Human cultures are riddled with myths, fantasies and delusions. Out of these grow the taboos, destructive cultural imperatives, dysfunctional behavior, and defective systems which, in turn, ensure that Homo sapiens continues to be the most disturbed and dangerous animal on this planet.
Virtually all of our ignorance and misdirection results from instituted and codified conceptual pathogens. The individual generates little of his or her own conceptual structure, mainly accepting and internalizing the cognitive material proffered by the culture.
Any delusional information will generate some form of dysfunction within the individual and the society. The highly deluded individual is also highly vulnerable to further false indoctrination. The most difficult cognitive problem for the individual is simply that of recognizing cultural teachings as being largely delusional. Cultural identity is usually an euphemism for cultural delusion.
In an environment structured to maintain delusion, one finds little definitive information, and virtually no encouragement toward orienting people to the realities. Falsehoods infect every sector of involvement and inquiry. There are few, if any, aspects of existence in which our institutional sources present a clear and accurate view. The delusional a-priori infects and distorts all cognizance. Little exists in reality as presented by our cultures. This cannot be emphasized enough. Everything gets distorted.
The overwhelming use of language and custom in human societies functions to support delusional cognitive systems. Our language is more often used to obfuscate than to enlighten; to hide, rather than expose; to generate confusion, not understanding. The overwhelming use of a language is to propagandize and to maintain the institutions and the debilitating beliefs. All of this is divergent from functionality, objective reality and the development of cognitive integrity.
Were our objectives more toward discovery and the acceptance of factual reality, we would have systems and societies able to make corrections. Where there is broad rejection of reality, perceptions become divergent from knowledge and selling must be on an emotional basis instead of appealing to reason and indices of evidence. Emotional bias is accentuated at the expense of reason. Nowhere is propaganda more in use than in institutional manipulation of human sexuality. In no area of fundamental human function does one find more rejection of the realities than in the area of sex. For the greater numbers, this is an area of frustration, of distorted drives and delusional expectations.
Sexuality is the most all-pervasive area of taboo. The basis for much of this taboo stems from Western and Middle Eastern religious teachings which deem sexual gratification as ignoble, if not evil and maintain an "obscenity of the flesh" that poisons, distorts and frustrates our natural drives.
On a physiological basis, sexual drives are governed primarily by chemistry, through hormonal secretions. These chemicals trigger physiological and emotional responses. The development of human sexual mechanisms and drives has its beginnings in the zygote and continues through childhood to adulthood, changing endlessly throughout life.
This is an area of human drives and function that cannot be denied and, therefore, provides a vulnerable access point for manipulation and control of the individual. By implanting associated guilt and fear, high levels of conflict, stress and deprivation can be induced. The reduction of these unpleasant conditions can be used to shape behavior.
The whole realm of sexuality provides an area highly vulnerable to emotional distortions. It is a rich area for manipulation and control by our institutions. The religions use it, as a means of control. The governments use it, as a means of involvement and growth. As with any proscribed or prohibited object or substance, sex, in any form, sells.
There are areas where cultural customs and our institutions have proscribed all but a strict set of behavioral patterns and work to further infuse the individual with high levels of guilt, frustration and self degradation. In the process of implanting the destructive associations, sex drives are distorted, generating pathology and insulating problems from any objective inquiry or amendment.
Sexuality is an ultimately irrepressible area of human function in which one finds high levels of suppression and repression, and therefore the greatest emotional and behavioral distortion of any human activity, with one exception, that of the reasoning processes in the defense of belief..
Human sexual behavior is so narrowly proscribed within most cultures that none, regardless of how sexually liberated they may think themselves to be, have escaped associated distortions of sexual drives and responses.
Not only is the United States probably the world leader in terms of a wide range and all-pervasiveness of sex-related problems, but it also reflects an almost total blocking of awareness of the root causes for these problems. As one would expect, such insanity has its source in cultural delusion and its beginning in the home. However, it propagated and perpetuated by the institutions of a culture.
In Western cultures, our traditional attitudes toward sex have their beginnings in the ancient Middle Eastern religions, the religions of Mythra and Zoroastrianism, before the development of Judaism and Christianity, where man was held to be basically vile and evil and where sexuality was held to be obscene and a curse. These ideas spread among the cultures of the Middle East and became incorporated into the subsequent religions of the area, Judaism, Christianity and Islam.
As religions established the idea that the basic nature of humanity was evil and obscene, virtually anything else which provided pleasure would be eventually denigrated. Official or institutionalized condemnation of human nature provides religion and government with a powerful instrument of control and manipulation through the implantation of fear and guilt, and the power to relieve that guilt. Religion causes personal decompensation and sexual distortion on a grand scale.
The ancient delusions persist to this day and western religions remain unchanged in their use of sexual drives as one of their foremost means of manipulation and control over families. These beliefs are still strong throughout the American cultures and the vast majority of lives are blighted by them in spite of there having been a so-called sexual revolution.
Even when the individual intellectually recognizes the absurdity of the falsehoods, he or she still remains captive of the associated feelings of guilt and unworthiness, so completely are they ingrained in the culture and in the individual's psyche.
The delusions having been officially codified, the individual can be punished severely, by the society, for breaking a taboo. Yet, where normal drives are in conflict with unnatural taboos and cultural proscriptions, suppression of behavior by society causes pressures and distortions to build to eventual explosive levels, tendencies that would otherwise never reach levels of expression can become truly devastating when they are no longer contained.
In the United States, we have created probably the most dangerous environment for children since they were sacrificed to the gods. We have children being abducted for sexual purposes and slaughtered in order to avoid penalties imposed by a "righteous" society. "Dead men tell no tales." In such a case, the child is expected to be disposed of, making any consideration of humane treatment or the welfare of the child superfluous. The suffering and stark terror that these children often meet is impossible to imagine.
The principle that is totally ignored here is that the suppression of any drive generates an increase in that drive. The society first spawns the unhealthy drive, then brings it to explosive levels where it is going to be acted out. Society has shaped and triggered the killers of our children. The blame is totally at the door of cultural delusion, primarily religion and government.
Of all areas of human sexuality, none is more vulnerable to damage, as a result of taboo, than the child. Our sexual taboos function to suppress behavior that is not only common to every society, but a functional aspect of the species. We are the only animal species on the planet that suppresses childhood sexuality.
In the course of that suppression, grave distortions in human sexual drives and responses occur, further increasing the pressures toward taboo behavior. As a result, violence to children and women, those most vulnerable within a society, is a growing menace, an ever-present danger. Every rape, every sexual assault and brutalization, every association of sexual pleasure with pain or suffering, has its beginnings in childhood.
Sex offenders do not spring, full-blown, into the society. They usually observe and experience negative attitudes and often physical punishment in the area of sexuality, often beginning in early childhood. It is in the formative years of childhood that the sexual distortions are implanted. This is understandable, not just because it is an area where problems escalate as suppression increases, but because the greatest emotionality can be generated here. This is where the implantation of guilt, ideas about self-worth and fear are most effective and destructive.
It is in childhood that most of our emotional and cognitive distortions have their roots. The damage, to a large degree, is permanent. With the subject, and the fact, of childhood sexuality being taboo and childhood sexual drives being suppressed, almost invariably punished, there is little ability to avoid either the instillation of guilt and other negative attitudes and associations, or the effects.
A taboo area is like a closed infection, it is where the problems build but cannot be examined, cannot be aired, drives cannot be fulfilled and reduced; where relaxed discussions and experimentation cannot take place, allowing individuals, children or adults, to work out their needs as natural aspects of life. The problems feed upon themselves, and grow.
It is in childhood that the seeds are sown for virtually every functional problem of adulthood, sexuality being just one serious and vulnerable area.
The American society denies that children have sex lives. We are expected to believe that, even though sexual systems develop from the moment of inception, the child is not supposed to experience any sexual needs until the last stages of sexual development, that of puberty. The denial and suppression does not prevent the child from having a sex life, of course. It just insures that it will be unsatisfactory, that it will be suppressed and distorted.
In most Western cultures exhibited childhood sexuality is punished, consistently, throughout childhood. It is something shameful, something to hide. Yet, the child cannot avoid it. The child is daily confronted with it, both internally and externally. It is something about one's self that is not nice, not acceptable, not right, while its titillating display cannot be avoided. We punish and disparage the very nature of the child, as well as the adult. Every child plays with its own sexual organs and seeks others to do it, until the activity becomes suppressed. Moving to completely suppress childhood sexual behavior denies a very real need of the child, implants the idea of not being right, and continues to have deepening negative effects throughout childhood.
Some parents believe that you can impose upon the child any code of behavior, or any belief system, without repercussions. You can't. A child, or the young of any animal, has natural parameters of function. If the teachings of the parents or the group are unnatural, leading to the suppression and distortion of those drives, there is going to be distorted expression of those drives, pathology commensurate with the level of deprivation affected and the distorted cognizance generated.
Just as you cannot instill beliefs without a corresponding distortion of the child's perception and reasoning, you cannot suppress natural behavior, implanting the idea of evil for having such drives, without instilling self-denigrating thought processes, as well as sexual and other pathologies.
You cannot suppress sexual needs and urges, as will manifest themselves in any healthy child, without implanting corresponding emotional pathology which will adversely affect future sexual drives and responses, as well as damage to the self concept.
Natural sex drives, which manifest themselves in some form from birth, normally manifest themselves in the exhibition of sexual curiosity and activity. The healthy child's behavior will include the seeking of tactile stimulation, both specific to the genitals and those which include a diversity of sexual overtones.
The child's natural activities, for both genders, will include the generation and stimulation of sexual feelings, sexual experimenting and sexual roll playing. All of these manifestations are aspects of the normal development of the growing child. They reflect the child's moving to fulfill physiological, emotional and cognitive needs. The suppression of childhood sexuality often moves the child to almost desperate measures.
Throughout childhood, the child works out many, if not most, of his or her approaches to life by playing; by taking on imaginative roles and by experimenting. In the realm of sexuality, playing is suppressed, yet this is one of the most basic and needed areas of human function and gratification. Such behavior is more than curiosity.
I am reminded of an incident, just a day in the life of a child and the parents. The girl was eleven years old and had a cousin visiting, a boy who was about a year younger. The boy's parents had dropped him off at the girl's home. It became immediately apparent that these two were sexually attracted to one another and their playing got to be increasingly suggestive. The girl's parents picked up on the direction activities were taking and immediately tried to suppress it. Checking on what the children were doing became more frequent and the voices of both parents took on a scolding tone.
The children tried to escape, attempting to find a game or a place that would take them out of parental observation. It didn't happen. There was no place to hide. As the day wore on, the game became more frantic, for both parents and the children.
It would have been funny except for the anger and frustration that was building. The parents became more punishing and dictatorial, the children losing their natural good natures, becoming increasingly rowdy and destructive. By the time the boy's parents came to get him the girl's parents were quarreling and the boy and girl were spatting, blaming one-another for some minor damage caused by their rough house play. Everybody was angry.
In this society, perhaps more than in any other so-called civilized society, not only are these manifestations of sexuality suppressed, but are paired with feelings of guilt and personal degradation, and often physical punishment. As one would expect, suppression only results in heightened levels of sexual frustration and interest which, by association, trigger guilt and other negative emotionality, leading to unhealthy and dysfunctional distortions in behavior. The syndrome is self-reinforcing.
To believe that all sexual drives can be suppressed until a state of physical maturity has been reached, and then suddenly have a young adult with healthy drives and response patterns in the realm of heterosexual behavior, is ludicrous. It is one of our most destructive fantasies.
We cannot escape our real animal natures nor our need for reality-oriented learning. To attempt to force learning and behavior along other paths only results in crippling us as individuals, as societies and as a species.
You cannot force an individual into an idealized mold and expect that person to function in the real world. This is a lesson humankind stubbornly refuses to learn. We live in a real universe with physical parameters. It is beyond the ability of any entity to make it be otherwise.
The child's sexual experiences will largely determine the pattern of adult sexual activity. One forms the basis of, and merges into, the other. It is a continuing maturation process in which, in our society, no one escapes entirely unscathed.
What, then, should be the natural sexual behavior of children, or adults, for that matter, in a society that is really civilized? We don't know, but the effects of what we are doing certainly gives us some clues as to direction, at least. And, we can draw inferences from recognizing certain principles that are being violated.
For sexuality to be a continuing warm, loving, fulfilling aspect of one's life, it would have to be tainted with a minimal amount of guilt and other negative connotations. This means that childhood sexuality would have to be something other than evil and a reason for punishment. The child should surely be left with good feelings about himself or herself, after having moved to fulfill a sexual urge. There can be correction without suppression.
It means that childhood sexuality would probably have to be allowed to seek its own activity level. It would also mean that sexual relationships would be allowed to work themselves out, with no harm or imposed or forced behavior allowed.
Sexual activity would not have to be allowed on the playground or the courthouse steps. Sexual activity seems to naturally lend itself to privacy, if for no other reason than it being so emotional in nature.
The following is a note I wrote to myself, as I often do, upon hearing another bit of insanity issuing from the media. This one was triggered several years ago by a highly publicized and emotional jury trial involving accused child molestation on the part of the operators of a day-school in California. This trial, as it turned out, became the longest and most expensive trial in history, until OJ's. The thoughts I had jotted down at that time relate to one of the most dysfunctional procedures in our courts, the slanting of testimony by the state in order to maintain, use and manipulate popular delusions. Courts often allow the use testimony out of context and just enough to generate the picture the prosecution wants to portray.
No one questions underlying premises and no one within official systems is about to question the absurdity of a law. The thoughts in this note have enough universal relevance and validity that it bears reprinting here:
"Today, in the circus-like trial of a day-school operator, accused of child molesting, a psychiatrist testified that children who have been 'molested' characteristically display symptoms such as bed wetting, nightmares, loss of appetite, etc.
He was lying. The lie was one of omission and innuendo. By terminating his testimony after making such statements, and with no further elaboration, he left the impression that the various symptoms would be caused only by the 'molestation'. The word "molestation", itself, functions to maintain all sexual activity between an adult and a child as being in the nature of an attack, in some way damaging to the child. This is the propagation of delusion. This expert witness aided in the perpetuation of the child molestation myth/pathology, hindering an understanding of the real nature of adult/child sexual activity.
Certainly, if a child is involuntarily confronted with something frightening, repugnant or painful, guilt-generating or a combination of such, the child certainly is being molested, and there is going to be trauma which can, and does, cause emotional damage.
However, the overall testimony of the psychiatrist, with the obvious
assistance by the court, implied and left the impression that:
To the contrary, symptoms are not monolithic. They reflect the amount of physical and/or emotional damage done, if any, and the child's perception as to the significance of the act. The act is not invariably traumatic, nor is it always imposed upon the child. In most occurrences, it is not, but represents an eager collaboration. Most so-called molestations reflect a mutually acceptable activity, something the child may initiate or is willingly involved in. There is no trauma, there is no pathology, there are no adverse symptoms, not from the so called 'molestation'.
Unfortunately, in the midst of the hysteria regarding child molestation and childhood sexuality, which has grown over the years, there is wide-spread molestation, real molestation, where children are forced into activities and where the child is often killed as a result of fear or distorted sexual urges, on the part if the molestor."
Where there is a suppression of drives which are endemic to a species, a culture, or to a large number of individuals within a population, there is going to be social pathology. Human drives, be they physiological or psychological, cannot be suppressed or legislated away without consequences. To try to do so only generates real problems.
Although sexual stimulation can be paired with any number of unhealthy behaviors, such as sadistic or masochistic activity, where torture, or worse, can be shaped to generate sexual excitation, the majority of child killings probably result from fear of reprisals by the society, the molester simply attempting to escape detection. In other words, these killings are generated and result from society's criminalization of the behavior.
The stronger and more punishing these laws, the more dangerous the society becomes for the child. The problem, in the United States, has escalated to the point where no child is safe on a street alone.
A large part of the problem is that we cannot see the obvious. The social problems of a society are invariably a reflection of its controlling institutions. We forget that the plight of any society is, predominately, a reflection of the premises, laws and regulations the people live under. We fail to understand that a code or law that is strongly divergent from natural drives is going to cause problems. For the human animal, in essence a learning machine, having the ability to conceptualize, individual autonomy is natural and critical. We cannot legislate something away simply because the majority, or a ruling segment, doesn't like it. To be effective, a law has to be necessary, to be based on a real need and be effective on that basis. Most of our problems stem from, not just a failure to educate, but from trying to force activity in directions that are seriously in conflict with natural drives and human functions.
In most occurrences of child/adult involvement there is no forcing of the child into behavior in which the child does not wish to participate. Oft times the child initiates the behavior him or herself. There is sexual play and gratification in several areas, conceptual, emotional, physiological. There is no pathology in such occurrences until the activity is exposed to public wrath or until the child begins to accept the culture's beliefs concerning such activity.
In one case, an elderly minister had himself several little girls who were apparently enjoying his special ministrations. The activities had been continuing for a matter of a couple of years and consisted of fondling including genital stimulation, his little harem being added to over the period. No one was apparently suffering any stress, until one of the children spilled the beans, telling someone, who told someone.
Of course, when the minister's extra ministerial activities came to light, the children were suddenly confronted with unrelenting rage and hysteria from parents and authorities. An entirely new complexion was put on the situation. The children immediately took on the role of victim, for survival, if for no other reason.
The trauma comes when the child encounters the histrionics of parents and community. The proclaimed symptoms, such as bed wetting, nightmares, etc., usually result from this, the real trauma or the guilt instilled. However, when there is force, fear or pain, as is increasing in this society, the effects are something else, and the damage is real.
A fact that few have the courage to accept is that people are a species of very complex animals, with all the attendant animal drives particular to the species, biological urges which go much deeper than the thin and, to a large degree, unnatural and dysfunctional veneer of our cultures. Because of our capacity to imagine and reason, sexual activity takes on considerably more meaning than in the case of the lower animals. However, with every animal species, except Homo Sapiens, sexual behavior has its begins long before the animal reaches adulthood.
Few people will allow themselves to recognize, and accept, that children do indeed have sex drives as part of a continuing and natural maturation process, that this process involves physiology, as well as emotional and cognitive growth and development.
Experimentation and sexual role-playing occurs in every culture. Sexual activity between adults and children is found in every culture. However, this society, the United States, is perhaps the most naive and taboo-ridden in the world on this matter.
However, even within a sexual-suppressive environment, in a mutually accepted sexual involvement between an adult and a child, the child experiences the fulfillment or reduction of drives which have been almost completely repressed. The child typically experiences pleasure that, until now, he or she has been largely deprived of, and has mixed feelings about it because of the consistent punishment that has been experienced and paired with sexual feelings. But, because the need is real and insistent, the child becomes, not only the willing partner of the molester, but an eager collaborator, the activity taking on an inordinate importance.
Consequently, when the sky falls, the effects on the child are more guilt-producing than would otherwise be the case. The strong negative reaction from parents, police, lawyers, schools, courts, social workers, etc. signals to the child that he or she has committed an act so vile and so evil that there is no way to escape it, or make amends. The child is placed in an impossible position. Emotional and cognitive pathology is insured. The only out is to project the blame onto the "molester".
Not only is there the severe emotional punishment from all quarters, the needed and highly magnified pleasure is immediately cut off, the molester having been the only source. The child sees the pleasure as having been taken away forever, and as it will turn out, to a large degree, it has. Heavy negative sexual response distortions are inevitable in such a case and defects are generated here that will accompany the child throughout his or her adult life.
As for the child, caught in a storm of adult hysteria, what is worse than the total loss of such pleasure in the future are the implications of the whole episode. The child liked this evil thing. Worse, the child continues to need this evil thing.
Even though it is a natural drive, not to be dismissed upon command, the child does not understand this and is led to believe that there is something truly wrong or evil with himself or herself.
The child is given a load of guilt that will never go away. The condemnation and guilt will permanently modify that person's self-image and implant an emotional worm that will always be there, just below the surface, eating away at one's self esteem and one's own nature and natural happiness. The hateful and shameful effects, generated and experienced, will be felt throughout the entire span of life and be caused, not by the molestation, but by 'normal' society's response to it. The trauma comes as the child accepts the condemnation, premises and ideas of the culture."
In a truly criminal molestation, where the child is forced into sexual activity and is often killed, the molester is a dangerous and highly damaged animal. Although such
pathology will also have had its roots in childhood abuses, it is often aggravated by the stupidities of the culture encountered after the molester has reached adulthood.
Such a monster was also once a child and his or her history will usually tell the sad tale. Regardless of childhood traumatic incidents, or the type of molester a court is dealing with, the taboo nature of the behavior, the hysterical and hate-filled response by the society, parents, public, law enforcement and the courts, the legal sanctions of society, all have the effect of amplifying the problem rather than solving it.
As in the case of any codified prohibition, suppression frustrates and accentuates the drive and the frequency of the offense increases. Pedophilia, in an of itself, is largely a non-problem, generated by a combination of factors, both inborn and cultural. Since the increased vilification of child molestation during the eighties and nineties, and the increased criminal penalties imposed, not only has the United States become increasingly dangerous for children, but child pornography has grown exponentially. It is now the most prevalent sales pitch in pornography but is a growing black market product.
Most social pathology begins with the child, whom we insist must be carefully taught. Too bad we are so totally ignorant about what needs to be taught.
In November of last year, 1997, in Kent, Washington, a 35 year old school teacher was tried and convicted for having an affair with a 13 year old student. Unfortunately, the woman got pregnant. A 13 year old boy would not make a fit parent. That age is a time for exploring and learning. However, the mother was able to take care of the child and wanted it.
Other than this, the reality is that this is about the best thing that could happen to the boy, in terms of his sexual and emotional maturation. The only harm, to both the child and the woman, issued from the delusional premises of the society, particularly the culture's controlling institutions. One of the saddest aspects of the case is that the woman accepted the condemnation of the culture, accepted its deluded premises. She was sentenced to six months incarceration, seven years of probation and her career is destroyed, all for behavior that was not only natural, but essentially positive and healthy. She would also would have probably made an excellent mother for the baby, now in another's custody.
An update on this case, has the woman, having been released, became pregnant by the boy again and will have the second child in prison. The boy is awaiting her release.
It is difficult to overstate the pathology of cultural delusion, in any quarter, on any matter.
There is a need to consider the differences between man and woman in terms of the way they tend to think. Just why this difference exists is not entirely clear but it is sure to be strongly related to adaptive mechanisms related to differences in gender roles.
The woman's role has differed from the male's, of necessity. As the bearer of the young, which requires an extended period of protection and care before the offspring can provide for its own needs, her role has been more confining than that of the male. The woman and child have to be protected and provided for and, normally, spend a long period of intense interrelationship. The establishment and maintenance of a safe 'nest' has ever been the woman's chief concern and focus.
Toward this end she has had to be the pragmatist, manipulating the man and other aspects of her environment, using and doing what-ever was necessary to achieve this end. Further, the role of mother meant endless work and attention to small details.
Being largely dependent upon the productivity and protection of the male, her behavior has characteristically been largely determined by, or dependent upon, the male's activity. This may account for what appears to be more emotionally based and manipulative behavior than the male. Her role, historically, has provided little time or opportunity for intellectual pursuits and complex patterns of behavior based upon inductive reasoning. She is probably more adept at accessing sublingual activities of the brain.
Now, in modern societies, we see a diversification of the woman's role virtually as wide as human endeavor itself, from truck driver to politician to scientist to astronaut. The woman is still fulfilling the role of mother and nest-tender even though she usually also spends a large part of her time as bread-winner. Even though job requirements may necessitate behavior determined by unemotional reasoning, she would appear to be as emotionally biased as her forebears, behavior and decisions being determined more by how it 'feels' than by being the end product of a reasoning process. Both men and women are inclined to make emotional decisions. However, the women appears to be more emotionally determined than the man.
Should this be true, it has serious implications for society since it is the mother who is the primary transmitter of cultural information to the very young child. In the child's earliest and most formative and vulnerable years, it is primarily the mother who plants the first seeds of societies' fantasies and insanities.
The woman more often accepts the packaged belief systems of the culture and transmits these to the children. It is usually she who imparts the belief in a god, who implants a wide array of fears and feelings of insecurity and who leaves the child largely defenseless in terms of accurate reasoning patterns. It is also the woman who usually begins the process of instilling the belief in the child that sex is evil and dirty. She is both the victim and the vector, the carrier and transmitter of cultural diseases.
The man also imparts his share of irrationality, of course, but it is the woman who spends the most time with the very young child. It is she who has the closest and most influential contact with the child during those first few years of greatest impressionability and vulnerability.
From the mists of time before recorded history, even before the codification of man's 'evil' nature, religion has played the primary roll in defining sexual roles in the various cultures throughout history.
Since sexuality is a vital natural drive which greatly affects everyone, it becomes the source of great power for any institution which can gain dominion over its expression. The technique used by western religions is to first condemn the drive as something basically evil and unclean; something for which one should feel guilt, then to proscribe all but a narrow means and set of circumstances under which the expression of the drive is sanctioned. Naturally, that expression will be in line with the fulfilling of the religion's agenda.
The greatest leverage for control and manipulation is probably in the instilling of guilt feelings. These can be generalized and used to steer behavior in virtually any direction. It is one of the primary means of undercutting self-reliance and the generation of dependency. The destruction of self-sufficiency becomes an important precursor to maintaining a following. It is an important precondition in gaining adherents who will accept the dogma.
In Western cultures the manipulation of sexuality has been the primary means of 'keeping the woman in her place', that is, pregnant and in the nest, producing more followers for the church. It has been the primary mechanism for keeping her role as that of a baby factory, and primary teacher of the culture's various dogma.
She provides the institutions, especially the religions, with increasing numbers to exploit, already infected with basic indoctrination; the preliminary hooks, in the form of the beliefs she has instilled in the child, already firmly in place.
This area of manipulation by the religions has been the primary means of keeping men in control as leaders. This control is still intact while millions of women do battle with very personal demons in their own private hells.
I can immediately recall three cases of permanent damage due directly to religious teachings. All three were women deeply immersed in the same religion, although at different times and in different circumstances. They represent different damage from different perspectives, but religion strongly affecting the lives of all these women.
One was a young woman about 20 years old with a seemingly healthy sex drive, at least in that it was too strong to be denied. However, after each sexual encounter, after having reaching a climax, she would experience nausea and spend considerable time in the bathroom, retching. After all, sex was dirty, evil and disgusting. This woman would eventually overcome her passions, becoming frigid and a 'ball buster', a large part of the 'evil' projected onto men.
Another was a college student in a design class who exhibited conceptual distortions in every area of activity. In one instance, the class was given the assignment of designing a 'feelie box' that would provide a tactile experience representing a lover. The box was to have a curtained hole through which one could reach in and achieve a tactile experience representing some aspect of that student's idea of a lover. This girl's box was fitted with a large pin cushion, with many pins, all pointing outward. When asked why?, she explained that they represented her most dominant feelings about touching someone, discomfort of an electric shock.
Here was a young woman who had come to physical maturity with no commensurate emotional or factual knowledge development in terms of her own sexuality. Naive and ignorant, life for this woman will never match the preconceived idealizations she has internalized in place of the stuff of real life. She will always feel cheated and never feel at one with herself or with nature. The world will never match her expectations. This girl eventually joined a religious order.
The third case was a woman in her thirties who was the mother of ten living children. She was robustly healthy and had a powerful sex drive. However, she had reached a compromise between the sexual pleasures she enjoyed and the guilt it generated. When caught in the cascading throws of climax she would gasp: "Give me a baby! Give me a baby!". Even so, she expressed she still felt she was doing something wrong.
Significantly, all three were Roman Catholic. All three had been from families who were deeply involved in the religion, had been immersed in it all their lives, and would not question any aspect of the dogma.
Sex as a natural (unconditioned) drive can be used for other purposes, as well. It is perhaps the area of greatest appeal in advertising. It sells. Pair it effectively with any product and expect a substantial increase in sales. The individual is responding to sexual urges and frustrations, symbolically, moved by emotional drives which remain largely unconscious.
The woman, often dependent upon the man, learns early in life to use sexuality as a means motivating the man. It is often used as a tease, often a suggested but unfulfilled promise. It is used in most marriages, to some degree, as an instrument of reward and punishment. As an instrument of manipulation, sex becomes a double-edged sword. It may be effective, but not without negative repercussions.
Distorted and/or frustrated sexual drives also account for tremendous amounts of interpersonal conflict within the society, in the work place, in public and in the home. Often the real cause of conflict remains unconscious.
Pornography fulfills a gnawing and voracious drive within society. Sex, because of its taboo implications, in virtually any form, can rarely be experienced entirely free from some feelings of guilt. In addition, in this environment, it is forever an area of various degrees of unfulfilled drives and frustration.
In a society where sexual guilt and privation is instilled early in life and where there is considerable repression, suppression and deprivation, every individual will have some level of sexual frustration, often acute.
If you examine the contents of any pornography, you will immediately see that it largely portrays, voyeuristically, that which cannot be achieved in reality, sexual fulfillment amid the unnatural mandates of the culture. It reflects the distorted and pathological sexual drives born out of implanted guilt, repression and high levels of frustration. In pornography, sex is presented as something dirty, sinful and ignoble. The high demand for pornographic material reflects the high level of sexual frustration within the society.
It also reflects the various shades of pathological sex drives the culture has inevitably spawned. The prevalence of rape, sadism, masochism, sodomy, bestiality, etc., portrayed in pornography represents harmful drives which have been stimulated through a distortion of natural drives and maintained largely through continued cultural delusions and strictures.
The message here is that we can no longer project the blame for Evil upon some creature of the Underworld (which God supposedly created), but must look to the evil within our own ideas and systems. The evil is carried by our cultures and by us. All of our insanities have their roots in a society's delusions.
Pornography provides an artificial bridge, uniting the world of religious condemnation with sexual fulfillment, a condition that can never be achieved in reality. Virtually all pornography portrays sex as something evil which must be hidden. It follows the Judeo-Christian ethic, portraying sex with all the negative connotations society and the religions heap upon it, while providing stories where sexual fulfillment, in all its distorted forms is, never-the-less, achieved. What is denied the reader or the viewer in reality is provided in fantasy. In all probability, the pornography market could not exist at anywhere near its present level, if at all, were it not for the pathology of religion.
The same holds true for virtually all sexual activity involving degradation and/or force or injury, for all sex crimes where there is violation and, all too often, mutilation.
We have a right to protect ourselves and others against damaging attack. This is a right that should never be relinquished. However, we should only empower government to step in where the individual is unable to defend, carefully limiting government involvement.
Government, religion and all other institutions of the society, should be kept out of the bedroom at all costs. Virtually every problem we have in the area of sexuality can be traced to belief, ignorance and institutional intrusion.
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