#unitive

flag id: the top flag has 6 stripes, with the first and sixth being much larger than the rest. they are dark dull seafoam green, faded orange, faded yellow, faded blue, medium dark faded purple, and soft seafoam green.

the middle left flag has 6 stripes, with the second and fifth being much larger than the rest. they are faded orange, dark dull seafoam green, faded yellow, faded blue, soft seafoam green, and medium dark faded purple. the middle right flag has 3 stripes, which are dark dull seafoam green, a horizontal gradient from faded orange to faded yellow to faded blue to medium dark faded purple, and soft seafoam green.

the bottom left flag has 6 stripes, which are faded orange, dark dull seafoam green, faded yellow, faded blue, soft seafoam green, and medium dark faded purple. the bottom right flag has 9 stripes, with the fifth being larger than the rest and the first, third, seventh, and ninth smaller than the rest. they are faded orange, dark dull seafoam green, faded yellow, dark dull seafoam green, a horizontal gradient from faded orange to faded yellow to faded blue to medium dark faded purple, soft seafoam green, faded blue, soft seafoam green, and medium dark faded purple. end id.

banner id: a 1500x150 teal banner with the words ‘please read my dni before interacting’ in large white text in the center. end id.

unitian/unitive sevarian | pazlian embelian | condrian

for anon! the flags use greens from the headmate and member flags to represent the larger member and several other colors to represent the smaller members within it.

the sevarian flag separates the smaller member stripes to represent that they can front together, the pazlian flag makes them a gradient to represent the need to always be together, the embelian flag makes the smaller member stripes larger to represent the members existing before and outside of the unitian, and the condrian flag combines the traits of the sevarian and pazlian flags to represent switching between the two.

Bringing Sanity to Sex: Part 2 of 2

I’m my previous article on sex and sanity, I asked whether there is such a thing as sexual sanity. That is: is there an objective reality about sex (an intrinsic meaning and purpose) that I would need to respect and live in accord with in order to be sexually sane?  

We saw that the answer is “yes.” Sex has an intrinsic ordering to the begetting of children. Regardless of someone’s personal motive for engaging in sexual activity, procreation is the natural end of sex. But is this all there is to sex? It would seem that this view reduces sex to mere biology and thus is guilty of a sort of “physicalism.” Perhaps this charge would have force if producing children were the end of the story for human sex. But it’s not the end. There’s more.

There is another purpose of sex that is intrinsically bound up with making children (the procreative dimension), namely, spousal union or friendship (the unitive dimension). There are two ways to see this intrinsic connection. The first sees the spousal friendship as finalizing the procreative dimension in as much as it makes sex a human reproductive act. The second way shows how the unitive is bound to the procreative for the sake of rearing the children produced by the act. Let’s start with the first and see how the unitive makes sex properly human.

Not Like the Animals Do

The natural end, begetting children, follows from the animality of human beings. It is our sexed bodies—our reproductive organs—that order sexual activity toward procreation. This is something that we have in common with other animals. But we know that human sexual activity is different than animal acts of reproduction. No one in their right mind refers to two dogs “making-love” and female horses don’t gird themselves in lace nighties to enhance the experience. Just like ranchers don’t put Barry White music on with dim lights and lit candles to create ambiance in the barn for the breeding of their horses.

So what is it that transfigures or elevates reproductive acts in a human being and makes them distinct in the animal kingdom? What is it that makes sex properly human?

Let Reason Be Your Guide

We can begin to get a glimpse of the answer by considering other human acts. Consider, for example, the act of going to the bathroom. We wouldn’t think much if Dorothy’s dog, Toto, relieved himself as they were walking along the yellow brick road. But what would your thoughts be if Dorothy decided to join him in such a relief session?

My guess is that you would be repulsed by such behavior. It would be as unreasonable as the woman who defecated on a poster that was supposedly of Mexico’s presidential candidate Enrique Pena Nieto during street protesting in 2012. This is not how humans go to the bathroom. Defecating must be done in a reasonable way (in private and preferably on a toilet) in order to be properly human.

Another example is sight. When Dorothy looks at a tree with Toto her dog along the yellow road in Oz, they both perceive a tree. But they do so in essentially different ways. Toto sees only a particular thing with a certain shape, different colors, and a particular smell.

When Dorothy perceives the tree, she not only sees everything Toto sees, but she sees it as a tree. The difference is, Dorothy is able to abstract the essence or nature of what the thing is and form the universal concept of treeness. She is then able to judge that the object before her is a tree, along with the other trees in the forest, and reason to certain conclusions about trees, namely, they are material and subject to corruption, etc.

Notice that Dorothy’s power of sight is radically transformed by her rationality. Although there are aspects of her power that she shares with Toto, it is essentially different because it’s fused with reason. As the philosopher Edward Feser explains, “A human visual experience is a seamless unity of the rational and the animal…we (unlike non-human animals) conceptualize what we receive through sensation” (Neo-Scholastic Essays, 395).

Another example is the act of eating. All animals share the drive to eat for the sake of self-preservation. But we all have an innate awareness of what is appropriate human behavior when it comes to eating.

I’m sure at some point in your life, at least if you’re a male, while sitting at the dinner table, your mother scolded you and said, “Son, where are your manners? Stop eating like a pig. You weren’t raised in a barn.”

Such a reprimand implies that there exists a standard of eating that elevates the animalistic inclination to that which is appropriately human (mainly, table manners) What might that be? Reason.

Far from being merely an animal activity, eating for humans is infused with rationality. Philosopher Paul Gondreau from Providence College describes the human dimension of eating as follows:

[E]ating serves a profound human function, indeed, it becomes an art, in as much as we prepare our meals with the highest of nutritional, gustatory and even aesthetic quality in mind, we observe proper etiquette when consuming our food, and, typically the preferred occasion of shared human fellowship, mealtime satisfies deep social (i.e., rational) needs (“The Natural Law Ordering of Human Sexuality to (Heterosexual) Marriage: Towards a Thomistic Philosophy of the Body,” in Nova Et Vetera, English ed. Vol. 8, No. 3 (2010): 553–92).

Just as there is a seamless unity between the rational and the animal in human visual perception, there is a seamless unity between the rational and the animal in human eating.

Human Sex is More Than Animality

What the above examples show is that our animal sentient inclinations become human if integrated into that which makes us human, namely, our rationality. This is the key to figuring out what makes human sex properly human.

For sex to be genuinely human, it must be integrated into that which is unique and noblest in us, namely, our rationality, which involves knowledge and love. And where is knowledge and love united but in friendship, interpersonal communion (stress on personal).

The bodily union between man and woman that is ordered to begetting children, therefore, finds its human perfection in the “indivisible union of souls” (Summa Theologiae III:29:2) that exists between spouses. St. Thomas Aquinas calls this spousal friendship a domesticae conversationis consortium—a “society of domestic fellowship” (Summa Contra Gentiles III, 123). He elsewhere refers to it as a “conjugal society” (ST Suppl., 41:1).

To get a bit metaphysical for a second, you might say that the unitive dimension of sex (spousal friendship) is to the procreative dimension what the rational soul is to the human body. Just as the rational soul makes our bodies human bodies as opposed to animal bodies or vegetative bodies, the spousal friendship (communal living) makes our procreative inclinations properly human—integrating them into the rational part of our human nature.

The human transformation that the unitive dimension provides to the procreative shows how sex is another human act in which there is a seamless unity between the animal and the rational

The Rest of the Story About Sex

What this analysis shows is that sex has yet another dimension and it is intrinsically united to the procreative, namely, interpersonal communion of knowledge and love (the unitive or “love-making” dimension). The procreative dimension flows from our sexed bodies and the unitive dimension flows from our rational souls. Paul Gondreau puts it succinctly:

Human sexuality, in its primary ordering to procreation as owing to the body, is at the same time ordered essentially to personal, unitive love as following upon the (rational) soul. By means of the unitive dimension, in other words, our sexuality participates in the rational dimension of human life (article cited above).

Therefore, to see what is there for human sex (to see reality) is to see both the procreative and unitive aspects. And sanity would demand that we live in accord with it.

Union for the Sake of Children

The unitive dimension not only flows from the procreative in as much as it integrates human sex into what is noblest in humans (rationality), it also flows necessarily from the procreative in as much as it is necessary for rearing the children that are brought about by the sexual act.

Unlike other species in the animal world, nature has not provided human infants with the ability to care for themselves. Nature has ordained them to be radically dependent on others for their needs, and for a very long period of time.

The needs for human offspring go beyond the mere physical. Because humans are rational animals, children also depend on others for what Aquinas calls “the training of the soul” (SCG III, 122)—that is, attending to the emotional and spiritual needs of the child. Children’s minds need to be formed in what is true. Their wills need to be directed toward what is good. They need help in learning how to live in community with others.

So nature ordains procreation not just to the generation of new human beings, but also to the formation (rearing) of such new human persons that allow them to fulfill their nature as rational animals.

It is here where the union between husband and wife comes into play. Nature ordains that both man and woman be needed for the child to come into existence and to be reared.

For example, nature has ordained the mother to be the nurturer and the father to be the protector and provider. There is not much the mother can do to protect and provide for herself and her children when she is nurturing a child within her womb, and any other children she may have previously given birth to. So nature pushes the father into a situation where he has to provide and protect the woman and the children with whom he has had the children.  

Both parents are also needed to bring their children to full maturity as members of the human race. Humanity is not a one-way street. Both sexes are needed for a full human education. Frank Sheed explains,

Humanity is not man or woman, but both in union. A child brought up by a father only or a mother only is only half-educated. He needs what the male can give him and what the female can give him. And he needs these two not as two separate influences, each pushing him its own way, so that he moves on some compromise line that is neither, but as one fused influence, wholly human, male and female affecting him as conjoined not as competing influences (Society and Sanity, 105-106).

Children need models of both sexes and the model of the relationship between them. Anything less is a half-human education.

What's the Bottom Line on Sexual Sanity?

The objective reality of human sex is procreative and unitive. Just as a human being is both body and soul, human sex is both procreative and unitive. Nature has made it so that both aspects are essential to human sexuality.

Our sexed bodies are ordered toward the begetting of children. But because we’re human, the procreative end necessarily involves an interpersonal union of knowledge and love. The unitive dimension of sex tells us that sex is for union with another person. But the procreative dimension tells us that sex is for a union between a man and woman.

Therefore, the objective reality of human sex consists of its ordination toward the end (goal) of a heterosexual union of knowledge and love, namely, heterosexual marriage. I call this heterosexual union “marriage” because the other essential characteristics of exclusivity and permanency are embedded in the procreative and unitive dimensions. I intend to draw these aspects out in a future post.

But suffice to say that sexual sanity sees the procreative and unitive dimensions as essential to the act. To say sex by nature involves one without the other is as contrary to reality as saying a human being is only a body or only a soul. Both body and soul belong to the nature of a human being. Both procreation and union belong to sex.

Bringing Sanity to Sex: Part I

Sanity is to see what is (reality) and live in accord with it. If your grandfather thinks leprechauns are jumping in his butter dish and he gives them his butter knife to use as a springboard, then his sanity is defective.

He mistakes a hallucination for what is real and behaves accordingly. As he tells you about this phenomenon at the dinner table, you probably would invite him to become a citizen of the real world and see reality as it is and live in it.

Sexual sanity

I use this example to prompt the question, “Is there a real world when it comes to sex and our sexual powers?” In other words, is there a meaning to sex that is independent of what you or I make sex out to be? Is there a reality to sex, and thus to our sexual powers, that we ought to reverence and live in accord with? Is there a real world with regard to sex that we could invite someone to live in? Is there such a thing as sexual sanity?

If sex doesn't have any sort of intrinsic meaning (a purpose independent of human contriving), then it would be impossible to be charged with sexual insanity. How could one be mistaken about the reality of sex if there is no reality about which to be mistaken?

But if sex does have an objective reality (intrinsic meaning and purpose) and we don’t make it up as we go, then how we relate to sex will determine our sanity just as much as does how we relate to butter dishes and leprechauns.

Drooling is not thinking

In order to determine if sex has an objective meaning (meaning and purpose independent of our intentions), we must do what modern man does not do: namely, think about sex.

I know what you’re thinking, “How can you say modern man doesn’t think about sex? Just watch the commercials—from shampoo to yogurt to cleaning supplies, everything is sexualized. Haven’t you seen Fifty Shades of Grey?”

No, I haven’t seen the movie or read the book, and, yes, everything in our culture is hyper sexualized. But this is not thinking about sex. I can’t put it any better than Frank Sheed:

The typical modern man practically never thinks about sex. He dreams of it, of course, by day and by night; he craves for it; he pictures it, is stimulated or depressed by it, drools over it. But this frothing, steaming activity is not thinking. Drooling is not thinking, picturing is not thinking, craving is not thinking, dreaming is not thinking. Thinking means bringing the power of the mind to bear: thinking about sex means striving to see sex in its innermost reality and in the function it is meant to serve (Society and Sanity, 107).

To think about sex is to ask, “What’s it for?” This is the first principle of intelligent use for anything. For example, if I don’t know what a microphone is for, I may be inclined to use it to hammer nails while building my house. But of course this would destroy the microphone.

Similarly, to intelligently use our sexual powers we must know their innermost reality and the function they are meant to serve. And as I’ve learned from my good friend Fr. Sebastian Walshe, a Norbertine priest at St. Michael’s Abbey in Orange County, California, to know the intrinsic purpose of sex is to know the proper activity of sex.

For example, the proper activity of a knife and its purpose is one and the same: to cut. Sight is the purpose of the eye, but it is also its proper activity. If an eye is defective and blind, then it isn’t acting (functioning) properly.

So what is sex for? What is its proper activity?

What’s pleasure got to do with it?

Someone might say, “Sex is for pleasure.” Although sex does involve pleasure, and this may be an individual’s subjective motive for having sex, it doesn’t stand up to the scrutiny of reason as an intrinsic purpose of sex (nature’s ultimate goal for sex).

For starters, one can attain sexual pleasure in many ways:

A man can rape an unconscious girl whom he drugged at the bar.

A doctor can sexually abuse a woman who is in a persistent vegetative state.

The sports star can bed as many women as he can in order to gain the pleasure of conquest and bragging rights in the locker room.

The married airline pilot can sleep with stewardesses on his long trips.

As one woman said in an on-street interview that Catholic Answers conducted, “Someone could marry their donkey for all I care”—which, of course, implies certain types of pleasurable behavior with the donkey.

Anybody of good will recognizes that such behaviors are not appropriate human sexual behavior. Therefore, there must be something other than pleasure that makes for proper sexual activity—that is to say, sex must be for something other than pleasure.

Moreover, pleasure is not the ultimate purpose of sex anymore than pleasure is the ultimate purpose of eating or breathing. Have you ever experienced being suffocated? Not so pleasurable, was it? The pleasure of breathing serves the ultimate end (goal) of breathing: namely, to keep you alive.

Eating is also pleasurable, but it is clearly not for pleasure. Pleasure is subordinate to the intrinsic purpose that it serves—nourishment of the human body.

The same line of reasoning can be applied to sex. When we bring the power of the mind to bear on our sexual powers, we see that sexual pleasure is subordinate to the end (goal) for which nature intends humans to engage in sex: to reproduce. As the philosopher Edward Feser writes, “To emphasize pleasure would be to put the cart before the horse” (Neo-Scholastic Essays, 389).

The ‘baby-making’ meaning of sex

In his book On the Meaning of Sex, the natural law philosopher J. Budziszewski identifies two conditions that must be met in order for some Q to be the purpose of some P, and procreation meets both of them. First, it must be the case that P actually brings about Q. Do the sexual powers of male and female bring about children when used in sexual activity? Yes.

Second, Q must explain why we have P in the first place. Does procreation explain why humans have sexual powers? Yes. Without the begetting of children, our sexed bodies would be unintelligible. To put it another way, if we weren’t meant to reproduce we wouldn’t have sexed bodies.

This is not to say that procreation entails sex, since there are some species that reproduce asexually. Rather, the claim is that sex entails procreation. Procreation is that for the sake of which sex exists.

So, regardless of what man may use sex, and consequently his sexual powers, for—whether it is for the expression of romantic love alone or the giving of bodily pleasure in recreational activity—childbearing is sex’s own purpose (intrinsic purpose) and thus its proper activity. It is the end toward which sex is ordered.

Once again Frank Sheed puts it succinctly:

If we consider sex in itself and ask what nature had in mind in giving sex to human beings, there can be only one answer: sex is meant for the production of children, as lungs for breathing or the digestive organs for nourishment. . . . It would be monstrous to deny . . . that that is what sex is meant for, that is why we have sexual powers. The fact that man can use sex for other, sterile purposes of his own choosing does not alter the certainty that childbearing is sex’s own purpose (Society and Sanity, 110).

So, as we use reason to see what is there concerning sex and check our sanity, we can conclude that it has its own intrinsic ordering to procreation.

At this point many questions abound: What about the fact that a human baby, unlike other species in the animal kingdom, is unable to fend for himself for quite some time once he is generated? If sex is for the generation of children, then what makes it distinctly human, since non-rational animals engage in the same kind of activity? Aren’t you reducing sex to mere biology and mechanics by saying sex is for begetting children? “Where’s the love, man” (can you hear the hippie voice?). Why should I even respect the procreative dimension of sex when I can avoid it?

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