Pure
Fiel a Verdad
- Joined
- Dec 20, 2001
- Posts
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Since the thread was expanded by its founder to include other religions, and because "Judaeo-Christian" traditions have been alluded to, perhaps this essay would be of interest. I would imagine traditional Christians would generally agree.
http://shamash.org/tanach/tanach/commentary/oxford-judaism/961117
[[Rabbi Boteach, a well known rabbi in Oxford England, is known for a degree of tolerance re homosexual practices (some of them) amongst Orthodox Jews. In the following essay, however, he draws a line, and gives reasons why consensual SM practices (at least those involving injury) are deviant, 'unnatural' and (presumably) should be illegal, where none of these points apply to homosexual acts. --- note by 'pure']]
The Jewish Guide to S & M
by Rabbi Shmuley Boteach,
Director, Oxford University L_Chaim Society,
Weekly Essay, 7 November, 1996
WARNING!!!: This essay isn't necessarily for the faint-hearted. So, if you fear offense please delete it now.
[excerpts]
===
Upon the publication of my book, the Jewish Guide to Adultery, friends of mine quipped that in time I would be forced to write a sequel entitled, The Jewish Guide to Incest, or better yet, The Jewish Guide to Sadomasochism. Little did I know that two years later a television company would ask me to debate the issue live with actual members of the Spanner case.
I panicked, not because I shied away from debating so controversial and explicit an issue. Hell, anything to get on TV. But rather because I have always confused the initials S&M with M&S, or - for those of you unlearned in the ways of we off-shore islanders - Marks and Spencers, Britain_s leading retail clothing chain. But such Freudian slips are commonplace among Jews since we get a far more intensely pleasurable thrill from shopping than anything remotely sexual. Jews believe in shopping and eating, not in sex. And nothing will ever change that - hopefully.
S&M, once firmly in the closet - literally - is in the news again. The Spanner case has brought it back. The 15 men who were prosecuted for meeting regularly to mutilate each other_s genitals in the name of sexual sensation and delight are appealing to the European High Court of Human rights to overturn their convictions at the hands of the British court system which sent a number of them to prison.
If anything positive has come from my brief foray into investigating the Jewish attitude to S&M, it is to give me some fantastic ideas on what to do for a party for friends in celebration of my birthday next month. We could do like the men in the Spanner case, squealing in pleasure while we hammer nails through our scrotums, pour boiling hot wax on each other_s organs, sandpaper our testicles, and pierce each one another_s genitals with every imaginable gadget.
No joke! All this actually happened. Lucky for us, they even videoed their exploits for posterity, although never with the intention of public viewing and it seems that the police were the only ones fortunate enough to witness such fun.
But even these exploits are blase_ and boring by the standards of creativity adopted by some of the men I have spoken to through the proposed television programme. A young man named Eric enjoys lighting firecrackers in his bottom, and John likes hanging weights, and an occasional saw and other pieces of hardware, from his male appendage. [...]
These acts, which would strike the mainstream populace and demented and depraved, are all defended by one central argument. Once upon a time the existence of G-d was largely proven by the argument from design. Today, the liberty for man to pursue any perversion he pleases is licensed by the argument from consent, or to be more precise, informed consent. What two consenting adults do in the privacy of their own bedroom is beyond the letter of the law. [...]
But for consent alone to be used to defend these actions is manifestly absurd. Judaism cannot countenance the mutilation of the body under any circumstance bar one: when such actions are undertaken for expressly for medical purposes and the prolonging of life, such as in the case of surgery under the knife, and the like.
My arguments in response to declarations of consent are as follows:
I. If consent is the sole criteria by which we afford full license to adults to pursue any activity so long as it is in the privacy of their own bedroom, then we must also allow incest. What a brother and sister, or mother and son, do in the privacy of their own bedroom is their business.
Most would retort that incest is different since it will lead to a child being born with an arm growing out of its scrotum. Agreed. Brothers and sisters procreating together will destroy their genetic pool. So we will have to legislate that a immediate family can only copulate if the female agrees to be sterilised previously, or if she is on a reliable contraceptive.
And why stop there? Why not allow necrophilia? Two lovers can have a pact whereby the other agrees that their body can be used for sexual fun even after death. Just think about it. Now Jeffrey can take his departed lover Paul_s body to parties and raves with him for everyone to share and have fun with. Why shouldn_t Paul be allowed to party beyond the grave? [...] so long as Paul agrees first. Some donate their bodies to scientific research. So why shouldn_t others donate their bodies to sexual experimentation?
Cannibalism should also be legalised. What right does the state have to interfere in two friends devouring each other_s remains, so long as there was informed consent? [...]
II. It is simply not true that our bodies belong to us and we can do with it as we please. Every free democracy on earth (with the notable exception of a province in Australia) forbids suicide and/or assisted suicide. If you try and jump off the Brooklyn Bridge (what an awful way to go, far healthier to flush yourself down a latrine) you will be arrested by the Big boys in blue, New York_s finest, a.k.a. the police.
Similarly, every decent society on earth deplores adultery, and for reasons that are not only religious. Even complete secularists condemn infidelity. And why? Because you are hurting your spouse. [...] he [adulterer] belongs to someone. His body is not his own. The same applies to society. We all belong to, and are responsible for, one another. And individuals cannot harm themselves with impunity.
III. Sadomasochism is a real sexual deviance. Now, I hear you already accusing me of typical religious prudishness and intolerance. But hear me out. I do not believe that homosexuality is a deviance and utterly reject the natural-law argument which says that the human body is constructed for heterosexual intercourse. On the contrary, the human body is constructed for heterosexual reproduction.
But what percentage of heterosexual sex actually involves copulation? Is kissing natural? Is that really what the mouth was made for? Was the tongue made to slither down someone else_s oesophagus? Let_s face it. Heterosexuals get up to some pretty weird stuff themselves. Furthermore, throughout history homosexuality was just as common, and in many cases more common, than heterosexuality, as Professor David Greenberg shows in his monumental and most comprehensive study, The Construct of Homosexuality.
Rather, homosexuality to me is prohibited not because it is a deviance, but rather because G-d prohibits it. The objection to homosexuality that can be made is strictly on religious grounds. G-d forbids it in much the same way he forbids a Jew to drive on Shabbos or eat a cheeseburger, notwithstanding how natural and intuitive these acts may be. Adultery is natural, especially for a man, but G-d still labels it a sin. In fact, I argue that a sexual deviance is a contradiction in terms. The essence of human sexuality is to do that which comes naturally and automatically, and for many, to have sex with someone of the same gender is an intuitive gravitation and orientation.
But sadomasochism is a real deviance because it is not intuitive. Rather, it is all about sexual experimentation, and is much like a heterosexual man who has sex with a man, not because he wants to, but simply because he wants to try something new and know what it is like. The average person is not driven genetically to hammer his scrotum to wood, and this act cannot be compared how a man or a woman are driven to adultery.
Rather sadomasochism, which has little historical precedent, is entirely a modern consequence of the loss of depth in human sexual relationships and the separation of sex from love. When two people who love each other have sex, with every experience they come to know each other better and deeper.
This is why the Bible and the Hebrew language have no expression for sex other than "knowledge," as in, "And Adam knew his wife Eve." A couple who are in love progress vertically in their relationship as each sexual experience, especially the truly pleasurable ones, elicit stronger and deeper feelings for one another. They draw closer and closer to the point where they become one flesh.
But sex without love is entirely different. To be sure, it is thrilling while it lasts, but leaves the individual feeling empty and vacuous when it is over. The participants therefore are forced to expand, not vertically, but horizontally. Instead of discovering deeper dimensions of each other_s personalities and warmth, they must simply try newer and newer adventures. They cannot repeat the same general retinue, albeit with modifications, over again because, since there is no love, this quickly becomes boring and stale. Rather, they must try something totally new. And once that_s done, they must expand their horizons, until they go totally off the deep end - like lighting incendiary devices from their anus or sticking gerbils in places that are worse than any cage.
IV. Finally, sadomasochism desensitises us to violence. When people partake of activities that are severely injurious to the human body, and call it a pleasure, they forfeit an ability to distinguish between that which is wholesome and good, and that which is agonising and hurtful. Violence, even of the self-inflicted variety, should never dignified no matter what label it carries. The measure of a healthy society at any given time is what it does with its sexuality.
[...]What two people do in the privacy of their own bedroom is of course society_s business. This was the excellent point that Frances Lawrence made in her recent, much-applauded manifesto. Even what a child watches on TV in the privacy of his own bedroom has a direct impact on society, she argued, because it desensitises him to enormity of the act of plunging a knife in his headmaster_s back.
As a Rabbi who hails from a religious tradition that has always glorified the sexual act between married adults, I am not a sexual prude, and opposition to sadomasochism should never be construed as prudishness. Rather, it is in the spirit of a profound respect for the loving bonds that sex can foster between two adults that these lines are written to ensure that the sex that we practice always lends our relationships intimacy and our bodies dignity and depth, rather than depravity and desolation.
====
http://shamash.org/tanach/tanach/commentary/oxford-judaism/961117
[[Rabbi Boteach, a well known rabbi in Oxford England, is known for a degree of tolerance re homosexual practices (some of them) amongst Orthodox Jews. In the following essay, however, he draws a line, and gives reasons why consensual SM practices (at least those involving injury) are deviant, 'unnatural' and (presumably) should be illegal, where none of these points apply to homosexual acts. --- note by 'pure']]
The Jewish Guide to S & M
by Rabbi Shmuley Boteach,
Director, Oxford University L_Chaim Society,
Weekly Essay, 7 November, 1996
WARNING!!!: This essay isn't necessarily for the faint-hearted. So, if you fear offense please delete it now.
[excerpts]
===
Upon the publication of my book, the Jewish Guide to Adultery, friends of mine quipped that in time I would be forced to write a sequel entitled, The Jewish Guide to Incest, or better yet, The Jewish Guide to Sadomasochism. Little did I know that two years later a television company would ask me to debate the issue live with actual members of the Spanner case.
I panicked, not because I shied away from debating so controversial and explicit an issue. Hell, anything to get on TV. But rather because I have always confused the initials S&M with M&S, or - for those of you unlearned in the ways of we off-shore islanders - Marks and Spencers, Britain_s leading retail clothing chain. But such Freudian slips are commonplace among Jews since we get a far more intensely pleasurable thrill from shopping than anything remotely sexual. Jews believe in shopping and eating, not in sex. And nothing will ever change that - hopefully.
S&M, once firmly in the closet - literally - is in the news again. The Spanner case has brought it back. The 15 men who were prosecuted for meeting regularly to mutilate each other_s genitals in the name of sexual sensation and delight are appealing to the European High Court of Human rights to overturn their convictions at the hands of the British court system which sent a number of them to prison.
If anything positive has come from my brief foray into investigating the Jewish attitude to S&M, it is to give me some fantastic ideas on what to do for a party for friends in celebration of my birthday next month. We could do like the men in the Spanner case, squealing in pleasure while we hammer nails through our scrotums, pour boiling hot wax on each other_s organs, sandpaper our testicles, and pierce each one another_s genitals with every imaginable gadget.
No joke! All this actually happened. Lucky for us, they even videoed their exploits for posterity, although never with the intention of public viewing and it seems that the police were the only ones fortunate enough to witness such fun.
But even these exploits are blase_ and boring by the standards of creativity adopted by some of the men I have spoken to through the proposed television programme. A young man named Eric enjoys lighting firecrackers in his bottom, and John likes hanging weights, and an occasional saw and other pieces of hardware, from his male appendage. [...]
These acts, which would strike the mainstream populace and demented and depraved, are all defended by one central argument. Once upon a time the existence of G-d was largely proven by the argument from design. Today, the liberty for man to pursue any perversion he pleases is licensed by the argument from consent, or to be more precise, informed consent. What two consenting adults do in the privacy of their own bedroom is beyond the letter of the law. [...]
But for consent alone to be used to defend these actions is manifestly absurd. Judaism cannot countenance the mutilation of the body under any circumstance bar one: when such actions are undertaken for expressly for medical purposes and the prolonging of life, such as in the case of surgery under the knife, and the like.
My arguments in response to declarations of consent are as follows:
I. If consent is the sole criteria by which we afford full license to adults to pursue any activity so long as it is in the privacy of their own bedroom, then we must also allow incest. What a brother and sister, or mother and son, do in the privacy of their own bedroom is their business.
Most would retort that incest is different since it will lead to a child being born with an arm growing out of its scrotum. Agreed. Brothers and sisters procreating together will destroy their genetic pool. So we will have to legislate that a immediate family can only copulate if the female agrees to be sterilised previously, or if she is on a reliable contraceptive.
And why stop there? Why not allow necrophilia? Two lovers can have a pact whereby the other agrees that their body can be used for sexual fun even after death. Just think about it. Now Jeffrey can take his departed lover Paul_s body to parties and raves with him for everyone to share and have fun with. Why shouldn_t Paul be allowed to party beyond the grave? [...] so long as Paul agrees first. Some donate their bodies to scientific research. So why shouldn_t others donate their bodies to sexual experimentation?
Cannibalism should also be legalised. What right does the state have to interfere in two friends devouring each other_s remains, so long as there was informed consent? [...]
II. It is simply not true that our bodies belong to us and we can do with it as we please. Every free democracy on earth (with the notable exception of a province in Australia) forbids suicide and/or assisted suicide. If you try and jump off the Brooklyn Bridge (what an awful way to go, far healthier to flush yourself down a latrine) you will be arrested by the Big boys in blue, New York_s finest, a.k.a. the police.
Similarly, every decent society on earth deplores adultery, and for reasons that are not only religious. Even complete secularists condemn infidelity. And why? Because you are hurting your spouse. [...] he [adulterer] belongs to someone. His body is not his own. The same applies to society. We all belong to, and are responsible for, one another. And individuals cannot harm themselves with impunity.
III. Sadomasochism is a real sexual deviance. Now, I hear you already accusing me of typical religious prudishness and intolerance. But hear me out. I do not believe that homosexuality is a deviance and utterly reject the natural-law argument which says that the human body is constructed for heterosexual intercourse. On the contrary, the human body is constructed for heterosexual reproduction.
But what percentage of heterosexual sex actually involves copulation? Is kissing natural? Is that really what the mouth was made for? Was the tongue made to slither down someone else_s oesophagus? Let_s face it. Heterosexuals get up to some pretty weird stuff themselves. Furthermore, throughout history homosexuality was just as common, and in many cases more common, than heterosexuality, as Professor David Greenberg shows in his monumental and most comprehensive study, The Construct of Homosexuality.
Rather, homosexuality to me is prohibited not because it is a deviance, but rather because G-d prohibits it. The objection to homosexuality that can be made is strictly on religious grounds. G-d forbids it in much the same way he forbids a Jew to drive on Shabbos or eat a cheeseburger, notwithstanding how natural and intuitive these acts may be. Adultery is natural, especially for a man, but G-d still labels it a sin. In fact, I argue that a sexual deviance is a contradiction in terms. The essence of human sexuality is to do that which comes naturally and automatically, and for many, to have sex with someone of the same gender is an intuitive gravitation and orientation.
But sadomasochism is a real deviance because it is not intuitive. Rather, it is all about sexual experimentation, and is much like a heterosexual man who has sex with a man, not because he wants to, but simply because he wants to try something new and know what it is like. The average person is not driven genetically to hammer his scrotum to wood, and this act cannot be compared how a man or a woman are driven to adultery.
Rather sadomasochism, which has little historical precedent, is entirely a modern consequence of the loss of depth in human sexual relationships and the separation of sex from love. When two people who love each other have sex, with every experience they come to know each other better and deeper.
This is why the Bible and the Hebrew language have no expression for sex other than "knowledge," as in, "And Adam knew his wife Eve." A couple who are in love progress vertically in their relationship as each sexual experience, especially the truly pleasurable ones, elicit stronger and deeper feelings for one another. They draw closer and closer to the point where they become one flesh.
But sex without love is entirely different. To be sure, it is thrilling while it lasts, but leaves the individual feeling empty and vacuous when it is over. The participants therefore are forced to expand, not vertically, but horizontally. Instead of discovering deeper dimensions of each other_s personalities and warmth, they must simply try newer and newer adventures. They cannot repeat the same general retinue, albeit with modifications, over again because, since there is no love, this quickly becomes boring and stale. Rather, they must try something totally new. And once that_s done, they must expand their horizons, until they go totally off the deep end - like lighting incendiary devices from their anus or sticking gerbils in places that are worse than any cage.
IV. Finally, sadomasochism desensitises us to violence. When people partake of activities that are severely injurious to the human body, and call it a pleasure, they forfeit an ability to distinguish between that which is wholesome and good, and that which is agonising and hurtful. Violence, even of the self-inflicted variety, should never dignified no matter what label it carries. The measure of a healthy society at any given time is what it does with its sexuality.
[...]What two people do in the privacy of their own bedroom is of course society_s business. This was the excellent point that Frances Lawrence made in her recent, much-applauded manifesto. Even what a child watches on TV in the privacy of his own bedroom has a direct impact on society, she argued, because it desensitises him to enormity of the act of plunging a knife in his headmaster_s back.
As a Rabbi who hails from a religious tradition that has always glorified the sexual act between married adults, I am not a sexual prude, and opposition to sadomasochism should never be construed as prudishness. Rather, it is in the spirit of a profound respect for the loving bonds that sex can foster between two adults that these lines are written to ensure that the sex that we practice always lends our relationships intimacy and our bodies dignity and depth, rather than depravity and desolation.
====
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