ASM013 Polyamory, Pedophilia, and Why We Say “OH GOD” During Sex

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the following program contains frank discussions of mature themes listener discretion is advised polyamory pedophilia and why we say oh god during sex put the kids to bed it's time for ask science mike after dark

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welcome to ask science mike a weekly program where i answer your questions about science faith and life this week is ask science mike after dark where we tackle banned questions that usually aren't allowed in spiritual communities this week we're mainly talking about sexuality and there's some pretty dark themes so be ready for that we'll return with the normal episode next week but for now let's get it started our first question this week comes from the email inbox and it reads hey mike my question is why do so many of us even atheists speak god's name during carnal activities what's the psychology behind this thanks juliet well it's interesting because swearing isn't just fun it's a nearly universal human activity it transcends languages and cultures people everywhere swear today and yesterday and pretty much as long as we've had recorded history swearing is of course very taboo in the christian west although it's becoming much less so but the taboo only increases its allure swearing is most common in cultures where it's frowned upon or restricted in some way for example in medieval times you could get the death penalty for swearing and yet swearing was incredibly common whereas if you look at contemporary secularized cultures where there is very little taboo against wearing and its frequency declines along with it it seems that the more social pressure there is against swearing the more alluring that it is now there are five major themes that researchers have found in swearing that are common across cultures the most common type of swearing is religious swearing or swearing related to religion you can probably see where i'm going to go with this in the answer to this question the second most common type of swearing is scatological people love to make jokes about poop that's not just our toddlers even adults like to throw around poop related swear words and words related to the parts of our bodies that make and release poop the third most common type is sexual organ swearing people use that a lot interestingly enough it seems that in modern america swearing related to female genitals is more taboo than male genitals the fourth most common type of swearing is sexual activities or swearing about sexual activities and the fifth most common type of course is swearing about someone's mother which just i actually i'm reading this really you know dry academic report uh getting this material which is linked in the show notes on ask sciencemic.com and uh i laughed when i got to that everybody loves it your mama joke now we swear for all kinds of reasons it's used for comedic effect it's used to provide nuance and swearing is typically more related to the context of the word than the word itself and the usage of a word can make it a swear word or not but when we talk about this particular question we're thinking about a specific type of swearing and that's something called a reactive interjection so when we have pain or surprise or sex or other really intense stimulus we can use language in a way that's unconscious or unintentional you can actually say something that surprises you it's independent of your consciousness and your agency and so when you consider the fact that religious swearing is the most universal type of swearing across cultures it is also typically associated with a lot of taboo when our brains experience some intense stimulus and want to express that or release that even necessarily independent of our decision making process well of course we use the most taboo powerful word we have in our vocabulary the name of god people also typically use what scat logical terms uh in in sex now this is partially a learned behavior we as we'll hear in a later question uh humans tend to be especially vocal in sex especially females and this is something we hear we hear it in media we hear it in first-hand encounters and so we learn these patterns but they are executed on a lower level of linguistic expression than our usual thoughtful speech this is a an example of lower brain functions interacting with our speech centers in the brain and the left temporal lobe and creating unconscious speech so the reason that we i guess swear during sex is because it is an intense and pleasurable stimulus that our brains are trying to express in some way especially females of the species and i don't necessarily view that as a bad thing so there you go the science of swearing and sex our next question isn't just one question it's hundreds of questions it's become almost ten percent of all the questions submitted to the program and those questions started after the first ask science mike after dark which was episode six and uh man there are a lot of questions about masturbation here is just a small sampling hi mike i finished listening to your monogamy masturbation marijuana episode i definitely understand where you're coming from as far as the health benefits of masturbation but i also think that it can be a quick stepping stone to porn because i doubt many guys masturbate without lusting i'm not saying it's impossible to masturbate without doing so but i feel like it's probably very uncommon what do you think about this etc another question the bible speaks much about sexual transgressions but it doesn't mention masturbation is masturbation a sin if it doesn't involve porn or lust is it okay to focus solely on satisfying that need is it even a need and the bible does mention uh masturbation look up almond anyway another one hi mike i just listened to the science mic episode on masturbation and pornography i applaud you for taking on this topic and i'm grateful for your commitment to science-backed grace-filled responses i also thought about how a decade ago it would have made no sense to me to think about masturbating without the use of pornography in fact it's only been the last few years i've been able to separate the two i've worked hard to let go of my old friend pornography and learned new healthier ways to practice masturbation without it another one hey mike i listen episode six about sex and masturbation and everything you said really resonated with me because they were the same thoughts i've been having for years despite my very religious upbringing in the bible belt i did have one question for you though about masturbation you said masturbation shouldn't be a shameful act for christians and that it can be a healthy way to control one's libido but you also said that lustful images like pornography can be damaging to a person's psyche and sex life maybe it's just me but i find i have a hard time masturbating without the use of some kind of pornography assuming there's a right way to masturbate what is the right way to masturbate and these questions go on and on and on there are hundreds it seems we've hit a nerve in our society and by the way these questions came from men and from women now they did seem to be most common to the bible belt the the southeast especially when people would describe their struggles something is broken in the way christians think about sex and it's causing a lot of stress a lot of concerns and for those of you who may question the way that i approach sex and sexuality but listen to the program anyway you have to understand this is one of the wedges that causes people to turn their back on the faith so let's talk a little bit more about masturbation is it a need no you won't die without masturbating you need air uh you need food you need water uh you don't need sexual stimulus you will not die without sex or orgasm or anything but is it a drive absolutely one of the most powerful human drives is the sex drive so even though we don't need sex our brains and physiology place a level of urgency on it that is similar to our biological needs so it's normal to think about sex a lot it's normal to desire sex it's healthy to want sex now the problem is as i say very often both the christian and secular approaches to sexuality have limitations so let's talk about a few things porn what is porn i think of porn as media with extreme stimulation and sexual content it's all about titillating and creating you know a high amount of sexual energy and that could be images or video and commonly is but it can also be text you can read pornography you can consume literature porn now if we talk about lust and so many questions bring up lust to me lust is when you fixate on your sexual attraction and in the process objectify another person and you obsess over sexual attraction that's what lust is to simply be attracted to someone is not to lust towards them you're supposed to be attracted to people that's how more humans get made and if you believe in god as i do god made us that way god made us to find other people attractive masturbation is stimulating your own sex organs generally with an intent to orgasm and it's important to think and understand there is absolutely nothing wrong with sexual attraction there's absolutely nothing wrong with sexual organs period you're not dirty you're not gross it's not shameful especially common in the emails i get are women who are uncomfortable with their own sexuality because of their upbringing and this is one of the reasons why women have a much more difficult time in america achieving orgasm than men it's conditioned your sex drive isn't bad so how do we tame that beast how do we avoid the taboo around sexuality and the intensity of the sex drive becoming a destructive things in our lives number one there are unconscious elements at play here you don't consciously decide to be attracted to someone you don't consciously decide to notice someone walking by but the way your energies are spent is a matter of what you feed there's a metaphor i like to think about brains called the two wolves analogy where you can imagine yourself as as being composed of two wolves one of those wolves is brutal and fast and violent that would be your limbic system the other wolf is playful and thoughtful but not as strong as the other wolf and the question is which one you feed which one you pay attention to so when you see a member of this gender that you're attracted to what do you do with that how do you fixate upon it okay that constant process of noticing people thinking about people even fantasizing about people really informs the way you respond to sexual stimulus and that's the problem today masturbation is almost always linked to porn addiction internet porn is so available and so accessible and so hd streaming to you live right now that people literally can't imagine what it's like to masturbate without lust and remember my definition of lust fixating on attraction objectifying another and obsessing over sexual attraction if you can't imagine masturbating without pornography you're probably addicted to porn and you need to take steps in your life to detoxify and as you do guess what your biology will do what your biology is supposed to do your sex drive is strong and it doesn't need this kind of stimulus okay if you break off porn long enough your sex drive is going to recover it's going to it's going to become more normative more healthy and listen i can remember being younger i can actually remember being a teenager in sunday school in high school and hearing older men who were teaching sunday school when sexual topics would come up talk about how listen it does get better this becomes more manageable as you get older and i thought that sounded insane but now from the viewpoint of 36 i get it the my body doesn't put nearly the same neurochemical impetus on attraction and sexuality as it once did i can appreciate sex more as a result and i hope that awareness that part of what's happening is your body is in the process for for those of you listeners who are younger of figuring out what sex means how to find sex how to acquire sex you're at a stage where in human history uh you are the most likely to be producing children it's normal to have these very strong sexual urges so how do you masturbate in health one don't objectify people women or women men are men they're not objects for sexual gratification when you contemplate the whole of a person it's more difficult to obsess over their specific physicality two i would avoid internet pornography it seems to be very common that people who consume internet porn consume more porn and and move toward an addictive state i think it's a thing best left alone now if you mess up you open a web browser and whatever don't beat yourself up the guilt cycle makes it worse simply over time consume less find relationships with people that if they can help hold you accountable and you can talk about those things and detoxify them and de-shame them it will help and then get to a point where um you don't masturbate necessarily out of habit or boredom but you know out of out of need out of drive and then it should be easier to not necessarily have to have even your own internal pornography in order to achieve some kind of climax or orgasm so you know some of this is kind of tough for me to talk about uh i'm older i'm married in a monogamous relationship my wife and i have a tremendous sex life i just i don't have a taste for really masturbation anymore i'd rather have sex i understand not everybody is in that situation and that's why i say i'm so passionate about people knowing it's okay to masturbate uh i think it's a better alternative to promiscuous sex or unprotected sex or or guilt-ridden sex uh for people whose sexual purity is important to them i think masturbation is probably a fantastic technique for maintaining that purity and and not having uh you know the temptations they worry about so that's a lot on masturbation hopefully that's enough to stem some of the email tied if not i know you guys will continue to email me questions about masturbation maybe we'll just have to have a masturbation segment on every ask signs mike after dark i don't know but there's some more on masturbation for you.

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This question comes from the email inbox and it reads:

> "Hey Science Mike, I have a question regarding statements that you made regarding monogamy. I have heard the statement before in defending polyamory, that an individual who desires the best and happiness for their significant other should be comfortable with their significant other having more intimate and sexual relationships if that's what their significant other desires. This troubles me because, in a sense, it makes the idea of monogamy appear selfish by implying that an individual is being selfish by desiring their significant other to love and have sex with them exclusively. Is this the case? Does polyamory, in a sense, result in greater individual happiness? Is monogamy selfish?
>
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> Thanks, Nick"
>
>

Well this is a tough question for me to answer; number one, because I'm exclusively monogamous and pretty happy with that, and also because i know i have, uh, readers who identify as polyamorous and as Christians, and which other listeners of this program are Christians who don't believe that polyamory is compatible with Christianity. So this is a quite a rabbit hole for the program, and uh, one i don't think i can give a great answer to in five minutes. So I'm going to focus on a couple of points.

One: does polyamory and essential gold and greater individual happiness? Well i wasn't sure scientifically, so i did research. I usually only give myself about two minutes to research answers for the program, but this was a multi-day examination of data, and i went to a go-to book of mine which is *Sex at Dawn* by Christopher Ryan on the topic, as well as a TED talk that he gave. And then i also searched a lot of scientific literature and studies and papers. And what i found surprised me.I'll be honest, science doesn't paint a particularly dark picture for polyamory and here's why - human beings are apes, right? That's where we exist in the taxonomy, or the categorization of life on earth, and genetically we are closer to chimpanzees and bonobos than elephants are to different varieties of elephants. So a chimp is not only closer to humans than an Asian Elephant is to an African Elephant, a chimp is closer to humans than a chimp is to other apes. Same with bonobos. If you kind of look at chimp and bonobo behavior, they have pretty promiscuous overlapping sexual webs, and anthropologists believe the kind of sexual war of the sexes built around monogamy is probably linked to the rise of agriculture. And even when we look at contemporary hunter-gatherer societies, they tend to be very egalitarian - they share resources, including sex. Now this doesn't mean promiscuity, it means that these cultures have overlapping sex relationships. They do pair bond, they just each individual is a part of multiple pairings, It's not like sex with strangers or hookup culture or those kinds of things. So Christopher Ryan uses the term sexual omnivore to describe human behavior, and i think it's a great descriptor, because humans are natural omnivores but we can choose to be vegetarian. and, in fact you can make a decent argument that vegetarianism is healthier for people than a traditional human diet. But just because you choose to be a vegetarian doesn't mean that bacon doesn't smell good anymore and i think that's a fantastic way to think about monogamy. Just because you've chosen to have an exclusive pair bond doesn't mean that you stop being attracted to other individuals, which is something we tend to freak out about.

Now if you look biologically to kind of back this up, during their uh times of uh sexual swelling, female chimps and bonobos will mate with up to a dozen males per day multiple times per hour. You know as many as four times per hour. Uh. During that time period they are extremely available during this time compared to other mammals in a menstrual cycle but not nearly as available as human females. Humans can have sex all through the menstrual cycle and even post-menstrual and menopause which is almost unprecedented in the animal kingdom. Humans can also have sex a thousand times per birth, which is a statistic remarkably similar to chimps and bonobos uh other apes it's closer to 12 times per birth. So we have sex very very often versus animals that tend to be more exclusive in their pair bonding. Human males have external testicles and that's for temperature control. And why do you need temperature control for your testicles? If you need to make a lot of sperm. Why? Because you need to ejaculate very often. Basically, the more ways you dice it, the more science supports the idea that humans are somewhat polyamorous by nature.

What really shocked me as i looked at specific studies (and let me tell you they are limited - there's not a lot out there) but in the studies that have been done among people that self-identify as polyamorous, STD rates aren't any higher than the general population. And kids don't actually associate any significant trauma if their parents are polyamorous. They appear to be as happy as any other child. Now, ~~these~~ this really went against my intuition on what i might find when i investigated this issue. Does polyamory result in greater individual happiness? Well potentially for some people.

Now there's all kinds of complexities with polyamory: one, it is not accepted in our society. Even among most progressives, it's very very taboo. So there is a risk of being ostracized socially. There are all kinds of legal confusions. Our entire society is built around pair bonding in terms of estate distribution and property ownership. There's a lot of complexities there. Now let's be honest, monogamous people statistically aren't that monogamous, so i would certainly view polyamory being honest about multiple sex relationships as being superior than infidelity from and monogamous relationship which happens quite often. (Affairs, extramarital affairs, uh, cheating, all those sorts of things) So if i look at this to the kind of my secularist ethics database (my my matrix for making decisions) "does polyamory produce suffering?", well, only in the case where one of the partners is not willing or there's poor communication skills. So it gets a decent pass there is consent involved if both members of a relationship are polyamorous and are open to open relationships. Then you have consent.

Now, that said, what the question described is you have a polyamorous person in a relationship with a monogamous person and the polyamorous person is saying that it's selfish to want monogamy and i could not disagree more! I want a monogamous relationship my wife wants a monogamous relationship and we are monogamous together and that works very well. If a polyamorous person is dating a polyamorous person, and they all agree: I'm not going to judge. That ~~it's not~~, it's not [for] me to decide whether that's right or wrong. And, you know, even in Christianity, (certainly the new testament) uh seems to strongly reinforce monogamy. The old testament: there's a lot of polygamy happening there. And i've heard people say "it's an oversimplification of the text", but the fact is, you know, we have God himself speaking to Moses and describing the circumstances by which a man can take an additional wife who is the wife of someone slayed in war. So if god was against it he certainly had an opportunity in that scripture to speak out. Now that's not how i read the old testament, but if you if you read it literally that way you're going to get that. So but i would say it's certainly fair to say that modern Christianity(and for most of the history of Christianity) uh is a monogamous institution. Uh If you're a polygamous Christian, you read the bible differently - that's with you in your faith community. I'm not gonna waste a lot of time worrying about that. But it is, i am going to say, it is fine for someone to want to be in a monogamous relationship.

So if you're dating someone, and they say "it's selfish for you to want monogamy", i guess they can believe that. You probably shouldn't be in a relationship with that person. That person should probably find someone who's polyamorous and you should find someone who's monogamous. If you both can't agree on the terms of relationship, then you don't have the foundation for a healthy relationship and that's the key point. Relationships are hard enough as they are. And i've noticed people get very desperate to maintain a particular relationship. But if you can't agree on structural issues like that, the healthiest thing is to amicably end the relationship; not to try to convince someone who wants to be polyamorous to be monogamous. Whether you think it's moral, or ethical, or not is irrelevant. You can't control someone else. In the same way, someone should not try to manipulate you into accepting polyamory if you're monogamous.

I feel way out of my league answering this question, so before anybody uh sends me an angry email telling me why I'm wrong, understand that i really was afraid to even answer this because I'm a committed monogamous heterosexual male. So i can talk about the science of the fluidity of gender or orientation, or the science of of why we're you know maybe as a species wired a bit towards polyamory, um, it doesn't describe my actual experience of being a human being on this planet. I love my wife - that's just i guess how I'm wired too. So if you'd like to learn more about this, i definitely recommend the book *Sex at Dawn*, look at the TED talk i have in the show notes at ask sciencemike.com. You can learn more about the science of polyamory. This is something that's probably going to come up more as time goes on as we adopt a new sexual ethic in this country uh that's, you know, less based on taboo and more based on individual freedom and liberty. That's one area i think that LGBT opponents are correct: is that uh the process by which society embraces gay and lesbian and transgendered relationships will ultimately set the ground work for polyamorous people to say "hey what about us?" And boy, is that going to be a fun national dialogue!

Of course, statistically there are fewer polyamorous people than LGBT folks - at least today, at least how we understand it. Like i said, this science is is pretty thin, pretty sparse, compared to other things I've tried to research. I hope that answer was helpful.

The bottom line, "is monogamy selfish?" no. Because relationships are a consensual agreement between two parties. And i think it's certainly fine to choose monogamy.

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Our final question also comes from the email inbox and it reads:

> "Hi Mike,
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> I was sexually abused by multiple family members during childhood. This has caused a lot of problems in my life, but one is worse than the others - i am attracted to children. To be clear, i have never molested a child. But i have sometimes searched the internet for images of children. I am always filled with disgust when i do this, and i hate myself for what i am. I know you'll tell me i should get help, but how can i do that? If anyone knew my secret, i would be unable to hold a job or have any friends. I'm so scared. Most of the time i want to die, and i have considered suicide on multiple occasions. What can i do?"
>
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You have stumbled upon one of our deepest fears and one of the things we fear most the sexual exploitation of children.

I want to start by applauding you for emailing me for having the courage to reach out i know that's incredibly frightening and it's a good thing that you want to get some help and some insight and some advice and i feel incredibly unqualified to offer that advice the second thing i want to thank you for is your restraint sexual urges are very powerful and you've resisted those urges and never molested a child and in doing so you have broken a cycle of abuse that affected you so the question is how do you keep that up because so far you've done the right thing you can't help that you're attracted to children you didn't choose that based on your message it sounds like you find that repulsive so a little science for you now the science of pedophilia is not well understood at all we have seen some science that indicates it could be developmental as in some biological basis there appears to be some correlation in some cases with trauma to the head before the age of 13. and in other cases like yours attraction to children is the result of being sexually victimized as a child and i'm so sorry that you went through that and whoever did that to you let you down in one of the worst ways possible despite the potential risks to you i advise you to seek quickly the council of a qualified therapist now the american psychological system even the global psychological community doesn't necessarily have a great handle on what to do with people who are attracted to children but have not acted on those urges and don't want to most of our justice system and our psychological profiles are built on people that have already victimized children you represent a responsible portion of a population that is despised i don't know the steps you can take to be rehabilitated i don't know anything about how to shift your desires uh towards more appropriate venues and uh this is a situation where this is very intellectual for me it's as soon as i figured out that other people could be sexually attractive i was always attracted to the adult female form which i think is a pretty normal way that humans develop you just you've got to get help you can't shoulder it alone you can't fight this battle by yourself and i think the you know best place to start is a therapist that you can trust that will understand you can communicate to the fact that you have never acted on these urges i would probably also take the step to self isolate from children i'd avoid obviously spending a lot of time and building any kind of significant uh relationship with a child because if pedophilia attraction is similar to normal attraction then the time you spend with an individual is a huge factor in when you will act on or pursue relationships so with adults the adult of your chosen orientation or your chosen gender you spend the most time with tends to be the one you're the most attracted to that's why as a married heterosexual male i spend most of my time with my wife because that makes it much easier to have a monogamous relationship because i remain attracted to her because of the time investment so i hate to say this but you know avoid creating relationships with the children avoid fixating on them definitely avoid the internet child pornography is illegal it should be illegal there are steep penalties for viewing or distributing child pornography or for storing it that could be life destroying for you so the best thing i could say is you've got to go get help look around maybe ask friends you know who've had therapists maybe work through a university but you've got to find someone who specializes in these sorts of issues and this sort of psychology you know probably your normal marriage and family therapist uh is not where you should be you need someone who specializes in and sexuality and perhaps even um sexual disorders and i don't say this a lot on the program i don't know that i've ever said it but i don't know who you are i don't have a name i don't have an email address but i'm going to pray for you because that's all i can do all i can do is tell you the best of what i know and uh and pray for you but i hope that not only are you able to resist these impulses on an ongoing basis but my my hope for you is that you could find fulfillment in a relationship with a consenting adult that ultimately leads you out of this cycle that started with people who exploited you and you didn't choose that you're a victim and i admire your determination to not become a perpetrator well that's another episode of ask science mike in the books that's an after dark edition where we talk this week exclusively about sexuality i guess uh if you have questions like those send them in we'll do another ask science smack after dark we actually have a lot of after dark questions already on file uh and keep your questions coming we need them to keep the program alive although we are absolutely crushed with great questions right now i love it i love the fact that there's gender diversity in our questions there's racial diversity in our questions that really gives me hope for this audience that it really represents a broad spectrum of humanity that lots of people are interested in open honest conversations about science and faith now i'd love to have a conversation like this in your local community um so if you go to ask sciencemike.com and look in the upper right-hand corner there's a button that says bookmike i would love to come to your church or your college or your conference to talk about difficult uh themes in an open way in an entertaining way even a humorous way that's that's what i love to do so if you'd like more information just go to my website you can submit questions using hashtag asksciencemike on twitter soundcloud or youtube or you can do what most people do and go to asksciencemike.com scroll down to the bottom of the page and you can record a voice question and send it there or type a text question uh including anonymous questions 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