Sex Conspiracy

This is in honor of the Woman's rights march on Washington.

I consider this a conspiracy because the younger generations don't realize how much about sex has changed over the decades.

Let me state for the record that this comes mostly from my own experiences and observations, but I have also done a lot of research on this subject. I am not writing this as a rant on politics. This is just something I felt that I had to get out.

What I mean by sex has mostly to do with how the world treats women. Women represent a dichotomy of sorts. On the one hand they are set upon a pedestal and treated as if they deserve worship and on the other hand are subjected to discrimination and abuse. Most people are not aware of the slow change in attitudes about women.

There are at least three aspects of the condition of women that are important: physical appearance; abilities; and societal status.

Women's social status has changed over time. When I was young, woman's place was in the home. Not all that many women worked outside the home. Despite the fact that World War II brought many women into jobs that involved production it didn't last after the war. Men came back from overseas and took back the jobs that they had given up to go to war. It's hard to express the immeasurable contribution that women made to the war effort. This alone should have proven that women were capable of doing anything a man could. However, this entire period has been virtually and conveniently forgotten.

Women were considered the weaker sex back then. Society didn't permit them to take on manly jobs in construction and heavy industry. As you are aware, that has changed in modern times. Women are now permitted in combat roles. That was never the case back then.

Even today, women are subjected to discrimination in the work place. They are not promoted as often as their male counterparts and definitely don't receive the same wages. Women are also subjected to age discrimination at younger ages than men are. This is slowly changing as more women have been promoted to top executive positions. I've already discussed the fact that women are not as prominent in science. It has been a long hard climb for women in the once male only professions. Hopefully, this will change when the world realizes that fifty percent of the human population has great potential.

Part of the problem with female discrimination has to do with the perception of women in the physical sense, and one reason for this is pornography.

In my day pornography existed but it was kept under raps. Pornography routinely included pictures of naked women. This pejorative labeling of nudity is of course completely ridiculous because the ancient Greeks created pornography and the word literally means depiction of sexual acts like prostitution. Neither Greece nor Rome considered the depiction of a naked woman, or a man for the matter, to be forbidden. Go to an art museum and look at the statures that they created. They obviously considered the human form to be a normal subject of art.

Pornography is defined as the depiction of sexual acts, not nudity. Religion is completely in error about this. Why would God create humans so that their bodies would be considered evil? That's crazy. The fact is that early humans wore clothing early on as adornments not necessarily to cover genitals. Modesty became a more civilized concept, especially when humans settled down and began farming the land. This led to cities and with civilization came clothing that not only covered the genitals but also constituted class and status. Even today this is the case. Workers wear uniforms while the elite wear suits. After the beginning of the age of industrialization wearing a suit signified that the wearer did not do manual labor. Essentially, a suit is still considered a symbol of status.

Women's clothing also reflected this status symbolism, but it did not involve executive status. In the 17th century and later, women's clothing became ornamental. Just look at the millinery of that period. Clothing became more artistic and decorative, which is a symbol of wealth and status. However, the real changes in the attitudes about sex involved what lay hidden beneath the clothing, and that involved the concept of nudity, which became associated with sex.

For some insane reason this idea about nudity became twisted, and the principle reason is the Church. Religion saw the depiction of nudity, especially of a female, to be egregiously evil and banned it, except in the case of art that involved religious themes. Ultimately, pictures of naked women became associated with pornography despite the fact that it was a standard subject of legitimate art. The truth is that religion considers women to be evil because they represent temptation to sex acts, essentially promoting the idea that women are jezebels under their clothing. I'm not sure why this is the case because none of us would be here if it weren't for the sex act. Religious sects that banned sexual activity altogether are extinct.

I think that religion became engrossed with sex because males run most religions. Declaring sex to be evil became a method of subjugating women. A good example of this is the unwritten rule that women should ware head coverings while in church. This arbitrary rule has evaporated in modern times, but it represented a definite disrespect for women by requiring them to cover their pride, which in those days was their hair. Obviously, the church didn't respect women as a matter of course.

I remember a scene from the movie 'Goya's Ghosts' in which a young woman, Inez, was stripped naked and tortured by strappado because she was accused of spreading Jewish rituals by refusing to eat pork in a restaurant. This was during the time of the Spanish Inquisition. Evidently, nudity was okay by the Church in this case, or they considered it a form of salacious entertainment.

Why is this important? The reason is simple. Because of this taboo about nudity, women were transformed from being a human female gender into an erotic sex object. I remember seeing a hearing where Hugh Hefner, the creator and publisher of Playboy magazine, was accused of turning women into sex objects. His response was that they are sex objects. He was right. The world had turned them into that in order to make money. Pictures of nude women, even ones that were completely non-sexual in nature, were considered pornography and as you well know pornography sells big time.

Some people might argue that pictures of naked women will encourage or incite rape. There is a possibility that pornography plays some role in that sort of criminal activity. However, it is known that serial rapists don't do it for sexual pleasure but for the domination of women. This is the same reason that pedophiles molest children. They find children to be easy targets. The same could be said for rapists.

There was a time when male nudity was not considered taboo. Men, and especially boys, were not supposed to be concerned about modesty. The same was definitely not true for women and girls. Up until the mid 70's, it was common in many schools and YMCA's for men and boys to swim in the nude. I know this because I had to endure it in high school. At the time I just did what all the other guys did and went along with it. I had poor vision without glasses and it literally seemed surreal to me. It wasn't until I had to sit out several sessions because of an injury that I saw the full impact of what was happening. I remember some guy sitting next to me saying that the girls would eat this up. I didn't have the same opinion. My thought at the time was that guys would be more aroused by seeing nude girls than the opposite.

The reason for this strange practice had to do with sanitation. Back then there was no easy way to chlorinate pools and the swimsuits of the day were made from wool, which could harbor bacteria. The National Health services issued a recommendation that swimming should be in the nude. Girls, on the other hand, were provided with one-piece suits that were allegedly not a problem. The fact is that it was considered improper for girls to swim in the nude, but not so for boys.

This practice was not adhered to everywhere, and in some cases it resulted in infections until the introduction of antibiotics. All that I know is that it was a practice that has been forgotten. There is a thorough scholarly three-part YouTube treatment of this practice – Naked Swimming in School – that covers all of the controversy and problems associated with it. It mainly touches on the fact that people forgot about it and what some men thought about it.
The reason I bring this up is that it emphasizes a major difference between boys and girls. Girls were considered to be too dainty to be subjected to this practice, whereas boys were not. This created a gender difference. There are photographs from newspapers of that era (mostly from the 40's and 50's) that show a mixed audience of men and women watching naked boys swimming. Back then that wasn't considered to be sexual. Even a Disney movie showed an opening scene of boys skinny-dipping in a stream. My how things have changed! Apparently, in those days nudity was okay as long as it was boys who were that way. There are several reported cases by those that were there about girls and women watching boys swimming in the nude, both in schools and YMCA's. There are even a few reported cases where a female instructor ran a nude boy's swim class. Fortunately, I did not experience that embarrassment. Nowadays, anything of that sort would be considered criminal. Obviously, another reason the practice ended is because modern gym and swimming classes now involve both genders. More efficient chlorination and testing methods also helped end the practice. Thank goodness!

There was one interesting variance to this idea. When I was young it was common for boys to go shirtless in the summer, especially when it was hot. It was not all that uncommon for girls that had not yet reached puberty to go shirtless. Nowadays, this would never happen, at least not in America. Even toddler girls are covered up. The main reason for this is what is considered nudity.

This aspect of nudity has reared its ugly head of late, and it has to do with breasts. For some reason, people have forgotten what breasts are for and have turned them into sexual stimuli. Recently, a furor has arisen about women breastfeeding in public. This is totally ridiculous. Americans are nuts because in many European countries this is not a problem. This should not be a problem here. Get over it!

As an adjunct to this is the fact that nude beaches are more common in European countries than they are here in America. Apparently, Americans are more up tight about nudity. I find that to be ludicrous.

When it comes to appearance, women are judged on the shape of their figures, and there are two criteria for this: the model and the endowed women. Models have been traditionally thinner than reeds. Long legs and narrow waists are the norm. The endowed woman, on the other hand, has plenty of curves, including large breasts and an amply shaped behind. Both of these criteria are flawed and disrespectful. Women are unjustly judged for their body shapes as well as their faces and hair. This is why women paint their faces with cosmetics and have their hair sculptured in beauty salons. They also wear padded bras and even padded bottoms to enhance their imagined lack of these ridiculous judgment criteria.

All of this nonsense contributes to the image of women as being sex objects. I doubt this insane idea will ever change but it's not right. God did not create humans for just sex; although, sex is necessary for continuation of the species. We were created to admire the amazing beauty of creation and express our love for what God had provided us. Sex exists as a means to an end, and that is the preservation of the human population. It was never meant to be a source of economic gain.

Some people will say that sex is also pleasurable and the reason it's so popular. Duh! If it weren't pleasurable we wouldn't be here. I'm not arguing that sex is evil. The Church thinks it is, but they're wrong. Sex was created by God to be an integral part of human nature. It should be celebrated as such.

The bottom line here is that the role of women in both sex and society have changed over the years. Hopefully, mankind will reform their collective view of women and realize that females are just as smart and capable as men. Only then will we experience equal rights for both genders. Notice that I said 'both'!

Thanks for reading.