[UA] Re: TABOO

[David M Jacobs]

At 09:46 PM 20/04/02 -0700, Paul Wrider wrote:

>Taboos are interesting things, in that they (usually) spring from 
>important rules, but then stick around even when they don't apply anymore, 
>for example:
>
>masturbation, homosexuality, etc. are bad because they keep you from 
>producing more healthy people that can continue our way of life.

Actually, taboos against homosexuality and bestiality (at least in 
Judeo-Christianity) don't appear to have moralistic roots; the moral and 
other angles seem to be later rationalisations.  Only later in the Bible 
are we told that God hates gays for their "immoral" acts.

IIRC, sexual taboos are first mentioned in chapter 18 of Leviticus, and are 
cited as examples of the practices of other (ie, non-Hebrew) peoples. It 
was more a point of nascent nationalism that originally forbade them; they 
are explicitly mentioned as sins because they aren't Hebrew practices.  For 
example, homosexuality was practiced in Egypt (archaeologists even 
discovered the tomb of a gay couple, who today would have been termed a 
hairdresser and an interior designer -- things don't change much, do they? 
#%o)  ), and bestiality formed part of the fertility rites in Canaan.

In Ancient Greece, hebephilia was more-or-less the norm.  In Rome, 
homosexuality was an expression of dominance; no one could cornhole the 
emperor, but he could do as he damn well pleased to others.  Vikings, so I 
believe, only looked down on being the "submissive" partner, because it 
meant voluntarily assuming an "inferior" position.

OTOH, some Pacific Islander societies that were cited by certain feminist 
anthropologists as "gay-friendly" matriarchies in fact turned out to be 
just humouring researchers; the concept apparently hadn't crossed their 
minds.  (Imagine an alien walking up to you and saying, "We have sex with 
our spaceships all the time.  You have sex with your spaceships, too, 
right?"  Most people would shrug and mumble, "Um, yeah, sure.")

Then again, there are other Islander cultures where transvestism is an 
accepted part of life, although I'm not sure what sexual role they take.

I'm curious to see what effect science has (if any) on societal taboos 
against homosexuality.  It's been strongly suspected for some time that 
about 50% of gay men carried a "gay gene" on their X chromosome, although 
the specific group of five genes has only been discovered in recent 
months.  It's also been known for about a decade that about 50% of gay men 
(possibly the same 50%) have structural differences in the hippocampus, 
part of the brain that influences sexuality.  All in all, it seems to be a 
50/50 nature/nurture split.

Still, I doubt that hard science would convince a hardcore fundy that if 
gay men _are_ an abomination in the eyes of God, then they're an 
abomination that He created.  I'd like to see the look on said fundy's 
face, though.

>What's interesting about  canibalism and incest is that the reasons not to 
>do them are still valid - eating your own species means you probably 
>murdered them, and even if you didn't doing it can give you weird diseases 
>like BSD and the like (biologically we're not built to consume our own)).

Prion diseases are a big problem with cannibals.  Kuru (AKA laughing 
sickness) has a 100% mortality rate and is only transmitted by eating the 
brain of someone else with the disease.

(In case you're wondering "which came first, the cannibal or the kuru?" my 
guess is that it probably originally arose as a result of aberrations in 
soil chemistry in some part of the New Guinea highlands, much as has been 
found to spark spontaneous BSE outbreaks in other parts of the 
world.  Unusual ratios of metals in the soil are taken up by plants; when 
cattle (or humans, for that matter) eat these plants, latent prions in the 
brain turn malignant.)

>Incest in close family members, especially in multiple generations can 
>cause huge genetic abberations.  Just look at the levels of hemophilia 
>amongst the royalty compared with the common folk.

I've often wondered about this in my own family, given the number of 
heritable nastinesses that we seem to fall prey to: haemophilia, history of 
mental illness and heart disease, sarcoidosis, shortsightedness, penicillin 
allergy, various minor skeletal deformities, etc.  There must have been one 
hell of a family love-in several generations back.

I'm curious, has pedophilia always been considered res ipsa a crime, ie, an 
abominable act separate to fornication and other taboos?  There's always 
the element of trauma, but it seems that modern abhorrence for the act 
revolves around the notion of loss of innocence -- itself a concept which 
really only dates to the 19th Century.

On the subject, though, I hear that the US Supreme Court is reviewing new 
censorship laws with regard to depictions of underage sexuality.  Under the 
laws (as they stand), works of literature such as Romeo & Juliet could be 
banned.  If you read between the lines, then you get the impression that 
various passages in the Bible might be deemed a little risque as well.  It 
almost puts pay to the notion in Brave New World that the Bible is a 
"pornographic old book".  #%o)

>So please, I beg of you all - if you must have sex with your family, have 
>safer sex with your family.  It will make the summer picnics much less tense.

I just got off the phone to my cousin; we went out and steadily became 
plastered last night.  Whilst talking to a friend of hers who was there, 
she mentioned that I went home with her last night.  Her friend, of course, 
got entirely the wrong idea.  We're a close family, but we're not _that_ close.

It just reminds me of the joke about the hillbilly couple who get married, 
and on their wedding night, the bride tells the groom that she's a 
virgin.  The groom storms out of the hotel room and makes his way back 
home.  When he arrives, the groom's father asks him what went wrong, and so 
the groom tells him.

"You did the right thing, son," the father says.  "If she's not good enough 
for her own family, she's certainly not good enough for ours."

>PS:  UA link - would Pornomancy with a family member increase the power 
>level?  It seems like what you're giving up (no pun intended) is  even 
>more important.

There was one CoC scenario in which the antagonist regularly used a Tantric 
ritual (called "The Keenness of Two Alike") to enhance his faculties; it 
required that his partner be a blood relative, in this case, his 
daughter.  I'd just love to see a late-night infomercial entitled "Boost 
Your Brainpower by Fucking Your Children!"  #%o)



David M Jacobs
dmjacobs at zipworld.com.au
http://www.zipworld.com.au/~dmjacobs/
ICQ UIN: 17027598

"'Kevin,' David interrupted, 'what the Germans should have done
was show the Russians a dead cat and ask them to explain it.'

"'That would have stopped the Soviet offensive right there,' I said.
"Zhukov would still be trying to account for the cat's death.'"

— from Valis, by Philip K Dick


_______________________________________________
UA mailing list
UA at lists.uchicago.edu
http://lists.uchicago.edu/mailman/listinfo/ua