Us & them: Sexuality, woman, man

Dear reader, I apologize for not having a clearcut path for this subject. Please understand that with sexuality being such a charged issue in many human communities, I won't be able to even slightly disentangle all the knots that we tie ourselves in around sex.

But the perspective of this blog (pitfalls of spirituality) would be incomplete I feel, if I left this subject out.

Because, like stated in the previous post, practically all spiritual movements and religions place emphasis on:

• The purported spiritual difference between men and women, which is also used to explain why the Leader must be a man.
  
• The `great spiritual importance' of sexual morality (the moralities differ greatly between movements though)
• The purported immorality of homosexuality.

######

Morality and moral pressure is one of the pitfalls of spirituality, in my not so humble opinion. Sexual morality is just an element of more general morality, but somehow spiritual movements place great emphasis on sexual morality. Having sex with a `wrong' person is often condemned far more strongly than -for instance- not helping someone in need, not caring for others, greed, etc.

It often seems that if one just not sleeps with anyone but the appointed spouse(s) - of the opposite sex of course- then one's morality is ok, according to the Spiritual Movement.

######

To me, it appears that in our age some form of sexual morality is still necessary in a society/community to ensure a basic level of trust, working together, upbringing of children, not fighting over sexual partners, etc.

This is a far cry from the Great Sin which many spiritual movements make of `sex with the wrong person'.

Don't misunderstand me: breaching of trust, deception, callous lust, abandonment of children etc. do not strike me as very spiritual. But breaching of trust and deception can be just as bad or worse on a nonsexual level. Abandonment, not being there for someone in need, unlovingness, closed heart, the list of things we do to ourselves and others is far broader than just our sexual acts and thoughts and feelings.

######

When sex is more than the physical act, it is also called making love. Make love, not war I recall as a slogan which made quite an impression on me when I was young.

The great spiritual problems of humanity to me lie more in the divisions of mankind, the fighting, the strife, the warfare, the power struggles etc. than in sex. Making love to me seems a very spiritual thing.

######

So why do spiritual movements (religions included as always) make such a great deal of sexual division (man/woman) and sexual morality?

I think it ultimately has to do with power and control. Sex is an important issue to most people -one could well wonder why, since to me love is far more important, but things are what they are, and many people tie love & sex together etc and we end up with all these knots around sexuality.

Assuming moral authority over sexual issues therefore achieves a double goal. First, the Moral Authority gets an important hold over people's feelings and actions. This yields tremendous power, much of it subconscious but also regularly quite explicit. Second, the division between men and women usually gives organizational and societal power to the men. One can wonder why men-of-spirituality would like this, since supposedly spirituality is some sort of opposite from power struggles...

But for the time being I suspect a lot of the divide-et-impera (divide and rule, old Roman adagium) tactic behind much of spiritual movements' sexual morality.

Us & them, woman & man, (homo)sexuality

`Us & them' is my shorthand for a fundamental division of humanity amongst any line. In my not so humble opinion, uniting humanity is a worthwhile and spiritual undertaking. Division of humanity hampers this undertaking, in my belief. Now in many spiritual movements, there is in words a large emphasis on seeing humanity as one. `We are all children of God'. `Consider all human beings to be your brothers and sisters'. And similar uplifting statements.

But there is at least one division which the vast majority of spiritual movements seem to underline, reinforce, advocate: the division between men and women.

For some reason, we seem really hooked to the idea that men and women are completely different in some fundamental spiritual way. The (physical) difference in reproductive organs seems to lead to some non-physical `spiritual' difference, even though we are summoned to see other physical differences -such as length, weight, skin colour, etc - as trivial in the spiritual sense. Even large cultural & age differences are seen as outer wrappings, not significant at all in the spiritual sense. But gender, boy, girl, that really makes us sweat.

This leads to the amazing conclusion that for most spiritual movements I have far more in common with an 81 yrs old Mbuti man [the Bambuti are hunter-gatherers from Congo], than with my wife who has the same age as me, who has lived in the same country as me, etc.

This perceived fundamental difference historically has translated into many discriminatory situations, where mostly men put themselves in position of religious power, and then dictate some version of sexual morality. Women are mostly banned from these positions of power, and this banishment is justified by variations on the claim that since men and women are so spiritually different, only men have the necessary spiritual make-up for these positions.

To me it seems a spiritual pitfall which branches out from sexuality to morality, from `woman & man' to `us & them' and ultimately to power. This is a complex issue, and I imagine it will take me several posts to only skim the surface. One thing that I would like to say in advance is that sexuality is some kind of hot potato in most spiritual movements and religions, and I believe this to be intimately linked to power and control issues. Ultimately I see this as the reason why homosexuality is considered such a threat (`unnatural', `against the wish of God', etc.) by many spiritual movements.

In subsequent posts I will therefore turn to scientific knowledge about homosexuality, to show why the above positions of spiritual movements on homosexuality are comparable to the 17th century position of the christian church on the question whether the earth revolves around the sun or vice versa.

Two weeks ago I saw the documentary `Jerusalem is proud to present', and tears sprang in my eyes to see the active violence and death threats against gay people by fundamental religious movements. A short description from the website of the uk jewish film festival:

Last summer [2006] Jerusalem was due to host the annual World Pride celebrations and gay pride parade, unprecedented in the city’s history. This hair-raising documentary captures the homophobic hate campaign launched by fundamentalist religious groups. Death threats pour into the Open House, Jerusalem’s LGBT community center, while in the Jerusalem City Council arguments for equality from its only openly gay member are met with verbal abuse, and a mayor so disinterested in democracy he simply leaves the room.

Orthodox Jews riot in the streets, their chief Rabbi apparently sanctioning violence to stop the ‘defilement’ of the holy city (interviewees include a gay rights activist stabbed during a previous march). The escalation of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict further impedes World Pride preparations, and the eventual compromise was controversial among the gay community. Gilady’s film is nevertheless an important record of bravery in an environment where the only thing uniting some Jewish, Christian and Arab leaders is their hatred for gay people.


This `woman & man' thread will be continued over the next posts. But let me state again, if one purpose of spirituality is to unite humanity, then it will not do for a spiritual movement to make such distinctions between men and women and anyone in between, and between heterosexuals and homosexuals and anyone in between...

A first list of pitfalls of spirituality

In this first post, let me simply name some pitfalls of spirituality that i perceive to crop up in many spiritual efforts, movements, religions.

1. guidance
2. universal truth & absolute truth
3. bliss & happiness, pain & sorrow
4. morality & moral pressure
5. before & after life
6. wonders & miracles
7. money
8. power
9. belonging & fulfillment
10. group dynamics
11. us & them
12. woman & man
13. ego & selflessness
14. mind & heart, logic & feeling
15. fear & temptation/reward

The list is not meant to be exhaustive, and I don't think that the above items are all completely separate either. It's just a working list to start from, as we go along the blog probably will evolve.