SexMeansSharing

In considering our sexuality we are inclined, at first, to think that a person is sexual because of his or her distinctive physical organs of generation. But it is not really because we have different organs that we are male or female; it is because we are male or female that we have these distinctive organs.

Every cell in our bodies tells the story of our being man or woman. And yet it is not even because every cell in our bodies is sexual that we, as full persons, can be CALLED sexual. Rather, it is because we are fully sexual in our being as persons that every cell in our bodies IS sexual. Genital organs, cell structures, and hormonal systems, all reveal our inherently sexual being. But they do not CAUSE us to BE sexual. They cause us to KNOW we are sexual.

If we are going to discover the true center and source of our sexuality, we will have to look deeper within ourselves. A person has emotions, an intellect, and a will that are just as integral and important as his or her body. It is often very difficult to say anything definite about the workings of these powers of the soul. It is much easier to know something definite about the body. Nevertheless, a person creates his or her life and destiny far more within the soul than within the body.

Sexuality so pervades the mind and heart--as well as the body--that it would be irrational to expect to find its center simply in the body. And yet most people tend to assume that sexuality is exclusively or primarily a bodily feature, because that is the first and most immediate way in which they come to know it. They confuse the way in which they come to know something with the thing itself that they come to know in that way. As a little child comes to know his body and bodily movements first (and in very definite ways) long before he or she ever suspects anything about an interior life that causes these movements, so we are naturally enamored of the physical structure and function of human sexuality long before we begin to realize how deeply it is rooted in the spiritual depths of the person.

The immature inclination to restrict the consideration of sexuality and human sexual energy to the bodily or the physical part of human beings has been one of the most significant factors in perpetrating and perpetuating the crisis in human sexual ecology from which the world has suffered in many forms throughout the ages. We have not exercised our potential to be sexual ecologists, just as we have not exercised, until recently, our potential to be physical ecologists.

We have considered only one set of relationships at a time, leaving out the practical realization that everything in the environment is related to everything else. So, we have concentrated almost exclusively on physical and genital sexual relationships without careful regard for the difficult-to-discern, but profoundly influential, spiritual relationships that are inextricably bound up with the psychic and physical.

Even the contemporary explorations of psychosexual relationships, such as those undertaken by Masters and Johnson, seem to have centered almost exclusively on the genital area of sexual dynamics. The brain is acknowledged as the main sexual organ in human beings. But it is regarded primarily as a service organ of the genitals, rather than of consciousness and of the spiritual in human sexuality. Because of the very pervasive tendency in science and in everyday life to narrow down one's field of investigation and to isolate a single chain of causes and effects, we have neglected the task of understanding the total complex of processes in both the environmental ecosphere and the sexual ecosphere.

At the outset of our study, therefore, I will attempt to provide a broad perspective for understanding man and woman. I will define sexuality, at least hypothetically, in such a way that it embraces all three basic ecosystems within the individual person and between individual persons.

The intentions here is not to prove the adequacy of the definitions. The testing of these definitions can only be done in the laboratory of one's own individual consciousness, reflecting on experience and on the results of study in many areas of life. The consistent way in which these definitions will be used throughout this book may serve additionally as a suggestion of their adequacy. But the individual reader can try these definitions on for size by thinking over matters in man-woman relations to see whether, or to what extent, the definitions make sense.

Sexuality, then, can be defined as the personal power TO SHARE (physically, psychically, and spiritually) THE GIFT OF SELF with self and with others.1 Sexuality is giving and receiving--not giving and getting. In Chapter 5, male and female sexuality will be defined in terms of these elements of sharing, giving and receiving. For now, I will simply suggest that every person may be regarded as SEXUAL (male or female) inasmuch as he or she has the natural power to share self.

A mother and child are exercising this power, for instance, when the mother is teaching the child how to peel and orange. To some extent each of them is sharing SELF with the other. Of course, they may be regarded as sharing the orange and the knife. But the exercise of their sexuality does not consist in the sharing of things, but in the sharing of selves. It occurs naturally and fluently to the extent that they are sharing THEMSELVES with each other. If they are enjoying, not so much the instruction, but the BEING TOGETHER, they can be said to be sharing themselves, and in that way they are fundamentally expressing their sexuality. Sexuality is the sharing dimension of personality.

If two people are members of the same sex they are sharing themselves with each other differently than if they were of the opposite sex. In any event, sexual activity is basically a sharing of self. It is not necessarily genital activity--although genital activity is necessarily sexual activity.

Sexual activity is an interaction with people of either sex. But it is also an activity simply within the self. That is why care was taken to say that sexuality is the power to share the gift of self WITH SELF. Sexuality is, first of all, an interior condition and activity.

A person walking along the street enjoying the trees, the birds, the passing people and so on is sometimes said to be "enjoying himself." So, the crucial test of sexual development often comes in the person's power to be alone creatively and joyfully. In those times of being alone, the degree of functional sexual power--sharing self with self--is necessarily revealed.

But sexuality is not genitality. We often fail to distinguish the two. Genitality is our personal and social power TO SHARE THE GIFT OF LIFE in space and time with a new human being. Genitality is a special, dramatic physical power--the power of SHARING LIFE. It is a natural power to share our space-time life with another person of either sex, a child. In exercising one's genitality a person does NOT SPECIFICALLY share the gift of self. One shares specifically the gift of life. Naturally, the individual wants to share self, too, and does--in that action generally, but not specifically. Genitality is a power different from sexuality. Genitality is a power that has specific organs pertaining to it. Sexuality does not.

Moreover, genitality is NOT SPECIFICALLY an individual "personal" power. It is generally a personal power, but it is specifically a power of the human community as such. When a child is conceived, that child belongs to, and is the responsibility of, the community in a definitive way. For instance, both parents may die shortly after the birth of the child. Yet that child will be in the arms of the community until death; and, if the child becomes a parent later in life, many generations of people may be afforded nurture in the human community because of the one conception of two parents many years before. Our genital power is a personal power in that it is OURS, and not that of another individual. But the child who may be conceived through that power is not simply the responsibility of the parent. That child is much more broadly and definitively the responsibility of the whole human family.

Sexuality is not genitality. Nor is it coitality. Coitality is another power, different from both sexuality and genitality. It is the power that most people seem to confuse with sexuality. Coitality is the personal power TO SHARE THE GIFT OF GENITAL LIFE with a person of the other sex. It is the power to engage in coital union with someone of the other sex. Like genitality, it is a physical power. Coition, the actual activity of sharing one's GENITAL-GENERATIVE life with a person of the other sex, is but one obvious from of expressing sexuality physically.2 EVERY shared look, touch, conversation and the like involves some form of sharing oneself physically with another person.

Perhaps the prime ecological disaster in human sexuality has been the culturally reinforced tendency to assume that physical sexual fulfillment can ONLY come through this one dramatic form of physical sexual activity: coital intercourse. When people hear of sex and sexuality, almost always they think of coital union which tends to culminate in orgasm for one or both partners. Because of the intensity of satisfaction often accompanying this union, all other forms of less dramatic physical satisfaction such as touching, kissing, or delighting in the visual and auditory presence of one another have been--as SEXUAL interactions--culturally neglected or even repressed.

Coital union is but one from of one specific kind of physical sexual intercourse; namely, touching. Although the senses of hearing, seeing, smelling and perhaps even tasting are often involved, the activity itself is specifically one of touching. If it happens to come to fruition in the special touching of sperm-nucleus and ovum-nucleus, coital union results in the most dramatic kind of all physical sexual intercourse; namely, the causing of another human being in the world.

The child, however, is the SPECIFIC result of the exercise of the GENITAL powers, not of the coital powers. The coital powers are the natural MEANS by which two people together share the gift of life with another person. But the coital union itself is specifically the sharing of one's own genital or generative life with a person of the other sex. This kind of distinction is important (along with others made later) if we would appreciate the beautiful complexity and unity of the human sexual ecosystem. Failure to make such distinctions, while regarding the remarkable interrelationships involved, muddies the waters of human sexual expression. Coitality, genitality, and sexuality are powers that are quite distinct within the human person. Each is associated integrally with the human body in a different way.

Strictly speaking, genitality is specifically related to the organs of generation, the testes and ovaries. Gestation, which naturally requires the womb; and nursing, which naturally requires the breasts, are further physical sexual processes consequent upon coition and generation. They are modalities within the personal and social power of genitality.

Sexuality is not, as such, a specifically physical power. However, this personal power to share oneself with self and with others--for human beings in space and time--is always specifically related to the body. The whole body of the person is its "organ."3

Sexuality is the over-arching and radically intimate source of vitality for the other powers. So, we can say that everything coital is sexual, although not everything sexual is coital--since EVERY action of a human being has the power to share self within it.4 We can likewise say that everything genital is sexual, although not everything sexual is genital--for the same reason.

But it is also true to say that everything coital is genital, although not everything genital is coital--because, for instance, penis and vagina are always necessary for a natural act of generation, but the ovaries are not necessary for coition. In other words, every coital organ is a genital one but not every genital organ is a coital one.

Recognition of the unity and distinctness of these natural powers is crucial if we are going to develop a sexual ethics that is faithful to the integrity of the human being's radically natural structure and dynamics. Moreover, all of these powers and their activities or processes --sexuation, generation, coition, gestation, natalization, and lactation--are personal. They are powers and actions that can only be attributed to persons, not to animals.

If sexuality means sharing, then only persons can be said to be sexual in the fundamental sense. Animals and plants have sex and sex functions, but they are not, properly speaking, sexual. Sexuality is a component of personality, not of "doggality" or "rabbitality." In mating, animals do not SHARE life with their offspring, because they are not capable of appreciating life AS A GIFT and because they do not have the capacity to give THEMSELVES as a gift to another.

Animals beget or reproduce offspring. They function essentially as vital instruments in transmitting life. People have the power to transmit life as a gift. Animals mate or copulate. They function in this way unselfconsciously and by instinct. People have the power to SHARE their very SELVES within an act of coital communion.

In the definitions, I have indicated that SHARING is the key to all forms of authentic human sexual intercourse. People SHARING their very selves in myriad ways of tender human intercourse: this is sexuality in action. People SHARING the gift of life with another whole human being: this is genitality in action. People SHARING the gift of their generative lives with each other in that most obvious of sexual acts (coital intercourse): this is coitality in action.

All loving begins with sharing. For those of us who are Christian, Jesus came into the world first through the activity of God sharing Self with us. For those of us who are Jewish, Yahweh is a loving, ever- caring Lord leading his people. For those of us who believe in a less personal God, it still may seem that the Absolute Power or Self in reality shares itself with all creatures in varying ways and degrees.5 We all seem to have a share in Divine energy. In any event, if we ourselves can be said to love, we will have to be able to relate to our beloved in

a sharing way. We must be willing to SHARE our very SELF with another in order to love that person. In doing so, we are acting sexually. Some can do the sharing much better than others; but an unwillingness to share is a lack of love.

There are many kinds and forms of love, but there would seem to be one essential meaning. Love is WILLING the truest and the best for the one loved, and being willing to show we mean it. We can be said to love only to the extent that we really do desire--not just "wish"--the truest and the best for someone in a given circumstance, despite what it may cost us to help it come about.

Our giving and receiving capacities need to be in a condition of expansion if we are really to love. We love only by giving of our time, talent, and efforts in such a way as to do all that we can to make the truest and the best come to the ones we love because they are so good and valuable in themselves.

Moreover, true love is always universal. As lovers, we are called to love everyone to the fullest degree possible. Including ourselves. Love is the activity of willing the truest and best to self and others, despite the cost. And no one can really love any one person, without loving self and all other persons who are. We certainly like different people more than others. And that intensity of liking, or desiring to be involved with, is what is usually called "love." But that is an undifferentiated, truncated meaning of love that captivates and enslaves, rather than frees. Later, we will explore the implications for the various kinds of love--eros, agape, storge, and philia.

Most people, at least, acknowledge that love involves giving. But in giving of ourselves for the good of the beloved we are likewise called to
receive whatever comes to us. We may receive the bitter as well as the sweet. After all, our love may not be reciprocated. But if we love and are truly sharing, then we are receiving in a way that is as expansive as possible.

Love necessarily involves--but is not the same as--giving and receiving. Giving and receiving are the prime components of sharing. And sharing is at the heart of sexuality. The more we actually love, of course, the more functionally sexual we can become.

Animals are not capable of love. Even their most human-like actions which resemble love--such as when a faithful dog dies trying to save a drowning child--are the result of instinct. Love requires the capacity to know one's self as a self, and to be willing to share this self for the good of the beloved as a self. Animals know things, but do not know them AS things or AS selves. A dog knows its bone, but does not know it AS A BONE or in its boneness. The dog may be said to know itself, but it does not know self AS A SELF or in its selfhood.

This observation is not intended to disparage the remarkable and beautiful powers of dogs and many other animals. But, perhaps, some people's difficulty in accepting the fact of an animal's inability to love comes from their own inability to experience or discern what real love is. Love is easily confused with affection and desire.

Love is not affection. Animals as well as people can be affectionate--they can "give affection." Yet many people seem to be, at times, functionally incapable of GIVING THEMSELVES (loving) while they are expressing affection. They can give affection, but they cannot give love. They can show how much they LIKE someone, but they cannot intend genuine good for the other person, if that would mean they themselves would have to be troubled in some way. Such a condition in an animal is not a defect at all. In a human being it is a great paralysis--whether it is recognized or not.

Love transcends affection. Love is an activity that is just as appropriate to one's enemies as to one's friends. In an animal, the inability to love an enemy is a natural inability. In a human being, it is a functional inability. Persons are naturally capable of love for all beings, friend and adversary alike.

Unfortunately, in the history of the Western world--most notably through the long, classical tradition of philosophical thought--"man" has been called a "rational animal." But it is difficult to see how man can be called an animal in any proper sense. We are animal-LIKE in many ways. Yet we are not basically animals.6

Human beings are not rational animals any more than animals are sentient plants. Animals, in turn, are not basically plants. They are a unique kind of living creature that has many properties similar to those of plants. But this unique kind of living creature is radically different form plants in the power to sense and to feel, as well as in the power of local motion. Similarly, human beings are like both plants and animals in many of their powers and activities, but they are radically other than plants and animals in their power to know the essences of things and to love. And all their powers of nutrition, growth, procreation, and self-repair essentially exist to serve these spiritual powers of knowing and loving.

Human beings are a unique kind of creature. On the one hand, they are radically other than animals in being capable of self-reflection and love. On the other hand, they are radically other than angels or pure spirits in the power to eat, assimilate nutrients, expel wastes, be healed by natural self-repair, procreate, have sensations and emotions, make deliberations, and so forth. So, the human person may be defined as a unique being which is NATURALLY--though not necessarily functionally at any given time with respect to all of these qualities--capable of living through processes of nutrition, growth, self-repair, procreation, feeling, imagination, emotion, ideation, loving, willing, and relating to self and others in a self-reflective way.

Perhaps, humans may be rightly regarded as the "lowest order" or the lowest type of persons. But humans ought not to be confused with the other lower kinds of creature any more than they are to be confused with "higher-order" creatures. We are sprit-LIKE, God-LIKE, animal-LIKE, and plant-LIKE in many ways. We are even rock-LIKE. When dropped, we fall like a rock. But we are in no proper sense--only figuratively, perhaps--rocks, plants, spirits OR ANIMALS.

In fact, if we are going to make an ecologically philosophical breakthrough in our self-consciousness and our understanding of the proper balance of interrelationships among planetary creatures, we may come to see that we have held the likenesses in reverse. It is not so much that humans are like animals, but that animals are like humans.

A dog with his tail between his legs LOOKS as though he is ashamed. But it is not shame. It is a likeness to (human) shame, but the latter is the primary reality. Just as human beings can bark like a dog, but it is not really a bark; so dogs can cower like humans, but it is not really an expression of shame. The behavior is shame-LIKE.

Even in regard to more common activities, we may have our priorities of vision reversed. Probably, we should not so much assume that people consume food like dogs and cats, but that dogs and cats consume food like people. Likewise, people do not grow and reproduce so much like plants; it is rather that plants grow and reproduce in likeness to the total growth (bodily, mental, spiritual) and procreativeness of people. Failure to respect the direction in which creaturely likeness flows results inevitably in a poor interpretation of total ecology in general and human ecology in particular. One can readily acknowledge that plants and animals existed on the planet temporally before humans and yet realize that what is chronologically first may be ontologically (beingfully)(meaningfully) last.

Every action and function of a human being is primarily a person-action, not a biological one. Primarily, the action of a person; secondarily, the action of an organism. Even the flow of blood in the veins or the flow of nerve energy or the fantastically complex enzymatic activity in the body is the activity of a person. It is the activity of a person who IS an organism; and not the activity of an organism that happens to belong to a person. We are person-al organisms, not animal organisms.

A person is one whole being, in which all of the powers are activated by a single principle of life and action. That principle of life in a person has been known as the rational soul. It is the intrinsic reason why a person can both think and copulate, love and sleep, and do all of the other multitudinous activities and functions--conscious and unconscious. There is an absolute unity to the human person, as well as to each animal and plant. The soul of the person is the all-pervasive source of every kind of structure in the individual. No power, organ, or

In the light of this unitary source of power and action, even the most biological and physical of functions must be regarded as primarily personal. We have a person-based biology, not a biology-based personhood. There is an enormous difference in the two ways of viewing humanity.8

The traditional way is to think of human beings as having a biology-based personhood, in contrast to spirits or higher-order creatures, who are thought to have a biology-less personhood. In this way of viewing it, the biological part of personhood is looked upon as a drag or a limitation--even, according to many, an indecency or punishment.9

But his perspective comes about largely through an unreflective and almost literal acceptance of Aristotle's definition of the human being as a rational animal. Thus, a human is thought to be basically an animal, a biological organism; but with a difference, rationality. Biology is then inevitably regarded as primary, and rationality as secondary. (Of course, much of this biologistic orientation is formed unconsciously.) Many otherwise sophisticated persons today accept this perspective rather uncritically. And many others seem to regard the bodily and the

However, in the history of Western philosophy there are periodic insights into the remarkable unity of body and soul. Some of these insights can convince the open-minded person that the body and biology, while an essential part of the person, are not the primary source of even the most elemental energy and activity. The primary source is his or her radically spiritual soul, which causes even the most basic biological processes. Ours is a person-based biology.

The implication here is the reverse of the traditional perspective. The rational soul is not seen as stuck within and confined by one's biology. Rather, the biology of the person is seen as both emanating from, and being within, a spiritual and incorruptible soul. The human person is not regarded as a high-class animal. Nor is the person considered to be a low-class spirit, contaminated by a body. The human person is valued as a being of a unique kind--both bodily and spiritually.11

Unlike the souls of plants and animals, the human soul is spiritual.12 Thus, the spiritual is the source of life in every part of the person, and the body is one of those real parts or dimensions. Through the power of his or her spiritual life the human person is able to share with self and with others in innumerable ways. This giving and receiving activity has different dimensions and many forms. But the personal power to engage in it can be called human sexuality.