# Baha'i Faith and Sexuality

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> Source: Bahá'í Library Online (bahai-library.com), curated by Jonah Winters. Used by permission of the curator. Original citation: R. Jackson Armstrong-Ingram, Baha'i Faith and Sexuality, bahai-library.com.
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> 
> Bahá'í Faith and Sexuality
> 
> R. Jackson Armstrong-Ingram
> 
> 1996-02
> 
> Family is very important to the Sambia. It is unthinkable that a man would
> have sexual relations with any woman other than his wife. The Sambia
> believe that it requires frequent intercourse during pregnancy to create a
> healthy baby as the child's blood and flesh are formed from the mother's
> retained menstrual blood and the bones are formed from the father's semen.
> The duty of men toward male children does not end with their birth,
> however. A girl will naturally mature into a woman because she has
> absorbed sufficient menstrual blood from her mother while in the womb and
> this has potentiated the organ that will produce menstrual blood in her at
> puberty. Boys also have this organ, but in them it remains dormant. Boys
> do not have an active capacity to produce semen, so to become men and to
> be able to pass on semen to create healthy babies they must be given semen
> by older males. Boys after the age of about seven are taught to fellate
> postpubertal boys who are themselves being fed by young men who are not
> yet fathers. It is a male social duty to feed younger males and enable
> them to successfully become men. The act of fellatio is nuturative. To
> refuse it would be selfish and antisocial. Similar views occur among a
> number of Melanesian peoples.
> 
> Family is very important among the peoples of many Pacific islands. The
> major purpose of marriage is to have children. It is a terrible misfortune
> for a married couple not to be able to have children. Only a foolhardy
> couple would get married without getting pregnant first and knowing that
> they were able to have children. In many Pacific islands there is no
> concept of erotic kissing. A standard part of erotic activity is biting.
> It is especially exciting to bite off eyelashes. The western interest in
> female breasts is considered inexplicable. Female breasts are for feeding
> babies; are western men hungry? Among one Pacific group, however, sex is
> considered unpleasant verging on painful and risky to the health. It is
> good manners to wish that a couple being married have two children as
> quickly as possible and then they will never have to do it again.
> 
> Family was very important to the Oneida Community in 19th century New York
> state. They practiced 'complex marriage'-- all the men were married to all the
> women. The most important thing in sexual relations was that the woman be
> properly satisfied. The spiritual progress that was the main purpose of sex was
> dependent on this. Men were taught to practice 'coitus reservatus' to enable
> them to engage in intercourse for extended periods (well over an hour) without
> ejaculating. Thus women could have a satisfying sexual life without the risk of
> pregnancy.
> 
> Among one Central American group it is usual for married couples to have sex
> several times a day. A couple that has not had sex for 11 days is considered
> divorced. They use a position that requires the minimum of bodily contact and
> may complete sex in 1 minute or less.
> 
> Family is very important to the Chinese who traditionally placed many
> restrictions on when sex between husband and wife was appropriate. It became
> completely inappropriate after the birth of the first grandchild or after the age
> of forty.
> 
> Family is very important in southern and eastern Africa. There a number of
> peoples have institutionalized quasi-marriages between persons of the same
> sex who may also have marital relationships with persons of the opposite sex.
> 
> Family was very important in mediaeval Europe. It was believed by physicians
> that conception required orgasm by both partners. The Catholic Church
> permitted women to masturbate to orgasm if their husbands ejaculated before
> satisfying them, as long as this was done with the desire to become pregnant.
> 
> In late 19th century America women were not believed by most physicians to
> have any sexual drive. Orgasm in a woman was a sign of pathology that required
> rigorous, even surgical, treatment. Women needed to be protected from the
> sexual demands of men. Sexual activity by men could be risky to their health,
> however, and lead to dire results if not 'moderate.' Many physicians believed
> that if this moderate regime included using prostitutes it was healthier to use
> male prostitutes as men could only contract venereal disease from female
> prostitutes.
> 
> Family is very important in the Middle East. Women have been traditionally
> believed to have a sexual drive up to nine times as strong as that of a man. A
> woman is in a constant state of sexual readiness and the mere presence of any
> unrelated man is likely to cause her to want to seduce him. Men have to be
> protected from the sexual temptations of women. And women's families have to
> be protected from the risk to their honor of women's unfettered lust. Such ideas
> are an aspect of what is known as the Mediterranean culture complex (although
> the area it applies to extends well beyond the Mediterranean) and are not
> derivative of Islam. They predate Islam and are found among all religions in the
> region. Indeed the most extreme aspects, such as infibulation, can be even more
> prevalent among other groups (e.g. Coptic Christians). In societies exhibiting
> this culture complex, erotic activity between men is relatively common
> irrespective of whether they are also married to women.
> 
> The term 'homosexual' was created in the 19th century west to describe
> individuals who were believed to be a 'female soul trapped in a male body.' As
> these individuals were held to be essentially female, although apparently male,
> in conformity with the current view of female sexuality they were assumed to
> have a passive sexual nature that expressed itself in a desire for erotic activity
> with men. Homosexuals did not want to have sex with homosexuals by definition.
> 'Normal' men took an 'active' role in sexual encounters whether these were with
> women or homosexuals. Some decades later, the term 'heterosexual' was created
> to denote those who -only- desired erotic activity with those of the 'opposite'
> sex. The creation of the term 'heterosexual' was part of a process of value
> ranking types of sexual behavior and attempting to link them with judgments on
> the social utility of individuals based on gender and sexuality. Later yet, the
> referent of the term 'homosexual' was redrawn to oppose it to 'heterosexual.'
> Attempting to relate these two opposed terms to actual behavior then required
> the invention of the term 'bisexual' to denote those who could not be covered by
> a simple dichotomy.
> 
> The issue is complicated by the use of these terms to describe both specific
> instances of behavior and specific individuals. Thus they are used both as
> neutral adjectives and as reified labels which may be value loaded. In many
> cultures historically and contemporarily these terms cannot be usefully applied
> other than as neutral adjectives. The reified label concepts are culture specific
> and not generalizable.
> 
> The term 'sodomy' is long established in western law and is not specifically
> linked to homosexuality. Basically, it refers to erotic activity between sentient
> beings that has no possibility of resulting in reproduction. Thus it can be
> between any combination of men, women, or animals. (Chickens have had a
> prominent place in the legal history of sodomy.) I have even seen 'sodomites'
> used to refer to men who had sex with women of another 'race' by an 18th
> century author. Although the word is popularly used to refer to anal intercourse
> this is only one aspect of its legal meaning and also not one to restrict it to
> homosexual contexts.
> 
> There is nothing 'natural' about human sexual activity, let alone the ideas people
> have about sex. There is nothing 'natural' about human family or marriage
> systems. Reproduction of the species requires that male and female gametes be
> brought together. How they are brought together is biologically irrelevant. That
> the vast majority of human erotic activity does not bring gametes together is
> also irrelevant. Human erotic activity is situated in specific socio-cultural
> contexts. Family and marriage systems are situated in specific socio-cultural
> contexts. There is no such thing as 'natural' erotic activity, a 'natural' family, or
> 'natural' family values.
> 
> Part of the operation of any culture is producing a feeling of 'naturalness'
> (inevitability, humanness) in its members about what they do. The challenge for
> global thinking is to be able to stand aside from this spurious feeling of
> 'naturalness' about one's own cultural arrangements; to stand aside not only
> from what actually occurs but also from what is -supposed- to occur. It is
> unlikely that concepts linked to and privileging highly specific attitudes and
> behaviors are useful in terms of articulating a globally applicable morality. It
> is more likely that core concepts that can be applied in many specific socio-
> cultural contexts will be useful.
> 
> 19th and 20th century Christian missionizing was accompanied by muumuus and
> the missionary position as a set of religious concepts was tied to a set of
> socio-culturally specific erotic attitudes and practices. The results of such an
> intertwining were cultural dislocation and hypocracy.
> 
> To this day, there is no open discourse on sexuality between westerners and the
> rest of the world. The west ( or a segment of the west) has so successfully
> missionized its own views on 'normal' sex that much of the world's peoples are
> aware that their own beliefs and practices are deviant by those standards and
> they tend to allow westerners to simply assume that everybody else does 'it'
> the same way. In fact, most of the world sees the west as rather odd and
> blithely goes on doing 'it' their own way without discussing the issue. Almost
> everything about 19th century middle eastern family and marriage systems and
> sexual practices was aberrant by then western standards. Much of it still is.
> 
> Religious ideas cannot be worked out in socio-culturally meaningful ways if
> they are only available packaged with the specifics of a particular time and
> place. It is part of understanding them to be able to unpack these ideas from
> their original context and repackage them in -any- context while remaining true
> to their core. This is the case when using them in any new culture whether that
> culture is geographically or temporally distant from the original socio-cultural
> context in which the ideas were expressed.
> 
> It is necessary for members of -all- cultures to realize that however 'natural'
> and fixed their culture seems, change always occurs. The important thing is the
> coherence of that change with core values not the outward specifics, and our
> responsibility to consciously adopt and maintain those values rather than
> simply follow exterior forms be those attitudinal or behavioral.
> 
> There is a distinction between a view of religion that is legalistic -- you do
> this and this and not that and that -- and a view of religion that is ethical --
> these are the principles you should adhere to when deciding what to do. One
> tells you how to act; the other teaches you how to choose. Islam, Christianity,
> and Judaism have deep rooted tendencies toward legalism, despite their being
> known as 'ethical monotheisms,' and this tendency has thus entered both middle
> eastern and western cultures. 'Things' are right or wrong. Morality is a matter
> of the objectively observable. In many ways this is a view of religion that is
> concerned largely with concepts of taboo and pollution rather than values.
> 
> The essential locus of the 'thingness' of morality for this aspect of Semitic
> religion (or more accurately for many adherents of the Semitic religions) has
> been sexuality. It is the red flag that sets all the bulls charging. However, the
> concentrated projection of moral fitness on the area of sexuality has often
> served as a screen to permit considerable flexibility of morality in other areas
> of life. Sexuality has been pressed into service as a moral synecdoche for an
> individual's whole life and if one remained conforming in that area it provided a
> sin-covering function for all other areas.
> 
> The corollary of this is that it is not deemed appropriate to discuss issues of
> sexuality in respect of those who have already been determined on other grounds
> to have led a moral life. To find a 'flaw' in their sexual conformity would be
> taken to bring into question their whole life, so their sexuality should remain
> unexamined just in case.
> 
> Thus, biography of early Bahá'ís has eschewed the issue of their sexuality and
> removed it from the context in which statements about sexuality in the
> writings are seen. That Bahá'ís had adulterous affairs, were blissfully
> monogamous, had homosexual relationships, hardly ever spoke to their spouses,
> used birth control, etc., is as relevant to understanding their lives as Bahá'ís as
> anything else about them. It is especially relevant to understanding their
> relationships and correspondence with the successive Heads of the faith.
> Correspondence includes the unwritten mutual knowledge that the parties have
> of each other and as much of that knowledge as can be recovered must be taken
> into account to understand the correspondence.
> 
> The phrase 'companionate marriage' is used in a Guardian's letter which is often
> cited as if this referred to people simply living together. Companionate
> marriage was a specific reform of marriage law and practice that was proposed
> in the west in the 1920s. the term refers to a legal contractual marriage that
> could be terminated simply by mutual consent. It was also proposed that the
> contract could include an agreement not to have children. Indeed, there could
> even be an agreement not to have sex. Companionate marriage was being
> presented by some American Bahá'ís, Lorol Schopflocher for one, as the ideal
> form of marriage and was being recommended to attendees at Bahá'í summer
> schools and other events. I was told by one woman who attended Green Acre in
> her youth that Schopflocher expounded to all the girls on how they should insist
> on separate bedrooms when they got married and that she had never shared a
> bedroom with her husband and never would.
> 
> A remark that it is shameful to keep a catamite presumably means first and
> foremost that it is shameful to keep a catamite. But from specific comments
> we may also develop generalizations. We are likely to be aided in generalizing
> by an understanding of the context in which the statement was made and
> received. However, apart from this there are two basic directions in which we
> may take our generalizing. The statement may be generalized to a condemnation
> of a broader range of homosexual acts; or it may be generalized to a
> condemnation of those in a position of power exploiting their dependents for
> their own ends. One type of generalization operates on the basis of presumed
> analogies among specific outward acts and the one in the statement; the other
> operates on the basis of a concern for the principles that may be inferred from
> the statement and how these may be related to motives, responsibilities, and
> relationships.
> 
> The important question is which type of generalization is more likely to produce
> results that may support a global value system that can flourish and develop in
> all cultures. Is God more interested in people's actions than their hearts? Is the
> road to salvation a mechanically instrumental one? Of course actions matter,
> but what underlies the actions must matter at least as much if we are not to
> espouse a materialist view of existence. And not only individual actions matter
> but also the broader patterns of social interaction in which these actions are
> situated.
> 
> The early anti-slavery movement in the U.S. was deeply interconnected with the
> development of feminism. These movements shared a common position that it
> was not acceptable for one individual to have rights in another's person or labor
> to an extent that violated the second individual's rights in their own person. It
> was considered to be equally evident that both slaves and 'free' women suffered
> under such a disability and that the development of a moral and just society
> required that their rights be restored and respected.
> 
> Unfortunately, the anti-slavery campaign degenerated into the cataloging of
> stories of abuse and an attack based on arguing slavery's inhumane practices
> rather than its fundamental illegitimacy. This allowed for the eventual
> abolition of slavery without acknowledging the humanity of the slaves and this
> side-stepping of the underlying question of rights also permitted the
> disabilities under which women had suffered to continue.
> 
> The anti-slavery campaign was originally about basic concepts of human rights
> and responsibilities. It reached its end on the basis of judgments about specific
> acts. That the abolition of legal slavery appeared to end such acts allowed the
> fundamental issues to remain undealt with. Both Americans of African descent
> and all American women suffered the consequences for over a century more. The
> moral issue in slavery was not one of how masters treated slaves, but whether
> anyone had a right to be a master. The moral issue in women's rights was not
> how husbands treated wives, but whether husbands had a right to be a master.
> The moral illegitimacy of masters was not in whether they treated their legal
> subordinates well or ill, but in their assumption of the right to impose their
> will and conscience on others.
> 
> All individuals are ultimately responsible to God for their actions. One may
> decide that God has provided an explicit set of instructions as to which actions
> are acceptable and decide to conform to this. This is essentially the position of
> such groups as the Amish. Or one may decide that God requires us to exercise
> moral judgment in each specific set of circumstances according to basic
> principles by which we should structure our lives and interaction with others.
> Either position is quite defensible, but they have different social outcomes.
> 
> The first position leads to well defined communities with strong boundary
> maintenance. These can be nurturative, satisfying, and secure communities for
> those who choose to be in them, or can be experienced as restrictive and
> repressive by others who may choose to leave. The second position leads to
> heterogenous, associative communities which are less concerned with boundary
> maintenance. These can be nurturative, satisfying, and secure for those who
> choose to be in them, or can be experienced as unfocused, lax, and uncomfortable
> by others who may choose to leave.
> 
> The big problem is: If a religion rules out the possibility of schism and yet is
> not inclined to accept within one broader community of faith subsets who
> acknowledge (however grudgingly) the rights of other subsets to have different
> perspectives on this basic issue of the legalistic/ethical morality continuum,
> can that religion avoid being an irrelevance to most of the people of the
> world?
> 
> Jackson
> 
> Comments on Armstrong-Ingram's
> essay by Linda Walbridge
> 
> Just a few quick thoughts on Jackson and xxxx's postings re: sexuality, which I
> have really appreciated...
> 
> I don't in the slightest want to diminish the importance of Jackson's message
> on the diversity of human sexuality and sexual norms. I just want to add another
> perspective. The societies which you reported on, Jackson, as I recall, were
> cases of isolated societies. Many of these are in a transitional state. They are
> to various degrees having contact with the outside world and are becoming part
> of the world economy. Even in very remote areas, we find men going on to work
> for businesses, earning cash and leaving behind their subsistence way of life.
> This is very disruptive to old family structures.
> 
> For example, we might find a society that normally practices polygyny. That
> structure may have been the norm and the entire way of life of the community
> centers on this. However, once men start leaving the village for the city and
> working for money, nothing is the same. He can't afford to support more than one
> wife. Village women also migrate to the city. Their life experiences and
> expectations change. She would find no advantage to sharing a husband with
> other women. They would not be doing the type of work that would have made
> other women in the household useful. They can easily be exposed to movies and
> TV that show a different way of life for women that will make husband sharing
> less attractive. What tends to happen here is that men, accustomed to polygyny
> but, now, not in a situation to practice it, will take girlfriends. The usual
> controls of the village in regulating sexual behavior will have been disposed of
> and new societal rules will not have been put in place.
> 
> As I don't need to tell you, urban life tends to promote the nuclear household. (I
> know there are cases where this is not necessarily so, but in general this is
> how it has worked.) In such a situation, nothing really is more advantageous
> than the monogamous, totally faithful, enduring relationship of a man and a
> woman. (This does not address the issue of homosexuality, I know. That is still
> another matter)...
> 
> While the world is certainly a complex place, the tendency is for more
> experiences to be shared. My Iraqi friends living in the West are a very good
> example of all this. They are, for the most part, straight out of Najaf and
> Karbala. Their world was a very narrow one. Girls married at about age 13 and
> proceeded to stay at home and have children. Life in the West quickly disrupts
> this pattern. I am quite close to a family where there are four sons and three
> daughters. The sons all married in their twenties. The three oldest are trained
> as scholars, the youngest is in medical school. The oldest daughter was married
> off at age 13, the two older ones are unmarried and in college. I was told quite
> frankly that this (i.e., the daughters going to college) never would have occurred
> had the family remained in the M.E. There will never be any question about
> polygyny or even temporary marriage in this family. It is not that they have
> become assimilated into American society. Not at all. But circumstances have
> forced changes - and some rethinking of things.
> 
> I suppose my point is that the Bahá'í teachings on sexuality and marriage will
> not seem so strange and out of place in most situations in the world today. I
> agree that if we go off to the heart of New Guinea where there is little culture
> contact we might run into some situations where we might think that there is
> no place at all for our notions of marriage and family. But those places I believe
> are rapidly becoming fewer in number.
> 
> This by no means makes me think that we can be complacent and think that our
> perception of the Bahá'í teachings can and should be forced down others throats.
> Nor do I think that we should quit discussing how individual variations in human
> sexuality can be accommodated in the Bahá'í community. Again, these are just
> musings on how I see the world today in connection with a particular aspect of
> the Bahá'í teachings.
> 
> Linda
> 
> Armstrong-Ingram's response to Linda Walbridge
> 
> Among the societies I discussed were the middle east, mediaeval Europe, 19th
> century America, and china. I don't think these count as isolated societies.
> Actually neither do most new guinea peoples. However isolated from the west
> they have been, most of these people have had long term contact with various
> local groups having cultures different from their own.
> 
> I do not think that urbanization can be equated with a drive toward monogamy or
> nuclear households. Polygyny is of course restricted to men with greater access
> to economic resources in those societies that favor it. Different types of
> wealth and social capital do not change that. Indeed, polygyny has been adapted
> to urbanization in various parts of Africa where relatively wealthy men (which
> can equal middle class by our standards, e.g. university professors) may have a
> suitably skilled urban wife to aid their career (often the only wife western
> friends know about) and a rural wife (wives) suitably skilled to manage their
> family land holdings. As a purely economic unit, if it is well managed a
> polygonous family has a definite advantage in the accumulation of wealth and
> often politically as well.
> 
> On urban living historically, there seems to have been no urban deterrent to
> polygyny in urban china or the middle east; the cliche harem is an urban
> institution. And the marriage system that is probably furthest from monogamy,
> Nayar group marriage, was an urban based system which aided the concentration
> of considerable economic resources in the hands of Nayar families. Actually the
> Oneida family was very successful economically too (Oneida flatware).
> 
> I would agree that the scale of urbanization is often different now and that one
> has to take into account the influence of the media. For example the hijra ( a
> third gender in India) are assimilating to the traditional definition of their
> 'nature' and role western ideas about transsexualism....
> 
> Jackson
> 
> Comments on Armstrong-Ingram's
> postings by Bev
> Peden
> 
> Dear Friends:
> 
> ...When people of other countries decide to follow the teachings of Bahá'u'lláh,
> then they will come to terms as to how to fit their sexual patterns and liaisons
> in keeping with the faith. I, for one, have no intention of wasting my time
> instructing them on anything past the marriage laws (consent of parents and
> exchange of vow) when it comes to sex. So many sexual patterns and marriage
> patterns are based on survival of the tribe that it is hardly fair to sit in
> judgement. In Africa, for example, where polygamy is practiced, a man who has
> accepted Bahá'u'lláh's teachings is not required to put away any of his wives,
> but is required to honour his commitment to her, her children and to do so until
> the death of the wife or children...just like "regular" folks. He is required not to
> replace that wife with a new one, until natural selection leaves him with either
> one or none. Even the urban setting has not deterred polygamy here, in fact it
> has made it more "necessary" in the man's point of view. He has one wife in the
> city to look after his needs, meet social status obligations, and to keep his
> home there, and one wife (or more) in the village to look after his farm and land.
> But there are many Bahá'ís who are making the adjustment to monogamy...with
> time. I am sure the same holds true for same sex relationships. If it is explicit
> in the writings that this is not part of the Bahá'í teachings, and if those
> choosing to follow those teachings are sincere, they will make the required
> adjustment in their heart and do so willingly. Our responsibility is to assist
> them with love and understanding...they are people, not statistics.
> 
> I have had some wonderful friends (Iranian by birth) become quite agitated at
> mild nudity (not intended eroticism) in my paintings...their comment was that
> we wear underwear so that the earth will not be embarrassed by our private
> parts. It was at this point I realized that they had some kind of bias. I did not
> feel it was my duty to try and change that. I didn't change my painting either. I
> have also stood with men who are wearing nothing but a cloth tied around their
> neck, and women with a flap of animal skin around their groin. Again, nothing
> felt amiss, I was not embarrassed, and neither were they...it didn't matter as the
> different manners of dress was not on our agenda...besides, it was so hot I was
> envious of their freedom from my idea of conventional clothing. Their sexual
> practices were never part of the conversation in either case. It is not at all
> uncommon here in Africa for same sex friends to walk about holding hands...it
> has no sexual association...it is an expression of friendship.
> 
> Now, there is a lot in the writings which is not in English, and some which is
> not available, so I am not in a position to be an authority on what the writings
> say. Can anyone get beyond our cultural hang-ups and really narrow the
> discussion down to:
> 
> a) What do the writings identify as "Bahá'í sexual practices"?
> 
> b) What exact liaisons are identified as being Bahá'í in nature?
> c) What
> interpretation is offered for their application by authoritative sources for
> these in the Faith?
> 
> Love,
> 
> Bev.
> 
> Armstrong-Ingram's response to Bev Peden
> 
> Further to Linda's comments: It is important to note that modern urbanization
> does tend to be more disadvantageous to women because it changes the nature
> of the family as an economic unit. For example, when peasant immigrants from
> Europe continued to practice pregnancy desertion in the US the consequences
> were much different. When a peasant husband went wandering in such parts as
> southern Italy he could not take with him the land, the chickens, the goat, etc.,
> and the family's basic means of subsistence remained available. In a New York
> tenement with the family dependent on the husband's wage for subsistence,
> pregnancy desertion was a disaster. There is similarly a disempowerment of
> women when nomads either voluntarily or by government force become
> sedentary. The changes in the internal economy of the family and its relations
> with the broader society generally undermine the position of women. The
> deleterious effects of urbanization on previously non-urban families are not tied
> to any particular family system (let alone sexual ideology), however, but are
> related more to the family's socio-economic resources.
> 
> Like Bev, I also tend toward the ... philosophy that if
> it isn't done in the street to frighten the horses it's a personal matter. However,
> the problems arise when personal and group sexuality is dragged into the street
> and used as a basis for judgments about broader social worth and rights. Also,
> not all erotically associated behaviour is confined to private occasions. Much
> public behaviour implies what may be occurring in private and judgments may be
> made on the basis of those implications (rightly or wrongly read) even more
> than on the basis of known private acts.
> 
> Bev's point about the diversity of response to the human body is also important.
> I am all too familiar with the kind of reaction to art that Bev describes. My wife
> is an artist who specializes in the human figure. There is almost nowhere in
> this area her work could be shown or sold, especially if the figure is male. Also,
> it needs to be understood (as I think came out from Bev's examples) that
> because a people expose most of the body doesn't mean they have no standard of
> modesty. They are as likely to distinguish between clothed and naked as
> Victorian England even if clothed means dusted with ashes.
> 
> Covering the body may be at least as much about prurience as modesty. One of
> the things I find most distasteful about television 'standards' in the US is the
> racist and sexist hierarchy applied to decisions about 'appropriateness' in
> showing the human body.
> 
> Jackson
> 
> Armstrong-Ingram's response to a posting on Gender
> 
> ...As I would use [the terms "sex" and "gender"], "sex" is a biological matter
> referring to subsets of species which can share genetic information with one or
> more other subsets to result in a new generation that combines genetic
> information from all parents in a package that is distinct from any one parent,
> higher animals have 2 sexes some more creative lower life forms have a lot
> more (there is a slime mold with 11); "gender" refers to a social status with an
> associated role (set of behaviors). There is no given connection between gender
> and sex. There are well over a 100 societies with third gender roles; their
> marriage patterns reflect this.
> 
> Jackson
> 
> Loni Bramson-Lerche discusses
> biological "gender"
> 
> I am still researching and thinking about the question of biological sex and
> gender, but I can give you a bit more information on the theory that there are
> more than two biological sexes. Unfortunately, I do not have much time and can
> only provide a very brief summary, which I hope will not distort the issues
> involved.
> 
> Most researchers agree that gender is socially constructed. In terms of
> biological sex, whereas it is usually easy to discern certain physical
> differences and similarities, how these are classified is, in the opinion of
> certain researchers, also a social construct. At this point in my research, I
> agree with these researchers.
> 
> Very briefly, if you think of a continuum, on one end there are XY individuals
> with body hair, a penis, testicles, narrow hips, etc. On the other end of the
> continuum are XX individuals with breasts, wide hips, little body hair, a vagina,
> clitoris, etc. In the middle of this continuum there is a variety, with XXY
> individuals, XX XY people, those with only one sex chromosome, X0, etc. It has
> been estimated that about 10% of the human population is found in the middle
> area of the continuum. The people in the middle area can also be classified as
> belonging there because of hormonal divergences from "the norm" during pregnancy (and sometimes after pregnancy). As you might know, at the moment of
> conception, and for about the first six weeks of life, everyone is female. If the
> right amount of androgen is not produced at exactly the right time, even if the
> individual is XY, a baby "girl" will be born. (There are also XX "men".) What this
> amounts to is that in some "men" and "women" there are different combinations
> of internal sex organs, secondary sexual characteristics, and external
> genitals. This is an overly short summary of the situation, but I do not have
> time for more than that.
> 
> In the international society that is developing, to decide whether someone is a
> woman or a man, the individual must be able to answer yes to a certain number
> of questions. Some of these questions have to do with: -the
> appearance of external genitals;
> -whether there is a Y chromosome or
> not;
> -the amount of certain hormones in the body;
> -and the sex assigned
> at birth.
> 
> The people in the middle of the continuum cannot answer yes to the whole set of
> questions. One possible way of resolving this situation is to say that, in fact,
> there is only one kind of human being which comes in a variety of shapes, sizes,
> and forms. Most people are not yet ready to think of there being only one
> biological sex and no such thing as gender, so there is a move to create a
> classification with more than two sexes. (And as you can see from Tony Lee's
> and J. Armstrong-Ingram's postings, more than two genders.) The move seems to
> be primarily in the "amateur" sports movement, specifically those sports (and
> events) that generate a lot of money. In order to participate in athletic events it
> is required to pass a sex chromatin screening. The testers look to see if the
> athlete has Barr bodies or not. If you have Barr bodies you are female (because
> Barr bodies are produced by XX individuals), if you do not, then you are male. The
> problem is that you can have "women" who do not produce Barr bodies, and "men"
> who do, depending on what sex chromosomes they have and what hormones they
> produce or were subjected to. (Barr bodies are present because of one of the X
> chromosomes.)
> 
> This is why some geneticists, biologists, and people in other fields who
> research these questions are calling for a classification with more than two
> biological sexes. Since there is such a rigid definition of what a man is and
> what a woman is, they feel it is only logical and fair to create a new
> classification with more than two biological sexes.
> 
> Sincerely,
> 
> (Dr.) Loni Bramson-Lerche
> 
> Armstrong-Ingram's response to Bramson-Lerche
> 
> Adding to what Loni said:
> 
> There are two kinds of living species, those who reproduce asexually and those
> who reproduce sexually. The concept of sex has really no biological relevance
> outside reproduction. Therefore in the strict sense only those individuals who
> produce viable gametes can be said to have a sex. the number of sexes in a
> species is determined by the number of types of gametes, it has nothing to do
> with whole individuals. Specific individuals can be said to have a sex or no sex
> based on the type of gamete they do or do not produce. The wide range of
> epiphenomena related to gamete production are not themselves of relevance in
> determining sex. Sex in human beings is a matter of male and female gamete
> producers. Categories like 'man' and 'woman' have no given correlate to this but
> relate to how an individual functions socially: they are genders. Attribution to
> genders is based on a combination of anatomical, physiological, and behavioral
> factors that are related to sex in complex and variably determined ways.
> 
> Jackson
> 
> Observations by Juan Cole
> 
> Tom Laquer, a historian at UC-Berkeley, demonstrated in his seminal book
> *Making Sex* that the Aristotelian-Galenic tradition that dominated medical
> thought in medieval Europe and the Muslim world posited a *one-sex* model of
> human sexuality. It held that women were inverted men. In fact, in medieval
> Europe there appears to have occasionally been fear that some women might pop
> out and become men. The one-sex model was upheld by Avicenna as well. It was
> only overturned in favor of a two-sex model with the Enlightenment and
> nineteenth-century physiology, which rejected the medieval analogies that had
> been proposed betight pop
> out and become men. The one-sex model was upheld by Avicenna as well. It was
> only overturned in favor of a two-sex model with the Enlightenment and
> nineteenth-century physiology, which rejected the medieval analogies that had
> been proposed betel of human biology, and that it may underlie their view of the equality
> of the sexes. (The medieval one-sex model had still been highly patriarchal,
> since the female version of inverted masculinity was considered "inferior" by
> male physicians; however, one could build an equality scenario on a one-sex
> model, which they appear to have done).
> 
> cheers Juan Cole, History, Univ. of Michigan
> 
> Armstrong-Ingram's response to Juan Cole
> 
> This analogy model -- that male and female sexual organs were essentially the
> same but one was an 'outie' and the other an 'innie' --is of course why it was
> thought that women could not get pregnant without an orgasm. Both male and
> female had to ejaculate to conceive. The discovery of the ovum in the period
> transitioning between the renaissance and the enlightenment was very
> influential in leading to the passive conceptualization of female sexuality. The
> organs are in origin the same; they develop as female unless a 'switch' is pulled
> hormonally to make them develop as male. The point I was emphasizing is that
> division into sexes is irrelevant in any context other than reproduction and
> there are two sexes in that context. Those two sexes are produced by having a
> female default form and a male variant form.
> 
> Your description of Holley, by the way, was all news to me. It really needs to
> be written up.
> 
> The short answer is: I agree completely. But in real life the answers are a bit
> longer.
> 
> Over 10 years ago, I completed the research and outline for a biography of
> Holley. We came to the conclusion that there was no way the book (or indeed any
> chapter of it) would get through review. Now, you can say how could we know
> that without trying? Well, of course, we can't for sure. But, writing 300 to 400
> pages on the off chance that all one's experience to date is leading one to draw
> an inaccurate conclusion is just too much of a risk. The specific issues that
> concerned us were all ones that had come up before and there was simply no
> reason to assume they would be any less of a problem than previously. Indeed,
> there was reason to assume that the totality of issues involved in this work
> would add up to an even bigger problem.
> 
> This is one of five books that I have completed research for, but see no
> possibility of publishing within a Bahá'í context. And this is not simply a matter
> of what I might write, but of what the source materials say. The types of
> objections that would arise are related to the content of the historical record,
> not just interpretation of that record.
> 
> Now, if some are starting to think that this is the old 'review' issue starting up
> again and that's a 'community affairs' issue anyway and doesn't belong here, I'm
> afraid I have to completely disagree. The issues of creation, legitimation,
> dissemination, and control of 'knowledge' within a community of faith are
> absolutely central concerns in the sociology of religion and cannot simply be
> sidestepped by fiat. If there are issues that may not be addressed, or evidence
> that may not be adduced, then understanding why is essential to understanding
> that community of faith.
> 
> Let me give some examples of the kinds of things that are problematic if one
> wants to write seriously about the Bahá'í faith _and_ have that writing readily
> accessible to the community: i.e. one wishes to not only produce a scholarly
> discussion but also an account that is useful to the community for
> understanding where it came from and formulating its goals for the future.
> 
> Let's start with what seems like a fairly minor matter. There is a Bahá'í story
> that links the founding of Green Acre with Sarah Farmer visiting the Parliament
> of Religions in Chicago in 1893 (or hearing about it; or reading about it; or even
> being present at the talk in which the faith was mentioned; there are a number
> of versions). The problem with the story is that there is information about the
> program at Green Acre in 1892. (It is not entirely clear, but there is a
> possibility that even this was not the first year.) Of course, the World's
> Colombian Exposition was supposed to be held in 1892 (it was delayed because
> of the depressed US economy), so she may still have been influenced by advance
> publicity for the Parliament of Religions, but Sarah Farmer did not start Green
> Acre in 1893. In her later years, the poor woman was, as we say in Ireland,
> away with the fairies. There is a rather light- hearted account by Miriam Haney
> (who was helping to look after her) of how Sarah tried to stab her with a pair of
> scissors but was too weak to actually hurt her. Miriam says that nobody gets
> cross about such incidents because Sarah has no idea of what she is doing.
> Certain individuals and institutions have invested themselves in an account of
> Green Acre and Sarah Farmer which makes the discussion of such documentation
> unwelcome.
> 
> Since around 1919, there has been a standard account that a break away group
> (referred to as "the Reading Room Group") tried to split the Bahá'í community in
> Chicago around 1917 and that the House of Spirituality led by Corinne True and
> Zia Bagdadi fought valiantly to maintain the integrity of the community.
> Actually, the records show that the Reading Room was established by the House
> of Spirituality c.1915; that as part of the tensions within the House and the
> broader community, True and Bagdadi were not in sympathy with those most
> involved with the Reading Room; and that True and Bagdadi formed a break away
> body to try to bring the community in line with their ideas of how it should
> function. At one time, there were actually three institutional bodies in Chicago:
> the House; the True/Bagdadi assembly; and a moderate assembly that tried not
> to take sides and act as a unifying force (it didn't last long). As things worked
> out, the True/Bagdadi faction was able to call on national support and won.
> Thus, the later Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá'ís of Chicago descends directly
> from the True/Bagdadi group and only indirectly from the House of Spirituality.
> In large part because of the activities of True's supporters at the national level
> (especially Remey) this episode is very well documented. It is simply not
> possible to seriously discuss the development of the institutionalization of the
> faith in Chicago or nationally without looking at what really happened at this
> time and on a number of other occasions for which there are traditional
> accounts which also stand in tension with the actual sources. Equally
> obviously, this episode has considerable implications for what we mean by
> schism.-->
> 
> ...I have copies of hundreds of pages of wonderful pilgrim notes that would be
> problematic to publish. Bahá'ís have created an image of Abdu'l-Bahá which
> draws on 'gentle Jesus, meek and mild' stereotypes and they often see him as a
> sort of semi-transparent, etherealized figure in a rose garden. However, Abdu'l-
> Baha was a very physical person and interacted very physically with those
> around him. He touched, patted, held, stroked hands, arms and shoulders of both
> men and women while talking with them. He put his arm around people. He
> stroked their hair. He had a great sense of humor and indulged in horse play
> when in groups of men, slapping faces and bopping people with his umbrella. (He
> was also known for his extensive repertoire of dirty jokes in Turkish.) The
> response of many American women to him was also very physical, indeed could
> be profoundly sexual. At that time in the US, the epitome of male sexual
> attraction was a mature, bearded man. There were a large number of sects
> started in the US in the late 1800s and early 1900s by imposing, bearded men
> who gathered a disproportionately female following. In almost every one, these
> women were sexually exploited. One of the remarkable things about Abdu'l-Bahá
> is that there is not the faintest trace of a shred of a hint that he ever took
> advantage of the way women responded to him. And there certainly would have
> been no objection on the part of many if he had tried. One of the beliefs of the
> American Bahá'í community at that time was that there was to be a third
> Manifestation for this dispensation born in America and there was quite an
> eagerness to be the mother. (Actually, Sohrab seems to have believed that he
> was to be/could be the father -- Richard knows more about this.) Abdu'l-Bahá
> both accepted the intensity of people's feelings for him and attempted to direct
> that intensity into suitable channels. Indeed, he even accepted the propriety of
> intense love relationships between men and women within the faith as long as
> that love did not lead to illicit sexual activity. (This is documented in both
> pilgrim notes and tablets. Some of the individuals involved in these couples
> were married to other people at the time.) Now, it hardly needs to be said that
> anything that even comes close to sex is a frontline freakout issue. But, how can
> we possibly understand Abdu'l-Bahá's relationship with the community, or
> indeed the issues involved in current interpersonal relations, without looking at
> such evidence?
> 
> From Tue Sep 30 13:19:44 1997 Date: Mon, 29 Sep
> 1997 18:30:35 -0500 (EST) From: Jackson Armstrong-Ingram
> To: Talisman Subject: Re: perversion,
> normality, the homosexual construct-->
> 
> ...Let me try to disentangle some more of the concepts that have been conflated
> in this discussion so far.
> 
> Sexual reproduction is a particular form of reproduction that provides that
> offspring will possess a genotype that is composed of part of the genotype of
> each of its parents. In higher animals (most likely for reasons of economy)
> sexual reproduction is carried out in the context of a species having two sexes.
> In some lower organisms this is not the case: There is a slime mold with 13
> sexes. From a biological point of view, sex only refers to the ability to produce
> viable gametes and participate in the process of bringing gametes together to
> form a new generation. A organism that does not produce viable gametes does
> not in a strict biological sense _have_ a sex.
> 
> In a species, such as human beings, that utilizes sexual reproduction the
> differentiation into two sexes is related to four different factors, or aspects of
> sex: genetic sex; hormonal sex; anatomical sex (which can be divided into
> internal and external); and physiological sex. _If_ all four aspects align then an
> individual can be said to be of _a_ sex when and while able to produce viable
> gametes.
> 
> In a dialectical relationship with this biological system of sexual
> differentiation, socio-cultural systems construct genders. Male and female are
> terms for sex; man and woman are the base terms for gender, but many
> societies also have other genders. (Societies may also have ideas about more
> than two sexes, or even about only one sex, but from the standpoint of Western
> biology there are two sexes.) The way(s) in which gender correlates with sex is
> not a given but itself a socio-cultural construct.
> 
> The gender system of a society exists within a fuller context of ideas about
> biology, ideas about families, ideas about bodies, ideas about pleasure, ideas
> about morality, etc. All of these ideas are socio-culturally specific and in turn
> influence how individuals perceive and experience biological facts.
> 
> Strictly speaking, only activities which can potentially lead to the conjoining of
> gametes can be called sexual. Other activities that are frequently so labeled are
> more appropriately termed erotic. While people may engage in sexual activity
> without finding it particularly rewarding in itself because they wish to have
> children, the reason for engaging in erotic activity is that it is enjoyed in and
> for itself. When erotic activity is labeled 'sexual' this tends to be done so as to
> lend the legitimacy of the directed purposiveness of sexual activity to certain
> forms of erotic activity and deny it to others. Thus, erotic activity between
> individuals who could engage in sexual activity if they wanted to may be
> privileged although the specific activity in which they are engaged is no more
> potentially sexual that the same activity between individuals who could not act
> sexually.
> 
> Which activities are considered erotic and where the boundaries come between
> erotic and non-erotic activity is an individual matter mediated by enculturation
> and experience. There is nothing automatically to be experienced as pleasurable
> in any erotic activity. E.g. kissing is a potentially highly erotic activity in
> Western culture; in many other cultures its appeal is quite inexplicable.
> 
> Even what seem by definition to be erotically charged activities in one society
> may have no erotic loading in another. There is a Latin American Indian culture
> in which it is a commonplace gesture for men to hold each others penises while
> conversing. An American anthropologist who was working in this society caused
> great embarrassment (and no doubt felt it) as he could not function in this
> expected interactional mode without having erections. The genitals are so
> completely an eroticized site for Westerners that there is probably no way a
> Western man could have anyone (irrespective of any erotic inclination toward
> that person) hold his penis without such a result outside certain very limited
> medical contexts that assume only brief touching.
> 
> The terms which as translated as 'adultery' and 'homosexuality' in translations
> of Bahá'u'lláh are zina and liwat. These are very specific concepts in Islamic
> law. Zina requires penile penetration of a human vagina (the term covers both
> the traditional meaning of fornication and adultery in English --the issue of
> whether anyone is married can relate to the severity of the offense but doesn't
> change the term); liwat requires a penis and the anus of a woman, boy, or man,
> or anything suitable at the back end of livestock. In both cases it is something
> done by a person with a penis to another.
> 
> In Islamic law there are the associated concepts of a person who does an
> illegitimate act and a person who makes possible the doing of an illegitimate
> act by another. In both zina and liwat the person with the active penis is in the
> first category and the other individual is in the second. That is why in strict
> interpretation someone who is subject to rape cannot be without blame as they
> made possible the perpetration of an illegitimate act by another.
> 
> What is essential to these categories (as to the passage in the Aqdas on
> catamites) is that they represent exploitative acts in which one person uses
> another being for his own pleasure. This is what makes them immoral, not the
> specific erotic activities but the contextual imbalance of power.
> 
> Anal intercourse as a gesture of both the primacy of personal pleasure and the
> irrelevance of the pleasure of the person being used as a vehicle for that
> pleasure is a standard feature of the Middle Eastern erotic repertoire. It is a
> commonplace of interviews with Phillippina maids returned from Saudi Arabia
> that they complain of the insistence of Saudi men that they submit to anal
> intercourse. It is also the most favored means of avoiding the risk of getting a
> woman pregnant in pre- and extra-marital affairs. As well as being used in
> marriage for birth control (and as a bargaining factor by wives).
> 
> The morality of erotic activity cannot be determined simply by whether the
> parties are married or not. In the 1860s in Chicago a court required that a
> woman be returned to her husband. She had had vaginal surgery and her husband
> had raped her ripping out her stitches. She was rescued and the wounds
> resutured. She did not want to return to her husband. After the court required
> her return, he raped her again and she almost bled to death. The courts held that
> no action could be taken against him as he was simply exercising his 'right' of
> access as a husband. However, the courts could take action in another way. A
> newspaper editor in another state who publicised the case and editorialized
> that if he had attacked her with a knife he would have been charged with
> attempted murder but because he attacked her with his penis he was immune
> from prosecution was himself prosecuted, found guilty, and imprisoned for
> publishing an obscenity. It took more than a century after this case to get US
> courts to accept that a marriage license did not protect a husband from charges
> of rape.
> 
> I remember my mother telling me of her disgust at two people she knew. They
> were married but loathed each other. Their religion did not permit divorce so
> they actually lived in different cities in different countries, meeting
> occasionally, as my mother put it, "for mutual relief." What occasioned the level
> of disgust that caused her to tell me about this was that they had just got
> pregnant (their religion didn't go for birth control either). As far as she was
> concerned what they had done was worse than adultery or prostitution; and I
> agree. They were married, but their erotic and sexual activities were without
> any moral foundation because they simply constituted mutual use without any
> grounding in a relationship of care and respect.
> 
> Personally, I think that any God who has a lot of time to worry about who is
> having consensual fun with whom really hasn't been paying attention to what
> this world's problems actually are. I think any God worth bothering about is
> concerned primarily with how people treat each other. I think in a healthy
> society physical interaction between individuals would encompass many
> different forms ranging from the simple pleasures of appreciating that other
> people are warm, breathing, tactile beings who are accessible and can
> communicate by more means than just sight and sound, through the range of the
> erotic, to the tiny percentage of human encounters that are sexual. And I think
> that any system of categories that tries to classify people on the basis of
> valued and devalued acts is dehumanizing, because the essence of humanity is
> the ability to form complex, varied, and educative relationships. And that's what
> religion is about, not mere codes of determination about the rightness or
> wrongness of acts, but a higher context in which human relationships can
> flourish and in which actions derive from those relationships.
> 
> Jackson
> 
> METADATA
> 
> Views33197 views since posted 1997; last edit 2012;
> 
> previous at archive.org.../armstrong-ingram_bahai_faith_sexuality;
> URLs changed in 2010, see archive.org.../bahai-library.org
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> — *Baha'i Faith and Sexuality (Used by permission of the curator)*