The Friday Sex Blog [Censorship]

¡Hola! Everybody...
Every summer, I live (and often die) on the performance of my beloved Mets. I will say that these are a tenacious bunch; we need more hitting, however, if we’re going to make any noise this year…

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-=[ Unnatural Acts]=-
Censorship in America

There’s nothing more natural than the urge to express our sexuality. Almost as reliable as that urge is the societal urge to censor these expressions. I have written before about the more than 2,000-year Christian war against sexuality. I believe sexual censorship is mostly founded on the fear of the power of sexuality to liberate us. At the risk of being slammed let me add, while I'm at it, that some of the most repressed individuals in this regard are often Christianized people of color.

In any case, who reading this can honestly say they have never had a deeply moving experience during sex (any kind of sex)?

Let me start off by noting that numerous sexual activities between consenting adults are restricted and carry extreme legal punishments. Until 1961, all fifty states had criminal laws against various forms of consensual sex between unmarried adults. While it is true that many laws were repealed during the seventies, as recent as 1997, twenty five states -- half the states in the union -- still had laws on the books criminalizing unmarried cohabitation. Fornication, defined as sex between unmarried couples, and “sodomy,” defined as oral and/ or anal intercourse, were (and some cases still are) illegal.

What does this really mean? In eleven states around the country, married couples who engage in oral or anal sex in the privacy of their own homes are committing a criminal act, usually a felony. In Rhode Island, an unmarried man and woman engaging in anal sex can receive anywhere from seven to twenty years in prison. In Michigan, two women were sent to prison for enjoying oral sex in the privacy of their tent in a state park. In South Carolina, “the abominable crime of buggery” (not defined in the statute) is punishable by five years in prison. You might think that these are old laws that remain on the books because they haven’t been questioned and you would be wrong. In 1986 the Supreme Court ruled that same-sex couples engaging in “sodomy” don’t have a constitutional right to privacy, upholding Georgia state laws in which consensual oral or anal sex between same-sex couples is a felony.

Today many sex educators are leaving the educational system because they are under a tremendous amount of pressure not to talk about sex. Imagine that: not being able to talk about the very subject in which you hold expertise.

For the most part, “sodomy” laws are used to discriminate against gays and lesbians in housing, employment, and child custody cases, but they can be used to discriminate against straight unmarried couples as well. Considering the Supreme Courts resistance to upholding sexual privacy at the federal level, the best tactic for fighting oppressive sodomy laws is at the state level.

Sexual expression becomes a crime when the materials produced are legally classified as “obscene.” Obscene materials are exempt from First Amendment guarantees of free speech. The legal definition of obscenity and the manner in which this definition is interpreted, determines what sexual materials we have access to and what materials we can create.

The Supreme Court’s definition of obscenity, the de jure law since their Miller v. California ruling, allows states to regulate sexual materials according to their own community standards. These regulations must be restricted to works that “taken as a whole, appeal to the prurient interest in sex,” that portray sexual conduct in “a patently offensive way,” and that “taken as a whole, do not have serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.” Only materials found by judges or jurors to meet each of three standards of obscenity may be deemed obscene.

Yeah, I’m shaking my head too…

These criteria are astonishingly vague. For example, the dictionary defines “prurience” as “an inordinate interest in matters of sex.” Wow! That’s very specific! Who or how one determines if a photograph has serious scientific value, versus merely scientific value is a road map for First Amendment violations.

If you think this doesn’t affect you adversely, then you’re probably doing a good imitation of an ostrich defensive measure (burying its head in the sand). Sexual censorship is used as a wedge for the sexually repressed to create intolerance and disinformation. One good example is the dismantling of sex Ed courses. “Abstinence-only” sex Ed, courses that teach only sexual abstinence, actually put teens at risk sexually. Teens attending abstinence only sex Ed calluses have been shown to engage in high risk sexual behavior at higher rates than their peers and are more prone to STDs and out-of-wedlock pregnancy.

In addition, any writing or material depicting sex in an honest manner can be censored, not because of the sexual content, but because perhaps the ideas in the material are dangerous to the status quo.

Yes, Virginia, this is the 21^st century and we’re still acting like juveniles.

Love,

Eddie

Resources

American Civil Liberties Union - Non-profit offering educational and legal services to defend First Amendment rights.

National Coalition Against Censorship - grassroots anti-censorship group fighting for freedom of expression.

Electronic Frontier Foundation - Nonprofit protecting civil liberties online.

Feminists for Free Expression - Anti-censorship organization

The Spectrum Institute - Nonprofit membership organization dedicated to protecting the rights of single adults and domestic partners with or without children.

The 12 Steps for Everyone [Step Five]

¡Hola! Everybody…
Every month, I dedicate a post to one of the steps of Narcotics Anonymous. These posts are by no means intended as extensive exploration of recovery. They are merely brief expression of my strengths, hopes, and experiences culled from my ongoing journey toward recovery.

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-=[ The Heart of Kindness ]=-

Step Five: We admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.

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Recap time!

First, we explored what I call the “Recovery Cha Cha Cha” -- the first three steps that serve as the foundation to recovery and freedom from addiction. Step 1 (click here) confronted me with the major contradiction in my life: how I managed to feel powerful when, in fact, I was powerless and needed help. Step 2 (click here) challenged my grandiosity. I have heard it said that addicts are egomaniacs with low self-esteem and I couldn’t put it any better than that. My low self-esteem pushed me to inflate my ego, but all I ever felt inside was emptiness and feelings of worthlessness. Step 3 (click here) helped me see that my efforts at control were in actuality ways of sabotaging myself. Ultimately, I can only take responsibility for myself leaving the rest to my Higher Power however I defined it. Lastly, the Fourth Step (click here) gave me the gift of self-knowledge. By reviewing in detail my fears, desires, thoughts, motives, and actions, seeing how they created wreckage, I was better able to uncover the secrets.

I raised a Roman Catholic and I can still remember the ritual Saturday confessionals. We would tease our friends and cousins if they took too long in the confessional because we all knew that meant there was a lot of sinning goin’ on. LOL Still, the feeling of catharsis that always accompanied a confession was always refreshing. Always, the priest listened quietly and no matter what you said or admitted to, it was taken in stride, with no judgment. The message, at least for me anyway, is that no one is ever truly beyond redemption.

As much as I dreaded the Fourth Step, the Fifth Step was the scariest for me. Shame was acting as an obstacle against my journey to freedom. In Step five, we are asked to bare our soul to our Higher Power (as we define it), ourselves, and another human being. Reveal all, put it all out there, and take the risk of coming face to face with our shadow and dragging it out into the open.

Secrets and shame are two of the hallmarks of the disease of addiction. Many of us come from families in which addiction was a way of life. Throughout our developmental years and beyond, many of us feared outsiders would see us and our “horrible” families truthfully, so we developed coping skills that developed into strategies of denial. Step Five, people, was my first taste of true freedom. And recovery isn’t about putting down a drug or a drink -- recovery is about freedom from active addiction.

Period.

Still, I couldn’t possibly share my most shameful secrets with another human being, I thought to myself. Surely, no one has ever done the despicable things I had done. I was stuck at Step Five for sure. Eventually I came to learn an important truth, and I feel this applies to anyone, not just addicts. When we try to carry the load alone, we suffer needlessly. And in an unconscious manner, in seeking relief from that load, sometimes we will accuse even our loved ones and friends of the very character defects we are desperately attempting to conceal. Psychological relief never comes from confessing the “sins” of other people. Everybody has to come to terms with their own.

The practice of confessing, admitting the exact nature of our wrongs to another person is not new; it’s an ancient spiritual practice, in fact. And religion is by no means the sole advocate for this principle, contemporary Western psychology has long ago acknowledged the value the profound need every human being has for practical insight and knowledge of their personality flaws.

After much thought, I decided to share my Fifth Step with a Jesuit priest who was a recovering addict himself. This priest, who I will call Eddie, was one of the kindest persons I have ever met. And he was far from the stereotypical clergyman. He sometimes cussed, for example, and he smoked cigarettes. Most of all, like many truly spiritual people I have met, he had a great, evolved sense of humor.

As I began sharing my Fifth Step with father Eddie, he just listened. He was present, listening to everything and I felt there was no judgment. In fact, he kept nodding as I read off my list and sometimes sharing that he had committed some of the same acts himself. At other times, we would laugh together at some of the things on my list. Eventually, I was able to share fully, without holding back, ad all the fear and shame seemed as if it were being washed away. I felt accepted and unburdened. Most of all, I felt relieved of the “burden of self.”

The first great insight during the sharing of my Fifth Step was that I wasn’t as unique or terrible or horrible as I thought. Yes, I had committed many wrongs, but I wasn’t the only human being to commit those acts, and being held in the cradle of kindness -- in the heart of the heart of kindness -- I came to know my first taste of true freedom. The 12 Steps aren’t about formulating ideas about freedom, they compel us to act on the pract5ice of freedom. The 12 Steps are experiential exercises, action steps, toward personal and communal liberation.

Taking Step freed me from the chains of my shame and secrecy. I realized that I was a good person at heart and being freed from a repressive morality, I was able to become a moral agent in my life. Most of all, you have to understand, the Steps are about compassion, not punishment. The Steps can be the start of cultivating loving compassion toward ourselves. Personally, it was liberating to discover that my very vulnerability, that uncomfortable sensation of being exposed, is actually the bridge to deeper connections to myself and others. It’s called emotional safety, and what that means is dropping the shame and the sham and committing to being as translucent as possible. And now, all these years after my first Fifth Step, emotional safety and genuine intimacy is the norm among the circle of my dearest friends.

Love,

Eddie

The TGIF Sex Blog [The Fear of Sex]

¡Hola! Everybody...
I didn’t get a chance to write anything for today, so I’m offering the following instead. Enjoy the weekend...

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-=[ Eros and its Discontents ]=-

The Suppression and Denial of Sex

Repression is not morality.

We come into this world as erotic and sensual beings focused on our senses, at one with our bodies, filled with a life energy that we do not suspect, do not fear, and not even separate enough from to conceptualize. Before we are taught to divide ourselves and our world into mind and body, order and chaos, good and evil, proper and improper, normal and perverted, male and female, we simply are what we are, and this includes the simple, irrefutable fact that we are erotic creatures. Children of all ages (as I will show in a future post) are erotic, sensual, sexual beings. We are sexual even the womb: male fetuses experience erections regularly.

However, as soon as we are born, our basic natural erotic feelings come into conflict with the morals of the people who are closest to us. Almost from the beginning, we receive signals, some subtle and others not so subtle, that being erotic is not a “good” thing. By the time we have become socialized, much of our original, erotic nature has been thoroughly condemned, judged, punished, twisted, and turned against itself. Because this conditioning process begins so early in our lives, we never truly have the opportunity to discover who we really are as erotic beings, to name clearly what we want, what we feel in the erotic/ sexual realm, let alone to learn how to develop our desires into a rich, satisfying, and healthy erotic/ sexual existence.

Some social commentators have noted that when it comes to sex, “we live in fear of being known. We know we are ugly before we have even seen ourselves.” Before we understand who we are as individual erotic/ sexual beings, before our erotic identities have had a chance to form, before we have any awareness of our self in these matters, we already have a vivid understanding that there is something fundamentally wrong with us because of how, or when, or toward whom we feel erotically charged. In other words, we are conditioned to accept the notion that there is something fundamentally wrong with us when we feel sexual.

Our basic erotic nature runs right smack into the wall of our culture’s irrational fear of the erotic, but we really don’t understand this. Instead, we feel that there is something terribly wrong with us. We pick up the cues that we must make a choice between what we feel in our bodies and what everyone else around us is telling us what we should feel. Somewhere along this path we are forced to split into contradictory beings. Freud call it id and superego, but call it what you want (body vs. mind, primitive vs. civilized, etc.), the point is that in order to gain approval of those around us, we have to reject our primal erotic nature. As we repress these desires -- in the process pushing them into the shadows where they gain more power over us -- we lose the ability to honor, or even be aware of the erotic within us.

These are the dynamics of the suppression and denial of Eros. In a culture such as ours, neurotically suspicious of erotic feeling and power, it becomes crucial for us to understand how this suppression occurs so that we can begin to reclaim our essential erotic vitality. We lose sight of this at great peril.

Fortunately for us, our erotic essence doesn’t die easily, even when strangled in early infancy. In fact, the erotic impulse cannot be eradicated at all -- it is too much a part of us for that. However, it can be stunted, twisted, and contorted so that it becomes limited to expressing itself in ways that are mundane, repetitious, painful, even violent, and certainly unsatisfying. It can be twisted so beyond recognition that it can even become dangerous to others and ourselves.

Fundamentalists and right wing conservatives tap into our internalized fears about sexual expression, as well as the fears that came about from the shift in sexual mores and gender roles during the social movements of the 60s and 70s because Eros is a powerful force for personal and collective liberation. The ongoing attacks on things erotic is part of a larger campaign to control and suppress sexual expression and it has major, destructive implications for our society.

Love,

Eddie

The TGIF Sex Blog [Religion and Sex]

¡Hola! Everybody...
I lost or misplaced my phone last night, so if I didn’t call you, it’s not because I didn’t think of you...

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-=[ Religion and Sex ]=-

Eroticism is assenting to life even in death.

-- Georges Bataille

What are the consequences when a religion does not recognize our basic human need for pleasure and uses its powerful influence as a way to implement social rules that repress our “God”-given right for nurturing, sensual, and erotic pleasure? What happens when we reduce sex to the mechanical joining of male and female genitals? What is the result of ignoring the vital sustenance women and men derive from the sexual rainbow of playful, loving, intimate, responsible, passionate, and transcendent sex?

When I first began to formally study human behavior, I was alarmed by the amount of studies of child abuse indicating that parents who abuse their children were often deprived of physical affection during their own childhood, and as adults fail to experience satisfying sexual relationships. Further studies show that deprivation of bodily pleasure during infancy and adolescence and the repression of pleasure promote adult violence.

Religions emphasizing a high, Father-like God that punishes deviation in sexual behavior commonly endorse anti-sexual and anti-pleasure values. As a part of their values, these religions promote negative attitudes about the physical nurturing of infants and children. They also punish adolescents and adults who indulge in prohibited erotic pleasures.

In a study on emotional bonding, researchers are quoted as saying that, “Deprivation of bodily pleasure throughout life -- but particularly during the formative periods of infancy, childhood, and adolescence -- is very closely related to the amount of warfare and general violence [in a society]. On the other hand, cultures that promote nurturing in child-rearing, that are comfortable with the body and with sexuality and pleasure, produce adults who have little sexual dysfunction, who promote gender and social equality, and a society that does not glorify slavery or war.”

In the twelfth century, the great Benedictine abbess, Hildegard of Bingen, re-interpreted the myth of Adam’s sin as a failure of Eros. In other words, she was saying that Adam was banished from Eden not because he discovered nudity or sex, but because he did not enjoy deeply enough the delights of the Earth.

Recently, a Dominican theologian, Matthew Fox, was silenced by Vatican celibates for his endorsement of Hildegard of Bingen’s interpretation of the Eden myth and for his positive attitude towards an erotic (Eros)-friendly creation spirituality. Fox argues that our failure to celebrate the pleasures of the Divine Presence in our lives causes an unhealthy compulsion to conquer and achieve pleasure elsewhere. He sees a direct link between patriarchal (father-like) religions that deny the importance of the nurture we draw from erotic pleasure and the anti-pleasure, anti-sex value systems of fundamentalism and fascism.

Religious fundamentalism of any kind rests on the literal interpretations of sacred texts written (mostly) by males who determine what rules guide human behavior and spell out punishments for those who break those rules. In this way, moralizing and condemnation become more important than celebration and play.

The repression of Eros and pleasure make for strange bedfellows. One only has to look on the early support of Hitler by Christians who agreed with his attacks on contraception, pornography, and sexual permissiveness. More recently, Christians in the US have supported neo-fascists attacks on abortion clinics, gays, and the liberal worldview. In fact, the Christian right, led by the likes of televangelists such as Pat Roberson, are part of the mainstream political wing of the Republican Party. I don't need to go into details of the consequences of religious fundamentalism in the Middle East, do I?

Anthropologist Margaret Mead warned us 25 years ago that we were entering a transitional stage she called the “pre-figurative.” What she said then was that the myths and symbols that gave meaning and direction to our culture have lost much of their meaning and significance, and that we are only beginning to create a new set of symbols (a “cosmology”), a culture that respects sex, pleasure and sensuality; that we have yet to begin to create icons and myths that will provide models for a new consciousness of the Earth and ourselves.

The prospect of change and evolution frightens, even terrifies, many people around the world. We can expect, and have begun to witness, fundamentalist, even fascist, religious sects to join forces across boundaries to oppose these impending changes. Such civil wars are already evident in the ongoing debates about sexual ethics, homosexuality, and alternatives to monogamy among Catholics after the Second Vatican Council, and at the recent General Assemblies of the Presbyterian, Episcopal, Evangelical Lutheran, Southern Baptist, and United Methodist Churches.

The human race is now caught in a struggle of adapting to a new consciousness, a new sense of morality. Many people still prefer to regulate sexual practice with rigid, repressive laws. The pioneering psychologist, Jean Piaget, called this “heteronomous morality”; Lawrence Kohlberg called it “conventional morality.” Stuck in this lower-level form of moral reasoning, people are concerned about whether genital activity is heterosexual, homosexual, or masturbatory.

Far fewer people appreciate and are comfortable with a morality based on personal responsibility -- an internalized (something you select for yourself) set of principles that focus on the quality of relationships. In this autonomous or “post conventional” moral thinking, one is concerned with the extent to which a relationship expresses the values of a spiritual “humanism” by being self-liberating, life-serving, joyful, and offering the potential for true freedom.

To create a social attitude that respects the body and its relationship to the ecology and to all of life, will not be easy. However, I truly believe that if we fail to make that transition only further instances of the holocaust, destruction of the environment, will continue unabated. The cost of repression of our inherent sexuality is not secondary, but vital to the quality of our existence.

Love,

Eddie

The Sex Blog [Censorship]

¡Hola! Everybody...
First things first: Today, both Eva and Choosing Life For Me~ Eternally celebrate birthdays.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY LADIES!!

OK! WTF is up with buying bed sheets?!! Freakin' thread counts, duvet sets, shams, blah blah blah! Is there really that much difference between a 300 and 500 thread-count sheet? I mean, I do want you to be comfortable, hun, but you ain’t wetting my $120 Ralph Lauren white shadow striped bed sheet set! LMAO! They have bed sheet sets that cost almost $200!!! WTF?!! Comforters that go for the same!!! And… WTF is a sham?!! All I want is something to cover myself when I go to sleep.

At the rate I’m spending money, I won’t be able to visit you, sweetie! LOL!

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-=[ “Unnatural Acts”]=-
Censorship in America

There’s very little more certain than the natural urge to express our sexuality. Almost as reliable as that urge is the societal urge to censor these expressions. I have written before about the more than 2,000-year Christian war against sexuality. I believe sexual censorship is founded on the fear that it is in our sexuality that we find the strongest ally toward true freedom.

Who reading this can honestly say they have never had a deeply moving experience during sex (any kind of sex)?

Let me start off by noting that sexual activities between consenting adults are restricted and carry extreme legal punishments. Until 1961, all fifty states had criminal laws against various forms of consensual sex between unmarried adults. While it is true that many laws were repealed during the seventies, as recent as 1997, twenty five states -- half the states in the union – still have laws on the books criminalizing unmarried cohabitation. Fornication, defined as sex between unmarried couples, and “sodomy,” defined as oral and/ or anal intercourse, are illegal.

What do these really mean? In eleven states around the country, married couples who engage in oral or anal sex in the privacy of their own homes are committing a criminal act, usually a felony. In Rhode Island, an unmarried man and woman engaging in anal sex can receive anywhere from seven to twenty years in prison. In Michigan, two women were sent to prison for enjoying oral sex in the privacy of their tent in a state park. In South Carolina, “the abominable crime of buggery” (not defined in the statute) is punishable by five years in prison. You might think that these are old laws that remain on the books because they haven’t been questioned and you would be wrong. In 1986 the Supreme Court ruled that same sex couples engaging in “sodomy” don’t have a constitutional right to privacy, upholding Georgia state laws in which consensual oral or anal sex between same-sex couples is a felony.

Today many sex educators are leaving the educational system because they are under a tremendous amount of pressure not to talk about sex. Imagine that: not being able to talk about the very subject in which you hold expertise.

::blank stare::

For the most part, “sodomy” laws are used to discriminate against gays and lesbians in housing, employment, and child custody cases, but they can be used to discriminate against straight unmarried couples as well. Considering the Supreme Courts resistance to upholding sexual privacy at the federal level, the best tactic for fighting oppressive sodomy laws is at the state level.

Sexual expression becomes a crime when the materials produced are legally classified as “obscene.” Obscene materials are exempt from First Amendment guarantees of free speech. The legal definition of obscenity and the manner in which this definition is interpreted, determines what sexual materials we have access to and what materials we can create.

The Supreme Court’s definition of obscenity, in effect since their Miller v. California ruling, allows states to regulate sexual materials according to their own community standards. These regulations must be restricted to works that “taken as a whole, appeal to the prurient interest in sex,” that portray sexual conduct in “a patently offensive way,” and that “taken as a whole, do not have serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.” Only materials found by judges or jurors to meet each of three standards of obscenity may be deemed obscene.

Huh?!!

These criteria are astonishingly vague. For example, the dictionary defines “prurience” as “an inordinate interest in matters of sex.” Wow! That’s very specific! Who or how does one determines if a photograph serious scientific value, versus merely scientific value is a road map for First Amendment violations.

If you think this doesn’t affect you adversely, then you’re probably doing a good imitation of an ostrich burying its head in the sand. Sexual censorship is used as a wedge for the sexually repressed to create intolerance and disinformation. One good example is the dismantling of sex ed courses. “Abstinence-only” sex ed, courses that teach only sexual abstinence, actually put teens at risk sexually. Teens attending abstinence only sex ed calluses have been shown to engage in high risk sexual behavior and are more prone to STDs and pregnancy.

In addition, any writing or material depicting sex in an honest manner can be censored, not because of the sexual content, but because perhaps the ideas in the material are dangerous to the status quo.

Wake the fuck up, people!

Love,

Eddie

Resources

American Civil Liberties Union: Non-profit offering educational and legal services to defend First Amendment rights.

National Coalition Against Censorship: grassroots anti-censorship group fighting for freedom of expression.

Electronic Frontier Foundation: Nonprofit protecting civil liberties online.

Feminists for Free Expression: Anti-censorship organization

The Spectrum Institute: Nonprofit membership organization dedicated to protecting the rights of single adults and domestic partners with or without children.