Cephalic Sex - an explanation on the purpose of sex

[cephallus, btw = brain]

The role of sex is about pleasure.  
Let's pleasure ourselves!

by Ranjan

The inability to perceive and behave outside the walls of our paradigm is beautifully illustrated by a Mullah Nasruddin story.  He would dearly like to own a donkey but they are expensive and he is really, really poor.  So for years he saves and saves, keeping his eye on the price of donkeys.  Finally he has enough money.  Elated, he goes to market.  Successfully concluding a deal, when he is leaving he is given a list of the foods for the donkey.  He hadn’t budgeted for that!  Now what to do? 

All the way home he ponders and worries, and finally hits upon a strategy.  He is going to reduce the recommended quantities a little bit everyday.  Eventually the donkey just keels over and dies.  He turns to his wife regretfully: “Aiyo,” he says, “if only the donkey had lived a little longer, I could have got him trained to living on no food at all.”    

When we work to an inappropriate blueprint, frequently the outcome is a sad end.  Sad for the Mullah donkey, even more sad for our love lives.  For nowhere are we more locked into our (obsolete) paradigm than when it comes to sexuality.

Paradigm 1
The only respectable sex is reproductive.  Get married! (Subtext: LGBT sex is unnatural.)  Conventional biology is contaminated by religious dogma.  Textbooks even label the human sexual system the 'reproductive' system.  Neuroscience reveals this is a secular superstition.  Modern research proves reproduction as the purpose of sex is not supported by empirical fact.  That is a paradigm shift.  We've got the blueprint wrong. 

Edward Wilson, in On Human Nature:

Its complexity and ambiguity are due to the fact that sex is not primarily for reproduction. Evolution has devised much more efficient ways for creatures to multiply . . . Sex by itself lends no straightforward Darwinian advantage.

Paradigm 2
The role of sex is about pleasure.  Let's pleasure ourselves! (Subtext: with as many variations as possible in people, positions and places.)  Modern biological research reveals the pleasure principle as the purpose of sex is not supported by empirical fact.  More superstition. 

Edward Wilson, again:

Nor is the primary function of sex the giving and receiving of pleasure . . . Most of the pleasures of human sex constitute primary re-inforcers to facilitate bonding.

Paradigm 3
It seems sex has an altogether different purpose: neural stability.  Go figure!  In A General Theory of Love Thomas Lewis et al write that in a loving relationship your subdominant neural pathways are deleted by broadcasts from your partner's brain and are replaced by your partner's dominant neural pathways.  You do the same to your partner's brain.  This changes both personalities.   It is a change in the physical structure of your brain, allowing the two brains to function in tandem.  It makes for greater neural stability.  Unlike reproduction which happens only occasionally, this brain-change is 24/7.  Empirical research reveals this is the purpose of sex, collapsing the argument that LGB sex is unnatural.

We move from phallic to cephalic sex; the future, today

This weekend at the Center on Halsted:
CEPHALIC SEX WORKSHOP: VALENTINE'S DAY 2010. 

Ranjan is one of the facilitators.

Learn more and register.