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Sex and social system
Jordi Soler Alomà [PhD]
Abstract
Socially, sex is many different things: it is both the reproductive mechanism of the
species and a key component of culture in all its manifestations. It is a blurred concept
that is associated with positive elements related to health and pleasure, but that is
also associated with shame and sin. It is a fundamental process in the development of
pre-adults, and yet, it is considered exclusive to the “adult world”.
The fact that society itself maintains ambiguous and ambivalent positions on such an
essential subsystem for the human social system makes it a structural problem, which,
therefore, negatively affects the well-being of society and the mental health of
citizens. Society needs to find the necessary means to solve this problem, generated
artificially and that is still fully in force. This article investigates how and why sex is
taboo in Western society and investigates some processes, in which all social actors
intervene, through which the sexual fetish is manifested.
Sexuality is a central aspect of the human being, present throughout its life. It
encompasses sex, gender identities and roles, eroticism, pleasure, intimacy,
reproduction, and sexual orientation. It is experienced and expressed through thoughts,
fantasies, desires, beliefs, attitudes, values, behaviours, practices, roles and
interpersonal relationships. Sexuality can include all these dimensions, however, not all
of them are always experienced or expressed. Sexuality is influenced by the interaction
of biological, psychological, social, economic, political, cultural, ethical, legal, historical,
religious, and spiritual factors (World Health Organization, WHO, Internal working
document, 2006a).
Keywords: Sex, society, taboo, development, culture, alienation.
Introduction
In the thematization of sex, we find problems such as: a certain degree of
misinformation; lack of freedom of expression; censorship both imposed and a priori;
its use as a tool for propaganda and suggestion; the lack of a deontological ethic that
transcends taboos, what is “politically correct” and what is taken for granted; absence
of scientific research on its role in culture and communication; a stereotyped
journalistic treatment; a social avoidance of the subject (except when it includes a
certain "morbid appeal"); astounding ignorance on the matter by all institutions (i.e.,
educational, legal, legislative, university...) The paradox of the matter is that, during
childhood, we are more aware of the true social nature of sex than in our adulthood.
At the age of 8 or so, we realize that, for the adults around us, sexuality is taboo. We
perceive it in the reactions they have when the subject comes up, whether it is by
chance or not, in any context. We also detect it in the reactions that our parents (for
example) have when a “sex” scene appears in a movie or TV series. And we see it, too,
in the different reaction they have, each of them respectively, depending on whether
the protagonist is a boy or a girl in an erotic scene. Everything related to sex has, in the
adult world, a strange and ambiguous nature, full of false morals, lies, imposture and
hypocrisy.
For this reason, when we "socialize" the developmental mechanisms that set our
biological calendar in motion, playing doctor and other games that have erotic
connotations, we do it hidden from adults. That is why, when we want to know what
sex is really about, we do not turn to our parents or tutors, but rather to our friends or,
since the use of this medium became widespread, to the Internet.
The relationship of society with the sexual is an alienated relationship. Prejudice,
stereotypes, commonplaces, ignorance, intolerance, ambivalence, amphibology and
foolishness are some of the categories applicable to the social reception of sexuality,
both in the personal sphere and in the public sphere (administration), media,
publications, research, etc.)
It is surprising that, for a phenomenon with such marked connotations, the best
dictionaries only offer biological "definitions", oriented to the reproductive aspect of
the species, without distinguishing the human species from the rest of the animals that
inhabit the planet. It is also paradoxical that, for the visual content related to an
activity that is as natural as breathing or eating, there is a concept with negative
connotations such as "pornography" for which, by the way, there is no strictu sensu
definition in any dictionary. According to the most prestigious dictionary in the Spanish
language, namely that of the RAE, it is an "... open and crude presentation of sex that
seeks to produce excitement" (RAE, 2021). This "definition" contains a prejudice: using
qualifying adjectives such as, in this case, "crude" is not appropriate for rigorous
academics, since it implies a priori judgments, which disable any supposed definition
that contains them; furthermore, in this case, it is clearly a prejudice. Definitions
cannot contain opinions or subjective judgments: they must be objective descriptions
of the referents of the terms. Another meaning attributed to it by the same dictionary
is “Treatise on prostitution”: that is to say, if someone happens to write, for example, a
history of prostitution, they must know that, according to the RAE, they are producing
pornography ( probably, the author of the definition read something about a well-
known Greek text, the Δειπνοσοφισταί, which deals with this matter, but in a context
that has nothing to do with the object of the RAE definition). The renowned Webster
dictionary does not fall short, and defines pornography as "the representation of erotic
behaviour (in images or writing) with the intention of causing sexual arousal" (Webster
Dec, 2021). Apparently, the brainy academic who conceived this definition does not
know that there is a big difference, which is also in the public domain, between the
erotic and the pornographic: in the first case it is insinuated, while in the second it is
flaunted. On the other hand, is "sexual arousal" bad in itself? If "sexual arousal" did not
exist, our species would have disappeared millennia ago. Furthermore, if we stick to
this "definition", 90% of artistic production (especially movies and TV series) are pure
pornography. Not even the prestigious Oxford dictionary is exempt from this
nonsense, including, also, in its "definition" the intangible of intention (Oxford D.,
2021). An important detail deserves to be considered: all the aforementioned
definitions refer to the intention. Anyone who has studied psychology at all, or anyone
with even a modicum of basic knowledge, knows that intention is an unobservable
subjective phenomenon: how can such an intangible be included in a supposed
dictionary definition? How do you "detect" someone's intention when doing
something? As the old saying goes: “the road to hell is littered with good intentions”.
All this does nothing more than demonstrate the fact that what we call "sex" it is not
known exactly what it consists of and that, as we have been able to verify, is, in our
"liberal" society, more taboo than ever before has been; we will see why.
The pornoscopic society
This alienated vision that we have of sexuality has made us apply a pejorative adjective
to what we call "explicit sex", which we describe as "pornographic". But what “explicit
sex” is? Does non-explicit sex exist? Since, in this matter, animals do exactly the same
as us, is "explicit sex", when carried out by non-humans, also pornographic? The truth
is that no one would know how to accurately answer any of these questions, much less
the question of "what" (rather it would be "who") determines that something is
"pornographic".
The word pornography was coined from the ancient Greek words πόρνη (pórnē
"prostitute") and πορνεία (porneía "prostitution"), and γράφειν (gráphein "to write or
record", meaning "illustration", as in "graphic"), and the suffix -ία (-ia, meaning "state
of", "property of" or "place of"), meaning "a written description or illustration of
prostitutes or prostitution" (Ateneo, 1998). The date of the first use of the word in
Greek is not known; the oldest attested and most related word that could be found in
Greek is πορνογράφος (pornográphos, i.e. "one who writes about prostitutes", in the
Δειπνοσοφισταί (Athenaeus, 1998). In the Greek, prostitutes were respectable people,
who could either be priestesses or even be oracles being in charge of the most
reputable temples; prostitutes were not prostitutes out of necessity or slavery (as
happens now), but by vocation (Vernant, J.P., 1993). Therefore, this term did not have
the negative connotations that have been incorporated later, due to the penetration
of the poisonous Catholic morality in popular culture.
In any case, the attribution of the “pornographic” label to certain audio-visual material
depends on the historical ballast, especially religious, that local “morality” carries, and
it is not without difficulties (and, by the way, arbitrariness). Both in the case of painting
and photography, there is a substantial part that is located in the field of art, without,
apparently, anything significant distinguishing it from what is commonly considered
"pornography". In cultures where there is no sexual taboo, there is also no blurred
concept of pornography. It would not occur to anyone, in India, homeland of the
Kamasutra, to brand the graphic reproductions in full colour and with great detail that
it contains about the different ways of carrying out intercourse as pornography, no
matter how much "intention" there is in it. Although in the production of a visual
element with "pornographic" connotations there is the intentionality that the
dictionaries cited above attribute (to pornography), and since taboo photography,
according to some authors, is an experience that takes place in the brain of the
photographer, materializes through his camera in an image that will no longer be this
intimate experience, there is nothing pornographic strictu sensu outside the brain of
the photographer (or whoever may consider it as such). The perverse aspect of
photography, if it can be described as such, is that professional photographers often
have sexual fantasies when they are behind the camera (Sontag, S., 2016). If we
consider this to be "pornography", the scope of the "concept" is as broad as (at least)
all of Western society for most of its history. In the same sense, the alienated
socialization of the body as an abstraction prevents the natural realization of eroticism
(Bourdieu, P., 1998). Thus, as happens with the in form of merchandise abstracted
time, the “sexual” body is institutionalized and becomes the property of the state,
which decides and legislates on how its use should be.
Our society censors the scenes of the so-called "explicit sex" in audiovisual productions
(cinema and TV), despite the fact that sex is an innocent and natural manifestation of
what is human; instead, it does not censor the systematic and extreme violence that
we can see in all series and movies (Grinde, B., 2021). We turn positive into negative
and negative into positive.
On the other hand, a belief shared by society and its institutions is that there is
something called “child pornography”. Such a thing does not exist, due to the triviality
(in which no one seems to have noticed) that there is no children in the role of
pornography producers or porn movie makers. Instead, what do exist are pornographic
productions made by adults in which minors are used sexually (if we want to use these
terms so indeterminate). In addition, the category of "minor" is a conceptual stupidity,
since it covers from 0 to 18 years (the upper threshold depends on the country). How
can a newborn and a 17-year-old pre-adult be included in the same category? You
don't have to rack your brain to realize the absurdity of the case.
Ablation of the clitoris “western style”
In the liberal Western world, no one defends such practices as clitoral cutting; every
rational person condemns the fact that the body of an adolescent girl can be mutilated
in this way so that she cannot experience sexual pleasure. However, we are
systematically practicing a psychological variant of clitoral ablation when we prevent,
condemn, demonize and describe as pornographic the free expression of their
eroticism by adolescents. In that, we are as primitive as the tribes whose practices we
unequivocally condemn.
However, despite the fact that society and its institutions are so far behind in this
matter, youth evolve, facing all the obstacles placed on them. An example: what used
to be called "penis envy" no longer exists, whose substratum was that girls envied
boys' penises because penis carriers enjoyed privileges to which they did not have
access (Gianini, E., 1973). Nowadays, girls are proud of their vaginas, and they would
not change it for anything in the world for a penis (unless it is a question of a change of
sex due to the development of sexual identity in one way or another).
Anyone with an ordinary memory can remember the participation in erotic games in
during the childhood. “Playing doctor” is by far the most prevalent. In the sexually
retrograde Western culture, this type of "early" sexual behaviour is condemned by
adults (who forget that at that age they did the same), so these games must be carried
out in the strictest secrecy. In other more advanced cultures in this regard, sex is not
"hidden" and children learn about it through observation and play, just as they learn
about other aspects of adult behaviour (Ember & Fischer, 2017). Today many
teenagers use the internet to carry out their “erotic games”, and this natural
phenomenon scandalizes adults (like everything that adults do not understand about
the non-adult world). To an open mind, what would be obscene is the fact that society
is scandalized by such trivialities, thus showing its shameful moral precariousness, as
well as its ignorance and hypocrisy, since, in reality, it does not care about adolescents
(who is what he tries to make us believe), but its precarious and superficial scheme of
values goes beyond the fact that things happen that are beyond its capacity for reason
and against which it can only act viscerally. Although we do not want to admit it, all
this "problematic" can be summed up in one sentence branded in our precarious
brains: sex is sin.
Let’s remember the first sentence of the epigraph with which we began this article:
“Sexuality is a central aspect of the human being, present throughout his life” (WHO,
2006a).
Pre-adults cannot be understood if the clichés coined by nostalgia, idealization and
indifference are not overcome. The social attitude towards pre-adults is so full of
contradictions that they experience them as a disturbing uncertainty about how things
should be. Neither the "example" offered by adults, which is unfortunate in every way,
nor the "scripts" offered by the media, allow us to create a model to follow or to be
inspired to evolve and improve. Our gridded society, under the excuse of "protection",
exerts the harshest repression on a part of the population simply for not having a
certain age, which, moreover, can vary from one country to another (or from one
culture to another). Pre-adults, of course, must be educated, but society must also
know how to learn from them (Gaitan, L., 2010).
Society commits cyberbullying against pre-adults
The new “needs” of the contemporary labour market demand from adolescents facing
high school a “life plan”, which goes through education and reaches the realization of
the concept to which they are expected to adapt. What this "concept" will be like will
depend, to a large extent, on the role of the parents, either because of their social
status or because they are directly involved in the "success" of their children
(Lancaster and Kaplan, 2010; Giudice et al., 2015). The current western family model,
which supposes a smaller number of children, allows parents to dedicate more
resources to the development of their children, in order to better adapt them to what
the market expects of them; In unfavourable circumstances for certain adolescents,
the market itself leads them, through a specific educational process, towards the
spaces that are free for them. In either case, failure magically becomes “success”
(Frankenhuis and Nettle, 2020). This new role of the family, which goes beyond the
mere reproduction of the working class to nurture the labour market, involves a
reshaping of both childhood, adolescence, and early adulthood and their concepts
(Worthman and Trang, 2018).
For a long time, the capitalist ideology promotes, especially among pre-adults, anti-
values such as individualism, addiction to material goods and interpersonal
competitiveness. Psychobiology maintains that important changes occur in the
maturation of the brain during the so-called adolescence, reorganizing and updating
certain cortical and subcortical structures (Blakemore, 2018). These psychobiological
changes depend on their structural relationship with the environment, which implies
society and its institutions, and their ability to live up to what the development of
adolescents demands (which, certainly, does not happen, but more quite the
opposite). In this stage, the nuclei that will constitute the nature of the future "adult"
are developed (Crone & Dahl, 2012), such as sexual identity and personal identity: both
development processes need to be expressed and recognized, but society puts all the
possible obstacles to the first (it only assumes the outcome, i.e. LGTBIQ+ stuff, as being
"politically correct") and does not favour the second at all.
Another obstacle that freedom of expression encounters in this area is the retrograde
legal system, which has approached this issue with the "values" of Catholic morality,
and, therefore, with a punitive spirit (in the same way, mutatis mutandis, that the
Inquisition). There is absolute chaos in relation to the delimitation of concepts, if the
dogmas of Catholic morality that survive in our brains can be called that. A pristine
example of the inexistence of a complete conceptual order is the fact that any exercise
of freedom of sexual expression carried out by a pre-adult is qualified as sin,
sometimes under the label of “pornography”; for example, if in the so-called streams
their protagonists unfold with greater freedom than this repressive system can
tolerate, they are labelled as "pornographic" stuff. This means that, for our obsolete
legal system, streamers are neither more nor less than “pornography producers” and,
in addition, they are also “porn actresses”, and that is said of some pre-adults who
freely carry out their erotic games originating from biological needs, who do not
believe at all that they are doing something demonic or committing any sin, but simply
believe that freedom of expression exists and exercise it. As if this were not enough,
there is no exact definition of what pornography consists of in the legal world (in the
same way that it does not exist in any dictionary). It is obvious that it is necessary for
someone, within the judiciary, to decide to think seriously and meditate deeply,
leaving aside prejudices and banal superficialities, and to carry out a minimally sensible
taxonomy that is both scientifically and methodologically sustainable. If instead of
substituting the qualifier "pornographic", which, due to its vagueness and semantic
imprecision, does not mean anything concrete, with a scientifically valid term, it would
be appropriate to apply it where it can really be applied, namely, in the “pornographic”
productions carried out by adults using minors sexually (Felson, M. & Eckert, M.A.,
2018). Only in this area would the use of said term be semantically admissible.
How sex becomes taboo and the consequences of this fact
In Western society, everything related to sex has been taboo since the emergence of
Catholicism. For Catholic morality, sex is, in the first place, a sin, and intercourse can
only take place for the purpose of procreation; In this way, Catholicism is applying to
women and men the same model of sexual relationship that is applied to mares and
stallions. Something as natural as nudity is the object of shame and scandal, as well as
being linked to "original sin". The Inquisition persecuted adolescent women who
exercised their sexual freedom, accusing them of being witches or of being possessed
by the devil in duty (by the way, it also persecuted them if they dared to think on their
own). The new “cybernetic” Inquisition blocks without explanation the streams of
adolescent girls who dare to freely express their eroticism, closes their accounts
without giving a moment's thought to how it can affect them psychologically, and
persecutes those who are interested in the subject. However, in other societies, at
least until they come into contact with the West, sex is not taboo at all.
In the traditional Hindu conception, sex is like an art, which also has a hieratic aura.
However, the confluence of Islamic ideology, in which sex is secret, with Western
colonial dogma, in which sex is sin and shame (Janetius, S.T., 2017), has led to the
emergence of taboos related to sex that not previously existed in this ancient culture,
and this is proof that progress is an anachronistic process.
This forbidden aura that sex emanates extends its superstitious mantle to all areas of
human life, and, in a particularly pernicious way, to scientific research. Reviewing the
literature on human sexual development in Western society, we find that researchers
complain about a lack of material in general and a lack of reliable material in particular.
Everyone agrees in attributing this scarcity to the aura of "taboo" that surrounds the
sexual. The obstacles come from the fact that it is both a social and a parental
problem: parents do not know how to face this challenge and, if they can, they avoid
discussing the subject with their sons and daughters. When they do, it's because "it's
time" and the way they deal with it is usually very superficial. To this we must add that
society does not recognize the ability of children to have "sexual sensations", obeying
the stereotype (which, by the way, does not benefit children at all) of "innocence",
which must be "preserved” and “protected” at all costs. In this matter, public
administrations turn out to be, in addition to being useless, harmful to the interests of
those affected. An abstract legal category is introduced that goes from 0 to 18 years,
that of "minor", which only serves to mask the lack of conceptual solvency and
becomes a journalistic tagline. Curiously, the world of audio-visual production
establishes "tolerance limits" that consist of deciding from what age a certain product
can be viewed, without giving any explanation of what criteria are used to set them, all
of which shows that they have no scientific validity (and, surely, lacks a methodology
worthy of the name).
On the other hand, by paranormally perceiving children as “angels” (and, therefore,
“innocent”), we are doing them no favours. What we are doing, in fact, is projecting
onto them a phenomenological spectrum that does not allow us to accept them as
they really are: by "idealizing" them (or, rather, by stereotyping them) we are reifying
them, turning them into simple objects of our property and in "targets" of the market,
which feeds back the reification process (Marx, K., 1976). On the other hand, it goes
without saying that "innocence" presupposes "guilt" (the meaning of innocent is "free
of guilt"), which leads us to ask ourselves the following question: if children are
innocent, then what are they not guilty of? It would not be necessary to bring up such
nonsense if there was not for the fact that our idiosyncrasy and our "moral principles"
are nourished by them.
Let’s continue: in the same way that we are not guilty from birth, since there is no
"original sin", children are not, in advance, "guilty" or "innocent" of anything (except
for those ill-informed people who subscribe to the "original sin"). If public
administrations were guided by scientific data, instead of by a magma of superstitions,
prejudices and stereotypes, non-adults, whom they are supposed to protect and help,
would benefit greatly from it. Under the nonsense of "innocence itself" what is hidden
is a functional illiteracy whose nature is pathological for not wanting to recognize itself
as such; it is the same kind of ignorance that characterizes deniers of the holocaust or
the global pandemic virus. The "protection" of the minor becomes "repression" of the
minor, by relying on superstitions that hide the profound general ignorance about
what the full development of the human being is, of which the process of shaping
sexual identity is part. Under the pretext of "protecting innocence" what is done is to
cover up one's own lack of scientific solvency. This "protection of innocence" reaches
the extreme of the preservation of ignorance, since there is a belief that the child's
alleged ignorance of matters "proper to adults" constitutes the "essence" of said
"innocence" to which in addition, it is necessary to safeguard so as not to “sully” said
“innocence” (as can be seen, it is an absurd loop). Applied to the adult world, it would
be the equivalent of promoting illiteracy among citizens so that they cannot read the
newspapers and are happy not to hear the bad news (as in the previous case, the fact
that there are other means to inform). You cannot be so foolish as to try to keep
someone in ignorance under the subterfuge of "safeguarding their innocence." Such
nonsense, what they demonstrate, is a total ignorance of the degree of information
that children handle from a very early age (Papalia, D. E.; Olds, S. W., 1991).
The underlying problem is whether we think that pre-adults, in addition to the right to
be "protected", have the same rights as adults and, if not, how to defend the
comparative size of the offense. It is clear that, by restricting their rights and freedoms
and preventing their access to information, they are not being protected, but rather
controlled (and blocked). The protection of these subjects of law cannot contradict the
protection of their rights and freedoms. What it is about is providing them with the
means so that they can exercise it freely and safely. In addition, as our data shows, the
inadequate management of public administrations in the face of this phenomenon
produces negative changes in the context, since it compels the conventional media,
which are safe spaces, to restrict freedom of expression in radical ways that, in
addition of having negative psychic effects in the short, medium and long term
(Sperling, M. A., 2014), it displaces the frustrated exercise of freedom of expression
towards less secure spaces than those habitually used [vid supra].
Since "innate innocence", for believers, is not possible in the human being, because of
the "original sin" that Adam and Eve committed in paradise, Western society, still
influenced by Catholic morality, "angelizes " to the kids. Due to Eve's "fault" (note the
“feminist” detail), Adam succumbed to temptation, and this had two immediate
consequences, in addition to being expelled from Paradise: the feeling of shame in the
face of nudity (which they did not have before, since in the Paradise lived naked in a
natural way) and the transmission to the entire human species of the sin originated by
Eve (in addition to having to work to live and giving birth in pain). Consequently,
according to the Holy Bible (Old Testament: Genesis) and the different religions that
subscribe to it, children are not innocent, since they are born with original sin on their
backs. However, within Catholicism and the society that (whether aware of it or not)
assumes its morality as its own, children are equated with angels, and, therefore, with
asexual and "innocent" beings who, "obviously", they do not have (nor can they have)
sensations or sexual relations. This myth of "innate innocence", which undermines the
scientific nature of research on the development of sexual identity, and which ignores
the fact that there are biological processes with their own calendar that must be
externalized and, in the case of humans , socialized, does not withstand the focus of
serious research (Bancroft, 2003; Graaf and Rademakers, 2006; Diamond, Bonner and
Dickenson, 2015; Sandfort, 2012) in which it is confirmed that there are sexual
relations between children, manifesting in activities erogenous such as kissing,
cuddling, genital play, and that these “early” sexual experiences are an integral part of
healthy development and have a lasting positive impact on later developmental
periods (Graaf & Rademakers, 2011); Diamond et al. 2015), as demonstrated in the
results of studies with control groups, and as demonstrated in a study of the sexual
evolution of a group of students sustained over a period of 40 years (Borneskog, C et
al, 2020).
Systemic approach on the processes involved in the development of sexual identity,
which is the approach with which psychobiology (or cognitive neuroscience) as well as
DST operates, reveals that the drives originating in the mechanisms of sexual
development promote the expression of these in the environment (in the case of
humans, their “socialization”); the result of this interaction will notably influence
several factors of the personality of the subjects, and can even define their sexual
identity (Borneskog, C. et al, 2020).
One of the problems that both psychobiology and evolutionary biology face is that of
what is the moment, during the life of a person, in which the so-called "sexuality"
appears. This problem is, in fact, an imaginary problem, since we are born as sexual
beings, destined to reproduce as a species, and to experience sexual pleasure as
members of a society in which what is related to sex has become part of what is ludic.
However, it is worth studying the synchrony (or lack thereof) of the genetic calendar
with social stereotypes regarding erogenous manifestations prior to the so-called
"adulthood". As stated before, the concept of "sex" has yet to be accurately defined. In
most of the scientific literature it appears as something taken for granted, or it is
vaguely defined or, to get by, the mere biological explanation is resorted to. Alienated
connotations have been attached to the term "sex" due to the different "morals" that
have prejudices regarding this matter; These connotations are foreign to the thing
itself and come, certainly, from ancestral prejudices and "social taboos". Consequently,
it might be preferable to refer to this human property as eroticism or, perhaps,
erogeny (we will expand on this matter later); such terms do not have the magma of
connotations that “sex” or “sexuality” have and, furthermore, through said
substitution, we manage to avoid, at least, the methodological error of using an a
priori concept (that is, taken for granted) , an error that does not fit in scientific
research.
Some psycho-neurologists believe that the "sexual" phenomenon is associated with
the development of the hippocampus; consequently, minors of a certain age (the so-
called “adolescence”) would lack this human “property” (Bunge, 2002). Although it is
true that the hippocampus plays an important role in this process, there are, as will be
seen later, other biological factors of greater relevance and, in addition: a) in human
society, "sex" is not only the mechanism of reproduction of the species, but it is also a
cultural factor, b) to the fact that "sexual" properties do not appear in all parts of the
world at the same age, we must add that the moment of their appearance differs
greatly depending on the type of society (there are even people who remain "asexual"
throughout life) and, therefore, the appearance of "sexual properties" is no less
phenotypic than genotypic and c) there are other psychobiological (or simply
biological) hypotheses that are based in the influence of the genetic calendar and are
better founded than that of the hypothalamus (at least considered in isolation).
At the other extreme of "when does the thing appear" is psychoanalysis, headed by
Freud, for whom "sexuality" is something innate and, moreover, believes that all adult
problems stem from the repression of what he calls “sexual drives” during childhood
(Freud, 1995). Although it is true that Freud was wrong in his way of approaching the
matter, more typical of phenomenological intuition than scientific research, he was
correct, albeit by chance, in what was essential: indeed, sexuality is something innate
(although it is not erogeny, or “self-conscious sexuality”) and, as psychobiological
studies show, sexual repression during childhood can cause serious problems in the
development of both sexual identity and personality, not in the deterministic sense of
Freud, but yes in the biopsychosocial sense (Graaf and Rademakers, 2011; Diamond et
al.2015; Soler Alomà, J. 2021).
According to the result of serious scientific research, the appearance of the first
symptoms of erogeny (or, if you prefer, of "sexuality") is linked to the development
and maturation of the adrenal gland, a process that takes place between the ages of 6
and 8 years (to scandal of social “morality”), and that is related to a significant increase
in the production of adrenal androgens, such as dehydroepiandrosterone,
dehydroepiandrosterone sulfate, and androstenedione, a process that is also involved
in growth of pubic hair (VanderLaan, D. P.; Wong, W. I.) After about a couple of years,
the gonadal glands begin to develop and mature, promoting the production of
homonymous hormones, such as testosterone and oestradiol, which, in turn, they
promote the development of the ovaries and testes, as well as the breasts and genital
organs (Dorn and Biro, 2011; Sperling, 2014). The role of the hippocampus in this
process is to act as a "reinforcement" subsystem. This scientific evidence places the
process studied at an earlier age than is popularly assumed, a quite pertinent fact that,
however, can bother mentalities that are not open to what questions what is taken for
granted: adolescence, biologically, would begin at 8 years old and would end around
12. What is commonly known as "adolescence" (which is usually between 12 and 16 or
18) would be nothing else, in the “sexual” field, than the person's reaction to the set of
contradictions, hypocrisy, ambivalence and ambiguity that appears before their eyes,
as well as the repression exerted by society and its institutions on the free
development of that human sphere; That is why "adolescence" is a conflictive stage,
but this conflict does not have internal causes, but rather external ones, as evidenced
by the fact that in societies where there is no sexual repression, there is no
"adolescence" nor its "pathological" picture” as we know it in the Westworld
(Sandfort, T., 2012; Worthman, C. M. & Trang, K., 2018).
In any case, the "milestonian" approach does not coincide with what is observed when
one loses the fear of leaving the comfortable chair in the office and goes beyond the
stereotypes, acquired through repeated readings of the same reference works (or of
authors who have only read these works) with which literary production is seasoned.
No matter how much imagination you put into it, here it is not about proposing new
mathematical or physical hypotheses, but about the study of the human being as it is:
and this cannot be done only from the office.
Apart from its (more or less) correct philosophical controversies, the DST
(Developmental Systems Theory), succeeds in conceiving the organism and its
environment as a single system (specifically, a developing system), with the corollary
that the interaction with the context can be as determinant for the phenotype as is the
genotype (Soler Alomà, J., 2022). Recent advances in epigenetics demonstrate that
environmental influences can regulate gene expression. Be that as it may, it is
unquestionable that the context, whether it is positive (or benign) or negative (or
toxic), notably influences individual behaviour (Zhang & Meaney, 2010; Soler Alomà, J.,
2021). To what extent this can be expressed phenotypically remains to be determined,
but this is not the core of the issue at hand.
Considering all of the above, it is obvious that society (with its institutions) must not
only change its attitude towards this matter, but must be able to understand that the
Internet, which is the new context that mediates practically everything in our lives, it is
also a new mechanism that, through different forms of erotic expression, mediates the
development of sexual identity and cannot avoid the duty to study the subject
seriously and without interfering with the rights and freedoms of the interested parties
since, in the way that this matter is treated by entities and public administrations, it
gives the impression that the interested parties are not treated as subjects of law, but
as things (Smahel, D.; SubrahmanyaM, K., 2014; Soler Alomà, J., 2021).
Several studies (Smahel & Subrahmanyam, 2014) confirm that most pre-adult subjects
use digital media to build and present their sexual identity, and, for obvious reasons,
they do so outside of parents, researchers and of adults in general (Smahel &
Subrahmanyam, 2014). This happens because, as was said at the beginning of this
article, from the age of 8 one begins to be aware of the taboo nature that, for adults,
surrounds everything related to what adults call “sex”. This generates a serious
problem in a part of the structure of the developing system that converges in the
individual and society: the developing individual does not trust the “fully developed”
individuals. The erotic drives of pre-adults, which obey the mechanisms triggered by
the genetic calendar, must be able to express themselves freely. The retrograde, anti-
scientific and insensitive attitude of social institutions by repressing and making it
impossible, what they achieve is, on the one hand, that sex remains eternally taboo
and, on the other, promote all kinds of psychobiological pathologies by preventing free
and full development of the human being: the protection of the “minor” is, in reality,
the repression of the “minor”.
If society prefers that erogenous drives be resolved, as in the past, by playing doctor
and other erotic games, the only solution is the disappearance of the Internet. But, at
this point, the Internet is already part of the structure of society as a developing
system. Absolutely everything goes through the Internet, from our money to the
definition of ourselves in our platform’s profiles, whether personal or academic. It is
logical and natural that, for Internet natives, there is nothing strange about
manifesting themselves, in all aspects of their personality, in this semi-virtual world
that we have created and that, for them, is part of reality in a way much more
essential than for previous generations. This includes, of course, the externalization of
erogenous drives that, whether we like it or not (this is totally irrelevant), are part of
the development of their personality, a process that must take place in a feedback
relationship with the environment (Soler Alomà, J., 2022).
This change of "scenario" from "playing doctor", forces public institutions to review
their current paradigm, based on Catholic morality, the Old Testament and the
"philosophy" of the Inquisition. Pre-adult erotic games used to be done in secret, and
therefore were not visible. Now they have come to light, and society is scandalized,
instead of trying to understand what is happening. It seems obvious, but it must be
repeated: nudity is not a sin (except for those who still believe in “original sin”) or an
object of shame, be it their own or another's. Self-eroticization is also not a sin (except
for those who still profess the "philosophy" of the Inquisition). Teenagers who exercise
their right to freely manifest their erogeny, they are neither possessed nor witches. All
this seems obvious, but public institutions act as if they subscribed to such sacrosanct
dogmas: based on these dogmas, for example, the “cybernetic” police proceeds, for
whom everything we have mentioned is a sin and, moreover, is criminal, and all this
without providing any proof, either brandishing rational arguments or adducing
scientific foundations. It seems that their only criteria are: “sin”, “shame”, “bad”,
“pornographic” and the like (Crone & Dahl, 2012).
Although in the educational institutional world there is agreement that students must
be provided with information about what we call "sexuality", there is no agreement,
on the contrary, on how to do it. It should be noted that we have made some progress:
now we no longer teach stupid things like that children are brought by storks.
However, students complain about the precariousness of training in this area, and
state that they learn much more and better through third parties or the internet than
at their educational centre (Luthar, S. S., & Kumar, N. L., 2018; Soler Alomà, J., 2021).
There should be no difference between explaining the functioning of the digestive or
respiratory system and the functioning of the sexual organs: everything is part of the
same system. It is true that the sexual issue is socialized and "culturized", but isn't the
digestive one? Isn't food, in addition to being a necessity, a playful and pleasurable
element? The same, exactly, as it happens with sex, food has become something more
than a merely biological fact. Why, then, so much childishness and so much taboo with
the sexual issue? The answer lies within us: the Catholic moral fundamentalist has
penetrated our idiosyncrasy to such an extent that we are unable to see that the "evil"
in the matter at hand is a phantasmagorical projection that comes from this retrograde
ideology or its derivatives and equivalents (Marx, K. 1976).
The school, therefore, does not fulfil its function. Another social institution that could
solve this problem, the family, is not very helpful either; not for lack of will, but for lack
of know-how. The most progressive fathers and mothers, who believe that the
knowledge of "sexuality" by their sons and daughters is something positive, cannot
accept the fact that they are facing a theoretical-practical phenomenon, and they are
horrified at the possibility of that their progeny can express and contrast their erogeny
through the Internet. It is natural that, in our time, in which everything happens on the
Internet, what used to be done by other means (playing doctor, etc.) is now done in
the medium par excellence. What is now done online used to be done hidden from
adults, either in "secret" places or in other spaces, such as toilets and changing rooms
in schools, rooms in homes or houses of relatives, friends or neighbours, or any
outdoor place away from prying eyes, because everything related to sex was as taboo
as it is now (although, perhaps, a little less). Interestingly, the name of the erotic game
par excellence, "playing doctor" (also with the addition of "... and nurses") has its
origin in the pre-adult relationship with medicine. The doctor has access to the
genitalia of the "minor" legally and without any apparent hint of taboo; that is to say,
what is normally the most “forbidden”, in the doctor's dwelling becomes normal and,
furthermore, is accepted by the parents as something natural; for this reason, for
children, playing “doctors” is a transgression that at the same time fits within
normality; in fact, the true transgression, in this case, is the usurpation of a role that
can only be exercised by a qualified adult (Soler Alomà, J., 2021).
Public institutions, which, let us not forget, work for us (which, furthermore, are the
ones who pay their members' salaries) should try to understand the causes and forms
of manifestation of these phenomena, and they cannot do this by resorting to Holy
Scriptures, but to science. They should understand that the expression of eroticism on
the Internet is not something "bad" (it is not a sin) and they should be able to assume
the role that these processes have in the development of sexual identity and,
therefore, in the construction of their own identity and personality of pre-adult
citizens. They should be able to think in other terms, since the paradigm of repression,
in which they are trapped, does not solve any problem, but rather creates problems in
an area where they do not exist beforehand. Instead of oppressing pre-adults and
undermining rights and freedoms, they should consider normalizing what, in the world
of those affected by the inquisitorial measures of the establishment, has always been
normal. When, following the criteria set by some retrograde institutions, YouTube and
other platforms close the account of a pre-adult for trivialities such as showing a
nipple, what they are doing, in addition to demonstrating their “moral” turpitude, their
insensitivity and their ignorance, it is block a person; a person who is being sent the
message that she is not accepted as she is, that she has no place in this world: she is
being denied as a human being. This supposed “protection of the minor”, what it
really is, is the exile of the minor and the condemnation of the minor to non-existence
as a human being.
Conclusions
Western society is unable to accept sexuality as something natural. Under the
umbrella of “morality”, our supposedly advanced society commits, against its
developing citizens, hundreds of mental "clitoral ablations" on a daily basis. Ours is a
pornoscopic society, in whose institutions the old DNA of the paladins of the
Inquisition still survives, condemning to the stake adolescent women who believed
they had rights and dared to exercise them (and anyone who dared to question an only
dogma, as witnessed by the cases of Giordano Bruno, burned alive, and Galileo Galilei,
sentenced to surrender). Cyberbullying against those who dare to express themselves
freely is not only tolerated but encouraged. The paradigmatic case of YouTube reaches
paroxysm: “minor” accounts are closed under any pretext however vague it may be.
Closing accounts means blocking people, people whose window to the world is closed;
who are treated like things that have no rights; who are not respected as members of
society because they are considered not old enough to be (I ask the reader to reflect
on the seriousness of the latter).
The taboo nature of sexuality is also reflected in the legal field, in which there is
absolute chaos in relation to the delimitation of concepts, to the point that there are
no concepts, but simple dogmas derived from Catholic morality, that are applied
arbitrarily. For example, the so-called streams in which the protagonists act with
greater freedom than this repressive system can tolerate are classified as
pornography. This means that, for our obsolete legal system, streamers, teenagers
who freely carry out their erotic games and do not believe at all that they are doing
something demonic or committing any sin, are (according to such retrograde
approach) pornographic producers, and also porn actresses. In addition, there is no
exact definition on what pornography consists of in the legal world (in the same way
that it does not exist in any dictionary). It is obvious that someone within the judiciary
needs to decide to think and carry out a minimally sensible taxonomy. The appropriate
thing, in this case, if you want to keep the adjective "pornographic" instead of
replacing it with a more complete one, is to apply it where it is applicable, that is, in
"pornographic" productions carried out by adults in which pre-adults are sexually used.
Nobody doubts, at this point, that there is a genetic calendar that generates changes in
the organism until it reaches its full development (at least, biologically speaking). No
one in their right mind doubts, either, that humans are social beings. If we put the two
premises together, the conclusion is clear: the full development of the human
individual can only occur in society. Therefore, if society puts obstacles to any of the
aspects that are part of this process, what it does is prevent citizens from fully
developing as healthy individuals. As we have seen, the effect of systematic and
institutionalized impediments is extremely dramatic in the case of the development of
sexual identity.
As happens with everything that is taboo, sex has a double existence: on the one hand
it is pornography, perversion, sin, and shame, but on the other hand it is the most
sublime to which the human being can aspire, since that is how shows us the sexual
act in movies and TV series. The culminating moment beyond which there is no
transcendence is intercourse. This proves to what extent our relationship with a part of
our nature as human beings (or, if you prefer, as biopsychosocial systems) is alienated.
The fact that each person is a biopsychosocial system means that they share structure
with the rest of society, and, reciprocally, society as a system shares structure with
each of the individuals that compose it. The dysfunctionalities in the structure are
dysfunctionalities of the social system. This means that, as a developing system that it
is, society cannot advance (that is, fulfil its role as “developer”) if it does not overcome
the dysfunctionalities that anchor it to the past. This also applies to the political-
economic organization, which is still anchored in the accumulation of capital as the
main purpose of the system. Unfortunately, what Karl Marx (1976) ironically wrote in
his prologue to Das Kapital is fully valid, where he stated that not only the living
torment us, but also the dead "Le mort saisit le vif!" (the dead clings to the living).
The fact that, in the treatment of this subject, dogmas, stereotypes, prejudices and
common places are used instead of scientific categories is as unfortunate as the fact
that such an attitude is tolerated (with the few exceptions of serious researchers that
we have seen throughout the article). In its time, any “deviation” from heterosexuality
was taboo. Today, questioning freedom of choice on this issue is already "politically
incorrect", except for certain prehistoric exemplars still dealing in the political arena.
This does not prevent sex "in itself" from being as taboo as it has been since the
advent of Catholicism and derivatives. Until we go to the essentials of the matter and
strip the issue of sexuality of all the layer of morbidity that surrounds it, we will not be
able to solve this systemic problem. But for this, it is necessary to challenge the
prevailing retrograde morality, which is not an easy task: the worst monsters are those
that we harbour in the sewers of the mind.
Let pre-adults express themselves as developing human beings in all their aspects, and
we can become a mature, advanced, and healthy society.
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