1 result for (book:notp AND session:768 AND stemmed:speci)
[... 6 paragraphs ...]
Even when social scientists or biologists explore human sexuality, they do so from the framework of sexuality as it appears in your world. There are quite natural sexual variations, even involving reproduction, that are not now apparent in human behavior in any culture. These variations appear in your world on only fairly microscopic levels, or in the behavior of other species than your own.
[... 2 paragraphs ...]
The male-female, female-male orientation is not nearly as separate as it appears to be in your present experience. It is not nearly as tied to psychological characteristics as you suppose. Nor is it inherently focused in the particular age period in which it now shows itself. Puberty arrives, so to speak, but the time of its arrival varies according to the needs of the species, its conditions and beliefs. You are an individual for life. You operate as a reproducing individual, generally speaking, for only a portion of that time.
[... 2 paragraphs ...]
I have spoken before about the growth of what you call ego-consciousness — which, let me reiterate, has its own unique rewards. That psychological orientation will lead the species to another, equally unique kind of consciousness.
When the process began, however, the deep power of nature had to be “controlled” so that the growing consciousness could see itself as apart from this natural source. Yet children, so necessary to the species, continued to spring from women’s wombs. Therefore the natural source was most flagrant, observable, and undeniable. For that reason the species — and not the male alone — placed so many taboos about female behavior and sexuality. In “subduing” its own female elements, the species tried to gain some psychological distance from the great natural source from which it was, for its own reasons, trying to emerge.
[... 8 paragraphs ...]
For those literal-minded readers, this does not mean that such activity would predominate at such times. It does mean that not all sexual activity is meant to end in childbirth — which is a biological impossibility, and would represent planetary catastrophe. So the species is blessed, if you will (louder) with many avenues for sexual expression. The strong focus that now predominates does inhibit the formation of certain kinds of friendships that would not necessarily at all result in sexual activity.
[... 4 paragraphs ...]