Engels: The Monogamous Family

Engels: The Monogamous Family

Engels discusses the historical developments of the monogamous family which brings to attention the social factors that influenced this type of family development over time. We find that women are heavily suppressed by male dominated monogamous families in many historic societies. This negative social position of women has much to do with their relationship to property and the social class that they are part of. The monogamous family has arisen from the accumulation of private property in the possession of an individual man, so that he can pass that wealth to his children. This transformation of communal property into private property and the establishment of a means of production set the stage for the development

This simple fact implies that sexuality is not natural, and that our biological make up prescribes in us numerous possibilities for erotic pleasure to be expressed as human sexuality. This is important to our understanding of how sexualities become regulated and how human sexual practices become defined. The knowledge of sexual practices done in the past is limited; however, we can use the Sambia of Papua as an example to provide insight on cultural differences of sexuality. Same sex relations exist among the Sambia of Papua, but these sexual relations only exist until a male matures into a masculine adult, when he then has the ability to have sexual intercourse with women. In contemporary western society, how could we define the Sambia of Papua as either heterosexual or homosexual; we cannot. This brings us to the question of gender. In contemporary society we have developed a social organization of gender that creates and prescribes our sexuality. This dominant discourse has perceived sexuality as a natural phenomenon, when in reality it is made through social practices. Sexuality is developed based on the social context of what is normal, which is why we socially create different definitions of sexuality like heterosexual, homosexual, lesbian, and bisexual. The social superstructures like religion, psychology, criminology,

These distinctions are a problem of heterosexual hegemony and not homosexuality. There is a problem in the formation of the capitalist social relations that shaped the sexualities of humans. The sexual preferences and identities are not universal, in so that a person who encounters sexual relations with someone of the same sex can still be heterosexual in identity and maintain masculinity. Examples of this have been found in prison inmates or ‘hustlers’ where they are only gay if they are passive or the latter, are doing it for free. Therefore the ruling concepts of sexualities cannot cover all experiences pertaining to