The Truth About Sex, A Sex Primer for the 21st Century Volume II: Sex for Grown-Ups. Gloria G. Brame
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That Evangelicals turned out to be as horny as other people their age is, well, basically what sex scientists like me would expect. Perhaps this is disappointing to people who think we should all practice what we preach. I think we should strike at the root, though, and learn to preach what we practice.
A scientific way to look at the study is simply that human sexual identity (needs, lusts, behaviors) trumps religious identity. Even though the study group’s primary belief system explicitly prohibits pre-marital sex, 80% of the surveyed adherents nonetheless chose sexual desire over religious belief. If they were completely unconscious of that choice, or attribute their behavior to magical spiritual forces, then it may suggest that the brain itself is wired to prioritize sex drive above spiritual feelings and finds ways to rationalize breaking its moral code. Where religious people may see “temptation,” a sex scientist sees someone’s brain perceiving a mating opportunity, and what they may call “the devil,” we acknowledge as the brain merrily churning up the hormones that compel us to mate.
Sex really is the most natural thing in the world, its primal consciousness buried in our deepest brain functions, and connected to a vast network of fluids, organs, and nerves throughout the entire body system. Its reach is so powerful that it may, at times, override other powerful human emotions, like altruism, love, or piety. This power may, in fact, be stronger in the moment than intellectual constructs, which may explain why sexual desire can be stronger than our powers of reason and land us in sexual situations we didn’t plan to get into in the first place. That may also explain why – when a disinhibitor like alcohol is added – sexual behavior itself becomes primitive.
There are very good reasons why we can’t allow humans completely free reign over their sexual behaviors. At the same time, there are better reasons why adults should learn enough about sex to make good choices, rather than fear-based ones. In this atmosphere of cultural shame, all too many of us let sexual fears and inhibitions dictate our lives.
It’s massively sad to listen to stories of people who, for lack of hard facts and a soft shoulder, have sex lives that are frustrating, depressing, and shameful. The inner feeling of being sexually viable (a nice way of saying “fuckable”) is so deeply rooted in the primitive part of our brain that when we feel sexually flawed or sexually inferior to others, the shame cripples our ability to form solid partnerships. People who think they are sexually unattractive in some way find it very difficult to integrate their sense of themselves as basically good people with their sexual image of themselves. I meet wonderful people sometimes who are ashamed to look me in the eye because they are about to admit that they can’t sustain an erection, and assume I’ll think less of them for it. This can be particularly painful to anyone who doesn’t fit into the conventional model of what sex should be.
LOUISE, an accountant in her 30s, was terrified that people would find out about the things she enjoyed in private with a man, including being tied up and spanked with paddles and canes. She blamed it on her profession: she worked in a very sensitive field and couldn’t risk being exposed, she said. She was afraid to keep BDSM toys in her house so she only played in other people’s homes. She did not want to meet any of her partners’ kinky friends, and was dead-set against attending any BDSM events or clubs, lest someone she knew saw her there. The list of rules and regulations she had created to shield her innermost sexual needs from the possibility that anyone in the “vanilla” world could use it against her was long.
Some of it was reasonable: being non-consensually outed can be extremely traumatic for anyone. It was wise to keep her sex life and her business life completely separate too. But, as we worked together, it was obvious that all her social fears about BDSM had warped her self-esteem and caused her to make bad choices.
Deep down, Louise really believed BDSM was dirty and shameful, and that people would reject and criticize her if they knew that in the bedroom she liked to be tied up and role play. Perhaps even more than that, she herself couldn’t stand the thought of being known as “a pervert,” because it was not how she saw herself. She saw herself as a normal, regular person not the kind of person who needed to be tied up and spanked to have an orgasm. Her perspective was that while she liked kinky sex, she herself was not kinky. It was just something she did, not who she was.
Her anxiety made her compartmentalize her BDSM life from the rest of her life:
Louise never introduced her BDSM partners to family or friends. That was unthinkable! She kept a non-kinky man in the picture to bring to family occasions, although she didn’t really enjoy sex with him. In private, she hooked up with kinky men she met on the Internet, using an anonymous handle.
I was sympathetic to Louise’s fears. Some of them were justified: she had signed a morals clause at work, and a scandal would cost her the job. But some of them were self-sabotage. She was miserable: she was smart and attractive and financially independent, and felt completely alone in life. I knew that there were plenty of men out there who would welcome the chance to get to know her – if only she let them. But since quality kinky men were turned off by her secrets and games, she ended up with sleazy ones who were just there to get their jollies.
Until you can accept that it’s really okay to need what you need in bed, that your personal sexual needs are, well, “just the way you are,” not some flaw or disease, nothing that says something is fundamentally freakish about you, but rather your own mind and body’s natural biology, it’s pretty tough to project the self-confidence that others find attractive. Not only did Louise and I work on her own inhibitions about BDSM, but we worked on her body language too. She walked around like a tight ball of fear, hands frequently clenched, a frozen smile on her face. People like that are predator magnets, radiating their insecurity and anxiety. As her mind relaxed, she learned to let her body relax as well. It was a first step forward towards projecting a sense of self-confidence and self-esteem, although the underlying work – of gradually learning to accept her sexual self without judgment – would take months.
Long before your conscious mind identifies what you really need sexually, your mind is absorbing and processing information – physical, emotional, erotic, and intellectual – that shapes your sexual identity. This is why many of us remember behaviors in childhood that seemed completely innocent to us at the time yet which we view as embarrassingly sexual when we’re adults. Most common, of course, are the weird things little kids do with their genitals – showing them to friends, exposing them in public, sticking things into holes, riding toys obsessively, rubbing against walls or floors – which, we later realize, is crazy perversion! What?! Though kids generally don’t understand what they are doing or why they are doing it, what’s important for adults to understand is that even when we are tiny tots who don’t experience sexual feelings the way adults do, our primitive brain is collecting information in preparation for that great day in the still-distant future when our bodies are fully ready for actual, conscious sex.
Needless to say, when children are exposed to sexual trauma – whether upon themselves or by witnessing it – their brains absorb and process that information too.
JERRY, a frail man in his 60s, said he had spent his life struggling with his demons. He hit the sexual stress trifecta: Shame, Guilt and Anxiety! For 40 years, he had