It was a sexual world.
Until then, of course, sex had always been present in lives, cultures, civilizations, but in many of them it had been hidden, repressed: it used to be the great secret, that silence that screamed in every corner.
At the end of the 20th century, it ended up becoming very explicit: few elements of that world did not bear a sexual mark.
From dress styles to product advertisements, from dance to languages and the arts, from public debates to private searches and big political movements, there probably hasn't been a time before—and perhaps since—a when humanity was more sexualized.
(Although one confused author then said that an average human being—an average human being?—spends 0.45 percent of their time engaging in face-to-face sex. If you calculate that the average person—the average people?— lived about 72 years, that would mean that these average ladies and gentlemen dedicated 2,840 hours of their lives to such a practice. Those 2,840 hours are, divided between 60 years —plus averages— of face-to-face sexual activity, about 47 hours per year, almost four a month, about one a week.The calculation is curious, because it would show that the presence that those exercises supposedly had was much more theoretical than practical, more illusory than real: a legion of excited ghosts, very excited but very ghosts. )
Despite so much sex, carnal or fantasmatic, in the Third Decade the family —in its traditional sense— continued to be the basic unit of affective and social organization.
It was becoming more and more concentrated: they were no longer those families of three generations and numerous members —grandparents, mothers, children, aunts, nephews, cousins, cousins— that prevailed decades before, especially in rural areas.
In those days, the family par excellence —with its variations depending on countries and cultures— was what was then called “nuclear”: a mother, a father, one, two or three minor children.
These families, in their reproduction and upbringing stage, shared a house.
The few initiatives that, during the 20th century, tried to break with this model to find other criteria for cohabitation —such as, for example, the Israeli kibbutz— had failed.
Although it was true that, in the RichWorld, the number of people living alone had already increased so much.
If a hundred years earlier "singles" were a minority of eccentrics or outcasts who aroused condemnation or compassion, in 2020 the option had become attractive: more than a quarter of North American homes had a single occupant;
in Holland or Germany they were more than a third;
in Sweden or Norway, half.
The wealthier a community was, the more alone its members lived.
Some interpreted it as a sign of the growing isolation of those societies "obsessed with success";
others,
as confirmation that the supposed gregarious and family spirit of the human being had always been a simulation or a condemnation —and that it was time to leave it behind.
To try to sustain it, writings abounded that insisted that living alone was not the same as feeling alone, loneliness as loneliness.
(In that solitude another mark of time was installed: the rise of the domestic animal. Since man became a man, he always lived surrounded by other beasts. Chickens that laid his eggs, cats that rats ate him, dogs that took care of his sheep, sheep that sheltered him, cows that gave him milk and manure and heat and work, geese that alerted him, doves that communicated him, falcons that hunted him, horses, donkeys, mules, camels, elephants, llamas that carried him, goats , pigs, bees, rabbits: he used them to survive. They were tools: when they were not eaten, men used them for their needs. But most of those beasts were replaced by machines - more efficient, easier, cleaner - and She lost her job, so those who could produce food or be eaten kept it.
For a time, men distanced themselves from animals: because they were no longer useful to them, because they went to live in the cities.
In the poor ones there were still some: rats, cockroaches, loose dogs, stray cats, a donkey, a chicken, the cows of India;
in the rich ones, only the birds and other insects and the enormous number of domestic dogs and cats.
In those days it was estimated that there were, throughout the world, between 800 and 900 million dogs that consumed more than 100,000 million euros a year in food and remedies and bows, and produced some 400,000 tons of shit every day.
Their situation—like that of cats—had evolved in the same way as the rest of the world's economy: the animals that were close to people no longer worked in production but in services;
specific,
company service and play and mime.
On the one hand, they accompanied the solos, they gave their houses a touch of color and warmth;
on the other, they amalgamated the family: in those days they did not conceive of anything more familiar than a couple with their children and a dog, the best friend.)
In those days it was easier than before to live alone.
The advancement of communications, which made people interact more and more digitally —seeing each other without touching, speaking without smelling each other, meeting without meeting—, made it less decisive.
But that isolation required certain economic conditions -he alone had to pay all the expenses of his house-, social ones -that women did not continue locked up in their homes- and, finally, affective ones: a society that no longer saw marriage as the only way to sexualized relationship between two adults.
An Afghan family poses in their home in Wuzed, in August 2016.Eric Lafforgue/Art in All of Us/Corbis via Getty Images (Getty)
And even so, the model of family occupation of the houses continued to prevail.
After all, families still inhabited more than half the houses in almost all rich countries, more than three-quarters in the others.
The poorer a place was, the more likely its houses were to house many relatives.
It happened in 99 out of 100 in Pakistan or Afghanistan, for example.
But, although the traditional family model was still very much in the majority, it was no longer the only option —and its power was diminishing day by day.
The great change —which came from previous decades— began when sexuality escaped from homes, was released from families.
For centuries, the alliance of states and religions had managed to keep it mostly within;
by 2020 sex had lost the reproductive character in which it had been confined.
Thanks to the widespread use of oral and topical contraceptives, which had spanned half a century, reproduction was just one of the many possible—almost always avoided—consequences of a sexual act.
Or, better: he transformed the sexual act into an action without consequences.
Few inventions produced more changes in behavior than the famous "pill", which allowed millions and millions of women to live different lives.
Of course, not all were advantages: many women had problems -physical or psychological- with these drugs and,
above all, it was very unfair that they were the ones who should, once again, take care and take risks.
But still, the change was crucial.
(Meanwhile, certain churches continued to combat contraceptives. He highlighted, due to its lethality, the resistance of the Church of Rome to the distribution of condoms in those African regions where the spread of sexually transmitted diseases, such as the so-called "AIDS", caused so many deaths. Under the pretext of principles, the Catholic hierarchies did everything possible to prevent the use of these prophylaxis and, thus, became guilty of the deaths of millions of people who were infected by not using them. Later, as always, they would ask for forgiveness .)
The movement, in any case, was unstoppable and they failed to contain it: it was then that the fall of something that seemed eternal began to consolidate —in the Rich World: indissoluble marriage.
For centuries, the legalized and lifelong couple had been the hegemonic way of relating and reproducing people: not getting married, according to that logic, was an existential failure, having failed.
But having sex with someone without being married was also an infraction of many different rules or, in the words of that tribe, "a sin."
In 2022, on the other hand, no one supposed anymore that sex should be limited to marriages or constituted partnerships;
When you thought about sexuality in those years, you thought of much more complex and confusing instances.
It is true that those marriages that had worked for centuries still existed, in which the man left the house to look for provisions and the woman stayed to take care of the home and the children and prepare the food that the male obtained.
But it was more and more frequent that both provided, with their jobs, the necessary or superfluous goods —and that had changed the way of their relationships and had created new ones.
Promotional photograph of the television comedy 'Modern Family', which delved into the new family models. Bob D'Amico (Getty)
The nuances varied according to the countries and their ideologies and their wealth.
Most non-Muslim countries were already registering less than half as many marriages as half a century earlier.
The trend had different nuances in each culture, but in all of them one cause was united: that marriage was no longer seen as the only way for a man and a woman to share a stretch of their lives.
Perhaps, also, because that stretch seemed very long: it was not the same to commit "until death do us part" when that separation would take 20 or 30 years than when it could take twice as long.
In any case, it was curious—surprising—to see how institutions that had survived so long changed so little.
(The supposedly indissoluble marriage had lasted many centuries; the supposedly indissoluble marriage for love had lasted, instead, barely two: it was, for a few decades, the product of the intersection of a pair of almost contrary ideas that coincided in time and space Marriage had always served as a unit of production —of children, of goods, of ideology— that was agreed upon in various ways —frequently the parents of the bride and groom did— and did not include the notion of love but did include it. of permanence: the operative bond could not be broken, under penalty of very uncomfortable consequences.In the 19th century, when romanticism introduced the idea that love should intervene in the choice of a spouse, the idea of indissoluble marriage was still in force: thus two opposites met briefly, love and duration.This idea of an indissoluble marriage for love was untenable and began to dissolve in the second half of the 20th century, when more and more people understood it and practiced its dissolution.)
A woman walks a dog in Paris, France, in April 2022. Pierre Crom/Getty Images
In England, for example, 83 percent of men born in 1940 had married before their 30th birthday;
only 25 percent of those born in 1980 were married by the time they reached that age.
In many cases, because they would never marry;
in others because, with the lengthening of lives and the change in work customs, those who married did so much later.
In Portugal, for example, in 1980, the average of women married at 23 years of age;
in 2020 they did it —those who did it— after their 30s.
And the idea that marriage was not the only way to procreate began to make its way.
In Italy, for example—a Catholic country par excellence—in 1970 only 2 percent of children were born to a single mother;
in 2020 they were almost 30 percent.
At that time in Mexico and Chile they were more than 65 percent, in France, Bulgaria or Denmark around 58: the idea of marriage as a baby-producing unit was falling into disuse.
In the Rich World, one in eight children lived with only one parent—which, in the vast majority of cases, was the mother.
In the MundoPobre the proportion increased proportionally.
It is not clear, seen from here, if they were aware of the fact that never - or almost never - in history had there been a society where each person had more possibilities to invent their relationship life.
Certain economic and social limits survived, of course.
But, beyond or to this side of them, their lives had nothing to do with what had been those of their grandparents or great-grandparents who, almost without exception, had a predetermined destiny of work, marriage, procreation, retirement, and death.
Very few escaped from it, and they used to pay dearly for it.
For centuries, most did not even consider it: the path had always been laid out and had to be followed.
The duty to be had been intense, unquestionable;
Not in those days anymore.
Or, if anything, the new duty to be consisted of finding different forms.
(And yet, beyond or to this side of any search and any sanction, the couple relationship continued to be the most prestigious, the norm that reassured: those who were in one —even if they did not enjoy it madly— considered themselves well placed, those who did not, in general, aroused suspicion: that they could not, that they did not get it, that why they would not want it. The paired ones did not cause questions: they were the accepted and correct answer. The biggest change was that, if anything, in most western countries, these couples did not have to be a man and a woman.)
***
The advancement of forms of gestation expanded the possibilities.
For millennia, babies could only be produced in one way: by intercourse between a man and a woman, the woman's pregnancy, the woman's birth.
Suddenly, those shapes had multiplied.
Since the birth, in July 1978 and in England, of Louise Joy Brown, “the first test-tube baby”, a flourishing industry of conception aids, “in vitro fertilization”, had developed.
It consisted of using the sperm and eggs of two people to create, in an artificial environment, a viable embryo.
Which gave rise to numerous variants: couples in which the mother did not become pregnant but could receive her already fertilized embryo and raise it in her uterus, couples in which the father's semen was not fertile and anonymous donors were used, the mothers who wanted to give birth without a father present and resorted to those donors, the female couples who obtained a donor with or without contact, the male couples who resorted to a donated egg and contracted a “surrogate womb” to raise it—and so many more. .
The issue of surrogates was highly debated: in general, it was about poor women who received a good sum for the "work" of gestating.
Rarely has the rental of bodies as “labour power” been so evident.
(And it was unintentionally ironic: the word “travail”—where “I work” from—meant, for centuries, the pains of childbirth.)
The system was typically industrial.
In poor countries, surrogate mothers spent nine months locked up in clinics specialized in producing babies to deliver them to their "legitimate owners."
There they were cared for, nurtured, controlled: in this trade —unlike many others— a poorly fed or badly behaved worker was not good business.
The fertilized embryo that each worker received was the result of an egg that may or may not have come from the mother and sperm that may or may not have come from her father.
If there were donors of one or the other, they were anonymous but not indifferent: the contributions of a professional model were charged much more than those of normal beings —because they would produce more handsome or more intelligent children.
Design and discrimination reached everywhere.
(Until 2015, when its authorities prohibited it, the great factory of foreign babies was India. Since then other countries —Bangladesh, Georgia, Ukraine, Colombia, Mexico— have tried to take over. Thus, mothers and fathers from the prosperous world sent their embryos, and local doctors implanted them in a local girl who, for putting her body into
full-time
production for nine months, earned what she would never have earned in many years of employment, if she had had it: between 5 and 10,000 euros. A North American girl could earn 50,000 for the same work, so the total price of a baby in the USA, including doctors and machines and agencies and lawyers and various capital gains, far exceeded 100,000; in cheap countries you could get it for less than half. )
In this context, the condition of father or mother was also shaken, it found meanings that it had never had.
***
At the same time, in the rich countries a trend was coming to an end that, for once, had originated in the poorest sectors: the formation of complex families.
The general abandonment of the idea of indissoluble marriage produced ways of relating that had existed little —and, in general, concealed.
Nurses attend to children at a surrogacy clinic in kyiv, Ukraine, during the pandemic lockdown in May 2022. Sergii Kharchenko/NurPhoto via Getty Images
Families were reformulated: children continued to grow up with their more or less natural mothers or fathers, but those parents mixed much more.
It was normal for a woman with children to unite with a man with children and for all those children to live together, or for a woman or man with children to unite with a man or woman without and for those children to grow up with that man or woman and your families.
In summary: a series of relationships appeared that until then had not been defined —because they had not had legal tender—: my boyfriend's daughter, my mother's boyfriend's daughter, my son's boyfriend's daughter and others, which, although frequent, they did not yet have names in the languages of those times.
It was curious:
But, beyond this lack, the truth is that these new functions demonstrated above all that the family, that supposedly unalterable pillar, was also dynamic, variable: that these boys could be your brothers for a while and stop being so later, for example.
And more and more countries accepted the constitution of families with two fathers or mothers of the same sex.
Homosexual marriage had been legalized for the first time at the beginning of the century, on April 1 —Fool's Day— 2001, in the Netherlands;
in 2022 it was already legal in 32 other countries, all of them in Europe and America except South Africa, New Zealand, Australia and Taiwan.
In those countries —and in some more— the homosexual condition ceased to be something marginal to settle in the social space.
The demand for marriage for all produced some dissent: those who saw their homosexuality as a way of placing themselves outside established institutions deplored the idea of adapting to those institutions.
Homosexuality ceased to be, then, a critical force—of the state,
the church and other forms of social control—to become a trend that struggled for their integration.
And many celebrated it: they had never wanted to be outside of any rule;
it was the rules that put them out.
(In certain wealthy countries, homosexual couples had become a privileged commercial target: both used to work, often had no children and could consume more than others. They were the majority of those that American marketing called "dinks" —
dual income no kids
—, which he worked hard to recruit.)
In those days it was disputed what proportion of men and women were homosexual.
The figure was complicated to the extent that it had to be specified, as always: it was not the same to compute those who had had sporadic encounters with someone of the same sex —at a time when these experiences were losing their dramatic weight and were happening every more frequent among young people—than counting only those who defined themselves as bisexual or exclusively homosexual.
A figure that the “gay and lesbian” movements—as they were called then—used to hold up was 10 percent: that they were 10 percent of the population.
The largest studies—in rich countries—did not reach half that amount.
A crude example: between 2005, when homosexual marriage was approved in Spain, and 2020, some 49,000 were celebrated,
slightly more men than women—and growing.
In that same period, heterosexual marriages were about 2,750,000 —and in sharp decline.
There had been, in that period, 56 unequal marriages for each same-sex marriage.
No matter how many there were, there was no doubt that, after centuries of condemnation and repudiation, homosexuality was beginning to be seen in those countries as something “normal” —with all that the word normal can contain.
It was another sign of the partition of the world: that did not happen in Asia or Africa.
Or, put another way: out of the 8,000 million inhabitants of the earth, no more than 1,300 million —one in six— lived in countries that accepted homosexual coexistence.
For the rest, the situation ranged from the mere rebuff of the Chinese “Three Noes” —Do not approve, Do not disapprove, Do not promote— to judicial condemnation: some 70 countries repressed it with sentences ranging from 100 lashes in Indonesia or Somalia. to Saudi beheading or Iranian hanging.
Almost all of those countries were in Africa or West Asia;
almost all were “Muslims” and based their prohibition and punishment on texts from their holy book, the Koran.
That is why their decisions may seem capricious to us: in Yemen, for example, a single man caught with another man could receive a lash or a year in prison, but a married man could be stoned to death.
And instead a married woman caught with another woman could spend three years in jail.
***
And meanwhile, in tolerant countries, the forms of sexuality were changing.
The separation between sex and marriage, between sex and reproduction, had opened the door: for many, who had stopped thinking of sex as a reproductive duty or a purchased exercise, any sexual combination was admissible and even vindicable.
Variety was promoted almost everywhere, from the most conservative media —as a way to preserve couples— to the most marginal environments —as a way of differentiating themselves that, at that point, already made little difference between them.
The "sexual restraint" that, during previous centuries, had been, if not the conduct, then the watchword, became a disgrace, a kind of oxymoron.
(However, certain practices were excluded from this tolerance: child sex —sex between children—, pedophilia —sex with children— and, of course, rape, abuse and other bodily violence. On the other hand, much was discussed about the legitimacy or not of prostitution.)
Within this framework, a little-discussed change had a decisive influence on millions and millions: the expansion of pornographic videos.
Pornography was then called a curious form of narration consisting of recording, with the tenacity of an entomologist, men and women embedding their sexes or other belongings in each other, athletic and acrobatic, sometimes even brutal, in order to arouse some kind of excitement in their consumers.
Pornography in movement appeared with the cinema, at the beginning of the 20th century, and it never stopped growing, but its access was always relatively difficult and its circulation was scarce.
Until the first years of the 21st century: then, with the extension of the internet, the most pornographic images were just a click away from anyone.
It was an avalanche.
In 1970, a state institution calculated that the entire North American pornographic industry moved about 10 million euros a year;
half a century later, that figure was estimated at 13 billion.
Every half hour, they said, a new porn video was produced in the United States.
In those days, children from the rich and not-so-rich world had access to them without problem.
Internet porn consumer.M.Production / iStock / Getty Images Plus
This diffusion produced a substantial change: for millennia, young people of both sexes began their sexual lives by force of instinct, asking questions, imagining, without having seen before what they were supposed to do, discovering together.
Or, if anything, in a movement that reasserted male power, men would "educate" themselves with a prostitute, and "instruct" their wives in turn.
With the spread of pornography almost all of them had already seen practical examples before attempting it.
Sex ceased to be search and invention —or
mansplaining
— to become imitation.
And the porn model, which was not designed to be a model, was full of violence and pirouettes, the idea of intercourse as domination, production, competition —which had, for many, disastrous consequences.
But, at the same time, it offered its young viewers a range of options —which, in many cases, led them to repudiate and search for other possibilities.
It was, also in this, a moment of transition: sexuality was developed in all kinds of images but it was still practiced in the encounter of bodies.
And the biggest change was the disconnect between sex and affection, which had been linked—except in the case of prostitution, where money substituted for the latter—for a couple of centuries, since the imposition of love marriage.
But not anymore: sex was an activity separated from affectivity, something that could be done without implying a further relationship.
(The clearest metaphor is that of the dance: just as in the old milongas a woman danced with a man and, when the tango was over, which they shared passionately, each one returned to their table, that's how it was, for more and more young people, sex in those days.)
But still, in general, very rigid criteria were maintained about what was beautiful and what was not, who were sensually privileged and who were disadvantaged.
It was clear, and the broadcasting and sales apparatus remembered it non-stop.
Such things were good and such were bad: wrinkles and pimples bad, smooth skin good;
the big clear eyes are good, the dark little ones are bad;
the narrow upturned noses well, the wide hooked ones badly;
the breasts supported well, those declined badly;
the long thin legs are good, the short fat ones are bad;
the thin waists well, the rolls and fats more than bad.
El set era largo y complejo y, sin embargo, la mayoría de aquellas personas lo conocía de una forma intuitiva, sin pensarlo: tan eficaz era su difusión. Para romperlo —entre otras cosas— se abría entonces una época de exploración: muchos jóvenes, cuyos mayores ya habían conseguido el derecho a una sexualidad no institucional, valoraban la experimentación, la búsqueda de modos y maneras distintas, que sus padres no habían siquiera imaginado. Los ayudaban las nuevas técnicas de intervención sobre los cuerpos que abrían opciones que habrían sido imposibles unos años antes. Como siempre, es difícil saber si fue el deseo el que creó la técnica o la técnica el deseo. Pero sí parecía claro que había que pensarse diferente, y en esa diferencia estaba todo el gusto.
“Ella estiraba sus pasos de pantera por una calle del centro de Madrid: ella tenía las piernas largas finas de canela oscura, la falda hipotética, las nalgas bamboleadas, la espalda poderosa cruzada por las tiras de un top blanco; ella tenía el pelo negro en cascada y recovecos; ella valía la pena de mirarla. La pasé, para verla de frente: ella tenía su cintura de avispa, sus tetas de muestrario, sus aros grandes muy dorados, su nariz aguileña, sus ojos almendrados, su barba de dos semanas perfectamente recortada. (…) En unas décadas, los historiadores que escriban este principio de siglo dirán que fue el momento en que los sexos se pusieron complejos: en que los avances técnicos y los cambios culturales permitieron que hombres y mujeres pudieran decidir si querían ser hombres o mujeres o algo más, algo que intentarían inventar. Tras décadas de pelea por el derecho a ser homosexual, las puertas quedaron entreabiertas para ser algosexual, para crearse. El cuerpo propio se ha transformado, para muchos millones, en el centro de la experimentación y de la búsqueda. Es fascinante y puede ser, al mismo tiempo, descorazonador: yo suelo preguntarme si esta insistencia en elegir el cuerpo de uno como el lugar de los combates no es el reflejo de un desaliento, la manera de resignarse a no dar esas peleas en el cuerpo de todos, el cuerpo social. O, a lo sumo, darlos en el común para ganarse el derecho a darlos en el propio”, dejó escrito un amargado de esos días.
Era uno de esos períodos en que, a falta de un proyecto colectivo (ver cap.10), la atención de los individuos se desplaza hacia sí mismos. Muchos jóvenes y no tan jóvenes de esos días dedicaban enormes esfuerzos a la construcción de identidades —personales, sexuales— que no encajaran en las ya existentes. De la división en dos géneros estrictos y heterosexuales, la tendencia había pasado, a fines del siglo XX, a la aceptación de diversas homosexualidades y, a principios del XXI, a la normalización de una idea nueva: que se podía ser “no binario”, “fluido”, no pertenecer a un género o al otro sino construirse una identidad más allá de esos límites. Por uno de esos pases mágicos a los que son proclives ciertos movimientos, la homosexualidad, que había sido el colmo del margen décadas antes, se había convertido en pura adaptación para aquellos que reivindicaban su derecho a no encasillarse en un género dado.
El juego era fascinante y, por su novedad, despertaba en esos días una atención particular. Era el juguete nuevo, aquel que permitía definir la época con rasgos que ninguna otra había tenido, pero su peso real —su influjo en las vidas de las mayorías— era módico. Los ambiguos y los transexuados eran, en verdad, una pequeña minoría en el MundoRico. Según los cálculos más generosos eran entonces, en todo el mundo, 1 de cada 10.000 personas: menos de un millón en el planeta.
(En la Argentina, por ejemplo, donde la idea estaba ampliamente difundida, la posibilidad de cambiar de sexo en los documentos oficiales —que databa de 2012— había sido aprovechada en esos diez años por unas 12.600 personas: un 0,08 por ciento de los mayores de 15 años.)
However, it seems that much was said about that twist.
His insistent presence in world debates must be related to the classic fascination for the extreme, for the change of what seemed immutable.
But they were still individual initiatives, involving very few, that did not change those societies.
It is true —seen from now on— that those discussions had not been able to see the point in which they had.
And it is true that, then, the strengths of conservation did not give up.
Next installment:
5. Heartbreak the same Women were freer than ever —in some places.
In others, they remained as submissive as ever, because their cultures dictated it.
Should you respect him?
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