Has moralizing about food and sex been reversed?

Has moralizing about food and sex been reversed?

http://www.hoover.org/publications/policyreview/38245724.html

As a food lover and part-time sex educator, I thought this was an interesting piece. I admit to only giving it a quick read and will read more carefully later, but basically the author suggests that stricter moral codes about food choices are overtaking strict moral codes about sex.

In the piece, she describes two imaginary figures – Betty, a housewife of 30 living in 1958 and her granddaughter Jennifer, also 30, living today. After describing their lives and attitudes towards food and sex in their respective eras, she notes:

"Thus far, what the imaginary examples of Betty and Jennifer have established is this: Their personal moral relationships toward food and toward sex are just about perfectly reversed. Betty does care about nutrition and food, but it doesn’t occur to her to extend her opinions to a moral judgment — i.e., to believe that other people ought to do as she does in the matter of food, and that they are wrong if they don’t. In fact, she thinks such an extension would be wrong in a different way; it would be impolite, needlessly judgmental, simply not done. Jennifer, similarly, does care to some limited degree about what other people do about sex; but it seldom occurs to her to extend her opinions to a moral judgment. In fact, she thinks such an extension would be wrong in a different way — because it would be impolite, needlessly judgmental, simply not done.
On the other hand, Jennifer is genuinely certain that her opinions about food are not only nutritionally correct, but also, in some deep, meaningful sense, morally correct — i.e., she feels that others ought to do something like what she does. And Betty, on the other hand, feels exactly the same way about what she calls sexual morality."

I don’t really buy the author's conclusion, though: that people are uncomfortable with what the sexual revolution has wrought and don’t think they can do anything about it, so they now turn to devising stricter moral standards about what they eat.

I'd be interested in others' thoughts.

Very interesting article

I dont cast moral judgements on either.

I dont think my lifestyle is right and others lifestyle choices are wrong, mine just works for me. I also dont think others should follow my lifestyle(they need to find their own comfort zone).

I eat/drink what tastes good with no second thoughts( be it red meat, dairy, pork, tequila, non organic foods, non sustanable foods, etc.) I also do what feels good with the same mindset. What other people do behind closed doors is none of my business, or concern.

I dont promote any agenda, or try to change the world, I just try to be happy, and support my family.

I love both, preferably at the same time.

It reminds me of a SciFi story that I just can't place but I'm sure someone will remind me. Some culture, either another planet or a future Earth, where sex is something done in public, but eating is considered dirty and never done outside the privacy of your home.

NAV MAN wrote:I love both, preferably at the same time.

"I find the pastrami to be the most sensual of all the salted cured meats."

It reminds me of a SciFi story that I just can't place but I'm sure someone will remind me. Some culture, either another planet or a future Earth, where sex is something done in public, but eating is considered dirty and never done outside the privacy of your home.

Are you confusing this article with Jonathan Swift's "A Modest Proposal"?

"I find the pastrami to be the most sensual of all the salted cured meats."

I was just about to say the same thing.

I think there is a natural tendency among many people, or society, to feel the need to lord it over others on a moralistic basis over something. And there's a pretty natural convergence right now between people who feel that a puritanical impulse about sex is passe or declasse, and people who have strong ideas about what's proper dietarily, nutritionally, environmentally. So it's no surprise to me that the puritanical impulse has to some degree found that outlet.

Basically, we're a society that comes home, finds our spouse in bed with the milkman and the two of them smoking after the act, and is shocked by smoking in the house!

Mike G wrote:Basically, we're a society that comes home, finds our spouse in bed with the milkman and the two of them smoking after the act, and is shocked by smoking in the house!

Well, she'd need a time machine in order to sleep with a milkman.

There was a George Will column a few weeks ago that pointed to this article, and I'm regularly dismayed with myself for not pursuing more scholarly research on this subject that's been heavily on my mind for the last several years.

It's been kicked around a few different ways here, directly and obliquely--a fairly recent discussion on C.S. Lewis, an old post by Mike G when the movie Kinsey came out.

I think there are some faults Eberstadt makes in stretching her analogy, and I find the Betty/Jennifer conceit a bit confusing and not entirely persuasive.

I do think there is really something to what strikes me as the underlying point, though (or maybe the tangential way this relates to my own thoughts on the subject): namely that (very generally speaking) it is more politically correct to criticize food choices than sexual choices. "Politically correct" probably isn't the best choice of words here, I can't think of something better off-hand.

I'm still working through this, but I guess (and I think this differs from the article) I don't think we've necessarily become more puritanical about food and less about sex. To the contrary, I think the hedonism of the sexual revolution either paved the way for or happened alongside our current food-centered hedonism. Don't know if these are both similar expressions of a cultural aesthetic, or if there is any cause-effect relationship.

By the same token, I think "sex-positive" educators and food moralists both are interested in (and understand the value) of expressing these most basic human appetites in an (in some sense of the word) "appropriate" manner.

The difference is that contemporary sexual moralizing is focused more on what you can do or should be able to do (presumably as a counter to all that was forbidden in the recent past); whereas contemporary food moralizing is focused more on what you should not do (presumably as a counter to an abundance unavailable in the recent past).

To get a little less philosophical, I think it's a lot more socially acceptable to call someone a pig than a slut.

j r wrote:It reminds me of a SciFi story that I just can't place but I'm sure someone will remind me. Some culture, either another planet or a future Earth, where sex is something done in public, but eating is considered dirty and never done outside the privacy of your home.

Demolition Man. Its a movie staring Sandra Bullock and Dennis Leary.

NAV MAN wrote:

j r wrote:It reminds me of a SciFi story that I just can't place but I'm sure someone will remind me. Some culture, either another planet or a future Earth, where sex is something done in public, but eating is considered dirty and never done outside the privacy of your home.

Demolition Man. Its a movie staring Sandra Bullock and Dennis Leary.

It can't be Demolition Man, because, as Sandra Bullock explains, in San Angeles "all restaurants are Taco Bell", because they won the Franchise Wars

aschie30 wrote:Well, she'd need a time machine in order to sleep with a milkman.

Not Really. Joe Oberweiss wants to be your milkman

Well, she'd need a time machine in order to sleep with a milkman.

As Steve points out, not technically true, but I was amusing myself with the anachronism nonetheless.

And notice that I didn't specify the gender of the errant spouse.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=poUN_8u3hSo

Mike G wrote:

...As Steve points out, not technically true, but I was amusing myself with the anachronism nonetheless....

Proof that the article is onto something. It used to be that the way one "amused" oneself was a private matter.

my thought is government should make its way out of private property; feel free to prostelyze from whatever perspective but once a governing body is involved so is coercion

The CS Lewis quote in the article was most interesting to me: I mean, his implied revulsion aside, it pretty much describes what we do here.

I agree with Hellodali that the conclusion seems to be a reach, though I agree generally with the premise.

I think, though, it has more to do with a very human response to the unknown: pre-sexual revolution, when we didn't have much control over fertility and sexually transmitted diseases, it was easier to address these issues with a generalized social stigma and strict moral codes about everything sexual than it was to tease out all the individual issues and address each one. We do seem to have gone down a similar path as regards consumption: (though it shows up in food most, I don't think it's limited to food) it's a very complicated issue, and we don't really know the consequences of our actions, so we're back to generalized social stigmae and moral codes - we haven't quite gone where the Victorians did, but we might well be headed in that direction.

Mhays wrote:The CS Lewis quote in the article was most interesting to me: I mean, his implied revulsion aside, it pretty much describes what we do here.

That (intriguing) quote, for the link-averse:

"C.S. Lewis once compared the two desires as follows, to make the point that something about sex had gotten incommensurate in his own time: “There is nothing to be ashamed of in enjoying your food: there would be everything to be ashamed of if half the world made food the main interest of their lives and spent their time looking at pictures of food and dribbling and smacking their lips.” He was making a point in the genre of reductio ad absurdum."

On the other hand, as my signature line suggests, Lewis also thought that man's obsession with food had a protective effect. The quote in this article seems to contradict that, but it inspires further research.

Mhays wrote:The CS Lewis quote in the article was most interesting to me: I mean, his implied revulsion aside, it pretty much describes what we do here.

Yeah, I couldn't remember if that quote had been pulled in the earlier C.S. Lewis discussion. I don't think he implied revulsion, simply absurdity. I think he has a point.

Hedonist here.

The paper is certainly thought-provoking. My main problem with it is that Eberstadt's examples of Jennifer and Betty are so heavily gendered. The history of ethics, even from the historical sources the author cites, is deeply rooted in notions of gender--Norbert Elias' Civilizing Process, which I was prompted to revisit after reading Eberstadt's essay, is rich with examples. I wonder how Eberstadt would have made the same arguments using men or different genders.

As for the overarching argument of the paper, I do believe in historical cycles, but I don't buy the notion of the reversal in moralizing. "Reversal" is too dramatic. Granted, I was born after the sexual revolution and still feel our culture is extremely uptight and moralizing about sex. This moralizing may seem diminished because media has helped us become more comfortable talking about a lot of topics that were once taboo, but we still, for the most part, don't talk frankly about sex and certainly not without shame and/or implicit or explicit condemnation.

I do think that there is much more moralizing about food today than there was when I was a kid, much more so in the US, where I think there's a lot more guilt and negative feelings around food than in other cultures to which I've been exposed in any sustained way. Another thing I found curious about the essay is that Eberstadt doesn't really address class. I see a strong tie between the increased moralizing about food and the increased gap between rich and poor (and related gaps in access to kinds of food). To take a moral high ground with food, one requires resources that are not necessarily needed to make comparably lofty proclamations about sex.

happy_stomach,

I think I'm with you on everything you wrote except this:

happy_stomach wrote:I do think that there is much more moralizing about food today than there was when I was a kid, much more so in the US, where I think there's a lot more guilt and negative feelings around food than in other cultures to which I've been exposed in any sustained way.

Unless you think religion and morality are two completely unrelated ideas, billions of people across the globe have been eating by a set of morality-based rules that have been drilled into their heads thousands of years. Maybe the idea is so rooted in those cultures that we don't associate it with the same guilt and negative feelings we do here. Maybe it's because ours is a culture of so much religious diversity that it seems that we debate these things more here, but it seems clear to me that morality plays a bigger part in food choice elsewhere than it does in the United States. That this paper treats food morality as some kind of modern phenomenon ignores the phenomena of kosher, vegetarian, and other deeply-morality-based food obsessions that have been around forever.

Kennyz wrote:happy_stomach,

I think I'm with you on everything you wrote except this:

happy_stomach wrote:I do think that there is much more moralizing about food today than there was when I was a kid, much more so in the US, where I think there's a lot more guilt and negative feelings around food than in other cultures to which I've been exposed in any sustained way.

Unless you think religion and morality are two completely unrelated ideas, billions of people across the globe have been eating by a set of morality-based rules that have been drilled into their heads thousands of years. Maybe the idea is so rooted in those cultures that we don't associate it with the same guilt and negative feelings we do here. Maybe it's because ours is a culture of so much religious diversity that it seems that we debate these things more here, but it seems clear to me that morality plays a bigger part in food choice elsewhere than it does in the United States. That this paper treats food morality as some kind of modern phenomenon ignores the phenomena of kosher, vegetarian, and other deeply-morality-based food obsessions that have been around forever.

Point taken. For the most part, I don't think morality can be separated from religion (which is just to say that I believe that someone can be guided by morals without religion). I think it seems to me that there is more moralizing about food in the US compared to say, France or even Canada, precisely because of the strong notion (if not reality) in this country of the separation of church and state. I haven't fully thought through why this might be, but moralizing about food is easier for me to tolerate when there's a religious basis that's acknowledged explicitly. I agree that in (some) other countries food and religion are inextricably linked in a way that isn't the case here. However, it's the kind of vague, secular --again, deeply rooted in socio-economic factors--moralizing about food in the US that really annoys me.

But I would also add that there is a class difference when it comes to sex. Wealthy people can better protect themselves from the potential negative consequences of sexual activity through better education, health insurance, and more expensive, more effective contraceptives. This is no different than how the wealthy protect themselves from heart disease and other food and nutrition-related diseases through education, better access to higher quality food, and better healthcare.

I agree that it is much easier to pronounce judgements on someone else's personal habits when you have both a better understanding of how your behavior might affect you (or society as a whole) and when resources to mitigate harm that might result from your behavior are readily available. OTOH, Moralizing did serve a function, however poorly, unfairly, and uncomfortably it did so: societal disapproval is one of the most effective ways to change behavior - e.g.: the anti-smoking campaign of the last ten years. I wish we could find a less destructive tool.

Mhays wrote:OTOH, Moralizing did serve a function, however poorly, unfairly, and uncomfortably it did so: societal disapproval is one of the most effective ways to change behavior - e.g.: the anti-smoking campaign of the last ten years. I wish we could find a less destructive tool.

I find it interesting to see such a negative take on social mores as a means of promoting healthy behavior.

Regarding religious dietary restrictions vis-a-vis modern day food sermonizing, I think there may be a pretty key difference in general vs. specific application. As a Catholic, I have no expectation that non-Catholics ought to abstain from meat on Fridays during Lent or fast on required days. I've never known those who keep kosher to admonish non-Jews for eating pork. I'm not sure if this is a function of contemporary religious tolerance or nutrition science (substituting a secular basis for food rules for religious), but they seem of a somewhat different order. Though certainly related.

On the flip side, it seems rare that people's views on what is acceptable sexual behavior are limited to those who share their religion.

I don't know, Aaron - cigarettes are a mild example of using social stigma to change behavior that went pretty well - after all, smoking is not nearly as complex a subject as eating or sex.

An example of misuse: I went to an extremely conservative Catholic high school; I watched a number of my friends disappear during junior and senior year (this happened to at least 10 girls in a class of 100.) At that time, the school suspended you for the duration of your pregancy, expelled you if you decided to parent your baby yourself, and if your pregancy caused you to miss enough school to cause you to fail, you failed. (So far as I know, no consequences were offered to the fathers of these babies at the corresponding boys' school.) Although this rule was well-known to all from the time we were freshmen, it had no effect on decreasing pregnancy (that rate is about the same as the national average for the time) - but it caused huge distress to these young women and their families.

While an extreme example, it mirrored a social landscape I find repugnant, and have no desire to return to, in regards to either sex or food.

Mhays wrote:
I agree that it is much easier to pronounce judgements on someone else's personal habits when you have both a better understanding of how your behavior might affect you (or society as a whole) and when resources to mitigate harm that might result from your behavior are readily available. OTOH, Moralizing did serve a function, however poorly, unfairly, and uncomfortably it did so: societal disapproval is one of the most effective ways to change behavior - e.g.: the anti-smoking campaign of the last ten years. I wish we could find a less destructive tool.

this is just a rant, not directed at you or anyone else in here:

i'm sorry but the anti-smoking campaign is bulls--t! if the people frequenting the establishment are all in agreement there should be no reason to ban a legal substance from the building. full disclosure: if you don't like it, there are other places to go. not so with this ban, a smoker has no where to go, they just stay home. so true with bowling allies and dive bars that were once havens for smokers. oh, well those places were scumy anyway?! not to the people who got a little enjoyment from them; all that has happened is increased animosity. what also gets me is that people who never step foot inside a casino, save for once every three or so years, decided that the ban should extend to them also. our casinos double suck now; they sucked before with crappy odds most of the time and now they double suck and the revenue drop shows it.

Yeah, that's pretty bad, no doubt. Institutions and individuals certainly have the capacity for expressing societal values in destructive ways, but I guess I tend to put that more on human error than devalue the idea of societal mores.

To resume a food-orientation, while I think the banning of transfats by a municipal government is ridiculous public policy and likely to have destructive, unintended consequences, I think it's also reflective of growing societal concern about the influence of industrial strength agriculture on our food supply, born out of the same ethos that leads many of us here to eat fresh, non-processed foods, local or otherwise. I think it's good for us as a society to see virtue in eating "real" food, despite the sometimes ridiculous actions that leads to. I like the idea of societal pressure to eat in-season tomatoes.

Aaron Deacon wrote:Regarding religious dietary restrictions vis-a-vis modern day food sermonizing, I think there may be a pretty key difference in general vs. specific application. As a Catholic, I have no expectation that non-Catholics ought to abstain from meat on Fridays during Lent or fast on required days. I've never known those who keep kosher to admonish non-Jews for eating pork. I'm not sure if this is a function of contemporary religious tolerance or nutrition science (substituting a secular basis for food rules for religious), but they seem of a somewhat different order. Though certainly related.

Maybe I just don't understand what you mean by "modern day food sermonizing". Where is this taking place? Sure, there are a couple of books touting veganism, but really it's just vegans that read them. To me, this strawman notion about "sermonizing" is the same thing that's used in misguided rants against "locavores" - it simply doesn't exist to any great extent. Sure, people seem to be talking more about what they eat, and the discussion may have inched a little more toward the forefront. But sermonizing? Where, besides on the very fringes of society, is that taking place?

Contrast that with the fact that our country recently impeached a president for backroom activity with an intern, forced a senator out of office because of rumored homosexual activity, ousted a governor who slept with a prostitute, and pondered incessantly about how the pregnancy of a vice presidential candidate's daughter might affect her campaign. How can anyone seriously make the claim that moralizing about food has taken over moralizing about sex?

Kennyz wrote: But sermonizing? Where, besides on the very fringes of society, is that taking place?

I dont know if I agree 100%,

I dont know of any meat eaters whose life goal is trying to convince vegetarians/vegans that they should eat meat. On the other hand I have read many comments, and have personally been admonished by, and had vegetarians/vegans try to convince me that my choice to eat meat is somehow wrong & their lifestlye choice is somehow right. I guess these folks could be the militant, fringe, but I dont know.