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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 February 2024
In this article I wish to argue against a particular conception of nature as a tool for the understanding and appraisal of people’s sexual lives. That conception is one which sees people as having a determinate sexual nature as part of their biological inheritance, their physical constitution. This sexual nature is then used to determine sexual norms: what is in accord with nature is good, and what is against nature is bad. I believe that this approach to human sexuality is mistaken and misleading.
Human sexual behaviour is very various and, as far as we can tell, always has been. But human societies have rarely if ever been content to allow free range to the full variety of sexual desires and tastes. Human societies develop conventions governing sexual activities, encouraging some and restricting others, and limiting them to certain contexts. Modem anthropological, literary and historical scholarship has placed a great deal of emphasis on the fact that these conventions too are very various; the rules governing what kinds of sexual behaviour are acceptable and which are not have varied greatly from time to time and from place to place. And, whatever the rules, transgression has been constant. People have for one reason or another not wanted or have found themselves unable to behave themselves sexually as required by their society. They have not done what they were expected to do or, more often, they have done what they were expected not to do. In every society some transgressions are treated as more serious than others, and societies have varied in which transgressions they treat as serious.
It is important to realise just how different the norms governing sexual behaviour can be in different societies. I will briefly mention two examples to illustrate this. Much studied has been the case of ancient Greek paedophilia.
1 Republic IX, 574b.
2 Laws VIII, 840a.
3 The Use of Pleasure (History of Sexuality II), p.188.
4 Three Essays on Sexuality, I The Sexual Aberrations, Pelican Freud Library, vol. 7, p.61n. Freud does not appear to be correct, however, in asserting that the ancients “glorified the instinct”, if that means they were carefree about their sexual behaviour.
5 Greenberg, David F., The Construction of Homosexuality, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1988, pp.27f., following Raymond Kelly, Etoro Social Structure: A Study in Structural Contradiction, Ann Arbor, University of Michigan Press, 1974.)
6 Though, as Foucault and others make clear, this case is more problematic, since the free boy will grow up to be the free man’s social equal, and nothing must be done to or by the boy to compromise his future status.
7 Gareth Moore, The Body in Context: Sex and Catholicism, London, SCM, 1992, esp. chapter 3.
8 Mary Douglas, Natural Symbols, London, Penguin, 1973, p.93.
9 Philosophical Investigations §244 .
10 In the light of Michael Williams’ discussion of privacy at this conference I cannot here help calling to mind Marvell’s remarkable words in The Garden::
Such was that happy Garden-state,
While Man there walk’d without a Mate:
After a Place so pure, and sweet,
What other Help could yet be meet!
But ‘twas beyond a Mortal’s share
To wander solitary there:
Two Paradises ’twere in one
To live in Paradise alone.
11 Many animals, too, leant behaviour from each other. We do not think an animal acts naturally only when it has learned nothing from others.
12 Genesis 1:27
13 Genesis 2:24
14 This raises a question what is to count as the same desire. Do we say that men and women naturally have different desires, since men naturally desire women and women men, or that they both have the same desire, since both desire the opposite sex?
15 Claus Westermann Genesis 1-11, SPCK, London, 1984, p.156.
16 But not, pace Freud, polymorphously perverse: perversity depends on a norm, and norms are social.
17 Unless we think that the attitudes of biblical authors necessarily tell us truths about humanity in general. There surely is a temptation here for some people. But why might we be tempted so to value biblical attitudes on sex and not similarly value biblical views on monarchy, war, slavery, usury, race, etc?
18 But if they really are primitive, are they not by the same token closer to nature?
19 Here it is worth calling to mind the ambiguity of the word ’strange’ in ‘a strange man came to the village’. We often expect outsiders to behave oddly, and are not disappointed.
20 §3
21 §6
22 The text goes on:
[God] fashions mankind, male and female, in his own image and likeness. Human beings, therefore, are nothing less than the work of God himself; and in the complementarity of the sexes, they are called to reflect the inner unity of the Creator. They do this in a striking way in their cooperation with him in the transmission of life by a mutual donation of the self to the other. This seems to be based entirely on a reading of Genesis 1:26. Apart from the dubious value of trying to form a theory of human sexuality on so slender a basis, the interpretation of that verse is novel (despite the earlier swipe at ‘new exegesis’ in §4), and no justification is offered for it. As far as I can see, it actually has very little to commend it. See the remark of Westermann quoted above.
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