I’m still thinking about Robert Burns, from my previous post, and the influence that his romantic poetry had on collective mores regarding love and sex in the 18th century, and beyond.
The male’s sexual drive, as a newly matured animal, is stimulated by the presence of a newly matured female. The male and female are caught up in a powerful, organic, animal paradigm—propagation of the species.
Their individuality does not matter. They are like magnetic particles meeting in one another’s life-sphere.
This function is to stimulate intercourse.
Her function is to become pregnant with a new being.
He gets the passion and departs.
She gets the passion and the burden of raising the new seed.
In viewing romance from the perspective of hormonally-driven passion, we can bring into focus the awesome power that drives this raw force.
Many women and infants died in childbirth during Robert Burns’ era. His second wife, Jean Armour, carried 9 children to term—three survived. Many men turned their backs on the nightmare of raising a child in poverty, separating themselves from any responsibility. That ‘hit-and-run’ mentality is still prevalent today, however, science has given us the ability, through DNA testing, to prove paternity. At its core, being expected to produce children throughout life has always been a burden for women.
Conditions and perspectives about birth control have changed over the last two and a half centuries. Family planning, which includes safe and legal abortion, contraception, and sterilization, are all viable options today in a quest for birth and health management.
In our current time, there is the added burden of overpopulation and provision. The environmental impact of the dimensions of human overpopulation continues to put humans, the animal kingdom, and Earth’s natural systems of balance, in jeopardy. This challenge drives the rational need to manage birth outcomes—the survival and well being of our species—while at the same time protecting an individual’s freedom of choice.
In our capacity to control conception, primarily through the birth control pill—introduced in 1960—we have been given the unprecedented opportunity to explore sex without the anxiety of conception. This singular shift has offered us the opportunity to experience sex and passion, absent the romance and love.
Romanticized sex has not been helpful in managing human breeding, but it has brought many to view sexuality more objectively. Science and technology have shown us how to bring birth into balance for sustainable population numbers, but little attention has been payed to the consequences of overpopulation in regard to the quality of life available to the fetus once born.
The circumstances that continue to drive high divorce rates, as well as the option for a woman to live as her own sovereign—free of male ownership and domination—has exposed much of what, in the past, was a woman’s burden.
Separating sex from love is at the core of women’s self-determination, especially when compared to the millennia old idea of viewing her as a random breeder of life without choice.
Sex, Passion, Romance . . . and Love?