birth control -> choice
My wife was talking about how a lot of the social change can be traced to the rise of birth control and a woman's increased ability to control her pregnancy. In the past, casual sex meant the possibility of her getting straddled with children, and the large social stigma that came from bearing them out of wed lock. As birth control became available, most women could avoid getting pregnant. The increase of women having sex outside of marriage lead to a decrease in the social stigma associated with it, which in turn leads us to today where women frequently have children out of wed lock and while no one says it's wonderful, we don't hand them a scarlet letter.
I think this makes a lot of sense, and shows a clear point in our social history one can point at to show where the trend away from monogamy began. It helps clear up the false idea that monogamy is on the decline because our society has lost something spiritually, morally, etc., all of which are true, but are more results of the same thing that's killed monogamy and not the cause of it. That thing, as j. morgan so wisely pointed out, is choice.
This doesn't make birth control "bad" per se. Like every invention since fire, it's a tool we can use to over come our circumstances, and it's the way we use and promote it that adds its moral quality.
posted by RJ @ 6:18 AM
10 comments
10 Comments:
I was actually thinking about this too and I agree. I'd never say that there isn't more casual sex these days than in the past--there's way more, because technology (as you've pointed out) allows us to escape what used to be the consequences.
You also correctly identified my point--there hasn't (yet) been some radical, moral, spiritual shift away from monogamy. People should really check out Jack Kerouac, Greg Corso, Allen Ginsberg and William Burroughs. YES, they were counter-cultural, j. morgan, and that's significant, but most people can't believe that they did and wrote what they did when they did until it's conclusively demonstrated to them.
One of my professors argues that the most significant change in the family has been the seperation of sex from procreation, largely the result of birth control. Once we seperated the two, people were "free" to engage in sex outside of marriage since a baby wasn't always the result.
Redhurt:
My only caveat is that birth control came from somewhere and was produced for some reason. The birth control pill was the paramount achievement of at least 70 years of modern attempts at reliably and cheaply eliminating pregnancy as a regular consequence of sexual behavior. The ethic of choice, in other words, both provided the context in which a birth control pill could be successfully developed and marketed as well as furthered that very project in so doing. I think that reliable means of birth control, then, do represent the departure point, but not in terms of the way Americans thought about themselves as sexual persons – more in terms of the way they were now able to practice more congruously with their sexual self-conception.
Charles:
“there hasn't (yet) been some radical, moral, spiritual shift away from monogamy.”
But that is a moot argument; we were arguing that there has been a cultural shift away from monogamy, not a moral or spiritual one. The moral and spiritual argument is an afterthought based on the observation that moral claims only have significant and broad purchase in a context where those same moral claims are reflected in culture.
“People should really check out Jack Kerouac, Greg Corso, Allen Ginsberg and William Burroughs.”
And you should really check out the way that they were dealt with in culturally significant media of the time.
Who gets to decide what's the "culturally significant" media of the time? I know we're swimming in subjectivity already, but that's about the most subjective adjective that's been used yet. I know how they were dealt with--censored, burned, destroyed, shoved out of the spotlight. So what? That's not my point--the point is the experiences they were having in the supposedly straight-laced 1950s. I'm not making a cultural argument--I'm merely making an empirical report. They were talking about the stuff that was going on that no one wanted to deal with.
So, did Leave it to Beaver or Jack Kerouac have a stronger impact on 1950s culture? The former. Which was a more accurate report of what was really going on? The latter. That's my point.
Another way to look at this would be that birth control allowed one of the luxuries of the powerful--casual sex with "no consequences"--to become something that average people could engage in as well.
So, birth control was not the separation of sex from procreation--it was the democratization of the separation of sex from procreation. Can we agree on that?
I agree, j. morgan, and I also agree, chuck.
I was thinking this morning about what it would be like to make a video game like "Civilization" where you implemented the social changes that are possible in developed societies. It's interesting to me to think that hot issues like same-sex relationships and the demise of monogamy are partially the result of our society's affluence. Our wealth gives us the time and freedom to choose. Very, very interesting.
This is from left-field, but I think that post-modernism and nihilism as philosophies/worldviews are a result of our affluence as well. It's hard to be a post-modernist when you need to go out in the field to work to feed your family.
Charles:
“Who gets to decide what's the "culturally significant" media of the time?”
Circulation and consumption are fairly good and widely used methods of determining cultural significance. Especially when tied to the prestige of those who consumed that source, it isn’t subjective at all. This isn’t a subjective exercise in practice, only in blog-land. In formal practice, we would be talking about the “imprint” of culture in the form of artifacts, which is about as empirical as historical study can get. The only reason I take up this point is because I bristle at implication that this is a “subjective” discussion. If it is, it is only because we are operating within the contrived boundaries of the blogsphere.
“I'm not making a cultural argument--I'm merely making an empirical report. They were talking about the stuff that was going on that no one wanted to deal with.”
1) They were talking about the stuff that was going on for some people. It was not going on for most people. That is important and makes your claim, while true, relatively insignificant when gauging the 1950s as a whole.
2) You are assuming that American culture didn’t want to (and presumably wasn’t) dealing with all of this because it wasn’t acknowledging it. That is, in my view, actually one of the most powerful ways of dealing with something that is considered unacceptable. Leave It to Beaver wasn’t a denial of Kerouac, it was a response to Kerouac.
“So, did Leave it to Beaver or Jack Kerouac have a stronger impact on 1950s culture? The former. Which was a more accurate report of what was really going on? The latter. That's my point.”
I agree if you localize that claim to specific groups. I don’t think that is a very useful – or accurate – portrayal of the 1950s as is. Even if localized, however, it doesn’t really tell us much about anything.
“So, birth control was not the separation of sex from procreation--it was the democratization of the separation of sex from procreation. Can we agree on that?”
Possibly. I think that misses the subtext of sexuality, namely, that it cannot account for the motivations for democratizing sexuality.
j. morgan, you're acting like the existence of Kerouac and Ginsberg's works makes your case even stronger! That's preposterous. Bracket it off or classify it however you want to, but when today's American teenagers who think the 1950s were a golden era of innocence read the Dharma Bums they're floored to learn what the counterculture was up to at the time.
You're reversing every single one of my examples and giving no ground whatsoever, so why don't you go ahead and identify the data/criteria/whatever that would make your case weaker?
I know what would make my case weaker: if you couldn't find pre-hippies orgying their way around 1950s America because of the social stigma attached to doing that.
Charles:
“j. morgan, you're acting like the existence of Kerouac and Ginsberg's works makes your case even stronger!”
Yes, it absolutely does make my case strong. These works were INTENTIONALLY, ADMITTEDLY, UNABASHEDLY COUNTER-CULTURAL!!!! In posturing as such, one is admitting the conditions of the dominant culture as real and as otherwise-oriented from your own culture. Even more convincing is the reception of their work in society. I think it absolutely strengthens my case.
“...when today's American teenagers who think the 1950s were a golden era of innocence read the Dharma Bums they're floored to learn what the counterculture was up to at the time.”
Exactly right, but not for the reason you think. It isn’t because the counterculture was more representative of either the attitudes or behaviors of the 1950s than the dominant culture, it’s because it was so radically countercultural.
“...so why don't you go ahead and identify the data/criteria/whatever that would make your case weaker?”
If the cultural imprint in the form of artifacts reflected a sentiment of openness and freedom toward sexuality rather than a sentiment of obligation of social function then I would be wrong. If Leave it to Beaver were a farce that was made to be an object of ridicule rather than a boardline-coercive means of identifying socially acceptable behaviors for Americans, then I would be wrong.
This might be helpful in shedding light on the disagreement here:
"...coherence cannot be the major test of validity for a cultural description. Cultural systems must have a minimal degree of coherence, else we would not call them systems; and, by observation, they normally have a great deal more. But there is nothing so coherent as a paranoid's delusion or a swindler's story. The force of our interpretations cannot rest, as they are now so often made to do, on the tightness with which they hold together, or the assurance with which they are argued. Nothing has done more, I think, to discredit cultural analysis than the construction of impeccable depictions of formal order in whose actual existence nobody can quite believe."
Clifford Geertz from Interpretations of Cultures
You are arguing that unless the 1950s dominant culture demonstrates a level of tightness and assurance that without major exception determined how people lived their lives, then it is either meaningless or false. Culture is not a totalitarian endeavor and it is by no means an uncontested one. Simply because people reject cultural ideals in their choices doesn’t mean that they don’t hold those same ideals very closely. Additionally, what those ideals represent and how they are constructed tells us a great deal about a society.
So, here is my recap of my argument:
I am arguing that there was a culture of monogamy that existed previous to the past few decades in America, which reached its peak in the 1950s when advances in technology allowed human society to materially facilitate those cultural expectations in a real, lived manner. I am arguing that this was, in most cases, a motivation to order life according to these expectations, although I am also noting that it was not total in its influence. I am arguing that the same forces that promoted that technological advancement, namely the elevation of choice, replaced older cultural ideals, namely obligation, and as such had a radical effect on the ways American ordered their lives, in this case their sexual and marital lives. One of the consequences of that has been that marriage, as an institution, has been weakened because Americans enter marriage less, exit marriage more, and no longer feel constrained to sexual practice or child rearing exclusively in that context. Marriage, as the cornerstone of all social institutions, must be a function institution in order for other institutions in society to function properly. This shift in American sensibilities surrounding marriage has prompted a domino effect of American institutional dysfunction.
As a wrap-up, maybe you could succinctly (or not so succinctly) lay out your argument. If we can’t hammer something out, we can at least be clear about our contentions.
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