Right now I am working on a paper on the topic of sexual ethics and particularly the different periods of history (in the West) and how cultural/religious opinions have altered man's feelings towards this serious relation.
While doing this, and talking with others about this, I had an epiphany or something like that. On the topic of birth control the world seems to be divided into two camps, one sees birth control as woman's liberation from men, as finally equalizing the sexes and permitting sex to be a show of equality. The other camp sees birth control as a great evil that has loosened the responsibility of sex and made it an activity, something to be done destroying the seriousness of this relation.
I do not believe that either is fully right or fully wrong. On birth control permitting equality I would like to respond that sexual activity - with or without birth control - should always be done within the realm of equality, of seeking the "human being" (as Rilke demanded) within the person of the opposite gender. On the raw physicality of it though women who use birth control will not have as high a rate of pregnancy and that does irrefutable equalize the results of sex. As to the opinion that birth control as loosened the responsibility of sex I agree, it has, and in many ways it has done more to divide men and women than before. Now, pregnancy (especially for teens) does not result in marriage to the extent that it did in the past putting a greater responsibility upon the mother than the father. This I believe can be linked to birth control, especially the pill, which is predominantly seen as the woman's responsibility. Marriage was the most sure means of ensuring that the male take responsibility for the child, and now while we have the court system it does not have a 100% success rate for controlling the phenomenon of "dead beat dads".
Yet thinking about the spiritual side of man while birth control can have the effect of misusing and exploiting others in the search for sexual pleasure - ultimately squandering this spiritual connection between men and women, it also can have a positive effect on man.
Birth control now allows man to move his sexual relations and desires outside of realm of the purely physical. Now the decision to engage in sex, or not to engage in sex, is a topic purely and solely for man's inner struggle, pushing him to do more to relate himself to himself. To discover what it is that motivates him, and where it is exactly that his moral decisions dwell. It now allows him to seriously challenge his conclusions and to what extent he is influenced by custom, religion, culture, or fear of other's opinions about him.
This is not to say that within the masses this is the result. In fact, statistically, it is not, but now because of birth control mans decisions can be a purely moral one. If man is constantly in a state of self searching, a natural state without distractions, he would be using the spiritual debate behind sex to learn his value*. In doing this the decisions may vary, no two people are the same, yet without the concern of pregnancy his decisions would be him projecting who he is onto the external world, and not letting the external world project who he is into him. Birth control would be supporting the higher spiritual in man, forcing him to search himself. Birth control then would build man's internal spiritual strength and not the animal.
(please note that by man or he or himself I mean both men and women)
*this is not a comment making a claim that there are no objective values, in deed there may be, but for a person to know this they can not take it as an assumption or else the word value would more accurately be convention. To know even if there are objective values one must find them aligning with his inner spiritual self because if they are objective then this would be natural anyway and grant them a more fundamental strength.
Katy, I like this. It reminds me of an issue that might seem, at first thought, to be a completely different subject, but which I believe is very connected.
ReplyDeleteInterestingly enough, back in the early 70's, when I was intensely into the feminist movement, I felt a twinge of concern over the direction of that movement under it's popular leadership at that time. I wondered if reason and depth of thinking would prevail and woman would be able to project more of the goodness and refinement of womanhood onto the world, or whether the crudity and ugliness of the world would project itself onto her instead, through an ignorant adoption a new "manized" womanhood. In short, I wondered whether women would adopt their own version of the very things that drive manhood into the ground and snuff out it's potential.
In the end I think the feminist movement was good. It took off the external shackles and allowed woman the possibility to profoundly influence the world around them. However side by side with this elevated sense, is exactly what I feared; a state of womanhood engaged in a promiscuity that flatly denies our incredible heritage and gifts in favor of a state even worse than the men who crawl into it's special hell.
MBE, back in the late 1800's perhaps had a similar sentiment. When speaking of the evils which kept women from the full potential to govern themselves and aide the world she said:
"If the elective franchise for women will remedy the evil without encouraging difficulties of greater magnitude, let us hope it will be granted. A feasible as well as rational means of improvement at present is the elevation of society in general and the achievement of a nobler race for legislation, — a race having higher aims and motives." 63:20
In the same way, birth control may indeed have the potential to be a step up for us as a species. We have a chance to lift the world to a higher expression if as you say, man gets busy "projecting who he is onto the external world, and not letting the external world project who he is into him, then birth control would be supporting the higher in man." The question is, will we do it or will we dip deeper into that special hell I was talking about?
Good topic for discussion.
Glo