From Whence Came Sex?

As brilliant as our scientists may be, even they are stumped when it comes to explaining the origin of sex. They become tongue-tied, blather on using unpronounceable words that are enough to turn you off to being sexual at all.

So it seems that no one has ever really figured it out. The word itself conjures up all kinds of mental images, doesn’t it?

Eons ago, when I was first starting to teach human sexuality to a group of teens in my local church, I would place a large group of pictures down on the floor and number them. The pictures consisted of everything from porn to nursing mothers to baby animals with their mothers in the field to romantic scenes. Gathering this array of pictures was fun!

Each of the young people was given a sheet with only one statement on it – “This says sex to me.” They were to indicate which of the pictures fell into that category by checking a “yes” or a “no.” At the end of that part of the exercise, we placed the pictures in order of the most number of “yes” or “no.”

At that point, we got into a discussion of the results. Of course, it came down to the definition of “sex” that each of them had assumed. For most, they translated “sex” as “sexy,” so the results showed a high number of pornographic pictures.

You can imagine the rest of that discussion, but the purpose behind telling that story here is that we all become just as twittery around the topic of sex as the teens and the scientists.

It has obviously been around a long time, otherwise how would we have populated the earth so quickly? Someone was “doing it” many years ago.

One of my favorite books that addresses this issue is The Rape of the A.P.E. by Allan Sherman, published in 1973. I remember reading it shortly after it came out. I was sitting under a hair dryer (yeah, I used to get my hair “done”) and laughing until tears ran down my cheeks. The A.P.E. stands for “American Puritan Ethic,” by the way.

He talks about how sex used to be something everyone did whenever they liked, wherever they liked, at whatever time of day they wanted. Can you just imagine such a dream world??

(Pardon me while my heart flutters a bit here!)

Sherman continues by reminding us that sex has become something we do under the covers with all the lights out, and probably some of our clothes still on. How confining!

And I even know people who actually have sex on a schedule. “It’s Friday, so we must be on for sex tonight.” How utterly boring!

The best I can figure out, sex started with two little cells who bumped up against each other and eventually created a whole bunch of other little cells. But where did it switch from being merely a physical reproductive process to being something that we titter about behind our fingertips, or seek out in strange ways until our libido is satisfied?

I’m not complaining, mind you!!! I love sex, love talking about it, and mostly love doing it. But my curiosity gets the best of me, so I had to look it up. The actual word comes from the Latin word sexus, which means gender, or a state of being either male or female, and dates back to late 14th century.

After that, it progressed through many different evolutions (no pun intended), such as quality of being male or female (16th century), sexual intercourse (thanks to good old D.H. Lawrence), genitalia (as late as early 20th century), to sexpot (no wonder I got pregnant about the same time as the origin of this word!). You can read more about it here, but nothing really tells us where this whole concept came from.

Why don’t we all just enjoy sex, and cease the worrying about who is doing what with whom (see my post from last Saturday on the politics of adultery), and how they are doing it?

By the way, if you are looking for a good book where nothing in our society is sacred, I suggest you check your library for an old copy of Sherman’s book. No, I don’t get anything from this plug – I live in one of those states where Amazon won’t let us be an affiliate anymore. I just think it’s a great read – and as appropriate for today as it was over 35 years ago!

For myself, I plan on some good sex next week when my sweetie comes to visit.

I blow you a kiss ~ ~ ~

Fanny