The Dark Side of Sexual Over-Acceptance
By: Aaron Quist
Tags: Love, Culture, Sex, Sexuality, Life

Modern Sex

The Dark Side of Sexual Over-Acceptance

What happens when we become too naughty?

Image by Nikita Klimov

We live in a time when nearly everyone’s sexuality can find a community of acceptance and celebration. Only a select few kinks, fetishes, and practices remain explicitly taboo. Because of this, there has rarely been a better time to be alive when it comes to exploring what turns you on and what gets you off.

This is liberating. It’s emotionally and physically cathartic to finally own up to who and what you are sexually. There is power in purposefully experiencing the pleasure your body is capable of, and to experience it without the puzzling guilt and shame that we are too often raised to associate with it.

Moreover, your sexuality is something you cannot get rid of. Life on this planet is inevitably sexual. We are all here as a result of sex, or at least through some facet of sexuality. Fighting it is essentially resisting your own physical existence. And yet, the human race has spent an immense amount of energy merely tolerating sex. We have long confined it to specific contexts, only fully allowing it under the strictest of cultural, religious, and spiritual terms. It is at once something the majority of us crave and at the same time fear. This is perhaps the most interesting paradox of human nature.

While modern humans have finally begun shedding our religious and spiritual hang-ups regarding sex, there is something pertinent to be said about our having experienced such hang-ups in the first place. I agree that our coming to terms with and celebrating the spectrum of human sexuality is ultimately a good thing (something necessary to actualize our full potential as humans), but I can’t help in wondering what might happen when we inevitably get too comfortable with it as a cultural idea.

We live in a time when companies like Urban Outfitters sell sex toys so sleek and attractive that they would not only look good, but appropriate, sitting out in the open on your coffee table as some kind of colorfully minimalist decor. Even department stores like Target are getting in on the action. This is admittedly super cool. It’s extremely liberating and exciting to be able to purchase something at once so beautifully designed, so Insta-worthy, but that also has the power to give you a mind blowing orgasm whenever you get tired of just looking at it.

It’s worth nothing that these toys are often categorized under the label of “self-care” products. We’ve seemed to migrate certain parts of our conception of sexuality into that curiously ubiquitous self-improvement/self-help territory. Since the expression of one’s sexuality is healthy, there is undoubtedly truth in this categorization.

However, this is somewhat concerning on a few levels. It’s as if we are taking some kind of strange pride in owning the newest and most orgasmic sex toy.

This has led to the tendency to present oneself through some type of weird “peacocking” in which one uses their sexuality as a means to prove just how open-minded and liberated they are at this particular moment in “history”. In other words, we seem to be finding a truly strange amount of ways to assert just how close we are to breaking free from X, Y, and Z’s oppression/repression, and to use that fact as a way to be our most “modern” or “woke”. I’m not saying that there aren’t those who are still oppressed, but on a larger cultural scale most of us can freely express our sexuality without unanimous judgment from society as a whole.

This is all kind of cool — and also kind of weird. It’s like the human race has begun to weaponize parts of our sexuality as a means to compete against one another socially, to assert just how cultured and progressive we are, instead of simply focusing on the love and pleasure it can bring into our lives. It’s important to note that numerous companies support this phenomenon with vigor. Our hyper-consumerism combined with our social-media-peacocking seems to be doing to sex what these same companies have done to love on Valentine’s Day. Our individual sexualities are cool, but this is not.

Think about the one thing that has made sex exciting for all of us on at least one occasion in our lives. That one thing is repression, its very taboo-ness. The stigma of sex itself is a huge part of what draws us to it, what makes so much of it exciting. After all, there is no better way to make something irresistible than by telling someone you shouldn’t even think about it, let alone actually do it. Curiosity will always get the better of you if I tell you that this secret item I have sitting in an unlocked box is not to be looked at when I leave the room (like a sex toy hidden away from guests in a dresser drawer). You may not look at it the first time, but you know damn well that you want to, and probably will given time.

Our history of sexual repression is exactly what tends to make sex so “naughty” and fun in the first place. It’s exactly what gives you that exciting thrill every time you do something you aren’t “supposed” to. It’s the adrenaline of doing something “non-vanilla”. It’s the joy of rebellion. It’s about realizing that rules aren’t concrete things that actually limit your freedom. It’s about creating plot twists in the story that is our history. It’s the joy of two lovers sneaking away from an all-seeing eye that hovers enigmatically over their shared paradise. It’s the absolute pinnacle of curiosity.

What do you have under your fig leaf?

With this in mind, where does this rapidly expanding acceptance and normalization of all-things-sex lead to? When a huge part of our collective conception of sex has always been the thrill of being “naughty”, of doing something you shouldn’t be doing, how will an absolute acceptance of this part of our humanity affect us in the long run?

On one level, complete acceptance will always lead to weirder, riskier, more taboo tendencies. Absolute acceptance will inevitably lead to boredom, to an overall sexual ennui within the greater collective consciousness that will leave us chasing something long ago abandoned. In other words, when it becomes so accepted and normalized that we begin to be bored with it as a cultural idea, we will inevitably begin taking bigger and bigger risks with it.

Take for example the truly mind-boggling practice of HIV Russian Roulette. Yes, you read that right. Take for example the insane amount of people coming forward about the ubiquity of sexual abuse committed in our entertainment industry by many of the same celebrities we’ve all spent years believing were respectably wholesome icons of success. Take for example the oddly disturbing amount of step-sibling/incest porn recently crowding the pages of popular sites like Pornhub. Take for example the ever-increasing availability and realism of sex robots of all kinds, resembling adults and children. My intention is not to judge anyone or anything from atop some moral high ground, but it’s hard to disagree with the notion that some of these phenomena have quite the dark side, regardless of any roots they may have in innocent and healthy sexual fantasy.

I’m not saying everyone will inevitably find themselves bored of sex due to an overexposure to it or by accepting it for what it is. If that were the case, we all would have been fed up with it long ago. No, it’s obvious that sex will always be a force to be reckoned with in the minds of humans. It’s too important for our survival, too powerful a source of pleasure, too fun a means to explore our humanity, and too useful a way to show someone you love them. After all, even the most awkward sexual encounter still has a certain rush to it.

What I am saying though, is that sexuality has become so celebrated and weaponized in nearly every cultural context in the west that we risk losing part of what makes pursuing sexual pleasure so interesting and so much fun in the first place. Namely, that we want to break the rules, that we want to be naughty, that we want to chase any momentary shedding of the limitations that our culture, our religion, and our history has placed on us. Sex will always be a fun game when balanced in this way, not merely something to prove just how modern, or progressive, or “woke” we are.

Yes, it is always healthy to talk openly about it, but let it retain some mystery. Let it ultimately be free of any agenda besides love and growth. Inspire people to be themselves and be open sexually, but leave them the mental space to get there on their own. This means not making it about endless self-improvement. It means not using it to prove our individual worthiness in the overall cultural landscape. It means not using it to sell product after product. It means not using it as a way to give ourselves something to post on Instagram.

Deep down, we all know that sex is a good and joyous thing. Sex is why we’re here in the first place: to give and receive love, to create life, to experience small little ego deaths in which we get lost in someone else’s body. No one should ever be judged for their innately healthy sexuality.

All human problems throughout history, such as our mixed feelings about sex, are really deep-rooted mysteries that drive us onward. Our problems are what keeps us motivated to continue playing the game we call existence. All of these issues are merely the collective human imagination writing the character arc to its own heroic journey.

Because after all, a story is no fun without some plot twists. It’s all about profound balance. Too much repression and we die. Too much acceptance and we become bored, no longer interested in playing the “same old game.” And then what will sex and sexuality as a whole become?

How can we ever be “naughty” when there’s nothing “naughty” left?