The Rebellious Imperatives of the Self

It’s incredible. You wake up in the morning determined to go and write a blog about a specific and important issue and suddenly you find yourself opening the newspaper and discovering an article that directs you in a completely different direction.

Such was the case today. There was me ready to blog about some really important things happening in our world, and I came across this piece, written by Christopher Turner on the life and works of one Willhelm Reich.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/jul/08/wilhelm-reich-free-love-orgasmatron

It’s not a short article either, and once more, may we thank the Guardian newspaper for bothering to produce such a thing. As one comment states, this article raises more questions than answers. But isn’t that precisely what journalism these days should be doing? It is not just about presenting facts. It is about stretching one’s mind, considering philosophies of past, present and future and, in the case as well as others, about how we can- as individuals and as a collective, look at the core values and purposes of society.

And where better to start on such a task as to look at sex.

Sex is so important that we have almost made it into something destructive due to our inability to actually come to terms with its real significance in life. Because essentially, we know it is significant and we know it is good for us. In realising this I think we are sometimes terrified of the enormity of it, and maybe society has shied away from the overwhelming power of sex because in its very nature it is possibly the most powerful thing in the world.

At the point when there is a dawning of sexual liberation, those in power get shit scared because subliminally or overtly, they know that nothing is more powerful than sex and they are terrified of the autonomy that positive and embracing sex may provide. This leads to suppression of sex and sexuality that in turn creates the sort of havoc that those in power actually rather like because it is something that they can control.

Actually, as a sex writer (she says somewhat grandly about herself) these sorts of articles are manna from heaven because it sends me off into all sorts of interconnected thoughts about what sex actually is, and the politics of sex is fascinating. Yet, we have hardly scratched the surface to see what effect sex and the suppression of sex has on our society. We spend plenty of time discussion the sexualisation of society but do very little to look at the more positive approach of sexual politics being the ultimate liberation of the people.

This is probably too complicated to try and tackle in one small blog so I shall probably return to it throughout my writing, but I am genuinely intrigued by the enormity of this subject and how little we have moved forward since Willhelm Reich’s work and the sexual revolution of the 1960s which could appear like a tea party once the real Age of Aquarius is upon us.

And in order to embrace the dawning of the new world, sex and its significance has to be at the forefront, just as Reich had stated in the middle part of the last century.

I don’t even know where to start with this one but I am just going to go with the flow and see what happens.

Once upon a time when we were just losing the hair off our Neanderthal backs, humans probably had a lot of sex. They probably had sex as naturally as they stalked off into the countryside to catch food for their hungry bellies. They probably had sex as naturally as needing to sleep. And according to research, they probably had sex with lots of different people; as a natural form of communicating when language was yet fully formed. These people, our ancestors, were highly unlikely to be monogamous.

Then along came a few little problems. One man wanted to feel more secure. One woman wanted to feel less hungry, so small units were formed to create the sort of stability that people desired. If a man killed a wildebeest, the woman might think she was going to be better fed by him than the man who was still hunting squirrels. So she would provide more sexual communication with this mate than the other. Eventually wealth from buying and selling became the norm and the first sight of capitalism was born with the added extra of possession and therefore possessiveness. Families emerged and so too did the monogamous form of living that we still apparently adhere to and aspire to today.

Sex itself became a bargaining tool. Added to this there was the old Darwinian issue of the survival of the fittest. The humans became somewhat choosy in their mating and sex became the means to greater success, greater riches and allegedly better offspring.

As time progressed and the viability of family units was seen as the only way to live life, sex became associated with intimacy (and economy) rather than its most natural instinctual form of physical expression.

Once this society was established, what happened to sex?

It became imprisoned in the socio-economic stability and soon it was finding itself hidden in secrecy along with the bodies that were now covered from view. With such intimacy and possessiveness, sex changed and was no longer the natural act that you could freely do with anyone you happened to fancy. And with that suppression came all sorts of other problems because ultimately man and woman could not lose that natural instinct. Ultimately, there was almost a natural disorder in chaining sex down and associating it directly with that possession and ownership.

Please note, I know I am being somewhat simplistic here but bear with me.

Jump along some centuries, and humans suddenly found themselves in a situation where sex was only supposed to happen between two people in a loving relationship. Its physical necessity was restricted. Once coupledom had been created, the thought of one’s partner being sexually intimate with another was abhorrent, and yet infidelities continued and will always continue until we realise the power of sex and its place in the natural order of things.

And then we conditioned ourselves to this way of thinking. Furthermore, possibly because as a society and individuals within we were constantly reminded about our duty to perform coupledom, we decided that sex was naughty and rude and shouldn’t be discussed. And why was this? Because anything else, any other decision would have opened a Pandora’s Box and absolute anarchy may prevail. If we were sexually liberated to have sex as and when we chose, the economic stability of society could come tumbling down purely because we had created this unnatural environment for living along with the destructive emotions that were at the heart of maintaining this madness of unnatural life.

Suppressing sex in this way and demonising it meant that we could pretend it was a bad thing even though we all knew and indeed practiced within coupledom (!) sexual acts that we knew were beneficial to our souls, our minds, our bodies.

It is like an ultimate irony.

We created this society. We were the ones who put sex in the wrong place.
Now here is something that is possibly a little contentious but needs to be considered. We bang on and on about the sexualisation of society these days and we laud any attempts by people to continue in their prudish manner but isn’t it possible that the sexualisation of society is an subliminal attempt to get back to basics, to return sex to its status as one of the main instinctual actions in life; flight, fight, fuck – along with sleep, eat, drink?

And yet we still cannot see it.

Please be assured, I am not advocating inappropriate sexualisation here but as I have said before, why do capitalists use sexual imagery to sell their products? Because it helps to sell whatever they are trying to burden us with. And why does it help to sell them? Because we are essentially sexual beings who have learned to suppress their sexuality and given an opportunity to associate a certain car, for instance, with a sexy blond draped across it, gives us a little pleasure and therefore we buy the product. Because we ARE sexual.

Too simple I know, but again, bear with me.

Let’s look briefly at the porn industry. It is so popular because people want to look at wonderful bodies. The may be getting the best sex that they have experienced in their lives but this does not prevent them wanting to look at others. Why? Because we are sexual beings. It is our instinctive nature to want to explore sex. The savvies in this industry know this, just as Reich and Kinsey had known before them. WE ARE SEXUAL BEINGS.

The whole suppression of sexuality has made an entire industry; the biggest on the internet if you look at certain figures. And still, with all this mass of evidence, we cannot admit to being sexual people for fear of being called a freak or a pervert just because we like sex.

The politicians scream about the appalling industry of porn without realising that it is the development of society and the suppression of the natural way that has caused this industry to profit so effectively.

Looking now at relationships and we are seriously fucked, without a single cock going anywhere near a juicy pussy. This unnatural order has been embedded for so many years that even those of us who are slightly more enlightened than most still have this gut-wrenching feeling as soon as we know or think that our ‘partner’ has slept with or had sex with another person because we have come to be conditioned to think that sex and intimacy and partnership and love are all safely and carefully enmeshed together, and this feels threatening to us, to our intimacy and sex and partnership etcetera. We are well and truly fucked unless we can break free from this, and the societal politics of sex is doing nothing to help us.

I know. I am there right at this moment in time. And I hate it, and I hate being there.

Sex should be about the physical joy of communicating amorous feelings. It should not be about all the other things, though there is clearly an issue here because it should be about all of these things as well (apart from the possessiveness) as sex is far, far more wonderful when it happens with somebody that you adore and care for.

And therefore, it should be perfectly normal to have sex with people that you like and for it not to be an issue for the other important people in your life. This is as it should be and yet we are so conditioned into the existing economy and politics of sex that we are driven to all manner of destructive emotions in trying to contain the uncontainable, if the natural order of things are to be assumed.

There is every possibility that Willhelm Reich was just a madman and that his Orgone theory was totally insane, but I cannot dismiss him as such. We know, we all know what good sex does for us. We know how we feel, how free and liberated we feel when sex and the relationship with the one that you are having sex with is bloody wonderful, so how would society benefit from finally casting aside all that imposed conditioning about sex and we looked at it in its truest form of the instinctual act as the dominant force?

Sexualisation and the politics of it somehow seem to work in favour of the politicians and the powers in society. It diverts thought from the real issue of sexual empowerment and freedom. If we are all caught up in the inappropriateness of sex, we don’t have to consider the inappropriateness of sexual confinement and we don’t have to concern ourselves with the empowering nature of sex that could possibly change society to the point where those in power have less influence.

Reich’s Orgone theory is one thing. I happen to think that there is something in the power of this omnipresent force. Whether it could be captured in a wood and tin box is another matter but there is certainly a force about sexuality that has to be to the good of all people if only there were less hang ups about the act of sex itself.

However, we should not dismiss the essence of Reich’s work as the mad rantings of an insane and quirky man. What he was trying to do was address the whole issue of sexual politics and make people realise that if we are ever to be free we need to have an enormous cultural, spiritual, moral, political and social shift in our views on sex.

There could be a million mini-revolutions with power returning to the hands of the people, but if we still maintain the constraints associated with monogamous sexual activity, then no manner of political and economic freedom will make us truly free. As Reich says, we need to overthrow sexual repression and we cannot possibly have the freedom that so many of us desire until we have done so.

Getting back to my own situation, it is all very well living a polyamorous existence but it is never just about two people and about their theories and expectations. It is not just me that is conditioned. Others are too. And there is a strong possibility that if one person has sex with another person or sleeps with another person, then assumptions as to the nature of the friendship or relationship ensue. It should not be that way but that is how we are conditioned; into thinking that the giving of oneself sexually is the ultimate act of togetherness or communication or intimacy when in actual fact it is nothing of the kind.

I actually do aspire to a polyamorous existence for all but until that happens, it feels as though the pockets of it in society cannot operate effectively because not everyone within fully appreciates the politics of sex or the extent to which they have been conditioned, even subliminally to see sex as some sort of commitment.

People are fascinated with sex for a reason, for a multitude of reasons. It is a fascinating subject and not just merely for the physical and emotional aspects.

Sex is life-giving and I really think that there is some Orwellian force going on here.

If we open our eyes we know that the natural high of sex could be the most liberating force that has ever existed, and quite frankly, I reckon that the powers that be are utterly terrified of the prospect of such liberation that would put the political revolutions of the previous century into insignificance.

Reich knew this which is probably why, with my conspiracy theory hat on, that they spent so much money in prosecuting and imprisoning him.

I wonder whether we really are on the verge of a brave new order which readdresses the true nature of sex. I wonder if, one day, the likes of Willhelm Reich and his appreciative followers will be seen as the greatest thinkers, politicians and philosophers of our time for having the foresight to see the suppression of sex for what it really is and the power of sex for what it really could be.