The TGIF Sex Blog [Religious Suppression of Sex]

¡Hola! Everybody...
Just in case you didn’t get the memo from Lush, von Brunn, the white supremacist Holocaust museum shooter is a registered democrat. Contrary to what the libruhl press is trying to say, people like von Brunn are the product of libruhl values. You know how us libruhls like to eat our young, hate Jews and blacks (and some women) and how we’re the reason for the destruction of all that is American and even that greatest American of all (after Reagan), Jay-sus!

Now back to your regularly scheduled sex, violence, and guns...

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-=[ The Religious Suppression of Sex ]=-

It is better to be unfaithful than to be faithful without wanting to be.

-- Brigitte Bardot (1934–)

Not long ago, I was having dinner with a close friend. I have found myself distancing myself from my two closest friends, and by chance I ran into one of them and we had dinner. The more we spoke, the more I realized, with the exception of one very important issue, we share very little in common. He has recently gotten into “scripture” and it seems that our rift grows the more he reads.

In any case, he asked me if there were any women in my life and we got into the eternal single guys conversation regarding women. In the span of around thirty minutes, I realized how far apart we are on issues I value very highly. As usual, he thinks my idea that men and women can be friends is wrong-headed. He almost started to use “scripture” as a way of backing this crap up, until I shot him my patented “I-will-tear-your-ass-up-with-cruel-unrelenting-logic-if-you-go-there” look.

Actually, he’s convinced it’s effeminate (“homo” was the exact phrase he used) for a man to seek platonic relationships with women.

The conversation turned to my love life (or lack thereof) when he asked me about a woman I had been seeing recently. As I related my story of distancing myself because the woman in question is looking for a serious relationship, he asked me, “Well, did you -- you know?” I realized he was asking me if we had had sex, and I answered no because I know this particular woman would not have sex unless it was a serious relationship. His response really got to me: “Well, that’s the kind of woman you’re supposed to have relationships with!”

Huh?

I was a bit confused as my mind tried to wrap itself around so Neanderthal a view, when I remember who I’m speaking to: a man who revered his ex-wife, but fucked women he considered “sluts,” “ho’s,” whatever. And you know what? His thinking, fucked up as it is, is not that different from many men. We want to marry the “good” girls (those who aren’t “easy,” or won’t “put out”), but when it comes to fucking, we want to fuck the “bad” girls.

Ahhhh… the wonderful world of sex: men’s’ freedom, women’s’ love and never the twain shall meet...

I find this thinking so wrong-headed it’s hard for me to know where to begin. One good place to start, however, is looking into how our conditioning about sex (at least here in Western world), came about.

Why? Because, though I know the fence needs fixing, I think philosophy is more important right now. Secondly, exploring deeply held assumptions (and we all are culturally conditioned to varying degrees), allows us to begin envisioning more skillful ways we, men and women, can relate to one another. Otherwise, don’t complain when he fucks the tramp.

The history of Christianity’s responses to eroticism is like a microcosm of the evolution of Western culture from a sex-affirming attitude, to a sex-negative one, ill at-ease with eroticism, sensuality, passion, and pleasure.

Dualism: Or the Underpinnings of Shame

Let’s go back to about six hundred years before Christ, where we find the earliest images of Eros. These images reveal the Greek God of Love as irrational, uncontrollable, mad, and foolish. Our Greco-Roman foundations adopted a dualistic world view of constant conflict, with the soul and mind cast as the protagonist seeking to escape the prison of the flesh. This perspective viewed the flesh as the source of evil. In Plato’s Utopia, he claims that the world would be better off if all sexual pleasures were starved. His utopia -- his ideal society -- forbids all sexual relations that are non-procreative. A society of breeders, as a friend calls fucking just to have babies.

Socrates and Plato viewed all forms of physical expression of sexuality as inferior to abstinence simply because they involve the body. It is interesting to note that though they tolerated homosexual and extramarital heterosexual relations, they agreed that any sexual activity was harmful to the soul. According to Socrates, it takes a year, “to recover from the scorpion’s bite.” (LMAO!!!)

Fast forward to three centuries after Jesus, and you find Plotinus popularizing this very view among early Christians. Platonism deeply informs much of St. Augustine’s views of sex, and through him, most of Christian thought down to the present day.

Other Early Influences: The Stoics and Gnostics

Stoicism, the dominant philosophy of the Roman Empire at the beginning of the Christian movement, endorsed this same from of Platonic dualism. Seneca the Younger, a contemporary of Jesus and tutor to the emperors, was the preeminent Stoic philosopher. His advice? “Do nothing for the sake of pleasure.” “Sexual desire,” he warned, “is friendship gone mad.” (Are we starting to see how this affects modern-day friendships between the sexes?) “It is also shameful to love one’s own wife immodestly… Nothing is more depraved than to love one’s spouse as if she were an adulteress.” Centuries later, St. Jerome repeated this very same Stoic sensibility: “Anyone who has passionate a love of his wife is an adulterer.” In 1988, in front of a public audience, Pope John Paul II again endorsed this stoic point of view, testifying to its hold on Christian sexual values.

The Stoics believed the ecstasy of sex was dangerous, hard to control, and detrimental to men’s health. Sex was a soulful burden needing purging before it could rise to the divine. Centuries later, Catholics would wage bloody battles to enforce celibacy on the clergy.

Another contemporary of Jesus highly admired by Christians, Musonius Rufus, maintained that “men who are… not immoral are bound to consider sexual intercourse [morally] justified only when it occurs… for the purpose of begetting children.” The Christian belief that procreation is the natural purpose of sex and that contraception is unnatural comes from the Platonic and Stoic philosophers. Christian moralists cannot even claim the missionary position, for it was the 2^nd century Stoic Artemidorus who claimed that male-superior, face-to-face sexual intercourse was the only morally acceptable position.

If you think the Stoics were a bunch of wet blankets, then you will love the Gnostics. The deeply pessimistic Gnostic worldview probably originated in Persia shortly before the birth of Christ. These guys stressed the worthlessness and baseness of all things. To the Gnostics, the body was a “corpse with senses, the grave you carry around with you.” According to the Gnostics, demons created this world and the soul is a spark of light from another world captured by demonic powers. This kind of degradation of the body was unknown in the Greco-Roman Christian world before the coming of the Gnostics.

The Gnostics are relevant in that they attempted to synthesize a blend of pagan and Christian values. They interpreted the Christian faith as a special kind of knowledge, gnosis, which the soul/ mind could use to transcend this earth and rise to the heavens. What is interesting is the Gnostics, like the Stoics before them, wavered between extreme sexual deprivation and hedonistic behavior, both motivated by their contempt for the body. Much like the conservative hypocrites of today.

When in the early 4^th century Constantine made Christianity the official state religion, outlawing pagan religions in the process, the emphasis on competing with other religions was shifted to sexual abstinence. Sexual abstinence and celibacy became the centerpieces of Christian moral life. Another wave of Gnostic influence, lasting about 100 years, ensued. By this time you find Manichaeus stating that sexual abstinence was required of true believers. Churches influenced by Manichaean thought even went so far as to only baptize virgins.

The triumph of anti sex values actually came about from a political movement that backfired. Jesus had included women among his immediate disciples, women who left home and openly traveled with him. This was an affront to the customs of the day and did not sit well with the church leaders who followed the apostles. One scholar, Elizabeth Schussler Fiorenza, suggests that as males tried to reassert male rule, the women rebelled with the only weapon they had -- withholding sex (as Prince says, “pussy control!”). The war of the sexes ended, Fiorenza believes, with a victory for the male celibates, who used sexual abstinence as a weapon by framing women as dangerous seductresses.

Fast forward to today and my friend and one can better see how gender sex roles are still firmly embedded in the cultural mindset. This cultural mindset has several dire consequences, the least of which is the debasement and destruction of sexual freedom, but that is fodder for another post.

Love,

Eddie

The TGIF Sex Blog (Sexual Upbringing in America)

¡Hola! Everybody...
Looking to get away for the weekend! The office closes early today and I’ll be making a quick exit... Hope everyone has a great time... BTW, The Losaida (Lower East Side) Festival is this weekend and Eddie Palmieri, along with other big-name Latino/a acts, will be appearing free. Check out my calendar for details (click here). And while you’re there, head over to Adela’s, eat some of the best PR food, and don’t forget to tell them Eddie sent you!

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-=[ The Cruelest Abuse: Sexual Upbringing In America ]=-

Once you are exposed to sex -- you’re never able to regain innocence again -- from then on you have sexual thoughts -- you have sexual feelings -- innocence is forever gone. It encourages sexual curiosity that would not have been there...

-- Oprah Winfrey on Teens and Dial-a-porn

[Note: This is part of a much larger post on sexual upbringing. I hope to follow-up with more in-depth posts on the subject in the coming Fridays]

I believe Oprah speaks for many American parents and the sentiment that if “you don’t try to shield them from ... all this explicit kind of stuff until they’re ready to handle it, then you’re robbing them of their innocence, their one time in life to be somewhat carefree.”

At this point, I would like to make the observation that as a nation our teen pregnancy and abortion rates lead the developed world. Many are trying to blame this phenomenon on a perceived sexual permissiveness and lax morals around sexuality. The point I will be making is that the exact opposite is true: we are a nation incapable of feeling comfortable with our own sexuality and we pass on our sexual hang-ups and dysfunctions to out children. I will make the case that, contrary to the blather that passes for sexual discussion these days, it’s not permissiveness, but rather, repression that is at the root of our “sexual problem” If you doubt me, just hold on for a second and absorb the following fact: the vast majority of teen pregnancies are the result of an adult impregnating an adolescent.

::blank stare::

Recently, there was a hue and cry around the new teen sex “epidemic” called s-exting. In fact, prosecutors across the nation began convicting teens as sexual predators. The fact is that even the experts concede that s-exting isn’t as widespread as reported in the mainstream media. In addition, I find it the cruelest abuse to criminalize what is normal adolescent behavior.

I think when adults say children can’t handle sexual content, they’re really expressing their own hang-ups about sex. We even fight about whether children should be taught about protecting themselves sexually.

People seem to mean by “sexual innocence” the absence of sexual thoughts, genital responses, and the awareness of how one is sexually aroused. A lot of parents would probably feel more relaxed if childhood did not have any sexual component and if sexuality magically appeared at puberty or better yet at marriage. Many parents have mixed feelings about their own sexuality and any recognition of sexuality in their children arouses their own unresolved sexual anxieties.

But let’s be honest about preadolescent sexuality -- were you “sexually innocent” prior to reaching puberty? Is that an accurate view of your pre- adolescent sexuality? When you were a child wouldn’t you have preferred learning more about the meaning of your sexual development rather than being blocked from such clarification by parents who were trying to keep you “innocent”?

Sigmund Freud shocked most of the Western world when he observed the reality of childhood sexuality over one-hundred years ago.

Almost all of the subsequent research of the twentieth century supported Freud’s assertion that children were sexual creatures. Alfred Kinsey, almost a half century after Freud, shocked this country with his own revelation of sexual responses involving erection and lubrication not only in preadolescent children but even in newborn infants. There’s even research of in utero sexuality!

I couldn’t begin to cite the overwhelming body of research supporting children as sexual creatures. Yet, this is exactly what we want to deny and what we want our children to deny. In the process, we teach our children that their sexual natures are evil and we drive the sexual conversation underground, where the shadow aspect takes over. It’s no surprise our children act out sexually, we don’t recognize nor do we support their sexual natures. Shit, even saying children are sexual creatures is enough to get you in hot water!

Even parents who claim to be open-minded about sex exhibit sexual anxieties -- for when they do discuss sex with their children, they often fail even to mention the pleasurable aspect of sexual experiences. They want their children to emphasize relationships and affection, and so they hesitated to mention pleasure too prominently. Since intensity of bodily pleasure is the aspect of sexuality that most clearly distinguishes it from other activities, this omission surely sabotages any realistic preparation for sexual behavior. Children experiencing these bodily pleasures must wonder why their parents don’t seem to understand what they are feeling.

Adult anxiety about childhood sexuality is not based upon any sane assessment of what is happening in their child’s life. Rather, because parents see sex as dangerous and threatening, they conclude that kids should be kept away from it. As a parent, I can certainly understand parents can have a realistic fear that other adults may take advantage of their child’s lack of knowledge about sex and may sexually exploit the child. But if that is your concern, it follows that you should talk more about sex with your child rather than promoting ignorance by acting as if childhood sexuality is a trampling of some mythical “natural state of sexual innocence.”

Finally, even parents who accept a more modern view of sexuality are hesitant to prepare their child for sexuality. For example, the typical response I hear from self-proclaimed modern, liberal parents is: “I am open about sexuality with my children and I will always try to answer any question at all that they raise about sexuality.”

Consider whether we would wait for questions to be raised in any other area of great importance to our children. We don’t wait for children to ask before teaching them how to tie their shoes, or how to add, or why not to play in the middle of the highway. How well would children know how to read if we waited for them to ask us before we taught them how to read? We think these are things they should know and we make sure they know them, whether they ask about them or not.

Why aren’t we adopting the same attitude when it comes to one of life’s greatest questions? Is it because we’re sexually permissive? I think not. And our children suffer for that.

Love,

Eddie