Everyone's a Little Bit Horny (Sometimes)

Most of the people who read this should recognize that title as an obvious rip-off from Avenue Q's "Everyone's a Little Bit Racist". The reason I love that song isn't because it's especially funny, but because it's entirely true. We all do make judgments and decisions based on things, like race, that we don't want to admit factor into our decision making process. The problem with this is that, when we don't acknowledge all of the aspects of our reasoning, we become blind to our own biases and incapable of accurately assessing our choices. Our sexuality (by which I mean our nature as physical, sexual beings, not sexual orientation) is something that has an incredibly impact on the decisions we make, but we tend to do a pretty terrible job of being healthy about it.

I'm going to go off on a tangent for a moment, but It will relate.

We're a society obsessed with self-stimulation, and this exhibits itself in a large part of the population through masturbation. Moreover, pornography is everywhere in our society; and virtually every adult male alive has intentionally sampled pornography at least once. I obviously don't discount myself from this group. I'm not trying to defend pornography. In fact, I'm doing just the opposite. Pornography distorts the intended nature of sex, ignoring the importance of intimacy and instead focusing on individual pleasure and achievement, frequently at the expense of the other member in some way. But that doesn't change the universality of the experience of pornography, and the fact that it isn't something we address openly and bluntly only gives it more power over our development.

The way we talk about pornography in different microcosms of society is a really good indicator of how we let our sexuality interact with our decision making process. In groups where pornography and/or masturbation habits are openly discussed without shame, most of the people I know are also more willing to admit to the impacts of sexual desire on their decision making...but the sexual desires are also generally greeted too enthusiastically, and sex is pursued as something good simply for the pleasure it brings. Instead of a focus on sexual health, there's a focus on "safety" in the active pursuit of sex.

On the other hand, you have groups where pornography is still taboo. They recognize the flaws with pornography, but because they are secretly aware of the universal nature of the pornographic experience, in an effort to dissuade it, they've become puritanical and any talk of sexual urges is associated with the pornographic rather than the expression of natural, healthy desires; so it is shunned and unhealthy attitudes towards sex fester. Here, instead of trying to develop a healthy understanding of sex, the focus is one of abstinence from this unseemly act.

Obviously, the unnatural nature in which sex is represented in pornography is the uniting factor in what's wrong with both of these approaches...but somewhere along the line, our entire understanding of sex, on both sides of the aisle, began to conform with the reality postured by pornography and not the nature of sex as created. As such, its becoming increasingly difficult to talk about sex in an open and constructive manner that actually relates to what sex is meant to be.

I wish I had something useful or new to say about where to go from here. I see no virtue in puritanism. As I inferred earlier, I see this as being largely responsible for losing sight of the one thing of value that those who rejected pornography had - an understanding of the real value of sex. I think that we need to work to rediscover this as a society, which will involve addressing the failings of pornography in a non-condescending fashion. From there, I think we need to be comfortable talking about and recognizing our urges as not unhealthy, but not to be dwelt on.

...there's a lot more I wish I could express, but I don't have the words right now. Maybe its better this way. If I want this to be a dialogue, then I can't have all of the answers up-front. Hopefully this is enough to get some sort of response from those of you who read it, and we can figure out what needs to be done together and start trying to reform where we can...It's a tricky issue, but an important one, especially when it comes to mending the secular-religious rift (I'm not certain, but I bet I could blame the attitudes of condemnation towards sex for most of my friends leaving the Church)...

thanks for your time, and hopefully this made sense