Sex in History  

From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia

Revision as of 12:58, 10 December 2007; view current revision
←Older revision | Newer revision→
Jump to: navigation, search

Related e

Wikipedia
Wiktionary
Shop


Featured:

The history of civilization is the history of a long warfare between the dangerous and powerful forces of the id, and the various systems of taboos and inhibitions which man has erected to control them. --Sex in History (1964) -- Gordon Rattray Taylor

Sex In History (1954), a work of history of human sexuality, analyzes trends in civilization by way of a matrism/patrism dichotomy. "Patrism combines two ideas: hierarchy and discipline. The individual fits into an organizational structure, in which orders come from above, and rules exist to cover almost every kind of situation. In contrast, matrism sees the individual as free from all external compulsions and hence obviously equal to all other individuals, in the sense of having no authority over them, nor recognizing any." Gordon Rattray Taylor Rethink, p 30

Patrism vs Matrism

"To sum up, then, we may expect to find as limiting cases two distinct alternative systems of attitudes, the main features of which can be expressed in tabular form as follows:"

Rule Patrist Matrist
1 Restrictive attitude to sex

Permissive attitude to sex

2 Limitation of freedom for women

Freedom for women

3 Women seen as inferior, sinful

Women accorded high status

4 Chastity more valued than welfare

Welfare more valued than chastity.

5 Politically authoritarian

Politically Democratic

6 Conservative: against innovation

Progressive: revolutionary

7 Distrust of research, enquiry No distrust of research
8 Inhibition, fear of spontaneity Spontaneity: exhibition
9 Deep fear of homosexuality Deep fear of incest
10 Sex differences maximised(dress) Sex differences minimised
11 Asceticism, fear of pleasure Hedonism, pleasure welcomed
12 Father-religion Mother religion

See also




Unless indicated otherwise, the text in this article is either based on Wikipedia article "Sex in History" or another language Wikipedia page thereof used under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License; or on research by Jahsonic and friends. See Art and Popular Culture's copyright notice.


External links

Personal tools