Sexual Ethics and Health
The world over, most cultures place a high value on monogamy and have for a long time. I write in various other places about issues with heteronormative social expectations and how this is a problem for women, for LGBTQ folks and for society and why we need to be actively looking to develop OTHER norms and get out from under this historical baggage.
But let's somewhat BRIEFLY talk about consequences of sexual choices and why they DRIVE this general default expectation of most of the human race.
Having multiple health partners comes with the risk of spreading disease. This is compounded by the reality that if your partners are okay with you having multiple partners, the odds are good they ALSO are not practicing monogamy, so ONE sick person can potentially infect MANY people via this network of sexual partners.
Since people who do sleep around know this is generally socially unacceptable, they may downplay how much they sleep around or outright lie and actively deceive people. So odds are poor they will be open and honest about matters of health with all their partners and this fact in some cases will actively encourage them to NOT take precautions because TAKING precautions may raise questions they don't want to answer.
Infidelity begets infidelity and lies, deception and betrayal beget more of the same. If a person is unfaithful, their partner may learn of it, not confront them, not leave and just decide to do the same.
Which means ONE person doing this can be a threat to the local social fabric. It can start a trend that casts a broad net of lies and infection across a substantial portion of the population and this can actually tear a community apart and lead to its ruin. (No, I am NOT being dramatic nor exaggerating.)
There have been -- and still are -- times and places where something other than strict monogamy was a locally acceptable answer for at least some people. There tend to be strict rules around how, when and why it is allowed and the reasons for those rules are frequently NOT explicitly spelled out and are often NOT understood and it MAY appear arbitrary or biased in some fashion.
I don't believe it is. I think the practices that got tolerated -- and get tolerated -- are practices that limit negative consequences to the human race, even when it is an exception to the expectation of strict monogamy.
The Inuit had a practice of sharing their wives with visitors. AS A GUESS from an outsider who does not actually know: This likely occurred because they live in extremely cold places, so they may have had their wife lay down with a hypothermic visitor to save the man's life then looked the other way when one thing led to another.
This apparently did NOT lead to disease. They apparently had no STDs, so they found that it was not a problematic practice and it became socially acceptable to do this as this thing they did under specific circumstances and not a case of "Oh, yeah, women just sleep around here. Whatevs."
Then the White man showed up, preached hellfire and brimstone at them for the practice while not being virtuous enough to turn down the opportunity and these judgy hypocrites ALSO introduced STDs to the Inuit. So now it was a PROBLEM, both for social reasons and for health reasons.
No clue if it is still practiced but "only with other Inuit" or something. It supposedly was discontinued but I am not Inuit so I don't actually know.
Some parts of the Middle East allow SOME men to have up to four wives. Odds are good this is due to a long history of the region being war-torn and there being too few men to go around as a consequence of men dying in war on a regular basis.
Insisting on strict monogamy in such circumstances causes two issues:
Most cultures are much more tolerant of MEN having multiple partners than of WOMEN doing the same. There are likely two reasons for this:
In ancient Egypt, royalty tended to intermarry with their siblings and the longer a dynasty lasted, the more screwed up their people were. A history professor of mine once talked about some of them having such severe overbites that the back teeth on top were meeting the front teeth on bottom, which is a significant physical deformity that impairs your ability to eat.
In other words, it's a SURVIVAL issue. So cultures that do not care at all who the daddy is are cultures which may die out in not too many generations if they don't specifically account for this detail and I have never heard of a HUMAN culture that does.
The ONLY primate I know of that lets females sleep around and doesn't care at all who the daddy is are bonobos. These primates send the females to OTHER troups when they hit sexual maturity and mothers NEVER mate with their own sons.
So on the one hand I am all for human societies making same sex marriage legal and coming up with other solutions that work to help us escape some of the problems we currently have due to heteronormative culture creating issues in the world for complex reasons outside the scope of this post.
BUT for purposes of HEALTH, if you have a serious -- chronic, incurable and deadly -- infection, such as trypanosomas or HIV:
If I made the rules, there would be a LOT LESS sex happening on planet earth. BUT it would be better sex AND people would be healthier.
But let's somewhat BRIEFLY talk about consequences of sexual choices and why they DRIVE this general default expectation of most of the human race.
Having multiple health partners comes with the risk of spreading disease. This is compounded by the reality that if your partners are okay with you having multiple partners, the odds are good they ALSO are not practicing monogamy, so ONE sick person can potentially infect MANY people via this network of sexual partners.
Since people who do sleep around know this is generally socially unacceptable, they may downplay how much they sleep around or outright lie and actively deceive people. So odds are poor they will be open and honest about matters of health with all their partners and this fact in some cases will actively encourage them to NOT take precautions because TAKING precautions may raise questions they don't want to answer.
Infidelity begets infidelity and lies, deception and betrayal beget more of the same. If a person is unfaithful, their partner may learn of it, not confront them, not leave and just decide to do the same.
Which means ONE person doing this can be a threat to the local social fabric. It can start a trend that casts a broad net of lies and infection across a substantial portion of the population and this can actually tear a community apart and lead to its ruin. (No, I am NOT being dramatic nor exaggerating.)
There have been -- and still are -- times and places where something other than strict monogamy was a locally acceptable answer for at least some people. There tend to be strict rules around how, when and why it is allowed and the reasons for those rules are frequently NOT explicitly spelled out and are often NOT understood and it MAY appear arbitrary or biased in some fashion.
I don't believe it is. I think the practices that got tolerated -- and get tolerated -- are practices that limit negative consequences to the human race, even when it is an exception to the expectation of strict monogamy.
The Inuit had a practice of sharing their wives with visitors. AS A GUESS from an outsider who does not actually know: This likely occurred because they live in extremely cold places, so they may have had their wife lay down with a hypothermic visitor to save the man's life then looked the other way when one thing led to another.
This apparently did NOT lead to disease. They apparently had no STDs, so they found that it was not a problematic practice and it became socially acceptable to do this as this thing they did under specific circumstances and not a case of "Oh, yeah, women just sleep around here. Whatevs."
Then the White man showed up, preached hellfire and brimstone at them for the practice while not being virtuous enough to turn down the opportunity and these judgy hypocrites ALSO introduced STDs to the Inuit. So now it was a PROBLEM, both for social reasons and for health reasons.
No clue if it is still practiced but "only with other Inuit" or something. It supposedly was discontinued but I am not Inuit so I don't actually know.
Some parts of the Middle East allow SOME men to have up to four wives. Odds are good this is due to a long history of the region being war-torn and there being too few men to go around as a consequence of men dying in war on a regular basis.
Insisting on strict monogamy in such circumstances causes two issues:
- You have women who can't find a partner AT ALL and so have no hope of marriage (or a sex life -- because this practice corresponds to conservative cultures that STILL expect you to be a virgin on the wedding night).
- You have trouble replacing population lost to war because a high percentage of women can't legally reproduce and bastard children raised by single mothers have, historically, NOT thrived in most cases.
Most cultures are much more tolerant of MEN having multiple partners than of WOMEN doing the same. There are likely two reasons for this:
- It is easier for a man to infect a woman with an STD (because he leaves behind sperm) than for a woman to infect a man. So a man who sleeps around some is less likely to get sick and thus less likely to make other people sick.
- If a man sleeps with many women but the women are all faithful to him, we still know who both parents are. If a woman sleeps around, we no longer can be certain who the father is and this was a bigger issue historically when there was no means to get some kind of paternity test, so the ONLY assurance was "He's the ONLY man I have slept with. Full stop."
In ancient Egypt, royalty tended to intermarry with their siblings and the longer a dynasty lasted, the more screwed up their people were. A history professor of mine once talked about some of them having such severe overbites that the back teeth on top were meeting the front teeth on bottom, which is a significant physical deformity that impairs your ability to eat.
In other words, it's a SURVIVAL issue. So cultures that do not care at all who the daddy is are cultures which may die out in not too many generations if they don't specifically account for this detail and I have never heard of a HUMAN culture that does.
The ONLY primate I know of that lets females sleep around and doesn't care at all who the daddy is are bonobos. These primates send the females to OTHER troups when they hit sexual maturity and mothers NEVER mate with their own sons.
So on the one hand I am all for human societies making same sex marriage legal and coming up with other solutions that work to help us escape some of the problems we currently have due to heteronormative culture creating issues in the world for complex reasons outside the scope of this post.
BUT for purposes of HEALTH, if you have a serious -- chronic, incurable and deadly -- infection, such as trypanosomas or HIV:
- Celibacy is BEST (and I practice what I preach. I have been celibate a LONG time because of my health issues).
- Monogamy with the partner you already had when you learned of it, who probably also has it, is second best. And you may wish to use protection anyway. I did until I got divorced.
- Monogamy with some other already infected partner and TAKE PRECAUTIONS is third best.
- If you absolutely are NOT going to be celibate or monogamous: USE condoms and ALSO take a prophylactic and ideally INFORM your partners so they can decide if they wish to take the risk and OFFER them a prophylactic as well.
If I made the rules, there would be a LOT LESS sex happening on planet earth. BUT it would be better sex AND people would be healthier.
