Spirituality, sex, and culture in Aotearoa

Spirituality: a safe place for sex and culture in Aotearoa New Zealand.

 An essay written for Massey University course 175-729 Psychology and Culture by Sonia Waters, 2022.

“Let’s talk about sex” is a statement that conjures responses of great diversity, from “hell yeah” to “heaven forbid” yet these two responses that rolled off my Pākehā tongue speak of colonialism, religion, and shadows. In this essay I investigate the question of spirituality, whether it is necessary to consider in psychology in relation to sexuality for Māori and Pākehā women in Aotearoa (New Zealand). I discuss the transition from harmonious freedom to colonial control for Māori with respect to the female body, and investigate dualities of religion and spirituality, mind, and body, in Western philosophy. After considering sexuality and spirituality from Māori and Christian perspectives, I discuss how empirical science added to the Western construction of male-based-normative sex and bodies and has pathologized non-normative sexuality, gender, and performance. Within this complex social system I consider opportunities offered by experiencing embodied sex with spirituality and I hope for the acculturation of Pākehā as tangata Tiriti (non-Māori who live in respect with Te Tiriti o Waitangi (Treaty of Waitangi) (Dewes, 2022)), and for mana wāhine (Māori women) in returning to pre-colonial concepts of Māori ora (health). Lastly, while talking about spirituality is a strength lacking in many psychologists (Hill et al., 2000) it is apparent that many practitioners of psychology in Aotearoa are also reluctant to talk about sex and non-normative gender orientations (du Preez & Macdonald, 2016). As psychologists aim to help their clients in all aspects of living, I consider spirituality essential in understanding both the context of their client and practitioners’ own perspectives, when talking about sex.

Māori are the indigenous people of Aotearoa (New Zealand). Mikaere (2011) explains that for pre-colonial Māori sexuality was balanced in gender power, female sexuality and reproductive functions were integral to Māori beliefs, for example womb symbolism features strongly in the creation of Papatuanuku (earth, land), and women held positions of power such as leaders, orators, and warriors. Rangi Topeora for example was a signatory to te Tiriti o Waitangi, a landowner, a composer, and her mother Waitohi was “a leader in her own right and a known military strategist” (Mikaere, 2011, p. 177). Mana wahine (Māori women) held positions of strength in the iwi (tribe), hapu (community), and whanau (immediate and extended family) (Simmonds, 2011; Waitere & Johnston, 2009).

Pākehā are descendants of early colonisers and other non-Māori who consider Aotearoa home. The first ships of colonisers from England carried mostly men. These White bodied men saw Māori women as wives, children and the property of Māori men. This patriarchal lens of male domination, foreign to Māori, placed Māori women in the home serving their men, in the kitchen and the bedroom. This marked the beginning of the displacement of mana wahine from unity and harmony to duality and discordance. Some of the first women from England to settle in Aotearoa were missionaries. While the men off the ships enjoyed and took Māori women’s bodies and sexuality (with or without consent) (Mikaere, 1999; Rountree, 2000) the Missionary women worked to conceal and control them (Rountree, 2000). Through diaries and published writing, Rountree (2000) documented the work of Marianne William who arrived in the Bay of Islands in 1823. Marianne’s purpose as a missionary was to “save souls” (p. 54), for Māori were “spiritually doomed, and needed to be brought urgently into the kingdom of God” (p. 55). Marianne viewed the Māori men as “noble savages” (p. 55) in their near nakedness, commented on their muscular, intelligent features, and noted “they appeared quite astonishing” (p. 55). She also wrote of her inability to sleep for the fine impression these men had made on her. In contrast, Marianne described Māori women, through the demeaning term ‘girls’ as dirty, degraded, wild, free, too sexual and “killed prisoners as any male warrior might” (p. 58). Marianne believed her work was to scrub, clean, and control Māori women and to make them brown versions of her white God-fearing self. As horrific as this must have been for Māori and as dreadful as it feels in my body as I write this essay in 2022, in 1823 Marianne and her fellow missionaries believed they were doing good work and helping Māori, in the name of God; the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

Christianity is based on the patriarchal trinity (Father, Son, Holy Spirit) and a duality in which the body is evil and spirit is good. Daniluk and Browne (2008) discuss the differences between religiosity, in which the rules, regulations, control, and Foucault’s concepts of surveillance, a watching by others which turns to a controlling self-consciousness (Berard, 2001), dominate colonial thoughts and behaviours. They suggest that religion promotes God-consciousness through a self-conscious control while spirituality is God-consciousness free of judgement. Hill et al. (2000) also discuss such duality yet draw them closer together noting religion does not exist without spirituality. Nonetheless, the body-spirit duality remains dominant in Christianity. Daniluk and Browne (2008) explain that religious values include the control of the female body and its inherent sexuality, treat virginity as a virtue, and dictate that good sex is for creation, after marriage and accompanied by love. For example, Marianne the missionary, worked hard to be the virtuous example of wife, mother, and woman, and used her religious values to control Māori women; she applauded when they learned to sew neatly, wear neck to toe dresses and had “yielded to us to determine when they shall sit and when stand” (Daniluk & Browne, 2008, p. 60). Murray-Swank et al. (2005) discuss that early Western religious practices and myths included sexual rituals and celebrated the feminine. As Christianity developed, so too did the division between the spiritual mind and the sexual body, the body in its sexual acts became evil. Daniluk and Browne (2008) note dualistic religions which stem from the Bible, The Torah, and Qur’an are negatively oriented to sexuality, bring an absence of joy and such religions are the source of psychosocial factors of shame and guilt. Spirituality however is ‘good’ and is therefore prioritised over the body and its shameful sex. For some women, sexuality experienced through a spiritual lens can be an empowering way to release from guilt and shame (Daniluk & Browne, 2008; Murray-Swank et al., 2005).

Positive feminine sexuality can be found in spiritual belief systems of Hinduism and Buddhism, in countries such as Egypt and Japan and in many indigenous cultures including Māori. In their discussion on indigenous peoples view on feminine sexuality Delugach (1999) share this from a Plains Indian elder:

Women have two gifts that men do not have. They bring life into the world, and they bleed. A woman is connected to the Grandmother Earth, and she purifies with the cycles of the moon as the tides purify the beaches. A woman’s moon [menstrual] cycle is her time of power. It is as if she is a river whose current changes direction every 28 days, for 4 days. She is open to spirit purification and deep healing in ways that men are not. If a woman can honour this time she will be restored and find new healing and medicine to bring her dream into the world. A woman’s time is during the darkness of the night. The new moon is her time of deepest ceremony and healing. (p. 142)

The spirit, body, land, blood, and feminine creativity co-exist here not as separate good-bad, evil-holy, dualities, but as one in ‘wholly’ connectedness.

The dualities of Western religions are institutionalised to include controls in community so that ‘good’ is maintained ‘bad’ is excluded. Religious principles have strong views on issues of gender and sexual identity. ‘Good’ sex is in heterosexual marriage (which includes obeying the husband and God) and in love (Daniluk & Browne, 2008). For people who identify as Catholic for example and as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transsexual, intersexual, or queer (LGBTIQ) their faith can question their right to exist (Hattie & Beagan, 2013). When people’s belief system has rules that exclude them, when they are welcomed one minute and exiled for ‘coming out’ the next, such incongruence between belief and behaviour is known as cognitive dissonance (Murray-Swank et al., 2005). Individuals will often try to reduce cognitive dissonance by for example, not coming out, leaving their church, or may interpret the rules of the church in their own way, possibly abandoning the dogma of their religion and individualising spiritual practice (Murray-Swank et al., 2005). Such gaps between religion and the needs of people can be fertile ground for creative leaders.

New religions aim to meet the needs of people minoritized by their sexual, cultural, or racial identity (Ley, 2013) and develop practices and interpretations of their religious texts to connect with God. Horn et al. (2005) challenge the traditional Christian belief of sex as sinful genital connection and discuss the positive connection of spirituality in sexuality. Sheldrake (2020) support this notion and explain God as eros, which is longing or passionate love, agape as universal love, or oneness, and that ecstasy is the “temporary dissolution of the normal boundaries of perception and living” (p. 38). Sex in the absence of boundaries is often imbalanced in power resulting in domination of one over the other, however, the dissolution Sheldrake (2020) speaks of, is with mutuality between human bodies, and between bodies and spirit. The heightened experience of ecstasy they say is like that of mystics. Horn et al. (2005) suggest human sensuality (of the whole body, not solely genital focus) is the erotic spiritual connection with God, which they identify as “embodied spirituality” (p. 82). They discuss the similarities in neurological processes which occur during practices of meditation, prayer, and sex and note that scientific research may be catching up with indigenous beliefs in that embodied sexuality is indeed a healthy spiritual endeavour.

Indigenous spirituality often places God at the centre of the ‘self’ while Bible based belief systems place God all around the self (Sheldrake, 2020). The ‘self’ for Māori is not a dualistic mind body split but holds the body-mind connected as one in which the mind is psychic and spiritual essence (Mark & Lyons, 2010). Māori concepts of health are visualised as Te Whetu (five pointed star) (Mark & Lyons, 2010) or Whare Tapa Whā (the walls and roof of a house) (Hodgetts et al., 2016) and include hengaro (mind, psychic), wairua (spiritual), tinana (physical, body), whanau (social, immediate and extended family), and whenua (land, not separate to the body but a part of). Each and every element requires integrated care and balance for the star to be bright or the house to stand strong. To illustrate the location of God for Māori, I reflect on a personal experience of local iwi blessing before building on land in Central Otago. Matt Matahaere of Ngāi Tahu explained he was not asking permission from their Gods in the blessing but given God is within him and within all people who would be working on the site, Māori or non-Māori, he was respectfully advising the Gods that construction would start and would bring prosperity to all. This self-empowered position of God-within applies to mana tane (Māori men) and mana wāhine equally (Waitere & Johnston, 2009). Colonialism set out, and thankfully failed, to crush this spirit.

Over 200 years of colonialism eroded Māori equity in health, housing, income, and wairua (Hodgetts et al., 2016; Mikaere, 2011). Wairua has depth beyond Western concepts of spirituality and includes connection with people, environment, ancestral heritage, and “at the heart of spirituality is the cultural ethos within which a person’s identity unfolds” (Durie, 2004, p. 1142). Early colonisers saw Māori ways of being and their spiritualily as heathen (Mikaere, 2011; Rountree, 2000). The colonisers stole land, forced anhyalilation of te reo (Māori language), and as Pākehā dominance grew, urban centers created, Māori migrated from their spiritual places to cities for low paid jobs. This movement desssicrated the collectivist supportive whanau system and forced Māori into individualist culture with male dominated two generation families. Pre-colonial Māori were wealthy with food, shelter and harmonious social systems, they welcomed Pākehā into Aotearoa and signed te Tiriti o Waitangi willing to share their land with the White newcomers. Jones (2017) highlights this position with a quote from one of the earliest texts in colonial Aotearoa where a Māori elder asked “‘Ka maodi tia te Pākehā?’ ... [meaning] ... ‘Are the Europeans naturalised?’” (p. 7) (more on European acculturation later). Pākehā did not uphold their side of the Tiriti and the wealth and health gap between Māori and Pākehā has widened to catastrophic magnitudes. This gap is evidenced in disproportionately high representation of Māori in prisons, unemployment, welfare care, and low socio economic status (Graham & Masters-Awatere, 2020; McIntosh & Workman, 2017; Williams et al., 2019). In their review of child abuse in Aotearoa Seymour et al. (2016) emphasise pre-colonial Māori provided children a special status in the whanau such that child abuse and intimate partner violence was not common. Research shows in Aotearoa up to 30% of girls and up to 15% of boys have been sexually abused and that up to 25% of children are exposed to interpersonal violence (Seymour et al., 2016). Only 25% of crimes are reported to police and people in the lowest socio economic locations (who are more likely to be Māori) were significantly less likely to report crime ("New Zealand crime and victims survey," 2020). Aotearoa compares as one of the worst for income inequalitity, poorest health, and highest rates of sexual abuse worldwide (Pickett & Wilkinson, 2015).

Western constructs of female sexuality are heteronormative, cis-gendered, White, and scientific understandings are based on male-dominated scientific research, or a deliberate lack of research (Tuana, 2004). Female sexual issues such as inability to orgasm in a particular way, too much, too little, or the end of menstrual blood, too much or too little sexual desire, and gender identity, have all been pathologised by the evidence-based medical system and have been included in the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistics Manual (APA, 2013) as desease. The pathologisation and socially constructed meaning of female sexuality, as constructed by dominant discourses of disease and religious dogma, is the context in which people in Aotearoa must find their sexual identity. Groups marginalised by these discourses, for example Māori women, women who identify as bisexual, lesbian, transsexual, and those who lie at the intersection of these groups such as lesbian Māori, are more likely than White cis-female with medium or high socio economic status to suffer from sexual abuse, discrimination, and intimate partner violence ("New Zealand crime and victims survey," 2020). So how on God’s earth do we shift this inequity and come to a place of acceptance and sexual freedom for all?

Accident Compensation Corporation (ACC) in Aotearoa exists to protect and support people who have survived harm. ACC provides support for survivors of sexual abuse through their sensitive claims process in which they pay for diagnosis and treatment for clients through legally recognised practitioners including psychologists and counsellors. The professional practice of psychology in Aotearoa is regulated by the governing body New Zealand Psychological Society, which ensures specific standards are met and practitioners work within the approved Code of Ethics. With respect to achieving cultural competance psychologists must have cultural awareness, knowledge, and skills ("Code of ethics for psychologists working in Aotearoa/New Zealand," 2012). There is increasing attention being paid to swing the focus of knowledge and skills from White, industrialised, educated, rich, and democratic (WIERD) psychology to be inclusive of all cultures and focusing on biculturalism of Māori and tangata Tiriti (Levy & Waitoky, 2016). du Preez and Macdonald (2016) discuss some of the difficulties people who identify as LGBTIQ experience and considerations essential for psychologists in working with clients and they express concern at the lack of training in  sexuality and the reluctance of practitioners to talk about sex.

I am a certified somatic sexologist, registered with the Somatic Sex Educators Association of Australasia (SSEAA) and in 2021 I celebrated being the first sexologist approved by ACC to provide services to sensitive claims clients. On review of their policies ACC retracted that approval as somatic sexologists are not legally recognised in Aotearoa. Aotearoa is the only whole country in the world where sex work is decriminalised and the rest of the world looks to Aotearoa in its positive approach to sex work as decriminalisation is aimed at protecting health and rights of sex workers without the complex red tape that other countries use in their legalised alternative. Resources approved by ACC for sensitive claims clients are stretched beyond capacity as evidenced by the long wait times clients experience between being approved for and receiving therapy. Somatic sexologists are taught awareness, knowledge, and skills in embodied sex where somatic means the living processes of the body including physical, felt sense, emotional, and spiritual, and embodiment is the awareness of and being in these inner and outer experiences (Pelmas, 2017; Strozzi-Heckler, 2014). Somatic sexologists provide a resource that is currently not utilised by the legal bodies working to support people who have survived sexual abuse.

The meeting place of spirituality (in Western and indigenous practices), Māori approach to wellbeing, and embodied sexuality, is a place of opportunity for women. As discussed earlier, Māori health requires balance within and restoration of hengaro, tinana, whanau, whenua, and wairua. While untangling the social determinants of health for Māori will be a highly complex and long term task, land is slowly being returned and language is slowly being restored; we might consider this a beginning. On the possibility of ‘naturalising the Europeans’ as hinted at earlier, with guidance and permission from Māori, perhaps the concept of wairua could be woven into the fabric of social systems in Aotearoa. Conscious to compliment indigenous concepts rather than ‘claim’ as Western spiritual materialism (Delugach, 1999), I imagine systems built with wairua could enable self-empowered, community-connected, equal distribution of power and acceptance of ‘visitors’ and ‘natives’ alike (deliberate use of the language of colonialisation). Into this system I would weave colours of spirituality into women’s sexuality. Research by Horn et al. (2005) suggests the relationship between embodied awareness of the spiritual and physical and mental health exists. In a growing body of evidence, Gabor Mate (2019) attributes much of the physcial body’s illness to psychosocial factors such that he suggests guilt and shame underlie illnesses such as cancer and autoimmune disorders. In accessing the spiritual dimension of sexuality, women may become free of guilt and shame, connected with their chosen God or universal and inclusive concept, feel the sense of belonging that wairua empowers, and be connected with and accepting of their sensual body. The possibilities seem infinite.

In addressing the question of spirituality and its relevance in psychology I have chosen to focus on sex as it is laced with taboo and religious controls that leaked from the colonisers ships and continue to flood modern social structures in Aotearoa. Sex is a complex issue especially when considered through the experience of trauma, marginalisation, racism, or non-normative gender and sexual orientations. Under-resourced health providers could better support their clients through additional training in gender and sex related topics. Social systems in Aotearoa could be better placed to attain equity for all if structured from a Māori understanding of wellbeing. Women may find an unshackling from guilt and shame through embodied spirituality. Oddly, WIERD psychology is the study of the mind and behaviour, which includes the actions of the body, but not the body itself. Indigenous psychologies do not observe these dualistic approaches, they include and treat as one, the body, land, and spiritual aspects of living. If the practice of psychology in Aotearoa is to serve all people, integration with indigenous belief systems, specifically that of Māori wairua, spirituality, is essential.

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