[UA] Re: TABOO

[Timothy Ferguson]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: ua-admin at lists.uchicago.edu [mailto:ua-admin at lists.uchicago.edu]On
> Behalf Of David M Jacobs

> 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.

You mean they are first mentioned in the "West"?

I presume you mean that the Levictine rules are meant to separate the Jews
from the Egyptians and the Canaanites, those who owned the land they are
taking over, in 18:3?  That seems overly generous an interpretation, to say
"It wasn't that they disliked these acts."  One does not give laws for acts
which one's subjects seem unlikely to commit.  Indeed, God clearly says
"these acts were committed before you", which may mean "by your ancestors."
I mean, is there a law which says "It's against the law to nail your penis
to the fridge", no, there isn't.

> It
> was more a point of nascent nationalism that originally forbade
> them;

Levictus 20:13 describes lying with another man as a "abomination" and
proscribes the death penalty.  That's not nascent nationalism - because
there are other abominations which are punished with social exclusion.  To
believe so is to ignore the commentary works of both the Jewish and
Christian religions.

 they
> are explicitly mentioned as sins because they aren't Hebrew
> practices.

Er, this is the passage that defines what a Hebrew practice is.  How can you
have "Hebrew practices" before this?

  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.

According to the Israelites, who then took it upon themselves to kill the
Canaanites and rule their land?  Yep, I'm finding that convincing.  The
references are no more convincing that mare-feis rites in Ireland.

> In Ancient Greece, hebephilia was more-or-less the norm.

Nice euphemism, which doesn't mean what you think it does, but absolutely
false.  Paedophilia was a sort of fashion that waxed and waned in ancient
Greece.  Think about how long a time you have, and how many communities you
have.

> 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.

Also not true.  It was perfectly legal to sodomise the Emperor provided he
didn't mind.  Also, the Emperor had no right to rape people.

I'd note that although I can't think of a law against it in the prechristian
empire, this does not mean that Roman military camps were like the YMCA.
There was a certain social stigma, which is why Suetonis makes very sure
that those of the Emperors he didn't like are noted as gay.  Those people he
really didn't like, like Julius, are sluts.

> Vikings, so I
> believe, only looked down on being the "submissive" partner, because it
> meant voluntarily assuming an "inferior" position.

This is true, AFAIK.

> 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.")

That's Margaret Mead's "Coming of Age in Samoa".

> 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.

Which to me looks a very diplomatic number for a natural process.

> 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.

Fundies clearly believe that God creates abominable people - genetics is no
excuse in the Bible.  Vengeance being delivered unto the son of the sinner
for seven generations and all that?

[Snip.]

> 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.
>

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

That's not due to inbreeding (we can trace the aberrant gene to a single
individual - Victoria).   The problem there is that if you had that aberrant
gene turn up in a normal population, the family's members would have just
died off.  They'd have been unmarriagble, most of the women would have died
in puberty, and the men would bleed to death due to the daily accidents of a
life of toil.  This isn't to do with breeding - its do with a lack of
selection pressure.

I'd also note that the common folk were just as inbred as the nobility in
many places.  Not marrying your cousin first starts looking a bit nasty in
"Jude the Obscure" by Hardy (according to Poole, anyway, in "What Jane
Austen Ate and Charles Dickens Knew" which is a fantastic book for 1890s CoC
campaigns.).  In Dickens bonking your cousin, particularly if she was the
heiress of the family's senior line, was so acceptable it was even more
expected than marrying a stranger.  Cousins are like that all the way back
to Arthurian romance - woman you know, but since they are family, you don't
have to get through the defensive ring of the family to have access to their
affections.

> 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?

Only for really careful definitions of hebephillia.  What the Greeks were
advocating in the Symposium, for example, is basically paedophilia, but
since its not paedophilia in the modern sense it get euphemised.

>  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.

It also needs a concept of adulthood that doesn't include a 13 year old
(Juliet in Shakespeare, for example).

> On the subject, though, I hear that the US Supreme Court is reviewing new
> censorship laws with regard to depictions of underage sexuality.

The review is complete, isn't it?  CGI kiddie porn is allowed under the
First Amendment (over there - here of course its not allowed at all.)



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