Thoughts in Defence of Prudery

Sex is one of the greater desires and pleasures of life. People do not need sex for their own survival but are willing to place sex and love above their own survival as tales of boys who would go to bloody wars to impress the objects of their desire attest to. Sex then is one of the major human desires.

Sex is a desire of animals (yes, I am aware that Humans are mammals but there is a fundamental difference hence the distinction between animals and humans is made in defiance of normal taxonomy) as well but the focus is not individual pleasure but procreation in all but mammals and apparently only dolphins engage in it for pleasure instead of procreation. Humans then are distinct in enjoying sex.

But one also asks, why are the limits placed upon such desire? We live in an age where the seeking and attainment of pleasure is viewed as a good in of itself. If sex is desirable and pleasure should be maximized, shouldn’t we eliminate the restrictions on sex and unleash our animal desire and enjoyment? The answer is that we are humans who are rational actors and who can appreciate not only our own pleasure but the other person. Love is a desire for the other person. Their body might be a means unto pleasure but the relationship is the core of love and the physical pleasure is an auxiliary to it.

The emphasis on immediate physical pleasure leads to actions that cauterize the ability to build up a different type of pleasure. There is a type of pleasure that is being in the presence of a person whom you desire but without any physical stimulus you feel pleasure. The pleasure comes from your relation to the other person. The person is the desire, not a physical aspect. This may give an almost (and sometimes) physical tingle but the power of it leaves any physical aspect in awe.

The lack of available sex seems to be the problem for those whose focus is on immediate pleasure. Consider which video seems the most exciting. Note that the videos are Afrikaans as the goal is that the tone and actions are what is looked at, not the specific words.





One observes radically different tones. One focuses on the physical bodies of females while the other depicts the relationship as a partnership of two individual personalities. The actions of the people in both videos likely resulted in sex but the approach to it and the meanings attached to it are radically different. One depicts sex as a pleasurable activity with an emphasis on the physical. The other depicts the relationship of the two people and their joining. The other focuses on the relationship.

The dryness of the second video is predicated on the excitement of overt sexuality. The preferences for the videos likely will reveal that disproportionately large numbers of men like the first while women like the second. This likely results from the differences in male and female perceptions of physical and emotional pleasure. Men focus more on the immediate physical pleasures as there is greater neurological pleasure from the physical while the emotional is not as endowed. Females have the reverse. These are generalities and exceptions certainly exist. There are men who have managed to focus on the emotional while some women are obsessed with physical pleasure.

The physical and emotional are both essential elements for human beings and the ability to appreciate one and not the other is true dryness. It does little good if one may contemplate the finest relationship when all around you is dust but to be surrounded by the physical with no emotion is to be lost. We are human beings, not lab rats in a behavioralists study nor beings of pure spirit. We are as C.S. Lewis put it well, amphibious creatures in between pure spirit and pure matter. We feel both emotion and the physical, we desire both company and solitude. What we desire then are often many contradictory things an we prioritize among them.

Human beings are also unnatural beings in that humans alter the environment around them, including the human environment. Our physical nature urges immediate physical pleasure while our emotions are dissatisfied by such things. It is the marvel of our humanity that we have managed to rise above our physical desires by love. Love may be a social construct, it may not be. What is clear that love allows us to focus on the emotional side of pleasure which is deeper. The social restrictions placed upon sex allow love to flourish without the risk of the physical obsessions uprooting it before the physical can be integrated into a combined pleasure.

If the social restrictions are not inherent to animal nature? Then let us thank our unnatural state for the ability to enjoy a pleasure beyond the pure physical. These social restrictions allow the two pleasures to form into one structure that enhances both and that reinforces each other. The reason for this is long forgotten in the mists of time. With the demand that all must be justified by pure logic, the forgotten reasons were unavailable to defend those restrictions and the emptiness and dissatisfied lives we see now are the result of the losses of these inhibitions.