The Two Polar Extremes of Sexual Politics


You always hear about how we are living in at a crossroads when it comes to society; when we’re at that pivotal moment in human history when things can swing in either direction, and we just have to wait for the winds of change to decide which way to blow. That is the case, but it is always the case. Society keeps moving and changing. Sometimes there’s regression but it’s still motion. Cultural evolution keeps moving in the same way that biological evolution does. It never really stops. It just keeps going very slowly into the future. Take, for instance, Richard Dawkins’ example. If you take a photograph of your father, his father, then your grandfather’s father, and keep going 185 million generations back, you will end up with a picture of a fish.

But there are still fish living along side with humans. Even linear evolution leaves branches on the evolutionary tree. The same applies to culture. In our particular case, we are talking about the culture of sex and how it’s accepted (or not accepted.) The difference here is that socio-cultural (memetic) evolution takes place much faster, especially now, thanks to the internet and mass-media. Another major difference between biological and memetic is how much each individual unit influences the other units. The characteristics of one human do not necessarily change the other individuals to such a large extent. There is always some effect, but it’s not usually too great, with some exceptions. When it comes to memes, they influence each other in very profound ways. Sometimes, when you have two opposing memes, it sort of balances out, but sometimes, they clash. That is the case with our sexual culture.

On one side of the spectrum, you have an ever expanding culture of sexual tolerance and even an endorsement of sexual behavior. Homophobia is less of an issue. More and more people are breaking out of their shells, doing more and more daring sexual ventures. We are embracing our true polygamous nature, and we are moving forward with our collective sexual maturity.

On the other hand, we have the remains of a failing puritanical, repressed society which teaches us that sex is a shameful thing that should only be practiced for the purpose of reproduction, and any pleasure that is derived should be ignored. To them, sex is the original sin, and they feel that if they don’t think about it for long enough and pray instead, it will go away.

So you have these two different schools of thought present in the same time and place. As you may have imagined, it got complicated. There were two possible ways that it could have played out. The first contingency would be something along the lines of things balancing out and finding some middle ground. Nice, eh? But no. We were not so lucky. Instead, we worked our way into a curious dynamic in which we want sex, , but are never given sex, because that’d just be naughty. We live in a perpetual strip tease.

We hear about how society is becoming more and more perverted, which is true, but it’s for a different reason. We are given a taste of what we want, but are told that it’s shameful to have it. I don’t know how much you know about psychology, but that is recipe for some sort of pathology.

Imagine you’re in a car crash and you are lying on the side of the road next to the burning corpus of what used to be a car. An ambulance picks you up and takes you to the hospital. Your life is hanging by a thread. Your first thought should not be something along the lines of “Oh my, my nurse’s panties are see-through!” This did actually happen, by the way.

Dylan Moran’s take on this is quite straight forward. “If you’re a young male, you live in a sexual tyranny…You can be in a car crash, lying in a ditch, thinking: “What is the erotic twist of this situation?” Our relationship with pleasure is very unhealthy. Instead of being embraced, it’s something that is considered to be evil. Everyone brags about how they went through unnecessary hardship. And why? I mean, who are we to enjoy ourselves in our own lifetimes?

It’s gotten so bad that I have heard women say that they want to have children through parthenogenesis. I’m not even going to comment on that.

But sex still exists. It’s very real, and all around us. In an attempt to fight off the puritans, we fire attractive, half naked men and women out of the television screens and magazine pages. Well…it’s also a very good tool for advertising. This is exactly why we see someone’s nipple on the television and throw a hissy-fit as a country. How does this make us look as a country? It makes us look like little children who saw a Playboy magazine for the first time. It’s sad, really.

This is the reason Todd Akins has no grasp on the female reproductive system. This is the reason scientific nomenclatures are considered to be dirty words. We’re so sick in the head as a nation that we cannot even handle the birds and the bees. Doctors are forced to resort to euphemisms. Children are exposed to silly words like “winky” and “dinglaing.” They become overly sensitive about simple facts of life and turn into maladjusted adults.

Enough is enough.