| A scholarly Social Anthropologist
priest takes a look at our society’s current Love Organizations.
Abstract: Summary: The commonly held romantic fantasy of young American men and women - the myth of the Knight in Shining Armor and the Beautiful Princess in whose marriage each totally satisfies the other's needs in passionate sexual monogamy -- seems impervious to major social changes that have radically altered modern male-female relationships. What does it mean for the future? Belief in the Knight/Princess myths, together with the expectations and hopes they each embody, persists today despite many challenges undermining the economic and ideological functions traditionally imputed to lifelong monogamy. These challenges include a doubling of life expectancy, our ability to enjoy contraceptive sex without marriage, and economic, social, and psychological empowerment of women. Whatever cohesive functions this myth played in supporting marriage and family in the past, it clearly conflicts with the realities of modern patterns of sex, divorce and remarriage. What kinds of adaptations in our romantic expectations will the 21st century need? Hope for love surely will not dwindle, but one can predict changes in what Americans might expect from marriage itself. These center on fewer children, continued affluence, greater leisure, and increasing satisfaction with work and personal growth. Against these rosy hopes are economic uncertainty, social anonymity, the scattering of family members, the likelihood of divorce, and the statistical certainty that women outlive men, all darkened by the lack of assured health care in the later years. Whether or not our social and religious institutions can respond to these challenges, it seems clear that the Knight/Princess myth is too narrow a path to provide the flexibility and diversity we need in our intimate relationships now and in the future. Robert T. Francoeur – Background and Premise My path to this presentation started 40 years ago when I earned a master’s degree in Catholic theology. My thesis topic was the controversial, seminal synthesis of evolution and theology proposed by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, the Jesuit paleontologist. My first books probed this synthesis in greater detail, in THE WORLD OF TEILHARD DE CHARDIN (edited 1961), PERSPECTIVES IN EVOLUTION (1965), and EVOLVING WORLD, CONVERGING MAN (1970). As a priest, I was intrigued by how the birth control pill, the civil rights and sexual revolution of the 1960s, major advances in reproductive technologies, and debates over sexual issues at the Second Vatican Council and similar Protestant of Jewish assemblies would inevitably alter our future understanding and experience of our sexual lives. Also influencing my effort to understand the future of sex, romanticism, marriage, and family was my doctoral research in experimental embryology and my recent work on an award-winning three volume INTERNATIONAL ENCYCLOPEDIA OF SEXUALITY, covering all major aspects of sexual attitudes and behavior in 32 countries, written by 135 scholars on six continents. My premise Three Romantic Traditions - Let me begin by focusing on three different romantic love traditions: (1) An emerging international youth culture
romanticism 1. A new International Youth Romantic
Love Tradition. This rapidly changing international youth culture of romanticism is spread by music that reaches youth everywhere on the globe almost as soon as it is encoded on CDs and tape cassettes or watched on satellite broadcasts of MTV. It is promoted by a whole genre of Japanese-produced erotica comic books and computer games reaching youth worldwide and rapidly growing in popularity in the United States. These media offer an emerging romanticism with a new iconography of the female that emphasizes gender equality. 2. The Pagan/Courtly Love
tradition In a few American subcultures, the jet-set, the aristocratic rich, celebrities, and our Presidents, from Thomas Jefferson to William Jefferson Clinton, the pagan/courtly tradition is evident but without unnecessary publicity (Cuber & Harroff 1965). Yet, beneath the surface, as Hunt suggests,
the unacceptable pagan-courtly tradition "fits too well the emotional
needs of many adults to go unused and unappreciated." The result
is a mythic image and unrealistic belief in lifelong exclusive monogamy
coupled with a quite different unadvertised and often subconscious practice
for many Americans. 3. Puritan/Bourgeois Romantic Love By the seventeenth century, the new ideals of romantic marital love had started to percolate down from the upper classes of society into the lives of the new middle-class merchants, although the more open and formal acceptance of adultery as a reward for love still caused many nobles and most of the conservative middle class serious concern. A convenient shift in the identity of the beloved lady, from the married woman to the single woman, relieved this erotic tension. (This shift in turn gradually led to the affirmation of a young woman and man’s right to marry out of love rather than parental dictate, and a reevaluation of the issue of premarital sex.) "In the northern European puritan-bourgeois tradition," according to Morton Hunt, "marriage came to be viewed romantically and idealistically as the most intense, most meaningful of human relationships and the only one in which sex, love, and parenthood were socially and morally acceptable. Any outside emotional or sexual involvement was seen as directly competitive with some part of this synthesis, disruptive of it, and therefore evil." When divorce became somewhat acceptable to the Protestant culture, the extramarital affair became even more intolerable. Psychologically this invidious and lethal virus was kept in check by the widespread message that one could not possibly love a spouse and another person simultaneously, and, conversely, that an extramarital affair was a sure proof that one did not really love one's spouse. The common acceptance of this message forced the extramarital relationship into a very definite garb of guilt, conflict, secrecy, and the choice between a purely physical, fleeting encounter or a deeply emotional relationship that could supplant the marriage. In America the puritan-bourgeois tradition prevails. It certainly is the only one acceptable for the masses. The current American myth of romantic love emerged in popular literature around 1880 in the images of the Knight in Shining Armor and his Beautiful Princess in whose marriage each totally satisfies the other's every need in passionate sexual monogamy. Young Americans, from my experience with college students, are even more convinced of this myth by the fear of the serial monogamy, divorce and remarriage they see in their parents’ lives. The Knight and Princess expectation permeates American culture despite the undeniable realities of change. The 1960s, the Turning Point The celibate Fathers of the Second Vatican Council were challenged by the changing social scene and a newly vocal laity to debate the morality of contraception, celibacy, premarital and extramarital sex, sex, and divorce. Protestant, Jewish, Quaker, and human scholars added to the challenge. The dam has finally broken. Like it or not, we are already searching for new paradigms for love, romance, sexual intimacy, marriage and the family. (Böchle 1970; British Council of Churches 1967; Cole 1969; Cuber 1969; Ferm 1971; Fletcher 1966; Fletch and Wassmer 1970; Genné & Genné 1961; Mace 1970; Milhaven 1970; Pittenger 1970; Presbyterian 1970, 1991; Quaker 1966; Robinson 1970; Roy & Roy 1968, 1970; Valente 1970). Today From 1960 to the Twenty First Century It seems as though a cosmic force, held back for centuries, has now burst the old dam, and is flooding everywhere like a tidal wave. Perhaps it is the historical destiny of man in the last part of this century to channel this force once more into service of the new man. A new era is certainly coming upon us, and is going to affect all our institutions, even marriage, the basic institution of our present civilization. Humanity is entering on a new and awesome adventure. It is as though we were setting foot for the first time on a new planet, not knowing what we are likely to meet. How will the man of tomorrow live his sexual life? Will he have won greater inner freedom? Will he have destroyed the tyranny of genitality and replaced it by a more discreet form of eroticism, more widespread, more communicative, permeating all human relationships? This is not answering the question at hand, except in a circular way implicit in the positive and creative tone of Snoek's observations and questions. The question disturbs him. Nevertheless he admits, it remains to be seen whether the institutionalization of sexuality in the sacrament of marriage excludes any other sexual activity as being incompatible and immoral. Snoek’s suggestion that a sacramental marriage may include rather than exclude other eroto-sexual intimacies and passions is evidence of a common tension in church doctrine. Although a traditional anti-sexual morality darkens the landscape, lightening occasionally strikes in the form of a prophetic sex-positive insight that can, with time, set the landscape ablaze. Snoek’s 1970 comment strikes me as just that kind of insight. It reminds me of Peter Lombard, a Paris bishop in the twelfth century. Contrary to the prevailing sex-negative views of his era, Lombard claimed that the erotic ideals of romance could and should be fused with marriage. He taught and defined that the full consent of bride and groom and their sexual consummation of the relationship were essential for a marriage. Centuries passed before Catholic theologians recognized Lombard’s prophetic insight, just as it will take a few decades for the churches and society to deal with Snoek’s prophetic questions. A few years ago, John Money, the internationally renown sexologist, reminded us that the past decade of sexological research has brought major breakthroughs in our understanding of our sexual identities, our gender roles and sexual attractions and bondings - every aspect of sex, marriage and family. Our exploding new knowledge of the roles genes, hormones, anatomy, neurotransmitters, neural encoding and our changing social environment and learning are, in John Money’s view, contributing to what promises to be a veritable explosion of knowledge concerning the governance of human sexuality and eroticism. This new knowledge will, in all probability, enforce a complete rewrite of the differentiation and development of human sexuality and eroticism early in the twenty-first century. (Money 1994:218) My conclusion is that we cannot incorporate our new knowledge and appreciation of human sexuality and bonding with some modification of either the puritan/bourgeois or pagan/courtly love views of romantic love. Both are crippled by their patriarchal roots. As Barbara Ehrenreich, Elizabeth Hess, and Gloria Jacobs (1987) urged, we need to challenge the old definition of sex as a physical act. Sex, or “normal sex,” as defined by the medical experts and accepted by mainstream middle class culture, was a two-act drama of foreplay and intercourse which culminated in male orgasm and at least a display of female appreciation. We rejected this version of sex as narrow, male-centered, unsatisfying. In its single-mindedness and phallocentrism, this [view of sex]... reminds us simply of work: "sex" as narrowly and traditionally defined, is obsessive, repetitive, and symbolically (if not actually) tied to the work of reproduction. The lessons of our past and the tidal wave of ecosystem changes we face, I am convinced, clearly suggest that any new paradigm and value system for romantic love will be some combination of the emerging international youth culture and the pagan/courtly love paradigm. It will be more gender equal and gender free. It will be pioneered and fashioned primarily by women, an echo of the priestess of Isthar, the Holy Whore, who taught men, Enkidu and Gilgamesh, the mystery and meaning of love, sex, and humanness (Rosten 1993). It will involve a holistic view of the sensual nurturing eroticism and sexuality that permeates our whole being, personality and everything we do. It will recognize that sexuality is, first and foremost, a polymorphic spiritual energy given primarily for the purpose of creativity, a gift to be enjoyed, a sensual, nurturing engagement of healing and creative ecstasy and pleasure. The new sexuality and sexual morality, which women are describing from their experience, will focus on persons and on the quality of one’s relationships. It will not focus on genital, coital connections (heterosexual, homosexual, or bisexual), nor on one’s marital status or lack of it. Sexual morality will be judged on our moral
use of our sensual panerotic sexual potential in loving, nurturing, life-serving
relationships. This emerging sexual morality will embrace the many coital
and noncoital, phallic and non-phallic, expressions of our panerotic potential.
Our lives will be enriched by a wide range of erotic intimacies, including
the varieties of “outercourse,” and what therapist Laure Berman
calls VENIS )Very Erotic Non-Insertive Sex). The pair bonding
of couples in and out of marriage becomes much more flexible and includes
a variety of exclusive and inclusive bondings (intimate friendships, intimate
networks, polyamorous groupings, open and closed marriages, satellites,
and comaritals). The question then becomes one of the extent
to which any particular friendship, whatever its intimate sensual/erotic
expression, embodies the moral values of “self- liberating, other-enriching,
honest, faithful, responsible, life-serving, joyful, and transcendent”.
7 A Century of Unprecedented, Radical
Changes Like all other animals, we humans will become
extinct if we do not adapt to a new environment. So How Will We Adapt
to our Radically Changed and Changing World? Infant Mortality: In 1850,
one in 5 infants did not survive its first year; one in two dies before
age 5. Fertility - Decreasing Family Size: Colonial America, 15 or more kid; 1900 – 6 to 8, Today 2.1 kids per woman --how much of adult life does woman spend in child rearing? Reprotech Infertility treatments that by-pass sexual intercourse, postmenopausal pregnancy, surrogate mothers, embryo transplants, kids with a genetic father and two genetic mothers (nuclear & mitochondrial DNA), frozen sperm and eggs, predetermining the sex of fetus --- all challenge our traditional paradigms and definitions of mother, father, kin relationships. Medical Advances: Antiseptics, antibiotics, vaccines, HIV/AIDS and Hepatitis C, VIAGRA Puberty and Adolescence - “Childhood” invented by the Victorians at the turn of the century “Adolescence” invented in the 1950s in North America and Europe. Sexually mature single young, middle-age, and older persons - a new species. Puberty: One-half of African American girls, and 1 in 6 white girls, start puberty by age 8 years The Increasing Economic and Psychological
Liberation of Women. Contraception: the birth
control pill (1963) opens the door to convenient effective contraceptives;
the Supreme Court declares unconstitutional all state laws banning contraceptive
sales to married women (1966) and single women (1972); abortion legalized
1973. Legal Changes: Consenting adult (sex) laws starting in 1961 - Pornography laws relaxed Roth v US in 1957, Miller v US 1973. Easy divorce and no-fault divorce. US military downgrades the crime of adultery. Sexual harassment & date rape laws. Increasing Mobility --bicycle to automobile, teens gain cars in 1960s e.g., Courtship moved from parlor to back seat of car. Anonymity of city and suburban life.... more tolerance of alternative lifestyles Leisure and Retirement --From six-seven days a week, sun-up to sun-down to 40 hour work week, dual career families, DINKS - Double Income No Kids, Social Security and Retirement pensions. Widespread increase in affluence. Sea Changes in the Visual Arts MOVIES AND TELEVISION - Changes in sexual content of cinema, television, video cassette rental, cable TV. Playboy, Penthouse and Hustler, Cyber sex on the Internet, privacy of the home Music and Dance - from arms-length waltz and minuet to cheek-to-cheek (1920s), Rag Time, Charleston, Jitter-bug, Dick Clark’s All American Bandstand, Elvis Presley, the Beetles, rock and roll, Madonna, heavy metal, rap and MTV Conservative Counter Trends: The Moral Majority, Christian Coalition, Family Research Council, Promise Keepers celebrate “traditional American family,” denounce gay rights, and opt for Biblical wife’s servant submission to her husband. This paper is part of a four hour panel presentation for the American Anthropological Association meeting, December 4, 1998, Philadelphia, PA). With Laura Ahearn, Helen Fisher (Anthropology, Rutgers University), Tomoko Hamada, Timothy Perper (Behavioral scientist and sexologist), Alan Beals, Robert Francouer (Biology/Sexology, Fairleigh Dickinson University), Dorothy Tennov (Linguistics, Georgetown University), Robert Moore, Victor de Munck (Anthropology, University of New Hampshire), Charles Lindholm (Boston University, University Professors Program), William Jankowiak (Anthropology, University of Nevada), and Elisa Sobo (Cancer Prevention and Control, University of California, San Diego) Robert T. Francoeur, PhD, ACS
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