All You Need is Love

All You Need is Love

Julie, my first-ever reader, told me that I have been guilty of "angry-blogging," so Adjunct Proff's blog today will be all about L.O.V.E. --its history, its present state and some fearless prognostications for the future of Love (because Love does have a future if humans keep living together in families and communities, instead of virtually connecting via Second Life avatars)

Take a look at these magical breasts!

Back in cave-man-cave-woman times, there really wasn't much spare time to devote to love.  People lived close to nature and... just did what came naturally.

In fact, anthropologists and even the odd historian believe that early societies were completely matriarchal because, well, women were magical.  Hey, women could produce children.  And even better, they could feed these brand-new human beings from great tasting milk from their own breasts, so it was a good two or three years before these new humans even wanted any scarce food.  What could possibly be any more magical?

You see, early man probably didn't make the connection between sex and child birth because, hey, it took at least two to three months between copulation sessions (sex) and any evidence of pregnancy.  And given the loose clan structure of early societies, the now visibly pregnant woman may have mated with several other members (heh heh, members) of the clan, so there might not have been any certainty of who the baby-daddy was, even if they had made the connection.  So, matriarchy, with a particularly prolific mother-grandmother at its head, is a quite reasonable assumption about early human societies.

All of this was about to change, unfortunately for these peaceful matriarchal societies, with the arrival of agriculture --more specifically, animal husbandry or herding.  Prior to this, early humans had only been around animals long enough to stalk and kill them.  As herdsmen, they were around sheep, goats and piggies all the time --even when they were "makin' bacon."

So that's where babies come from!
Mommy said they came from her magical vagina...

It wasn't too much longer before men connected the dots: Man + Woman + Sex = Babies.  And this is where the power of women based on their ability to have children vanished.  Now, women were treated like livestock, fed if they proved good baby makers, or worked to skin-and-bones if they were unable to have children.  This is probably why early civilizations like to show their fertility goddesses as big, fat ladies, because well nourished women always had the healthiest babies.

Yeah bee-at-chez, I gots it all goin' on!

 And this is where women's status pretty much stayed, from the Dawn of Civilization to the Middle Ages (approximately 4,316 years).  Oh sure, Spartan women could own businesses and rich Roman women had some heavy clout, but these were the exception rather than the rule.  I'n not saying that there was no love during this time in human history --quite the contrary.  Check out this hot love-poem from ancient Egypt:

Come, my Soul, swim to me!
The water is deep in my love
Which carries me to you.

We are in the midst of the stream,
I clasp the flowers to my breast
Which is naked and drips with water.
But the moon makes them bloom like the lotus.

I give you my flowers
because they are beautiful,
And you are holding my handIn the middle of the water.

Wanna pet my pussy-cats?  Didn't think so...

If you want to know where, when and who invented romantic love (love-letters, mash-notes, flirting, etc.), read on.  The where was France (it figures!), Poitiers, to be specific; the when was 1168 to 1173; the royal who was the most extraordinary women of the entire Middle Ages, Elanor of Aquitaine.  Queen E lived fast and BIG.  During the course of her 75-80 year life (Queen E always lied about her age), she would inherit a fortune and a kingdom (Queendom?), get married, get an annulment, get married again, have a couple of kids and a totally dysfunctional family, be imprisoned, widowed, and eventually die with a champagne bottle in one hand and a royal flush in the other (ok, maybe not the champagne and cards bit).

I am a totally bitchin' medieval babe!

At Poitiers, Queen E set up what cultural historians have since dubbed "The Court of Love."  She did this by surrounding herself with really handsome knights, really knock-out-pretty ladies-in-waiting, the best of the troubadour  poets, and some pretty sexy unicorn tapestries.  And what did the denizens of Queen E's court do all day?  Well, Love!

Ladies dropped handkerchiefs and sleeves for knights to fight over; lovers intrigued with everyone in order to hook-up with each other in secret; lots of love-poetry was written, read out-loud, performed to medieval musical accompaniment, and even scratched onto the castle walls.

But by far, the most influential writing to come out of this period was a book called The Art of Courtly Love, a kind of medieval dating do's and don'ts.  This book was, essentially, the first ever rule book for that competitive, contact sport known as "The Battle of the Sexes."  Among the rules contained therein was the one that said "women should be placed on a pedestal, the better to be worshiped and admired by all."  Sounds like women are climbing back to their place of prominence, right?  Unfortunately, no.  Elanor's Court of Love was a mere blip on the radar of history.  Human society would remain pretty male-chauvinist-piggy for quite a long time to come.

Hey Princess, while yer up, gimmie another beer!

Let's get real here: there can be no love between men and women until there is equality between men and women: social, political, economic, cultural and sexual equality.  And there is not much doubt when THAT happened: sometime during the 1970's in the United States of America.  

Following the invention, distribution and general use of the birth control pill in the 1960's, women finally had a handle on their own reproductive matters.  Add to this the Supreme Court's decision in Roe v. Wade making abortion legal, and the fact that Mary Tyler Moore made it socially acceptable for a woman to have a career and not a husband, and you've got the makings of the Sexual Revolution.  It wasn't long before Gloria Steinem was burning her bra, Masters and Johnson were publishing their report on human sexuality, Jane Fonda was supporting edgy political causes, and Edith was talking-back to Archie on All in the Family.

I said you were singing flat because you were singing flat, you dick-head!

 So, love today: Well, there's a lot of nudity available on the internet.  And non-traditional families are on the rise: single mom, single dad, two mommies, two daddies, sister-wives with one patriarch [only in Mormon towns] and moms and dads who are transvestites or transgender.  Kind of makes the Father-Son Pancake Breakfast a way-more interesting affair than it was in the 1950's.

Guys, we're so hilarious that ABC should make a hit-sit-com about us!

So, what's love's future?  Adjunct Proff thinks that Love and technology will have a bea-utiful future together.  Instead of skyping, lovers who are parted by distance might be able to have virtual make-out sessions using holograms and virtual-reality environments.  Instead of Match.com, people will be able to go on virtual dates before actually meeting and discovering he's a balding, 50-something pudgy guy who lives with his mother.  Robot surrogate mothers may make motherhood possible for women in their 60's.

What won't change will be the blush at a compliment, that delightful nervousness right before a first kiss, and the catch-at-the-heart that a groom feels when he catches his first look at his bride as she marches down the aisle --with both of her dads.

My mom only had to deal with one mother-in-law