Part 21 (1/2)

Love and integration of sexual experiences, in the h which hominids move from the self-perpetuation drive to new levels of expectation and new intensities of their relations, is also prag, as a practical experience of human self-constitution, is conducive to relations between male and fe It is bound to continue along a ti, reshaped into the e contract and the family alliance Literacy, as a particular practical experience of language, regulates the sexual, as it regulates, in a variety of forms, all other aspects of human interaction In the literate erotic experience, expectations pertinent to the pragmatics of a society in search of alternative means of survival evolve into norms The inherited experience of feh the experience of rituals,hierarchy, soes place woe in which this does not happen ”Many men and women” is in Arabic (”rijaalan kafiiran wa-nisaa'aa”) literally ”men many women” In japan, women speak a japanese reserved to their sex alone In the English wedding ceremony, the woman had to repeat that she would ”love, honor, and obey” the husband To this day, Orthodox Jewish ive thanks to God that He did ”not make me a woman”

With the deets divorced from procreation Statistics of survival in the past world of limited available resources, of natural catastrophes, of disease, etc, cease to play any role in the illiterate sex encounters sexuality becomes a diversified human experience, subject to divisions, eneral dynalobal economy, so does sexuality, in the sense that it allows for experiences which, in limited coious, especially), were si sexual awareness up to the present, everything one can iine in respect to sex has been tried So often placed under the veil of secrecy and mystery, sex is no less frequently and vividly, to say the least, depicted Yet a rhetorical question deserves to be raised: Does anyone know everything about sex?

The land of sexual ubiquity

Borges, in his oould have probablyabout sex would require that one be everyone who ever lived, lives, and eventually will live Such a Borgesian map is indeed detailed but leads no further than ourselves Connect all sex-related matter that is on the Internet today- froitimate sex education and the passionate defense of love-and you will still not have e of sexuality

When one considers all the books, videotapes, songs, radio and television talk-shows, private discussions and public sermons, the subject of sex would still not be exhausted If sex were an individual fully approach the subject without the risk ofit a personal confession, or worse, a pretentious discourse about soh the many and powerful filters of his or her culture? But norance, or discretion, assume

Ritualized sex was a public event, so, or acculturation, for sex to becoed sexual habits and propagated rules coherent within the pragions described acceptable and unacceptable behavior, inspired by the need to oals of survival through lineage and proprietary rights, especially when ales began to dominate in society Art, science, and business appropriated sex as a subject of inquiry, or as a lucrative activity sex is a driving force for individuals and communities, an inescapable component of any experience, no matter how remote from sex

sexual ubiquity and the parallel world of self-awareness, enification different from the actual sexual act, are connected in very subtle ways Once sexual experiences are appropriated by culture, they becoe Each sexual encounter, or each unfulfilled intention, is but a phrase in this language written in the alphabet of gestures, odors, colors, smells, body n: first, in its indexical condition-a definiteto our deepest secrets encoded in our genetic endowment; second, in iconicity, that is, in all the imitations of others as they constitute their identity in the experience of sexuality As n in its symbolism Indeed, phallic and vulvar symbols populate every sphere of human expression (and obsession) Nevertheless, our own self-constitution in the sexual act confirms a double identity of the hule for survival, where the sheer power of nu destructive make for continuous selection (Darwin's law of natural selection); and culture, in which huressive self-definition, many times in conflict with the natural condition, or what Freud and his followers defined as the psychological dimension The two are related, and under specific circumstances one do notion that the sign is the person who interprets it integrates the two levels

In the pragmatic framework, experiences of self-constitution result from the projection of natural characteristics in the activity perforoals pursued,from other, relatively limited, perspectives? Probably not An exa sexuality from the viewpoint of the conflict between sex (libido) and self-preservation (ego) instincts, later substituted by the conflict between life instincts (Eros) and the death instinct (Thanatos, self-destruction) Such theories introduce a language layer into a subject which, although acknowledged, was siious terms (mainly as prohibitions), or in poetry As with any other dualistic representation, such theories also end in speculation, opposing the experience to the scheme adopted The scheme functions in extreme cases, which psychoanalysis dealt with, but explains sexual nor can be defined, or even exists-to a lesser extent, and inconsistently The labels reoes drastic alterations Some of these alterations affect the very nature of the sexual experience as humatic circumstances, some of extreme alienation

The literate invention of the woment of the conflict between a new state of affairs in the world and our perspectives, limited or not by the literate model of sexuality

The current situation recalls the world before literacy, before the expectation of hoeneity, and before the atteression The atoeneric existence not yet defined by sexual differentiation The male-fe the saative, as in the case of a stone and the hole that reenderless world as androcentric, because the generic hunificance of whatever such a genderless matic realm: how does difference result from same, if this same is an archetypal body with characteristics celebrated copiously over tiraenderless person, who seematics of the tie of genders The sense of excite nature certainly spilled over into every other form of human experience, sex included A new scale of mankind required that the efficiency of human activity increase This was a ti scientific theories It was also a tih still limited, sexual experiences, made possible by a framework of creativity different froes Discoveries into Platonic archetypes, appropriated by the Catholic Church and used as explanatory matics required that the one-sex , ical awareness, labor division) were reached within the model The world of practical experiences of this time unfolded in the Industrial Revolution

With literacy established, somatic circumstance, were enforced Others were deeuage of church, state, and education From the ubiquity of natural sexuality to ould become sexual self-awareness and sexual culture, no matter how limited, the journey continued in leaps and bounds

To acknowledge the woical entity, with characteristics impossible to reduce to male characteristics, was not due to political pressure-as Thomas Lacquer, a rematic needs It sie uely acknowledged as such, by addressing the richness of the huh, the order in nature and matter found by science contradicted the new experience of variety, sexuality included, ulf opened between reality and appearance, ram, well extended in the realm of sexual encounters

Back in the ht that ”the source of all evil is the woman,” probably embodied in the prototypical Eve The social iraeneralized literacy and better knowledge of the hues, and of any age since sexuality eance

Reproduction still dominated, since incipient industry needed more qualified workers in its own reproduction cycles, and productivity triggered the need to maintain consumption But the unnatural dirowth, limited means of birth control, and levels of production and consuh efficiency

Those who think that the relation between industry, sexuality, and reproduction is far-fetched should recall the birth policies of countries obsessed with industrial growth In as communist Romania, workers were needed to do what there were no machines to do: to produce for the benefit of the owners of the means of production To a similar end, the Soviets handed out overn the characteristics of literacy, clashed with the harsh prag in the former communist countries

The result of the clash was that women avoided birth at all cost

Ahead to the past

Longer life and the ability to enjoy the fruits of industry altered attitudes towards sex, especially reproduction

sexuality and e were postponed to the third decade of life as people acquiredin their quest for a better life Children were no longer athe strength of nature's drive towards self-perpetuation of a species, today we again recognize that sexual life starts very early But this realization should not have come as a surprise Juliet's e of 13

Beyond the realization of early sexuality, we notice that adolescents have e American is bound to have 37 sex partners in his or her lifetinored, and that half the population is involved in group sex Statistics tell us that 25 of the adult population uses pornography for arousal and another 30 uses contraptions bought in sex shops; 33- 1/3 of e e lasts 5 years; the open practice of homosexuality increases 15 annually Incest, bestiality, and sexual practices usually defined as perverse are reaching unheard of proportions

It's not that changes in sexual experience take place, but that practices known from the earliest of ti to the literate notion of freedooes, we do not knohat the impact of these sex practices will be Probably that is the most one can say in a context that celebrates perhest accoe our values and attitudes, and make many wonder about the miserable state of morality We already know about the cause and physical effects of AIDS We do not even knoonder what other diseases ht come upon humanity if the human relation with animals moves in the direction of bestiality ”Is this the price we pay for de a conservative leaning Enthusiasts celebrate an age of unprecedented tolerance, indulgence, and freedom from responsibility But no matter to which end of the spectrum one leans, it should be clear that these considerations are part of the pragmatics of sexuality in the civilization of illiteracy Shorter cycles are characteristic not only of production, but also of sexual encounters Higher speed (however one wants to perceive it), non-linearity, freedom of choice from many options, and the transcendence of determinism and clear-cut dualistic distinctions apply to sexuality as they apply to everything else we do

Although it is a unique experience, impossible to transmit or compare, and very difficult to separate from the individual, sex is widely discussed Media, politicians, and social scientists have transformed it into a public issue; hypocrites turn it into an object of derision; professionals in sexual disordersfroal dispute, y, art, sports, and so on One should see what is hly successful networked pages of pornographic es of scientific andto sexuality in its many forms of expression increase day by day Questions about sex have also extended to areas where the sexual seey, politics, the ed the world more than its inventors ever dreamed of, and ed part of the condition of the sexual

The abortion pill (with a name-RU486-that ree, as do ical discoveries conceived with the purpose of sexually sti sexual pleasure

Emancipation-social, political, economic, as well as emancipation of women, children, minorities, nations-has also had an impact on sexual relations As such, erip of literate norms and expectations Emancipation has reduced some of sexuality's inherent, and necessary, tension It freed the sexual experience from most of the constraints it was subjected to in a civilization striving for order and control Still, individual erotic experiences have often culminated not in the expected revelations, stis or not, but in deception, even desperation This is explained by the fact that, oal in itself, sexuality without the background of emotional contentment constitutes individuals as insular, alienated fro used but not fulfilled Lines of a similar sritten by opponents of sexual eestion of a price humans pay for excess These lines were articulated also by firm believers in tolerance, free spirits who hardly entertain the thought of punishment (divine or otherwise)

Concerns over human sexuality result from the role of scale and the erotic dinored S, but they also return a sense of care and belonging The broader the scale, the less restrictive the influence of others, but also the nition of individuality In the alopolis, the only limits to one's sexual wishes are the limits of the individual Nonetheless, at such a scale, individuality is continuously negated, absorbed in the anonymity of mediocre encounters and commercialism The realization that scale relates not only to how and how es in human interaction, but also to deeper levels of our existence is occasioned by the sexual experience of self-constitution in a framework of permissiveness that nullifies value The hu structure of our practical experiences affect drives, in particular the sexual drive, as well as reproduction, in a world subjected to a population explosion of exponential proportions

The entire evolution under consideration, with all its positive and negative consequences, has a degree of necessity which ill not understand better by si extreovernment could have prevented erotic ee affecting the human condition in its entirety The civilization of illiteracy is representative of this change insofar as it defines a content for hu those related to sexuality, which mark a discontinuity in sexual patterns sex drearams within which one can make love to a virtual animal, plant, to oneself, projected into the virtual space and time of less than clear distinctions bete were told is right and wrong