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ZEN AND THE ART OF FUCKING

SEX IN HISTORY

THE DAY THAT THE MAN WENT MAD

The situation didn't change much for tens of thousands of years until, less than 20.000 years ago, the bow was invented and raising livestock began. Man became hunter/breeder, and theft and murder became convenient activities. A group of capable archers could easily overwhelm a tribe, kill the males from a distance and steal the women and herds. Man thus started to kill, to rape, to steal and to reduce others to slavery.
The invention of war had a terrible impact on the lives of our ancestors: economic and productive systems, customs, social behaviours, and human relationships were completely revolutionized. This caused a huge, terrifying psychological and mental shock. How can you make love and enjoy food in the midst of a humanity that dedicated itself to slaughter?
It was then that man went mad. The power of the male/warrior/breeder became limitless and he ousted the woman, declaring himself the stronger, and therefore the master. The men, armed with bows, now wanted to keep whatever they mangaged to conquer from their enemies all for themselves. This gave rise to a patriarchal society that instituted marriage, the property of wife and children, the existence of supreme male deities, and the concept of sin.
The new sexual laws expected the woman to work for the husband and bear him children. Moreover, it was decided that women were to make love only with their legitimate husbands.
It never worked very well, seening that you can't command the heart, and you certainly can't command sex. This didn't prevent groups of fathers, clerics, wise and powerful men to dedicate enormous energy in the attempt to convince everyone that sex was evil.
Seening that they were cuckolds anyway, they became infuriated like wild animals and attempted to punish their women, wives and daughters in all ways in order to bend their instincts.
They invented Eve's apple and Pandora's box. The 'Great Mother' became the first demon: Lilith. The biological importance of the woman was denied - the woman came to be considered merely ground for the cultivation of the seed of the male who was the true author of the birth of a new life.
Woman was denied a soul or the right to vote. Adulteresses were stoned and the priestesses of the surviving matriarchal religions were burned, accused of witchcraft, obscenity and heresy. Often women were prevented from owning anything and of practising medicine. Everywhere rape became a common and honourable practice.
Among many peoples, such as the Doric Greeks, the Romans, and the Chinese, the murder of newborn females was practised on a large scale: fewer women, fewer problems. Even in reduced numbers, women continued to inspire fear, therefore it was decreed that they had to eat less than men, remain segregated in the home, and denied a liberal, scientific and artistic education. Among the Doric Greeks, women who had given birth to a female infant were fed less than those who had given birth to a male.
Lastly, to prevent women from experiencing pleasure, the removal of the clitoris was performed, something that is still practised among some African populations. The chastity belt was invented and the lips of the vagina were sewed up to prevent sex before marriage or in case of the husband's prolonged absence.
Elsewhere women were physically disfigured in order to render them truly inferior. In China, at the start of the Middle Ages, young girls' feet were bound to hinder their natural growth, thus transforming them into horrible, deformed, and painful stumps.
All this brutality and stupidity caused an infinite number of sexual problems.(1) Evidently, in this kind of climate, lovemaking was not relaxed. Desires were repressed and understanding, respect, and tenderness between men and women were non-existent.
Therefore all sorts of sexual perversion and extreme sexual behaviour were embarked upon. Prostitution, pedophilia, and pornography prospered. In short, taboos, as always happens, unleashed desires, magnifying them and rendering them extreme.
Therefore the last ten thousand years have passed with a humiliating sense of dissatisfaction and violence. Only with the industrial revolution and woman's new economic and social role was this tendency reversed.
Today we can say that woman has reclaimed the right to have a soul, to own property and to vote. She is slowly regaining social equality with man. This has made it possible again to think of a truly enjoyable sexuality: love with liberated women is better...
Isis resurrects Osiris with a blow-job, from the Papyrus of Ani. Sacred images of male and female sexual organs in a Shintoist temple.

1. These historical themes are dealt with more extensively in the volume "The True History of the World", Demetra Publ., Universal Encyclopedia (September 1993).

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