The moral “decorum”, the pathological sublimation of sex

First posted: 13 october 2009

At university, i attended at a class with required presence, called: Audiovisual Laboratory.

The teacher asked us to create some documentaries about the topic of sexuality in our society, this means how sex is perceived and processed in the present.

Each student was (only in theory) free to think about some ideas, concepts, subjects, which, then, could be developed with the other students.

My first thought, about this situation, was: “We’ll «slaughter» us one by one” because unfortunately the team spirit, when the exam is based on how you create the work, disappears and leaves its place to the unbearable attempt to “emerge” above all: a bad idea if you want to work in a prolific and friendly group.

However this is another story, now, I’d like to talk about the choice of subject: the sexuality.

I was thinking about this and I found, in my library, a book by Martha C. Nussbaum (“Hiding From Humanity: Disgust, Shame, and the Law”) regarding the criminal incidents of acts against natural sexuality committed breaking the laws. When I read it I imagined a picture about all of us, in this society, hidden behing masks at the same moment that we’re ponting a man (or a woman), blaming them because they don’t conceal themselves while fulfilling and pleasing instinctual and sensual acts, not protected by fictious masks and camouflages. Sexual and erotical intimacy, coming from instinctual needs, are feared by some persons, because they are unable to cope with them in a natural way. A human being, capable of living his/her sexual needs with natural attitude and quiet mental disposition (without being affected by pathological deviances) sometimes “scares” us provoking disgust and sense of repulsion. His weaknesses and (apparent) “vices” are at large, in front of us, unmasked and frank.

We think to be different from animals because of our rationality; some of us are longing to tear away, throw out of themselves and remove all the instinctual pulsions and needs, which belong to our unconscious self, and that’s really part of us, so intrinsic and indelible.

We try to rationalize sex and instincts, to force the irrational side of our nature into something acceptable for the other people.

How many times do you think or hear someone saying: “It’s disgusting and sick”, watching a film where images recall, remind, or hide inside them something of sexual but not in an explicit way? It disgusts us, unconsciously, but we can’t realize what is really close to us:

Is it too hard to disclose our innermost desires, digging into our dephts, making it human or to understand that animal instinct belongs to our being?