September 22, 2010 • 27 mins
A recent trend has seen young people -- especially women -- choosing to be celibate for non-religious reasons. But why? In this episode, Molly and Cristen discuss the cultural history, gender implications and possible benefits of celibacy.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
It's ready. Are you welcome to stump Mom never told you?
From House top works dot com. Hello, and welcome to
the podcast. This is Molly and I'm Kristin Kristen Uh.
(00:20):
One of the articles I wrote in my first year
as a writer at HAUSA works dot com was a
little article about whether, um, double dipping a chip uh
brought more disease into your body because you were somehow,
you know, putting your germs into the salsa or the guacamole,
whatever the dip happened to be, and then um, you know,
(00:41):
and taking another bite after someone else a double dip
the chip. Yes, such a party faux pa it is.
And you know, the first time I really thought about
it as a party foul pap was when I saw
the episode of Seinfeld in which that very faux pau
was sort of magnified, as all faux pas are magnified
on that show. In large awkward hands. I didn't have
(01:01):
to worry about the large awkward hands yet the man
hand it hands. But I do remember that episode very
distinctly where George goes off on someone who has double
dip the chip. And you know that was what was
so funny scop going you double dip the chip, You
double dip the chip. And what I found when I
wrote the article is there was some truth to his phobias.
You do get You do get a quite a percentage
(01:21):
of germs if you if you double dip chips to
be aware at your next party science according to Seinfeld,
and my attention, that's our topic for today because another
notable Seinfeld episode, also involving George is all the best
episodes do um is the question of whether celibacy makes
you smarter. Yeah, there's an episode of Seinfeld. A lot
of you all out there have probably seen it where
(01:44):
the gang has a contest to see who can remain
celibate the longest, and it has very different results for
the different characters. For George, it just turns him into
this like superhuman essentially. Yeah, he just walks down the
street and throws off like physics formulas. He didn't even
realize he knew. Suddenly he's brilliant. And for a Lane,
(02:06):
it's horrible. She can't do it. Sheet becomes just a
ruling mess who cannot function in society. So we wanted
to ask her. Some said find out the science behind Seinfeld, right,
because Molly, you and I have been talking a lot
about doing it on mom stuff lately, so I think
you've we've been talking about is she's related to sex? Yes? Yeah,
(02:28):
we decided to see what would what would happen if
we talked about the opposite. Yeah, sex. Yeah, We're always like,
what about economs and penis sizes and birth control? Hey,
why don't we just do away with all of that?
All right, let's simplify things and just talk about celibacy.
And you know, the word celibacy technically means unmarried. It
just means a bachelor, but in our current vernacular it's
(02:49):
um equivalent with not having sex. Yeah, And of course
a lot of times when we talk about celibacy, first
thing that pops into our heads is probably the priesthood
Catholic Church. Yes, there's a lot of new there's a
lot of discussion lately about if we abolished delibacy in
the priesthood, would there be fewer cases of molestation? Is
you know, the repression of sexual desires in priests leading
(03:12):
to these awful crimes against children, And you know that's
that's the topic for another another episode. We're gonna leave.
We're gonna leave the whole priesthood and celibacy kind of
out of this conversation. But the important reason to bring
it up is because there has always been this association
between abstaining from sex and the divine and that's one
reason why people may choose not to have sex today,
(03:34):
is because they feel there are religious reasons not to
do it, moral reasons. But um, you know what, the
idea of selbacy and priests didn't originally start because they
wanted the priest to be, you know, so very pure
as they served the church. It was actually to keep
the priest from giving away church lands to their wives
and children when they died. So it's sort of something
(03:55):
that's evolved over over the age. But there you know,
from from the time there were the earl as martyrs
in the Christian Church, many of them would abstain from sex,
but they'd abstain from food, they'd abstain from beverage because
they were trying to be the purest possible vessel for
a communion and divine with with their God. And while
there have always been these religious undertones linked to celibacy today,
(04:19):
there's been a media trend of the new celibacy, if
you will, this idea of people reclaiming their virginity, of
being very open about abstaining from sex on purpose, you know,
to try to better themselves, not necessarily for religious purposes.
For instance, there was um a story that we found
on CNN that came out not too long ago about
(04:41):
how supposedly more college students, and especially female college students,
are choosing to abstain from the hook up culture that
has uh kind of permeated the college dating world, you know,
in which two people are just you know, they go
out and they get drunk, and they the benefits, friends
with benefits or strangers with benefits and sometimes not benefits
(05:05):
or coin of episode. But at the same time, in
a lot of these and a lot of these studies,
especially the ones dealing with celibacy among younger people, they'll
throw out these studies to kind of support the idea
saying that, well, you know, psychologically hooking up is is
bad for women in particular, so you know, it kind
(05:26):
of seems like it is advertising celibacy as a positive
thing for your for your mind and body. Well, I
feel like those Trent pieces really emphasize the emotional aspect that,
like you said, Christen, the studies have indicated that women
get hurt psychologically from um, not having these long traditional romances.
So um, it's celibacy or this new celibacy is kind
(05:49):
of painted as a reaction to that hookup culture where
women can confine sort of the emotional benefits of sex
when they choose to have it. But what most of
the pieces seem to emphasize is that these are people
who have had sex and are now abstaining from it.
It's not abstaining all the way until you're married and
then having sex. It's you know, they have seen they've
(06:10):
seen the other side and decided that they're going to
come back to this thing. And it was interesting just
to read about all these emotional benefits because no one
is bringing up the Costanza argument that it might make
you smarter or dumber and uh well, and and perhaps
the reason for that is because you know, with the
just to kind of use the the Seinfeld example, you know,
(06:31):
focusing on George as a guy choosing to remain celibate.
A lot of the stories that we hear about today.
The reason why we're saying, you know, they're there are
all these studies, um, proclaiming emotional benefits for women who
choose to not hook up, even though those results are
actually mixed when you look at the entire body of research. UM.
But I think Molly, Um, you'd agree that a lot
(06:53):
of uh, the celibacy angle and a lot of this
question of you know, whether or not you should or
shouldn't have sex focus is specific fickly on women in
this emotional aspect. It kind of just assumes that guys
are by nature sexual and they need to go out
and you know, kind of procreate, spread their seed, and
it's just part of who they are as as human animals.
(07:16):
But for women, you know, if it's it's a lot
more complicated, which I kind of take a little bit
of issue. Well, that's the problem. I think we'll probably
circle back to this many times during the podcast. But
there's always gonna be a problem when you link women
in sex because if you think of like sex in
the city and the backlash from that people get mad
and women have too much sex, and now the fact
(07:37):
that a woman not having sex as news you I mean,
you can't win. You cannot be a woman in win
in terms of whether you are having sex or not
having it. Um. But I think that I was reading
one New York Times trend piece about this phenomenon of
women abstaining and joining purity groups that are popping up
all over college campuses, and they aren't linked with any
sort of religious background, because, like we said, that's always
(07:59):
going to be a reason. But these people are deliberately
trying to find benefits that aren't linked to religious arguments
for doing this. And the woman in this one particular
New York Times piece try to paint her stance as
a celibate as sort of a different kind of feminism,
because when you think about second way feminism in the
way that it sort of said, you know, women own
(08:20):
their bodies, Women can have sex with their bodies the
way men have sex with their bodies, and there should
be no shame in that. She said that that's exactly
what she's doing. In the opposite way, by choosing not
to have sex is just as valid choice. It doesn't
need that same amount of judgment. Um. But you know,
it's still a judgment because it ends up in the
paper and people are shocked by it. And the thing
(08:41):
is it's actually statistically not um that crazy of a
notion to be celibate. According to the National Center for
Health Statistics, eleven percent of never married adults UM choose
to abstain from sexual intercourse, and that that statistics would
indicate to me that that doesn't include people who just
(09:01):
haven't lost their virginity for whatever reason, because that's kind
of another issue that will bring up, um, you know,
this idea of celibacy by choice and forced celibacy when
you just you just can't get any But let's go
to celibacy as a choice, because I think that if
we look at sort of a cultural history of celibacy,
(09:22):
we might be able to find, um, some reason behind that.
Woman in the New York Times piece I mentioned saying
that celibacy is a form of feminism because there's this
great book called The History of Celibacy by Elizabeth Abbott,
And to me, this really kind of put into perspective
how celibacy has always been a form of power for
men and in this day and age, the George G.
(09:43):
Stanzas of the world, he gets smarter, he gets better,
and how uh celibacy has power for woman has never
been emphasized, which I think is how they were allowed
to paint a lay and is like this sniveling dummy
when she didn't didn't get any and um. And the
fascinating thing about the history of celibacy is just how
(10:03):
far back in history people have been so concerned over
the issue, not so much of having sex, you know,
because they understand that you've got to do it to procrate.
It's just kind of a natural byproduct of being a human.
It's one of our biological urges. But it's more resisting
that urge and the effects of that and what might
(10:24):
happen to you that has kind of plagued mankind, humankind
for a long time. This big, this big question of celibacy, right,
And of course there were the religious overtones. Um. In
the Bible, the fellow on in Onnan stills his seed
and it's considered this great crime. So there's always been
(10:45):
you know that people think that that's where the priesthood
celibacy stuff comes from. The ownan spilled his seed and
now these men must carry their seed. Um. In Hinduism,
there's also this emphasis on conserving semen and not letting
not letting it go to waste with sex. Um And
of course we mentioned the martyrs who were always trying
to find this divine communion with God. But if you,
(11:07):
if you, we we separate the the the religious aspects
for a moment and look at the earlier medical thinkers.
The big daddy of the mal hippocrates hypocrisies. He considered
sperm and semen to be um one of the main
humors of the body, and to have one of your
humors out of balance was the whole reason that people
(11:28):
got sick in the first place. So he thought selbiacy
for men was a great thing because it was helping
them keep all their bodily fluids and balance. It was
balancing your blood with your semen and your the water
in your body, and it just it was. It was
something that was very tricky. And so this really had
interesting repercussions for women because you know, according to Abbott,
(11:49):
every time a woman came to see Hippocrates feeling sick
or depressed or whatever, he diagnosed her with wandering womb.
And apparently, if she did not have enough semen in
her body to weigh down the womb and hydrated, it
would start to wander throughout her body, causing all sorts
of damage. So whenever a woman came that the book
(12:10):
said that was his main examination of woman's to see
if her womb was wandering. But it's but it's interesting
too because Hippocrates wouldn't say, you know, go and um
have intercourse with with one man gets your your your
humors balanced, because if she were to only have sex
with one guy, that would deplete his humor and throw
(12:32):
his his humor levels out of whack too. So essentially,
Hippocrates prescribed promiscuity to women, you know, to to make
sure that their their wombs were wandering all over the
place causing all sorts of trouble. The women needed to
be uh needed to have sex and uh and have children.
But he could never reconcile with the fact that celibacy
(12:52):
for men was good of us. You know, don't don't
take too much from one guy because he needs it.
You know you need it too, but but please don't
deplete the men. Now, hippocrates successor is a guy named Galen,
and he thinks that too much sperm can make you unhealthy,
too little can make you unhealthy, So he kind of
advocates sex the same way a doctor might advocate like
(13:14):
a healthy diet or an exercise plan, just in moderation.
Do not do not overdo it. If you're gonna eat
that piece of cake, do not eat the whole pie.
I mean, there's all there's something to be said for that.
Maybe maybe Galen was was onto something he was I
think that makes sense. But you know, it led to
all these conversations of how much is too much, particularly
(13:36):
in the middle of the night. Kristen, Oh, yes, well,
I think you're referring to uh, wet dreams. You know
your body sometimes cannot help but admit uh some semen.
And this would throw the doctors off because they're like, whoa, whoa, whoa,
got to preserve this? How much of this is safe?
And according to the to Elizabeth Abbott, they consulted with
(13:56):
the monks who had decided to live and sell up
see anyway, and and they how much of this is normal?
Like how much of come and get by without? How
many wet dreams are are allowed? Yes, depleting the body?
And the monks came back and said, two to three
times a month, you can have a wet dream because
you know, we we live in the strictest, you know,
strictest way we can to please God. And God seems
(14:17):
to be okay with two to three a month. Now.
Fast forwarding to the Victorian era, not surprisingly, this idea
of celibacy, and particularly male celibacy, really comes back. There's
a huge resurgence in the eighteen thirties for this male
purity movement. And this is also why we have yummy
(14:38):
snacks like graham crackers and corn flakes, because the idea
behind graham crackers and corn flakes during the Victorian era
was that they were they were bland foods that were
designed specifically to not stimulate your your taste buzz, not
get your um senses too excited, and then possibly as
a by product, become sexually aroused as well, because I mean,
(15:03):
one graham cracker, okay, but goodness knows us s'more You
eat some s'mores and you might be you can't account
for what would happen. You might go on a rampage.
And you know, in this this purity movement that was
aimed strictly at males, and interestingly, it's the only purity
movement that has been aimed only at males without addressing
females as well. Um, because the thought at that time
(15:26):
was the women you know, were so overcome by the
moods and sways of population you just couldn't control them.
That men had to take it all upon themselves. The
idea came into being that men had a limited, uh
quant limited amount of semen, just like women are born
with all the eggs I'll ever have in their life.
That thought became popular that men are born with all
(15:46):
the semen they'll ever have in their life. And if
it really is this vital fluid that keeps you healthy
and keeps you strong, wasting it on sex seemed really
problematic to these people. Um. And this is where we
get the idea of athletes staining from sex to conserve
spirm writers conserving um they're sperm by abstaining so they
can write the great American novel. The writer Balzac had
(16:09):
this great quote after he had had sex. There goes
another novel. Yeah. Yeah. And a fun fact about Muhammad Ali,
he used to abstain from sex for six weeks before
a big fight and other boxers found out about this
and they were like, hey, we should we should do
that too, and he said it was because it makes
you angry. Yeah, yeah, it would build up kind of
all of this uh, all of this rage. And there
(16:30):
have been certain soccer teams as well where there's been
a team policy before say the World Cup or some
kind of big tournament, where the team members are not
allowed to sleep with with people. Um, and maybe you
have to build up that internal fire and rage. So
it just continues throughout history, and that's I think how
they can get away making this George Costanza argument that
(16:51):
sex has an effect, but throughout history you don't see
the Elaine Benis argument of sex making you smarter or dumber,
because you know, there is the cultural history, but there
is no study to back up the fact that sex
makes you smarter like that, especially answer to the question
we should be honest and say there's no empirical data
to back up what we uh what we said, which
(17:12):
I found really surprising. I was expecting to find considering
all of the crazy studies, Molly that you and I
run across, you know that that actually pertained to a
lot of these kind of strange topics that will cover uh, celibacy. No,
no one's no one's studying it's out there. We couldn't
find it. But going back to women in history, though,
I do think that we need to point out, Um,
(17:34):
you know some examples that Elizabeth Abbott does bring up
in the history of celibacy. For instance, if we go
back to say the vessel virgins, they came from upper
upper middle class Roman families and they were given um
all of this power and responsibilities, very sacred space in
society and exchange for preserving their virginity. But the interesting
(17:56):
thing is, even though uh they were they were women
in the was this power associated with their celibacy. They
were given the rights of men. That was the big
payoff for them, was that they were treated with the
same respect as men in society. So even though it's
a group of women who are being celibate, it's still
perceived kind of through the male lens, if that makes sense.
(18:19):
I completely agree Christim because the three examples I've got
next of women in history who have been celibate, the
whole reason they seem to get away with it is
because they're in masculine roles. We don't have. We have
very few examples of women in history who can maintain
their femininity and still be celibate, because the ideal of
femininity becomes bearing children. So the examples I've got of
(18:41):
women who were historically celibate are Joan of Arc, Elizabeth
the First in Florence Nightingale, all women who rejected traditional
gender roles to take on sort of these male um spheres. Obviously,
Jana Bark becomes a warrior and she she basically said, like, look,
I am pure because I'm on a ship from God.
You can you can see the proof of my divine
(19:03):
mission by seeing that I am a virgin. And uh,
She's basically said, you know if I am, if I
am sexually active, I can't lead all these men because
they won't respect me and because they'll always be after me.
So there are actually accounts of the time of how
the men just stopped being sexually attracted to Jana Arc
because she was living as this male Elizabeth. The same case,
(19:26):
virgin Queen. What do we associate with her is her
virginity and Abbott sort of postulates that she saw she
saw a lot of drama in Henry the eighth Time,
saw the punishments of entering into sexual unions, and because
she wanted to keep her head and also keep her empire,
she abstained from marriage and sex so that no no
(19:47):
one will be able to devalue that power. So it
is associated with maintaining male power throughout history. So do
you think so that maybe today, um, with with feminist
them and with gender equality and all of that, this
idea of the new celibacy, we can uh maybe have
the best of both worlds if someone, you know, if
(20:08):
a woman chooses to abstain from sex, if there is
maybe a new form, more modern form of power that
she can grasp. I think that's what what I've come
to the conclusion of it. It's just not being articulated
in the articles about ce celibacy because, like we said,
all the articles deal with, um, how these women are
protecting their hearts and they're sending their fragile emotions. Yeah,
(20:31):
but you know, I don't think that that's the reason
why women don't have sex. I mean, that's the reason
why some people don't have sex. But I think that, um,
throughout history, there's never been this idea that a woman
can abstain from sex and be a stronger woman because
of it. Um. But no matter what, even though like
we said, there were there's there aren't any studies saying,
(20:52):
you know, yes or no celibacies is good or bad
for you. No matter what Throughout history, there has been
constantly this this hatchment to power and celibacy, um and uh.
And I think that that still resonates today. And I
would argue that perhaps today there might be even more
(21:13):
power that you can um grasp through celibacy, because we
do live in a more sexually open society where we
talk about sex more. You know, people are more open
about having sex outside of marriage, um and uh. And
so maybe it's it's an even more radical choice today
(21:35):
to abstain from sex than it would have been, you know,
fifty years ago, a hundred hundred years ago, especially because
you know, when you look at data about um celibacy
and how long people actually go. For instance, there was
a recent study on uh female college students who chose
to kind of go through periods of celibacy more for
health reasons than anything else, and the average amount of
(21:56):
time that they would stop having sex was only thirty days.
You know, That's which really isn't it really isn't that long,
which I think, you know, um kind of indicates that that, yeah,
it's a it's a pretty conscious decision that you do
have to make, unless you are one of the people
who we found in one study from Georgia State University
(22:17):
about unintentional celibacy, which is kind of the flip side
of the coin to where, uh, you know, if it's involuntary,
if you you know, if if you're a person who
maybe wants to have sex like you're you know, you're
the Steve Correll character and forty year old virgin. Um,
it's not powerful at all. They feel very removed from society. Yeah,
(22:38):
they feel. We found a study that was put out
by researchers at Georgia State University, and the phrase they
kept using was off time that you know, because are
because you see so many movies about sex and it's
placement within one's lifespan. You come to think that there's
this schedule by which you must have had sex, and
you must have gotten married, and you must have your kids.
(23:01):
And these people who feel that they're behind get really
emotionally depressed about it because, you know, they just they
feel they've been passed by. And that's something that did
come up in that movie about how you know he
he eventually stopped trying because he just figured, you know,
the time and gone Yeah. But um, but I think
that that's what can be so dangerous about discussions of
(23:21):
sex and celibacy in the popular media, is there really
isn't this right time to do any of that? And um,
you know, whether you decide to be celibate until the
time you're thirty and then all of a sudden you
do meet the love of your life and it all
works out for the best, or whether you go through
sometime where you start experimenting with sex very early, decide
that's too early, and then abstain from sex until another
(23:43):
point in your life when you're ready to do it again.
I think all of those are such valid choices that
the conscious that the constant a discussion about sex and
when you should be having it in the media, uh,
can really feel make these people feel their choices are
wrong when in fact they're not right. So really, when
we're talking about the consequences, if you will, of choosing
(24:04):
celibacy or choosing to have sex, the science kind of
comes up in a wash. You know, there's no there's
no study proving that celibacy will make you smarter, or
celibacy will you know, make you win a boxing match
or whatever, and it won't turn you into Elaine Venice.
Who can't who walks down the street. My favorite scene
(24:26):
is when she's just looking in a window and she
just starts clapping because it's just the most magical things
she's ever seen. It's not gonna it's not gonna make you.
That's not gonna happen. But and on the on the
flip side of that too, science also doesn't say, you know,
if you are choosing to have a lot of sex,
if you are, you know, all for the hook up
culture that you are, just you're being making poor choices
(24:48):
for your body and for your for your mind too,
you know what I mean. It's in it all. Like
we said, you can't win, right, So just make your choice, yeah,
and live with it. Yeah, and stop judging everyone else.
Stop judging, yes, celibates, Stop judging the promiscuous, the promiscuous,
stop judging the celibates. Can we all just get along,
you know, outside of the bedroom? Can we just you know,
(25:11):
accept each other's choices exactly? So that's that's that's what
we've come up with after researching celibacy. Yeah, we want
to know what you thought about it. Yeah. The right
answer is there is no right answer, So we would
love to hear your thoughts on this episode. The email
address is mom stuff at half suff works dot com
and I think we have time for a little listener. Well,
(25:35):
I've got one here from Maddie, and this is in
response to our episode on gender stereotyped instruments entitled why
Don't Boys play the harp? She says, I was surprised
that you didn't mention the piano. I'm a teenage girl
and I play the piano. However, I know many boys
that play the piano as well, along with the saxophone.
I think the piano isn't really gendered stereotyped. There are
many famous piano players of both sexes, such as Carol
(25:58):
king Elton, John Carly Simon, Alicia Keys, Billy Joel, Freddie Mercury,
and Stevie Wonder. Just wanted to share my opinion with you,
and that is a really good point. We really didn't
talk about the piano at all. We also didn't mention
any stringed instruments, which has our orchestra listeners a little.
It's a little sad. We're going to get to everyone
and we're a little heavy on the on the saxophone.
(26:20):
I guess we love talking about speaking of um instruments
in that family. We have an email from Debbie who
talks about how the band director in nineteen seventy five
when she started band class As signed her to play
the clarinet even though she desperately wanted to play the drums,
but her parents were relieved. And um. She talks about how,
(26:40):
you know what other instruments her family plays. But the
thing that I loved was we talked about how you've
got to get uh, male flutes more prominent. You gotta
break the stereotype of flutes are only for girls. So
she writes, when you spoke of the flute being a
more female instrument, I immediately thought of Ian Anderson of
jethro Tull. He really rocked that flue. So there you go.
(27:01):
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(27:23):
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(27:46):
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Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
It's ready. Are you welcome to stump Mom never told you?
From House top works dot com. Hello, and welcome to
the podcast. This is Molly and I'm Kristin Kristen Uh.
(00:20):
One of the articles I wrote in my first year
as a writer at HAUSA works dot com was a
little article about whether, um, double dipping a chip uh
brought more disease into your body because you were somehow,
you know, putting your germs into the salsa or the guacamole,
whatever the dip happened to be, and then um, you know,
(00:41):
and taking another bite after someone else a double dip
the chip. Yes, such a party faux pa it is.
And you know, the first time I really thought about
it as a party foul pap was when I saw
the episode of Seinfeld in which that very faux pau
was sort of magnified, as all faux pas are magnified
on that show. In large awkward hands. I didn't have
(01:01):
to worry about the large awkward hands yet the man
hand it hands. But I do remember that episode very
distinctly where George goes off on someone who has double
dip the chip. And you know that was what was
so funny scop going you double dip the chip, You
double dip the chip. And what I found when I
wrote the article is there was some truth to his phobias.
You do get You do get a quite a percentage
(01:21):
of germs if you if you double dip chips to
be aware at your next party science according to Seinfeld,
and my attention, that's our topic for today because another
notable Seinfeld episode, also involving George is all the best
episodes do um is the question of whether celibacy makes
you smarter. Yeah, there's an episode of Seinfeld. A lot
of you all out there have probably seen it where
(01:44):
the gang has a contest to see who can remain
celibate the longest, and it has very different results for
the different characters. For George, it just turns him into
this like superhuman essentially. Yeah, he just walks down the
street and throws off like physics formulas. He didn't even
realize he knew. Suddenly he's brilliant. And for a Lane,
(02:06):
it's horrible. She can't do it. Sheet becomes just a
ruling mess who cannot function in society. So we wanted
to ask her. Some said find out the science behind Seinfeld, right,
because Molly, you and I have been talking a lot
about doing it on mom stuff lately, so I think
you've we've been talking about is she's related to sex? Yes? Yeah,
(02:28):
we decided to see what would what would happen if
we talked about the opposite. Yeah, sex. Yeah, We're always like,
what about economs and penis sizes and birth control? Hey,
why don't we just do away with all of that?
All right, let's simplify things and just talk about celibacy.
And you know, the word celibacy technically means unmarried. It
just means a bachelor, but in our current vernacular it's
(02:49):
um equivalent with not having sex. Yeah, And of course
a lot of times when we talk about celibacy, first
thing that pops into our heads is probably the priesthood
Catholic Church. Yes, there's a lot of new there's a
lot of discussion lately about if we abolished delibacy in
the priesthood, would there be fewer cases of molestation? Is
you know, the repression of sexual desires in priests leading
(03:12):
to these awful crimes against children, And you know that's
that's the topic for another another episode. We're gonna leave.
We're gonna leave the whole priesthood and celibacy kind of
out of this conversation. But the important reason to bring
it up is because there has always been this association
between abstaining from sex and the divine and that's one
reason why people may choose not to have sex today,
(03:34):
is because they feel there are religious reasons not to
do it, moral reasons. But um, you know what, the
idea of selbacy and priests didn't originally start because they
wanted the priest to be, you know, so very pure
as they served the church. It was actually to keep
the priest from giving away church lands to their wives
and children when they died. So it's sort of something
(03:55):
that's evolved over over the age. But there you know,
from from the time there were the earl as martyrs
in the Christian Church, many of them would abstain from sex,
but they'd abstain from food, they'd abstain from beverage because
they were trying to be the purest possible vessel for
a communion and divine with with their God. And while
there have always been these religious undertones linked to celibacy today,
(04:19):
there's been a media trend of the new celibacy, if
you will, this idea of people reclaiming their virginity, of
being very open about abstaining from sex on purpose, you know,
to try to better themselves, not necessarily for religious purposes.
For instance, there was um a story that we found
on CNN that came out not too long ago about
(04:41):
how supposedly more college students, and especially female college students,
are choosing to abstain from the hook up culture that
has uh kind of permeated the college dating world, you know,
in which two people are just you know, they go
out and they get drunk, and they the benefits, friends
with benefits or strangers with benefits and sometimes not benefits
(05:05):
or coin of episode. But at the same time, in
a lot of these and a lot of these studies,
especially the ones dealing with celibacy among younger people, they'll
throw out these studies to kind of support the idea
saying that, well, you know, psychologically hooking up is is
bad for women in particular, so you know, it kind
(05:26):
of seems like it is advertising celibacy as a positive
thing for your for your mind and body. Well, I
feel like those Trent pieces really emphasize the emotional aspect that,
like you said, Christen, the studies have indicated that women
get hurt psychologically from um, not having these long traditional romances.
So um, it's celibacy or this new celibacy is kind
(05:49):
of painted as a reaction to that hookup culture where
women can confine sort of the emotional benefits of sex
when they choose to have it. But what most of
the pieces seem to emphasize is that these are people
who have had sex and are now abstaining from it.
It's not abstaining all the way until you're married and
then having sex. It's you know, they have seen they've
(06:10):
seen the other side and decided that they're going to
come back to this thing. And it was interesting just
to read about all these emotional benefits because no one
is bringing up the Costanza argument that it might make
you smarter or dumber and uh well, and and perhaps
the reason for that is because you know, with the
just to kind of use the the Seinfeld example, you know,
(06:31):
focusing on George as a guy choosing to remain celibate.
A lot of the stories that we hear about today.
The reason why we're saying, you know, they're there are
all these studies, um, proclaiming emotional benefits for women who
choose to not hook up, even though those results are
actually mixed when you look at the entire body of research. UM.
But I think Molly, Um, you'd agree that a lot
(06:53):
of uh, the celibacy angle and a lot of this
question of you know, whether or not you should or
shouldn't have sex focus is specific fickly on women in
this emotional aspect. It kind of just assumes that guys
are by nature sexual and they need to go out
and you know, kind of procreate, spread their seed, and
it's just part of who they are as as human animals.
(07:16):
But for women, you know, if it's it's a lot
more complicated, which I kind of take a little bit
of issue. Well, that's the problem. I think we'll probably
circle back to this many times during the podcast. But
there's always gonna be a problem when you link women
in sex because if you think of like sex in
the city and the backlash from that people get mad
and women have too much sex, and now the fact
(07:37):
that a woman not having sex as news you I mean,
you can't win. You cannot be a woman in win
in terms of whether you are having sex or not
having it. Um. But I think that I was reading
one New York Times trend piece about this phenomenon of
women abstaining and joining purity groups that are popping up
all over college campuses, and they aren't linked with any
sort of religious background, because, like we said, that's always
(07:59):
going to be a reason. But these people are deliberately
trying to find benefits that aren't linked to religious arguments
for doing this. And the woman in this one particular
New York Times piece try to paint her stance as
a celibate as sort of a different kind of feminism,
because when you think about second way feminism in the
way that it sort of said, you know, women own
(08:20):
their bodies, Women can have sex with their bodies the
way men have sex with their bodies, and there should
be no shame in that. She said that that's exactly
what she's doing. In the opposite way, by choosing not
to have sex is just as valid choice. It doesn't
need that same amount of judgment. Um. But you know,
it's still a judgment because it ends up in the
paper and people are shocked by it. And the thing
(08:41):
is it's actually statistically not um that crazy of a
notion to be celibate. According to the National Center for
Health Statistics, eleven percent of never married adults UM choose
to abstain from sexual intercourse, and that that statistics would
indicate to me that that doesn't include people who just
(09:01):
haven't lost their virginity for whatever reason, because that's kind
of another issue that will bring up, um, you know,
this idea of celibacy by choice and forced celibacy when
you just you just can't get any But let's go
to celibacy as a choice, because I think that if
we look at sort of a cultural history of celibacy,
(09:22):
we might be able to find, um, some reason behind that.
Woman in the New York Times piece I mentioned saying
that celibacy is a form of feminism because there's this
great book called The History of Celibacy by Elizabeth Abbott,
And to me, this really kind of put into perspective
how celibacy has always been a form of power for
men and in this day and age, the George G.
(09:43):
Stanzas of the world, he gets smarter, he gets better,
and how uh celibacy has power for woman has never
been emphasized, which I think is how they were allowed
to paint a lay and is like this sniveling dummy
when she didn't didn't get any and um. And the
fascinating thing about the history of celibacy is just how
(10:03):
far back in history people have been so concerned over
the issue, not so much of having sex, you know,
because they understand that you've got to do it to procrate.
It's just kind of a natural byproduct of being a human.
It's one of our biological urges. But it's more resisting
that urge and the effects of that and what might
(10:24):
happen to you that has kind of plagued mankind, humankind
for a long time. This big, this big question of celibacy, right,
And of course there were the religious overtones. Um. In
the Bible, the fellow on in Onnan stills his seed
and it's considered this great crime. So there's always been
(10:45):
you know that people think that that's where the priesthood
celibacy stuff comes from. The ownan spilled his seed and
now these men must carry their seed. Um. In Hinduism,
there's also this emphasis on conserving semen and not letting
not letting it go to waste with sex. Um And
of course we mentioned the martyrs who were always trying
to find this divine communion with God. But if you,
(11:07):
if you, we we separate the the the religious aspects
for a moment and look at the earlier medical thinkers.
The big daddy of the mal hippocrates hypocrisies. He considered
sperm and semen to be um one of the main
humors of the body, and to have one of your
humors out of balance was the whole reason that people
(11:28):
got sick in the first place. So he thought selbiacy
for men was a great thing because it was helping
them keep all their bodily fluids and balance. It was
balancing your blood with your semen and your the water
in your body, and it just it was. It was
something that was very tricky. And so this really had
interesting repercussions for women because you know, according to Abbott,
(11:49):
every time a woman came to see Hippocrates feeling sick
or depressed or whatever, he diagnosed her with wandering womb.
And apparently, if she did not have enough semen in
her body to weigh down the womb and hydrated, it
would start to wander throughout her body, causing all sorts
of damage. So whenever a woman came that the book
(12:10):
said that was his main examination of woman's to see
if her womb was wandering. But it's but it's interesting
too because Hippocrates wouldn't say, you know, go and um
have intercourse with with one man gets your your your
humors balanced, because if she were to only have sex
with one guy, that would deplete his humor and throw
(12:32):
his his humor levels out of whack too. So essentially,
Hippocrates prescribed promiscuity to women, you know, to to make
sure that their their wombs were wandering all over the
place causing all sorts of trouble. The women needed to
be uh needed to have sex and uh and have children.
But he could never reconcile with the fact that celibacy
(12:52):
for men was good of us. You know, don't don't
take too much from one guy because he needs it.
You know you need it too, but but please don't
deplete the men. Now, hippocrates successor is a guy named Galen,
and he thinks that too much sperm can make you unhealthy,
too little can make you unhealthy, So he kind of
advocates sex the same way a doctor might advocate like
(13:14):
a healthy diet or an exercise plan, just in moderation.
Do not do not overdo it. If you're gonna eat
that piece of cake, do not eat the whole pie.
I mean, there's all there's something to be said for that.
Maybe maybe Galen was was onto something he was I
think that makes sense. But you know, it led to
all these conversations of how much is too much, particularly
(13:36):
in the middle of the night. Kristen, Oh, yes, well,
I think you're referring to uh, wet dreams. You know
your body sometimes cannot help but admit uh some semen.
And this would throw the doctors off because they're like, whoa, whoa, whoa,
got to preserve this? How much of this is safe?
And according to the to Elizabeth Abbott, they consulted with
(13:56):
the monks who had decided to live and sell up
see anyway, and and they how much of this is normal?
Like how much of come and get by without? How
many wet dreams are are allowed? Yes, depleting the body?
And the monks came back and said, two to three
times a month, you can have a wet dream because
you know, we we live in the strictest, you know,
strictest way we can to please God. And God seems
(14:17):
to be okay with two to three a month. Now.
Fast forwarding to the Victorian era, not surprisingly, this idea
of celibacy, and particularly male celibacy, really comes back. There's
a huge resurgence in the eighteen thirties for this male
purity movement. And this is also why we have yummy
(14:38):
snacks like graham crackers and corn flakes, because the idea
behind graham crackers and corn flakes during the Victorian era
was that they were they were bland foods that were
designed specifically to not stimulate your your taste buzz, not
get your um senses too excited, and then possibly as
a by product, become sexually aroused as well, because I mean,
(15:03):
one graham cracker, okay, but goodness knows us s'more You
eat some s'mores and you might be you can't account
for what would happen. You might go on a rampage.
And you know, in this this purity movement that was
aimed strictly at males, and interestingly, it's the only purity
movement that has been aimed only at males without addressing
females as well. Um, because the thought at that time
(15:26):
was the women you know, were so overcome by the
moods and sways of population you just couldn't control them.
That men had to take it all upon themselves. The
idea came into being that men had a limited, uh
quant limited amount of semen, just like women are born
with all the eggs I'll ever have in their life.
That thought became popular that men are born with all
(15:46):
the semen they'll ever have in their life. And if
it really is this vital fluid that keeps you healthy
and keeps you strong, wasting it on sex seemed really
problematic to these people. Um. And this is where we
get the idea of athletes staining from sex to conserve
spirm writers conserving um they're sperm by abstaining so they
can write the great American novel. The writer Balzac had
(16:09):
this great quote after he had had sex. There goes
another novel. Yeah. Yeah. And a fun fact about Muhammad Ali,
he used to abstain from sex for six weeks before
a big fight and other boxers found out about this
and they were like, hey, we should we should do
that too, and he said it was because it makes
you angry. Yeah, yeah, it would build up kind of
all of this uh, all of this rage. And there
(16:30):
have been certain soccer teams as well where there's been
a team policy before say the World Cup or some
kind of big tournament, where the team members are not
allowed to sleep with with people. Um, and maybe you
have to build up that internal fire and rage. So
it just continues throughout history, and that's I think how
they can get away making this George Costanza argument that
(16:51):
sex has an effect, but throughout history you don't see
the Elaine Benis argument of sex making you smarter or dumber,
because you know, there is the cultural history, but there
is no study to back up the fact that sex
makes you smarter like that, especially answer to the question
we should be honest and say there's no empirical data
to back up what we uh what we said, which
(17:12):
I found really surprising. I was expecting to find considering
all of the crazy studies, Molly that you and I
run across, you know that that actually pertained to a
lot of these kind of strange topics that will cover uh, celibacy. No,
no one's no one's studying it's out there. We couldn't
find it. But going back to women in history, though,
I do think that we need to point out, Um,
(17:34):
you know some examples that Elizabeth Abbott does bring up
in the history of celibacy. For instance, if we go
back to say the vessel virgins, they came from upper
upper middle class Roman families and they were given um
all of this power and responsibilities, very sacred space in
society and exchange for preserving their virginity. But the interesting
(17:56):
thing is, even though uh they were they were women
in the was this power associated with their celibacy. They
were given the rights of men. That was the big
payoff for them, was that they were treated with the
same respect as men in society. So even though it's
a group of women who are being celibate, it's still
perceived kind of through the male lens, if that makes sense.
(18:19):
I completely agree Christim because the three examples I've got
next of women in history who have been celibate, the
whole reason they seem to get away with it is
because they're in masculine roles. We don't have. We have
very few examples of women in history who can maintain
their femininity and still be celibate, because the ideal of
femininity becomes bearing children. So the examples I've got of
(18:41):
women who were historically celibate are Joan of Arc, Elizabeth
the First in Florence Nightingale, all women who rejected traditional
gender roles to take on sort of these male um spheres. Obviously,
Jana Bark becomes a warrior and she she basically said, like, look,
I am pure because I'm on a ship from God.
You can you can see the proof of my divine
(19:03):
mission by seeing that I am a virgin. And uh,
She's basically said, you know if I am, if I
am sexually active, I can't lead all these men because
they won't respect me and because they'll always be after me.
So there are actually accounts of the time of how
the men just stopped being sexually attracted to Jana Arc
because she was living as this male Elizabeth. The same case,
(19:26):
virgin Queen. What do we associate with her is her
virginity and Abbott sort of postulates that she saw she
saw a lot of drama in Henry the eighth Time,
saw the punishments of entering into sexual unions, and because
she wanted to keep her head and also keep her empire,
she abstained from marriage and sex so that no no
(19:47):
one will be able to devalue that power. So it
is associated with maintaining male power throughout history. So do
you think so that maybe today, um, with with feminist
them and with gender equality and all of that, this
idea of the new celibacy, we can uh maybe have
the best of both worlds if someone, you know, if
(20:08):
a woman chooses to abstain from sex, if there is
maybe a new form, more modern form of power that
she can grasp. I think that's what what I've come
to the conclusion of it. It's just not being articulated
in the articles about ce celibacy because, like we said,
all the articles deal with, um, how these women are
protecting their hearts and they're sending their fragile emotions. Yeah,
(20:31):
but you know, I don't think that that's the reason
why women don't have sex. I mean, that's the reason
why some people don't have sex. But I think that, um,
throughout history, there's never been this idea that a woman
can abstain from sex and be a stronger woman because
of it. Um. But no matter what, even though like
we said, there were there's there aren't any studies saying,
(20:52):
you know, yes or no celibacies is good or bad
for you. No matter what Throughout history, there has been
constantly this this hatchment to power and celibacy, um and uh.
And I think that that still resonates today. And I
would argue that perhaps today there might be even more
(21:13):
power that you can um grasp through celibacy, because we
do live in a more sexually open society where we
talk about sex more. You know, people are more open
about having sex outside of marriage, um and uh. And
so maybe it's it's an even more radical choice today
(21:35):
to abstain from sex than it would have been, you know,
fifty years ago, a hundred hundred years ago, especially because
you know, when you look at data about um celibacy
and how long people actually go. For instance, there was
a recent study on uh female college students who chose
to kind of go through periods of celibacy more for
health reasons than anything else, and the average amount of
(21:56):
time that they would stop having sex was only thirty days.
You know, That's which really isn't it really isn't that long,
which I think, you know, um kind of indicates that that, yeah,
it's a it's a pretty conscious decision that you do
have to make, unless you are one of the people
who we found in one study from Georgia State University
(22:17):
about unintentional celibacy, which is kind of the flip side
of the coin to where, uh, you know, if it's involuntary,
if you you know, if if you're a person who
maybe wants to have sex like you're you know, you're
the Steve Correll character and forty year old virgin. Um,
it's not powerful at all. They feel very removed from society. Yeah,
(22:38):
they feel. We found a study that was put out
by researchers at Georgia State University, and the phrase they
kept using was off time that you know, because are
because you see so many movies about sex and it's
placement within one's lifespan. You come to think that there's
this schedule by which you must have had sex, and
you must have gotten married, and you must have your kids.
(23:01):
And these people who feel that they're behind get really
emotionally depressed about it because, you know, they just they
feel they've been passed by. And that's something that did
come up in that movie about how you know he
he eventually stopped trying because he just figured, you know,
the time and gone Yeah. But um, but I think
that that's what can be so dangerous about discussions of
(23:21):
sex and celibacy in the popular media, is there really
isn't this right time to do any of that? And um,
you know, whether you decide to be celibate until the
time you're thirty and then all of a sudden you
do meet the love of your life and it all
works out for the best, or whether you go through
sometime where you start experimenting with sex very early, decide
that's too early, and then abstain from sex until another
(23:43):
point in your life when you're ready to do it again.
I think all of those are such valid choices that
the conscious that the constant a discussion about sex and
when you should be having it in the media, uh,
can really feel make these people feel their choices are
wrong when in fact they're not right. So really, when
we're talking about the consequences, if you will, of choosing
(24:04):
celibacy or choosing to have sex, the science kind of
comes up in a wash. You know, there's no there's
no study proving that celibacy will make you smarter, or
celibacy will you know, make you win a boxing match
or whatever, and it won't turn you into Elaine Venice.
Who can't who walks down the street. My favorite scene
(24:26):
is when she's just looking in a window and she
just starts clapping because it's just the most magical things
she's ever seen. It's not gonna it's not gonna make you.
That's not gonna happen. But and on the on the
flip side of that too, science also doesn't say, you know,
if you are choosing to have a lot of sex,
if you are, you know, all for the hook up
culture that you are, just you're being making poor choices
(24:48):
for your body and for your for your mind too,
you know what I mean. It's in it all. Like
we said, you can't win, right, So just make your choice, yeah,
and live with it. Yeah, and stop judging everyone else.
Stop judging, yes, celibates, Stop judging the promiscuous, the promiscuous,
stop judging the celibates. Can we all just get along,
you know, outside of the bedroom? Can we just you know,
(25:11):
accept each other's choices exactly? So that's that's that's what
we've come up with after researching celibacy. Yeah, we want
to know what you thought about it. Yeah. The right
answer is there is no right answer, So we would
love to hear your thoughts on this episode. The email
address is mom stuff at half suff works dot com
and I think we have time for a little listener. Well,
(25:35):
I've got one here from Maddie, and this is in
response to our episode on gender stereotyped instruments entitled why
Don't Boys play the harp? She says, I was surprised
that you didn't mention the piano. I'm a teenage girl
and I play the piano. However, I know many boys
that play the piano as well, along with the saxophone.
I think the piano isn't really gendered stereotyped. There are
many famous piano players of both sexes, such as Carol
(25:58):
king Elton, John Carly Simon, Alicia Keys, Billy Joel, Freddie Mercury,
and Stevie Wonder. Just wanted to share my opinion with you,
and that is a really good point. We really didn't
talk about the piano at all. We also didn't mention
any stringed instruments, which has our orchestra listeners a little.
It's a little sad. We're going to get to everyone
and we're a little heavy on the on the saxophone.
(26:20):
I guess we love talking about speaking of um instruments
in that family. We have an email from Debbie who
talks about how the band director in nineteen seventy five
when she started band class As signed her to play
the clarinet even though she desperately wanted to play the drums,
but her parents were relieved. And um. She talks about how,
(26:40):
you know what other instruments her family plays. But the
thing that I loved was we talked about how you've
got to get uh, male flutes more prominent. You gotta
break the stereotype of flutes are only for girls. So
she writes, when you spoke of the flute being a
more female instrument, I immediately thought of Ian Anderson of
jethro Tull. He really rocked that flue. So there you go.
(27:01):
Amail mail flowers, yes, mel flowers everywhere. We love them.
So if you would like to get in touch with
me a momy you, there's so many ways. You can
send us an email at mom stuff at how stuff
works dot com. If you're on Facebook, you can just
head over to our Facebook fan page, write something on
our wall. We love it when people write on our wall. Uh.
And then finally you can follow us on Twitter, tweet
(27:23):
us up we're at a Mom's Top podcast. And then finally,
you can read our blog during the week. It's stuff
I've Never told you and you can find it at
how stuff works dot com. For more on this and
thousands of other topics, is that how stuff works dot com.
Want more house stuff works, check out our blogs on
(27:46):
the house stuff works dot com home page. Brought to
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