The Friday Sex Blog [The Culture Wars]

Hola Everybody,
Many people are saying they’re sick of this election cycle and are so turned off, they can’t wait for it to be over. Think about that. I believe this election will create a more dangerous version of Trump. That’s what voting for the lesser of two evils does -- it creates evil.

On another tangent, I'm so tired. I’m not seeing the light at the end of the tunnel, my friends.

The War on Sex

Speaking of elections, one phrase that continually pops up is “culture war.” This familiar expression is actually part of the problem. You see, the phrase suggests there are two sides of equal strength lined up, honoring more or less the same rules of engagement, wanting to conquer each other.

But what is called a “culture war” is nothing like that at all. Those who fear and hate sexuality (erotophobes) are attacking those who appreciate or tolerate sexuality (erotophiles). Erotophiles are not attempting to force erotophobes to live more sexually adventurous lives. In fact, erotophiles aren’t trying to make the erotophobes do anything they don’t want to do. However, erotophobes demand that both sides -- everyone -- live according to their anti-sex (erotophobic) values. For example, an erotophile might say, “If you don’t want to go to a nude beach, don’t go, but don’t shut it down to prevent me from having that choice.” An erotophobic response might be, “I don’t want to go to a nude beach, and I don’t want you to have the option of going either, so it must be closed.” In a similar way, erotophobes want to control and mitigate the sexual rights of those they fear. For example, erotophiles might say, “If you’re against gay marriage, don’t marry one.” Erotophobes respond by waging campaigns of hate against the LGBTQ community.

While erotophobes recognize there’s a huge range of opportunities for erotic stimulation, satisfaction, and imagination, they want to deny everyone, not just themselves. Ironically, erotophobes (like most conservatives and some liberals) claim to be the victims in this culture war.

They say they are the ones who are being attacked, their values undermined, and their way of life destroyed. From their paranoiac perspective, they see so-called indecent entertainment, changing fashions, recent court decisions, internet access, and a range of contraceptive technologies, as an intrusion -- as being force-fed sex. They can’t, they wail, turn on a TV, go to a mall, boot up a computer, or even go to work without being assaulted by sexual images. Furthermore, they claim, even when they are not being literally confronted, they are still forced to abide others’ sexual activity next door and all over the United States -- behavior that is immoral, disgusting, and sinful.

I have no doubt this is true for them. However it is irrelevant to the governance of the U.S. Nowhere in our founding documents is there mention of regulating anything considered immoral, sinful, or disgusting. On the contrary, the United States was founded on the idea that people should be able to choose what to do and with whom to associate based on their personal values and ideals -- not those of a king, feudal lord, or religious hierarchy. Nor even, as James Madison declared, the tyrannical majority in their own town, state, or nation.

When erotophobes demand that we eliminate entertainment, fashion, medical technology, bedroom activity, and businesses that are in their estimation “immoral” or “sinful,” they are calling for a dismantling of the core values our nation was founded on. Such changes would result in governance that would bring us closer to modern Saudi Arabia, the former Soviet Union, the Taliban in Afghanistan, and Nazi Germany.

Historically, the U.S. has tried to balance the rights of individuals and community responsibility. Therefore, for example, while you enjoy the freedom of speech, you don’t have the right to yell “fire” in a crowded theater. Another fundamental U.S. right is that the law should address actual crime and actual victims, and it should be drafted in ways that limit negative unintended consequences when solving a problem (in actuality, this is not true in practice).

Today’s culture war seeks to disrupt that balance, and it has already succeeded in many ways. Historically, it was against the law for someone to actually kill your cow, or doing something makes you worried about someone killing your cow. Attempting to criminalize abortion isn’t enough for conservatives, they also attempt to ban over-the-counter availability of emergency contraception, saying such availability would “encourage promiscuity.” Progressives respond with scientific data that clearly shows it won’t, and in that way, one more battle is joined. Erotophobes respond that (as is usual) they have no data, they have “concerns” and “feelings,” which are now considered seriously in public policy debates.

Although our country makes cars safer in case of accidents, has school athletes wear helmets in case they fall awkwardly, and establishes poison control centers in case toddlers get into cleaning supplies, these sexual jihadists don’t want to reduce the consequences of unauthorized, unprotected, or unfortunate sex. They say that doing so encourages bad sexual choices. That’s like saying seat belts encourage dangerous driving and poison centers encourage sloppy parenting practices.

Forget that children who are taught abstinence-only have as much sex -- only they use condoms less often. Erotophobes have manipulated the public into fighting sexual expression, not sexual ignorance or poor sexual decision-making.

Let’s be clear, a large part of the culture wars is really about the pathological need to control sex. Erotophobes fear sex. They fear sexual expression, sexual exploration, sexual arrangements, sexual privacy, sexual choice, sexual entertainment, sexual health and sexual pleasure. They want you to fear it as well. Today’s conservative/ fundamentalist political movements (and some progressives, I might add) present a horrifically distorted picture of sexuality. It’s a narrative of danger and fear; a narrative of evil and sin and, therefore, of self-destructiveness. While erotophobes typically describe their fear in socially acceptable terms (i.e., “protecting children,” “defending marriage”), what they really fear is sexuality as they understand it. Actually, this is the same type of fear that compel people who call themselves progressive, to vote for candidates who value repressive social policies.

The outcome of these battles will determine how our children will live for decades to come. It will determine what books they will be allowed to read, what they will be taught to fear, what they know about their bodies, and how much control they will have over their own fertility.

Millions of people in the U.S. are afraid of sex. Some admit it, some don’t. Millions more hate sex, and some have declared war on it. The pluralism of the United States is despised by fundamentalists around the world -- including those right here on our soil. If you’re interested in sex, you’re part of this war whether you like it or not. If you watch TV, use a sex toy, go to the movies, need an abortion, enjoy the occasional dirty online chat, want a physician trained in sexual medicine, or have a child in school, the guns of the culture war and the war on sex will be pointed at you.

It is imperative that we begin asking the right questions, right now, because the answers will matter.

My name is Eddie and I’m in recovery from civilization…

The Friday Sex Blog [Tantra]

Hola mi Gente,
This weekend is a celebration of Puerto Rican culture and pride. I'm looking forward to enjoying some of the festivities, especially the Fiesta del Barrio on Saturday.

What follows is a very brief and very inadequate attempt to elaborate on tantra.

Tantra

Every woman’s nature is to be a priestess, to be an initiator. Only when a man knows how to give her pleasure will she be radiant, devoted, loving, satisfied, and able to be in the fullness of the whole relationship.

 -- Margot Anand

Sex lies at the root of life, and it is crucial that we learn reverence for it. By reverence I don’t mean to say that sex should only be practiced under certain conditions and only with certain individuals. By reverence I mean that we must come to the realization that sex is an energy -- a divine and transformative energy -- and that we must learn to revere and cultivate that energy. 

More than any other experience, orgasm brings us closer to the divine. This is why organized religions have always tried to control sex: ecstatic people are a free people. In the moment of orgasm, a bonding between the right and left hemispheres of the brain occurs. When the creative, intuitive right side of the brain fuses with the center of logic and thinking on the left side, an akashic field (“zero-point”) of total connection can be accessed. The ego walls come tumbling down, time and space cease to exist, and you become one with energy and consciousness. 

This form of sexual practice transcends mere ego needs so often heard in popular culture: songs wailing about “Baby, I need you,” and “I can’t live without you.” Sabotaged by ego needs (the “Mini Me”), sex becomes a quick exercise in tension and release. It obstructs the free flow of energy.

Sexuality is a very natural instinct, a powerfully creative force. From the tantric perspective, each of us can put that force to work in the service of healing, transformation, and the realization of our potentials. Yet, in many ways, we are conditioned to think about sex in a way that confuses us. We straddle the two extremes of viewing sex as something natural that should not be interfered with, and the perception of sex as something hidden, dirty, and taboo. Of course, that last part is what sometimes makes it so interesting and brings violence and exploitation into sex. In this country, we find it so difficult even to talk about sex without defining it in deviant terms, we have to fight through all the cultural taboos to have a good time, it seems.

I write about sex mostly because I feel the damage caused by the anti-sex cultural attitudes can’t begin to be measured. Instead of celebrating sex as a creative force, we turn it into a shameful, guilt-ridden affair. Religions want to make people believe that a priest is necessary in order to have a relationship with the divine. They discourage any attempt to have a direct experience of “God” on their own. Religious institutions, for the most part, do not want us to wake up to our natural ecstasy. The moment they wake up, a person becomes a free thinker and for those in power, a free thinker is a dangerous individual. 

Tantra developed as a rebellion against the repressive moralistic codes of organized religions in India around 5000 b.c.e. It developed particularly as a response to the widespread notion that sexuality had to be denied in order to attain spiritual enlightenment. Tantra means “weaving,” in the sense of bringing together the many and often contradictory aspects of the self into one harmonious whole. Tantra also means “expansion,” in the sense that once our own energies are understood and unified, we grow and expand into joy. Truly, Tantra is the “yoga of love.”

Characterized by what the Tibetan Tantric tradition calls crazy wisdom, Tantric masters scandalized mainstream society and were often condemned and persecuted. Crazy Wisdom is a tradition in which the teacher uses paradoxical stories, seemingly absurd questions, and unexpected behavior in order to tease, jolt, and provoke people to drop mainstream conditioning and conventional attitudes so that they may embrace the whole spectrum of life, with no conflict between the sacred and the profane, the spiritual and the sexual.

There’s no way I could do justice to the Tantric vision in a one-page Word document, but I will say that the Tantric vision accepts everything. There’s nothing forbidden in Tantra. Everything that a person experiences, regardless of whether it is judged as good or bad, is an opportunity for learning. For example, a situation in which you experience sexual frustration is not viewed negatively in tantra, it is viewed as an opportunity for learning.

The best way I’ve heard tantra described is through the use of the metaphor of weeds. While weeds, if left unattended can bring a garden to ruin, one can also use weeds to fertilize the soil and make it richer. In this way, Tantra utilizes energies usually judged as negative as a path toward growth.

According to Tantra, sex is first a matter of energy, and Tantra views energy as the movement of life. For example, the nucleus and electrons of an atom have a certain rhythmic movement. The same goes for molecules, cells, and organs of the human body. Similarly, each organ -- the heart, diaphragm, intestines, lungs, brains, etc. -- pulsate to the rhythm of life. The vibrations from these rhythmic movements generate bioelectric currents that stream continuously through the whole body. They also generate energy fields that surround the body, and our moods and emotions generate specific vibrations that alter these energy fields as well.

One last thing, Surrender is an essential aspect of Tantra. There is, however, much confusion about what surrender means. People are suspicious of this term, which is often equated with loss of free will and personal power. In fact, they are confusing surrender with submission, which is (to me) a passive attitude that implies giving up responsibility for one’s behavior. True surrender, at least within the Tantric tradition, is a conscious choice made from free will. It means opening your heart and trusting the person you are with.

Tantra is about wholeness, of embracing everything, because every situation is an opportunity to become more aware about who you are and about how you can expand your capacities. Because Tantra embraces wholeness, it embraces opposites, seeing them not as contradictions but as complements. The concepts of male and female therefore are placed apart, forever divided by a gender gap, but are viewed as part of a continuum that meet and merge in every human being. Tantra recognizes that in each individual there exists both a masculine and feminine quality.

My name is Eddie and I’m in recovery from civilization…

The Friday Sex Blog [Religious Sex]

Hola mi Gente… 

Today  is Friday and it's all about sex here. LOL

* * *

Religious Sex

… Her truth, her altar,
… where the stuttering
of my lips
offers prayers
from an unknown religion
to forgotten Gods.

-- Edward-Yemíl Rosario, © 2008

According to The Big Three (Christianity, Judaism, Islam) the erotic impulse – the world of Eros, the body, and human sexuality – is the domain of the devil. From this perspective, the physical is sinful, bestial, a distraction from all things spiritual. Human sexuality, according to this view, is an obstacle to the high hallowed pursuit of God and everything that is good and ethical. From the moment we are born, we are told that the more we open to the erotic impulse, the more we listen and open to the needs of the body, the more we embrace and enjoy our sexual natures, the further we stray from moral rectitude and emotional well-being.

I write my Friday sex blog mostly because I argue that the opposite is true. I submit that the erotic impulse, honored and liberated from the shackles of guilt and organized forces of suppression, is a legitimate and powerful path toward a profound psycho-spiritual awareness. The sex blog is a call to stop trivializing the erotic/ sexual world as we so often do, as if sex involved nothing more than sensory stimulation, ego gratification, and the pursuit of an orgasm.

Some might see my assumptions as radical. That there is more to sex than the giddy pursuit of carnal pleasure may be hard to accept in the aftermath of the sexual explosion of the 60s and 70s. It was an era when reliable birth control, combined with an awakening feminism, political consciousness-raising, and the movements for gay, lesbian, and bisexual liberation released us from some of our legacy of sexual oppression and fear. However, I also argue that it is precisely our failure to recognize the depth of the erotic impulse that is at the root of our current dissatisfaction with our sexual nature.

Once we began to shake loose the shackles of repression, we were as the proverbial children let loose in candy store. In the time of so-called free love, we seemed to want nothing more than to consume as many erotic experiences as we could. We were, after all, sexually starved beings emerging from fifteen hundred years lost in a wasteland into a world of lush jungles bursting with exotic fruit. I was there, and it was an exciting time in the cultural history of Western sexuality, and an important first step in freeing ourselves from the repressive world on the 50s – the white-picket-fence, clean and tidy, sexual suburbia of post-war United States.

Released from decades of sexual repression, we had more sex in more ways (with your mouth, your ass, with a vibrator, within groups, or with people of your own gender), than ever before. But even as we feasted on erotic delights we also discovered, even as we celebrated breaking down the political, religious, and cultural inhibitions, that there were limits to the path were on. The new synthesis, to borrow from Hegel, had created a new antithesis. The crest of the wave was moving faster than the base and there were rocks up ahead. Jumping into the sexual realm, we found ourselves confronted with a landscape we could not have expected and did not know how to interpret.

As much as we would like to trivialize energies, we must realize that whenever we play with erotic energy, we engage both emotional and archetypal forces that have their roots in the very heart of who we are as human beings, in how we define ourselves and relate to the world around us. Entering consciously into the erotic world raises issues and feelings, for example, around usually unfulfilled desires rooted in infancy – desires to be held and nurtured. It touches our prenatal memories of being at one with another human being, around ego boundaries, and the blurring of personalities, and around surrendering control. The erotic impulse always raises all the issues related to intimacy – the desire to be close to someone else, the fear of becoming lost or smothered, and all the past yearnings, wounds, and disappointments we have experienced. Being sexual brings us face to face with issues of our perceived worthiness to receive love or pleasure, as well as when and how we want, or don’t want, to extend these ways of caring expressions to another.

Going deeper, the emotions released by deep erotic experiences, we were perhaps confronted with anger, passion, even rage which we may find embarrassing or disturbing. We find ourselves dealing with issues of power, and of trust. Going deeper still, erotic experiences takes us down to basic feelings about the balance of chaos and order, and even to an experience that many describe as a direct contact to the Divine.

As a sexual philosopher and explorer, I believe my perspective is very different. I see the sexual experience as path for exploring the very meaning of life. I see the attempt to pursue awakening only through a disembodied mentality as wrongheaded and culturally biased. Perhaps it’s a consequence of a spirituality dominated by male spiritual teachers who defined an embodied feminine way of engaging the world as inferior.

Sex is a matter of energy. Once you have learned to experience orgasm as an energy event outside the sexual context, you take responsibility for your own well-being in sex. You realize that the true source of your pleasure lies not so much in your partner as within yourself.

My name is Eddie and I’m in recovery from civilization…