Reading Ines’ comment, about talking with her mother, I felt that it was my chance to grab and talk about my own experience, discussing about sexual behavior with both my grand-mother and my mother. Imagine that it happened some….25 years ago.
It was early 80’s, a rather progressive period on terms of sexual behavior. We were talking about my cousins getting engaged (the official step before marriage). For my grandmother it was natural that the new couple would live together from now on and would have sexual life. It was a very common attitude for the couple to get married when the woman was pregnant. And this was not something new! It was happening in Crete quite a long time ago.
But for my mother, who was not Cretan, that was kind of provocative, according to her beliefs. She was a generation younger than my grandmother but having not the Cretan culture, she was opposing to pre-marriage sexual intercourses. Wasn’t it strange?
My grandmother gave me an explanation of why Cretans have had this, let’s say “custom”. Going back in time, in the years where Crete was under the occupation of Turks, when a couple was getting married, the first night after the marriage, when it was supposed to be the first time of the couple to have a sexual intercourse, the Turk Chief of the area demanded that he would have the woman first. If she would refuse she was brutally punished with the cutting of her breast. How could Cretan people then survive this tragic fact they were facing? How would they be sure that the baby born was a Greek and not a Turk? They changed their sexual behavior and getting engaged was like getting married. The marriage was taking place when the woman was already pregnant. The same behavior was kept through the years even when the “danger” did no longer exist.
Without knowing the past, somebody would assume at that time that Cretans had an immoral attitude, since they had sexual intercourses before marriage, compared to others. But before judging, it’s better to try to find why. Every human behavior has its explanation.
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13 comments:
Maria,
this is a fantastic lesson of how complexe is our behavior. We need to know the past to understand the present. Unusual lesson of History, and a lesson that matters in what concerns to philosophy, psychology and sexual education. What is right? What is wrong? We need to think deeply to know that.
Maybe there isn’t a right or wrong… See, for instance, in Tantra philosophy sex is seen as a “thing of gods”; people became god as they experience the sexual act. Sex is not seen as a sin, even if the couple is not married, the only thing that’s required is that they both act in love, universal love, and understand that the energy released during sex is sacred and can lead them both to spiritual evolution. Another example is Celtic culture, where women seam to “own” the right to their sexuality, seen as a power. So, maybe there’s no such thing as right or wrong as morality depends mostly on religion and culture and that changes over the years. Or, as we can see in this story, morality changes for convenience; what was immoral turns acceptable by need. In my belief, self-respect and love it’s all that’s needed.
Wellcome Dulce! We need you in this blog. It is very good to have mothers discussing this subjects with us. It should be interesting if you do something similar to what Inês Pereira and her mother have done: they wrote a comment in pairs... I think this way, my mother thinks that way; my mum says that and I agree with her... Can you do such work with your doughter?
I most definitely do it !!!
Great post Maria! Here is our opinion:
This episode of Crete highlights philosophies of their society that have never been studied before: sex before marriage. This concept is a unique solution used to avoid the barber actions invented by the Turkish king (to have sex with women on their wedding night). Interesting enough, it is this line of thought that is practiced in the contemporary society.
Although many people (mostly religious) lose their virginity after marriage “in the eyes of God”, today’s community is more open to this situation.
Although today´s society is still a little conservative in terms of customs and traditions, we believe that people already have a different way of thinking about this important step, which we have to overcome at some stage of our lives.
Nowadays people take this step when they feel ready, when they have someone by their side who they idealize to spend their life with; when they are certain about their feelings and what they really want for the future.
However this requires being conscious and responsible, as when making such a hard decision we have to consider many other things and know how to intervene, for example, on the aspect of contraceptive methods.
This whole process doesn’t have a certain age to happen, however experts say that in their opinion there must be awareness on the part of each person in relation to the problems and implications that could come up.
Regarding the practice of sex only after marriage, we think that people no longer follow this custom so harshly, because they base themselves on other criteria, even though some people still don’t follow it.
However, in regard of the king having sex with women on their wedding night before their own husband, the actual society is in full disagreement.
This comment was created by:
Inês Pereira
José Freitas
Tiago Rosado
This is the comment of Carina Duarte (10ºA), from Henriques Nogueira School:
"I think our current society looks at this subject in a more open way. Now, society doesn't judge people who have sex before marriage. But we can't think that the old society and the society of other locations, were retrograde. We just have to understand their cultures and their past, because this influences the present. And before judge, we must understand their reasons, because these actions may have been conditioned by historical and cultural factors. These factors define ways of being, living and feeling and set limits on human freedom and action."
This post shows the evolution of time. As I said in another comment, there is no minimum age to have sex, and in fact, the old ways also gave problems, I do not believe that people comply with all the rule, and formerly also had single mothers. Not always the idea of "what is old is better. " The culture moves with the times and in all there are good things and bad things. Young people and adults, should be aware of the risks and have criteria in mind, not to be consequences.
Mariana Viola 11ºB
Our society has chagend, and now we look at these subjects in a more open way. Culture has chaged our points of view and, thanks to that, we are now able to face these subjects differently. A proof of that is the Cretan costums, which changed the grandmother's point of view, but not her daughter's - that caused a very different reaction to pre-marriage sexual intercourses.
This show us how the human being is made of culture and beliefs, and how they can affect our judge capacity and our opinions about the world we live in.
João Desidério
10ºA
Through time, women have always been discriminated, and that discrimination has a cause in the cultural legacy, transmited from generation to generation.
As the human being is not only made of genes, culture affects in a large way his values and ways to act. This is also reflected in the social side, because we have contact with different people with different values, so, they'll change our opinions and ways to think.
This is explicit in the text: When the Turk Chief wants the woman in the first night, it's obvioulsy a cultural condicionant. By facing these social and cultural influences like condicionants/barriers, we are redirected to the human freedom question.
Another proof of how culture affects us is also in the text, when it talks about the opinion differences between mother and daughter - this has obvioulsy its base on the cultural legacy.
Because different cultures have different "rules", we can look at them in three different ways: interculturalism, relativism and etnocentrism.
Nowadays, culture has changed and so our points of view, and we are adopting an interculturalism atittude.
Different cultures have different moral codes, so they can be confrontes with different values, by a teoric reflexion about the moral codes. Here is le connction to etic.
João Desidério
João Rodrigues
Lyubomyra Vaslavska
André Brito
10º A (Henriques Nogueira School)
Maria Castelo and Mariana Mendes said:
«Naturally, like almost everybody in the world, we consider the Turks actions wrong. It would be a relativist point of view if we said: “well, it’s their land (of the Cretans), it’s their culture, let them deal with it. But in an intercultural approach, more reflective and thoughtful, we would say that the actions of the Turks are wrong because they disobey Human Rights.
They (Turks) have an extremely ethnocentric behavior; they imposed its culture to the people of Crete. These were forced to change their culture, their cultural pattern changed completely so that they could adapt to the situation they were in.
And it’s rather natural that they continued doing it; keeping this second culture generation through generation.
But it is also natural that, after the departure of the Turks from Crete, things have tended to normalize, back to what they were before.
Maybe it comes from there that the Maria’s mom doesn’t want her to get pregnant before marriage, but this grandmother is not so "against", because she is accustomed to another reality, different from the reality that Maria’s mum was accostomed.
Women were fragile, at least, they were more fragile then some men, so it was easy for the Turks to take advantage of them instead of taking advantage of the man, and by doing this, they were winning by two ways: abusing the women and also prospering their people, because there was the possibility of the son that the women had to be theirs.
We think that, basically, what the Turks did was just a way to impose power by humiliating the Cretans. Maybe they (Turks) would have a better way to impose power and not hurt anyone, but what is done, is done.» (from Henriques Nogueira School, 10ºC)
I do not understand why Maria and Mariana said that «it is also natural that, after the departure of the Turks from Crete, things have tended to normalize, back to what they were before.» In fact, historic process never goes back, don't you agree?
I don't agree with you also when you say that maybe Turks «would have a better way to impose power and not hurt anyone»; don't you think that imposing power always hurts all the people under that power?
Beatriz, Bruno and Cátia (10ºC, Henriques Nogueira School) said:
«After reading this post we were debated with two different opinions. The grandmother and mother of Mary. The grandmother of Mary despite being a generation older than the mother of Mary agrees with sex before marriage, but the mother of Mary who is less of a generation does not share this ancient custom, which leads us to conclude our thoughts and our tastes are influenced by our culture and our beliefs because even by the same family being a mother and grandmother of Mary have different cultures and consequently different opinions.
Currently, our society is not as conservative, because with the changing times, the customs and way of thinking of most people is changing, and we are having a more open mind to the various matters that were previously more difficult to address. Given the situation of this post, we agree that our society is currently in disagreement with the fact that the woman be forced to have sexual relations with the Turkish leader in her wedding night.
However, there may still be cases of people who agree with this. These people may have historical and cultural conditioning or psychological make them agree with this. Taking the example of a pedophile. This does not give freedom to the person who chooses to satisfy his own sexual desire and is not free because it is conditioned by psychological problems. Now, consider this action good or bad depends on the values of each subject or culture (subjectivity of values) and ethics of each.
That is, people's opinion depends on their culture and their beliefs. As the culture and beliefs, are influenced in our thinking and our decisions. Right and wrong and good and evil are concepts that can have different meanings for different cultures, which leads us to think that at that time, the chances for the Turks was having sex with the woman on her wedding night that she did not agree. This is an ethnocentric culture, because they are only worried about their own pleasure , not valuing the views of women, even to the point that they cut the breasts if they did not take having sex with them.
Currently this is an unacceptable situation for our culture.»
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