SUPPRESSING SEXUALITY quotes
Suppressing sexuality

There is a good deal else that would not exist without “poisonous pedagogy.” It would be inconceivable, for example, for politicians mouthing empty clichés to attain the highest positions of power by democratic means. But since voters, who as children would normally have been capable of seeing through these clichés with the aid of their feelings, were specifically forbidden to do so in their early years, they lose this ability as adults. The capacity to experience the strong feelings of childhood and puberty (which are so often stifled by child-rearing methods, beatings, or even drugs) could provide the individual with an important means of orientation with which he or she could easily determine whether politicians are speaking from genuine experience or are merely parroting time-worn platitudes for the sake of manipulating voters. Our whole system of raising and educating children provides the power-hungry with a ready-made railway network they can use to reach the destination of their choice. They need only push the buttons that parents and educators have already installed. (*“Poisonous pedagogy” refers to that tradition of child-rearing which attempts to suppress all vitality, creativity, and feeling in the child and maintain the autocratic, godlike position of the parents at all costs. See the author’s book For Your Own Good, especially the section entitled “Poisonous Pedagogy.”)  — Alice Miller

Society's systematic oppression and trivialization of men's rights and emotional lives is crucial to the alienation and diversion of their energy and creativity from family and community into prefabricated establishment-sanctioned masculine roles. Indeed, authoritarian cultures have a vested interest in the routine brutalization, pleasure deprivation and emotional circumcision of males for the purpose of conditioning the next generation's "collectively autocatalytic" hierarchy of authority figures. (Emotions are inherently self-referential. They provide our primary self-perception of our own well being. What is the social/structural purpose of the systematic suppression of men's awareness of their own well being?) The colonization and recruitment of men's bodies and minds begins with MGM. [2005] Male Circumcision in the USA: A Human Rights Primer by Rich Winkel

"Most religions have been inspired by God the Moralist Dictator, who invariably banished the pleasures of sensuality, eroticism, individual luxury and free art. These taboos are comprehensible because a citizenry that pursues pleasure will tend to pay less attention to domestication and the self-sacrifice that benefit society. The Eastern and Mideastern empires reserved luxury, art, sensuality to the aristocracy.--T. L.

Christianity is alone in thinking that sex is entirely the Devil's business and an offence to God, This is a strange doctrine and almost implies that God and the devil must have collaborated on the creation of humanity, God working above the belly button and the Devil below(166).-Robert Anton Wilson

The average American male reaches orgasm in one and a half minutes, and usually performed in a dark room, so that it ca be finished furtively before the sex-hating Christian God has time to notice what is going on(167).-Robert Anton Wilson

Christian missionaries to Africa condemned polygamy, with the result that great numbers of women became "socially superfluous".  Many went to the cities and became prostitutes. Missionaries to North America had a similar effect when, discovering the informal family arrangements between many white settlers and native American women, they accused the natives of immorality and prostitution.  Protestant women in pioneering settlements adopted the missionary position - or rather, supported the missionaries' point of view - with the result that Indian women lost the status and respect they had enjoyed from the earlier white settlers. Interracial marriages died out, while prostitution flourished.--Love for Sale: a global history of prostitution by Nils Ringdal

"A man who doesn't have good sex resents life living itself; he wants to force and control it; he identifies with priests; he thinks business and sport, war and politics are more important than home building and garden tending, wife cultivating and child rearing; he no longer remembers his youth; his feelings, like his environment, are simply something to be dominated and destroyed; he is not moved by the Living......----J.James

Prescott
"Cultures that punish infants or repress sexuality are violent."--- James W. Prescott, Ph.D.

"Sexually awakened women, affirmed and recognized as such, would mean the complete collapse of the authoritarian ideology" ----Wilhelm Reich ("The Mass Psychology of Fascism" and "The Function of The Orgasm"). [1989] THE TRUTH ABOUT SEXUAL MONOGAMY by James W. Prescott, Ph.D.

Violence against sexuality and the use of sexuality for violence, particularly against women, has very deep roots in Biblical tradition. [1975] BODY PLEASURE AND THE ORIGINS OF VIOLENCE By James W. Prescott

The origins of the fundamental reciprocal relationship between physical violence and physical pleasure can be traced to philosophical dualism and to the theology of body/soul relationships. In Western philosophical thought man was not a unitary being but was divided into two parts, body and soul. The Greek philosophical conception of the relationship between body and soul was quite different than the Judeo-Christian concept which posited a state of war between the body and soul. Within Judeo-Christian thought the purpose of human life was to save the soul, and the body was seen as an impediment to achieving this objective. Consequently, the body must be punished and deprived. In St. Paul's words: "Put to death the base pursuits of the body—for if you live according to the flesh, you shall die: but if by the spirit you mortify the deeds of the flesh, you shall live" (Romans 8:13). St. Paul clearly advocated somatosensory pleasure deprivation and enhancement of painful somatosensory stimulation as essential prerequisites for saving the soul. "Now concerning the things whereof you wrote to me: It is good for a man not to touch a woman" (1 Corinthians, 7:1). [1975] BODY PLEASURE AND THE ORIGINS OF VIOLENCE By James W. Prescott

It is evident that the Judeo-Christian concept of body pleasure is quite the opposite of that outlined by Aristotle, particularly, the relief of body pain and discomfort through somatosensory pleasure. This denial of somatosensory pleasure in Pauline Christian doctrine has led to alternative forms of 'relief' through such painful stimulations as hair-shirts, self-scourgings, self-mutilations, physical violence against others, and in the non-sensory pleasures of drugs. [1975] BODY PLEASURE AND THE ORIGINS OF VIOLENCE By James W. Prescott

The question arises as to how Christian philosophy and theology, which borrowed heavily from Aristotle, managed to avoid, if not outright reject, Aristotle's teachings regarding the morality of pleasure. The roots to this question can be found throughout the Old Testament, beginning with the account in Genesis of the expulsion of Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden. The first consequence of Eve's transgression was that nudity became shameful. This even may well be the beginning of man's hostility toward women and the equating of woman with evil, particularly the evils of the body. This is vividly portrayed in Zechariah (5:5-8) in an angel's description of the flying bushel:  "This is a bushel container coming. This is their guilt in all the land." Then a leaden cover was lifted and there was a woman sitting inside the bushel. "This is wickedness, he said, and he thrust her inside the bushel, pushing the leaden cover into the opening."[1975] BODY PLEASURE AND THE ORIGINS OF VIOLENCE By James W. Prescott

Violence against sexuality and the use of sexuality for violence, particularly against women, has very deep roots in Biblical tradition, and is spelled out very early. The nineteenth chapter of Genesis (19:1-11), the first book of the Old Testament, holds that the rape of woman is acceptable but the rape of man is "a wicked thing." This chapter about the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah describes Lot's hospitality to two male travelers (actually two angels) who were housed with him.
    In the evening the townsmen of Sodom came to Lot's house and said to him: "Where are the men who came to your house tonight? Bring them out to us that we may have intimacies with them." Lot went out to meet them at the entrance. When he had shut the door behind him, he said, "I beg you, my brothers, not to do this wicked thing. I have two daughters who have never had intercourse with men. Let me bring them out to you, and you may do to them as you please. But don't do anything to these men, for you know they have come under the shelter of my roof." They replied, "Stand back! This fellow," they sneered, "came here as an immigrant, and now he dares to give orders! We'll treat you worse than them!" With that, they pressed hard against Lot, moving in closer to break down the door. But his guests put out their hand, pulled Lot inside with them, and closed the door; at the same time they struck the men at the entrance of the house, one and all, with such blinding light that they were utterly unable to reach the doorway.
    As the story continues, the two angels escort Lot and his family to safety and then destroy Sodom and Gomorrah for their great sinfulness. Yet not a word of reproach is given to Lot for his willingness to hand over his two virgin daughters to be gang raped. This same story is repeated in the books of Ezekiel (23:1-49) and Judges (19:22-30). [1975] BODY PLEASURE AND THE ORIGINS OF VIOLENCE By James W. Prescott

Given such a tradition, it is understandable that during the Inquisition only women were charged with having intercourse with the devil and put to death for this crime of pleasure. What man has died at the stake for having slept with Satan? This tradition is maintained in modern cultures where women are punished for prostitution but their male customers are not.  The historical and Biblical acceptance of rape down through the ages has brutalized the psyche of males brought up in this tradition. [1975] BODY PLEASURE AND THE ORIGINS OF VIOLENCE By James W. Prescott

If we accept the theory that the lack of sufficient somatosensory pleasure is a principal cause of violence, we can work toward promoting pleasure and encouraging affectionate interpersonal relationships as a means of combating aggression. We should give high priority to body pleasure in the context of meaningful human relationships. Such body pleasure is very different from promiscuity, which reflects a basic inability to experience pleasure. If a sexual relationship is not pleasurable, the individual looks for another partner. A continuing failure to find sexual satisfaction leads to a continuing search for new partners, that is, to promiscuous behavior. Affectionately shared physical pleasure, on the other hand, tends to stabilize a relationship and eliminate the search. However, a variety of sexual experiences seems to be normal in cultures which permit its expression, and this may be important for optimizing pleasure and affection in sexual relationships. [1975] BODY PLEASURE AND THE ORIGINS OF VIOLENCE By James W. Prescott

Reich
The suppression of the gratification of primitive material needs has a result different from that of the suppression of the gratification of the sexual needs. The former incites rebellion. The latter, however—by repressing the sexual needs and by becoming anchored as moralistic defense—paralyzes the rebellion against either kind of suppression. More than that, the inhibition of rebellion itself is unconscious. The conscious mind of the average unpolitical individual does not even show a trace of it. The result of this process is fear of freedom, and a conservative, reactionary mentality. Sexual repression aids political reaction not only through this process which makes the mass individual passive and unpolitical but also by creating in his structure an interest in actively supporting the authoritarian order. The suppression of natural sexual gratification leads to various kinds of substitute gratifications. Natural aggression, for example, becomes brutal sadism which then is an essential mass-psychological factor in imperialistic wars. THE MASS PSYCHOLOGY OF FASCISM by Wilhelm Reich

If one studies the history of sexual suppression one finds that it does not exist in the early stages of culture formation. Therefore, it cannot be the prerequisite of culture. Rather, it appears at a relatively late stage of culture, at the time of the development of authoritarian patriarchy and of class distinctions. At that stage, the sexual interests of all begin to serve the profit interests of a minority. This process has assumed a solid organizational form in the institutions of patriarchal marriage and patriarchal family.
    With the suppression of sexuality the emotions undergo a change: a sex-negating religion begins to develop which gradually builds up its own sex-political organization, the church in all its forms, which has no other goal than that of eradicating sexual pleasure. This has its sociological reason in the exploitation of human work which sets in at this stage. THE MASS PSYCHOLOGY OF FASCISM by Wilhelm Reich

Suppression of the natural sexuality in the child, particularly of its genital sexuality, makes the child apprehensive, shy, obedient, afraid of authority, "good" and "adjusted" in the authoritarian sense; it paralyzes the rebellious forces because any rebellion is laden with anxiety; it produces, by inhibiting sexual curiosity and sexual thinking in the child, a general inhibition of thinking and of critical faculties. In brief, the goal of sexual suppression is that of producing an individual who is adjusted to the authoritarian order and who will submit to it in spite of all misery and degradation. At first, the child has to adjust to the structure of the authoritarian miniature state, the family; this makes it capable of later subordination to the general authoritarian system. The formation of the authoritarian structure takes place through the anchoring of sexual inhibition and sexual anxiety. THE MASS PSYCHOLOGY OF FASCISM by Wilhelm Reich

The suppression of natural sexual gratification leads to various kinds of substitute gratifications. Natural aggression, for example, becomes brutal sadism which then is an essential mass-psychological factor in imperialistic wars. To take another example: the mass-psychological effect of militarism is essentially libidinous. The sexual effect of a uniform and of rhythmically perfect parades, of military exhibitionism in general, are obvious to the average servant girl, even though they may not be obvious to learned political scientists. Political reaction, however, makes conscious use of these sexual interests. Not only does it create peacock-like uniforms for the men, it uses attractive women in its recruiting campaigns. One only has to remember the recruiting posters with texts like this, "If you want to see the world, join the Royal Navy." The far-away world is represented by exotic women. Why are such posters effective? Because our youth, as a result of sexual suppression, is sex-starved. THE MASS PSYCHOLOGY OF FASCISM by Wilhelm Reich