Sex and Torture in America

[davidswanson]

By David Swanson

How does sex differ from torture? The one is good and the other bad, might be your immediate reply. But were I to describe an act of torture, this would be taken as a serious article. Were I to describe an act of sex, then political publications wouldn't publish it, spam filters wouldn't allow you to receive it, and if you did receive it, you might turn away. In fact, we have set up numerous mechanisms, external and internal, to protect you from sex that just don't exist for torture and should possibly be considered. Such as:

1.-The Federal Communications Commission. Numerous things sex-related are banned from the airwaves for our protection, while discussions of torture and an expanding range of depiction of torture is acceptable. Police shows and exciting crime dramas depict torture and techniques bordering on torture as noble and good, while either avoiding sex or treating it so grotesquely as to unintentionally turn you off it.

2.-Presidential Impeachment. Sex, or at least some types of sex, or at least lying about it, or at least lying about it under oath, is considered to fall under the category of Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors. Torture of all sorts, from the mildest up to murder, in plain violation of a variety of laws, treaties, and the U.S. Constitution itself, and lying about it, and using a tyrannical "signing statement" to overturn a new redundant law banning it, and using it to generate faulty "intelligence" with a wide range of disastrous results beginning with an illegal war that has slaughtered approximately 658,000 people, and lying about the reasons for that war in formal signed reports to Congress and speeches made before Congress and the American people, is all considered to fall into the category of faithfully executing the Office of the President of the United States and to the best of one's Ability, preserving, protecting, and defending the Constitution of the United States.

3.- Ed Classes and Transmitted Diseases. Sex-ed classes serve to discourage sex. Many, known as "Abstinence Only" classes, simply demand complete renunciation of sex. I'm not commenting one way or another. But where are the Torture-ed classes teaching total abstinence from torture? Isn't there any way to amend "Thou shalt not kill" to include "or torture"? Sexually transmitted diseases have starring roles on public service announcements and are widely reported as reasons to be careful when engaging in sex. Well and good. But torture transmitted diseases are unheard of, although they include the full gamut of known injuries and diseases, including sexually transmitted diseases and every other kind, with a particularly high frequency of Post Traumatic Stress disorder, including proclivity to suicide. As with sex, in torture, all partners including tortured and torturer are at risk of picking up the diseases.

But, you may object, people are not routinely torturing each other. We're leaving it to the CIA to torture evil doers and the occasional 400 innocent prisoners picked up by mistake. Of course, but this is part of the problem. When people fantasize about sex, they put themselves in their fantasies. Most people who fantasize about torture, fantasize about someone else torturing another someone else to protect good people from enemies. But this should be thought of as someone else smoking crack with another person to protect you. It's actually less effective than that at protecting you, but it has some similar results. Neither person will stop smoking crack and return to their previous state. Neither person will cease to exist. Either might end up in your neighborhood or household. So you should give some thought to what torture will have done to them.

Sex, as you know on some level and resist on another, is one of the most beautiful things in life, involving the most extreme pleasure, the most extreme expressions of love and connection. Sex is sustaining and beneficial. How does this differ from torture? Torture is the very worst thing in the world, involving the most extreme suffering, pain, agony, humiliation, despair, and misery. Its devouring effects are long lasting, very long lasting, often longer than a lifetime. What does it say about America that we increasingly tell each other that wisdom involves more openness to torture than to sex?

[Katherine Brengle]

1. k&r

[AtomicKitten]

2. Yes please to the first, no to the latter for me.

Seriously, SEX is the boogyman for many Americans because they never develop emotionally past prepubescence. That certainly explains the outrage over Clinton's hummer, yet some folks are perfectly fine with the idea of torture.

Europeans think Americans are hopelessly retarded.

On edit: The movie Hostel explored the idea of torture as a commodity. Fascinating film. Ironically the last scene where a victim extracts revenge on a torturer, dispatching him in gruesome manner, was cheered by audiences and found to be very satisfying.

[derby378]

3. Dominatrixes have blended sex and torture for a long, long time...

Those who say that "dommes" never perform sexual acts on their "slaves" and paying clients are living in a world of denial. They have become well-versed in the psychological "Twilight Zone" between pleasure and pain, and when that one interrogator smeared fake menstrual blood on a prisoner at Guantanamo Bay, I realized that we have just stepped into a de Sade novel.

[tomreedtoon]

4. Sex and torture are the same damn thing.

Trying to mold yourself into something very different from yourself, in order to obtain sex, is a major industry. It all starts in puberty, when you realize that you're not getting sex, and therefore "something is wrong with me." Thus exercise, cosmetic surgery, cutting your leg tendons so you look good in high heels, deadly breast implants, and all the rest.

One of the mainstays of humor is showing a guy trying to make himself sexually attractive to women, and always failing. It's one of those things that has to be funny, to deal with how painful and destructive the process is in reality.

And please, SHOVE that canard about "someone will love you for yourself." That is a 1960's hallucination. Not only does this not work, it keeps people straining to "find themselves" so they can "get some." They already have themselves, and their attempt to warp their bodies and minds to be "more themselves" (that is, a self that makes them attractive) is terrible to watch.

I realize this original post was supposed to say "sex good, torture bad." The guy who wrote it obviously didn't realize what a can of poisonous vipers he opened up with the topic.

[Porcupine]

6. sex is a transaction, torture an imposition.

If you and a lover get soaked to the skin on a rainy walk it's a turn on. The same amount of cold water sprayed from a hose on a detainee is torture.

The difference is that without choice some experiences are life and sanity threatening. Our brains are not programmed to give up that much choice without lasting damage.

[truedelphi]

9. You make some excellent points

And it is so true about how we are all basket cases trying to be what we are not in order to get laid or get loved.

If we were not living inside an MTV commercial of what is HOT-T-T, we would be better off.

[unhappycamper]

5. Good post.

k&r

[donsu]

7. people have hormonal urges to have sex with someone or themselves

when the hormones leave the body in old age or because of medicines, the urge to do sex is gone.

torturing is a mental urge not a hormonal urge.

torture is a mental problem.

the urge for sex is normal for the species survival.

torture is a mental problem.

[truedelphi]

8. People are routinely tortured on their jobs

So I would have to disagree with <But, you may object, people are not routinely torturing each other. We're leaving it to the CIA...>

I have had several friends whose lives were made a nightmare by supervisors who did their emotionally, and verbally abusive games non-stop.

We should have classes on detailing coping strategies for that problem by sophomore year in college.

Agree with everything else that you say.