Sexual activity becomes sacred and taboo-laden only once linked to generation.
Evidence
Malinowski is surprised that young people who sleep together freely in the “house of the unmarried” show off their love lives so readily; the explanation is that an unmarried daughter is considered unable to bear a child and the sexual act is merely a quiet and ordinary pleasure. On the contrary, once married, her spouse cannot give her any public sign of affection, nor touch her, and any allusion to their intimate relations is sacrilegious; she then has to be part of the formidable essence of mother, and coitus becomes a sacred act. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 353
Categorization
- XREF: This inversion of premarital freedom vs. married taboo is exactly the pattern Sartre/Beauvoir develop later — woman defined by her reproductive function once married. — connects to: Freedom of pleasures independent of sexual development stripped sexuality’s explanatory power. — Catherine Malabou, The New Wounded: From Neurosis to Brain…, 4203; Religious prostitution originally encoded fertility magic before sliding into venality — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 191
- SHARE: A cross-cultural fact (Trobriand free youth sex vs. total marital secrecy) that would fascinate anyone into anthropology or kinship studies.
Broader Connections
- Religious prostitution originally encoded fertility magic before sliding into venality
#corroborates(0.78) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 191 - Freedom of pleasures independent of sexual development stripped sexuality’s explanatory power.
#complicates(0.75) — Catherine Malabou, The New Wounded, 4203