Why I Cannot Believe in a Free-Love Equestria · 9:49pm Feb 11th, 2014
I've noticed that there's a whole group of fanfic writers who depict Equestrian sexual mores as an "Everypony Has Lots of Sex" setting, or in other words that extreme sexual promiscuity is considered normal or at least not in any way objectionable by most Equestrians. Some of this work is very funny, and some of it very good -- I particularly recommend the (very NSFW) Stories from the Front, which has some excellent art and imaginative world-building in this regard.
The problem is that I can't believe in it. Not even a little bit. Here's the reason why.
In the show, it is repeatedly emphasized that the Equestrians are incredibly sentimental about romantic matters, to the point that even their nonsexual friendships take on a strong romantic tone. They invest tremendous positive emotional affect in their friends and family. The times they've depicted actual romantic love, it's been shown as very strong -- both when fulfilled and when denied. There are powerful emotions at work here.
Now, most actual societies aren't like this. Most societies are actually by our standards rather callous and unsentimental -- though often cruel and possessive -- in sexual matters. The reason why we see this aspect of Equestria as "normal" and even "nostalgiac" is that the modern West, and even more so the modern West of around 1800-1900, was very much like this. Compare with, say, 19th century China or the modern Mideast. Those cultures are closer to the average ones, as far as humanity is concerned.
The average human culture's approach to sex works like this. Couples are matched by their families and marry as an alliance between said families. Husbands and wives try to work together as best as possible, so it's bad if they actively hate one another, but love is hardly necessary, either before or during marriage. Husbands go out and work or fight; wives maintain the home and pop out and care for babies, so that there's a next generation. Both husbands and wives seek romantic consolation outside marriage, and as long as they're discreet about it, in most cultures it's no biggie, especially where husbands are concerned because only women get pregnant. In very patriachial cultures, such as Muslim ones, men can beat or kill their wives with near-impunity; in other ones, the abuse in a failing marriage is more mutual.
Does this sound terrible to you? It probably would to most Equestrians as well, because they share our romantic sentimentality. Our culture -- and theirs -- are similar in that we consider sexual relations in a romantic and sentimental fashion.
This is not, by the way, because they are a matriarchy. It's quite easy to imagine terribly ruthless and unsentimental matriarchies -- think E. E. "Doc" Smith's Lyranians from the Lensman series, who have a society that would appall any right-thinking Equestrian whether from the canon version or one of the Eternal Free Love ones. (No love, some friendship between females, and males are bestial dwarf slaves who exist purely for procreation and are killed when their services are no logner required).
It is because the Equestrians are a liberal society, in the sense that they consider individual life and liberty to be among the greatest of goods, and consider themselves to be free ponies with rights under law. (This is of course because Celestia doesn't want to rule as a tyrant, but the fact that it came as a gift from her doesn't change the reality of the situation). Since they see each other as free and valued ponies, they feel strong positive emotions toward one another in general.
Sex is (hopefully) an intensely pleasurable experience. It is absolutely normal to develop strong positive affect toward any sexual partner one does not actually hate or despise. Note the strong efforts made by misogynistic cultures such as those of Iran or Saudi Arabia to make men hate and despise women, and prevent women from enjoying sex, thus making them hate and resent men, precisely to block this emotional tendency. The Equestrian equivalent would probably be misandrist, and its aims would be to prevent mares from coming to love their stallion sexual partners -- but Equestria is most definitely itself not like this at all.
Around 1800 was when it first became generally accepted that friendship should be the foundation of love and love the foundation of marriage. There was a bold social revolutionary -- well, actually she was in-person kind of timid save to those she trusted -- associated with this cultural change as expressed in fiction. She was one of the founders of a genre which expressed this sentiment. The name of this bold social revolutionary was Jane Austen, and the genre she founded is now called the "romance novel."
One would have to look at things from the eyes of an 18th-century, or even better a 17th-century traditionalist, to grasp just how radical a notion reared its head in the 18th century. Friendship the foundation of love implies a fundamental equality between the sexes. (If Lizzy can challenge Darcy's beliefs, then Lizzy and Darcy are treating one another as equals). What happens to the Biblical claims of male superiority, then? Love the foundation of marriage implies that it is the couple, rather than their families, who decide to make a marriage (with all that implies in terms of the possibilities of failed courtships and resultant scandals). Furthermore, it can result in a situation where husbands and wives love and have loyalty to each other primarily, rather than to their extended families or political or religious institutions. This is the birth of the modern, "atomistic" society -- though it's more like small molecules as opposed to large long-chain ones, if we want to extend the analogy.
It wasn't until the turn of the 20th century (c. 1900) with the challenge of Marxism to liberalism and Freudianism to traditional morality, that this attitude started to change. Specifically, progressive writers such as Wells in Britain and Dreiser in America began to argue that sexual inhibitions were holding people back from a fuller expression of their own capacity for life and love and resulting in serious emotional repression, often vented in very dangerous and violent ways -- a good example of this theory (and its potential disastrous consequences, though Dreiser thought he was exposing the evils of sexual repression) is demonstred in Dreiser's An American Tragedy, which I review here.
When this notion had trickled down from the intellectual elites to the general public, the result was the Sexual Revolution, particularly notable in the 1920's and 1960's-1970's, though the actual large scale shifts in public opinion took decades more: for instance it was the Greatest Generation of the 1940's who actually put into practice Jazz Age morals on a large scale, and the Slackers of the 1990's who did the same for 1960's Free Love theories.
The problem -- and here is where I get back to Equestria -- is that Free Love doesn't go well with a strongly romantic and sentimental view of sexuality.
Why is this? Well, from a trivial theoretical point of view, if sex is something to share with casual acquaintances, it's rather difficult for the same person (human or pony) to see it as something to invest with great emotional and sentimental significance. Friendship may still be sentimentalized, but "sex" no longer has anything at all to do with "love." The two may coincide, when one has sex with a good friend, but the emotional focus will be on the friendship. "Love" is something one has for very good friends, or for family, not for sexual partners as a default assumption.
There are dangerous practical consequences of such an attitude. The first is that sex makes babies, and babies need caring for. Pony foals are a bit more precocial than Human infants, but they can't really look out for themselves, not until they're at least toward adolescence. That means that they need parents who are willing to stick together to support those children. This, in turn, means that there has to be some sort of stable emotional and familial bonds between those parents. The term for such a bond is "marriage."
And we see in canon that they get married and that these marriages are friendly and companionate -- the husband and wife love each other and their children, investing strong sentiment in these relationships. They get worried when these bonds seem threatened. What's more, they conduct courtships which seem aimed at eventual marriage.
This gets to the second dangerous practical consequence of viewing free love as the norm. What happens when those free-spirited ponies who are so amusing in carefully-contrived comic situations collide with Ponies who are seriously looking for lifetime mates (or at least strong sexual friendships) or (even worse) with those who are in meaningful romantic relationships which may be temporarily threatened by quarrels or simple separation due to circumstances?
We know what happens in human cultures when this occurs. The most obvious consequence is murder and other violent crimes of passions. The Ponies would be less likely to do this, simply because they are a less violent species than ours. But the less violent consequences -- broken marriages and courtships, jealousy, resentment, and hatred -- the Ponies are also in canon quite capable of such emotions. When social Reality Ensues, it's not quite so harmlessly erotic-comic.
Someone like Storm Front or (the Winningverse version of) Cloud Kicker would, logically, be leaving a trail of hatred and resentment -- in fact, of enemies -- behind her, along with all the harmless mutual sexual satisfaction. This doesn't mean that their behavior wouldn't be possible, it doesn't even mean that they might not delude themselves that this was not the case. It's just that it would be happening. It's just that the emotional consequences to others are mostly unavoidable
Remember, regardless of how ethical an Ethical Slut they try to be, they don't have perfect information about their partners. Some will see intense emotional involvement in what they saw as just fun. Some will lie to them about being in romantic relationships. Some will be just about to enter or consider leaving existing relationships which might have worked out if not subject to interference. Love is a strong emotion, and when you play around with it, it can unleash some very strong reactions.
If the show remained totally silent on romantic / sexual matters, I could buy the idea that it's just editing out lots and lots of constant, casual and public sexuality, and that Equestrian culture is actually far more licentious and libertine than any human one. The problem is that it shows just enough of love and sexuality to make it abundantly clear that sex in Equestria produces strong emotional ties, and hence that all the reasons why random sex doesn't work so well in our world would make it work poorly in Equestria as well.
Now, I want to emphasize what I am not saying here:
(1) - I am not saying that the Equestrians are absolutely chaste in or out of marriage. They almost certainly have pre-marital sex, extra-marital sex, broken marriages and failed courtships which included sex. At least some Equestrians are probably willing to have sex in contexts where marriage isn't even wanted by either or both parties. All these things were true of late 19th and early 20th century Western romantic culture, at least as it was actually-practiced. (And some worse things were true of them, some being sins which I do not think are common in Equestria, specifically widespread rape and sexual slavery).
(2) - I am not saying that all the Equestrians believe that sex must be emotionally-significant. There can be subcultures which do practice Free Love (or something of the sort) without creating dissonance with the sentimentalism that we see on-screen. There were groups and subcultures in Victorian and early 20th century America and Britain which did this. They were seen as irresponsible, dissipated or even evil by the wider society, but they existed. They are most likely to consist of young Ponies not yet very serious about their lives, or older ones who are sufficiently misfit that they cannot form long-term emotional bonds.
(3) - I am not saying that the Equestrians consider sex evil. Indeed, to adopt a romantic/sentimental view of sexuality one must first consider it to be good! (That was one of the reasons the 18th-century concept of friendship in marriage was revolutionary -- it turned sex from a base necessity into an affirmation of love between equals). I am saying that the Equestrians do sometimes consider sex under particular circumstances to be a very bad idea -- but then, that's true of anypony who is living in what they perceive to be a real world rather than someone else's sexual fantasy!
(4) - Finally, I most definitely am not saying that the Equestrians reject homosexuality, lesbianism, and polyamory to the extent that the late 19th-century / early 20th-century West did. The logical implication of an idealization of Love and Friendship is to idealize it and celebrate its existence in all forms. The main Equestrian problem with homosexuality / lesbianism would be its infertility; with polyamory the responsibilities involved in truly loving more than one pony. This does not mean, however, that I assume that all or even a majority of Equestrians are gay or polyamorous -- homosexuality in particular would still be a small minority orientation (though lesbianism might not be if we assume a strong sexual skew towards live female births over male ones, and in that case polygyny would also probably be fairly common as well).
In short, I consider Equestria to be about as prudish in terms of sexual promiscuity as (say) early 20th century America (which was not that prudish at all in practice by world standards, though it imagined itself to be so), though probably much less prudish in terms of its attitude toward minority sexual orientations. I also suspect that the Equestrians are less hypocritical about it than were Americans of 75-100 years ago -- they're probably ok with pre-marital cohabitation, for example (plenty of which went on in America c. 1914, by the way -- the couple would just pretend to be married).
I hope I get some responses on this. :
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That means that they need parents who are willing to stick together to support those children.
We see an awful lot of (apparent) single mothers among the background ponies, and foals being raised by 'sisters' who are old enough to be their mothers.
Not to mention that another big fanon thing is ponies needing to be 'in season' to have kids, which would leave the rest of the year to mess around harmlessly. I don't think that's necessary though. Or something that's had any hint of existing in canon unless you count 'Hearts and Hooves Day' (which doesn't really suggest it, but it's when you could place it and not contradict canon at least) (that, or the middle of winter maybe, since we never see the middle of winter but it's a 'really fun time' when ponies take off work and... stuff).
Someone like Storm Front or (the Winningverse version of) Cloud Kicker would, logically, be leaving a trail of hatred and resentment -- in fact, of enemies -- behind her
Ponies are really big on forgiveness as a part of their culture (or, among other things, Twilight Sparkle would be shunned by everyone in Ponyville for the multiple times that she's *ruined their lives*), so while she'd make ponies angry now and then, the number of ponies who'd actually hold grudges is probably really, really small.
You could even say that when the romantic couples collide with the free-sex fanatics, it's specifically something that doesn't matter as much. "That's just Cloud Kicker being Cloud Kicker." And (on the cheating party's part) write it off to getting caught up in the moment as if it was a musical number.
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There were actually a lot of (never-wed) single mothers in late 19th century / early 20th century America and Britain, though not as many as today. They often pretended to be widows. One of the points I must emphasize is that people in the late 19th century /early 20th century weren't as morally strict as people today may imagine.
Some of the background ponies in question probably are never-wed single mothers. Some are probably widows. And some are probably wives whose husbands are somewhere else at the moment.
The obvious examples of likely never-wed single mothers on the show would be Derpy and Berry. In fact their presence goes into tragic realist territory, as both seem to have emotional problems which would make them more likely to be left abandoned and pregnant. Derpy is -- whatever the heck makes her the way she is -- and Berry may be an alcoholic. What makes this worse is that Derpy seems like a really cheerful and loveable pony.
If you're talking about Applejack / Apple Bloom and Rarity / Sweetie, I find it hard to believe that Applejack (of all Ponies) would lie about being Apple Bloom's mother -- it's even less believable when one considers how this would hurt Apple Bloom (she thinks her parents are both dead).
Rarity -- yeah, I could see her making a pretense (but notice that if she was that would imply that being a never-wed mother would was seen as at least a little shameful). The problem is that she lives in a town of 2000 people -- would anypony believe this pretense? (Though, granted, everyone who knew her might pretend to believe it, just to be kind to her).
I think what you're seeing with Apple Bloom is that her parents are dead and the Apples as a family are collectively raising her, because they have no good alternative. Applejack winds up emotional surrogate mom because she's female and around the right age.
With Sweetie Belle, it seems more that Sweetie's parents (Magnum and Pearl) consider Rarity old enough to look after her little sister, while they go finally enjoy their lives. Rarity sometimes complains about having to watch over her, which would be pretty heartless behavior if Sweetie were actually her own child. And if she were actually Sweetie's mother, would she dare to enter the Sisterhooves Social with her?
Oh yes, I do think that the Ponies are better at forgiveness (and worse at violence) than are humans. That's why I can believe that there's not massive active and openly-expressed hatred of the Winningverse Cloud Kicker. The problem is that "better" doesn't mean perfect, and there are a lot of ways to do somepony dirty without being active and open about it. Or simply not do somepony any favors when one could. And we know from canon that the Ponies are perfectly capable of keeping resentments -- and, say, having your marriage broken by somepony else would be a pretty strong source of resentment.
The Winningverse Cloud Kicker is less believable than Storm Front for one big reason. Storm Front's job makes her a transient; she doesn't stay long enough in any one town to make scores of enemies there. Cloud Kicker is constantly around Ponyville, a small town. In a small town, everyone knows who to blame.
As for Twilight -- she was assigned by Celestia to live in Ponyville, which makes her effectively a royal intendant. And she's saved Ponyville (and sometimes the whole country) from serious peril more than once. This makes the occasional damage more forgivable. And in any case I've always assumed that the Royal Government compensated victims for damage due to Twilight Sparkle.
I actually assumed that most of the time, those with more serious romantic intentions avoided ponies like Cloud Kicker, and that some of her claims to the contrary were lies. The real humans I've known with similar attitudes were rarely very honest individuals; it's probably fairly similar with the ponies.
The easiest way to fit everything together is if we assume that there's a highly promiscuous subculture, particularly among the pegasi, to which most Equestrians don't belong. This is a direct parallel with the way such things have usually worked in human history -- there's often a "fast set" whom some envy but most respectable folk try to avoid. I could show you examples for pretty much any period of Western culture of which I have any knowledge.
The reason why there'd be resentment and avoidance is due directly to the economics of sexual and romantic interaction. "Cheap sex drives out dear" in the same market, to put in a most callously un-Equestrian fashion, so those offering serious romantic involvement don't want to be in the same "market" as those offering casual sex. You see the same dynamic at work in human society in the avoidance of singles bars by those actually looking for relationships.
1824186 I actually assumed that most of the time, those with more serious romantic intentions avoided ponies like Cloud Kicker, and that some of her claims to the contrary were lies. The real humans I've known with similar attitudes were rarely very honest individuals; it's probably fairly similar with the ponies.
Really? In my experience people lie more about things that they care about, so the people who care more deeply are the one's who'd be lying about it. Cloud Kicker doesn't have any reason to lie because she doesn't give a crap about anything.
OTOH she could be exaggerating to tease people, which is a completely different motive for lying -- I can see her doing that I guess.
The reason why there'd be resentment and avoidance is due directly to the economics of sexual and romantic interaction. "Cheap sex drives out dear" in the same market,
And that's complete nonsense, since it's not the same market at all. The reason romantic people tend to resent free-love types is the same as any other kind of intolerance -- people are different from them, and not a suffering as a result. This cannot stand!
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The reason it's "not the same market" is because of avoidance. If you're looking for love, you don't go to someone who is into casual sex for the same reason that if you are looking for casual sex, you don't go to someone who is into love. This even gets explicitly mentioned in one of the Winningverse stories -- Cloud Kicker's aware of the principle and tries to avoid ponies who are looking for love!
The problem is that one might be unaware of which "market" one had entered, and that could create problems on both sides.
I'm not talking about lynch mobs here. I'm talking about bad feelings, of the sort that end friendships and make enemies. And by "enemies," I don't mean murderous enemies, I mean ponies who are no longer willing to extend you the goodwill that is normal in Equestrian society, and in extreme cases are willing to exert themselves a little to make your life more difficult if they see an opportunity.
Such unfriendly behavior is against the Equestrian ideal, of course. But then, so are violent crimes of passion against ours.
Yet they happen. And constitute a potential downside for a Casanova.
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Look, I think you imagine I'm trying to argue something far more prudish than I actually am. I'm neither, for instance, strongly against non-marital sex nor arguing that the Ponies are against it either. I'm merely pointing out the social incompatibility of extreme romantic sentimentalism and extreme casual sex, and the potential friction such incompatibility can cause. Especially when both exist in the same pony, which is actually Piercing Gaze's dilemma in "A Long Night at the Hippodrome." And he -- while promiscuous -- is nowhere near as promiscuous as the Winningverse Cloud Kicker.
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To be specific about Piercing, if he hadn't been promiscuous he wouldn't have made the initial pass at Trixie at that point in their friendship. If he wasn't romantically sentimental, he wouldn't have cared much that its success drove her away from him. It's an internal conflict.
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The reason the promiscuous often pretend to have even more sex than they are actually having is that they have defined "having sex" as a major life goal, and rate it by volume. Being rejected or only partially succeeding is humiliating. Plus, there's often a desire to drag down the reputations of those who reject them. These are the main motives why, for instance, teenage guys will often lie about having had sex with teenage girls who actually didn't let them get very far. And most of the really promiscuous people I've known were pretty much, emotionally, stuck somewhere in late high school or some party college, well into their thirties.
1824382 Okay -- but what I was saying was that they wouldn't actually end friendships or lead to long term resentment like they sometimes do among people in our society. At least not anywhere near as often.
(Although to be fair the Winningverse specifically *does* have ponies holding grudges for-freaking-ever; it's one of my pet peeves with the series, along with its obsession with making the Royal Guard more important.
It's not really one of the stories you're talking about, actually, since it does have Cloud Kicker being an exception rather than a rule and focuses on all the stuff you're mentioning.)
But, really, I think it *could* work as a free-love blah blah blah even if it's not a necessary or likely interpretation of the canon. I think romance would be separated from sex in that case -- either by the people avoiding (having sex with) each other or by it just not being a significant part of romance even though it makes you feel good. Lots of things make you feel good. Romantic types get jealous about all the other things, too.
...see, Gilda.
Clearly, griffons do not have the proper mindset to participate in the Equestrian 'friendship'-based society.
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The extreme Equestrian tendency toward forgiveness (which in canon extends to former mortal enemies, not just "cads and hussies" (to use the obvious insulting appellations in a matriarchy) and overall niceness) actually the reason I can believe in the viability of a promiscuous subculture alongside the super-sentimental romantic main culture. But I do think it would sometimes end friendships and lead to long-term resentments. Depends on the individuals and the consequences.
More often, it would simply damage friendships and lead to long-term lowered affect toward the "cads" and "hussies." I don't think that the Ponies are non-capitalist communitarians, but I do think that a lot in Pony society gets done by personal reputation, because that's actually how things worked before modern electronic communication and computerized record-keeping. You had "credit" if you were "creditable," which is why those 19th century characters are so concerned about their honor and other kinds of reputation. Conversely, if you were "discreditable," you found your terms of business less favorable. Both in terms of actual money business, and other social interactions. There was less litigation, and more unofficial sanctions, back then than there is today.
Pony society is very tolerant, but the one thing they are not tolerant of is hurting other Ponies. (Which is good, because that's what makes their society evolutionarily robust and thus believable). Which means that in it, one goes out of one's way to avoid hurting other Ponies. And to apologize, sincerely, if one does. One will usually be forgiven.
But if one keeps hurting Ponies, the same way, over and over again, one might find tolerance stretched mighty thin. No, they wouldn't lynch you, but they might shun you.
So the promiscuous would probably do exactly what Cloud Kicker does in those stories, and try to avoid getting involved with the non-promiscuous. And the problem would be that sometimes they would fail to make the right judgement call in that regard.
It's not a fatal problem. Cultural and social tensions of all sorts exist in every known human society at every point of history. But it's a problem, and it makes the whole issue of promiscuity vs. sentimentalism more than just a source for dirty jokes.
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Well yes -- but such a separation of love and sex only works if the Ponies have an even more alien psychology than is apparent from the show. It could be done -- the best way would be if they have an uncontrollable breeding urge at certain times, so that one would be more likely to breed with a spouse or friend (who is one likely to be spending time with, after all?), but this would be merely a strong tendency rather than a moral rule.
The show would indicate otherwise -- Mr. Cake seems highly-uncomfortable about one possible interpretation of the natures of his unusual offspring, and Rarity's jealousy of Applejack regarding Trenderhoof is even more overblown if this is all about being seen with him at a dance -- to name two obvious examples of Equestrians not just taking it in stride regarding romantic/sexual matters. But yes, it's remotely possible, because they are aliens.
I'm not exactly sure why Gilda was so jealous of Pinkie hanging out with Rainbow Dash. Her reasons may have been lesbian-sexual, jealous-friendly, or even something which doesn't exist much in modern Equestria but does in Griffon cultures, like the concept of "blood-sisterhood" my Luna holds dear because she grew up in more violent times. I'm pretty sure that Gilda wasn't planning on breeding with Rainbow, anyway.
Very, very interesting. I'm fascinated you brought this up, because I Just posted Good Ponies Don't... Do They? a few days ago, which deals with exactly this sort of thing.
I mostly wrote it to explore the idea. I read (and write) a lot of ship fics, and I find you have two kinds-- ones which gloss over sex entirely (ponies fall in love and date and sex is never mentioned) or those that assume a late 20th-21st century idea of sex, where couples have sex whenever they feel like it. What I almost never saw addressed was the (in my opinion more likely) idea that having premarital, or at least pre-commitment sex would be a controversial thing.
Rather than try to pinpoint a time period, I went with an idea that casual sex was a newer thing, and older ponies would look down on it. To that end, Applejack and Twilight, both raised by older ponies, were shocked by the idea that their friends would be doing something like that, while Rarity and Rainbow Dash considered them prudish or quaint for the idea.
Interestingly, Rarity has been shown to use "feminine wiles" to get what she wants from stallions (both in the beginning of Best Night Ever, and in Putting Your Hoof Down) which tends to indicate a more cynical view of sex. She knows what she's implying to the stallions, whether she intends to follow through on it or not, and she knows they'll do things for her in hopes that she will. And, I've found that in shipping, Rainbow Dash is generally assumed to be the most sexually active of the ponies, which I attribute to her disregard for "mushy" feelings in canon-- if she dislikes sentimentality, then it would make sense for her to be more likely to divorce it from sex.
I really love the ideas you set up in the original post, and I haven't totally read the comments yet but they look fascinating. I'll be poking around this evening.
This is also quite possible, because Equestria's medical technology is around the level it was c. 1950 in America. This means that they within the last century developed and have a reliable and cheap male, and they either have or are very close to getting a reliable female contraceptive. Historically, the development of reliable and cheap contraceptives was one of the factors which loosened sexual morality in our world.
I have "suppressors" in my stories, which reduce the intensity of the 21-day estrus cycle including both female arousal and the emission of a scent that arouses stallions, but this is not a reliable contraceptive though it does reduce fertility. (Trixie's forgetting to take hers one time is relevant to the backstory of An Extended Performance and its side-story "A Long Night at the Hippodrome").
In my verse, the estrus cycle in the Ponies is not overwhelming, because they are sapient, but a mare in estrus tends to be more likely to want sex, and stallions around her get more competitive and sexually-aroused themselves. It's considered a bit rude and trashy for a mare not suppressing her estrus to put herself in close contact with any stallions with whom she does not actually wish to mate, because she's giving off a distracting scent. Before they had suppressors, they used various aromatic substances to mask the smell, which worked to avoid distracting stallions, but did little to affect the mare's own emotional condition. They're close to developing a medication which would actually shut down estrus for a cycle and thus be a true female contraceptive -- when this happens, then they're likely to experience a true Sexual Revolution. (Celestia help them).
Oh yes. Rarity by far is the most emotionally-ruthless of the Mane Six, especially where seduction is concerned. Twilight would consider it unreasonable and thus beneath her; Applejack dishonest and thus against her code of honor (she showed, however, in "Simple Ways" that she definitely knows HOW to do it, and including it in her parody of Rarity was clearly meant as a dig at Rarity); Pinkie Pie is just not even thinking on that level; Fluttershy is too shy to do it; and Rainbow Dash isn't subtle enough to do it well, plus she's also a fairly direct pony.
My personal opinion is that most of the time Rarity has no intent of following through on it, she's playing the same kind of game that Quinn Morgendorffer was in Daria. Namely, the goal is to get what you want with the minimum actual sexuality. Rarity is not being directly dishonest -- at no time does she actually state that she's going to do anything sexual with anypony, and if she did she probably would follow through with it. The behavior probably bothers Applejack a bit, though.
An interesting aspect of the singleness of the Mane Six is that any romantic backstory you give them is more or less inflicted on them, because clearly things didn't work out. In my work I'm inflicting some rather unhappy romantic backstory on Rarity as an explanation for her current cynicism. Not terribly tragic -- simply a lover who turned out to be not as nice as she thought, resulting in a painful breakup -- but not happy either.
I used to make that assumption too, until I considered the implications of the combination of her lack of understanding of social subtleties with her sense of loyalty. I don't think she'd be capable of being that casual about sex, because she'd assume mutual loyalty as in a friendship, which would make casual breakups hard for her.
But your interpretation also fits the evidence, if she assumes that sex is fun but emotionally unimportant, so that it would more be along the lines of "Oh, you don't want to play catch with me anymore? Um, ok ..." than "You betrayed me by leaving me!" As I said, Rainbow Dash works equally well as boisterous bisexual or oblivious innocent (with each interpretation generating its own brand of comedy).
Hm... I agree that the likelihood of free-love Equestria is very small at least. I must ask though what this is about them having romantic overtones to their friendships. Hugging your friends is hardly romantic. Perhaps marginally possessive but not romantic. As for genuine romantic love I think we see all of two of them. Shining/Cadence and Carrot/Cup are the only active relationships the show has depicted.
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The mares, at least, act toward each other rather like young Victorian or Edwardian women in that they are very physically-demonstrative in their friendships. They not only hug but also bump muzzles, rub and lean against each other, which is equid body language equivalent to hand-holding, being arm-in-arm or even non-sexual kissing. (It is also actual equid body language, and the writers and animators deserve praise for showing how sapient horses might behave toward one another). Emotionally, they sometimes display jealousy of their friends spending time with other friends. It's precisely all this behavior which leads many viewers to conclude (incorrectly in most cases IMO) that they are lesbians.
This is true not only regarding the Mane Six, but also involving the CMC and numerous secondary and background ponies. It's also sometimes observed between family members. This has to be taken to be fairly standard Equestrian behavior between dear friends. We do not see mares doing this to mares who are merely casual acquaintances, though we do see the upper-class Equestrians doing a cursory and abbreviated (and obviously false) exaggerated friendliness toward each other in general (the equivalent of "air kisses").
We don't know about stallions, because the show doesn't focus on any close stallion friends. If it follows the human model, they probably express affection toward each other in more indirect manners, possibly mock-aggression (we see Rainbow Dash, who is a rather masculine mare in terms of her behavior, do this to her friends on a fairly regular basis) as when human male friends shake hands vigorously, fist-bump, mock-punch each other, and so forth. Or maybe more directly -- in Victorian times good male friends would think nothing of kissing each other on the cheek. It wasn't taken as homosexual, any more than a friendly punch to the arm is taken that way today.
Stallions and mares together are probably shyer unless they are actually in some sort of courting relationship, because a stallion would know that his friendly nuzzle might be taken as a pass, and a mare would be afraid to let him do this unless she wanted to express at least some sort of romantic receptivity. Our own hyper-sexualized culture can mislead us here: men and women c. 1800-1850 did not consider merely walking arm-through-arm, or even holding hands, to be all that intimate, though it was something a woman would only let a man who was at least a friend of some sort do with her, and with an unrelated male could definitely indicate romantic interest. A woman would, however, not think twice about promenading in such a fashion with a close male relative, such as a father or brother -- and she would have been disgusted at anyone who found anything impure in such conduct. Freud has a lot of cultural damage for which to answer.
We've seen very little romantic love because until this season the series has mostly avoided showing any of the Mane Six in love with anyone. The external reason was the original desire to focus on female friendship rather than romantic love, and also the insane degree of censorship imposed on any show believed to be "for children."
An in-Universe reason for this is that every member of the Mane Six has good reasons not to fall in love during the time period (whether of 2 or of 3-6 years) being depicted. They are all young mares, none of them ready to marry, and most of them extreme non-conformists and/or outlier high achievers with obsessive interests based around their skills. This is a description of young women who in our world would probably have few romantic relationships, and possibly none unless they were willing to engage in casual sex.
Equestrians also seem to have different patterns of maturation than are common for early 21st-century Americans, though they are not that alien to 19th-century Americans. Equestrians seem to become economically self-reliant earlier than we do today, at the equivalent of age 14-18; but sexually active later than we do today. The present-day pattern of having non-marital sex starting betweeen 14-18 yet sponging off one's parents until 18-21 or even later is actually quite abnormal, and would be impossible as a majority behavior in any society not as fantastically-wealthy as is our own, especially since sex makes babies.
We have however seen plenty of background ponies engaged in what look to be romantic relationships, especially on episodes that in some way focus on romance or sexuality. They are depicted as being strongly and sentimentally-attracted to one another, which is why I can't believe in the free-love Equestria -- combining strong sentimental romantic love with random casual sexuality is messing with social nitroglycerine. Even if such behavior would not create the sort of violence it does in our own culture (because the Ponies are a more peaceful species), it would most definitely create disharmony, and all sorts of nasty passive-aggressive or even socially aggressive behavior (of which we know in canon the Ponies are capable: remember how many episodes have been in part about social bullying?).
The reason why I bring up the possibility of Bohemian free-love subcultures is that such have historically existed on Earth, and I actually want it to be possible for there to be Ponies like Storm Front or the (Winningverse) Cloud Kicker. Cultural diversity is more interesting than cultural homogenity. The point of such subcultures is to reduce the occurrence of collisions between incompatible value systems.
It hasn't escaped my attention that the really promiscuous fanfic ponies are often Pegasi -- Luna has a fleeting thought regarding one possible reason for this in Chapter 3 of All the Way Back. I've thought of others, but the chapter is really more about dealing with dragons than sexual morals and subcultures. A more obvious reason -- mobility -- might not occur so readily to Luna because she is even more mobile than most pegasi, but not promiscuous.
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Yes, I agree that there is nothing romantic in their handling of one another and that seeing such is obviously a case of shipping glasses being on. (I also agree as that about the animators modeling it after actual horses. It's one of my favorite aspects of the show.) As for the jealousy of friendships I would have to say I thought everyone experienced those. They might be a little old to be experiencing it but learning to share your friends is one of the hardest things to learn growing up and a good thing they address it repeatedly given the goals of the show.
I would think how they behave on Hearts and Hooves Day to not be overly indicative as its mirror in our world is full of sentimentality that those expressing it do not necessarily feel but are rather pressured into. The few times we see male female pairs, or same sex pairs, in the background could all just as easily be friends as genuine couples during any other points in the show.
Of course there is such a likely subculture as there is always a subculture no matter the society or era that indulges in things outside the norm. I was merely indicating that I agree it is unlikely to be the norm.
Hm.. this conversation is reminding me of why I find Cadence the most horrifying character in the show so far. An unchecked love spell casting authority figure whose default method of handling two ponies arguing as she passes by is to make them fall in love with each other.
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I think what happened with Cadance was that she saw a couple she knew to truly be in love having a quarrel. And that she's too ethical to go around doing the whole Erotic Mind Control thing. But yeah -- she does have an ability with considerable Power Perversion Potential, and her Nightmare would be truly terrifying.
Yes he does. I'm beginning to suspect that free-love was sort of a backlash to what happened, people in friendships could no longer touch each other or make physical contact unless they wanted to do something (or be implicated in doing something) much more intimate as well. Of course when facing a problem any solution can come up and rather than re-instating the status-quo the free love movement just said "Well, let's make it so we can have sex with anyone casually!"
This all said, fantastic little essay you have here.
I can see how you'd get that from the Old Testament, and heck even Ephesians 5 has what can certainly be considered a dark underpinning, with focus on the husband assisting the woman and the woman submitting.
But then the passages also make comparisons to the union of husband and wife with Christ and the church, and so what did that entail? Christ loved his church (all who followed, or in other words 'submitted' to him) so much that he was even willing to die and face the suffering of hell so that the church of his believers, those who had gone to him willingly, could be redeemed of sin. Note that this possession of sin was present in all human beings, male and female. So when Christ loved the church and redeemed its members it was essentially making people worthy of presence in God in heaven.
Now considering that, yes in the past women had been abused, repressed and disrespected and like men done bad things (I'm just looking at history and human nature here, we don't even need to go into the bible to find examples of unsavory men and women).
So the call of assisting women in the way that Christ helped all the church would be acknowledging a certain disparity existed between men and women just as there had been with a disparity between all of humanity and God.
Acknowledging differences of circumstance that require address and correction isn't bad, it's in actual fact good, because if you ignore that certain people are treated differently because they're black or conservative or female or Muslim or atheist or any number of conditions both within and without their own power to control would be acting in an ignorant manner.
If I see a crippled man and decide to help him, I'm going to need his "submission" in the sense that he doesn't beat me when I try carrying him to the hospital. I'm not going to treat a crippled man the same way as I would others in helping them because the crippled man has a specific problem that needs addressing.
For Christ and the church this was the condition of sin, for man and woman it was bringing the woman into the holy life, the public life in the church, where previously they'd been locked up in their husband's houses, like collectables.
Why there wasn't a radical shift of patterns once Christianity was taken on? That's a longer story that falls outside the purview of this comment. And I have to go now. Toodles!
There was also a socialist assumption being made here. A lot of the 19th century and early 20th century socialists assumed that in a socialist society women would cease to be the private property of men and would instead become communal property. That assumption (both in terms of sharing women and in the sense of imagining women to be "property" to be owned privately or communally) had a lot of influence on the Free Love movement of the 1960's-1970's. It's one of the reasons why radical feminism began, as women of the Counterculture rebelled against the idea of being morally-compelled to have sex with essentially any men of the Counterculture who bothered to ask them.
Your religious argument is correct as far as it goes, though you're ignoring both the high status of women in Western Classical culture (that of the Romans and of the Gauls and Germans) and the fact that though Original Christianity was relatively pro-female, it quickly took an anti-female turn (starting with Paul) and also from the start at least one faction of it took a very anti-sexual turn (even as far as to condemn married sexuality as inferior to both pre-marital virginity and to religious celibacy). Though the anti-sexual aspect of Christianity sometimes actually favored women (it gave them a moral defense against male predation), it also could harm them in that the tendency of men in power was to blame any disruptive sexuality on feminine lusts and wiles (a tendency which you can see becoming far more socially destructive in modern Islam).
The background against which early Enlightenment and Romantic feminists such as Mary Wollstonecraft, Jane Austen, and Mary Shelley were operating was not one of Primitive Christianity, but rather Christianity the way it had developed in Medieval and Modern Europe. The assumption was that sexuality was to be controlled by the family, with the father theoretically governing who was to be permitted to court his daughters and possibly arranging marriages for them (in practice, of course, the mother also had a lot of and sometimes more influence). This is the assumption which led later socialists to consider women to be the "property" of men under capitalism.
One of the demands of the early feminists was something we would consider so reasonable as to be undeniable: namely that the unmarried be allowed to court whom they chose, and marry or break the courtship as they chose. This was often termed "Free Love," which has created some confusion: many people today imagine that Mary Shelley was promiscuous, when what she really claimed was the right to choose to love or not love someone, and for this love to be the precondition for marriage rather than something to emerge after an arranged marriage. Far from being promiscuous, she was deeply in love with her husband Percy Bysshe, and he may have been the only lover she ever had (as she fell in love with him in adolescence and later avoided all attempts to court her after his death).
Sigmund Freud should not be viewed as evil. He was attempting to understand the subconscious processes of the human mind; in his time the only tool he had was "the talking cure" (psychoanalysis) which meant asking his patients what they were thinking and dreaming about. He did discover the very important fact that there is a subconscious mind and that subconscious desires and thoughts can affect conscious behavior.
I do not know that he was a Marxist, though he was probably moderately socialist, as were many intellectuals of his era. He does not seem to have personally desired to destroy sexual morality: instead he believed that repressed sexual impulses were more likely to do so if not understood. His theories were fundamentally flawed because unfalsifiable: on the other hand, the Popperian test on which they may be logically criticized was not developed until toward the end of his life (in part, because scientists needed a philosophical structure on which to understand just why Freudian psychology and Marxian economics were fundamentally flawed but could not be logically attacked within the target philosophy's structure of defensive assumptions.
When considering the cultural evolution of various codes of conduct and morality among Ponies, one needs to consider that they are biologically different from us in ways which have social consequences. We cannot simply generalize from our own species; we have to go with what's shown and what's implied.
The ancestral Ponies, Equus equus, were herd-dwelling creatures with dominant stallions and dominant mares within a herd: the dominant stallion had first choice of mating with all the mares and could drive off any sub-dominant stallions, but had a relatively short period of dominance (usually only a year or a few years). The non-reproductive role of a dominant stallion was to drive off predators.
Dominant mares lasted longer in their positions of dominance, because the contests for domination were less violent than among stallions and hence a mare, once dominant, might remain in that position for most of her possible lifespan. The social role of a dominant mare was to act as herd memory, to wisely guide her herd between sources of food and water and avoid predators and poisons.
Another big difference between the primal Ponies and the primal apes is that horses have good senses of smell and mares go into estrus every 21 days. When a mare goes into estrus, the stallions around her become aroused and are likely to become violent. This factor is probably the single most important reason why the modern Ponies -- genus cabalminisculus (*) tend to form matriarchal societies.
Consider the situation for civilized Ponies. If one has hundreds of Ponies living in relatively close quarters, then the chances are that any stallion will at some point during his day encounter a mare in estrus. Since they're both sapient, and they have an organized society including morality, courtship and marriage, he doesn't try to mate her, any more than a typical human man tries to climb on top of a pretty woman he sees on the street. But he still responds chemically to her signal. Customs tell him to repress his desire to attempt to mount her, but he still feels it.
The effect is that, through most of history, Pony stallions in contact with any large number of Pony mares are in a constant low-level state of sexual arousal. This means that their effective emotional self-control and intelligence are reduced, albeit slightly -- living in civilized societies for generations would very strongly select against being overcome by inappropriate sexual desire, as stallions who did would be feared or laughed at, depending on whether their reaction was to attempt rape or simply have uncontrollable erections -- in either case they would be less likely to contribute to the next generation, as most attempted rapes would not succeed, rapists would probably be punished more or less harshly, and stallions who were constantly embarrassing themselves in public would be viewed as less desirable husbands.
The cumulative effect of this would be that stallions would tend not to be trusted in positions of authority. No one wants a king or general or boss who is made foolish all the time by sexual arousal. Those societies which did try male dominance, and to some extent even those which tried sexual egalitarianism, would be out-competed by the better leadership of those led solely or at least mostly by mares.
This tendency is exacerbated in Equestria by the fact that its leader is an immortal female Alicorn (we don't know yet if stallions can even become Alicorns). Equestrians look to their Ruling Princess as the model of leadership, and they see a mare, not a stallion.
So your argument about the relative frailty of womanhood cuts the other way among the Ponies. They would consider stallions "the weaker sex." It's true that stallions are on the average bigger and stronger than mares (though this is an average -- Applejack could physically defeat all but the largest and strongest stallions in unarmed combat), but Pony society is not generally mediated by violence and shows itself perfectly capable of capturing or expelling any deviants who turn towards it. Adults cannot gain status among the Ponies by beating up other Ponies, and those who tried would be treated as criminals or even insane.
I see evidence in the show that some of the societies preceding Equestria were more male-dominated or at least egalitarian, though. There's a general consensus that Commander Hurricane was male, and we know that King Sombra was male. I think that the Ponies became even more matriarchal for a while under Celestia, and that the pendulum may be swinging back toward sexual egalitarianism.
In my fictions I'm assuming that one big reason was the development of cheap, effective and safe medicines for mares to reduce the production of pheronomes during estrus. These are called "suppressors," and they're what Trixie lamentably forgot to take that night around a year before An Extended Performance, with tragic consequences for her friendship with Piercing Gaze.
"Suppressors" have only a slight effect on fertility, but they allow the mare to stop being a walking magnet for unwanted and embarrassing sexual attention for every male downwind. Introduced around a century ago, they have begun to change society. As they got increasingly cheaper, safer and more effective, only rather low-class mares would not take them unless specifically hoping to mate with their husbands or at least lovers, and in consequence, upper-to-middle-class stallions now rarely encountered mares in obvious estrus. The result of this is that stallions are now more emotionally-stable, and their social status is climbing back toward equality with mares.
Anyway, nice response -- hope you liked mine.
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(*) My essay "A Horse Isn't A Horse, Of Course, Of Course" discusses the possible biological classification of the Ponies, and argues that although clearly descended from genus Equus, they also clearly no longer belong to that genus.
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Indeed. I can actually envision Nightmare Cadence as a failed Galadriel unable to resist temptation. A Galadriel that actually has the power to force all ponies love her in a quite literal sense. Sort of a dark Aphrodite or Venus. In a world where love is a very real power, she could conceivably be a very dangerous threat, and one which Equestria is ill equipped to handle. Of course, she wouldn't be a failed Galadriel without including the dramatic speech.
Of course, mind control in that manner is likely to be extremely damaging to anypony subjected to it. I thought Jim Butcher in his Dresden Files series did an amazing job of fleshing out Mind Control and how it could drive both the user and the victim quickly insane. So "... and despair" would also come to pass, I think, in an AU where Cadence succumbs to the Nightmare. It would be a short, though disastrous reign of terror, absolutely devastating to the populace before Nightmare Cadence succamb to her own insanity and self destructed.
This was a good, very good, essay. It, and the discussions below it, gave me a lot to think about.
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Yep ... Galadriel both in the books and in the movie is a very beautiful and charismatic character, who tends to evoke immediate admiration from anyone who meets her face-to-face -- which was one of the reasons she had a reputation for being an "enchantress" (the other being her actual and powerful magical abilities). An evil Galadriel would presumably use those qualities to enthrall others in the bad sense of the term. An evil Cadance might be -- hmm, actually rather like a more competent version of Queen Chrysalis!
Very interesting. I'd have to say I agree with this for the most part. I see Equestria as having a majority who treat sex with a romantic sentimentality, but still having a not insignificant subculture leaning towards free love. Another view of mine isn't necessarily that free love or casual sex are a new idea so much as they are an unpopular one. All in all, this was a wonderful writing you've done here, along with the thought provoking discussions in the comment section.
Don't you just love it when someone says something you weren't entirely sure how to state?
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I sort of like the Winningverse, but at the same time, I can have a hard time with it, as I just don't "get" ponies like Cloud Kicker, who are by and large motivated by sex and see it as a thing to be constantly worked toward.
For that matter, I also don't the understand the constant references to it in everyday conversations, television, movies and advertisements to name a few (particularly among men). I'm no expert, but I don't think we do it often enough to warrant this. I just...kind of don't see the point or explanation. Maybe I'm simply out of touch or not like most others in this respect.
It might also be worth mentioning that I don't particularly like those who treat as something to be shunned and something not to be mentioned. Really, how strong and significant is the desire or need for sex in the average human? And to what extent is it a learned desire? My current lack of answers to these questions in a large way muddy my views on how it should be treated.
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In the history of human civilizations -- and I don't see why this would be any different for Ponies -- free love and casual sex have always existed, just as have marital love and emotionally-meaningful sex. As I discuss in A Robust Solution, the two approaches are mating strategies.
Free love and casual sex tend to be unpopular on a large scale because they are normally exploitative strategies. The Mk. I Standard Scenario is that a male of sufficiently higher status parlays this status into sex from a female of sufficiently lower status that marriage is not expected to result. (Variants include those in which the male is bluffing/lying or the female is naive (*), or those in which the female is of very high wealth or enjoys subsidized child care and hence will not need assistance to take care of the offspring).
To take the obvious example, in the Sexual Revolution of the Sixties on the college campuses, the males involved were relatively-wealthy and high-status college professors and older students, exploiting relatively-poor and lower-status younger students and girls from the surrounding communities. To take the one most applicable to Equestria, the Bohemians of the late 19th century and Fast Set of the early 20th century were composed of males disproportionately from the upper and upper middle classes, while the females were mostly of lower status (shopgirls, entertainers and prostitutes). (**)
The matriarchal nature of Equestrian society, coupled with easier low-tech contraception (Ponies are relatively infertile off cycle) makes it easier for mares to play in their Fast Set without direct reproductive consequences. There's also a tendency for Equestrian Fast Set sex to be homosexual specifically because it completely avoids the risk of conception save by powerful magic. Mammals also respond to extreme regular physical exertion as a clue that the environment is too dangerous for childbearing, which is one reason why the most promiscuous Fast Sets in Equestria are among Pegasi who engage in regular long-distance flying and itinerant Earth Ponies. When Equestrians develop a reliable, safe and cheap contraceptive, everypony who wishes will get to play, with devastating social consequences such as those with which we are already quite familiar.
An additional factor is Lone-Madness. Ponies are more gregarious than Humans and are prone to losing sanity if they do not psychologically belong to a "herd" which surround them on a fairly regular basis. Lone-Madness can take many forms -- generally, there is an obsessive desire for social contact, which sometimes results in desperate expressions of sexual desire, producing a pattern of extreme nympho- or satyromania. The fact that Pegasi, by their natures, are most likely to go Lone-Mad, led to this being called "Sky-Madness" before it became understood as a psychological condition potentially affecting all Ponies.
The Winningverse has a lot of interesting development of background ponies and Equestrian history, but suffers very much from the subordination of all other considerations to Cloud Kicker's libido. Cloud Kicker is obnoxious to a degree that should result in her being widely and deeply hated -- most egregiously, she won't take "no" for an answer. She doesn't actually attempt to rape anypony in the stories I've read so far, but she is about as annoying to other ponies as possible without using physical force.
The desires for friendship, for love and for sex in some mixture are very strong in humans and based on canon also in Ponies as well. The mixture varies based on the individual and the stage of life; the degree to which each is pre-requisite to the next depends strongly both upon individual morals and cultural mores. Our culture is currently rather hyper-sexualized as the result of having had it very soft for a very long time -- this is a manifestation of "decadence." This has happened many, many times before, and will many, many times again in history.
Sexual desire can be very beautiful. Or very ugly. It's all a matter of context.
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(*) Fluttershy's Night Out (by Bad Horse) and A Robust Solution (by myself). Fluttershy is a classic Ingenue in Bad Horse's Break the Cutie story; the latter story is about the start of her emotional recovery. Taken together, they highlight why Fast Sets are often unpopular among those not in them.
(**) Upper and upper-middle-class females in the Fast Sets tended to use the increased sexual freedom as a means of finding upper and upper-middle-class steady lovers, sometimes leading to marriages. When the Counterculture of the Sixties attempted to enforce promiscuity on all, the reaction led to radical feminism. In other words, when the Revolution tried to degrade elite women to the level of toys for elite men, the elite women responded by attempting to give up on men entirely -- surely a dramatic example of the link between casual sex and the expression of superior social status!
Loved both the comments and the blog itself. It lends to world-building with 'sense', something that most writers tend to forget.
Thank you for sharing your insights, even if this comment is several years later than the original post.