I wanted to explore an idea, that of shame being a weaponised human emotion. This thought came to me while talking to my partner Em about a social news article we heard in the car while going somewhere. Sparked by the subject matter I asked Em what she thought, as I often do, primarily because she will give me the ever valuable woman’s perspective, but also because she will give me another perspective than what I can come up with on my own. These are important considerations, I don’t believe in a single person being able to form a theory to completeness and then support it in conversation without first testing the facets of it against possible arguments it may face, should face, from other thinkers. Thankfully Em is such a sceptic that my arguments had better be good ones.
The subject is sex, the article speculates on the effects of polyamory (configuring and understanding of the relationship between person as involving more than a pair of persons of opposing sexes, a non norm we might say), and promiscuity (multiple sexual partners). I asked Em if she thought the goalposts of regard (the general social collective response to the sexual decisions of an individual) were different for men and women in perceptions of what ought to be, (knowing that I already think they are), and why that may be? I maybe didn’t put it quite as well as I am writing it now, but she knew what I meant and as usual provided a necessary and helpful insight that then assisted me to form this mini essay.
Her reaction was initially from her programming, social conditioning based on parental influence, societal peer group assertions, early church influences, and school learned reactions from women toward woman. But as per her norm, when invited to examine a complex concept, Em moved past norms quickly and got to a place where she speculated those responses may be the result of operand conditioning, a deliberate societal mechanism of hegemonic control where people are taught to completely ignore their intuition and replace it with a borrowed set of canonical edicts. We didn’t yet get to speculating on the why that should be.
I already thought what I thought because I have considered this subject quite a bit, but I never wish to preach my perspective as if I am a locus of wisdom even if it sometimes seems that way. Conversation is about learning, persuading, and changing, it is not for merely directive statements. I often react from my programming also, but I have learned through my writing and debating to think for a few moments before offering anything as my concrete position. My previous style was to think out loud and modify what I thought as I was speaking, but this just makes you seem less solid. Asking a question is more useful than making a statement because a statement does not invite debate, it is an attempt to stop dialogue.
Back toward the subject though…
A pal sent me the meme – “The key that opens many locks is a master key, the lock that is opened by many keys is just a shit lock” – but this is a linguistic trick, a false comparison between that which requires protection, and that which unlocks that protection. To accept this statement as a metaphor for the self protection, against potential exploitation, that a woman is, from my perspective, quite unreasonably expected to enforce upon their sex life by their society, is a falsehood. Apples and Oranges. The statement does not explain why society thinks that men can be praised for their promiscuity, yet women are expected to act shamefully in regard of seeking the fulfilment of their desires, even in a simple desire for some variety. And women do not help other women in this regard either, you may hear a woman say that the only man she has ever known sexually is her husband and wish to be actually praised for that statement as if it is an achievement or an indication of integrity. Well that’s fucking ridiculous (not the single partner, the wish to be praised for inhibiting their desire historically, or having sampled only one person’s intimacy).
There is absolutely no difference whatsoever with having had many sexual partners, or only a few, in respect to the relationship you are currently in when it comes to honesty and integrity toward your current partner. Your history plays little part in the dynamic unless that history indicates that you have frequently deceived and used sex for something other than pleasure. Those people who have manipulated are likely to continue to be manipulators, those that have abused are likely to continue to abuse, those that have robbed will likely rob again, these are consistencies based on the personality traits of the particular person, and not dictated by the numbers involved, they are the skewed motivation and it is they that should be frowned upon rather than the sexual desire. A woman could sleep with 20 guys in a year because she likes variety, or she could do the same but to gain presents or cash. We must judge by the motivation and not by the act. My Ex-wife I would now describe as a ‘manipulative thief’ when we were married, I later found out from her previous husband that he thought of her in that same vein.
I think I’d probably be correct if I assumed she is still up to her old tricks toward whomever she is currently trying to empty the bank account of. I have little faith in her capacity to ever change, having witness what I think were multiple attempts to become a better moral and responsible actor consistently fail. I’ve been close enough to the problem to offer my perspective, to me it appeared her motivation is not all sexual in nature. She may enjoy sex yes, but the transactional nature of the enablement of those physical acts in regard to our, now thankfully historic, relationship led me to think that sex is just something she uses to gain something else. The problem with that is she was just not honest about it, like a sex worker or a person selling themselves on Only Fans would have been. If you’re going to be transactional then be so, nobody actually minds I think, what they do mind is being deceived or manipulated (as I believe I was). If you are dishonest then you’ll do harm and people will say justifiably derogatory things about you. None of this is what we are discussing if we are talking of honest people, the saying of derogatory things about people that enjoy entirely harmless physical sexual interactions with other people is not justifiable, it is mean, and it is likely derived from simple jealousy toward their bravery in seeking and realising their goals. Remember that we praise people often for seeking and realising wealth or success.
Let’s throw in a scenario…. So your friend and her partner wish for a thrupple, and they tell you so (not for you to join, they’re just saying). We could assume that at some point they want to tell their close pals beforehand, so it then comes as no surprise when it happens, and they also will of course wish for understanding from those close to them. I suppose this is like telling people you are gay, though people close to you are rarely as surprised as you think they will be (I’ve never met anyone that shocked anyone with that revelation). I think the thrupple thing would be more of a shock. How are you likely to react do you think? What if it’s only temporary, to spice things up, and nobody is being deceived, would that make any difference? What if one of them steps outside the relationship for purely carnal purposes with the blessing of the other, does that merit your judgement?
What about the girl that has no idea of settling down yet, but likes the physical reward and temporary psychological benefits involved in the random intimate sexual act? Will society encourage them to turn to a falsehood such as a book written in the bronze age, and revised in the dark ages, to find a way to cultivate such hatred of their innate nature enough to find happiness in the act of suppressing their desire? This is often a form of learned experience, social conditioning derived from the whatever church. The “sin” of feeling desire, when desire is a component part of the psyche, is a schism that Freud might have examined in his work. The artificial creation, for a mooted purpose that serves the self in ways only realised after life as we know it in conscious experience has come to an end, of a conflicting perspective from the subconscious, the ID (the desire for), that is strongly opposed to what is provided by the SuperEgo (restraining mechanisms, learned by conditioning and experience), which will act to make the Ego (your conscious self in the world) occupy a consistent state of turmoil.
To be in constant turmoil in the mind is not sustainable nor healthy, I suspect this is why we so often hear stories of church type people falling into debauchery when their scripture based psychological bullshit solidity has been overwhelmed by the physiological imperatives they have been so unsuccessfully pretending they didn’t have. We pretend like we buy into these ideas, but we do not, we actually know better. When the 60 year old guy tells you, if you dare to inquire, that he holds no instinctual sexual thoughts toward the 25 year old waitress with the rear end like a perfect peach, he is either a homosexual, has different preferences in the female form, or he is simply full of shit! We are human animals, we have a nature that includes evolutionary imperatives, we are the bee that is strongly attracted to the plant that has nectar, can’t fully explain why, and shouldn’t have to apologise. Any attempt to create a false legislation that re-describes us in a man made scripture based fashion is simply not supportable by any trickery of language, yet we continue to pretend to each other that it is.
No matter what laws are written, juridical or theological, that imagine or prescribe the idea that desires can be eliminated by human reasoning, they will fail. We may play emperors new clothes for a while when we are young and dumb, but sooner or later we will realise that we have been programmed into falsehoods, and we will cease to believe in them even if we carry on acting as if we do. That’s the real key, that the reaction lingers beyond the belief, and that is what happens when an article pops up in the news that states a non-norm as something we may need to think about and react to. Our first reaction is often then a falsehood even to ourselves, but it is our first reaction so we really should discount it. Often the problem is that our first reaction is all we have time to offer in conversation, and we may leave others thinking that their thoughts are at odds with ours and others. When people feel they are thinking outside of the alignment of others they often try to suppress what they actually think, and then we are back in emperors new clothes territory. I would contend that this is what those that make their power from such falsehoods, church leaders, bad journalists, and political actors, need and hope to gain from this scenario.
It must serve some power to be conditioned, break yours..
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