The Sex Card
nava April 29th, 2009
Is it just me or does it seem like the sex card is the permanent trump these days?
The other day I was flipping through a magazine and on the third page, there was an ad of a half-naked girl in a silver bikini and silver body paint staring back at me with a very come-hither look on her face. Guess what she was advertising: water. One of the most basic, natural things in creation, advertised by half-naked, silver-body-paint girl who had positioned the bottle very seductively near her mouth. Really? Is this supposed to entice me to buy water? I drink water. I’ve been drinking it since I was born. I don’t look like her. Neither will you. Realistically, anyone looking at the ad knows that, too. Yet, there must be an appeal; it must work on some level, or else every ad-campaign from “Got Milk” to “Axe Deodorant” to anything else you can think of wouldn’t objectify women and men to promote a product. Whether or not we actually engage in it, most of us are OD-ing on sex.
So where does the obsession even come from? There are lots of theories, I’m sure. I have my own. Every human being was created because of love and to love, and the highest physical expression of love is sex. But this is only true within its proper confines (i.e. marriage). When we separate it from this context, when we sexify everything from water to milk to hygiene products, what value does it hold? Suddenly what is meant to be, aside from the vehicle for procreation, a special act which deepens ties of intimacy and union between two committed individuals becomes trivial and mundane.
Unfortunately, the effects of sexification don’t stop at the depreciation of its own intrinsic value. We are told by the religious scriptures of the world’s major religions that we should not engage in sex until marriage. But, why? Shoghi Effendi explains that:
Briefly stated the Bahá’í conception of sex is based on the belief that chastity should be strictly practised by both sexes, not only because it is in itself highly commendable ethically, but also due to its being the only way to a happy and successful marital life.
I remember the first time I came across this quote. ”…the only way to a happy and successful marital life.” Bold statement. One I didn’t quite understand. I could wrap my mind around it having negative effects on my soul that I didn’t comprehend because the workings of the spiritual world are a complete mystery to me, anyway. But this implied that the reason wasn’t merely spiritual. That it wasn’t a matter of “have sex and you go straight to hell” but that this was also a practical law. Shoghi Effendi was warning us that engaging in sex outside of marriage would affect us within marriage. The reasons why sex outside of marriage when you are already married is wrong is obvious. It’s hard to paint adultery in a favorable light so I will assume that anyone reading this can also understand why fidelity and truthfulness would never allow for one to engage in intimate acts with anyone other than one’s spouse. But why not be allowed to have sex before we’ve made that commitment? How is that harmful?
When I tried to understand this law, it all came down to foundation. If you build a house on a cracked foundation, the chances that it will crumble are so much higher than if you build it on a firm one. Even though sex is a physical act, chastity is primarily a spiritual law. On at least one level, the protection in this law is abundantly clear to me. As God has designed us, He knows how we’re hard-wired. He knows what’s good for us, what will hurt us, and how we will react to different things. If He has ordained that we wait until marriage, perhaps it is in part because He knows that physical acts of intimacy bind us to one another emotionally in ways that are not meant to be broken; in ways that He did not design to be broken. So whether we engage in those acts casually, they still have an effect on us, and make it harder for us to be detached from one another, thereby often binding us to people who really aren’t right for us. Think what a thick veil sex becomes in the process of getting to know someone to determine if he or she is the right person for you. How many people stay in bad relationships, to the point of marrying the person, because the physical aspect blinds them completely. Sex is intoxicating. Why make a potentially life-altering, life-long decision while under the influence?
And then there’s just common sense. Human beings are creatures of habit. When we get used to sleeping with whomever we want whenever we want, when we never learn to develop self-control or discipline, and have never even tried to resist temptation, what’s magically going to enable us to do that once we’re married? Not a whole lot.
It’s no surprise then that the verity of that “bold statement” about the only way to a happy and successful marital life is everyday confirmed in the marriages crumbling all around us.
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Simply yet powerfully written! Thank you!!
This sentence was the focal point of the article for me:
“Why make a potentially life-altering, life-long decision while under the influence?”
Bravo!!!
Very profound and timely! Mirrors a conversation on the exact same topic I had with a dear friend last night. Thanks for sharing your reflections!
“…the only way to a happy and successful marital life.” Yes, indeed!
“And then there’s just common sense. Human beings are creatures of habit. When we get used to sleeping with whomever we want whenever we want, when we never learn to develop self-control or discipline, and have never even tried to resist temptation, what’s magically going to enable us to do that once we’re married?”
But there is an enormous swath between chastity before marriage and indiscriminate sleeping around, and in fact that is the space where all almost all modern Westerners live. Most moderns have sex outside of marriage, but within committed relationships, and there simply is no social scientific evidence that their later marriages suffer because of it, despite your statement otherwise. I worry when we as Baha’is paint this in such a black and white manner because, ultimately, it makes it very difficult to defend the efficacy of Baha’u'llah’s laws. If we want folks to think that Baha’i laws like chastity are good for people and good for the world we need rationales and arguments for chastity that are consonant with scientific evidence and people’s personal experiences. Our goal as Baha’is, ultimately, is to create new models of marriage more grounded in spiritual principles. Perhaps as that develops the link b/w chastity and good marriages will become clearer (and we as Baha’is have to patiently follow the laws until then), but for now its just not very strong. We risk looking naive and out of touch if we too strongly assert the link that most people know isn’t there
I wonder what age group you use to define where “most modern Westerns” live. Speaking from experience, a college campus and more recently teaching at a high school, unless the two campuses were anomalous, it seemed very very evident that more and more people in the rising generations do engage in sex at an early age and somewhat casually. It’s true that many people only had sex within their relationships, but their definition of a committed relationship was the next person they happened to be dating, and often those committed relationships would last just a few months until they were in the next one. Now, speaking in terms of more concrete data, surveys are often skewed and hard to rely on because it can very often depend on who’s doing the research work and if they have an agenda in mind, nontheless, I did a little research last night after reading your excellent, thought-provoking post, and here are a few statistics I found on how many marriages break up due to infidelity (since part of my point was that pre-marital sex, or just our general inundation of all-things sexual, breeds habits of infidelity):
-Recent studies reveal that 45-55% of married women and 50-60% of married men engage in extramarital sex at some time or another during their relationship (Atwood & Schwartz, 2002 – Journal of Couple & Relationship Therapy)
-About 60 percent of men and 40 percent of women will have an affair at some point in some marriage “Monogamy Myth”, Therapist Peggy Vaugn
-Conservative infidelity statistics estimate that “60 percent of men and 40 percent of women will have an extramarital affair. These figures are even more significant when we consider the total number of marriages involved, since it’s unlikely that all the men and women having affairs happen to be married to each other. If even half of the women having affairs (or 20 percent) are married to men not included in the 60 percent having affairs, then at least one partner will have an affair in approximately 80 percent of all marriages. With this many marriages affected, it’s unreasonable to think affairs are due only to the failures and shortcomings of individual husbands or wives.”
Note that the above adultry statistics of the prevalence of affairs were made more than a decade ago; so based on changes in society during the intervening years, the current percentage of the population who have had affairs is probably somewhat HIGHER. For instance, the continuing increase of women in the workplace and the increase of women having affairs on the Internet means that the numbers for women having affairs is probably similar to those for men—about 60%.
http://www.menstuff.org/issues/byissue/infidelitystats.html
Here is an article that offers points regarding the effects of chastity:
http://www.foreverfamilies.net/xml/articles/benefitsofchastity.aspx?&publication=full
And some studies on the effects of early sexual initiation on women:
Early sexual initiation was also associated with a number of behavioral problems. “Ignoring the age of the partners, the earlier a girl was when she first had intercourse, the greater her risk of suicide attempts, alcohol use, drug abuse, truancy and pregnancy,” Leitenberg says.
Psychology Today Magazine, Jul/Aug 2001
Last Reviewed 26 Sep 2005
Article ID: 2139
**Now I realize that these surveys don’t take into account whether or not the people had been sexually active before marriage, and perhaps there isn’t a link at all, but I did notice that the numbers of marriages where one partner engaged in extramarital sex was definitely on the rise. (Look at data from 1999 vs 2006 and already the percentages are higher.) And just looking around me, I see that the attitudes towards sex are more casual (ie sex outside of marriage more and more acceptable) with every generation. These two things hardly seem isolated from one another, perhaps the key idea being a casual attitude towards sex.
I often wonder if there is a link between sexual abuse and the casual relationship people have towards sex outside marriage? When you look at statistics which suggest 1:4 girls and 1:6 boys will be sexually abused before the age of 18, they’re learning the wrong things about sex from an early age! I’ve written a compilation on abuse and violence from the Baha’i Writings, which your readers might enjoy reading: http://www.susangammage.com/abuse-and-violence
Sing it sister! I agree with everything expressed. I went through the same thought process and reflected on the same quote and many others from the beloved Guardian about the concept of chastity. I grew up in the US where many of my peers in high school and college were engaging in promiscuous relationships thinking they can flip a switch and be chaste when they are married. May the realization come that we must start to live the life, today, we want to have and believe in rather than leave it another morrow.
Thank you for the link, Susan, and for the feedback everyone! I also just wanted to correct my previous comment where I said the statistics on infidelity where about “marriages that break up due to infidelity”. I misspoke. The data doesn’t indicate whether or not those marriages dissolved, just that they were plagued by at least one partner engaging in extramarital sex.
Your right Joe it isnt black and white and the Baha’i goal should be primarily to create marriages more based in spiritual principles and this will evolve over time. Chastity before marriage isnt the only grounds for creating a happy successful marriage. in fact, because most of my generation (I’m 50) didn’t practice chastity before marriage we should in that case all be divorced or unhappily married! thankfully that is not the case because chastity is only one aspect that MAY help improve marital happiness despite all the scaremongering and extreme pressure on this one aspect of a relationship. To prove the point I know of several couples who were chaste before marriage only to end in divorce after a couple of horrific decades. The emphasis for our youth should be on determining compatibility and attraction, both very important elements and trying their best to maintain chastity but in a balanced and relaxed way.
What a fantastic post, thanks a lot :¬)
If people are wanting to look into these themes in more depth, i have been reading quite a few things of late and the best two resources i have found so far are:
a) the excellent book “Conscious Courtship” by Raymond Switzer, a Baha’i psychologist, cannot recommend it enough:
http://www.bahaibookstore.com/productdetails.cfm?PC=7116
and b) this article on Baha’i library, a talk by Dr. Hossain Danesh on marriage and sexuality:
http://bahai-library.com/talks/marriage.sexuality.html
Peace!
Thanks, I’m trying to understand this whole Tiger Woods drama as it’s making me sick to my stomach.
Well said, everybody, well said.
Your analysis, conclusion, and clarity couldn’t be more spot on. Perhaps the next logical step from here would be to practically advise young Baha’is growing up in often less than helpful cultural contexts, from the west to Iran, on how to apply god’s teaching on pre-marital chastity in an unsympathetic world. Personally, such presents one of the most formidable challenges to my spiritual growth and I found your perspective insightful and reassuring.
There is something regarding to this in Carlos Castaneda’s literature. According to this, a link of flowing energy is established through the sexual act, and it will not break for 7 years.