yeah there's constant sexual stimulation all around us, combine it with religious repression and a boring life and what else is there to do

"If you charge off with some political agenda that is not informed by clarity, you are going to end up with business as usual.b ecause the road to hell is paved with good intentions but it is not paved with clarity." ~ Terence McKenna.

I was going to have my significant other post in here for the female perspective, but she is not allowed yet...

She pretty much agrees with most of what's been said with the addition of a significant degree of fear in day to day life.

Significant degree of fear in day to day life?

Where do you live, Uganda?

but if you look at the statistics for any country, the number of women who haven't been raped or molested is a minority.

You really believe this?

In Victorian Times it's perceived that men would go crazy just by seeing a females ankle or knee...now, an ankle or knee should not be sexually stimulating, but repression caused it to be.

(token female perspective)

Most sexual representation in Western culture lacks examples of the highest pinnacles of sexuality. It's mostly base-level, monkey behind the controls, mutual masturbation with someone else's body. And, while that can be fun, it does not come close to what sexual expression and experience can be.

Sexuality can be a merging of energy fields, a divine and peak experience. It can be transcendent and holy, can offer insights into why we Gods/Goddesses even bother this whole existence thing. Eternity exists in that space.

I'm reminded of that Bill Hicks bit about how the transcendental LSD experience seems newsworthy. Transcendental sexual experience exists, but you sure wouldn't know it by watching the TV or hitting the bar scene.

Well I was thinking of this earlier today for some reason. I was thinking that - I don’t know why I was thinking this - but I was thinking that sex is so intrinsically a mental activity that the amazing thing is that it’s kept in the body at all. Normally this equation is turned upside down and people say, it’s so intrinsically of the body but the fact that phone sex can be a nine billion dollar a year industry is telling us something about how erotic sensitivity is distributed through the network of the civilization.

[Audience Indecipherable]

It’s a pity that it’s linked so closely to biology. This is why the cult of sexiness is something very different and very modern than the cult of procreation obsession. Sexiness is something probably invented post 1850 and it’s flash, that’s all it is. It’s the permeating erotic sensitivity that characterizes modern civilization – in billboards, in advertising, in the constant assault of visual images. I really notice this when I go up the Amazon because there’s no calendars, no girly pictures, nothing. Then when you get back to Iquitos, you just realize that what civilization is - is an ocean of explicit erotic imagery that keeps us all in a state of probably willingness to consume stuff. It’s a stimulant like caffeine but it’s a sexual stimulant.

[Audience Indecipherable]

That’s right. Like bisexuality, which is a characteristic of feminine psychology. In this society, I think it’s directed related to the rise of modern advertising. There was no reason to reinforce that before 1850 or so and then you see this emerging.

[Audience] – Do you think that virtual will make it worse?

Well I don’t know. I suppose there is a raging debate about pornography. There’s a raging debate about everything.

[Audience] – What about pornography directed towards women and children?

Ah, pornography towards women and children. Well, I make a distinction between…oh god, now do we want to go off into this?

[Audience] – I’m sorry, I take that back.

Camille Paglia asked a very interesting question to which I don’t have the answer and I don’t even think we need to discuss it. But I think everybody should think about it. The question was: can sexual liberation end anywhere but in sadomasochism? That’s a very interesting question.

[Audience] – Sure it can!

Sure it can? She said maybe not. I don’t know. I don’t want to mud wrestle over it. What do we think about this? For instance, aggression toward women. What do we think of aggression toward women that is acted out and no women are actually abused. This is where the pornography thing comes in. Is it subliminal? Is it a cause or a substitute? If it’s a substitute, surely we must agree that it’s a good thing. But if it’s a cause, we must surely agree it’s a bad thing. Or is it both? I don’t have burning opinions about all this. I’m a first amendment guy right down the line and just take a position that nothing should be restricted by government. Whatever the means by which the memes are sorted out, it should not be the wisdom of a benevolent government telling us what kind of images we should have.

The tough one is images of pain and abuse, images of psychological degradation. I don’t know exactly what to do about that. If you go back to the roots of western civilization and read Plato’s Republic, Plato was very suspicious of the poets and did not think those people should be allowed to just run untrammeled over the landscape. Here at Esalen, a great deal of time and effort has been expended to establish the medical concept that there are healing images. Stan’s work, some of Michael Murphy’s work, some of the continuum work. Healing images are an article of faith around here. I believe it but has anybody stopped to notice that if there are healing images, there are sickening images. Well then, if you have tuberculosis, we don’t say you have a right to mingle with the rest of us, or if you have some other contagious, rampantly contagious disease. So if you’re carrying a meme that is toxic, do your first amendment rights exceed the mental health rites of the majority?

-terence McKenna

True sexuality is not directed simply to the sexual act, it has a lot more to do with the process of reciprocal enchantment, which expresses itself with sight exchanges, smells, gestures and so on.
A psychoanalyst once told me indeed that there's no sexual instinct, but rather a coupling instinct.

I think that's brilliant!