I feel like this has its roots in the forever objectification of women and the treatment of us as chattel. Historically, men are literally given a woman in marriage and that entitles them to sex with her. The Western insistence that sex is only licit in marriage feeds this.
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Women historically have been treated as only valuable because you can have sex with them and have children to cement a male legacy. So women and sex are seen as this interchangeable object. The one is bound up in the other and only valuable because of this concept.
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And although women are treated ALMOST like whole people now, we haven’t changed our relationship to sex enough. That’s why people think they can earn or be owed sex. No one feels they are owed a good game of basketball, despite that being an activity that some people enjoy.
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I think that this - the objectification of sex - is something that we need to work on to move away from in order to stop this whole incel concept. It’s not a thing a person gives to another. It’s an activity that people participate in, often with other people.
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Also, my initial thoughts on concepts of romance, courtly love, and incels are here:https://goingmedievalblog.wordpress.com/2018/04/26/on-incels-and-courtly-love/ …
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Reminds me of a Decameron story: a promiscuous married woman argues that, since she has a greater supply of nookie than her husband can use, she should be able to distribute it as she pleases. Played for fun, but it does have that idea of sex as a "thing" to be given or taken.
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Ah the Decameron, my fav except from there is always ‘whereas a single cock is quite sufficient for ten hens, ten men are hard put to satisfy ten women’. This plays into a medieval idea of sex as an actual thing that has to be assuaged. It is its own thing with its own needs.
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Jerome on sex and women, for example, says '…women’s love in general is accused of ever being insatiable; put it out, it bursts into flame; give it plenty, it is again in need; it enervates a man’s mind, and engrosses all thought except for the passion which it feeds.'
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So yes, sex is this thing in the possession of women, in this case that you should be wary of, and to a certain extent, fear. Of course medieval people see women as MORE interested in sex than men, which is different to now.
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read Sex At Dawn by Ryan and Cacilde on the creation of the idea of scarcity and women’s sexuality as the foundation of patriarchal society. Destroying the bonding purpose of human sexual expression. It was purposefully commoditised
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An an historian of sex, I can assure you I have read it and it’s on my shelf.
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Oh great. Anywhere else I can learn more about the conversion from human sexual activity being an abundant act of bonding to controlled and scarce - especially women and LGBT folk?
@GoingMedieval -
As mentioned elsewhere for a theoretical evolutionary perspective Sex at Dawn by Ryan and Jethá is a good place to start. For you, “Sex and Difference in Ancient Greece and Rome” could be of interest. (Jstore link below). http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.3366/j.ctt1r24jz …
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Got a medieval view I love Evans’s edited volume “A cultural history of sexuality in the Middle Ages”. It hits a lot if point about difference.
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Thank you
@GoingMedieval -
Oh and anything by Ruth Mazzo Karras in medieval sexuality is amazing. Enjoy!
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The idea that women could be sexual subjects, that women could have sexual wants and needs that *aren't performative for men* has literally never occurred to them. Thus, for them sex is something men do *to* women, not something that people do *together*.
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I've been saying this for years! Sex ed (such as it is) in the US is based on this fallacy. It's all up to girls to be vigilant and abstinent because men are uncontrollable sex fiends who will reject them if they are not virginal.
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Yes yes yes yes all of this
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