The Transformation of Modernity by Michael Hviid Jacobsen Mikael Carleheden

Author:Michael Hviid Jacobsen, Mikael Carleheden [Michael Hviid Jacobsen, Mikael Carleheden]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781138631069
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Published: 2019-10-31T00:00:00+00:00

The Politics of Sexuality

The construction of sexuality is, and always has been, a dialectical process between individual passions and desires, on the one hand, and societal expectations and demands on the other. In other words, the construction of sexual identity and a sense of sexual belonging goes on in a Heraclitean universe. This means, of course, that the individual and society are interrelated and mutually constitutive; the one cannot be analysed or thought of without the presence of the other. Basically, we can speak of two moral levels of sexuality in the social sphere, both of which in practice serve to reinforce each other. The first operates at the abstract level and can be termed the moralisation of sexuality. The second, which we shall return to below, may be called the politicisation of sexuality and operates at the more concrete level in the form of legislation. Since we have touched upon how sexuality is morally circumscribed and subject to moral constraints on behaviour and thoughts, this will merely be a further elaboration of those ideas. One of the keys to understanding the moralisation of sex lies in the so-called social sublimation of desire, i.e., that human sexual passion has to be directed and guided toward certain objects whilst being kept at bay of others, that some actions and the objects of those actions are regarded, to utilise Mary Douglas’ apt terms, as symbols of sexual purity while others are imbued with sexual danger. Historically, this has meant that heterosexual, marital and coital intercourse performed for the sake of the production of progeny is regarded as the ideal against which to measure all other types of sexual activity. From this ideal construction of sex was derived a relegation of, for example, the sex performed by homosexuals, non-marital sex, adultery, noncoital sex, and sex-for-the-sake-of-camal-and-mental-stimulation-and-satisfaction such as sado-masochism, necrophilia, paedophilia and nymphomania to the sphere of the perverse and obscene.

As we saw previously, sexology has been instrumental in a scientisation of this basically moral valorisation and juxtaposition of sexual practices for the purpose of judging, condemning or punishing. As a result, sexology has also been instrumental in moralising the otherwise purely scientific by lending support to often rather dubious ideas about human physiology and the psyche. Throughout its history the science of sex has created many myths about human sexuality, e.g. the myth of innate female frigidity and the asexual woman (Hawkes, 1998, p. 103). Amazingly we never hear of frigid males! Early sexology was clearly plagued by misogynism and regarded the female as often nothing more than a simple instrument for the stimulation of male fantasies and as objects of male suppression - what C. Wright Mills’ captured with the satiric phrase ‘women, the darling little slaves’. Homosexuals, another popular category among late-19th century sexologists, were at best viewed disdainfully and at worst as carriers and transmitters of diseases; women with an overt appetite for carnal pleasure were regarded either as prostitutes or nymphomaniacs; onanism and auto-eroticism were seen as threatening to

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