Speaking about Sex, Politics and Religion
I recently engaged in an online dialogue on, sex, politics and religion. The person who started the post made the comment that we should NEVER talk about these topics.
Now I understand where the writer was coming from;talking about sex, politics and religion can break rapport, create conflict and ruin the career of the unwary but I have a different perspective. As humans, sex, politics and religion play a significant part of our lives and the biases and meanings we bring to these topics will significantly affect our behaviour; so to not talk about them can be equally dangerous.
Let’s start by considering why talking about sex, religion and politics is like juggling with live ammunition or walking the tight rope without a safety net.
Animals have sex to provide offspring, some are monogamous some are not; and some masturbate or engage in homosexual behaviour. Humans unlike animals have the cognitive power to make meanings and therefore judgements about the act of sex. Humans have the ability to codify behaviour and even communicate these judgements through language. We are social animals and have survived by moral codes communicated by our leaders (politicians), the first recorded being The Code of Hammurabi,King of Babylon about 2250 B.C although the Egyptians probably had an earlier code. The Code of Hammurabi contain 282 sections that set forth business, family, social, and political rules. A universally agreed moral code should remove the need for discussion but not everyone does agree. A device to make argument impossible is to suggest that your rules come from an omnipotent and omniscient deity and so therefore who are you, a mere mortal to challenge this?
Now my last sentence was probably inflammatory to millions of people who believe that their moral code is divinely inspired. This is why talking about how to behave is fraught with danger because instead of just having a different view on how we should behave we can run foul of the ruling party or even the big G.
If we were to stop all talk of sex, politics and religion we would be effectively outlawing comedy and fun. Comedy and fun allow us step back from our ‘frames of mind’ and consider alternative views. I don’t know if Galileo had a sense of humour but he ran foul of religion when he suggested that that the earth rotates around the sun instead of the other way around. I seriously doubt the Roman Inquisition had much of a sense of humour when they held his feet to the fire to silence him.
Mahatma Gandhi ran foul of politics when he spoke up against the moral authority of the British Empire. His speaking up was successful in removing the occupiers but his pluralism was not sufficient to prevent the separation of the Indian sub-continent along religious lines.
My point is that speaking about sex, religion and politics is called for when we need to shift points of view, especially when there is injustice. The challenge will always be that to have an effective discussion we need to agree on points of reference. When discussing the 3 ‘taboo’ topics it is often not possible to agree on the reference and so we have to ‘frame’ our discussions delicately, for the moment someone feels judged or take something personally they are likely to respond defensively or aggressively.
I speak on leadership and specifically Self-Leadership and in both these disciplines it is important to know what we believe and why we believe it. It is also necessary to be able to deal with paradox and consider multiple perspectives. To this end I make it my business to be knowledgeable of other people’s beliefs and to respect them without needing to agree with them. So by all means speak about sex, politics and religion but do your homework first!
