Sex as Bait - Eve, Casanova and Don Juan

The Violent Separations

Definitions convey an illusion of exactness. Those who indulge in them suffer from the scientistic occupational hazard of imputing to language qualities it cannot have. The diffuse boundaries of the connotative meaning of words are not meant for exact definitions. Of much greater use are inspired descriptions of what sex does. One such description is the following by Bermant and Davidson:

Sex is separateness: A division of reproductive labor into specialized cells, organs, and organisms. The sexes of a species are the classes of reproductively incomplete individuals. In order for a sex member to contribute to the physical foundations of its species, to reproduce part of itself into the next generation, it must remedy its incompleteness. The remedy is found in the union of incomplete parts from complementary incomplete organisms: sperm and egg unite. The accomplishment of this union requires energy. The animals must locomote, gesture, posture, vocalise, display, or otherwise behave if union is to occur. Any behavior that increases the likelihood of gametic union may reasonably be called sexual behavior.[6]

This fits our conceptual matrix of the dialectical interplay between the core vectors of separation and participation as the basic dynamic of human and animal behavior. Sexual reproduction involves first of all the havoc wrought by the separation of meiosis in comparison with which the less violent cell division by mitosis is a divorce by mutual consent. Meiosis reduces by half the number of chromosomes in the cell. The process of "crossing over" tears the chromosomes apart and recombines them in order to achieve greater genetic variation which amounts to a virtual pogrom within the cell. The meiotic separation which is bound to be registered as a shattering event by every particle of the cells and every coil of the double-helix molecules of the genes, leaves the haploid gametes with half the number of chromosomes. This implants, apparently, in the gametes, the drive to regain their previous wholeness and full diploid number of chromosomes. Consequently the sole raison d'être of the gametes is to regain a participant union of fusion between sperm and ovum which effects the restitutio in integrum of diploid cells and starts thereby the generation of a new organism. The participant union of the gametes which recreates diploid cells seem to be the biological "bait" offered to the violently separated haploid cells in the same way that the whole organism is baited by sex and love to court, mate and reproduce.

We intend to substantiate our claim that the quest of union following some violent processes of separation is the basis of the biological processes of reproduction as well as sexual behavior. This brings the present work into the wider theoretical framework which we have postulated elsewhere: that Man's personality core dynamics as well as much of his social interaction is motivated by his quest to overcome the catastrophic separation of birth, the ejection from the pantheistic wholeness of early orality and the expulsion from the protection of the family fold.[7]

For the first two billion years of life on earth reproduction was asexual. Flora and fauna divided, produced buds and propagated by offshoots. This was the relatively calm, Edenic period of growth when except for occasional mutations the offspring generation resembled very much the parent generation. Sometime at the beginning of the third billion years of life on earth eukaryotes (i.e., cells and membrane-bound nuclei with gene arrangements within chromosomes) developed and prepared the evolutionary background for sexual reproduction and the vast population explosion of life on earth.[8] The more advanced a species is on the evolutionary scale the more likely it is to reproduce sexually. Sexual reproduction makes a species more adaptable to environmental changes. The greater variability and reshuffling of genes involved in sexual reproduction makes for a greater variety of the genotype and phenotype of the individuals in a species, so that some would prove to be adaptable to the adverse environmental changes in which others perished. The evolutionary password seems to be: "The versatile — not the meek — shall inherit the earth".[9] There is a fair amount of evidence and it is also logical to assume that sexual reproduction evolved in times of hardship, changing conditions and environmental hazards, so that the greater variability of offspring would increase their hardiness and raise the possibility of survival of some of the individuals in the species. "As soon as cloning was possible in the history of life", says Williams, "sexual reproduction would be confined. to times of change or stress."[10] Later we shall mention instances of fauna and flora which reproduce asexually in favorable environmental conditions, but when the weather turns bad and food becomes scarce these specimens start reproducing sexually. It seems that sexual reproduction is linked to adverse conditions, to stress, want and environmental catastrophes.

We shall elaborate our thesis that sex is linked to the phases of separant growth by the manifestations of change, variability, stress, upheaval and adverse conditions on the group and on the environment. It is also accompanied by violence, pain and suffering on the biological and personal levels. These stressful manifestations of sex precede the separation of birth which signifies the violent transition from a blissful existence in utero to the harsh exposure to want and to a deprivational interaction with the environment. We shall try to substantiate our hypothesis that given these circumstances, there would be no sexual reproduction without the participant bait provided by our programming in the form of some moments of blissful visions of union in orgasm and temporary feelings of communion with our beloved. We assume by inference without being able to prove it, that similar forms of participant baits motivate other fauna and flora which engage in sexual reproduction.

The mechanisms of sex and reproduction are both prior and subsequent to the separant developmental processes of birth, the oral coagulation of the ego boundary and the rites of passage from childhood to puberty. As these separant processes of birth and growth are registered by the organism as catastrophes, the individual strives all his life to overcome these catastrophes by reverting back to the previous states of familial togetherness and forgiveness, to the pantheistic wholeness of early orality and to the bliss of self-sufficiency in utero and of non-being. It is expected that no individual would engage in reproduction and subject his offspring to the catastrophes of separation unless he is baited by the most intense sensation of fusion and togetherness which are precisely those inherent in orgasm and longed for by love. The paradoxical or rather the dialectical outcome is that another separant cycle is initiated by such a participant "trigger" and the baits used to set it off. These baits are the personality core incentives to reproduce which are, no doubt, related to our genetic programming to procreate. We shall try and examine further the relationship between this core personality incentive to reproduce and the other biological, interactive and cultural motivations of reproduction, in the subsequent chapters of this work. An etymological side-glance which is rather interesting to the present context is the statement by Capellanus that "Love gets its name (Amor) from the word hook (Amus) which means 'to capture' or 'to be captured' for he who is in love is captured in chains of desire . . . just as a skillful fisherman tries to attract fishes by his bait . . . "[11] Rarely does an etymological source of a word fit its function as in the present case of sex and love.

Another premise with which we shall be concerned in the present work is the fact that sex dichotomizes our developmental continuum of separant growth/participant non-being, an idea also referred to in previous works.[12] The mythological symbolics and archetypal sources in some of the myths of creation and the fall with which we shall deal later, depict woman as the temptress, the seductress and as the evil channel through which human beings are expelled into this world and exposed to its vicissitudes. The male, on the other hand, is depicted as the baited — the one who was lured by sex to reproduce. We shall try to show that sex as the basis of reproduction was one of the mythological foundations of Original Sin because the word yada in Hebrew is both to have sex and to, know, so that there is a mythological relationship between having sex and the myth of the Fall. However, at the later developmental stages there is a diametrical change of the mythological male/female roles. Abraham and the male in the Kabbala become the source of authoritarian stern judgement whereas the image of the adolescents' mother is depicted as the source of grace. This metamorphosis of parental roles from the earlier developmental stages to the later ones, which is apparent in mythological literature and rites of passages in many societies, will also be dealt with.

Both the separant phases of development and their participant counterparts have sexual manifestations. For instance, the birth through the vagina has its participant Tantric rituals in which sex is performed as a symbolic regression back to the womb. Sexual differentiation may be related even in the oral phase to the differential attitude of the mother towards her suckling baby. Finally, after the rites of passage from childhood to puberty, the participant graceful image of the mother quite often manifests itself in the boy's desire to court and marry a girl resembling his mother;...