thoughts on abortion and contraception

In Rome & Jerusalem: The clash of ancient civilizations, historian Martin Goodman discusses abortion among the Romans. It seems that there were many pregnancies but few children. Due partly to child morality no doubt, but also to terminations, a subject little discussed in Roman writings. They seemed to treat it as 'late contraception', but it was no easier a subject for them than it is for us today. 

The Roman physician Soranus of Ephesus, who wrote a still-extant work on obstetrics and gynaecology, was descriptive rather than prescriptive:

A woman who intends to have an abortion must, for two or three days beforehand, take long baths and eat little food and use emollient pessaries and abstain from wine. You then need to open a vein and extract a good deal of blood.

So bloodletting wasn't just a curse of the eighteenth century [there's lots of it in the Marquis de Sade, surprise surprise] - in fact it was popular throughout the ancient world, even among the ancient Mesopotamians. A time span of thousands of years in spite of its inefficaciousness in nearly all cases.  

The interesting thing though is how familiar the Roman attitude is to a modern secularist. Abortion isn't treated lightly, but it is tolerated, and the choice largely if not entirely belongs to the woman [a noteworthy point considering that Roman women certainly didn't enjoy the freedoms they now have in the West].

The modern anti-abortion hysteria to be found in some benighted circles is due of course to the religious poison. The Catholic Church position on contraception seems to be that spermicide is infanticide, essentially a form of abortion. Certainly Mother Teresa denounced contraception as the moral equivalent of abortion. Every sperm is sacred, so she must have found it terribly lamentable that 50 to 500 million sperm cells die after every male ejaculation, as a matter of course. Now if we can work out how many ejaculations take place every minute around the globe....

Whichever way you look at it, the Catholic position is laughable. They've never quite been able to come to terms with the incredible wastefulness of the evolved reproductive process. Sex is murder! Think of all those poor dying spermy things on your hanky, your thighs, on your face, in your throat and other nooks and crannies... 

All the same it really is remarkable to think of this wastefulness. Fifty to five hundred million sperm cells released in one ejaculation, with only one having a chance to fertilize the egg. Say a couple are trying to make a child. Many ejaculations might occur before the pregnancy occurs - and then of course they might continue after the pregnancy, with none of those sperm cells having a chance. If we say, conservatively, 100 million dead sperm cells per ejaculation, and with our not so very horny young couple, one ejaculation a night, and they take two weeks to make a baby, and then go on fucking at more or less the same rate for another three months... Let's see, that's about 10.5 billion dead sperm cells! And that's just from one guy for a period of three and a half months!

So there you go - sex really is mass murder on a monstrous scale, and God made it that way.  

private matters

clothed or naked?

Bonobos masturbate in public, or in the open. Do bonobos ever show shyness in their sexual practices? I'll ask questions on this. 

I'm interested in the fact that human sexual activity largely occurs in private, though there are occasions, in subcultures, when it occurs before a selected public, and becomes more thrilling for that.

Humans have often been described as the most social animals, a fact upon which civilization depends. Less acknowledged is that we're the most private animals. Cats like to go to semi-private places to defecate, and cover up their doings. We've built structures in which we're surrounded on all sides, where we make ourselves totally invisible to our peers, and our doings our flushed magically away out of sight, out of mind. And we have boudoirs for the other thing. 

The private, enclosed nature of the sexual act adds to ignorance, especially among the young. Think too of the general attitude to nudity. Interesting to think that we're the only species for which the term nudity has any relevance. These days, more often among enlightened parents, at least little boys and girls have baths together. I never had a bath with my sister as a kid. With my brother, yes.  

Seeing another's genitalia stimulates interest in your own. That's if you see them. I mentioned bathing with my brother as a young kid, but I don't recall looking at or seeing his genitals. I suppose I wasn't interested at the time, and it took me quite a while, I suspect longer than average, before I became much interested in my own uncircumcized equipment.  

Only the other day, in the changing room of the public baths/swimming pool, I found myself taking a surreptitious interest in other men's genitals. What little I saw reassured me somewhat. I noticed at least one man going very much out of his way to conceal his cock on coming out of the shower. Was he ashamed of the size of his equipment, or was it some more general shame about nudity, or the exposure of the private parts? If so, was it his upbringing or culture or religion?

It's an odd scenario, a place where men come together in nudity, briefly, in a society where public nudity is generally unacceptable. It's hard to carry off such moments with nonchalance. 

I recall, years ago, seeing a man in this sort of setting, walking freely and it seemed proudly through the change rooms, in spite of having very little in the way of tackle, as the benighted classes call it. I was full of admiration of course, but I also wondered - did he know? Was it bravado? Was he simply beyond such juvenile anxieties? In any case I wished I could be so struttingly unconcerned. Not that my tackle is small of course - my released penis sweeps menacingly across the floor like an anaconda on steroids. 

Given the complexities of public nudity alone, it's hardly surprising that the human sex world is a threadless labyrinth.

spermatorrhea

hands off cocky

The above term was once used to refer to the results of masturbation without quite adverting to the activity itself, as if it was something that occasionally happened only inadvertantly. In those days masturbation could never be sanctioned as a pleasurable practice. Note the male bias in the term: female masturbation was probably considered as impossible as lesbianism.

In this brief history of masturbation, it's suggested that the ancient taboos against masturbation, and homosexuality and other non-reproductive forms of sex, probably derive from the need to expand the population of the group. An evolutionary trait, which now is no longer necessary. I wonder about this. A local group or tribe evolves, what, a gene that influences the consciousness [the individual or collective consciousness?] to save energy, or indeed sperm, for only reproducive purposes. 

Of course dogs, cats and buffalo don't require such an evolutionary trait because they don't masturbate or have oral or anal sex. Though bonobos do masturbate [themselves and others]. The point being that homo sapiens must have evolved, first, to realize the possibilities of non-reproductive sex. The pleasures of such activities. 

Sex is pleasurable. But this isn't a simple statement, by any means. It's safe to say sex is pleasurable for a chimp, a bonobo. But for a dog? A bird? A spider? What we're talking about here of course is sensation and its development through species. Humans have more complex sensations of everything, hence of sex. Overwhelmingly that sex sensation needs to be pleasurable, to get us to do it, to seek it, to go forth and multiply. Our sophisticated consciousness  allows us, though, to separate the pleasure, and the means of obtaining that pleasure from reproduction. Think then of the role of memory. Once you've experienced sex, you can bring it to mind, relive it, then learn how to stimulate yourself the same way, without the need of another.

The curbing of such wastefulness of sperm, of fluids, of energy, how exactly does that come about? Do we start by chiding ourselves, or others?

Masturbation is much more acceptable now but not entirely [we may feel more guilty about the sexual fantasies we indulge in while masturbating than about the masturbation itself, especially if those fantasies involve people we know, but then the guilt can add to the excitement]. Bill Clinton apparently sacked the US surgeon-general in 1994 for claiming that masturbation is something that is part of humanity and something that perhaps should be taught. Perhaps this highlights Clinton's own confused perceptions about sex. More likely it was a kowtowing to that country's many conservative wankers.

a voyeur's intro

This blog is based on the principle that, if you're not getting any, or not likely to get any, that shouldn't be a barrier to your exploring the most exhilarating and fascinating of activities, and thus gaining pleasure, and profit, in your own way, without, hopefully, over-emphasising its importance and even its pleasurableness, in the manner of a spectator looking through the keyhole at parties he'll never get invited to. Though of course, the very focus will inevitably raise human sexuality above its context, and could create problems.