It’s About Making Babies!

NML on Baggage Reclaim writes about “Trading on your looks & sex appeal” as a way to avoid or sabotage substantial relationships. One particular point caught my attention.

You don’t go in focused on sex or your sex appeal and then wonder why they don’t appreciate more substantial things about you.

General comment

We all know that many of us really do go in as sexual animals, and them hope a relationship is gifted to us. We all like repeats with wonderful partners.

That recipe for disaster is potent – and deceptive.

Substance of sex appeal

Anyway, what caught my eye was that sex and sex appeal are described as somehow “lesser” than character, morals, self, accomplishments, material possessions, pets, ability to grow prize-winning azaleas or whistle through your teeth, etc.

What is important?

What is important depends a bit on what you do, to get together with someone. Look and act like a stripper – you get a strip club customer, someone interested in public “intimacy”, group activities, the appearance of sex (not necessarily a gift for sexual encounters), someone likely expecting to trade out for sex in a straight dollar value manner. Look and act like a grocer, you get someone interested in stores, or groceries, or management, or .. Look and act like a woman interested in a home, you might get someone interested in a home.

Respect yourself and others, choose to associate only with honest and honorable people, and you find yourself in respectful, honest company. Show by word and by action what is important – and you avoid those that don’t measure up.

Confront inappropriate behavior and disrespect, and you make a place in your life and relationship for respect and disciplined behavior.

So, sexy is wrong. Right?

Maybe. Definitely, maybe.

See, sex is a strong part of what binds couples into a mating or marriage. Not as a means to lure a partner, not as a means to reward or punish desired or undesired behavior.

Sex is a complex interaction of hormones and reactions to sights and sounds and tastes and .. hormones. We adjust, physically, to those in our lives. Shared breaths begin the exchange of pheromones and hormones. Kissing, skin contact from holding hands to touching faces, etc. continue this intimate exchange. We interact with our partner, and we adjust and adapt to them.

Hopefully the encounters are mostly favorable and enjoyed. We all tend to repeat what we enjoy. This has resulted in perpetuation of the species (sex and babies), good work ethics, discipline, civilization, also lawlessness, war, and other addictions. So we need to enjoy intimacy with our partner prospect – or we need a different partner prospect.

The trick is to pick an acceptable intimate partner, without letting sex interfere with setting boundaries and rejecting unsuitable candidates.

Don’t settle for less than a suitable partner candidate.

If the respect is there with someone, but no “spark”, they may be a great neighbor or teacher or friend.

If someone is easy to get to know, funny, and hangs out at the coolest places – run and hide, this is a sex predator with advanced skills in winning bed partners. Or maybe just a clumsy, shallow wannabe. In either case, they are unlikely to be interesting for long, and unlikely to be interested in any kind of real relationship. And will abuse your trust and respect, and deceive you about themselves and about you.

It all needs to be there.

The dispute

So my only quarrel with NML’s statement, really, is that sex and sex appeal aren’t lesser concerns than any other facet of a partner prospect that must be suitable, for a reasonable chance at a lasting relationship. Just don’t let the sex go to your head, influence your decisions (except about sex), or obscure anything unsuitable.

Sex?!?

I, for one, do it because it is a helluva lot of fun

Kira writes “Why have sex?” on 20-Forty.com. As she states above, mostly for self-enjoyment. Recreation.

Basics

Me, the model I use is the prehistoric hunter-gatherer village. What got humankind from then to now?

Babies. Babies, and families to raise them, and communities for mutual defense and to share risks and shortages. Nations organized communities for defense, to join together for bigger projects – roads, and anti-bandit patrols, and bridges, and water projects. Armies, to defend and to whack away at enemies and bandits.

And to have more fun in life.

Patriarchal religion vs. pagan reverence for life

So is sex recreation for the individual, or is it an expression of magic and mystical powers that drove the Christian church to develop binding rites to seal that power away from the woman’s use, to be available for the patriarchal church’s use (marriage, chastity, and monogamy)?

Social rules vs. natural inclination

Our bodies from ancient days have been drawn to copulate (have sex, Kira). Because babies often resulted, that was an important survival trait. We are still powerfully drawn to engage in sexual congress. The sexual stimulation is an avalanche of hormonal reactions, and we are driven to repeat the experience time and again. As Kira mentions, “a helluva lot of fun”.

In today’s culture we compromise many of our natural inclinations, urges and needs and desires our bodies express. We teach our young to use the bathroom, out of sight of others. We teach our young to play nicely, when it seems hunting-type “bash and whack” skills are more normal. We teach our kids to obey authority, and define discipline in their lives. Most Judeo-Christian faiths hold sex to be a sacred act, between couples that have performed a sanctified marriage rite. Many other religions hold sex to be a sacred act, capable of enabling creative energies and power and majyk. For many, sex is natural, as companionable as a smile, as fraught with meaning as a handshake.

Stir the gene pool

In some cultures, men encouraged their women folk to sleep with travelers. For remote communities, this was an act of hospitality, and a way to enrich a dangerously confined gene pool, resulting in genetic variety and healthier babies. And, likely, encouraging the traveler to return with outside news and goods.

Rebelling against authority

Today in America, there is a very real rationale driving folk to have sex – to rebel against authority. This has been going on on the national stage since the 1960′s. Another prime driver is to sell beer and cars. Commercials that use sex and innuendo to sell products perpetuate a myth that the products – and responsible people – are intended to create sexual opportunities.

Build the next generation army

If you read the ancient philosophy of Socrates through the dialogues of Plato, in “the Symposium” – a drinking/debating forum), Socrates lauds the bliss and heartbreak of love (between a man and a boy), and mentions the law of the land that required every man to take a wife (obviously not his first love, since she isn’t a boy) and produce sons for the army. They were always going to war, so like the Old Testament of the Bible, the government and Church were really strict to produce as many sons for the army as possible. Recall at the time that one of the tactics of a conquering army was to kill the men of the conquered nation, and rape the women. This destroyed the new land’s ability to raise an army and rebel, “soiled” the women so no one else would take their part, and mixed bloodlines for the next generation so the new land would quickly assimilate into the conquering nation. Yes, an act of birth was an act of war, in one way or another.

And it still is. I question someone that stands and shouts, “I support our troops” or ” I am a patriot” – that isn’t raising sons and daughters for the next generation’s army. Look around – other nations are building their armies, big time.

Why have sex?

I think the reason to have sex is primarily to bind a family together. That might be a couple, they might or might not be of child-bearing age or inclination. A home and family is a social construct of love and support. Because we use sex organs for sexual intercourse, I keep coming back to the reason our bodies are capable of sex and drawn to it, is about procreation. Making babies. Advertisers preach that sex is about selling products, about exerting power over others. But the enduring message is about relationships, families, communities, nations – worlds.

And building families and communities and nations is a very good reason to have sex. Did you choose your partner to achieve that goal?