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2.24.2010

Sex the cause of sexism? Better off without?

So in Biblical studies class, there's been some talk, inevitably, about sex. Namely, that the only virtuous women are virgins (though that doesn't hold true all across the board). Some of the women in my class take offense to this, which I can understand. Basically it's telling them that because they don't desire virginity above everything else in this world (some of them might even desire...marriage! Gasp!), they're not valuable. But I think the statement runs deeper than that, and you can easily see it in a different light.

If all were as it ought to be, there would be no division amongst the sexes. All throughout history, sexism has been one of the most dominant forms of discrimination. It persists, even in modern society. I think the philosophers of the ancient world might have been longing for a world without sexism. But how do you get that? How do you eliminate sexism? Even if you take out the sex, people still see women as being delicate, easy to faint, prone to every illness in the galaxy...etc.

At any rate, I believe it's possible that they saw the essential driving factor in all this sexism to be stemming from sex itself. In the male world, sex and power-play are inextricably linked. You cannot have one without the other. Perhaps this is what philosophers of the ancient world thought. So it would make sense then, if you wanted to strive towards a perfectly egalitarian society, to eliminate sex. Which, certainly at that time, probably gave freedom to a lot of women. They could do other things with their lives than be some man's property, raise his children, run his house. The option of being a nun was probably liberating for them, it was something else they could do...and as a nun, a women probably had greater freedom than she did otherwise.

And I must admit this view is damn interesting. What if people really did stop having sex? All over the world? What if? What would happen with sexism? Would it go away? Would people still get married? Really if you think about it, the only thing barred to a non married couple in conservative society is...sex (and a bit of foreplay as well). So...would people still get married?

I think it would be interesting to see. To see a society where men and women lived together with absolutely no sex at all, in any form whatsoever. What would that be like?

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