Extended Essay
John
Miller
Forbidden
Knowledge
Professor
Philip Jenks
12:30 –
1:45
Outline
Thesis
Statement – In an earlier time, in the dawn of the new world, when the western
civilizations were considered to be more conservative, their respective societies
had been faced with the dilemma of choosing between the pursuit of their sexual
urges or abstaining from them. Humanity, in this realm of the world, had been
brought up that it is both morally and spiritually ethical to remain firm in
resisting these temptations. However, we are all only born human and we are, at
heart, sexual beings. It’s completely natural to feel these sexual urges and
want to act on them.
When did
the realization take place, in this area of the world, that it was a moral
imperative, to try and separate us from our sexual desires? Where exactly did
key people in history bravely declare, “Enough!”? Leading to courageous
exploration into a topic deemed so inappropriate, that even one’s casual
thought of it meant severe punishment.
What sort of effect, from these findings, will this have on western
culture as a whole? Will it lead to a better outlook of a topic that generally
is looked at as improper discussion in public settings?
I The
Arguments For Repression Of Sexual Desires
1)
Fictional Stories For
Elective Abstinence
a)
Pan And Syrinx
b)
Gustave Flaubert’s A
Sentimental Education
2)
Organizations Against Sexual
Literature
a)
The Catholic Church
b)
Index Librorum Prohibitorum
c)
France’s Bibliotheque
Nationale
3)
The Inquisition
4)
Punishments For Sodomy
5)
Andreas’ The Art Of Courtly
Love
6)
Judicial Courts’ Rulings In
Favor Of Blocking Access To Sexual Materials
7)
Ted Bundy Placing Blame On
Sexual Literature
II The
Arguments For Knowledge Of Sexual Desires
1)
Civilizations Before The Rise
Of Christianity
a)
Mesopotamia
b)
The Greeks’ Lifestyles
2)
Eighteenth Century French
Pornography
3)
The Exploits Of The Marquis
De Sade
III
United States’ Findings On Sexual Knowledge In The Twentieth Century
1)
Attorney General’s Commission
On Pornography
a)
1970 Report
b)
1986 Report
2)
William Stayton’s Views On
Sexuality And Religion
3)
Roger Shattuck’s Point On Sex
Improving Culture
In an earlier time, in the
dawn of the new world, when the western civilizations were considered to be
more conservative, their respective societies had been faced with the dilemma
of choosing between the pursuit of their sexual urges or abstaining from them.
Humanity, in this realm of the world, had been brought up that it is both
morally and spiritually ethical to remain firm in resisting these temptations.
However, we are all only born human and we are, at heart, sexual beings. It’s
completely natural to feel these sexual urges and want to act on them.
When did the realization take place, in this area of the
world, that it was a moral imperative to try and separate us from our sexual
desires? Where exactly did key people in history bravely declare, “Enough!”,
leading to courageous exploration into a topic deemed so inappropriate that
even one’s casual thought into it meant severe punishment. What sort of effect,
from these findings, will this have on western culture as a whole? Will it lead
to a better outlook of a topic that is generally looked at as improper
discussion in public settings? I hope to shed some further light on these
questions as I make my way through to understanding the struggle to acknowledge
this forbidden topic. And the reasoning behind some of the fears that developed
from the mere mention of this subject, leading to information being censored by
religious sects and government organizations.
Elective, or self-imposed, abstinence is one reason some
would choose to refrain from participating in sexual encounters. This is due to
many factors. Perhaps from a trauma suffered earlier in someone’s life. This
could result in a gigantic phobia directed towards sex. Or possibly, one was
brought up to regard sex as a sacred act that you don’t enter into lightly.
Waiting for the right someone you care deeply about and want to share this gift
with. Another explanation is a person was brought up to believe that sex is a
great sin and considered extremely dirty.
The story of Pan and Syrinx is an example of elective
abstinence. Syrinx was a woodland nymph who resides in Arcadia. She had many
male suitors vying for her affections. She avoided them at all costs in an
attempt to remain a virgin and be compared to the pureness of the goddess
Diana. (Shattuck 110)
Pan, god of fields and forest, saw Syrinx one day and was
immediately smitten. She, in turn though, rebuked him and escaped into the forest.
She ran until she was forced to stop by the River Ladon. As Pan drew nearer,
she beseeched the other wood nymphs to save her. They granted her request by
changing her into tall, riverbank reeds. Upon arriving at the river, Pan made
an attempt to hold Syrinx but it was to no avail. She was completely
transformed by this time. Pan was amazed at Syrinx’s disappearance and the
beautiful sounds made by the reeds impressed him. He decided to fashion a
flute, which he named Syrinx in honor of her. (Shattuck 110)
Syrinx was not Pan’s only love interest. He also pursued
Echo, another woodland nymph. She too rejected him and ran away. His anger over
this was so great, that he incited a group of shepards to rip her to pieces.
The only thing that was left was her voice (Morford &Lenadon 298).
I recognize immediately how Syrinx was attempting to stay
the course for her ambitions. She desired a somewhat higher level of
consciousness. Being courted, wed, and made love to would have, in her eyes,
ruined her ambitions. Shattuck was correct in not going so far as to call it
sublimation. It would not have suited the context of the story. As for Echo, it
was a just a case of Pan not being attractive enough for her.
Gustave Flaubert’s A Sentimental Education also
serves to further define the position of elective abstinence. It tells the
story of Frederic Moreau and Madame Arnoux, and how they failed to capitalize
on revealing their feelings for each other in their younger years. (Shattuck
135)
Skip ahead several years and we find that Madame Arnoux has
married but time has not been good to her husband. He is in a state of
deterioration. Frederic, meanwhile, has allowed himself to sink slowly into a
state of lethargy. One night though, Madame Arnoux comes to him and they mutually
confess their feelings for each other. However, towards the end of their
meeting, all is not well. Frederic doesn’t want to taint the younger, more
beautiful image he has of her in his mind. He uncomfortably pulls away from her
and they say their goodbyes. This final action clearly warrants elective
abstinence on Frederic’s part. (Shattuck 135)
Entire organizations have also made monumental attempts at
smothering, as much as they could anyways, people’s attempts at obtaining sexual
forbidden knowledge. The Catholic Church is one such entity. Once the printing
press was invented, they realized the masses could now have the opportunity to
learn to read and think for themselves. They set about creating an organization
to regulate what they felt was acceptable reading material. (Shattuck 27)
The Church supported organization was called the Index
Librorum Prohibitorum, or List Of Prohibited Books. From this, the church
hoped it could have power over what they considered to be acceptable. It not
only served to suppress erotic literature but books on science and free
thinking as well. Fortunately, the Index rarely destroyed literary
works. Scholars, though, were the only ones with access to the written word.
(Shattuck 27)
Sodomy was considered an unspeakable, unholy crime by papal
authorities during the Reformation Period. The punishment for committing this
crime usually was death, at least in Europe. In the colonies, they regarded
sodomy as a sin but felt that every man was equally sinful. So, they in no way,
shape, or form punished a man or woman for the crime. Records do show, though,
that the act was committed in the new world. (Katz 64)
Andreas’ The Art Of Courtly Love deals with
repression of sexual desires in a different way. It merely states how a knight
should go about earning his lady’s favor. Then it adds all that a knight should
strive for from her is nothing more than a word of commendation. (Shattuck 286)
I enjoyed how the passage simply attempted to guide a man when trying to court
his lady. They tried a different approach by suggesting how to go about this
instead of trying to force someone to their will.
The legal system also had its hands full with determining
what literature was acceptable. The Hicklin rule of 1867 decided that, a book
titled, The Confessional Unmasked, “Tended to deprave and corrupt those
whose minds are open to such moral influences.” A similar case in New York City in the 1950’s stated that an
adult comic book storeowner had been charged with selling lewd material to
minors. The New York Court Of Appeals found for the Prosecution, stating that,
“Collections of pictures or stories of criminal deeds of bloodlust or lust
unquestionably can be so massed as to become vehicles for inciting violent
crimes.” (Shattuck 295) The U.S.
Supreme Court overturned the ruling. Justice Frankfurter’s views were clear,
“It would be sheer dogmatism…to deny to the New York Legislature the right to
believe that the intent of the type of publication it has proscribed is to cater
to morbid and immature minds.” (Shattuck 295) What I believe the judge is
saying is that the pornography isn’t found in the printed page, but in some
people’s minds.
Pornography has long been condemned as an unholy device.
Conservative Christian groups see it, as a device that is a stepping-stone to
deviant behavior. Deviant behavior so terrible, it could even lead one to
commit murder. Ted Bundy used this as an excuse during his last interview. His
claim, as taken from MacLean’s Magazine, was, “The condemned man linked his
crimes to violent pornography and alcohol. Bundy said that as a child, he had
become fascinated by sexual violence that, “Brings out a hatred that is just
too terrible to describe.” He said that alcohol reduced his inhibitions against
killing.” (Shattuck 261)
Ted Bundy’s excuse carries no credence of any kind with me.
I have to agree with Shattuck’s passage where he describes, “ Every available
record shows Bundy as a practiced, systematic liar with no appeal to truth,
only to expedience and concealment” (Shattuck 262). The reading gives me the
idea that through everything he says, he is just trying to be made into some
sort of martyr against the adult entertainment industry.
We, as a society, should not be afraid in any way to
explore our sexual curiosity. We have evidence from previous cultures where
they were completely honest about how they felt about certain sexual practices.
We can learn from certain past societies and put their notions to our own use.
Mesopotamia depended chiefly on the land to sustain their
life. From this, they correlated sexuality with reproduction and the
productiveness of nature. Tablets discovered from third-millennium Mesopotamia
show their male god, Enki, displaying the inseminating and irrigational power of
virility. Meanwhile the goddess, Inanna, celebrates the well-watered fertility
of her vulva. (Nye 17)
Canopus, a town found on the Nile, held a religious
festival and cultic fertility rites related to the yearly flooding of the Nile.
Sexual pleasure was celebrated but was still bound to the sexual and religious
requirements. (Nye 18)
The Greeks also enjoyed a sexual freedom in their culture.
They weren’t the least bit inhibited when it came to their sexual behavior. The
value of being in love and the beauty of their love object, whether male or
female, were very important to them. Gender wasn’t a factor in most Greek
males’ minds. (Nye 18)
Greeks maintained an active-passive role when in sexual
relations. Active meant the one performing penetration. Subsequently, the one
receiving took the passive role. The free male citizen was predominantly the
one to fulfill the active role. His sexual targets included women, boys,
foreigners, and slaves. Basically, anyone who didn’t share the same political
and legal rights and privileges he did. (Halperin 24) The reputation for
whoever was the receiver had become a symbol of dishonor and was considered to
be shameful and slavish for a free male citizen to take. (Cohen 28)
Most free Greek males maintained a “bisexual” lifestyle.
Greeks, however, didn’t recognize sexual orientation. This was just a way of
life to them. All that they were concerned with was the sexual appetite they
had concerning beautiful human beings. Be they man or woman. Many Greek males
engaged in paidika, the act of changing one’s preference for women after
having had a preference for “boy-loving” in their youth. (Foucault 28)
The topic of eighteenth century French pornography is a
fine example of advancement in sexual knowledge. French authors such as
Nerciat, Mirabeau, and Restif de la Bretonne served to both enlighten their
audience and educate them. Erotic literature became a means of graphic
demonstration of revolutionary ideas and a way to make good money. Pornography
became a way to lash out at the conservative machine in Europe. It poked fun at
religion, the crown, and the upper class. It also provided a form of sex
education and entertainment. (Shattuck 286)
One cannot review
forbidden knowledge of sexual desires without taking a closer look at the
Marquis De Sade. Sade was basically a one-man sexual revolution, the man
responsible for supplying the English language with the word sadism. His
work, while shocking for the most part, is included in this due to his attempts
at challenging his period with his erotic works of fiction. He was not afraid
of the punishment for his behavior or his writings. I gathered at times he
probably enjoyed the attention and the reactions he got from people. He spent
much of his time engaged in various forms of sexual pleasure, of both
heterosexual and homosexual inclinations. He spent a good deal of time
infuriating other people due to his actions. He spent most of his life in
prison for various morals charges. He composed several of his erotic works
while there. (Shattuck 229)
After Sade died, most of his manuscripts weren’t lost or
destroyed. They disappeared underground where he had developed a small fan
following. He maintained a reputation due to fierce attacks against his work
and the shock value derived from his coarse, erotic writings. (Shattuck 235)
In the twentieth century, the topic of sex and sexual
literature became more of a relaxed topic. Part of this came from two
subsequent reports done by the U.S. Attorney General’s office. The first
report, commissioned in 1970, found the conclusion that, “Empirical research
designed to clarify the question has found no evidence to date that exposure to
explicit sexual materials plays a significant role in the causation of
delinquent or criminal behavior among youth or adults.” This report only favored to regulate adult
materials for minors. (Shattuck 294)
The following report, completed in 1986, came to a slightly
different but still unopposed conclusion. They found a small percentage that
showed a link between Class I sexually violent materials in television and
movies and sexual violence in society. (Shattuck 294) Ultimately, it issued no
recommendations for change in current federal obscenity law under Miller versus
California 1973. Marvin Miller by both the state trials and appeals courts for
sending unsolicited sexually explicit materials in the mail. The Supreme Court
returned the case to the California courts for retrial under new standards.
1)
Appeal to prurient interest
in sex, judging by community standards.
2)
Portray sexual conduct in a
patently offensive way as defined by state law.
3)
Do not have serious literary,
artistic, political, or scientific value.
Under this law, it
makes it a futile attempt to prosecute materials accused of being obscene.
(Shattuck 228) This is the major argument I present on looking back at Ted
Bundy’s excuses for why he committed those murders.
After reading William Stayton’s findings, I felt it aided
in making huge strides for the cause of discussing sex. One main reason is
because Stayton is both a Baptist minister and holds a degree in Human
Sexuality. The fact that he is able to discuss this uneasy topic so daringly
with curious teenagers in a church is amazing.
His discussion on how we view the act of sex, for pleasure
versus procreation, is a good change of pace. This portion of the topic of sex
has needed to be addressed for quite some time and is what I will be covering
on this portion of the paper. I feel his two arguments that I found work in the
defense of sex for pleasure. The first one where he says, “If sexual pleasure
was intended only for procreational purposes within the marriage bond, then God
has played a terrible joke on the multitudes throughout history who never
married or could not have children or who theoretically could have had over
thirty children during their child-bearing years!” (Stayton 2)
The second one only serves to back up his previous
statement at the beginning of his paper, “To restrict sexual pleasuring to the
procreational function, and to validate sexual pleasure only when it occurs in
heterosexual relationships, diminishes the creative capacities God gave humans
for expressing love.” (Stayton 7) I feel if more people read this article than
maybe we wouldn’t have so many hang-ups over talking about sex.
Roger Shattuck also makes a strong case on one of his
points concerning sexual behavior and how it shapes various cultures. He
states, “I am proposing that these writings, different that they are from one
another follow an impulse to modify sexual behavior as a means to influence and
presumably to improve the social life of a culture. They envision a better
state of things through sexual instruction.” (Shattuck 287).
I’m inclined to
agree with his assessment. It would only do our present culture good to break
away from the old habits of dismissing the topic entirely. We as a society
would do well to talk and learn more about sex. Despite some of the advances I
have listed, we are still living in one of the most sexually repressed
societies in the world, due mainly from fear of its implications. We wind up
only making it harder on ourselves. Everyone is naturally curious about sex and
its many facets. If we made the time to try to move through all the warnings
and barriers we’ve created for ourselves through time, we would have an easier
time understanding our sexual natures.
Having grown up as part of
the “MTV generation,” I’m familiar with Madonna’s views on sex. From examples
in some of her tracks and videos, such as “Like A Virgin,” “Papa Don’t Preach,”
and “Justify My Love,” we can see how obvious her sexual innuendos are. I
remember reading in magazines and seeing on T.V. how controversial some of her
songs were. Madonna was not the first recording artist to incorporate shock
value with the sexual overtones in her songs. No one can deny though, that she
has been a forerunner in the last twenty-five years for making sex in music
more mainstream. She made it so that the topic was more in your face that you
had to deal with it. Madonna was never one to shy away from controversy.
The title alone for one of
her first singles, “Like A Virgin,” caused much controversy and introduced
Madonna instantly to America. This track dealt with a couple’s new love. In it
she makes the comparison of feeling this fresh, new love to a virgin having sex
for the first time. In the chorus, she sings,
“Like a virgin, touched
for the very first time. Like a virgin, when your heart beats next to mine.”
This song was one of the
reasons why Tipper Gore lead the charge before Congress to lobby for a law to
be made to restrict certain albums from minors purchasing them.
Her next album featured a
single titled, “Papa Don’t Preach.” In it, she addresses a young, single woman
getting pregnant out of wedlock and deciding to keep the baby instead of having
an abortion. From the fourth and fifth verses and second chorus she sings,
“He says that he’s going
to marry me.
We can raise a little
family.
Maybe we’ll be alright.
It’s a sacrifice.”
“But my friends keep
telling me to give it up.
Saying I’m too young I
ought to live it up.
What I need right now is
some good advice.”
“Papa don’t preach. I’m in
trouble deep.
Papa don’t preach. I’ve
been losing sleep.
But I’ve made up my mind.
I’m keeping my baby.
I’m gonna keep my baby.”
I remember well the
controversy that stemmed from this very song. The Catholic Church was deeply
disturbed by it. It came out to the public that Madonna, in the late seventies,
had had an abortion. They branded her a hypocrite for her opposing views in the
song and her life. Their answer came in the form of a parody of her song
titled, “Madonna Don’t Preach.”
Her song, “Justify My
Love,” was considered so risqué; it was banned from airplay on MTV. The topic
is extremely apparent in the lyrics of the song.
“I wanna kiss you in
Paris.
I wanna hold your hand in Rome.
I wanna run naked in a rainstorm.
Make love in a train cross-country.
You put this in me.
So now what, so now what? “
”Wanting, needing, waiting.
For you to justify my love.
Hoping, praying
For you to justify my love.”
The video carried over the
erotic themes of the song quite well. It pushes the envelope on the
conservative boundaries of sex. It is, in my opinion, the most controversial
video Madonna has ever made. She made the ban on MTV work out in her favor. She
decided to release it on video where it became a best selling video single.
Madonna is not afraid of
using sex as a topic in her songs. She is also not afraid of engaging those who
find fault in her musical decisions. When she is faced with controversy over
the subjects of her songs, she always finds a way to make it work in her favor.
Which is very evident from the amount of albums she has sold.
Works Cited
Roger Shattuck. Forbidden Knowledge. New York:
Harcourt Brace, 1996
Philip Jenks. , ed. Forbidden Knowledge Fall 2004
Package. Portland: Smart Copy, 2004
Robert Nye, “Before Sexuality.” Jenks 17-18
Robert Nye, “The Renaissance And Religious Reform.” Jenks 51-53
David Cohen, “Honourable Sexuality.” Jenks 29-30
Michel Foucault, “Were The Greeks Bisexual?” Jenks 28
David Halperin, “Active and Passive Sexuality.” Jenks 23-28
Jonathan Katz, “Sodomy and
Sin In New England.” Jenks 64-65
Mark P.O. Morford, Robert J. Lenardon. “Classical
Mythology.” Jenks 297-299