Monday, August 13, 2007

Who's sex obsessed?

The charge by many religious people that modern culture is sex obsessed is one of the most pathetic cases of projection I have ever seen. It is firstly historically blind. Some of the most bizarre and repressive theories about human sexuality came out of Victorian Age Britain which made one of the most comprehensive efforts to control and contain sexual behavior.

One of the few god insights to come out of postmodernism (which I would like to add I consider largely gibberish) is to to found in Michel Foucault's first volume of the History of Sexuality. Once the effort was made to tame it and explosion of discussion, documentation, and study of sexuality followed, which produced a lot of truly bizarre theories most of which were designed to legitimize repressive control of human sexual behavior. The most repressive age was simultaneously the most perverse. A quick trip over to the blog Catholic Dads will make one a bit queasy if looked at with a mind to finding perversity.

These guys are truly sick. They are obsessed with controlling sex, and constantly need to rationalize their very human impulses to be simpatico with a very deranged theology. If you want proof go to the site and see how many of the posts deal with sex, especially their daughters and sex. They need to know how to prevent it happening before marriage, ways to stop it, they endlessly cheer each other up by affirming how right Catholic teaching on the subject is, they can't even deal with a bit of discussion about birth control, are obsessed with their manliness, and endlessly want to find ways to prevent their children from having any exposure to or knowledge of it. The obsession with their daughters is so rampant that I got a bit nauseous. Moreover these guys actually believe that Satan and Hell lie in wait for people who act on sexual desires that to a sane person are utterly harmless.

Despite the charge that we are sex obsessed the most discussion of it seems to be on the religious right. A brief trip into the past to review the examples of Jimmy Swaggart, Ted Haggard, Jim Bakker, David Vitter, Newt Gingrich... well you see my point. What they may complain abut is pop-culture but if they are yearning for a time when the masses didn't crave bawdy, dirty, and low brow entertainment then they will be sorely disappointed.

1 comment:

Mike said...

Lot's of good points here but perhaps "harsh". I'm not clear; are you concerned trying to say sex is a natural human instinct or are you just ranking on Catholic Dads (not that it's not deserved)?