Who Invented Sex Anyway?

Since blogging is all about mouthing off about stuff one knows little-to-nothing about, I’ve decided to go along with a friend’s suggestion that I write about sex.

As a child of the sixties and seventies, my sexual history was shaped by articulate and persuasive works like this:

"A sexual revolution would require, perhaps first of all, an end of traditional sexual inhibitions and taboos, particularly those that most threaten patriarchal monogamous marriage: homosexuality, "illegitimacy," adolescent, pre- and extra- marital sexuality. The negative aura with which sexual activity has generally been surrounded would necessarily be eliminated, together with the double standard and prostitution. The goal of the revolution would be a permissive single standard of sexual freedom, and one uncorrupted by the crass and exploitative economic bases of traditional sexual alliances." (Kate Millet. Sexual Politics, p.62)

I was raised by a strict Italian mother with whom I had a deeply adversarial and difficult relationship. I wanted and needed to believe in Kate Millet. Forty years later I have to admit that through all my determined wantonness it was my mother’s and grandmother’s credo of self-protection and mistrust of men that colored my sexual experience and that the sexual revolution came too soon and too fast ( innuendo intended) to do me or many of my generation any real good.

Who invented sex anyway? According to a Prehistoric Sex Quiz at the Live Science website, Ice Age cave drawings and artifacts (the nature of which I will leave to your imagination) indicate that the female of our species enjoyed sexual activity on par with the male? Was it really the patriarchal system that wrecked it for succeeding generations?
The same quiz states that early human sexual habits resemble most those of the promiscuous chimp-like bonobo. Maybe that’s where we went wrong. Maybe free sex without guilt is the only way to free ourselves from the bondage of sexual inequality?
Who knows? I certainly don’t. All I do know is that whenever I an unfortunate enough to watch a few minutes of panting, gyrating, semi-clad music video (or mainstream commercial) what I see is a whole lot of sex and not much joy.

Ha! Seems like I now know even less about sex than when I began writing this blog. I rest my case.

Today’s listening pleasure- Jimi Hendrix, Are You Experienced? 5 stars 