Paul Goodman Archive
Written: 1960.
Source: Text from RevoltLib.com.
Transcription/Markup: Andy Carloff
Online Source: RevoltLib.com; 2021
Let us next talk about marriage and so-called “animal” functions of the social animal.
Everyone agrees that an important condition for the troubles of growing up is the troubles between the parents at home, brutal quarrels and drunkenness, coldness, one or the other or both parents getting away as often as possible and being withdrawn while present, and marriages breaking up. The most common popular, and mayoral, prescription for delinquency is “more parental supervision.” In the usual circumstances this would likely increase the tension and the trouble, but be that as it may: the question remains, how? how to have reasonable supervision when the marriages themselves are no good? for presumably the good marriages don’t have the problem children. (The frequent recommendation to fine or jail the parents is a lulu.)
I do not think the public spokesmen are serious. For powerful and well-known modern reasons, some of them inevitable, the institution of marriage itself, as we have known it for several hundred years, cannot work simply any longer, and is very often the direct cause of intense suffering. Urbanism, the economic independence of women, contraception, relaxing the inhibitions against unmarried and extramarital sexuality, these are inevitable A dispassionate observer of modern marriage might sensibly propose, Forget it; think up some other form of mating and child care. The pastor of a large church in an ordinary Midwestern town told me that, in his observation, not one marriage in twenty was worth while; many were positively damaging to the children. If very many marriages could simply let themselves dissolve after a few years, the partners would suddenly become brighter, rosier, and younger. But of course, in this field there are no dispassionate observers. We are all in the toils of jealousy of our own Oedipus complexes, and few of us can tolerate loneliness and the feeling of being abandoned. Nor do we have any other formula for secure sex, companionship, and bringing up children.
This is not a newsy story. Is it kept in mind by the Mayor of New York whose canned voice says every night on the radio that parents who are not affectionately supervising the children are failing in responsibility? Has the Mayor not seen an harassed mother hysterically and unmercifully whacking a three-year-old in the sand pile? Does he think it is some different parent he is now appealing to? (I heard one mother scream, “I ask you only one simple thing, to obey me!”)
“Most of the children we see [in King’s County Domestic Relations Court] have been so seriously damaged by their environment that they need 24-hour-a-day corrective treatment. I’ll say unequivocally that most of the children we see should be separated from their parents for their own health and welfare.” (Dr. J. M. Fries.)
Consider some incidents of sex and marriage in a more “privileged” and a more “underprivileged” situation. For the first, we can return to the remarkable boom in early marriages and child bearing that we mentioned in the last chapter, occurring especially among the economically privileged who previously would have married late. No doubt this has been partly due to the war and Cold War, clinging to life and clutching to something safe in an era of anxiety. But it seems to be also partly a strong reaction to the drift toward formlessness which these young persons could observe in their own parents.
These young-marrying, contemporaries or juniors of the Beat Generation, have often expressed themselves as follows: “My highest aim in life is to achieve a normal healthy marriage and raise healthy [non-neurotic] children.” On the face of it, this remark is preposterous. What was always taken as a usual and advantageous life-condition for work in the world and the service of God, is now regarded as an heroic goal to be striven for. Yet we see that it is a hard goal to achieve against the modern obstacles. Also it is a real goal, with objective problems that a man can work at personally, and take responsibility for, and make decisions about—unlike the interpersonal relations of the corporation, or the routine of the factory job for which the worker couldn’t care less.
But now, suppose the young man is achieving this goal: he has the wife, the small kids, the suburban home, and labor-saving domestic devices. How is it that it is the same man who uniformly asserts that he is in a Rat Race? Either the goal does not justify itself, or indeed he is not really achieving it. Perhaps the truth is, if marriage and children are the goal, a man cannot really achieve it. It is not easy to conceive of a strong husband and father who does not feel justified in his work and independent in the world. Correspondingly, his wife feels justified in the small children, but does she have a man, do the children have a father, if he is running a Rat Race? Into what world do the small children grow up in such a home?
It is advantageous to the smooth functioning of the organized system if its personnel are married and have home responsibilities. (E.g., it’s much harder for them to act up and quit.) But the smooth functioning of the organized system may not be advantageous to the quality of the marriage and the fatherhood. It is a troubling picture. On the one hand, early marriage is excellent and promising, especially in the probable case that both the young people have had sexual experiences and could have others, and they have chosen the marriage as a reasonably steady and jealousy-free alternative. And having the children early is admirable, rather than delaying for the empty reasons that middle-class people used to give. On the other hand, to take on such early responsibilities indicates an early resignation: the marriage seems partly to be instead of looking ambitiously for a worth-while career.
If the highest aim in life is to achieve a normal marriage and raise healthy children, we can understand the preoccupation with Psychology, for the parents do not have much activity of their own to give rules to the family life. The thousand manuals of sex technique and happy marriage, then, have the touching dignity of evangelical tracts, as is indeed their tone; they teach how to be saved, and there is no other way to be saved.
On the children is lavished an avalanche of attention. They cannot possibly reward so much attention, and the young father, at least, soon gets pretty bored and retires to his Do-It-Yourself. Now it used to be said that middle-class parents frustrate the children more, to meet high standards, but the frustration is acceptable because it leads to an improved status, esteemed by the children; the lower classes, on the contrary, are more permissive; nor would the discipline be accepted, because the father is disesteemed. What then is the effect, in the ranch houses, if the discipline is maintained, because the standard is high, but the status is disesteemed, first by the father himself, who talks cynically about it; then by the mother, who does not respect it; then by the growing children? Is it possible to maintain and pass on a middle-class standard without belief in its productive and cultural mission?
I wonder if we are not here describing the specific genesis of a Beat Generation: young men who (1) cannot break away from the father who has been good to them, but who (2) simply cannot affirm father’s values; and (3) there are no other dominant social values to compensate. If this is the case, where now there are thousands of these young men, there will be hundreds of thousands. The organized system is the breeding ground of a Beat Generation.
Among poor young men, quitting school early and perhaps meeting discrimination in the better unions, or other obstacles to making something of themselves, the more permitted and widely stimulated sexuality can work as a deadly trap. For there is desire and sexual opportunity at the same time as the older adolescent’s sense of personal worth is diminishing. He must act the man when he does not feel like a man. This may come to the impotence of the unemployed or the self-disapproving alcoholic. It is not helped, either, if the desirable women seem to choose “successful” fellows, or if a young man has the convention that dating costs money. The contrary alternative is that sex itself become a proof of manly worth, a form of conquest without lust or love, or not even conquest, but simply potency proving potency. For instance, young Navy sailors who on the ship are griping but docile children, on shore regard the women as their “pigs” and do not let themselves get “involved.” Among the Spanish poor, too, the tradition of macho, masculinity, that they have brought with them, seems to be especially a means of proof that a young man is not a contemptible boy.
On either alternative, his sexual need can get a fellow into plenty of trouble. To get the money and be a success, he may steal. If he proves himself by sex, brutality or promiscuity will get him into sexual scrapes. If sex gets him into too much trouble or if his doubt of potency is too strong, he may withdraw altogether, into gambling or being a tough guy, or passively into narcotics.
There are class differences; but through all classes, it is hard to grow up when the general social attitude toward sexuality is inconsistent and unpredictable. (It is hard to exist as an adult too.) In this respect our society is uniquely problematical. Broadly speaking, there are three universally widespread and incompatible attitudes toward sexual behavior, and two of these are inconsistent in themselves.
In the ideal theory and practice, sexuality is one of the most important natural functions and the attitude toward it ranges from permissive to enthusiastic. This is the position of all Thinking, of public spokesmen and women’s magazines, and of the Supreme Court in its decisions on classics of literature; and it is somewhat put into practice by psychological parents, mental hygienists, nursery schools, and bands of adolescents and adults. Yet there are puzzling inconsistencies. What applies to brother does not apply to sister, though every girl is somebody’s sister. What is affirmed and tacitly condoned, must still not be done overtly. For instance, although all Serious Thought is agreed on the simple natural function and there are colorful little abstract treatises for children, it is inconceivable for a publisher to print a sober little juvenile story about, say, playing doctor or the surprising discovery of masturbation. A character in a juvenile (or adult) adventure story may not incidentally get an erection as he may wolf a sandwich or get sleepy. It seems obvious that, here as everywhere else, the only antidote for the sadistic-sexual comic books that are objected to, is the presentation of factual truth and a matter-of-fact tone; whereas what we have, permissiveness combined with withdrawal from real contact, precisely produces the sadistic-sexual need. This is the bread-and-butter of psychological theory; why is it not said in the annual investigations of the comic books? Again, although most public spokesmen are for a “healthy frankness,” the public schools are run quite otherwise. Let me recall a typical incident recently in California (spring of '59). A high school science teacher employed the bright-idea project of tabulating the class’s sexual habits as an exercise in fact finding. This got him into terrible hot water, and the School Board carefully explained, “What we teach is human reproduction, much as we discuss the functions of the human eye or ear,” that is, without mentioning light or sound, color or harmony, or any other act or relation.
(I am writing this equably and satirically, but the stupidity of these people is outrageous.)
The treatment of sexuality in the popular culture and the commodities and advertising is less puzzling: it is to maximize sales. Existing lust is exploited and as far as possible there is created an artificial stimulation, with the justified confidence that the kind of partial satisfactions obtainable will involve buying something: cosmetics, sharp clothes, art magazines, dating entertainment. And since, for very many people, lust is at present accompanied by embarrassment, shame, and punishment, these too are exploited as much as possible. I do not think there is here any inconsistency. One simply goes along with the widespread melodramatic fantasy of lust and punishment. E.g., the public sentiment for Caryl Chessman’s execution, 70 per cent, expressed itself with terrifying frequency in sadistic, pornographic, and vindictive language: the plays of Tennessee Williams are the deep poetry of these people. It would be inconsistent if the popular culture tried to be factual, analytic, or compassionate. But there is an absolute incompatibility between this sexuality of popular culture and the ideal theory and practice of the “simple natural function.”
If we ask, however, what is acceptable public behavior in the neighborhoods or with the neighbors, the confusion is baffling. There are islands of contradictory practice, even though these may have the identical Culture and almost the same Thought. Kids masturbating may be smiled on or ignored, or they may be barred from one’s home, or they may be arrested as delinquent. Among the boys themselves, up to the age of thirteen mutual masturbation is a wicked thrill, but after thirteen it is queer and absolutely to be inhibited. Adolescent couples must pet or it is felt that something is wrong with them; but “how far?” Sometimes they may copulate, if they can get away with it; or they absolutely must not. You may admire and speak to strange girls on the street, it is flattering and shows spirit; or you may not, it is rude and threatening. But if you whistle at them while you huddle in your own group, that’s bully. You may pet in public like the French; you may not pet in public, it’s disgusting; you may on the beach but not on the grass. Among the boys, to boast of actual or invented prowess is acceptable, but to speak soberly of a love affair or a sexual problem in order to be understood is strictly taboo; it is more acceptable among girls. It is assumed that older teen-agers are experienced and sophisticated, but they are legal minors who must not be corrupted. More important, any relation between an older teen-aged girl and a man even in his twenties, or between an older teen-aged boy and an experienced woman, is shocking or ludicrous, though this is the staple of sexual education among the civilized.
In this tangle of incompatible and inconsistent standards, one strand is sure and predictable: that the law will judge by the most out-of-date, senseless, and unpsychological convention, even though it is against the consensus of almost every family in the neighborhood and the confessional attitude of the parish priest. They will arrest you for nude bathing a mile away on a lonely beach. (But this tendency to maintain the moral-obsolete is, of course, inevitable in our kind of democracy. A legislator may believe what he pleases, but how can he publicly propose the repeal of a statute against sin?)
I am describing again an interrupted revolution, the so-called Sexual Revolution. We see again how the organized system of production and sales manages to profit by the confusion of the interruption, whereas a finished revolution would be economically a dead loss, since good sexual satisfaction costs nothing, it needs only health and affection.
Special mention must be given to male homosexuality, which preoccupies adolescents and young men of every class from bottom to top. The preoccupation appears either as gnawing doubts that oneself might be a “latent homosexual,” or as reactive contempt and ridicule, or hostility and even paranoia. Among young people every kind of nonconformism in a contemporary tends to be thought of as homosexual, whether it be a passion for music or a passion for social justice.
Inevitably in the stimulating and hectic sexual atmosphere, including overtly expressed homosexuality, repressed homosexual thoughts also begin to break through. Remnants of unfinished normal homosexual situations reappear, and one is sharply aware of new temptations in the culture. The shared narcissism of dandy hair-do’s is astonishingly prevalent; the affectionate body-contact of buddies is obsessionally inhibited or immediately commented on and “interpreted”; and one sees queers everywhere.
The question must be asked why the breakthrough into awareness seems to balk and circle at just this point on just this issue? why, in the present, just the homosexual temptations and threats loom so large? One important answer, I think, is the theme I have been developing in this book. The fellows are interrupted in growing up as men; their homosexuality threatens them as immaturity. They are afraid of going backward to boyhood status, admiring the model penises and powers of their seniors and adults. Or they regress further to a safe narcissism and would want their own penises and bodies to be loved as their personal worth, but this reversion to infantilism is fiercely resisted.
In the difficulty of growing up, the young man psychologically regresses to an earlier stage because it is easier, he cannot take on the responsibilities of heterosexual love and masculine conflict. But then, doubting his potency and to avoid ridicule and danger, he becomes obsessionally heterosexual and competitive; or alternatively, he may become apathetic and sexually not there.
Other “animal” expressions, besides the sexual, are also problematical. Let us sum them up by some more philosophical considerations.
As our organized system perfects itself, there is less “open” environment. It is hard for a social animal to grow when there is not an open margin to grow in: some open space, some open economy, some open mores, some activity free from regulation and cartes d’identité. I am referring not to a war between the “individual” and society, or to a wild animal that has to be acculturated—for there is no such individual or animal—but to a deepening sociological flaw in the modern system itself. A society cannot have decided all possibilities beforehand and have structured them. If society becomes too tightly integrated and preempts all the available space, materials, and methods, then it is failing to provide for just the margin of formlessness, real risk, novelty, spontaneity, that makes growth possible. This almost formal cause importantly drives young people out of the organized system altogether and makes creative adults loathe to co-operate with it. When time, clothes, opinions, and goals become so regulated that people feel they cannot be “themselves” or create something new, they bolt and look for fringes and margins, loopholes, holes in the wall, or they just run.
Our society preempts literally too much of the space. For instance, it is impossible in the Eastern United States to pitch a tent and camp for the night without registering with the National Parks and its list of regulations. You cannot go off somewhere for a sexual bout without paying rent. Almost any stone that a kid picks up and any target that he throws it at, is property. People hygienically adopt a permissive attitude toward the boisterousness and hyperkinesis of children, and meantime we design efficient minimum housing. Under modern urban conditions, it is impossible for an old woman to be a harmless lunatic, as was commonplace in country places; she would hurt herself, get lost among strangers, disrupt traffic, stop the subway. She must be institutionalized. If you roam the street late at night doing nothing, and looking for something to do, the cop who is protecting you and everybody else doesn’t want you to be going nowhere and to have nothing to do; and you ask him, Does he have any suggestions?
There is something attractive in the forbidden as such. I think that the theme of this chapter explains this puzzling attraction.
On the usual psychological theory, to do the forbidden is to attack the forbidding authority, ultimately the oedipal father. This explains the obvious fear of punishment, and also the stronger, often quite irrational, fear of transgressing the due order of things. (E.g., “Are we allowed to climb up there on that ladder?” “Naw! of course not!” “Then we’d better not”—even though there is nobody to catch them at it. But they then climb up anyway.) On this theory, what would the attraction be? The forbidden object itself, resonant with the other repressed things forbidden by the oedipal authority; and secondly, more subtly, a teasing of the authority, to win his personal attention, for he is so impersonal. I think there is a good deal to this second point, for it has somewhat the feel of the attraction of the forbidden. (E.g., “Will the watchman wake up?”— hoping that he will thrillingly wake up, even if he bites.)
But I should like to suggest still a third fundamental attraction in doing the forbidden: the animal need to transgress the limit in order to finish the situation. Consider. People are continually stimulated and set in motion, but they come up against limits and cannot fully go or let go. Typically, because of inhibitions and circumstances, the orgasm is not total and not altogether without “self-consiousness.” The spontaneous acceleration toward an unlimited goal seems evident in the way one forbidden achievement emboldens the next, until the process comes to a natural end, rather than an imposed limit. The freedom that beckons in the forbidden attraction is not, negatively, merely a freedom from constraint, but a relief of internal pressure as one arrives and finishes the experience. There is a quiet satisfaction even if there is not much satisfaction in the forbidden object achieved. (E.g., there is nothing up on the roof and the kids soon climb down and go home.) But there is no disappointment, because the action has reached its natural end: you have climbed to the top of the mountain and that’s the furthest you want to go.
This spontaneous acceleration to the goal is not the same as “raising the ante” characteristic in purely delinquent behavior. Raising the ante has a fragmented and desperate tone that comes from finding that each daring act has not paid off, and therefore the next time one must stab more wildly. The end of raising the ante is clearly self-destruction, to be “extreme”; it is not to finish a process. Doing the forbidden is a normal function of growth; raising the ante is a sign that a person is not in contact with his real needs.
The same twelve-year-olds I have been describing returned to the same building the next week—a pleasant spot overlooking the Hudson where they came to smoke forbidden cigarettes. They directly climbed onto the roof, for it was now the established routine, and they came down. But there was a new boy with them whose behavior was different. He promptly dared the others to jump off the roof—a ten-foot drop to a concrete pavement, guaranteed to break both ankles. He himself climbed over the ledge and hung by his hands and said he was going to drop. He would have let go, too, except that we men intervened, shouting. The other kids were indignant and disgusted at his senselessness; they did not seem challenged. One of the men said to him. “That wasn’t smart.” He, grinning: “Aw, I thought youse’d think it was smart.”!! Had he been playing, after all, for our attention? He got it.