The Non-Problem of Sexual Arousal

There’s an unexamined assumption that lies at the foundation of the debate over pornography and obscenity and that is that sexual arousal is a moral problem.

Why is it a problem?

All life is dominated by two biological imperatives: survival and reproduction. Now, I’m not about to make a reductionist argument that this is the only thing that drives humans. We are far more complex than that, but for all our complexity, these two drives are constant. When our survival needs have been met, our brain is hardwired to think of reproducing. This is not controlled by our conscious mind. It is spontaneous. The only thing our conscious mind has control over is whether or not to act on this naturally arising arousal.

The eternal virgin

However, sometime in our distant past humans began to view sexual arousal as both a moral and spiritual problem. They began to talk in dualistic terms. Of good and evil, light and dark, and of a pure spiritual realm versus a corrupted material realm. Sex was perceived to be a spiritual problem because it caused souls to be born into the corrupted, material world. Some religious thinkers (including the Buddha in the east) began to argue that one could somehow enter this pure spiritual realm by turning away from the corruption of the material world.

At its most extreme they engaged in a number of ascetic practices designed to overcome the two biological drives of survival and reproduction. Some mortified the body and almost starved themselves. Others tried to repress all sexual urges. This was utterly futile. In fact it was insane. Many ascetics literally drove themselves crazy. Their divine madness wasn’t divine. It was just madness.

This world denying attitude made its way to the Semitic cultures of the Levant and found particular resonance amongst several Jewish sects loosely called Essenes, and thence into Christianity. I have already talked about the myth of the Fall and the particularly Christian notion that the actual method of corruption is sexual intercourse (although the Fall is really about disobedience). A number of early Christian theologians openly condemned sex and argued that a good Christian chose celibacy and rejected ‘the temptations of the flesh’. Pope Gregory the Great said:

Conjugal union cannot take place without carnal pleasure, and such pleasure cannot under any circumstances be without blame.