On the Sunday evenings, the misses and I have been trying to follow a series on television about the journey Darwin made with the HMS. Beagle from 1831 to 1836. The series is aired by a Dutch public network called V.P.R.O., and, as is customary with these guys, it is an immaculate cluster of real life events – i.e. doing the Beagle’s journey all over again but in 6 months. It sports a website, TV and radio programs and most of all, more science than one could wish for!
If you have some time to spare, have a look. The TV program is of outstanding quality and it beats the average daily TV-pulp by several boat-lengths. A nice fringe advantage as well: since Darwin and his evolution by natural AND SEXUAL selection has everything to do with sex, this series provides a good excuse to bring up that very item. It goes without saying, that I would be the last one to pass up on such an opportunity. Hence, amongst other things, this posting….
There is something that has been bothering me since the Sex-topic is out in the open. It seems as if the devil is stacking the deck in favour of it. For some reason, as much as sex is still taboo in our culture, it is well on its way to becoming super high profile in the media, by which it attracts a little too much attention to my taste. There is sex everywhere. If you punch in a search term, any search term, in a picture search engine, you will at some point bump into a hit of an erotic nature. Switch on your TV after a certain hour, and the breasts and nipples will smother you from the screen. And the amount of nudity you will see at the average magazine kiosk is amazing. You don’t even have to leaf through anything, it’s just sitting there on the shelves, in plain sight, for anyone to see. And if you ask me, it is waking up the wrong dogs.
Due to being partially Dutch and living in the Netherlands, I have quite a lenient and liberal attitude towards nudity; like most Dutch who have been in touch with daily reality do…. And I understand that the world envies us because of our plenty-full nude beaches. Nobody could care less about all the people running around there, in their skin only.
Well, this is not entirely true any more: The last paragraph above rather describes the public opinion of the mid-eighties. Nowadays there is something going on that might be more disturbing than people going naked in public: And that is the de-sexualisation of our species by several topic/interest-groups; mostly religious ones.
Let me first make a reservation before I go on: If one reads the text above, one might be tempted to think that I am somehow a “naturist”. I started out this post talking about Darwin, craftily alluding to evolution and the importance of sex for the survival of a species. But the jump to the thought that I consider sex to be celebrated openly as our way of survival and as something “being natural” and therefore “okay”, needs to be thoroughly denied. I do not think that. “Naturalness”, in relation to our species, is no argument to condone anything, since it is our human prerogative AND main featured strong point, to manipulate nature to our own ends and benefits. For instance: we discard the natural order – in which the physical stronger have the power and lead whereas the weaker have to obey and follow – as a viable political system nowadays. Fascism – THE exponent of a “natural order political system” according to Mussolini and his playmates – has been out of fashion in this part of Europe since more than 60 years. And to be civilised, something I dearly value, means to be politically removed from nature; thus being “left”.
So what then, has been bugging me? I can offer a somewhat ancient illustration: As I left high-school after my exams and started my studies in 1982, I pretty much slid into the Autonomous-Anarcho Squatters scene right away. This scene leans to the political ultra-left, and it was where I got my political and social training. It was a great time, and I would do it all over again straight away, but there was one big drawback to the egalitarian, feminist and anti-sexist flavour which is so characteristic to the Anarcho scene. And that is the almost-denial of sexuality. As an authentic fellow warrior, one had to place oneself very far away from the contemporary attitude about sex. The radical left was radically anti-sex, or so it appeared.
This sexless attitude still exists, although not necessarily with the political left. Other players on the “decency platform” are making themselves broad: The religious zealots of old, the bible belt Dutch, who have been voicing their objections against a liberal sexuality for a long time, are now joined by the emerging Dutch Muslim and a host of Born Again self-appointed moral censors crowding the media. Religion has always been a useful tool in the Fight Against Sex. Especially for those religions that cover their women, because their men are unable to trust themselves if they see a female sample of the species. This unjust reversal of responsibility is very sad, but very true.
We are de-sexualising ourselves. And I suspect that this is going to give us problems; at least in the long run. Especially for us “men”. We already have to take distance from our natural sex-drive most of the time. This is not a bad thing in general, because we are better than the perpetually “ready” Baboons. But being a man is becoming very difficult. What position/role/attitude should we put up when we are with women? Are we allowed to see them as sexual persons? And what should we teach our sons? Maybe the answer is easy when we are on the work-floor, but what about the nude beach? Or the pub, where the use of alcohol might have impaired our civility already?
In other words: how are we expected to deal with sexuality and at the same time still remain men?
I have no answers. But I do know that I am definitely moving away from what seems to be the general Political Correct attitude towards sex. And if, at a much later stage, I am able to pass this attitude on to my sons, with the full preservation of respect for women, I’ll be a happy man.
