From: hicks@pulsar.rtp.dg.com (Linus Hicks)
Subject: Sexuality: Me Tarzan, You Jane
Date: Thu, 24 Dec 92 21:27:40 GMT
Reply-To: hicks@dg-rtp.dg.com
Organization: Data General Corp., Research Triangle Park, NC


The following is quoted without permission from "Keeping the Love You
Find, A Guide For Singles" by Harville Hendrix, Ph.D.

Our sexuality is a highly personal and central aspect of our identity,
and it plays an unparalleled role in our relationships. We like to
think of sex and our sexuality as so "natural" that we don't have to
think about it, or work at it. But in fact sexuality, like gender, is
largely a cultural construct. What we believe and do sexually is what
we're taught to believe and allowed to do. What we do in bed - _that_
we do it in bed - is learned. Pure raw sexual pleasure - or any pure,
raw emotion, for that matter - is all but impossible, except in
fleeting, unguarded moments, so pigeonholed are our ideas about sexual
behavior. As Jamake Highwater notes in "Myth & Sexuality," even what
we _feel_ about sex is culturally determined.

The fallout in relationships of the effects of our sex-negative,
pleasure-negative culture would fill another book. The strongest
influences on our attitudes toward sexuality have been transmitted
through biblical epics and the theory of original sin attributed to
St. Augustine. Rather than viewing human nature as essentially good,
and sex as life affirming (as is the case in some Eastern cultures),
our attitudes toward sex - the evils of the flesh - are based on the
premise that human nature is essentially evil and sex the depraved
act of an evil being. Even the product of sexual intercourse - the
infant child - is born "of sin." Thus we have the sex-prohibitive
religious practices - celibacy, the proscription of sex other than
for procreation, etc. - so prominent in our cultural history. More
subtly, we have the fear, shame, guilt, sexual "acting out," and
other psychological and political ramifications of these culturally
transmitted values superimposed on our innate sexuality.

It was probably inevitable that our rigid sexual strictures would
explode, in the form of the so-called sexual revolution and sexual
liberation. But revolutions are also destructive. Nature has its own
timetable, its own pace; hurricanes and volcanos wreak havoc.
Certainly sex has come out of the closet in recent history:
adolescents experiment at an ever-younger age, sex education is more
widespread, birth control more accepted and readily available, and
premarital sex is the norm rather than the exception. Some point to
widespread pornography as indicative of our liberation from sexual
repression. However, pornography _reflects_ that repression;
prurience is the flip side of puritanism. When a normal avenue of
self-expression is blocked, that expression often surfaces in an
exaggerated and distorted form in an effort to restore balance. This
is dysfunctional, for it only reinforces negative attitudes;
nevertheless it gives expression to something otherwise repressed.
But orgies and sexual marathons are no more liberated than sex in
the missionary position with the lights off. Even the seemingly
innocuous romance novels to which many women are addicted, in which
dastardly men force them to do their bidding or handsome princes
come and carry them away from their dreary lives, are cultural
distortions of sexual expression. They are a subset of pornography.

A culture that denies pleasure breeds the expression of pleasure in
distorted ways: rampant drug and alcohol abuse, for example - and
violence. Rape, in particular, has nothing to do with sexual
pleasure, and everything to do with the lack of, or denial of
pleasure. The depersonalization of the other, in rape, is an
expression of a split self, a desparate attempt to connect with the
hated opposite in oneself. A rapist suffers from sensory deprivation,
from the repression of _eros_, from a deep self-hatred acted out upon
a hated object - the perfect formula for violence. Sexually permissive
cultures are typically nonviolent. (Judith Hooper and Dick Teresi,
"Sex and Violence," _Penthouse_, February 1987, p. 41ff.)

A telling indicator of the negative sexual programming widespread in
our culture today, which has increased as we have supposedly become
more "liberated," is the incidence of inhibited sexual desire (ISD).
ISD is a complaint about which I and other therapists hear all too
often. Now that we are permitted to have sexual pleasure, it seems
that many people are having more sex, but enjoying it less. Pleasure
has become a duty. Telling people who have grown up under the old
rules that they should love sex, that they should feel "free" and
"turned on," is like telling someone flying in the coach section
that he has to land the plane. Without years of training, it produces
tremendous performance anxiety.

It is no wonder that sexual pleasure is so elusive. How can we enjoy
sex, which is nothing if not private and idiosyncratic, when our
expectations, and those of our partners, are a function of the social
bias? Sex should be loose and juicy, hard and heart-stopping - a
sensual experience. But how can we enjoy sex when we've been told
that pleasure is sinful, that our bodies are to be hidden, or that
they must conform to a narrow interpretation of permissibility? We
do not so easily shake off the bonds of repression. Sex in our
culture is a means to many ends (physical release, amusement, power,
debasement, control, connection), but rarely is pure sexual, bodily
pleasure the goal.

THE SEX-LOVE TRADE-OFF

The culturally imposed sex roles and sexual stereotypes we have been
discussing with respect to gender are particularly devastating in the
sexual arena. The sexual repression of men and women takes quite
different paths. Women in our society are cut off from enjoying the
_physical_ pleasure of sex; men are cut off from enjoying the
_emotional_ pleasure of sex. Women supposedly "give" their sexual
favors; men "take" their pleasure. Women are in essence cut off from
sex, men from sexuality.

We have all heard the stereotypes: Men want only sex, women want only
love (or affection). Men enjoy sex; women don't. Furthermore, men
_should_ want only sex (only wimps fall in love and let a woman
control them); women _should_ want only love (women who enjoy sex are
nymphomaniacs, or whores). Boys are raised to view sex as a conquest,
girls to see it as something they do to get love. A learned emotional
ignorance makes it difficult for some men to experience sex as a
vehicle for and expression of a variety of feelings and needs.
Socialized not to experience their feelings and emotions fully, those
feelings become localized in the genitals. But there is a big gap
between an ejaculation and a full-bodied orgasm.

Women, on the other hand, have been denied orgasmic pleasure by the
insistence that they don't have orgasms, or shouldn't enjoy them.
Physiologically, women are multiorgasmic, but women who openly express
(or actively seek) their sexual pleasure are often degraded, referred
to by derogatory terms such as "slut" or "tramp." Despite pornography
and the media's promotion of the sexually assertive woman, and the
fact that many men _say_ they wish their partners were more aggressive
in bed, most women who take the initiative sexually find themselves
confronted with disapproval or impotence. Because sex has been an
instrument of power for men, women's exercise of it is threatening.

For women particularly, sexuality is another area that cultural
inequities have infiltrated and undermined. Much of the sexual
language and practices in our culture are demeaning to women. Sex has
become an expression of conquest and control over, even hostility and
violence toward, women, rather than the expression of intimacy and
connection they seek. (As Gloria Steinem replied when asked why she
never married: "I can't mate in captivity.") It is hard to feel
comfort, much less pleasure, in an atmosphere of sugjugation or
objectification, where sex is used as a weapoin. Again, the conflict
between men and women in the sexual area is not a "natural" by-product
of biology or nature, but a reflection of patriarchal power. The
subjugation of women is not cross-cultural, and in cultures where
there is greater equality between men and women, there is less sexual
tension. Sexual intimacy - like all intimacy - requires equality.

End of quote.

It's a real interesting book, but don't expect to read it without
doing some pretty heavy introspection.

Linus
Newsgroups: alt.politics.sex