Cultural Approaches to Sexuality
While this is less of an issue today as it was historically, some traditional cultures heavily punish women for appearing sexually available. Even today, many cultures psychologically punish masturbation and porn consumption. Why have so many unrelated cultures evolved these practices? Is prudery still of utility in a constructed culture?
The common-sense presumption that a woman dressing modestly is less likely to experience sexual violence is an unlikely motivator for culturally-pressured sexual modesty. Not only does dressing in a provocative manner not appear to increase the probability that someone is raped, but dressing modestly does.[[71]](#_ftn71) In addition, there is a positive correlation between the number of rapes within a culture and the modesty expected of women within that culture. This can be seen both between and within communities. In other words, rape is more common in groups like the extremist Amish and among extremist Islamists when contrasted with cultures that don’t have strong modesty mandates. In short, modest dress is associated with heightened odds of being raped and culturally mandated modest dress correlates with higher rates of rape within a culture.
If the prohibition against provocative clothing in women (very few cultures have prohibitions against provocative clothing in men) did not evolve to reduce rapes, then why bother with modest dress? The mandate against women appearing sexually available common across cultures appears to exist for one core reason: Cultural signaling. Cultures that admire female sexuality are likely to feature more sexual promiscuity and less dedicated partnering-off of adherents.
Why discourage recreational sex with non-dedicated partners? In traditional cultures, a child born outside of a family unit was very likely to become a ward of the township, which increased the town’s collective financial burden. Children born out of wedlock and ultimately orphaned were also more likely to become pickpockets and join local gangs (which historically were made up of much younger individuals and more dangerous to the general public). Should sexual promiscuity ultimately place such heavy burdens on societies, it would make sense that they would discourage it.
There is another reason why hard cultures often evolve to impose female modesty. Most men are biologically programmed to desire young, genetically fit, fertile women. As such, secular forces in societies (like companies) can use sexualized young women to sell things (be they products or messages). This can cause cultures to more broadly value sexualized women, which almost always comes at the expense of general appreciation of less sexy female roles like motherhood (an older woman who already has kids on average is less sexually appealing than a younger woman who does not). Loss of respect for motherhood at a societal level can be catastrophic for birth rates given the sacrifices required to become a parent. (For a more detailed discussion of this topic, see the chapter “Glorification of Motherhood” on page 424.)
What about masturbation? Why on earth are so many long-lived cultures wildly against something that research shows to be largely beneficial (see The Pragmatist’s Guides to Sexuality and Relationships for a detailed review of the research on this). Masturbation is condemned for two reasons: The first and more obvious is that people who are not masturbating will only be able to experience orgasm through sex. Such people will presumably have more sex with their dedicated partners and be more motivated to find a dedicated partner while young, which will lead them to have more children on average.
The second and less immediately clear cultural motivator to discourage masturbation is that while self-pleasure has positive health effects, the arbitrary and consistent denial of impulses has even stronger positive health effects, as it strengthens the parts of the brain associated with inhibitory pathways—the pathways used to shut down impulses and intrusive thoughts and emotions. Cultures don’t need to single out masturbation to strengthen adherents’ inhibitory pathways though; a similar effect could be achieved through practices like fasting or denying oneself certain foods (both of which are also common across successful hard cultures).
Mandates toward modesty and against masturbation seem to have evolved over time within most of the cultures in which they are common today and were not typically a feature of those cultures at their inception. Consider early Christianity: While Jesus did not talk about sex, Paul, who built early Christian communities, certainly did. Generally, it seems like anything you wanted to do was OK so long as you were married. Though some individuals had the “gift” of being free from sexual thoughts, those who lacked this gift were best off getting married, then doing whatever they wanted.
Contrast this early Christian view with Roman Catholics seeing masturbation as sinful, Mormons contextualizing masturbation as a sin (to the point that young Mormons are regularly quizzed on the topic during their missions), John Calvin writing that “the voluntary spilling of semen outside of intercourse between a man and a woman is a monstrous thing. Deliberately to withdraw from coitus in order that semen may fall on the ground is double monstrous,” and the founder of Methodism, John Wesley, arguing that “an unproductive sexual act, whether that should be in the form of masturbation or coitus interruptus … destroyed the souls of the individuals who practice it.” Virtually every hard form of Christianity evolved to condemn non-productive ejaculations despite early Christianity not featuring strong policies on the subject. To us, this demonstrates just how much this cultural demand positively increases the fitness of adherents and thus how strong the evolutionary pressure to develop it must be.
Should we want to explore a culture with sexual prohibitions truly optimized to encourage a high birth rate, we have to look at Judaism, which had a long time for evolution to hone into very, very specific practices. In addition to condemning premarital sex, premarital hand holding, masturbation, and coitus interruptus, stricter forms of Judaism even mandate abstinence for two weeks after menstruation. What is interesting is that while conservative Jews have a high birth rate, it was (historically at least) dwarfed by that of cultures which merely mandated abstinence and sex inside of marriage (such as Catholicism and Mormonism). Judaism only beats those cultures now due to an intentional, logical devotion to growing their population through birth rate, which is partially motivated by the reduction in Jewish population that happened during the Holocaust (and thus some have hypothesized it will recede over time).
What does the above reversal in birth rates show us about the world today? Were these abstinence, modesty, and anti-masturbation systems historically evolved to increase birth rates only effective when used in moderation? Is it that they are no longer effective today? Or is it simply more efficacious for parents to logically explain to their kids why it is important to have lots of children? Perhaps a combination of all these factors is at play.
Ultimately, cultural mandates for modest dress and against masturbation harm the psychological development of group adherents. For more info on masturbation in particular, see The Pragmatist’s Guide to Sexuality, but suffice to say that—aside from masturbation developing into an addiction just like any dopamine-associated act, such as eating food, is liable to become—the act only produces serious negative psychological effects when an individual contextualizes it as shameful or somehow bad. In other words, if you don’t think masturbation is bad, it’s not going to have bad effects on you so long as you haven’t developed an unhealthy addiction to the habit. Worse, individuals who view masturbation as shameful can be seen in the data to consume more porn. You can observe this effect by overlapping maps investigating individuals’ views of sexuality with maps of online porn consumption.
Another huge problem with modern hard cultures that mandate modesty, look down on sexuality, and frown on masturbation is that they will feature higher rates of attrition. Few things lure teens into deconversion more than sexuality. In this modern world, an ideal hard culture would be able to both venerate motherhood and be sexy.
So how does our personal culture approach sexuality? As we see no compelling evidence that contextualizing sexuality as shameful will help them, we don’t discourage masturbation or even well-protected, safe, premarital sex (though there are some caveats on that front, which we cover in The Pragmatist’s Guide to Relationships).
Generally speaking, our culture is neutral toward provocative dress so long as it is worn with a specific goal in mind and not as generic self-signaling. Sexuality can be a powerful weapon against pop culture if utilized intentionally and methodically. Were you, for example, to create a cultivar with a really sexy “traditional” outfit that became aspirational in its sex appeal to pop cultural groups whose members also had the mental fortitude to not succumb to sexualizing themselves, you would have a pretty powerful package.
In our House, we will explain to our kids that there is no moral difference between non-reproductive sex and masturbation. Both are recreational activities that activate arousal pathways. As with any other recreational activity—be it eating tasty foods, drinking, passively scrolling on social media platforms, or playing video games—moderation is key. In short, we want members of our House to advantageously use—rather than be used by—sex and sexual signaling.
Unlike masturbation, sex has potential tactical value in that it can be used to manipulate other individuals’ hormonal states and lead people to form an illogical bond to you. In addition, there are various means by which sex may be exchanged for resources, access, influence, or power, so it is worth putting in the effort to build some skill even if you find the whole act repellant (see The Pragmatist’s Guide to Sexuality for more info on how this system can be gamed). As our House views sexuality as only being moral when it is used in a tactically beneficial manner, we are in the rare cultural position of finding something like an exchange of sex for money as being morally superior to purely recreational sex.
Another “weird” thing about our House’s approach to sexuality is that we don’t see it as the primary tool for creating children. Our theological mandate toward intergenerational improvement means that we view the act of creating children through sex as a means of last resort that should only be utilized in the face of extreme financial limitation or resource deprivation. Children created through sex cannot be selected based on optimal polygenic risk scores or otherwise genetically modified, which, given our worldview, is wildly neglectful. As Simone says, “The greatest gift we can give our children is the knowledge that they are a product of science and not their parents having sex.”
Bonus Note: On Culturally Mandated Genital Mutilation
The relative rarity of female genital mutilation among successful cultures suggests that it is not a good strategy for increasing birth rates. It is hard to see how male genital mutilation might increase birth rates, but it has become common among successful cultures, likely by accident (similar to how having one’s thyroid removed became a medical fad for a while). We say “by accident,” as it appears to have initially been an extremely costly ritual, being originally performed on adults to signal group allegiance and build a sunk cost fallacy around group alignment. Eventually (after the first Temple period), one subfaction of the group figured out how to “cheat” performing circumcision before a person could remember the pain. Now that this hack has become common, the whole ritual is kind of pointless, culturally speaking.
Robosexuality
There is a Futurama episode in which we learn that humanity almost went extinct after sex bots became very good at becoming girlfriends and boyfriends to humans. This crisis was only rectified by creating a negative social stigma around these relationships, framing them as “robosexuality” (and to a lesser extent, making them illegal). When we first saw this episode, we thought it was funny. Now we seriously wonder if robsexuality is the hill on which our species will die.
Can we really say that back when we were young, horny, and struggling to date, we would have been able to resist forming a deep emotional relationship with an amalgam of GPT 10 and a dynamically animated AI girlfriend / boyfriend? Humans and cultures that primarily motivate marriage through the emotional rewards that come from it (be they sex or love) will likely be wiped out by the proliferation of AIs on the dating market within the next 50 to 100 years.
While you may assume we would need to prematurely code a disgust for romantic and sexual robot-human relations into our culture, the way our cultivar (House Collins) frames sexuality makes us uniquely resistant to the hazards of robosexuality. We don’t prohibit things like gay sex or masturbation so long as a person has kids. A similar mindset can be taken to robosexuality (so long as robosexuality does not turn out to be wildly addictive—who is to say how good these AIs will get at hijacking lower human brain functions?). In fact, if AI gets worried enough about human birthrates and is coded to be almost perfectly aligned with humanity, it might even handle genetic recombination and childbirth (through artificial wombs) better than your typical human partner.
Expect this to be a major issue that many cultures will be forced to address in the near future. Cultivars that fail to either successfully prohibit robosexuality or find a way to embrace robot-human relations in a manner that maintains high birth rates will go extinct.
J. D. Unwin & Sexual Liberation
J. D. Unwin was a professor at Cambridge back in the 1930s who did some really interesting research into 80 native cultures and six civilizations. He developed a theory, which evidence seemed to support, claiming that deistic, sexually illiberal cultures that value rationality had the best outcomes of all culture types (with cultural output measured in literature, art, science, furniture, architecture, engineering, and agriculture). Unwin also observed that the prosperity produced by these three traits leads to sexual liberation, followed by a decline within three generations. Of all the traits he found that correlated with a culture on the precipice of flourishing or collapsing, the most important was the rate of prenuptial chastity.
Unwin used his data to make specific predictions: That within three generations of a sexual liberation movement, our own culture would begin to see:
- A breakdown of strict monogamy
- Lower rates of religious practice
- A decline in rationality
Fortunately, he made these predictions long enough ago that we can now see whether they were predictive. Unarguably, Unwin’s first and second predictions were spot on and if you consider movements like postmodernism to be anti-rational, he was certainly correct in his third prediction as well. As much as we would like to dismiss Unwin’s research based on the time and culture in which it was produced, his predictive capabilities nevertheless give us pause.
For a weird science experiment from this period that also had an uncomfortable take on gay people but was weirdly predictive, see: “But Surely the Problem will Fix Itself: Behavioral Sinks” in the Appendix on page 786.
Levirate Marriages
Levirate marriages tell us something interesting about the role marriage traditionally played in society when contrasted with its current role. In a Levirate marriage, a brother of a deceased man is obligated to marry his brother’s widow. This tradition exists across the Abrahamic faiths but is also seen in many other cultures, including among the Shona of Zimbabwe, Huns, Kurds, in Japan (under the name aniyome ni naosu), and in India (under the name niyogi).
This brother-marrying-deceased-brother’s-widow practice appears to have co-evolved so many times because within cultures that do not permit women to work, it reduces the odds that widowed women and their children become wards of the wider community by placing them under the responsibility of the man most genetically related to the newly fatherless children. The fact that Levirate marriages are virtually unheard of outside of extremely patriarchal societies (societies that grant women less independence) gives this theorized motive credence.
The practice may actually lower birth rates by sometimes obligating younger men to marry older widowed women, as has been concretely recorded in African communities that actively practice this tradition.[[72]](#_ftn72) It appears Levirate marriages present the rare case of a tradition that adds fitness to a culture not by increasing birth rate, but by increasing social cohesion (another example of such a tradition is monogamy).