Does sexual repression lead to (collective) neurosia?

[Smith_3]

I would really like to hear some opinions on this. I have heard people claim before that puritanism is at the heart of what is wrong with america.

Would be even cooler if we could poll this in the form "strongly agree","agree","disagree","strongly disagree","other (please explain)".

[Deja Q]

1. That is a many splintered topic.

In due course, I will say more.

[denem]

2. Godwin's Law

Not much on the ground sexual repression going on in Nazi Germany. There are seldom simple explanations for anything.

[TrogL]

3. authoritarianism is what is wrong with America

It promotes sexual repression (among a lot of other things).

Authoriarianism is about control, not sex.

[GreenPartyVoter]

9. I think you are on to something there. our troubles are with politics as much as religion and

and certainly where those two seem to wrongly intersect in Washington D.C.these days.

[unpossibles]

4. on some level I agree

I think repression in general is bad, although I also believe that there should be a balance where people have some sort of social filter. In other words, I don't think politeness should be forgotten or that people should f**k in the streets either, just be more open and honest to themselves, their partners, and in general to each other.

Our collective neurosis is partially a result of the strange combination of repression with oversaturation combined with religious-inspired guilt and dishonesty.

Just my 2¢ though.

[uberblonde]

5. Yes.

This has been another edition of "Simple Answers to Simple Questions."

[Annces]

6. Somewhat agree

If you take anything that is natural and say it is wrong, then people get separated from their own-selves, which is abnormal. Just as if you say being fat is bad, or even a little fat, people get eating problems.

I think puritanism brought some positive things, such as good work ethic.

[Perry Logan]

7. Republicans are all gay, but they don't know it. I think this proves the point.

[izquierdista]

8. If sexual repression were to disappear

most other means of repression would be soon to follow. And the end result would be a healthier mental attitude.

Sex is at the heart of the collective neuroses in America. Even those who might be able to reason their way into a tolerant, liberal attitude in other areas clam up when it comes to the topic of sex. Oh, they may agree that gay marriage doesn't affect them and should be allowed and they may appear to be open-minded, but they really aren't. There are some natural human behaviors that they react in horror to because of the puritanism of the culture. It could be public nudity, it could be an adult having a relationship with someone much younger, it could be any of a dozen triggers that will set them off into an unthinking fright, ready to severely punish the transgressor.

Part of it is human biology, for humans just don't like to think about other humans having sex, not their parents, not their children, not the two men that live down the street. That is why pornography remains taboo, it is sex on display and it really has nothing to do with being degrading to the people posing in it. Humans only want to see suggestive displays from their mate or someone they want to be their mate, or if they look at pornography, they look at it in private and not as part of an audience. It probably all stems from the behavior of the higher apes that only the alpha male and his consorts can mate, all other lower ranking members of the troop have to get their sex furtively on the side.

While some societies have shed the taboos on sexual behavior, Americans seem to have enhanced and built up the taboos. Of the range of human sexual behavior that can be documented, only a very small fraction would pass the current set of American taboos. At the end of the Civil War, many teen-age girls were marrying older veterans that had government pensions, marriages which today would be called "child abuse". While some societies have decoupled public nudity from sex (and have no problem with nudity at the beach), most Americans become extremely nervous at the sight of an uncovered breast in public. Even urinating in public, which in some cultures is merely in bad taste, is categorized as a sexual offense in parts of America.

Authorities have discovered that it works well to their advantage to utilize sexuality to control Americans. From hyping it in suggestive advertisments, to shaming people that violate one of the myriad laws, to whipping up a lynch mob with two simple words, c---d p--n, sexuality is the cudgel with which the American state keeps its citizens in line. Every so often, there is someone on which the cudgel just doesn't work, a rebel like Frank Zappa, someone open about sexuality like Larry Flynt. The other 99% of the time, people react like Larry Craig: deny, deny, deny, then start making up excuses, and in the end, conform.

That is what it is all about, conformity. And what you have after you have forced people to conform to something that is not in their character is a very neurotic individual.

[Smith_3]

10. Wow.

impressive :)