship, consisting
of an interplay of mutual emotions. This was a radical idea for the 12th
Century. The court also held that love can exist only in affairs and not
in marriage.
- Poet Chretien, on orders from Eleanor, developed the romantic story
of Sir Lancelot and Guinevere.
- Eleanor's gay, happy and civilized life lasted four years. King Henry
II then swept in and ruined the court in 1174.
- Courtly love introduced the elements of emotional relationships between
men and women for the first time. This was a revolutionary concept where
love was based on mutual relationships involving respect and admiration.
Courtly love elevated woman from a servant and housekeeper to a more equal
partner and an inspirer of progress.
The Church vs. the Renaissance
(1300-1500)
- Courtly love mocked religion. Churchmen fought this new, happy love
(e.g., St. Thomas stated that to kiss and touch a woman with delight, even
without thought of fornication, was a mortal sin).
- Priests and religious fanatics began a 300-year period of flagellation
where they paraded in hordes from town to town praying and whipping themselves
and each other into bloody pulps.
- The struggle was between the darkness of religion and the enlightenment
of the Renaissance. Also the papal power struggled against the resurgence
of pro-man, pro-life Aristotelian ideas.
- The church moved in and a new breed of malefactors not known before
appeared. They were the inquisitors who were backed by a series of murderous
papal pronouncements and bulls.
- By 1450, the official Catholic dogma was established that witches existed
and could fly by night. All physically desirable women were projected by
the church as evil sorceresses. The church was losing its power and this
was their means to fight the rising rationalism and happiness brought on
by the emerging Renaissance.
- Inquisitors Jacob Sprenger and Henry Kramer, Dominican brothers and
professors of sacred theology at the University of Cologne, armed with
their influential book. Malleus Maleficarum ("The Witches'
Hammer"), and with Pope Innocent VII's infamous Bull of 1484, extracted
from women "confessions" they wanted with horrible tortures.
They burned to death over 30,000 "witches" charged with having
sex with the Devil, whom the Church insisted had a brutal penis covered
with fish scales.
- Crosscurrents and contradictions raged between the happy and pleasurable
love arising from the enlightened Renaissance spirit and the hatred of
women (wicked witches) arising from the dark and malevolent spirit of the
Church.
- Aging Pope Alexander VI had many teenage mistresses.
- In the 16th Century, impotent Duke of Urbino and Elizabetta Gonzaga
engaged in a platonic love affair that resulted in a handbook on courtly
manners, The Courtier, by Castigliones.
- Queen Marguerite of France was involved in intense but platonic love
affairs with twelve men simultaneously She also wrote a collection of 72
tales titled Heptameron that were bawdy and ribald. These were tales
of platonic and "perfect love" mixed with orgies, incestuousness,
partner swapping, sexually insatiable priests, etc.
- Marriage was based on both physical and financial aspects. Love was
neither the basis for marriage nor any essential part of it. Marriage was
a lifelong financial transaction. Marriage usually took place at 14-16
years old, and sometimes at 2-3 years old and included a dowry plus income
and property guarantees.
- Henry VIII in his youth (before his horrible self-debauchment) was
slim, athletic, handsome and intellectual. He was the first major figure
to combine love and marriage represented by his long battle with Bishop
Wolsey and Pope Clement VII about divorce and marriage to Anne Boleyn.
- Woman's status was changing. Writers were trying to play both sides
of this change (e.g., a book by Pyvve titled, The Praise and Dispraise
of Women). Contrasting approaches also appeared in classical literature
(e.g., Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet vs. The Taming of the Shrew).
- New concepts of joining the mind and the body in love and marriage
were developing.
- The middle class was being attracted to the romantic love concepts
of the nobility.
- Renaissance enlightenment with its atheistic echoes made sex seem not
so sinful and disgusting as the church projected. The middle class began
to associate sex with love.
- The completely new concept that young married should live together
alone in a dwelling of their own began developing in the 17th Century.
- While the status of woman as a human being and as a love object was
rising, her legal status remained little better than in the Middle Ages.
All property belonged to the husband. Wife beating was still legal.
The Puritans
(1500-1700)
- Puritans were not anti sex. Quite to the contrary, they were
value-oriented about love and sex, even romantically sentimental.
- The Reformation combined the enlightened Renaissance (marital sex was
held as good and wholesome) with the malevolent Christian position that
continued to burn women as witches.
- Dr. Martin Luther (1483-1546) battled against Catholic asceticism in
advocating the enjoyment of every pleasure that was not sinful. Luther
was lusty and vulgar in the "eat, drink and be merry" style.
He claimed to have broken wind in the Devil's face and to have told him
to "lick his ass". He fought Rome and claimed that celibacy was
invented by the Devil and that priests could marry. He asserted marriage
was not a sacrament at all, but a civil matter. In 1532, he held that Christ
probably committed adultery with Mary Magdalene and other women so as to
fully experience the nature of man. Luther asserted that sexual impulses
were both natural and irrepressible. He broke from Rome and married. Luther's
reformation rapidly spread across Northern Europe.
- The Bluenoses-John Calvin (1509-1564) was the opposite of Martin Luther.
Calvin was cheerless and had a viciously malevolent theology based on total
human depravity and the implacable wrath of God. An unhappy and unhealthy
ascetic, he had ulcers, tuberculosis, and migraine headaches and considered
life of little value and God as a harsh tyrant. Calvin set up a brutal
political theocracy in Geneva. No dancing, fancy clothes, and jewelry were
allowed. Death penalty for adultery. Even legitimate love was stringently
regulated. Solemn weddings with no revelry. The Calvin marriage had two
functions: (1) to produce offspring, (2) to eliminate incontinence.
- Most Puritans thoroughly rejected the inhuman joylessness of Calvinism,
except for a vocal minority such as John Knox in the United States. His
Blue Laws of the 1650s were against Sunday amusements, smoking, drinking,
gambling, fancy clothing, etc. He also promoted public whippings, scarlet
letters, execution for adulterers, and the Salem "witch" executions.
- Stern puritan traits were often only expressions that masked moods
of mischief and romance. Church trial records show that much sexual "sinning"
existed. But only sex outside of marriage was attacked. Puritans greatly
enjoyed sex inside marriage and condemned the "popish" concept
of the virtue of virginity Most Puritans were tenderly romantic and good
lovers.
- The image of the sexless and heartless Puritan is false. Consider the
17th Century Puritan, John Milton (Paradise Lost); he was virtuous, but
experienced a healthy view of sex. He displayed idealistic and romantic
views about marriage. Milton sent tracts to Parliament urging modern-day,
easy divorce (" with one gentle stroking to wipe away 10,000 tears
out of the life of man"). Milton,s Paradise Lost projects a benevolent
view of Adam and Eve in a romantic love context. Milton entirely rejected
St. Augustine's malevolent views of women, sex and life.
- 16th Century Puritans tried to combine the ideals of love with the
normality of sex into marriage. They also valued money more than leisure,
and success more than culture. Woman's status improved under Puritanism
(e.g., a woman could separate, even divorce, if beaten). Property rights
and inheritance laws improved. Marriage became a civil contract.
- 17th Century Puritans were pious and severe, but also strongly sexed
and somewhat romantic.
- 18th Century Puritans started hellfire-and-brimstone sermons.
- 19th Century Puritans developed the stifling prudishness of the Victorians.
The Age of Reason
(1700-1800)
- By mid-18th Century, emotional love had fallen out of favor among the
upper classes and intellectuals (rationalists). They wanted a new approach
that would be more stable and productive. They turned from emotion to reason.
Theology and metaphysics yielded to mathematics and physics. They scorned
enslavement to emotion. Emotionalism became intolerable to men in the Age
of Reason. They wanted women of intellect. They separated or dichotomized
the mind from the body.
- The epitome of rational gallantry was Louis XIV, the Sun King of France.
All Europe saw him as the ideal of the aristocracy and a model for all
lesser men. He established elaborate rules of etiquette that served to
suppress all evidence of emotion.
- Nobility concealed feelings with the aid of detached reason and carefully
rehearsed manners.
- In between the gallant rakes and the subdued Puritans arose an upper-middle-class
man (as described in Samuel Pepys, diary, 1683). The age of enlightenment
had arrived. New scientific and rational outlooks replaced mystical and
intuitive ones of the past. A humane and tolerant view of man that saw
him as basically good, worthy and admirable replaced the Christian theology
that saw man as besotted and laden with guilt and sin.
- Never before had such emphasis been placed on manners. An artificial
code of formal behavior was consciously and deliberately applied in order
to control one's emotions. The emotional life of humans disappeared behind
the facade of elegant manners and icy self-control.
- Almost any behavior was acceptable as long as emotions were concealed.
Even private intimate conversations were stilted with remote and detached
words.
- The rationalists scorned the gloom of Christianity. They scrapped the
church's concept of women as evil, but they often viewed women as ornaments,
toys or unreasonable nitwits and still held women as subservient.
- 18th Century love idealized the mythical Don Juan who was impeccably
mannered, lustful, haughty and false. Love was often reduced to malicious
sport with the motive to seduce.
- Giovanni Jacopo Casanova (born 1725) was an adventurer who had a brilliant
mind. He wrote two dozen books covering math, history, astronomy and philosophy.
- By mid-18th Century, flirtation and romance were no longer an exclusive
part of aristocratic tradition, but were common in the bourgeois or middle
class.
- Ben Franklin was a rationalist with guiltless views of sex.
Victorianism
(1800-1900)
- During 19th Century Victorianism, the ideas of nobility and birthright
were declining with the rise of capitalism and the industrial revolution.
Newly rich entrepreneurs were growing wealthy and tried to copy ways of
the upper class with lower class customs. Urbane control of one's emotions
was losing popularity to "sensibility". A maudlin "sensitivity"
became the ideal. Love now became a mighty force and noble goal. Men grew
shy, inhibited and fearful of rebuff as they began backing away from sexuality.
They sought not the dazzling flirtatious woman, but the shy, virginal one.
- Victorianism stood for high "moral" standards, close-knit
families and glorified views of women. At the same time, prostitution was
widespread and the structure of marriage was crumbling as women began revolting
against their oppressive "glorified" status.
- Jean Jacques Rousseau was one of the most influential forces in forming
a new, viciously oppressive political "liberalism" that was combined
with slobbering sentimentality. His sex life was one of incompetence misery
and frustration. He often displayed sick sentimental tears. He hungered
for cruelty and beatings and lived with women vastly inferior to him in
order to boost his low confidence and weak self-esteem. He gave away his
own children. He wrote with maudlin sentimentality. Europe was deeply under
Rousseau's influence. After his death, his ideas were eagerly adopted by
the social "intellectuals" and "liberal" politicians
and have dominated them to the present day.
- Rousseau appealed to the seriousness of the middle class. Laughter
and wit went out of style. Emphasis began to focus on female modesty. The
social "intellectuals" gradually became anti-sex and anti-pleasure
oriented. Thomas Bowdler censored Shakespeare's works in 1818. Immanuel
Kant died at eighty, a virgin. Open displays of sentimentality, melancholy
and tearfulness became chic. For example, the Irish poet, Tom Moore, got
sentimental even for the stones in a road.
- The clinging-vine personality in women developed: women should be modest,
virtuous and sweet. They should be weak and anxious to lean on and be dominated
by strong men.
- With rising prosperity and development of public school systems made
possible by the industrial revolution, children began to move outside of
the home, depriving women of many of their functions. The reasonably affluent
man no longer needed an all-work woman. He could now concentrate more on
a woman's value as a love partner.
- Togetherness concepts developed. With his sweet home-making wife, a
new style of home-life patriarch arose. The stay-at-home husband was to
spend every available hour with his good wife.(e.g., Corbett's book, Advice
to a Young Man, frowns on social activities with others in stating, "If
they are not company enough for each other, it is but a sad affair".)
- Women had to be "morally" spotless. This led to excessive
prudishness in word and actions. Prudishness then spread from sex to bathroom
functions.
- Encyclopaedia Britannica of 1842 stated that the female had no privileges
except to barely consent or refuse a man. A woman being courted was permitted
to summon up a "timid blush" or the "faintest of smiles"
to convey her feelings.
- The Brownings supposedly never saw each other entirely naked.
- United States Surgeon General, William Hammond, stated that decent
women felt not the slightest pleasure during intercourse. Many doctors
considered sexual desire in women to be pathological and warned that female
passion could cause sterility. Many thought only prostitutes could enjoy
sex.
- The woman's role was glorified and idealized, but this was only a new
pretext for their continued subjugation by men. Women literally made themselves
helpless through fashion. They immobilized them. selves in laces and stays.
- Victorian men were patriarchal and stern, but they played this role
at their own sexual expense.
- Out of this Victorian repression arose a great hunger for a fantasy
sex life. Flagellation, pornography and prostitution rose dramatically
(e.g., 50,000 prostitutes in London in 1850 and over 300,000 copies of
the pornographic book, A Monk's Awful Disclosures, were sold before
the Civil War).
- Nearly all written works about the private lives of Victorians, on
the other hand, were "purified" by omitting all references to
sex and love life.
Decline of Victorianism, the Rise of Capitalism, and the Emancipation
of Women
(1850-1900)
- Emancipation started in 1792 with Mary Wallstonecraft and her attacks
on marriage and the subjugation of women. Her work was undermined by her
badly misguided condemnation of masturbation and her advocation of government
force to stop prostitution. In 1833, Oberlin was the first college to admit
women. In 1837, Mt. Holyoke became the first women's college. With the
rise of capitalism, women gained economic rights never before enjoyed.
Capitalism broke up autocratic church power and the feudal-nobility pattern.
- During the 1840s, the new middle class began growing rapidly. Capitalistic
economics were accelerating the dissolution of class differences along
with ancient social ties and repressive customs.
- The rigid Victorian home was threatened by female suffrage, divorce
reforms and free love.
- Victorianism was a desperate delaying action (in collusion with the
church) against inevitable changes made by capitalism and the industrial
revolution.
- Victorianism and religion tried to fight change and to retain the subjugated
position of women by government force and police activities.
Emergence of Twentieth Century Romantic Love
(1900-1930)
- With the partial emergence of capitalism grew a new age of romantic
love. America's increasing divorce rate reflected not the failure of love
but the increasing refusal of people to live without love and happiness.
- Love patterns of all modern societies were replaced by America's
model because so many people were drawn to the romantic love style that
combined sexual outlet, affectionate friendship and family functions, all
in a single relationship.
- Romantic attraction not only became desirable, but became the only
acceptable basis for choosing a lifelong partner.
- Romantic love was made possible by capitalism and the industrial revolution.
With romantic love, the sexual desires of both partners could be satisfied
within marriage. All the tenderness and excitement of love could coexist
with household cares and child rearing. Romantic love was the most difficult
and complex human relationship ever attempted . . . but the most appealing
and satisfying.
- Soviets detached individual values from sex (e.g., they promoted the
concept that sex was no more than drinking a glass of water).
- The modern Sexual Revolution discarded the 19th Century prudish and
patriarchal Victorian-Christian patterns. Sexual liberation has made achievement
of sexual pleasure increasingly important.
- Children were no longer an economic asset, but a costly luxury valuable
only for love. For example, in 1776, Adam Smith estimated an American child
was worth £100 in profit before he left home; by 1910 a city child
cost thousands of dollars; by 1944 a child cost about $16 thousand to raise
to adulthood; by 1959 a child cost about $25 thousand to raise. In 1975,
costs for raising a child to adulthood will average $50-$75 thousand, not
allowing for future inflation.
- Isadora Duncan (1900-1927) was a symbol of flaming feminism with her
free-love and unwed motherhood stances. She claimed that sexual love should
be ecstatic for women. Margaret Sanger staged a heroic fight for birth
control claiming that a woman's body belonged to her alone. She published
birth control information in 1914 and opened birth control clinics in 1916.
Catholic elements had her arrested and jailed. But her work spread. By
1930, over 300 birth control clinics had been established.
- Margaret Sanger separated lovemaking from procreation. This brought
the traditional ideal of a monogamous, faithful marriage under attack.
- Complete freedom by each partner was advanced by intellectuals such
as H. G. Wells, Bertrand Russell Havelock Ellis, Judge Ben Lindsay.
- Havelock Ellis offered ideas in 1900 that were remarkably similar to
those advanced in 1973 by the O'Neill's in their book, Open Marriage.
- The Sexual Revolution also stressed the mechanical aspects of the sex
act. In Marie Stopes' book, Married Love (1918), the woman's right
to orgasm was promoted. Orgasm was described as a thing-in-itself. Wilhelm
Reich proposed that orgasm failure was the cause of major mental and physical
diseases. He even advocated masturbation to combat cancer via flow of sexual
energy.
Modern Romantic Love
(1930-Present)
- Free love and open marriage developed in the 20th Century along with
progressive polygamy via repeated marriage and divorce. Sexual enjoyment
was accepted as a human right.
- The need for reassurance of one's personal self-esteem made this new
form of romantic love popular and desired. Themes of love, heartbreak and
eventual happiness became popular and dominated the soap operas.
- Dating started in the 1920s as a new way of mate selection made necessary
by city life. Shy, passive femininity was being discarded. The crucial
feature of dating was freedom from commitment while young people learned
and experimented.
- Dating was criticized by many altruistic sociologists and social "intellectuals"
as a loveless, competitive contest. But dating was a healthy breakthrough
and generally a cheerful and happy activity. Dating was an educational
process, leading from playful heterosexual behavior to companionship and
love.
- Premarital relationships became more open and intimate than relationships
of the past. Potential partners were able to know each other much more
deeply through intimate dating.
- This new romanticism was at once both idealistically romantic and practical.
- Many conditions were similar to Roman times (economic and legal emancipation
of women, well-to-do city life, children being a luxury rather than an
asset, and sexual enjoyment deemed a right for all). One profound difference
existed . . . Romans moved away from married life while Americans became
more marriage-minded than ever before. And when marriage failed, Americans
would divorce and head right back into another marriage.
- Most altruistic sociologists have strongly criticized romantic love
while praising conjugal love. Their attacks are, however, distorted and
out of context. They project romantic love as it was idealized in the medieval
period when love could not exist within marriage.
- Romantic feelings are not only for new loves and adolescents, but are
also for long-married couples.
- Women have gained the right to he equal to men, but many women are
afraid of the demands and challenges of being an equal; other women hold
the erroneous fear that equality might cost them the chance for love and
marriage.
- Inequality for females is no longer a matter of law. Men and women
now have essentially the same educational and economic opportunities, but
most American wives still do not work.
- To the average man, his job is what he is. To the average woman, a
job is only to make money. The average American wife suffers from a chronic,
low-grade dissatisfaction, diminished self-esteem and increasing boredom.
- Most women are confused about their "role" and do not really
know what they want to be in life. Surveys of two college campuses indicated
that 40% of the coeds admitted "playing dumb" with interesting
men because many men feel threatened by overtly intelligent women (M. Kamarovsky,
Women in the Modern World, Little, Brown & Co., 1953).
- Modern love makes sense and is exercising its immense appeal all over
the world.
- Modern romantic love is almost everyone's goal. Today, the value and
purpose of romantic love is, above all else, directed toward the fulfillment
of major emotional needs
Future Romantic Love
(1980-2080)
- Instruments of force and coercion are identified and eliminated through
a philosophical and intellectual revolution. All forms of altruism, religion
and mysticism are identified and exposed as destructive fraud and are rejected.
As a result, coercive governments and agencies of force are also rejected.
The life and property rights of the individual are fully recognized and
protected. Total physical, emotional and intellectual freedom is possible.
Concepts of minority rights and women's rights are replaced with concepts
of individual rights. Romantic love, psychuous pleasures and long-range
happiness are experienced by most people and available to all people through
the Advanced Concepts of Romantic Love.
- Man's greatest and ultimate achievement, biological immortality, becomes
a reality for all productive human beings.
COMMON CONCEPTS AND 62 FALLACIES ABOUT SEX AND LOVE
With a few notable exceptions, most books about sex and love pass on
to their readers too many careless or unthoughtout assertions, cliched concepts,
myths and fallacies that distort or undermine the objective concepts needed
to achieve romantic love, psychuous pleasures and long-range happiness.
The first step toward eliminating the harmful effects of myths and fallacies
is to explicitly identify them. This Section identifies and classifies many
of these fallacious myths.
Two major types of sexual myths exist:
Sources of Sexual Myths
- 1. Old Myths
- Errors
- Superstitions
- Church and religion
- Altruistic ethics
- Victorian ethics
- Government oppression
- 2. New Myths
- Misinterpretations of Freud
- Existentialism and modern altruism
- "Playboy" philosophy
- Erroneous and rigid sex manuals
Tables F-1 to F-6 also compare each fallacy to the corresponding objectively
correct concept. Most of these objectively correct concepts are based on
the Advanced Concepts of Romantic Love and are identified as such with the
corresponding Advanced Concept number.The fallacious concepts that block
psychuous sex, romantic love and happiness fall into the six basic, interrelated
categories listed below:
Common Concepts or Fallacies
|
Category |
Table |
Number
Identified |
% |
I
II
III
IV
V
VI |
Sexual&Love
Psychological
Philosophical
Physiological
Political
Aesthetic
TOTAL |
F-1
F-2
F-3
F-4
F-5
F-6 |
19
11
16
5
6
5
62 |
30.6
17.7
25.8
8.1
9.7
8.1
100.0 |
Tables F-1 to F-6 identify a total of 62 fallacious concepts. Each fallacy
is contrasted with the objectively correct concept (accompanied by a reference
to the corresponding Advanced Concept of Romantic Love). These Tables provide
an additional tool for evaluating the various thinking, communication, literature
and books about sex and love. These identifications of false vs. valid concepts
can help a person separate objective sexual values from the sexual myths.
TABLE F-1
I SEXUAL AND LOVE
Common or Fallacious Concepts |
Objective Concept |
Refer to Concept |
1. The religious procreation view of sex versus the casual "Playboy"
(fun) view of sex represent two opposite views. |
The religious and the "Playboy" (fun) view of sex are fundamentally
the same. They are both contrary to man's nature and undercut one's capacity
to enjoy sex. The opposite view is represented by the Advanced Concepts
of Romantic Love, which can deliver psychuous sex by integrating the mind
and body with love and sex. |
37 |
2. Satisfactory sex is a primary cause. Sexual satisfaction can lead to
good love relationships and happiness. |
Satisfactory sex is a primary effect. While sex can be the most intense
form of human pleasure, this pleasure is an effect or a result of one's
past choices and actions. The most intense and valuable form of human pleasure
arises from psychuous sex, which in turn results from achieving the conditions
required for long-range happiness as identified in the Advanced Concepts
of Romantic Love. |
17 |
3. Casual sex, orgy sex, and swinging lead to sexual freedom. |
Casual sex, orgy sex and swinging can lead to eventual impotence and the
loss of sexual pleasures. The Advanced Concepts of Romantic Love lead to
a rational and objective radicalization of sexual and philosophical thought
and a breaking free from destructive and erroneous traditions. This breaking
free in turn can lead to genuine sexual freedom, psychuous pleasures and
long-range happiness. |
61
62 |
4. Sex should be spontaneous with no thought, effort, or goals. |
Growth in sexual and psychuous pleasures requires rational thought, demanding
effort, and pursuit of challenging long-range goals. |
8 |
5. The Open Marriage concept leads to increasing promiscuity, extramarital
affairs and deteriorating relationships. |
Contrary to popular opinion, the Open Marriage concept eliminates promiscuity
and casual sex. While freely and permanently leaving open the opportunity
to guiltlessly experience any beneficial and rational relationship in any
form with any person (including sexual) open marriages probably result in
fewer extramarital sexual relationships than normally occur in traditional
closed marriages. |
63 |
6. Children can benefit or add to a love relationship. |
Children almost always diminish the quality and growth potential of a romantic
love relationship. Also, children have no way to offer values to the sexual
and romantic aspects of a man-woman relationship |
102 |
7. By nature, sexual quality and pleasure diminish with age. |
By nature, sexual quality grows as the development of psychuous pleasure
increases with age. With the Advanced Concepts of Romantic Love, the quality
and overall pleasures derived from sex continualy increase with age. |
78 |
8. Love is an automatic reaction that requires no thinking. |
Value-oriented romantic love is the result of rational thought and earned
values. |
8 |
9. Mysticism plays an important role in romantic love. |
Mysticism in any form works against romantic love, psychuous pleasures,
and long-range happiness. |
38
41 |
10. Psychologically, men and women are sexually equivalent. |
Psychologically, men and women are sexually different. (Men and women are
equivalent only from their intellectual and character development capacities.)
Psychologically, women must sexually surrender as the penetrated partner
as opposed to the man, who must be psychologically (and physiologically)
dominant as the penetrator. |
47
100 |
11. Sex is fundamental to human life, love, and happiness. |
Productive self-sufficiency (not sex) is fundamental to human life love
and happiness. |
6 |
12. Sadomasochism (S-M) is always a destructive and neurotic form of sex. |
Certain forms of noninjurious, mutually desired sadomasochistic sexual behavior
(e.g., tension-creating or tormenting-suspense type sex can reflect love,
tenderness, self-confidence and can be healthy and beneficial to each partner
as well as to the relationship. |
112 |
13. A person can be fundamentally changed by another through love. |
A person fundamentally changes only through his own volitional character
development. Love, understanding and support may help but cannot cause basic
changes in others. |
96
97 |
14. Selfishness is destructive to love. |
Rational selfishness is essential for developing mutual romantic love, psychuous
sexual pleasures, and long-range happiness. |
52 |
15. Women do not experience "wet" dreams. |
Women can experience orgasm during dreams. A woman, however does not ejaculate
during orgasm as a man does. |
none |
16. No difference exists between vaginal and clitoral orgasms. In fact,
all female orgasms are basically clitoral in nature. |
This is a myth that has gone in a full circle. The facts are: most female
orgasms are clitoral-based regardless if the stimulation is in the clitoral
area or in the vaginal area. A distinctly separate vaginal-based orgasm
is, however, possible. But the vaginal orgasm requires the action of developed
vaginal muscle. Since few women have developed this muscle, few women have
experienced vaginal-based orgasm. Neither the clitoral nor vaginal orgasm
is superior to the other . . . they are just different |
48 |
17. Occasionally a man's penis gets "hung up" or locked in a woman's
vagina. |
Although many "amusing" stories evolve around men getting hung-up
in women to create embarrassing situations, no medically verified cases
of this phenomenon occurring in human beings are on record. |
none |
l8.Penis size makes no difference to the woman in sexual intercourse. |
A larger penis can enhance both the physical and psychological stimulation
in some females. In romantic love and psychuous sex, however one's character
and actions are variables that override the erotic variable of penis size. |
50 |
19. Castration renders men impotent. |
Castration in a man is analogous to a hysterectomy in a woman. But castrated
men usually undergo a much greater psychological shock that serves to unnecessarily
diminish or eliminate potency. Medically, however, castration in men or
women need not result in any loss of sexual potency or performance. Hormonal
treatment can diminish or eliminate side effects due to castration. |
none |
TABLE F-2
II PSYCHOLOGICAL
Common or Fallacious
Concepts |
Objective
Concepts |
Refer to
Concept |
1. Mental health and psychological well-being are functions of how well
one adjusts to the views, opinion and beliefs of others, the majority and
society. This concept place conformity as the standard for mental health. |
Mental health and psychological well-being are functions of how loyal one
remains to seeking undistorted truth in dealing with objective reality,
regardless of the views. opinions or beliefs of others. |
7 |
2. Psychological and mental well being have little to do with love which
is blind and based solely on emotions. |
Psychological well-being and mental health are necessary for achieving value-generating
romantic love, which is based on clear rational thinking and objective reality
as well as emotions. |
7 |
3. The mind and body are separate and conflicting entities. |
The human mind and body are interrelated entities that can, by nature, function
harmoniously and beneficially together. |
7 |
4. Reason and emotions are conflicting entities. Emotions need to be repressed
in favor of reason. |
Reason and emotions can and should function harmoniously together. One's
emotions (either rational or irrational) are a very real and valuable part
of everyone and should never be repressed or denied. No one ever has to
act on irrational emotions and, therefore, no one needs to hold any guilt
for any unacted-upon emotions, no matter how irrational |
54 |
5. Abstract symbols are not real and should he avoided. |
Symbols that are contextually accurate abstractions of reality (hard or
real symbols) can concentrate, intensify and enhance love, sex and happiness.
Abstract symbols that are based on mysticism or nothing objectively real
or that are misrepresentations of reality (soft or unreal symbols) can be
destructive and should be rejected. |
137 |
6. Taboos such as suicide, infanticide, and incest are by nature immoral
and are categorically nonviable human options. |
Suicide, infanticide, and incest are not by nature immoral and cannot be
categorically dismissed as nonviable options. [In addition to injurious
sadism and forcible rape, the only other sexual act that is immoral by nature
is the adult-child sexual relationship
involving
a direct or indirect initiation of force or coercion against the child,
who is unable to make knowledgeable or objective sexual decisions.] |
110
121 |
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