I was looking at this old image, thinking about the thoughts it had conjured in me about a year and a half ago, and it stirred up a lot of old feelings. I guess not much has changed on this subject, although a year and a half is a small amount of time for the kinds of sweeping changes I envision. Still, here's the reformulation of my thoughts:
Sometimes I think about all the effort we expend to hide the simple fact of our sexual natures, when it is ever only hiding just under the surface of everyday life, and it just seems so...insane. Like to acknowledge our bodies and the purpose they are driven towards would send society screeching to a halt, or worse, crashing down around us in flames. There are worse "sins" than perversion. You can destroy yourself with illicit drugs, give in to selfish and antisocial impulses, and sabotage your own well-being. But sex is a fundamental part of living. Yeah, it feels good, and there's a risk of indulging too heavily, without proper preparation and protection. But you can kill yourself from eating too much fat or sugar, and those are everyday staples of our diet, available in every grocery store. Every morning we get up and transport ourselves about town in roving death machines. And by and large, we're okay. Admitting that the anticipation of the sensation of a penis entering a vagina (or any number of other more and less related stimuli) gets you excited (as your instincts dictate) isn't going to destroy the fabric of society. It isn't going to cause churches to spontaneously combust, nor is it going to irrevocably scar our children for life. So can we just get over it already?
I posted this over at deviantART, and got a nice response (you can read it on that page), which had me thinking further about the impact that religion (specifically Christianity) has had on our sexual attitudes. I feel strongly about what I wrote, so I wanted to reproduce it here on my blog:
I do think religion has had a lot to do with it. I remember reading The Mists of Avalon, which depicts a world in transition between the old religions and Christianity, and thinking about the effect the latter has had on changing man's perception of his sexual impulses. I can see its utility in a civilizing context; after all, if you control sex - who and how people procreate - you control the population. Which isn't to say that I believe in an elaborate conspiracy, but what purpose does religion serve if not to protect the masses from their own baser impulses?
Still, I think that in this age of contraceptive technology, it's counterproductive (to which the results of any study on abstinence education will attest) for priests to continue to be the stewards of our primal instincts (especially in light of their own moral failings). It's time we took responsibility for our actions back into our own hands. We needn't embrace the illusion that sex is sinful just in order to control our urges. Maturity, technology, and public education are sufficient for that. Sacrificing a holistically positive approach towards human sexuality (as the ancient pagans must have had) should only have ever been a means to an end - a necessary evil, if you will. It's time to cast that view aside, and embrace sex - safely and responsibly - not as wild animals, but as the evolved and sophisticated race of intelligent beings we ought by now to be.
Or maybe I'm just ahead of my time.
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