every program in women's studies ought to include a little excursion into the world of the bonobo
Bonobos are, with Chimpanzees, humans' closest relatives. Being primates, both species have complex social behaviour. The ability for cultural transmission has been documented in apes as far from humans as macaques.
Anyway, what makes bonobo society remarkable is that their normal social interactions involve the exchange of sexual favours for material gains. If a male has some food, a female may come close, offer to rub her heginals against his, and then take away a portion of the food. In the much more violent chimpanzee society males usually eat first even when the females find the food, and the females eat what's left. Bonobos engage in genito-genital rubbing to make up after a fight, to ask for favours and to establish social bonds, both with the opposite and the same sex.
If there were no cultural stigma associated to sexual behaviour, it is likely that women would voluntarity exchange sex for money or other favours as the occasion demanded.
Bonobos also give the lie to the idea that only humans have sex for enjoyment and not for procreation --- or indeed that human sex should "naturally" be for procreation only. guaranteed to evoke a violent reaction from police is to challenge their right to "define the situation." --- David Graeber citing Marc Cooper
her heginals
Exactly the point I should have been made in my comment before. More clear, more to the point. Together with Izzy you have expressed my opinion better than myself.
It is time for me to shut up for a while and learn.
But before doing it, let me recall that both men and women would be able to interchange sex for objects if sex would be neutral and there would be no myth/concept regarding sex-male-female. And of course, among women and among men... but this is another topic.
A pleasure I therefore claim to show, not how men think in myths, but how myths operate in men's minds without their being aware of the fact. Levi-Strauss, Claude
