Thread: SEX!
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Old 05-13-2006, 08:57 PM   #82
BrettH
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As I stated from the beginning, the only constant about sexual tabboos among all humanity is that people can be very creative about constructing them. Many are totally contradictory from other cultures. My posting of various cultures past and present was never intended to prove that people have NO tabboos of any kind; simply, that they rarely are the same tabboos as those of modern America, and therefore, are not inherent. They are a product of culture.

The reason I took up this argument against you was because you made the assertion that modesty was not a construct of culture. My examples are all very helpful in countering your assertion, and I would never say that all Greeks were exactly the same in the same way that I would never say that all people in the world have the same cultures.

Greeks on the whole, including the more prudish Athenians, were much less ashamed of their bodies than Americans are today even if all you take into account are the men in the Olympics and the decoration on the pottery that everybody had in their homes (and there are far more examples than that.) The Spartans were an example of a large chunk of Greece (they were one of the most powerful and large sized of the city states) that even allowed their women to display nudity as a non-sexual behavior in the manner of men, taking the differences even further.

ALL Greeks, contrasted with our modern American culture, indicate a very different idea of the role of nudity and sexuality and were therefore a valid example of a different set of mores. I mentioned the Spartans only to correct your comment that Greek women couldn't attend gaming events. It was never necessary to the argument, and your refocusing on that detail as the crux of my point is a straw man tactic.

I don't recall saying that body shame is a Christian invention (which I do not believe), only that your personal viewpoint and argument seems strongly Christian-biased. Anyone that views the entire world through a particularly strong social filter will have difficulties seeing the validity in other cultures, whether their filter is Christian, Muslim, Wiccan, or Zoroastrian. They will have a tendency to assume that any similarity they find in other cultures to their own validates their viewpoint, while any variance is merely an aberration.

----Brett
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