Maria Dolan describes the dilemma faced by teenage girls, who cannot prepare for safe sex without admitting to their desires. So while fundamentalists have good reasons for rejecting the alienation and value-free quality of modern liberalism, simplistic rules are too confining and too dogmatic to meet complex and evolving human needs. Just as there appears to be an emerging integral culture that transcends both the modern and traditional cultures of the west, there may be an emerging integral sexuality. The politics of touch We are embodied creatures, as Sam Keen points out in The Loving Arts in this issue. Neither the modern vision of disembodied cyber-sex nor the denial of lusts and passions of fundamentalism gets it.
Babies crave the touch, motion, sound, and smells of their parents.
I expected my two children to eventually outgrow their desire for bedtime snuggles, but at age seven and twelve, neither have shown any signs of wanting fewer hugs or less physical closeness. Our society has created a completely unnecessary scarcity of touch. Touch is so closely associated with sexual contact that it has become taboo in most settings. Friends can't hold hands. Teachers can't touch children.