When I started this blog, I had an opening page that promised many topics. I deleted that when it became obvious I wanted to cover relationship stuff for quite some time. I've been using intermissions to slip across other topics, but nothing in depth really.
My topic todays is a "tweenie", not totally relationship, not totally something else....
There's a saying in some parts of the counselling world - "If the sexual aspects of a relationship are fine, sex is totally unimportant. It only gains importance when it's a problem".
Pretty anti 1st generation Freud eh? (He actually debunked his sex theories later in life, his 2nd stage that many ignore or never even knew about. For the record, he declared his earlier research was based on a lousy and prejudicial selection of subjects!)
We, as humans, manage to push most aspects of our lives into needlessly complicated and myth ridden areas. We can come up with distorted, obsessional over emphasis on just about everything we do (or don't do).
Sex is just one of those areas.
We also love to claim lack of control in our lives, especially if we can attribute activities to genes or animal heritage or both. "I can't help it, I'm just being the alpha male" and that sort of crap.
Before delving into sex and co, I'm going to make a pretty radical statement.
"I have yet to find any aspect of our lives and behaviour that cannot be strictly under the control of our own conscious decissions (excluding the EXTREMELY RARE misdevelopment or misfunctions of our physiology)."
So, for example, ALPHA MALES act like ALPHA MALES simply because they are being taught to! Now, not in the far distant past.
OK, sex.....
We have bodies. Those bodies have parts. Those includes tits, bums, penises and vaginas.
We like to use those parts of our bodies, all of them, for many things.
Take our hands. We can use them to hold things, push things, we can touch others with them, and we can hurt others with them. We don't declare them no-go bits or assign sin to them.
Ah, you may say, there is a fundamental difference between a hand and a penis! Hands aren't under the control of hormones! (Well, not directly, the argument may go...).
So, the sexual organs are in a different category, so the argument goes.
Hmm, so that means they must be covered up and declared nasty?
Look, let's get real. Hormones etc do have direct effects on those sex parts (making them sensitive, erect, la de da) - but those direct effects are minimal. It is in the mind that the effects have real power. Covering the bits up will not make much difference there. Oh, but seeing bits leads to excitement and lack of control.... Bullshit.
We have Victorian men being driven into animalistic rampancy by the sight of an uncovered piano leg, Muslim men by a woman's hair, but Swedish men blithely indifferent to six foot tall busty blondes swanning around the beach. Hmmm.
We need to separate reality from guilt/sin/fanaticism if we are to tackle this sex subject sensibly.
Part 2 coming....
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Great topic Mike. As you know, we (my family, which includes 10 year old daughter, my mother and step-father) just completed the "5th Grade Faith & Sexuality" Workshop. I know most on FB cringed when they saw the words Faith & Sex juxtaposed but WOW what a positive and uplifting experience.
ReplyDeleteThe rational that sex/sexuality/sex organs are all a part of creation, like our useful and much appreciated 'hands,' and therefore are a 'good and purposeful' part of our existence.
We broke down and examined your ALPHA MALE topic as well which is totally controlled by society and sadly THE MEDIA!!!! Men DO HAVE EMOTIONS they just don't feel they have a safe place to express them without being 'labeled.'
I am so thrilled that with 25 families we were able to engaged the brains of our 'tweeners' to think outside the sex 'box' and become comfortable and respectful of that which makes them inherently unique and beautiful. Thanks for blogging about this topic. If for one will continue to write about it in my poetry & short forms from the aspect of those who are blighted by the psychosis of sexual repression and guilt.
Project Gutenburg is an ititiative to digitise and make freely available all written works that are out of copyright. While browsing, I found an article written by a clergyman in the late eighteen hundreds, talking about sex. It was so refreshing and 'modern'.
ReplyDeleteHe put forward the 'God endowed us' argument brilliantly. He also put forward an argument against 'protecting our children'. To paraphrase, better to provide sound information and enter sensible discussion rather than let them discover crap behind the bike sheds.
Religious leaders that promote avoidance of temptation really puzzle me. Didn't Jesus face temptation so he could become strong enough to reject it?
The only thing we achieve by avoidance is a definite inability to cope when nasties unavoidably and inevitably come along to bite us. We lack suitable tools because we never had the chance to develop them.
With children, the trick is not to pretend something doesn't exist, it comes with finding a frame of reference that matches a child's level of knowledge and experience. The myths and dirty stories behind the bike sheds will never find that framework. Parents and teacher's can - providing they can drop their own prejudices and fears.
It's really farcical over here at times. A whole scene is deleted from a film because two people, fully clothed, kiss. Yet, scenes where someone puts an evil spell on someone else, and then hacks their head off with a machete remain untouched.
Sex and love is sinful, aggression, hate and violence is exciting and wholesome eh.
Now how am I supposed to take over the world through nudity if nobody thinks it's naughty anymore?
ReplyDeleteSeriously... totally agree with the forbidden fruit argument--hide it and make it bad and suddenly everybody is all over the action. Same worked for alcohol during prohibition (or for teens now) and is why drugs are such a violent racket.
A little reality added to all these thing--they are what they are--with a little less value judgment and I think we might be able to call it progress.