# Why do sexual utopias always fail? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [June 1, 2007, 4:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-sexual-utopias-always-fail/406360 "2007-06-01T16:09:40Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Shodan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9f8e36/32.png) [@Shodan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shodan)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2007, 9:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-sexual-utopias-always-fail/406360/21 "2007-06-01T21:53:42Z")
[QUOTE=Der Trihs] And no sane person feels unconditional love, so relationships that last that long are seldom if ever built on that. [/QUOTE] I’m going to need a cite on that. Regards, Shodan ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2007, 10:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-sexual-utopias-always-fail/406360/22 "2007-06-01T22:01:40Z")
[QUOTE=Shodan] I’m going to need a cite on that. [/QUOTE] And I want a cite that unconditional love - unconditional **anything** - is not insane. How can feeling love while someone disembowels you with a kitchen knife be anything but insane - and that’s part of what “unconditional” means. My “cite” is that unconditional love is, on the face of it, insane, and I’ve known sane people who had lifetime relationships. ---
**Author:** ![Captain\_Amazing](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6de8d8/32.png) [@Captain\_Amazing](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Amazing)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2007, 10:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-sexual-utopias-always-fail/406360/23 "2007-06-01T22:10:15Z")
[QUOTE=Der Trihs] And I want a cite that unconditional love - unconditional **anything** - is not insane. How can feeling love while someone disembowels you with a kitchen knife be anything but insane - and that’s part of what “unconditional” means. [/QUOTE] I think that when most people talk about unconditional love, they sort of add an implicit disembowlling exception. They really mean “almost unconditional love, but if you try to disembowel me, we’ll have to have a serious talk about the future of our relationship”. ---
**Author:** ![Don\_t\_fight\_the\_hypothetical](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/59ef9b/32.png) [@Don\_t\_fight\_the\_hypothetical](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Don_t_fight_the_hypothetical)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2007, 10:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-sexual-utopias-always-fail/406360/24 "2007-06-01T22:10:35Z")
[QUOTE=BrainGlutton] I dunno about that. Rulers with harems seem to have made a lot of use of them. [/QUOTE] There were no competing males in a harem. And the ruler could have his own lifestyle outside of the harem and wasn’t subjected to living in a “utopia”. Harem girls were more or less sex slaves. Big difference. ---
**Author:** ![JRDelirious](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jrdelirious/32/9531_2.png) [@JRDelirious](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JRDelirious)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2007, 11:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-sexual-utopias-always-fail/406360/25 "2007-06-01T23:48:21Z")
[QUOTE=Der Trihs] Put me in the “we just aren’t made for it” camp. Also, such a utopia is built on the assumption that everyone has the same taste in sexual culture; as children are born or outsiders enter that “utopia”, there will be more and more people who don’t want a sexual free for all. A **true** sexual utopia ( or as near as human nature allows ), IMHO, would be one where everyone is free to pick his or her preferred sexual lifesyle. Orgies for some, lifelong exclusive relationships for other, and so on. A “utopia” built on some ideological view of sex isn’t much of a utopia at all. [/QUOTE] I’m very much in agreement with this. Often the theory behind sexual utopias, much like the theory behind social or political utopias, is based on what’s essentially wishful-thinking premises about why human behavior is as it is now and of what will happen if we’re “liberated”, without stopping to think that they’re doing exactly the same thing as the “repressive establishment”: telling others how to live their lives. Y’know, virtually every society we know of has had SOME form of exclusive- or primary-relationship pattern (even a harem IS an exclusive relationship: all the girls are for his lordship’s exclusive use 😛 ). That some people think everyone’s “real” nature is a state of total Free Love seems to go contrary to the evidence. And as for the “unconditional love” sub-debate, IMO it’s moot for the purpose of this inquiry. For most of Western history, lifelong marriages and the socially accepted sexual behaviors were NOT founded upon “unconditional love”, that was a notion more associated with motherhood or with the religious field. But I wonder if we could keep addressing the OP on the basis of human behavioral patterns, or if we really want to get into the metaphysical. ---
**Author:** ![LonesomePolecat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/a88e57/32.png) [@LonesomePolecat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LonesomePolecat)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2007, 12:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-sexual-utopias-always-fail/406360/26 "2007-06-02T00:18:36Z")
[QUOTE=Don’t fight the hypothetical] There were no competing males in a harem. And the ruler could have his own lifestyle outside of the harem and wasn’t subjected to living in a “utopia”. Harem girls were more or less sex slaves. Big difference. [/QUOTE] Hmm. My understanding is that harem wives were often the victims of politics. That is, many of the marriages arranged for a potentate or ruler were done out of political necessity, and not out of a real desire for the woman involved. The marriages were made for the sake of creating a political alliance or connection between the monarchy and a tribe, family, clan, etc. whose support was crucial for the ruler, and not simply because the monarch was a randy old goat who couldn’t keep his hands off the young girls. (Though no doubt many monarchs, mid-Eastern and otherwise, were randy old goats.) However, it’s been a long time since I read anything about this, and I’m open to correction on the point. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2007, 2:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-sexual-utopias-always-fail/406360/27 "2007-06-02T02:43:04Z")
> [@Der Trihs](#): > > A true sexual utopia ( or as near as human nature allows ), IMHO, would be one where everyone is free to pick his or her preferred sexual lifesyle. Orgies for some, lifelong exclusive relationships for other, and so on. A “utopia” built on some ideological view of sex isn’t much of a utopia at all. And by this standard, the present state of, say, US (or Canadian or western European) society **is** a sexual utopia compared to almost every society in history. In large swathes of all those societies, consenting adults can have sex with pretty much whomever they want whenever they want, and nobody restricts or penalizes their behavior. Consenting adults can instead follow the dominant longstanding tradition of publicly committed pair-bonding with built-in monogamy, and the majority of them do, but they don’t have to. I’d say that’s a pretty utopian level of freedom: we are free to conform to the prevailing social custom of voluntarily restricting sexual autonomy, but we’re also free to ignore it and have as much sex as we want with whatever (consenting adult) partners we want. What more can you ask from any reasonably realistic utopia? (Yeah, you might wish that all the people you wanted to have sex with wanted to have sex with you, but that’s probably past praying for.) ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2007, 4:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-sexual-utopias-always-fail/406360/28 "2007-06-02T04:48:57Z")
[QUOTE=Kimstu] And by this standard, the present state of, say, US (or Canadian or western European) society **is** a sexual utopia compared to almost every society in history. [/QUOTE] Mostly because those past societies were awful indeed. America, especially, has all sorts of hang ups like the illegalization of marriage between gays. ---
**Author:** ![Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7cd45c/32.png) [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2007, 3:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-sexual-utopias-always-fail/406360/29 "2007-06-02T15:50:04Z")
To answer the OP: Because they never invited me. :mad: ---
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2007, 3:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-sexual-utopias-always-fail/406360/30 "2007-06-02T15:55:45Z")
[QUOTE=Lumpy] It’s got to be the oldest “new” idea in human history: “why don’t we just toss out our hangups about sex and form a society where people can have sex all they want all the time?” From hippie communes of the 60s & 70s to the Free Love movement of the 19th century avant-garde and the Oneida Community to as far back as some communalistic heresies in the Middle Ages, and presumably even older. Yet obviously none have endured. So something must be fundamentally wrong with the concept. Why exactly do attempts at such societies always fall apart? [/QUOTE] Communes don’t fall apart because of free love, they fall apart because none of those people freakin WORK for a living! Other than shunning or banishing people who don’t pull their weight, how do encourage people to actually do anything? And if you banish enough people, there’s no one to do the work. Most of the reasons communes fail are economic in nature. If you like, however, you can go to places like Amsterdam or Eastern Europe where prostitution is legal. Ultimately, the problem of any “sexual utopia” is that you still have all the potential problems that come along with sex anyway: -Unwanted pregnency -STDs -Jealously or even simple resource allocation (when’s my turn?!) -Compatability (are you down with the funky shit?) -Mutual attraction (I’m not interested in banging every she-pig who wants it) I mean it’s not a Utopia if every essentially has to submit to being raped by anyone who wants some. ---
**Author:** ![Magiver](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/4491bb/32.png) [@Magiver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Magiver)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2007, 4:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-sexual-utopias-always-fail/406360/31 "2007-06-02T16:15:20Z")
[QUOTE=plnnr] The Oneida Community didn’t succeed? Maybe not at being a free love commune, but it did succeed in that the businesses started as the financial underpinning of the community are still in existence. The Oneida Silverware company is, IIRC, the largest in the world. [/QUOTE] The Oneida Commune didn’t succeed as a group so much as the individual efforts of John Noyes. FYI, I was born in Oneida. Interesting side note: I remember my mother telling that the descendents of the commune were always quick to point out that they knew who their father was. I guess that doesn’t mean anything in this century. It was a big deal in early part of the last one. . ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2007, 8:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-sexual-utopias-always-fail/406360/32 "2007-06-02T20:13:41Z")
Most utopias (political or sexual) are utopias from the point of view of the guy who founds them. He may convince other people that this is a good idea, but when it gets down to the details they utopia is not so great anymore. Those of us old enough to remember the mid-60s, and heard of life earlier, know we are living in a sexual utopia, relatively speaking. It can be better - but bans on gay marriage are still not as bad as Turing getting basically castrated for being gay. We’ve retreated a bit from a few years ago, but all in all people should be grateful for those of us who screwed for liberty in the '60s. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Malacandra](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Malacandra](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malacandra)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2007, 8:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-sexual-utopias-always-fail/406360/33 "2007-06-02T20:13:51Z")
[QUOTE=Der Trihs] Mostly because those past societies were awful indeed. America, especially, has all sorts of hang ups like the illegalization of marriage between gays. [/QUOTE] Interesting emphasis to put on it. Was it ever legal to a significant extent in recorded history, that you should speak as though “illegalization” were in some way a uniquely modern American vice? :dubious: ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2007, 8:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-sexual-utopias-always-fail/406360/34 "2007-06-02T20:33:57Z")
[QUOTE=LonesomePolecat] Hmm. My understanding is that harem wives were often the victims of politics. That is, many of the marriages arranged for a potentate or ruler were done out of political necessity, and not out of a real desire for the woman involved. The marriages were made for the sake of creating a political alliance or connection between the monarchy and a tribe, family, clan, etc. whose support was crucial for the ruler, and not simply because the monarch was a randy old goat who couldn’t keep his hands off the young girls. (Though no doubt many monarchs, mid-Eastern and otherwise, were randy old goats.) However, it’s been a long time since I read anything about this, and I’m open to correction on the point. [/QUOTE] Dynastic marriages generally are made only when the woman in question is to be the ruler’s lawful wife, meaning her children by him will be in the line of succession to the throne. That’s rarely the case WRT to a ruler’s harem. Every woman in the Ottoman sultan’s seraglio was a slave and the sultan had no wife at all (so when he died, there was a brief succession struggle among his slave-born sons and the winner had all his half-brothers strangled). Apparently this was deliberate policy; the sultans did not want a hereditary aristocracy to emerge. See [this](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=414988) thread. So the harem existed because the sultan **was** a randy old goat, or, more to the point, was presumed entitled to the opportunity to be one if he wished. A harem, like a palace, was simply a basic perk of his position. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2007, 8:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-sexual-utopias-always-fail/406360/35 "2007-06-02T20:50:20Z")
A Chinese emperor would have one or two wives (whose sons would be princes) plus a harem of concubines. It’s not just rulers. In polygamous societies, rich and/or powerful men typically accumulate as many wives (sometimes, concubines in addition) as law/custom allows. In part this is as a status symbol, to prove he can afford that many, but that doesn’t mean he’s not interested in doing a whole lot of fucking. (When Mohammed’s first wife, Khadija, was dying, he lamented that he could not face life without her; she tartly predicted that he would have her replaced before he got home from the cemetery.) ---
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2007, 9:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-sexual-utopias-always-fail/406360/36 "2007-06-02T21:27:01Z")
As to [harems](http://www.answers.com/topic/harem) > [@](#): > > Sexuality and reproduction were only one aspect of harem life in the Muslim East. Some Ottoman sultans displayed an insatiable appetite for women, but even they had to follow the rigid rules of conduct associated with the imperial harem. The valide-sultan (‘queen mother’) set these rules and wielded great power as the head of the harem hierarchy. She chose the sexual partners for her sons and was in charge of training all the women. The chief black eunuch (kizlar a?asi) guarded the harem and worked closely with the valide-sultan. He was also in charge of all imperial religious and charitable foundations and became an important personality in harem politics. He represented the link between the imperial harem and the outside world. However, not all palace women remained completely confined to the harem. Some women graduated from their palace training and were manumitted and married to high dignitaries in the empire. They maintained their ties with the palace and played an important role in Ottoman politics. In the eighteenth century Ottoman princesses were able to move out of the Topkapi Palace harem and set up private mansions along the Bosphorus. Although not really independent of the sultan, they had large retinues and held enormous wealth as tax farmers and landowners. > > Slavery and polygamy were the backbone of this institution, which received sanction in Islamic practice. The Koran allowed Muslim men to marry four legal wives and have an unlimited number of concubines. The prophet Mohammed himself had eleven legal wives and several concubines. Despite this Koranic injunction, only 2 to 3 percent of Muslim men practiced polygamy in the Ottoman Empire. However, concubinage was probably more widespread, at least in the cities, due to the ready availability of female slaves. Many households in Istanbul contained at least one female slave who performed household duties. Slaves had limited legal rights but could move to better positions once they converted to Islam and bore children. The Koran encouraged Muslim men to marry their slaves (Sura 24:30). Muslim men were permitted to marry non-Muslim women, including their concubines, while Muslim women could not marry anyone but free Muslim men. Moreover, Muslim women were forbidden from having more than one husband at the same time. The Koran considered the children of concubines legitimate and equal in rights to children born to free women. It also banned the prostitution of female slaves by their master and promoted their fair treatment and manumission. However, these proscriptions could not always be enforced. FWIW ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2007, 9:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-sexual-utopias-always-fail/406360/37 "2007-06-02T21:39:41Z")
[QUOTE=Malacandra] Interesting emphasis to put on it. Was it ever legal to a significant extent in recorded history, that you should speak as though “illegalization” were in some way a uniquely modern American vice? :dubious: [/QUOTE] No, I was pointing out that America is lagging well behind many places in Europe, and arguably going backwards. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2007, 10:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-sexual-utopias-always-fail/406360/38 "2007-06-02T22:32:57Z")
[QUOTE=Der Trihs] No, I was pointing out that America is lagging well behind many places in Europe, and arguably going backwards. [/QUOTE] To be fair, America is still a **sexual** utopia for homosexuals, in that they are free (personal attractiveness permitting) to have sex with hundreds of same-sex partners, or to settle down in one long-term relationship; it’s just that in the latter case they can’t take advantage of the legal incidents of marriage. ---
**Author:** ![ITR\_champion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/c67d28/32.png) [@ITR\_champion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ITR_champion)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2007, 6:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-sexual-utopias-always-fail/406360/39 "2007-06-03T18:39:59Z")
I would say that if people are constantly being distracted by all the hot sex going on in the Utopia, they won’t have time and energy left for more mundane business such as food and maintenance and finances. (On a side note, I see that one of the google ads for this thread is a fundraiser for John McCain. Could it be that he’s delivering on one of his [campaign promises](http://slev.wordpress.com/2007/03/27/john-mccains-myspace-just-got-jacked-up/#comments)?) ---
**Author:** ![Gymnopithys](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/fbc32d/32.png) [@Gymnopithys](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gymnopithys)\ **Post date:** [June 4, 2007, 11:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-sexual-utopias-always-fail/406360/40 "2007-06-04T11:55:57Z")
[QUOTE=LonesomePolecat] (Though no doubt many monarchs, mid-Eastern and otherwise, were randy old goats.) [/QUOTE] You mean billy-goat? 🙂 [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-sexual-utopias-always-fail/406360.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-sexual-utopias-always-fail/406360.md?page=3)