Taboos as Time Goes By

I've been musing over the past couple of days about social taboos, particularly constraints on language. The latter especially affect writers; there used to be words that were labeled "unprintable" and seen on the page only in pornography. Norman Mailer's novel THE NAKED AND THE DEAD subsitutes a similar-sounding nonsense term for a common four-letter word frequently uttered by soldiers. An oft-repeated anecdote claims Dorothy Parker once said to him, "Oh, you're the young man who doesn't know how to spell f--k."

In everyday polite interaction, there are still some taboo conversational topics. We can hold forth at length about the excellent dinner we ate at a restaurant over the weekend. Among relatives or close friends, it's okay to "geeze" about one's bathroom-related physical problems. But we can't remark that we had great sex over the weekend, except to the person we had it with (or possibly in intimate, alcohol-fueled same-gender gatherings). That's never an acceptable topic for general conversation.

Taboos change over the decades, generations, and centuries, of course. Eighteenth-century novelist Laurence Sterne includes what appears to be a perfectly sober, respectable mention of the four-letter word for excrement in his TRISTRAM SHANDY. Radical shifts have occurred within my own lifetime. The "unprintable" F-word for sexual activity and S-word for excrement are now printed and spoken freely with (in my opinion) regrettable frequency. On the other hand, we're well rid of a term that was commonplace, although not considered polite, in my youth and is now so taboo that published works never show it written out, except sometimes in fictional dialogue—the N-word for Black people.

Consider the film of GONE WITH THE WIND. It gives the impression that the director made numerous concessions to be allowed that single "damn" in Rhett Butler's final line of dialogue. In the book, Prissy objects to being sent to look for Rhett at a "ho'house." In the movie, she has to say something like "Miz Belle's place." Earlier, we don't hear Scarlett's whispered question about the woman Rhett compromised; in the novel, it's shown as, "Did she have a baby?" When Rhett and Scarlett have a furious quarrel during her last pregnancy, Clark Gable says, "Maybe you'll have an accident," instead of using the word "miscarriage" as in the book. Most absurdly, when Rhett angrily tells Scarlett in the novel, "Keep your chaste bed," the movie rephrases the line as, "Keep your sanctity." Mentioning chastity is borderline obscene? LOL.

Non-verbal taboos, naturally, change too. In the 19th century, exposed feminine ankles were considered risque. Yet in some tribal societies, women routinely go bare-breasted in public. Film-makers used to be forbidden to show a man and woman in a bed together, leading to the notorious twin-bed arrangements of married couples on old sitcoms. Although I lived through part of that era, it still jars me when I watch old movies and TV shows and witness almost everybody casually smoking EVERYWHERE. And, to cite a custom not grounded in either health considerations or sexual mores, in my childhood a woman wouldn't be dressed correctly if she showed up at church without a hat or shopped at a department store in slacks instead of a dress or skirt.

Robert Heinlein casually drops references to changing social taboos into his novels. The protagonist of twin-paradox interstellar adventure TIME FOR THE STARS returns to Earth after almost a century of near-light-speed travel (still a young man) to be shocked that decent girls and women are no longer required to wear hats in the presence of unmarried males. After thirty years in cryonic sleep, the narrator of THE DOOR INTO SUMMER wakes from suspended animation to find that in the year 2000 a formerly innocent word, "kink," has become an unspeakable obscenity. In some subcultures in the far-future universe of TIME ENOUGH FOR LOVE, nudity is perfectly acceptable at mixed-gender social gatherings.

For a fascinating exploration of why certain apparently irrational taboos and other "bizarre" customs have rational origins and serve pragmatic social purposes, check out COWS, PIGS, WARS, AND WITCHES (1974), by anthropologist Marvin Harris. Also recommended: His follow-up book THE SACRED COW AND THE ABOMINABLE PIG (1985), more tightly focused on food-related taboos and customs.

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

The Omnivore's Dilemma

No, not the book of that name, which was the only reference that popped up on a full page of Google results. I first encountered this term in the section on "Disgust" in HOW THE MIND WORKS, by Steven Pinker, who attributes it to psychologist Paul Rozin. The omnivore's dilemma encapsulates the double-edged nature of our ability to digest a vast variety of different foods. Therefore, human beings can survive in almost any environment on Earth. The negative side of this advantage is that we can't be sure whether a new potential food source is safe to eat until we've tried it.

As Pinker puts it, "Disgust is intuitive microbiology." After a certain age (when they outgrow the "put everything in their mouths" phase), children avoid things we would consider intrinsically disgusting, such as decayed organic matter or body fluids and excretions. Most people will even refuse to put in their mouths harmless items that resemble disgusting objects (e.g., fake vomit). Contact or resemblance equals contagion, an emotional aversion that overrides mere rationality. But what accounts for "disgust" reactions to items that we dismiss as inedible but many other cultures classify as food?

Pinker points out that we accept a very narrow range of animal products as food, even though those we shun are perfectly edible. Most Americans confine their animal diets to chickens, pigs, cattle, sheep, and selected types of fish and other seafood. From the mammals we raise for food, many of us eat only certain parts of their bodies and avoid the rest (e.g., organ meats, feet, tails, etc.). Pinker discusses how we learn these dietary prejudices as a byproduct of the omnivore's dilemma. In infancy and early toddler-hood, the "put everything in their mouths" stage, children have to eat what their parents offer them. When the child gets mobile enough to forage for himself or herself (in a hunter-gatherer society), the "picky" stage sets in. (It's probably not a coincidence that the food-finicky phase coincides with the drop in appetite when the rapid growth spurt of early life slows down.) Now the child regards new foods with suspicion. The items fed by the parents during the early months are accepted as edible. All other potential foods are, by definition according to the child's world-view, repulsive. Whatever isn't explicitly permitted is forbidden and therefore disgusting. As a practical corollary of this process, it seems parents should try to introduce their toddlers to as many different foods as possible during the sensitive learning period.

I was reminded of this section in HOW THE MIND WORKS (a fascinating, highly readable book—check it out) by Facebook videos of our seven-month-old grandson trying his first solid foods. He likes avocado. Until recently, he liked applesauce. Last week, he rejected it; maybe that's just a temporary fluke. Babies, like human beings in general, crave sweet tastes, because in a state of nature our ancestors depended on sweetness to tell them when fruit was edible. This natural attraction to sugar inspires infant-care experts to advise starting babies on less sweet foods (e.g., vegetables) first, rather than letting them get fixated on sugary things such as fruit right off the bat.

Pinker, by the way, says that not only are most parts and products of animals considered disgusting (see above), but also most or all disgusting things come from animals. Vegetables may be rejected because they taste bitter, but they're not viewed as disgusting. I reacted to that statement with, "Speak for yourself, Dr. Pinker." As a child, I was disgusted—i.e, nauseated—by several kinds of vegetables because they were served in a cooked-to-mush condition. The combination of change in taste from overcooking and the yucky texture made my stomach revolt. I believe, by the way, that the cliche of children hating vegetables arises from the crimes perpetrated on perfectly harmless plants by 1950s cooking styles and the prevalence of over-processed canned veggies in the American diet of that period.

One especially interesting issue: What about bugs? Why don't many cultures—ours included—eat insects and similar arthropods (e.g., spiders)? We often pay high prices for the privilege of consuming certain other arthropods, such as lobsters. And we happily eat one kind of insect secretion (honey). Yet we abhor the termites and grubs that form an important part of our ape relatives' diets. The easy answer in American culture is that bugs aren't included among the "permitted" items we're fed in childhood. But why aren't we?

An article from SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN attempting to answer that question:

What's Stopping Us from Eating Insects?

And one from the anthropology website "Sapiens":

Why Don't More Humans Eat Bugs?

Neither of these articles exactly repeats Pinker's hypothesis, which makes a lot of sense to me, although the second essay touches upon it: Gathering enough insects or other small arthropods to provide sufficient protein isn't a very efficient process. It takes a lot of time and energy. Therefore, people incorporated bugs into their diets only if those creatures were abundant (in the tropics, for instance) and nothing better was readily available. Where a society could obtain plenty of protein from more efficient sources, such as raising herd animals, they didn't bother to eat bugs. And since whatever isn't permitted during the early learning period is by definition forbidden, bugs are disgusting to most of us. This cultural phenomenon drives the humorous appeal of the popular children's novel HOW TO EAT FRIED WORMS, since at a certain age many kids develop a sort of queasy fascination with yucky things.

One lesson for future interplanetary explorers might be that colonists should conscientiously expose their children from infancy to all sorts of safe native foods in extraterrestrial environments, even if the parents find those items repugnant.

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Interrogating Cultural Taboos

Recently I read a news item about a crusade to ban slaughtering horses in the United States for human consumption. My first reaction was, "Huh? Who in this country eats horsemeat?" It turns out that some slaughterhouses in North America supply horsemeat for foreign markets. Eating horses, not to mention dogs or guinea pigs (the latter were originally domesticated as meat animals), strikes us as repugnant. As Steven Pinker mentions in HOW THE MIND WORKS, most of us eat flesh from only a few animals and, from that small group, only certain parts of the creature's body. Cultural squeamishness prevents us from taking advantage of a wide variety of perfectly nourishing protein sources. Not that I'm complaining; I share that squeamishness. (I once tried in good faith to eat a soft-shelled crab. I had to stop after one bite, since the texture struck me as not unlike a giant insect.) Pinker has a valid point, though.

Americans embrace and enshrine in law some few cultural taboos that have no readily identifiable secular, civic justification. A couple of examples immediately come to mind. Not that I personally endorse these practices—I simply propose that banning them doesn't necessarily have a rational basis.

Speaking of eating animals, what about animal sacrifice? To most Americans, the phrase conjures images of dark, savage rites. Until the destruction of the Jerusalem temple in A.D. 70, however, animal sacrifice played a central role in virtually all the world's religions. Since the meat of sacrificial animals is eaten, the practice effectively amounts to a different, more intentional and reverent way of preparing animals for food. If performed with as little pain as possible, why should it be illegal? Animals killed that way probably suffer less trauma than those herded into a slaughterhouse.

Changes in sexual mores and marriage laws often evoke cries of alarm from some people that we're sliding down the slippery slope to all kinds of dire outcomes, including legalized polygamy. But polygamy was also a widespread custom through most of Earth's history and remains legal in many countries today. Why shouldn't it be?—among consenting adults, needless to say. The only valid SECULAR reason I can think of to ban that marriage structure is fiscal. Social Security and health insurance for additional spouses would have to be funded. That problem doesn't seem insurmountable, though. Such programs cover multiple children. With minor adjustments, they could cover multiple spouses (for increased premium payments, maybe.)

When we meet extraterrestrial aliens, we'll probably encounter customs that seem as appalling to us as, maybe even more than, the practices of "primitive" cultures on Earth appeared to European explorers. For example: Most of us consider it an ethical obligation to use heroic measures to save the lives of premature babies. (The word "heroic" itself reveals our feelings about this issue.) In a hunter-gatherer society, a newborn infant too small or sickly to survive (given that culture's level of medical technology) would be left in the forest to die quickly rather than linger for days or weeks and then die anyway. A mother who refused to "expose" such a newborn wouldn't be praised for her devotion; she would be censured for subjecting the clan to a futile burden.

In Robert Heinlein's STRANGER IN A STRANGE LAND, Mike (the human castaway brought up by Martians) tells his new friends on Earth that in Martian society competition for fitness to survive occurs at the beginning of life, not in adulthood. Martian "children" past the hatchling stage are relegated to the wilderness to live or die on their own. In this novel, also, characters propose a favorable view of group marriage and ritual cannibalism. In THE DARK LIGHT YEARS by Brian Aldiss, Terrans discover aliens that make nests of their own dung. This species is intelligent, but the Earth scientists don't know that. They provide the creatures with clean, sterile environments in a well-meaning attempt to improve their health and living conditions. The aliens sicken, because their symbiotic relationship with the lower animals that live on their droppings is essential to their well-being.

Imagine meeting intelligent ETs who devour their spouses after mating, like praying mantises and black widow spiders. There's a major challenge for a romance writer! Or a civilized species in which babies eat their way out of the mother's body, like some Earth spiders. In that culture, a female who manages to survive the birth of her offspring would be an object of scandal. Octavia Butler's "Bloodchild" features human-size, centipede-like sapients who've made a deal with Terran colonists: In exchange for being granted refuge on this planet, some human hosts allow eggs to be laid in their bodies. If all goes well, the larvae get removed immediately upon hatching, and the host (usually a young man) survives unharmed. Sometimes, though, things don't go so well. . . .

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt