Click for 8.5x11" poster.

Modalities of Conscience. How does your topic relate?

A few of the many manifestations of Conscience.

]]> http://syndicus.ca/?feed=rss2&p=107 0 http://syndicus.ca/?p=76 http://syndicus.ca/?p=76#comments Mon, 30 Nov 2009 04:36:27 +0000 Syndicus http://syndicus.ca/?p=76

The theme for our winter publication is Pressure!  Interested in writing?  Send your piece to submissions@syndicus.ca!

Here are some suggested topics to get you started:

1. Conformity in Religious Communities
2. When In Rome: Covert Prestige Dialects in Socio-Linguistics
3. The Commodification of Nudity in North American Discourse
4. Body Image & Eating Disorders: A Girl Thing?
5 Anonymity in the Internet Age: Behavioural Repercussions of Choosing your Identity
6. What Drives Children to Violence?
7. Selective Pressures in Evolution, Meet Climate Change
8. Peer Pressure and Smoking Culture: A Historical Perspective
9. Its Easy Being Green: “Pop” Environmentalism
10. Too Much Homework?
11. Creative Piece: Short Story, One Act Play or Long Poem.
Working Title: “No.”
12. Topic of your choice

A Jumble of Genes
Why Humans are Incest Repellent
by Allison MacLachlan

Several winters ago in Britain, a man and a woman fell in love and were married. Their romance was just like any other boy-meets-girl fairytale, minus one serious roadblock: in December 2007, the House of Lords ruled to annul this couple’s union1. As it turns out, the two were related—and not as distant cousins. The man and woman were twins.
BBC News reported the man and woman didn’t realize their genetic relationship until after they were married. The pair of fraternal twins had been separated at birth1. When they met by chance later in life they felt inevitably drawn to one another, a feeling they came to know as love.
Despite the traditional romantic elements of this anecdote—forbidden attraction and the prescient hand of fate—it doesn’t have the universal appeal of a Romeo-and-Juliet, Lancelot-and-Guinevere love story.
In fact, it irks us. There’s something tragic and repulsive about romantic love developing between family members. But fundamentally, why are humans so averse to inter-familial romance?
Pam Hodgkins, CEO of the charity Adults Affected by Adoption, explained for BBC’s news report that “We have a resistance, a very strong incest taboo where we are aware that someone is a biological relative.”1 In nearly every corner of the globe, humans view incest—defined as sexual activity between closely related persons—as at least objectionable and at worst, illegal.
Our deep-seated aversion to incest stems from our biology. Beings that reproduce sexually, from fish to ferrets and hamsters to humans, rely on sex to create variation among their offspring.
A male and female each contribute a half set of chromosomes to the production of a new embryo. For example, in humans, where 46 chromosomes make up a complete individual, the mother and father must each contribute 23.
Along these chromosomes, several genes sit quietly like keynote speakers at a conference. They are the VIPs, the ultimate authorities who will control what happens. They are responsible for disseminating important information to the crowd—in the body’s case, this is a crowd of cells and molecules, rather than CEOs and managers.
The way we function as effective humans largely boils down to our genes. If we inherit some faulty genes as a result of random mutation—and we often do— it’s usually not an issue because, like kids on a field trip in primary school, genes travel in pairs. It’s as if a mother’s genetic contribution holds hands with a father’s contribution. If one member of the pair has a mutation at a specific locus, the other likely does not—given the breadth of the human genome. This is why variation is important: it reduces the odds that congenital birth defects will happen.
In the case of inbreeding, where male and female partners both come from the same familial genetic pool themselves, similar genes become concentrated. As a result, there’s a far higher risk of birth defects in their offspring2.
This becomes a serious problem if you look a few generations down the line in a hypothetical community of inbreeders. With close to 50,000 active genes in any given human’s body, there are countless chances for inopportune pairings to happen—especially when mutated versions of genes keep being traded among the same population2.
Like almost anything else in biology, incest is victim to natural selection. Darwin’s theory of evolution suggests we’re all on a mission to live out our genetic legacy by producing healthy offspring who survive to reproductive age themselves. If our biological destiny is to propel our genes indefinitely into the future, the least advantageous decision would be to put our offspring into life-compromising danger before they’re even born: in essence, to engage in incest.
So, for the benefit of our own natural selection, it’s adaptive to consider incest something we’d never want to be involved in.
But how do we know who to avoid? In a world where competition for mates and genetic legacy is said to be the underlying motivation for virtually all we do as humans, there must be some mechanism to help us recognize who it’s appropriate to mate with—genetically speaking.
One proposal, called the Westermarck effect, suggests children who live in close domestic proximity during their early years lose any sense of sexual interest in one another1. Since children in this situation are often siblings, who naturally share a large percentage of genes, it’s a logical adaptation.
The Westermarck effect is clearest in Israel’s “Kibbutz” communities, where communal caregivers typically raise neighbourhood children in peer groups defined by age, rather than nuclear family units1. One study that followed a cohort of these children into later life found that, out of 3,000 marriages, not a single one took place between kids raised together in the same peer group between birth and age six. And only 14 of the 3,000 marriages were between children who had been members of the same peer groups at any point in childhood1.
The Westermarck effect suggests the genetic health of our offspring depends on who we spend time with when we’re young. For genetically related children brought up separately, it’s easier to slip into sexual attraction as adults.
In a new age of reproductive technology, it’s possible incest could happen purely by accident. Procedures like sperm donation and in vitro fertilization experiment with bringing sexual reproduction out of the body and into test tubes. It becomes harder to recognize your relative’s chromosomes when they’re looking at you not from his face, but from a Petri dish.
So long as we don’t have sensors to alert us when we’re falling for someone too close to our genetic quotient, we should be privy to the potential risks of reproductive medicine and the modern family. Some relationships need to remain platonic in order to keep our genetic legacy on the playing field—but thanks to biology, we don’t even need to be reminded.
1 BBC News. 11 January 2008. “Parted-at-Birth Twins Married.” BBC News [Online]. Available: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/7182817.stm.
2 Mosher, Dave. 16 January 2008. “Incest Not So Taboo in Nature.” Live Science [Online]. Available: http://www.livescience.com/health/080116-incest-science.html.

In an era where social conservatism is railing against modernizing democrat forces in Congress and the White House, the issues surrounding public and personal morality have never been more relevant. This has been examined on a policy level through the debate over abstinence only education, and the sexual rights of adolescents. At a grassroots level, this movement has produced an increase in purity pledging, and the spread of father daughter purity balls. (Advocates for Youth, 1)
The United States government has funneled $50 million dollars a year into abstinence only sex education from 1998 onwards, and denied funding to comprehensive sex education programs. Despite the unproved efficiency of these abstinence only programs, only eight states have refused funding; California, Connecticut, Maine, New Jersey, Montana, Ohio, Rhode Island, and Wisconsin. (Advocates for Youth, 2) Outside of schools, increased controls over adolescent access to family planning services are being implemented, through the requirement of parental consent for oral contraceptives and laws demanding that doctors and nurses report sexually active teenagers under 17 to authorities and their families. (Brindis, 284)
In this climate of traditionalism, the popularity of virginity pledging in the United States has been steadily rising since its inception as part of the “True Love Waits” movement in 1993. Teenagers can pledge to save themselves for marriage, stating:
“Believing that true love waits, I make a commitment to God, myself, my family, my friends, my future mate, and my future children to a lifetime of purity including sexual abstinence from this day until the day I enter a biblical marriage relationship.” (Truelovewaits.com, 1)

Studies of virginity pledging have demonstrated that it can be successful in encouraging younger teens to delay sex, but usually not maintained until marriage.1 Recent studies suggest that up to 82 percent of those who take a virginity pledge later deny it, and have roughly the same rates of sexual activity as those who never took a virginity pledge. (Reuters, 1) For those that do not recant, however, serious sexual health risks have been tied to virginity pledging.
Firstly, those who take a virginity pledge are up to one third less likely to use contraception if they break their pledge. (Bearman, 899) This is not surprising, as it is difficult to prepare for something you don’t intend to do. Those who take a virginity pledge are therefore more likely to engage in unprotected sex, and are thereby more at risk for unplanned pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases. (Bearman, 900)
Secondly, there is a high likelihood of recanting one’s sexual history upon taking a virginity pledge. A study done by Janet E. Rosenbaum, titled “Reborn a Virgin: Adolescents’ Retracting of Virginity Pledges and Sexual Histories” documented that at least 10% of teenagers who had previously admitted sexual experience recanted after having recently taken a virginity pledge. (Rosenbaum, 7) This denial of previous sexual experience coupled with the increased likelihood of unprotected sex among pledgers is a huge cause for concern, as individuals have a higher chance of transmitting and receiving sexually transmitted diseases without knowing it. Not surprisingly, STI testing and seeking contraceptive medical care are also far less likely among pledgers.
Issues of sexual denial notwithstanding, the success rate of pledging and the people who chose to pledge at all are highly dependent on demographic considerations. Socio-economic status, religiosity, ethnic group, and even intelligence all play a role in determining whether one’s virginity pledge will be successful. Academically inclined teenagers of a higher socio-economic group, especially females, are far less likely to have an early start date for sexual activity due to higher perceived risks to their future. (Bearman, 868) They are also statistically less likely to enter into a virginity pledge in first place, perhaps due to perceived increase in ability to withstand sexual pressure. (Bearman, 908)
Those who pledge also have to conceive of themselves as having a “non normative identity” and part of a select group in order to be successful. The appeal to evangelical Christians, as part of their belief in themselves as a limited group predestined for salvation, is evident. Statistically speaking, this select group of pledgers in a social environment must be no more than 30% of the population. Any more than this, and virginity ceases to an exclusive status, and the abstinent effect of the pledge is removed. (Bearman, 895) This reduced effectiveness of mass virginity pledging is demonstrative of the unlikely success of an abstinence based sexual education in the United States. (Bearman, 901) One can conclude from the documented research that if most American high school students were to pledge their virginity, there would be no “pledge effect” to delay the transition to sexual intercourse.
One can see the need to belong to an exclusive social group in the demographic information of many pledge participants. Some of the most common pledge candidates are white females belonging to a lower socio-economic group, with a lower GPA, limited social network, higher religiosity, and lower self esteem. (Bearman, 881) Comparatively, black female pledgers and non black male pledgers tend to be the opposite, with higher academic achievement, high self esteem, and higher attachment to their high school. (ibid) These demographic factors suggest that low self esteem, coupled with a desire to belong to a special group, are indicators of a higher rate of pledging. (Bearman, 881)

Demographic arguments and success rates aside, the very concept of virginity pledging is worrisome. Randy Wilson, the founder of the Purity Ball movement, has commented that American’s daughters are “…desperately waiting for us in a culture that lures them into the murky waters of exploitation. They need to be rescued by you, their dad.” (Banerjee, 1) Promises made by fathers at purity balls state that fathers will pledge “before God to cover my daughter as her authority and protection in the area of purity.” (Banerjee, 2) These assertions of male dominance make the power dynamic inherent in this movement quite evident By contracting your virginity to God, your family, and your future spouse you are effectively relinquishing ownership of it, and giving someone else control over your sexuality.
This handing over of sexual control is demonstrated most viscerally in the Purity Ball phenomenon, in which young girls (often between the ages of 10 and 18) make a covenant to their fathers to save themselves for marriage. In return, their father pledges to protect their daughter’s virginity for their future husband, and affirms his desire to “war” for his daughter’s heart. (Purity ball, 1) Begun in Colorado Springs in 1998, Father-Daughter Purity balls occur in 48 American states. (Colorado Springs Father Daughter Purity Ball.com, 1)
The pledge spoken by fathers at purity balls to their daughters drills home the ideas of ownership and dominance inherent in this virginity movement. Spoken over their seated daughter as a covenant, the father states that:
“I, (daughter’s name)’s father, choose before God to cover my daughter as her authority and protection in the area of purity. I will be pure in my own life as a man, husband and father. I will be a man of integrity and accountability as I lead, guide and pray over my daughter and my family as the high priest in my home. This covering will be used by God to influence generations to come.” (Colorado Springs Purity Ball website, 1)

This ceremony, complete with the gift of a purity ring from father to daughter, exchange of vows, the passing of father and daughter under crossed swords, and girls dressed in white dancing around a large wooden cross, is representative of a larger trend in the religious right: control over female sexuality. The fundamental message here: your sexuality is not your own. It is a commodity purchased and sold by others, the basis of your personal morality. (The purity myth, 27) The making of the heartfelt promise to a father to remain “pure” until marriage effectively makes a girl’s virginity the currency of her moral worth. In the words of Lauren Wilson Black, the daughter of Randy Wilson (the founder of the Colorado Springs Purity Ball), without virginity, a woman cannot enter her marriage as a “whole” person. (Robb, 1) These arguments hearken back to medieval requirements of blood on the wedding night bed sheets and monikers of “fallen women”, and “damaged goods”.
However, this is traditionalism with a twist. Not only do girls attend an event with their fathers that seem to be equal mixes of prom, wedding, and church service; they are effectively “dating” them, as fathers model the proper treatment by men for their daughters. (MacLean’s, 2) While spending quality time with their fathers, and learning how to value respect from their partner is inarguably worthwhile, many argue that it is not clear is why this lesson needs to be taught in such a quasi romantic way. (Gillis, 2) There is a demonstrated need for father-daughter activities that reflect a relationship between parent and child, not a relationship between pseudo spouses.
Capitalizing on these new markets of tween regalia and romanticism, a blossoming merchandise industry surrounding the virginity movement has sprung up. Among these companies is “Wait Wear”, an online clothing store that hawks a “chaste couture” line, and prints t-shirts that read “Notice: No trespassing: my father is watching”. (Wait wear.com, 1) Totally apart from the blatant reference to the female wearer of the shirt as “property”, it is difficult to avoid the suggestion of voyeuristic supervision by a father jealously guarding his daughter.
This protection of fragile feminine virtue by patriarchal means is a considerable repeal of evolved sexual and community ethics. To be defined in terms of your worth by a society praising inexperience, virginity, and submission, cannot be regarded in any way but degrading for the women and girls that submit themselves to virginity pledges and purity balls. This modern buying and selling of virginity on the Christian marriage market under the guise of a “fatherhood movement” and family values is fooling no one.
1 88% of pledgers have sex before marriage, as opposed to 99% of non pledgers. (Bearman, 274)

Are modern definitions of sexual deviance distinctly different from historical definitions? Can a term, so integral to our sense of wrong and right, be less reliable than previously thought? Modern conceptions of sexual deviance revolve around the notion that one’s sexuality is a basis for one’s identity. However, in earlier periods this was not always the case. Meanings are not static and our sexual behaviours can, and are, re-written and continually re-read. The Marquis De Sade is often perceived as a ‘perverse’ man who was locked away as a pariah because of his erotically insane writing for twenty-nine of his seventy-four years. While his name became synonymous with sexually deviant behaviour, his written works offer insight into the construction of our definitions of what is deviant, perverse, abnormal and aberrant. Man produces the impressions in the Marquis’s metaphor and just as the man represents one side to the story, so does the body represent the other.
Relations between people have historically been regulating factors of societies. Efforts to organize social relationships according to categories diffuse into false dichotomies of normality versus aberration. Sexual relations are one of the most significant human interactions and thus sexual practices manifest to external observers as the ‘image’ of a society. Classification creates a language to identify, and through the process of socialization (whereby society dictates behavioural expectations) the term sexual deviance has drastically changed. In fact the word itself merely implies that which deviates from the norm, and its synonym, perverse, indicates “a broader opposition to what is expected or accepted.”1
The term sexual deviance has evolved from a temporary act of aberration to a signifier of an individual’s identity. Temporary deviant acts could, in the past, be societally regulated, but identifying a deviant mind as opposed to a deviant act is a relatively modern invention. When the deed in question is not a deviant act, but an indicator of a deviant identity, how does one regulate it?
The treatment of deviant behaviours in colonial America illustrates the regulatory attempts to channel sexual practices into the matrix of marriage and procreation. In the case of Samuel Terry of Springfield, Massachusetts, his attempts at sexual expression were not trumped but relocated to its ‘normalized’ setting. Puritan clergy “emphasized marriage as the only suitable outlet for sexual desire and warned against both masturbation and premarital sex.” In 1650 during Sunday sermon he stood on the church grounds “chafing his yard to provoke lust.” He received several lashes for masturbating in public. Again in 1661 he was required to pay five pounds over the birth of his first child with his wife of only five months. In eleven years he violated two deviant acts the church warned not to commit. Later in 1673 town courts fined Terry again for performing in an “immodest and beastly play.” Terry is an example of temporary sexual deviant behaviour and of channeling sexual expression to a normalized area: marriage. Terry garnered enough respect and trust from his community members that he was made constable and entrusted with foster children by the courts. With acceptance and payment for his transgressions he remained a citizen in good standing—his sexual actions did not define his identity.2 The transformative process of sex becoming a means to a person’s identity is a convoluted and contentious subject. Christianity in the middle ages produced a widespread normative model of an appropriate heterosexual partnership. “In pre-industrial European societies, sexual practices were primarily subjected to moral and religious problematization and categorized in relation to sin.” Religion prescribed sexual and gender roles by means of socially constructed repetitions of regular daily activities. Cultural expectations about fidelity within marriage, virginity, and abstinence became inscribed on the body and dictated how the body must perform. While Christianity “gave sex a special status by declaring it to be the original sin,” it also became a vehicle for creating further discourse on acceptable and non-acceptable practices pertaining to sex.3

Modern Culture views sex as one of the fundamental constituents of identity. Scientists in the 19th and 20th centuries believed sexual behaviour was the inevitable natural outcome of our biological make-up. With the influence of Charles Darwin, and many other scientists of the period, Victorian societies secularized. Instead of relying on religion, society turned anxiously to science to classify and explain the world around them.  As normal sexuality was continually being defined and re-defined, sexual abnormalities developed as categories for acts or desires that were not ‘normal’. Some categories for these classifications still exist today, like fetishism, necrophilia, urolagnia and algophilia. The talk of normalcy led to the business of deviance.3
Michel Foucault proposed that repression of sexuality since the 19th century has made sex one of the main features of human identities. Power-Knowledge is the attainment of power which develops through possession of knowledge. From the other side of the equation, power produces and reproduces the knowledge that creates the categories it then attempts to regulate and control. The categories, like the aforementioned deviant classifications, isolate normal from abnormal behaviours, and the utterance of the regulation appropriates certain acts as crimes and determines their relevance and presence within society. Foucault goes a step further by also suggesting that this process of repression, classification and abundant discourse of the subject is meant to create an opportunity for intervention. Through continued discourse power creates the subjects it is supposed to oppose and reject.4 Foucault commented on the coining of the term homosexual in 1870: “Homosexuality appeared as one of the forms of sexuality when it was transposed from the practice of sodomy to a kind of interior androgyny, a hermaphrodism of the soul. The sodomite had been a temporary aberration; the homosexual now was a species.”4 The term sodomy had in earlier times been used to describe any act that was not heterosexual and even bestiality. The creation of the term homosexual created the homosexual through the isolation of specific actions that are deviant from the norm. Such attempts to be more ‘scientific’ by defining categories have only trapped individuals into defining their identities in relation to their physical acts.
The Marquis seemed to be onto to something. Our bodies mirror our cultural values, making bodies sites of deviance. The term sexual deviance has been boiled down from an over arching umbrella to a hat. Sexual deviance assumes a persistent personification that passes as real. You wear the hat, you are the hat. The body has become a site of boundaries, representing imposed limitations for constructing a heterosexual surface presentation of a culturally acceptable self. Our bodies have been expected to provide a means of self-identification, but when we rely on certain types of exclusionary classifications we risk becoming trapped by our own definitions of what our identity is to us.

1 Merck, Mandy. Perversions. London: Virago Press, 1993, 2.
2 D’Emilio, John, and Freedman, Estelle. Intimate Matters: A History of Sexuality in America. New York: Harper and Row Publishers, 1988, 15-38.
3 Mottier, Veronique. Sexuality: A very Short Introduction. New York: Oxford University Press, 2008, 25-33.
4 Foucault, Michel. “The History of Sexuality.” In The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism, edited by Vincent Leitch 1619-1670. New York: Norton, 2001.

There is no shortage of individuals who, in the thick of an argument concerning sexual morality, will voice the familiar rhetoric- “It’s in the Bible.” Passages, written in periods ranging centuries apart, are cited without context and without understanding. Throughout this piece I will not be arguing the absolutism of Biblical morality—this is not a piece on whether the cited passages are “right” or not, or whether there is any validity in Biblical ethics—I will take no moral standpoint on any referenced passages. Rather, this is an analysis of the often misunderstood historical context and paradigm of Biblical writers. Particular focus will be placed upon the Hebrew Bible.
This is an issue primarily about colliding worldviews. What must initially be understood is the concept of the mutability and fluctuation of religious morality—we must not perceive this to be a static concept. Religious morality in our 21st century paradigm encapsulates several corresponding ideas which were not always a part of the religious moral framework. Morality, in previous historical contexts, did not serve as a universal ethics system derived from reason—in this thinking, we are products of the Enlightenment. Morality and reason were not always associated; indeed, morality acted as a functional means in the context of the Hebrew Bible writers. The religious morality, in particular sexual morality, described in the Hebrew Bible encapsulates morality as being the societal construction of pollution beliefs. Religion, and correspondingly sexual morality, was about hygiene.
Pollution beliefs were directly integrated with religious beliefs as part of the societal functions of the religion- it was a practical application. Morality was infused with religion, which was infused with sexual hygiene. This is best exemplified in the book of Leviticus in the Hebrew Bible: “Do not have intercourse with another man’s wife; that would make you ritually unclean.” (Lev. 18:20) Indeed, the entire book of Leviticus is devoted to hygiene as an expression of religiosity. Leviticus 13 even goes into detail on the clean or unclean status of those with skin diseases. Sexual regulations are given specific attention in Leviticus 15 and 18, addressing bodily discharges, incest, homosexuality, adultery, and bestiality: “When any man has a discharge from his penis, the discharge is unclean… any bed on which he sits or lies is unclean.” (Lev. 15:2-4) The instructions concerning discharge, behavior and acceptable sexual conduct were largely about religious preoccupations with pollution, taboo, and the maintenance of the sacred in often uncertain and anxiety-inducing settings and societies.
Much of the Hebrew Bible follows this mode of thinking, though not necessarily all. Several laws concern fasting, idol worship and other rituals. However, a significant portion of the text is absorbed with notions of binary thinking- pure versus impure, us versus them- the text is literally swarmed with the concept of separation. This is made clear in several passages: “I am the Lord your God, who rescued you from the land of Egypt; I am set apart and you must be set apart like me.” (Leviticus XI, 46) This is the framework through which the world was organized. And to perceive the environment this way was psychologically beneficial. Our environments affect how we extend our ideas onto the world. Mary Douglas, a theorist of pollution concepts, states, “We are…positively re-ordering our environment, making it conform to an idea. There is nothing fearful or unreasoning in our dirt-avoidance: it is a creative movement, an attempt to relate form to function, to make unity of experience.” (12) Douglas explores the concept extensively in Purity and Danger: An Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and Taboo. Pollution, and managing it, was a means of simultaneously seeking psychological control over the supernatural and organizing societies. Douglas states, “The separation and consecrated things and persons from profane ones, which is a normal part of religious cults, is basically the same as the separations which are inspired by the fear of malevolent spirits.” (21) The sexual morals outlined in the Hebrew Bible are hygiene-oriented, while being religious in nature. Religion emerged in reaction to the conditions of the world- not the other way around. And it is with this understanding that the practical application, or at least what was perceived as such, of religious ritual and practice can become clear- this was not religion as we understand it in the contemporary sense.
Religion, in our twenty-first century paradigm, is not associated with hygiene. Though in most religions pollution concepts have become ritualized, hygiene and pollution are generally understood in scientific dimensions. We live in a post-Enlightenment, post-Scientific Revolution age- we structure our beliefs empirically. We are function oriented and don’t perceive consequences as a result of obscure immorality- your roof didn’t collapse because you committed adultery and are thus unclean, but because you didn’t build it properly.
The problem arises when the pollution-oriented morality of the Hebrew Bible is understood as absolute ethics, particularly in the realm of sexual morality. We are presently so wildly detached from the circumstances of the text that referencing them as moral compass is absurd. This is a matter of being intellectually vigorous in understanding the historical context of religious texts and demanding of oneself that one’s ethics have a sturdier ground than convention or poorly quoted Biblical references.

Sexual morality in particular has been usurped by a myriad of religious groups, claiming it falls under the umbrella of religiously applicable morality. For example, in March of 2009, Pope Benedict XVI reiterated previously made statements denouncing the use of contraceptives, even in continents such as Africa, where twenty-two million are infected with the HIV virus. Homosexual behavior has also traditionally been regarded as immoral by the Roman Catholic Church, as expressed by Pope Benedict XVI in a 2008 address to Vatican senior staff, during which he condemned the “destructive blurring of gender.” This is problematic in that the justification for many of these condemnations lies in the words of a text utterly divorced from contemporary conditions. In regarding holy texts as absolute  truth, one must simultaneously dissociate them from any academic research done on contextual aspects of the text suggesting broader influences than divine inspiration. Sexual morality thus falls victim to the misunderstood passages of the Hebrew Bible. Only through the inclusion of the academic study of religious texts and religious histories in curriculums, can the present suppositions about the seemingly non-historical, absolutist nature of religious texts be challenged and effectively contested. From this, we can better understand the role that our own human fixations, motivations and psychological quirks, even our hygienic compulsions, have played in historical religiosity and how these have spiraled into religious absolutism and intense cultural confusion.

Pornography has become a hot topic in recent times, largely due to the newfound proliferation of media. Laws on pornography vary between countries and states, but the general consensus, at least in  the North American legal sphere, is that those involved in production must be consenting adults. Consider, however, this thought experiment: imagine that the sexual content is within the context of a written story, or artwork posted on the Internet. Is anyone being exploited by this, regardless of whether the fictional characters are above the age of fictional consent? In the narrowest sense of no actual persons being involved, the rational conclusion would have to be no. Surprisingly, in many countries such an example would indeed be prone to legal prosecution, in some cases even in the absence of any other offence, because it falls under the umbrella of what is termed “obscene content.” Often, the distinction is arbitrary between what is considered obscene content, and what is permissible.

The issue is a divided and contentious one. For instance, sexual drawings of children were prohibited in the United States by the PROTECT act of 2003, but this ban was subsequently ruled to be unconstitutional by the Supreme Court. In the Netherlands, the law only covers cases involving “realistic images,” but this definition is admittedly hazy. There is the notable exception of countries such as Australia, which specifically outlaw all sexualized depictions of children who are, or even appear to be, below the age of sixteen. Australia is one example of a legal system with a “zero-tolerance policy” towards any (even fictional) sexual content involving minors, in every medium.

In 2008, a legal case was brought to the Australian Supreme Court which involved a cartoon drawn in the style of “The Simpsons” wherein young characters were shown to be engaged in sexual acts. The court upheld a conviction of child pornography, with the judge ruling “In my view, the magistrate was correct in determining that, in respect of both the Commonwealth and the NSW offences, the word ‘person’ included fictional or imaginary characters … the mere fact that the figure depicted departed from a realistic representation in some respects of a human being did not mean that such a figure was not a ‘person’.”1 Is this an instance of governments going too far in their zeal to demonstrate their intolerance of child exploitation, and as a result tightening the boundaries of free artistic expression? Or is it legitimated by fears that being too permissible in their ruling will somehow affect the prosecution of the real abusers?

The question of acceptable content is complicated by the fact that most of the existing legislation, at least outside of Australia, deals specifically with visual material. The situation, therefore, for written fiction (commonly known as fanfiction in the fan community) about underage characters is often much less clear cut. Many critics of fanfiction depicting underage characters in sexual situations believe that it can have the effect of glorifying and even endorsing sexual abuse of young children, and pedophilia. There have also been arguments which posit that tolerating such content within fandom  communities presents an odious image of fandom to the mainstream. Conversely, those who argue for the harmlessness of these fan works stress that fictional characters and drawn art, no matter how offensive to some, cannot cause concrete harm to a living individual. In any case, many web archives of fanfiction wishing to protect themselves legally do not allow any sexual content at all to be posted to their domain. Others may set age limit restrictions on how young it is permissible for characters to be represented in the works that they accept, however these guidelines are often arbitrary, as the legal age of consent varies widely from country to country, even between different states in the United States.

Popular blogging site Livejournal, run by the American-based company Six Apart, caused a stir in 2008 when they deleted, without any warning, a whole host of accounts which were deemed to contain inappropriate material, termed as “drawings and text — that explicitly depicts minors under the age of 18 (real or not) in a graphic sexual context.” This was done in accordance with a newly-instated “zero-tolerance policy” effected in order to eliminate certain categories of posts and behaviours. Alongside material that “encourages or advocates hate crimes, rape, or child abuse or pedophilia,” 2 certain types of fiction are also banned as (allegedly) illegal under U.S. law. This action caused quite a stir in fan communities, who felt both that they had been deprived of an important outlet for creative expression, as well as unfairly lumped in with a vague but disturbing category of criminal offences they were innocent of.

Strictly speaking, fanfiction goes against copyright laws because it makes use of the source material protected as the copyright holder’s intellectual property. However, instances of citing copyright as a justification for legal action are comparatively rare. Perhaps surprisingly, trespassing on intellectual property is very often not the primary concern of litigators or their clients. Many writers or producers of entertainment media are perfectly comfortable with the flourishing of fan works. One prominent example is author of the popular “Harry Potter” series J.K. Rowling, who has openly given her blessing to writers and artists of fan works based on her books. She has stated that she is thrilled to have played a role in inspiring so much creativity and literacy, and is flattered by the fans’ response. 3 She does, however, include the caveat that no one should be making use of her material for profit, and that she would be uncomfortable for any stories that were “obscene.”

This last stipulation seems a valid concern, given that the book series is primarily targeted to children and teenagers, and there is thus a very real possibility that fans of the books could inadvertently stumble across non age-appropriate sexual content when surfing fan sites. In their book Girl Culture: An Encyclopedia, Claudia Mitchell and Jaqueline Reid-Walsh note that “legal action against fanfiction  very often makes reference to its supposed moral threat in terms of promoting pornography and endangering minors.” 4 This quote helps to elucidate the primary concern regarding sexual content in fictional works: the worry is not that minors will be endangered by direct exploitation, but rather through mere contact with what many view as inappropriate material. The question then becomes, who  decides what is appropriate? If the issue is based on a debate over morals, shouldn’t it be left to the discretion of media users, or their guardians, rather than under the jurisdiction of a third party who decides what material is or is not acceptable for the internet?

The illegality of child pornography is contingent on the fact that it is exploitative and a serious form of abuse. In the case of adult themes and representations of sexual acts involving fictional characters,  it would be an invalid argument to say that anyone is being directly harmed. The objection is thus a moral one, which supposes that the material is a corrupting influence on real individuals who access it.  The practice is in fact an entirely victimless one, aside from the purely hypothetical assertion that viewers or readers of fan works will be inspired to act out the depictions. In the end, we must ask  ourselves if fans’ artistic works are indeed a truly a harmless outlet for expression.

1 “Fan History: Shotacon.” Fan History Wiki. 10 Feb. 2009. Web. 30 Sept. 2009. <www.fanhistory.com/wiki/Shotacon>.
2 Wilson, Melissa. “Livejournal Bans Underage Adult Fanfiction.” Firefox News. 19 July 2007. Web. 30 Sept. 2009.
<http://firefox.org/news/articles/511/1/Livejournal-Bans-Underage-Adult-Fanfiction/Page1.html>.
3 Waters, Darren. “Rowling Backs Potter Fanfiction.” BBC NEWS. 27 May 2004. Web. 30 Sept. 2009. <http://news.
bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/3753001.stm>.
4 Mitchell, Claudia, and Jaqueline Reid-Walsh. Girl Culture: An Encyclopedia. Vol. 1. Westport, CT: Greenwood,
2008.

All over the world women’s bodies are seen and treated as sexual objects. While many people may feel that they do not subscribe to this view, there is still a cross-cultural obsession with ideas of modesty and decency surrounding the female body. This fear of over-exposure comes because we associate women’s bodies with a sexuality that labels them inappropriate, rather than regarding them as natural and normal. Women’s bodies are sexualized by others – for example, men or various forms of media and popular culture – and also by women themselves. All of these forms of sexualisation act as a barrier to equality, and work to perpetuate sexism.

In western society, the sexualisation of women is often fairly obvious, and is recognized in certain forms by most people. Women are commonly reduced to their appearance in popular culture and media, from misogynistic song lyrics to television ads showing women how to be “sexier” by changing the way they look. What sometimes goes unnoticed, however, are the ways in which we have naturalized this sexualisation in other situations. It is common to see a man without a shirt, and it is not automatically assumed to be in a sexual context. At the same time that we accept this “natural” behaviour, we make judgements about women who dress in a revealing way, exposing “too much” of their bodies. As soon as a woman shows her skin, it is seen as a sexual act. These assumptions about the sexual nature of women’s bodies, along with our societal norms of valuing modesty and chastity, often lead to judgements that are harmful to women individually, and also on a wider scale by promoting sexism.

This sexualisation of women’s bodies is not limited to western culture, but rather can be seen around the world, in different cultural groups. One example that has become a controversial topic in western countries recently is the requirement or choice of Muslim women to wear a veil. The most common type of covering that a Muslim woman might wear is called the hijab, which covers a woman’s hair and neck1. Some Muslim women cover themselves with the veil in front of all men who are not direct relatives or their husband, to prevent indecent acts or thoughts2. This suggests a sexualisation of women’s bodies by all other men, so much so that women have to cover themselves to avoid being seen as an object of sexual desire. This explanation also places all responsibility on the wearer of the garment, and not on the person who will be viewing and interpreting the situation. If the body is not seen as a sexual object, but as a natural and very normal thing, it could be seen without shame or a sense of indecency. The hijab is also only worn by women, which brings up issues about the equality of this tradition. As one Muslim woman who chooses not to wear the veil explains: “Both men and women are required to dedicate themselves to God, but it is only women who are expected to demonstrate this dedication outwardly in the form of hijab”3. As in western culture, the male body is seen as something natural, and very few cultural guidelines are given for how men should present their bodies in an “appropriate” way. The female body, however, is a constant source of controversy and there is no end to the often contradictory cultural expectations and restrictions for the way a woman should dress and present her body.

While many westerners are critical of the veil because they see it as a restriction of women’s rights, we must realize that the same sort of restriction is at play when a western woman is criticised for wearing what our culture might consider “revealing” clothing. In western culture there exist similar ideas about modesty, although to a different degree, and many cultures maintain the idea that a woman should limit how much of her body she reveals. Women who fail to dress to western cultural norms often face insults and harassment that are reminiscent of the kind of judgement women in Muslim countries may face if they choose not to wear a veil. The sexualisation of women’s bodies is a widespread issue that has many similarities across cultures.

In addition to the many instances in which women are sexualized by outside forces, it is also common for women to internalize these ideas and to begin to see themselves as sexualized objects. Many children are taught from a young age that attractiveness is important for success and love, and the media emphasises that this is especially true for women. There have been several studies which demonstrate the negative psychological effects of women’s self-sexualized images. One such study, (Fredrickson et al., 1998) involved a group of college students who were asked to try on and evaluate either a swimsuit or a sweater. While wearing the item of clothing, they were asked to complete a math test. The results revealed that women wearing swimsuits performed significantly worse than those wearing sweaters. The experiment was also conducted with young men, in which case the garment seemed to make no difference4. These results suggest that the sexualised images that women hold of themselves and their bodies have a negative effect on their cognitive abilities. Something as natural as wearing little clothing caused anxiety for these women, perhaps not consciously, but enough that their ability to complete a simple task was impaired. The sexualisation of women’s bodies leads to discrimination and inequality which can have negative consequences for women who internalize these messages.

The sexualisation of women has also been linked to three of the most common mental health problems for girls and women: eating disorders, low self-esteem, and depression5. The harmful effects of sexualisation are clear. If a woman feels that her only value comes from the sexual pleasure she gives to others, then it is unlikely that she will have a strong sense of self-respect. Research also shows that the sexualisation of girls decreases their ability to develop healthy sexuality (Impett et al. 2006). Self-objectification among young women has been directly linked to diminished sexual health, including decreased condom use and diminished sexual assertiveness6.

Finally, the sexualisation of women is harmful in the way that it perpetuates stereotypes of women as objects, and allows sexism to continue. Sexualisation often leads to judgement based on competing societal norms. Women are expected to be attractive but not too sexy and modest but not uptight. The judgement that women face when they fail to live up to these norms can in turn lead to harassment. When men feel that women are objects to be used, harassment about the way a woman looks or other aspects of her sexuality often occur. One specific kind of harassment that has devastating consequences for women, and one that perpetuates sexism, is sexual harassment in the workplace. A report in the Journal of Population Research and Policy Review determined that “Harassment has significant negative consequences for the economic, emotional and physical condition of women, delimiting further an economic position for women which has already been affected severely by occupational segregation and employment discrimination” 7. If women’s bodies were seen as simply bodies, and not as sexual objects, it would allow women to be seen as equal members of not only the working environment, but of society. Our obsession with the female body as a sexual object is constantly working against women who try to find success through other aspects of themselves,  undermining their talent, intelligence and hard work. While it may be argued that in some cases women use their sexuality to their advantage in the workplace, this is not a demonstration of agency, but rather a symptom of societal stereotypes. Women often operate within the framework of social stereotypes because it is much easier to do so than to work against it. This does not demonstrate an endorsement of the sexualisation that goes on, but rather its forced acceptance.

Sexuality is an important aspect of humanity; however, the treatment of the female body as exclusively a sexual object is detrimental to women’s struggle for equality. The fact that female modesty exists as a cross-cultural value illustrates the widespread view that women’s bodies are something shameful and inherently sexual. This ubiquitous sexualisation and objectification affects the way that women are seen and see themselves, which in turn limits their experience, and fundamentally, their rights.

1 Asser, Martin. “Why Muslim women wear the veil,” BBC news 5 Oct. 2006.
<http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/5411320.stm>.
2 “Why do Muslim women wear the hijab?” Islam for Today retrieved Sept.10, 2009.
<http://www.islamfortoday.com/hijabcanada4.htm>.
3 Ibid.
4 Zurbriggen, Eileen L. et al. “Report of the APA Task Force on the Sexualization of Girls” American Psychological
Association (2007). <http://www.apa.org/pi/wpo/sexualizationsum.html>.
5 Ibid.
6 Ibid.
7 Schnieder, Beth E. “Approaches, assaults, attractions, affairs: Policy implications of the sexualization of the
workplace” The Journal of Population Research and Policy Review (1985).
<http://www.springerlink.com/content/h724171j86574217/>.

Sex is easily one of the most loaded words in the English language. No matter the context, its utterance seems to invoke in us the thrill of the taboo. It is ignored and euphemized when we are children, and even as adults it seems to be out of bounds of “polite conversation.” Yet it is something with which we are constantly obsessed. Sexual imagery assaults our senses in advertisement, popular media, literature, and even our political discourse. It pervades virtually every aspect of our lives, and yet we retain much of our ancestors’ taboos about verbalizing this most fundamental of human urges. This tension has spawned a whole subset of academic theory, evidenced by the sheer number of “and Sex” courses offered at university. We could think of no more fitting a topic for our theme in this issue of Syndicus.
In the pages that follow you’ll find fascinating discussions on topics like incest and its evolutionary consequences, the sexualization of female bodies across cultures, the pervasive virginity myth in American Christianity, and more. This issue also breaks from tradition and features not one, but two prominent interviews. Judith Butler is a world-renowned radical feminist scholar whose work has informed much of feminist discourse in the past twenty years. Her fundamental argument is that gender is performative, not biologically given, and that insight has been foundational for the academic study of queer theory. Vanessa Valenti is an editor at feministing.com, the world’s most popular feminist blog. As we enter the age of the internet, it is important to discuss how marginalized groups are carving out safe spaces for themselves online, and what repercussions this has for their identities in the realm of the physical.
Each piece in this issue offers a unique perspective on sex and how it pertains to the way we live our lives. We hope that in reading this magazine, you’ll have your conceptions about sex challenged, and will come away having learned something about that most slippery of concepts.

Sincerely,

Chris Rudnicki
Editor-in-Chief

Contents:

Letter from the Editor – Chris Rudnicki

Interview with Judith Butler (Coming Soon!)

Interview with Vanessa Valenti of feministing.com (Coming Soon!)

A Jumble of Genes by Allison MacLachlan

Deviant Bodies, Deviant Minds by Ashley-Elizabeth Best

Fan Art by Irina Lazarevic

Sexual Ethics and the Hebrew Bible by Raissa Killoran

Skin or Sin? by Kathryn Bell

Virgin Worth by Sydney Houston-Gouge