The decision to stop the discussion highlighted what I think is a significant problem in the West (although, for some perspective, nowhere near as important as global warming or social injustice), and that is the taboo on talking about sex in general, and acknowledging children’s sexuality in particular.

This all ties in neatly with a discussion on the ABC’s ‘Matter of Opinion’ on 27/9. The topic was the sexualization of children through the media. Here I am revisting the corporate paedophilia entry, and here I wish to note that Dr Catherine Lumby, who made a comment to that entry, was on the panel. I won’t bore you with the names of the other panellists (because they are probably not known outside OZ) but they consisted of a female child psychiatrist, a conservative feminist, a male media expert and Catherine, also a media expert and I guess, liberal feminist.

Whilst I thought it was a fair discussion of what are complex issues I was struck by one thing. How little we actually know about children and sexuality and how little we are prepared to discuss it.

I have come to the conclusion that we face two threats: the commercial exploitation (and commercial sexualization) of children, and the ‘asexualization’ of children by sexual conservatives. This last term needs further explanation. Over the last hundred to fifty years the West has generated the myth of the innocent child. I have pointed out that up until 1929 the minimum age of marriage in England (and Australia) was 12. The situation in the US changed later, with some states keeping a low marriage age until the 70’s (the country singer Loretta Lynn married at 13). The idea that adolescents must now wait until they are 16-18 is relatively recent and is an attempt to increase the length of childhood.

It seems that the more open adults are about sexuality the more sexual conservatives want to increase the age of consent and prevent adolescents from knowing anything about sex. Mind you, when the age of marriage was as young as 12 the young wife was meant to be an innocent virgin magically awoken into her sexuality by her husband on their wedding night. The age of consent has increased at the same time as women choose to marry later. Is this really about trying to preserve conservative, patriarchal notions of virgin marriages?

So it seems the more the adult world embraces open discussion about sexuality the greater the fear about ’sexualizing’ children. I’ve probably said this before (I’m too lazy to check) but I loathe the word ’sexualize’. It’s a new word. It’s not in my dictionary. The correct word to use is socialize. In which case children have always been socialized into the norms of their society. To use the term ’sexualize’ in this context is to provide an excuse to narrow the discussion and avoid a general discussion of how children are socialized in our hyper-marketed, consumer culture. It’s not just about sex. It’s about a whole range of issues. In fact by accepting and using the term sexualization we in fact conflate a whole range of issues that actually have little to do with sex as such.

A prime example is the research done by the APA that purports to show that sexualization of children leads to anorexia and eating disorders. There is no doubt the incidence of eating disorders has increased, but I would have thought it was due to the social pressure to be thin. Granted, physical appearance is connected to appearing attractive to the opposite sex, but current research shows that for girls and women, it has more to do with being accepted by other women. Here I want to interject with a common male complaint – we don’t like skinny girls; we don’t like stick thin models. The biggest buyers of celebrity and fashion magazines are women. Look to Playboy to find the masculine ideal. The eating disorder epidemic is about female competitiveness and peer acceptance. By using the term sexualization we blame the wrong process. We are looking for apples in an orange tree.

There is also no doubt that marketers have discovered a new market in children. But this is not about sexualization, it’s about marketing to children using a whole range of ploys. I’m clear about the solution. Marketing to children is unethical and should be banned. Sweden has done this. We must follow.

But what is happening is that the conversation about sex in the adult world bleeds into the child’s world. I was buying a newspaper the other day and in the magazine rack, at child’s height, was a woman’s magazine with the clear sub-heading ‘achieving better orgasms’ (or ‘how to have great sex’, or ’sex secrets’, etc). Magazines, TV and films targeted at adults are seen and read by children. Doh! My father kept Playboy magazines under his bed – of course my brother and I found them. My ex-girlfriend told me the story of minding her five year-old niece. She had discovered her grandfather’s Penthouse magazine and had come into the loungeroom naked, posed in a sexually explicit way and asked if she looked pretty like the girl in the magazine. My ex-girlfriend was flabbergasted, embarrassed and did not know how to handle the situation. I read of another story recounted by the photographer and film director Larry Clark, a female friend of his was exposed to porn as a child. Her father would watch porn late at night. If she had to get up to go to the toilet she would pass the living room and see the images on the TV, without her father being aware.

Children have always been exposed to sex. Older children (siblings, cousins, neighbours) tell younger children and these stories get retold in the schoolyard. I saw my first porn in the schoolyard. A friend got it from his older brother. Do you think the parents or teachers ever found out?

This is why I advocate sex education, early sex education. And I’m pleased to note that the type of sex education I think should be taught at primary level is being taught. I saw video of ten year-olds drawing naked male and female bodies, after the initial giggling the class approached the lesson with amazing maturity.

Sadly, even after hearing some promising discussion on ‘Matter of Opinion’ I’m still dismayed at the level of ignorance about children’s sexuality and the process of socialization. We fret about bras for prepubertal girls, but accept that they should cover their chests. This is socialization into gender norms. It’s been going on for centuries.

Let me say it this way. All children are socialized. The real question is what type of socialization is appropriate. But in a society that is undergoing a revolution in sexual attitudes it is unsurprising and unremarkable that we are confused about how to socialize children in this area. We don’t know what is acceptable, so how can we tell our kids what is and isn’t? Attitudes differ in sub-groups. Latina and Afro-American girls tend to start having sex earlier than White girls. Much of the complaint about the sexual imagery in music videos is about Black music. White kids are exposed to Black culture. But here we reveal sexual racism. White girls are supposed to kept pure, but ethnic girls are somehow different (and Black men are very sexual by nature – get my drift?).

So what’s the fear about? What exactly will happen if children are exposed to sex? I’ve never heard a clear explanation of the fear. It seems irrational. As I have said before, children in traditional cultures are exposed to the realities of sex. It’s Western culture that seems obsessed with protecting children from sex. Why? We used to create nice stories about storks and cabbage patches to avoid explaining where children came from. Why? The answer is obvious, the Judeo-Christian teaching on sex.

The way through this is to talk intelligently about sex.

Finally, a comment on the two conservative Muslim women, one of whom told the story of her ten year-old nephew who asked why women got excited so easily. She tried to blame Western culture and the Western media for its portrayal of women. Sadly Catherine Lumby fell for the ploy and tried to defend the media. However, she failed to address the real problem. The 10 year-old boy in question was reflecting Islamic attitudes to women picked up from older males. This too, is a process of socialization, but socialization into negative, patriarchal attitudes.

Of course there is no medical reason for the procedure, it is entirely cultural. At some point in the past (pre-Christian and pre-Islamic) some fool had the bright idea that the clitoris was a bad thing and should be cut off (along with the labia minora). The practice is based on Semitic ideas of sex as sin and that the clitoris, as an organ of pure pleasure, was the devil’s seed. Both Christian and Muslim clerics have described the procedure as necessary so as to excise the source of female temptation and pleasure. What better way to control women’s sexuality than to cut it out?

We can look at this procedure with abhorrence but the tragic fact is that it persists because women believe it is a necessary precondition to marriage. Mothers take their daughters to women who perform the procedure. It has become a cultural practice and even though it is completely irrational it persists just because it is a cultural practice.

We can understand that it began as a way to control women. The Abrahamic traditions have a fear of women’s sexuality. She is a temptress. That’s why Islam demands that women wear the hijab and burka. I mentioned the plight of Chahinez who was verbally abused when she wore Western clothes. It’s all about conforming to social norms no matter how silly. How many Muslim men would be shocked to learn that in the West men and women join naturist groups and mix freely and that the men are not driven into an uncontrollable sexual frenzy (and don’t get erections – btw, a recent study of men and women contradicted a common belief. The study was to judge reactions to couples having sex. What the study showed was that men tended to go straight to the woman’s eyes and linger before looking at them screwing, whereas the women went straight to the screwing and lingered longer on it than the men, disproving that men are only interested in sex) and are able to carry on perfectly normal conversations. The writer Ayan Hirsi Ali describes the first time she went swimming in a pair of bathers in mixed company. She was shocked that the men did not pay her much attention and that she felt perfectly safe. She had been led to believe that the men would be uncontrollably aroused. The clerics who had told her this were lying.

There are many social norms that are irrational. They exist because they exist. They are like junk DNA in genes, except we could say they are junk memes. This is what culture often is, a collection of irrational rules based on ignorance. It becomes a vicious circle of belief. Some fool decides that such and such has to be done and then a system of enforcement arises. The enforcers rise to a position of power and authority and so they maintain the belief system in order to maintain their power and privilege. They enforce the system through a set of real and imagined threats and punishments. Laws are passed to preserve the junk memes and people are punished (and sometimes killed) or they live in fear of going to hell. The reason the cruel practice of female circumcision persists is because people believe the myth that surrounds it.

We can look at North Africa and realise that many of their beliefs are nonsense. As Chahinez found, all the stories she had heard about the decadence of the West were wrong. She found that she had much more freedom in France (despite the discrimination against Muslims) than she did back in Algeria. She found that women were treated with a great deal more decency and respect than in Muslim countries. Let’s expose the lie. Muslims complain that women are given more respect in Muslim countries. Bullshit. Only if they conform to conservative expectations. In several countries women are kept in place by threats and fear. How many have been killed in honour killings for ’shaming’ the family? And the nature of the shame? To step outside the narrow role for women. There was a case in Britian recently. A father ordered the murder of his daughter because she was seeing a man he did not approve of. They garotted her with a shoe lace and buried her in a suitcase in a backyard.

But we shouldn’t think we don’t have a similar sets of irrational rules. We can look at the conservative moral attitudes of other cultures and laugh. We can listen to their moral conservatives spread fear that if the silly rules are disobeyed the sky will fall in – and laugh because we know the sky won’t fall in if couples hold hands and kiss in public, or if women wear bikinis when they go swimming.

So I thought I would list our own silly rules, our own junk memes.

1. The fear of nudity. Nothing will happen if we decide that clothing is optional. After a relatively short while we will get used to naked bodies and think it perfectly normal.
2. The fear of seeing genitals, even when aroused. Again nothing will happen. In Rome there were phalluses everywhere. The god Priapus was popular and there were many statues and frescoes depicting his enormous member.
3. The fear of open sex. Again nothing will happen. Most people will still prefer private love making, but the sky will not fall in if they are seen, or if you see them, or if children see them.
4. The fear of children openly exploring their sexuality. Provided they are not exploited by adults nothing will happen (and provided they are taught about controlling pregnancy and STI’s).
5. Open and frank sex education and training. This will actually lead to greater sexual and emotional intelligence. The moral conservative agenda keeps people fixated at low levels of both.
6. The depiction of nudity and sex in art, film and TV (even in prime time) (I’d love to see a children’s mystery/adventure film set in a naturist colony like Montalivet in France, the nudity would be incidental to the plot) (Incidentally generations of families have been holidaying in Montalivet and the photographer Jock Sturges, who owns a holiday home there, has captured the ease at which children accept the lifestyle, most of his first subjects have grown up and recounted how fondly they remember holidays at Montalivet – the film might be a simple story about a holiday adventure at Montalivet).
7. The full acceptance of alternative sexualities, homosexuality, bisexuality, transsexuality and polyamory. Again, most people will be heterosexual and monogamous but won’t feel threatened by difference.
8. Flexible gender roles.

It would be interesting to hear your reaction. Have I gone a step too far? Why? What will happen, will the sky fall in or will we adjust? All of these things have been found in one or other culture. Some Polynesian societies would honour a girl’s vagina by regularly massaging it with aromatic oils (with orgasms and pleasant feelings a happy side effect, but not the purpose – the purpose being to have a nice smelling vagina). Both boys and girls would get explicit instruction and girls would be given dildos. Under the ‘taure’are’a’ system adolescents were free to play around. When Captain Cook landed in Tahiti he was entertained with a traditional dance in which a 12 year-old girl has sex with a warrior (it’s recounted in his diary). In the Trobriand Islands children were even freer and adults were nonplussed. For over forty thousand years Aborigines walked around completely naked. Do we think for one moment that these societies were traumatised (or their children)? Quite the opposite, as misguided as it may seem the Pacific is regarded by Western society as an earthly paradise.

The fear of nudity and sex arises in sex negative societies. The fear is irrational and based on mythic thinking, on junk memes. Western society has thankfully moved on from a very dark and sex ignorant period. Islam still has a long way to go, but we shouldn’t be complacent. We still have much further to go.

What’s stopping us? Two things:

1. A set of laws that privilege the Judeo-Christian myth and the moral system they derive from the myth, and a system of controllers (priests, police and others) who benefit from the power and authority.
2. A willing population who believe in the immutability of junk memes because that’s the way they were raised, in other words, an inherent social conservatism that punishes anyone who disobeys the rules, no matter how silly the rules are. Social disapproval is a major factor.

Ethnocentric thinking includes accepting and obeying ‘the rules’ of the group. Sometimes the rules are designed to test obediance. It’s not unusual for a ruling elite to make rules just to see how high their subjects will jump. Some of the most fatuous of these rules can be found amongst the Aryans of India, like the rule forbidding an untouchable from letting their shadow fall on a precious brahmin. How ridiculous can it get? Well, even more ridiculous – a story in the paper about a brahmin mother who insisted her son takes his own plate to university for fear that he might eat off a plate once used by lower caste scum (thus contaminating his precious brahmin purity).

In fact let me suggest a governing principle – wherever you find a silly rule you find someone who benefits. The reason the Judeo-Christians protect their silly sexual morality is because their whole system is largely dependent on it. If these rules are found to be arbitrary and unnecessary then a large part of their ideological edifice collapses and so does the church itself and all that tax free money and property that feeds the egos of narcissistic priests and self-proclaimed ‘born again’ reverands and ministers. Keeping junk memes alive and thriving is big business.

Now a caveat – we do need to be careful. Some rules are necessary and there for good reason. I happen to think that at least seven of the ten commandments make good sense (just not the three that refer to god). I don’t think you should kill (or use violence or force) , lie, steal or covet your neighbour’s wife (or friend’s lover). It’s the rules governing sex that are mostly irrational.

And another caveat – one of the apparent contradictions inherent in my approach is that people with low emotional and sexual intelligence, and therefore low impulse control, will not respect personal boundaries, especially those of adolescents and children. The question is, will a relaxing of the rules allow more abuse to occur, not just child sexual exploitation, but all forms of physical, emotional and mental abuse? This a serious and complex question. Firstly, people with low sexual and emotional intelligence are more likely to abuse others simply because they do not respect or even understand another person’s physical, emotional and mental boundaries. If they get angry they hit out, if they feel lust they exploit the next available opportunity even if it is rape or some kind of physical, emotional or mental manipulation or force. Studies of jail inmates typically show low scores on most developmental tests. In cases of mental disease or disability, such as sociopathy, autism, the person may not be able to read emotions or even recognise the rights of others.

The answer to this is that sexual repression actually causes low sexual and emotional intelligence. The cycle of abuse is real. It may seem counter-intuitive but a careful relaxation of sexual repression will lead to an overall increase in sexual and emotional intelligence and therefore a drop in abuse. It will still happen and should not be tolerated or excused, but the current belief that more repression is needed will only compound the problem by locking in low sexual and emotional intelligence. Let me repeat a point made in my previous post. The Abrahamic moral code is based on low sexual and emotional intelligence and therefore locks the faithful into closed behavioural patterns that inhibit emotional and sexual, and therefore moral, growth.

I know I’m repeating a theme and indulging in finding different ways to express the same point, but I believe Integral Theory must recognise the role these irrational beliefs play in inhibiting human potential. We actually have nothing to loose because many of these rules are fatuous, and everything to gain.

So when we talk about the feeling function we need to understand that it too has levels and we need to talk about what level of emotional understanding the individual has and what the average level is for a given society/culture. The anthroplogical evidence suggests that some tribal societies encourage a high level of emotional intelligence whilst others express a low level. I remember an example from an Amazonian tribe with the anthropologist noting that the tribal men had a very low threshold before entering a violent emotional state. As a result violent death was common and accepted. In contrast other tribal societies have complex methods to circumvent negative emotions.

I do not assume that Western society is more emotionally intelligent than some tribal societies. What I will suggest is that because Western society is in reality a complex of sub-groups that some sub-groups have patterns of low emotional intelligence and others have patterns of high emotional intelligence. Although it is not strictly correlated it is true that poor and educationally disadvantaged sub-groups have patterns of low emotional intelligence, hence the higher incidence of domestic violence and child abuse. Low emotional intelligence is directly related to low impulse control and the inability to read the emotions of others.

As far as I am concerned there is a direct correlation between education, the development of reason and high emotional intelligence. If we study Roger’s five levels we see a growth in the ability to understand and control feeling function. At the low levels emotions control us and we have low impulse control. At the higher levels we learn to control our emotions, isolate and reject the negative emotions and increase the positive or neutral emotions. The development of reason is essential to this process. Specifically we learn to objectify our feelings, analyse them and self-select useful emotional states.

The irony in this is that people with high emotional intelligence can appear cold and analytical to people with a low emotional intelligence (EQ). From the perspective of the person with a high EQ the person with a low EQ can appear irrational, volatile and the victim of easily triggered emotional states – they can appear to ride a roller coaster of emotions.

But what is the highest level of the feeling function like? Here’s a quote from the article.

“That is why in dealing with their fellow-man they could see and hear and touch at a new level. That is why they could sometimes read hearts and know intuitively what others were thinking. I am not speaking here about extrasensory perception but about a certain mystical awareness, an intuitive knowledge, a deep feeling. No superficial emotion this, but an extraordinary empathy.”

This is what I feel when I connect with people. I said in a comment that I am emotionally intuitive. Some would describe this as being ’sensitive’. I have always been like this and it has taken me some time to understand this. As I said it can cause problems. Why? Because I read people’s emotions very easily, including their minor, sub-text emotions. It is very hard to lie to me or to hide how you are ‘really’ feeling. I have found that in most relationships people often choose to hide what they are feeling. They create a relationship persona, who they are in that relationship, and they try and hide some aspects of their personality from their partner. Unfortunately for me people can’t hide. I sense emotional incoherence very quickly. Sadly I have learnt that I can’t expose that incoherence. I learnt the hard way. People feel exposed, they don’t like too much emotional honesty. So I often don’t say anything. I have been single for much of my life for this very reason and for the fact that I haven’t found many people with a similar ability. I should add that my emotional intuition allows me to read group dynamics easily. (People who have known me will understand that as soon as I met some of the key people in I-I I knew what was going on and began to draw attention to the contradictions and problems, although I could hardly argue that I just had a feeling).

It is from this perspective that I say that at the higher levels of the feeling function there is no conflict with reason and intellect, in fact the Jungian types start to blend and one can access the information each function provides. People’s emotional reactions become data.

The other thing that happens at the higher levels is that one does not indulge the emotional states of the lower stages. An example of this is the distinction between sympathy and empathy. The sympathetic response is reactionary – it reacts to the perceived emotional state and wants to ameliorate negative emotions. If someone feels sad the sympathic person wants to make the person happy, if they feel angry they want to protect them from the cause of the anger, if they feel afraid they want to protect them, if they feel they are being victimised the sympathiser again wants to protect them. Perhaps I should have been clearer when I was talking about ’special victims’, so let me be clear now. It is the sympathetic response that creates victim politics. Sympathisers tend to see the world in terms of victims and perpetrators. They are at their sympathetic worst when they act in black and white simplisms and fail to see taht victims are also perpetrators and perpetrators victims.

The empathic response allows you to understand how people feel, but you temper it with reason. Reason tells you if the feeling states are based on real events that can be changed or perceived events that cannot. The empathic response, based on high emotional intelligence, will tell you if you need to be involved. To give an example – I have been involved in some challenging psychodynamics in which people break down and cry. The sympathiser will rush to the person, see them as a victim of something being done to them, embrace them and try to stop them crying, whilst becoming upset themselves. The empathiser with high EQ will assess the situation, understand what they are going through but may decide that the tears are part of a internal process that they should not interfere with. The sympathiser sees this as cold, but it is actually the better response. Misplaced sympathy can actually prevent a process from reaching its natural conclusion.

In the same way I can see the pain and suffering the Aboriginal people are going through – and again perhaps I should have said this, but the pain is part of a process. The modern world is not going away, nor can Aborigines return to the past. The pain they suffer is the pain of adjusting to a new reality. The pain is actually a complex of emotions, fear, uncertainty, anger, grief, confusion, etc. However the problem is that these emotions always arise in transitional phases, from the mundane and short-lived (like a new job, moving house, a new relationship) to the complex and generational. So let me rephrase my criticism of the left in this way, they have been distracted by the sympathetic response and the so-called MGM (as badly expressed as it is) is actually misplaced sympathetic reactionism. They react by trying to protect Aborigines from the new reality and one way to do that is to escape into fantasies (about the past, the present and possible future).

I will admit to also being lazy. The thing is that I can analyse situations from many different modalities but it is difficult to express them in few words. If I was to try to do it my contributions would be full of complex caveats (and lots of brackets {and digressions and exceptions}).

For example – I have been talking about the irrationality of attitudes to sex in very simple terms. However I understand sexuality to have a developmental logic and to be strongly related to the feeling function. The Judeo-Christian tradition is fixated at a low level of emotional and sexual intelligence for a reason, to keep the faithful indoctrinated. The need to have a god is actually a low emotional need. Once you develop emotionally that need disappears and is replaced by an intuitive sense of connection. It is the same with sex. The taboos are designed to keep people at a low level of sexual intelligence.

Anyway – I’ve run out of steam and will continue this thread later. I need a break.

But please don’t mention how the children were conceived or how they are born. It’s crazy. You encourage people to have more children, which means they have to have more sex, but don’t dare mention the ‘ahem’, you know what…the details of sex. What surprises me is that the Judeo-Christians haven’t embraced more medical intervention. If there was IVF for everyone then you wouldn’t ever have to stick ‘it’ in ‘you know what’ (blush).

But the schizophrenia is extreme. Children are precious, pure, innocent, etc, but the act of creating them is dirty, shameful, indecent, sinful, etc, etc. And the genitals must remain hidden at all times. The organs that create children are dishonoured, considered dirty and obscene.

The ancients had a different sensibility, images of the genitals were invoked to celebrate fertility. Here’s a cute suggestion. The universal symbol for fertility clinics should be a penis in a vagina.

Of course the other thing that can never be shown is the birth itself. The child is a thing of wonder, God’s little miracle, but the thing it comes out of is obscene and can’t be seen.

I hate the word ‘indecent’ – indecent exposure, indecent act, etc. All of these are about genitals. A child cannot see genitals or touch them out of natural curiosity because in most jurisdictions this is classed as an ‘indecent’ act. And we all know what happens if a child sees or touches genitals – the sky falls in! They are traumatised for life! Well, actually nothing happens unless the child is taught genitals are indecent. The child thinks that genitals are part of the body, like an arm, or a finger, and guess what? They are.

You can poke your tongue out and expose the insides of your mouth (all that pink, inner flesh) but you can’t look at genitals. They are rude.

Why? Because I said so.

So what is the place of psychosexual development in Integral Theory and practice?

We have two sources to examine. The Western strand which begins with the early sexologists, such as Havelock Ellis, and the enormous breakthrough that occured in Germany, which began with Freud and Reich. Here it is worth noting that both Freud and Reich belonged to an organisation founded by Magnus Hirschfeld, the World League for Sexual Reform. There is a famous photo of Nazis burning books – apparently it was taken as the Nazis were destroying Hirscfeld’s Institute for Sexology in Berlin. Wilhelm Reich was in Berlin at the time as well and his two books ‘The Function of the Orgasm’ and ‘The Mass Psychology of Fascism’ had created an interesting debate about sexual repression. Reich had argued that sexual repression caused both psychological and physical body armouring and that this led to several pathologies. He then argued that the cure was sexual release through a full body orgasm. I won’t go into a full description here other than to say that many orgasms are only partial and contained orgasms.

The Reichian strand is the root of a number of modern therapies, primal scream, etc and Neo-Reichian therapies played an important part in the sexual revolution and human potential movements of the 60’s and 70’s.

At the same time Western intellectuals were discovering Tantra and trying to reconcile the very frank connection between sex and spirituality, particularly of varma marga (left-hand) and shakta Tantra.

Some of you may not know that Hatha Yoga was allegedly developed by Goraknath, the disciple of Matsyendranath, the founder of the Nath sect, a varma marga Tantra path. This sect (connected to the 84 mahasiddhas also found in Buddhist Tantra) advocated mastery of all body functions. I’ll go right to the really challenging stuff, the stuff usually left out by modern Hatha Yoga schools so as not to upset delicate Western sensibilities. One of the original Hatha yoga skills was regular enemas and one technique was to stand in a river and suck water into the anus and draw it up into the lower colon, and then expel it. A similar technique was used to flush the urinary tract. After years of practice the yogi can suck water up his penis (vajroli mudra). The whole point was to develop the pubococcygeus muscles (pelvic floor, as in Kegel exercises). Once control of these muscles was attained they could be used to control ejaculation in urdhvareta kriya. A trained yogi can take himself to the point of ejaculation, release, but then immediately draw the ejaculate back. There are several stages to urdhvareta, the highest is the ability to experience full orgasm whilst containing the ejaculate. It was thought that the spiritual essence (tejas) was separated from the physical substance (ojas). When the white tejas of semen was united with the red tejas of menstrual blood a unification of Shiva/Shakti occured that lead to ecstacy and realization. There were similar exercises for women adepts, the difference however, was that women were encouraged to have orgasms, multiple if they could. The whole idea was to try and extend the momentary bliss of orgasm, control it and consciously transmute it to a higher, spiritual energy.

To achieve this adepts had to pay very close attention to the yoga of intercourse. This was helped because at the time of the Nath yogis parts of India were very open to frank sexual experimentation. I have already mentioned the tradition of the Devidasi, part of their original function was to act as consorts for Tantric yogis and many of them were high adepts in their own right. They did not marry, but instead dedicated themselves to a life of sexual spirituality.

Under the Judeo-Christians the West was taken in quite the opposite direction. Suffice to say that under their control the West lost all vestiges of sexual spirituality found amongst the goddess traditions of the ancients (Hathor, Artemis, Astarte) and was plunged into complete ignorance where all knowledge of sex was lost. We are talking about polar extremes. Under the Judeo-Christians the genital region was regarded as filthy and literally satan’s playground. I mentioned that some Orthodox Jews have intercourse through a hole in a sheet to avoid too much contact. In varna marga the genitals are intentionally worshipped as divine. In yoni puja the vulva is worshipped as a symbol of Shakti. The woman (usually a young adolescent, but sometimes in the past, a kumari, or virgin – in some Shakta cults a kumari of a particular age is given a specific name, ie Bhairavi if she is 12, etc, each age being a particular form of the goddess) is dressed in fine silks, but her yoni is exposed. Mantras are chanted and her yoni is treated as a murti and the five sacred substances are rubbed on and poured over her yoni. There is also a form of lingam puja. The yoni and lingam pujas are always performed before an act of sacred sex, but can also be performed on auspicious occasions. Some Shakta temples have separate stone yonis and lingams, but the most common representation is the ubiquitous shivalingam.

The point I want to make here is that under the Judeo-Christians the West became profoundly ignorant of sex and orgasms were actively discouraged. At the height of Tantric practice in India in the Middle Ages, the knowledge of sexuality and orgasm had become highly detailed and sophisticated (but still dressed up in mythic obscurantism).

There is a connection between Reich and Tantra. The Tantric Yogis had developed the theory of samskaras, blocks in the psycho-sexual-spiritual system that prevented the free flow of prana and shakti. I do not know if Reich borrowed the idea from the East (many Tantric texts had been translated and studied by German academics), but his theories correlate quite well – except he does not go as far as Tantra. It is my contention that there is an important psycho-sexual-spiritual line of development that unlocks considerable developmental potential. It involves learning how to recognise and develop psycho-sexual ecstacy in the body from basic physical orgasm to emotional, mental and supramental orgasms.

I can personally attest to their existance. In one chanting session my body experienced a rolling series of full body orgasms. I had an erection but the sensations were not localised. I stopped them because I was feeling overwhelmed by what was without a doubt, a spontaneous, non-genital, multiple orgasm. This experience made me realise that humans are capable of experiencing high levels of psycho-sexual ecstacy.

However, it is difficult to teach the public about such things. There are now so many taboos around sex that it is almost impossible to get the message out. Under the control of the Orthodox Aryan Brahmins India has become hyper-conservative and turned its back on the Tantric tradition (the Tantric tradition was radically opposed to the Orthodox Aryans). And in the West Tantra is often dumbed down to become a New Age fad. The problem is that the West and Westerners (and now Indians) have been loaded up with so many inhibitions and samskaras that it is difficult to see how psycho-sexual energy can be released. It is necessary to be totally unashamed of the body and of sex. One of the most powerful Tantric rituals was the Chakra Puja in which twelve couples sat in a circle and performed tantric sex, starting with yoni and lingam puja. In the West sex is regarded as personal and private and many people could not have sex in front of other people. How many women would allow a congregation to perform yoni puja on her? Too many women would be mortally embarrassed and many believe their yonis to be unclean. One of the highest forms of yoni puja was performed on menstruating girls and the blood was mixed with sacred substances and sipped as a sacrement. In Leviticus there are many injunctions about unclean bodily fluids and Orthodox Jewish women still face a number of prohibitions during their period.

All this leads me back to Reich and his book ‘The Mass Psychology of Fascism’. I think Reich was partially right, the totalitarian pathology functions through sexual repression. The totalitarian is threatened by liberated psycho-sexual expression.

The question for Integral Theory is how much of Reich was right, how much of Tantra? Reich certainly went off the rails later in life (although Orgone looks a lot like Prana) and Tantra was corrupted and the varna marga indulged in some unnecessary and revolting practices (including, it has to be admitted, cannabalism and human sacrifice). So what should be included and what should be transcended? What parts were right and what parts were wrong?

I also want to make it quite clear that when I talk about reaching one’s full potential on the psycho-sexual line I am talking about the type of control the Tantric yogis developed. In men this is the ability to control ejaculation and amplify orgasm from a localised sensation to a full body ecstatic experience. In women it is the ability to experience uninhibited multiple orgasm and a similar yogic control. To achieve this the individual must remove all vestiges of Judeo-Christian and bourgeois shame and guilt. I also think that in such a society highly sophisticated psycho-sexual techniques can start to be taught to young adolescents – yep, Tantra for teens – that is, if you are serious about reaching one’s ‘full’ potential. Now that last statement ought to tickle those vestiges of Judeo-Christian shame and guilt.

The internet porn revolution is slowly changing this, but there is still a high degree of moral panic over this. It seems our embarrassment means we cannot think about the issue in any clear way. In today’s Melbourne Age there is an article that suggests that Internet porn compulsion/addiction is affecting relationships.

Well, der! Any compulsion affects a relationship because the compulsion works against intimacy, whether that compulsion is alcohol or collecting or a general compulsive disorder. Seriously, there are people who become obssessed about collecting certain items, so obssessed it takes over the relationship. Should we be shocked that some people become obssessed by Internet porn instead of gambling, drinking or collecting dolls?

So how big a problem is it? The Age article cites two studies. One suggested that 9% were addicted and another suggested 6%. Well! You could knock me down with a feather! A whopping 6-9%. It’s a crisis! Seriously folks, how many relationships are ruined by other addictions like alcohol and gambling? I’d suggest it’s a rate higher than 6-9%, and these activities are widespread and legal.

The journalist responsible for this piece of moral panic, Adele Horin, drops this clanger – “And the kind of material available exceeds imagination”. This is a very revealing sentance and tells us immediately she is a sexual conservative. It’s a silly thing to say. Clearly if it exists then someone has imagined it. It therefore does not exceed someone’s imagination. All Horin is saying is that it exceeds her limited imagination. But we should not be surprised. A society that considers the open discussion of sex is bound to produce people with a limited sexual knowledge and imagination.

Horin does go on to say: “The rising tide of internet pornography is giving some Australians the best sex education of their lives.”

So what’s the moral panic about? It’s clash between those who think sex should be private and hidden and those who think it should be openly celebrated. Those who think it should be kept private need to answer this question – why is porn so popular? The answer is simple. People have always been interested in sex. It’s a perfectly natural part of being human and a society that censors sexual imagery and keeps it out of the public domain will only create a subaltern desire for those images.

I have no problem with graphic sexual images, but I do have a problem with the porn industry. It’s often just crude and artless. But first we need to understand where the term porn comes from. It comes from the Greek ‘pornai’, meaning prostitute. It was created by the archaeologist C O Mueller in 1850. He had encountered erotic frescoes in Roman ruins and assumed that they were from brothels. He was wrong. Many were in fact from wealthy homes. It seems that the display of sexual images was the height of good taste in Roman society. Of course the puritannical Judeo-Christians regarded prostitutes as sinners and because sex was only for procreation the enjoyment of sexual imagery was also a sin. God forbid we should enjoy the erotic! So erotic imagery was banned and hidden. Of course the natural human interest in sex subverted the ban and erotic images were produced in nearly every age and culture. The reason the porn industry is so crude is because it was originally illegal and produced by the criminal underground who lacked any creative or artistic sensibility.

In my view the solution to the porn problem is to legitimise erotic imagery in the public domain. This will rob the porn idustry of its appeal as a subaltern activity. In fact this is what is happening anyway. The US porn industry is huge, with some estimates suggesting it turns over more money than Hollywood. The sheer size of the industry has legitimised it to some extent and some operators are becoming more professional. The porn actress Jenna Jameson runs her own company and turns over a few million. Actors are better paid and better looked after. This will improve as the porn industry becomes more mainstream and control is taken away from the criminal underground (who do nopt have a history of treating people well).

But this is the other side of the moral shock. That there are a seemingly endless supply of young women in particular who want to be in the porn industry because they like sex. We have all heard the story of Linda Lovelace – how she was bullied and forced into porn by a violent boyfriend. That is not the case today, and whilst there are no doubt still many seedy operators, the growing professionalism means they are disappearing. The moral shock comes from sexual conservatives like Adele Horin who lack the imagination to conceive of young women who are effectively sexual athletes and exhibitionists who enjoy what they do and make good money, like the actress who said she specialises in anal orgasms. I would guess Horin didn’t even know anal orgasms were possible.

The article goes on to say that some women feel threatened by porn sex, that they cannot hope to compete. This is a real problem and the fault lies with the men who think their partners should compete. Would they expect their partners to run like a professional athlete, play violin like a concert violinist, or cook like a four star chef? No. But this is because these things are openly discussed in society and we clearly understand that some people excel in certain fields. The key here is ‘open’ discussion and an ‘open’ appreciation of these skills. It is the same in the erotic fields, some people have talent. Not many men have the stamina or size of porn actor. Not all women have the heightened desire that porn actresses do. There is a young porn star who has a naturally large vagina and she is able to accomodate larger objects, despite her petite frame. But I would guarantee that not too many people would know that there is also a variation in female genitals. Again, because sexual knowledge is kept out of the public domain.

What has this got to do with integral philosophy? It’s obvious. The erotic is a part of who we are and an integral society must integrate it into its culture.

And on a final note of annoyance. The article clearly marks Adele Horin as a conservative feminist moralist because she raises the objection that Brazilian waxes are somehow designed to evoke pre-pubertal girls. Rubbish! I suppose the demand from women that men be clean shaven indicates their desire for pre-pubertal boys? Horin clearly does not know that more and more women are demanding that their men trim and shave their pubic hair as well. In Australia this is known as shaving one’s ‘back, crack and sack’. Depilation as a long history and has been practiced by many cultures. Horin displays her ignorance by raising this tired conservative feminist furphy. People shave their pubic hair for two reasons – no-one likes hair in the mouth (the reason women say they like clean-shaven men, because they don’t like kissing hair) and smooth skin is more sensitive to touch.

The internet porn revolution is an information revolution. It must be integrated into society.

As for porn addiction. Any addiction is a problem and addictive personality types can be addicted to anything. There is no evidence to suggest that porn is somehow inherently more addictive than anything else. Any concern over an addiction to porn or to sex usually carries a moral shock element due solely to the Judeo-Christian idea that sex is bad and that addiction to anything to do with sex is somehow worse than any other type of addiction.

The report was revealing because one of the first things it said was that adults and parents find it difficult to talk about hypersexuality in children. The reason I think is simple. We have developed the completely false idea that children are (and ought to be) asexual.

Around 45% of children with bipolar disorder exhibit hypersexuality. This causes a number of behaviours, masturbation (not necessarily compulsive), disinhibition, interest in sex, use of sexualised language, seeking sexual contact with other children and adults.

The article also mentioned that parents with hypersexual children do not report it because they fear they will be accused of sexual abuse. Hypersexuality can be misdiagnosed as ‘overstimulation’ due to exposure to sexual activity. However, studies have shown that only 1% of the 45% diagnosed with hypersexuality have been sexually abused.

The biggest problem however, is parent’s moral shock at the behaviour of their child. One parent reported disbelief and couldn’t understand where their child got their behaviour from. She said they had been very careful about not exposing their child to any sexual imagery or information. This is the type of ignorance I’d expect in a society that has trouble admitting child sexuality.

Here’s the deal – a good deal of sexual response is hardwired. The mania is caused by the overstimulation of part of the brain. A side effect is often the overstimulation of the sexual centre in adults and children. The hypersexual child is acting out instinctive behaviour. The problem is the parent’s naive belief that children are naturally asexual.

But the reality of child hypersexuality raises another interesting issue. It suggests that there is a range of sexual responses in children as a result of their particular mindscape. Bipolar disorder is clearly an exceptional circumstance but there are children who exhibit natural sexual precocity (and conservatism). This begs the question – what is normal behaviour?

Unfortunately our idea of ‘normal’ is constrained by the moral assumptions of the Judeo-Christian tradition which is sex negative. A cross-cultural study would indicate that sex positive societies accept sexual behaviour from children that ‘we’ would not. In short, we condemn sexually precocious children for moral reasons and not because of any objective undrstanding of normal behaviour.

Of course hypersexuality is a problem, especially if the behaviour prevents socialization and functionality – but how much of it is unnecessarily problematized because of moral concerns? In our sex negative society no wonder hypersexuality in children is embarrasing. When will we grow up?

One very good piece of news that came out of the discussion was that there has been wide spread rejection of the US abstinence approach. It ain’t gonna happen in Oz. Another surprising revelation (for me) was that a Liberal senator, Judith Troeth (in Oz the Liberal party are the conservatives) is studying the possibility of a compulsory, national sex education approach. I was surprised because Troeth said some quite progressive things and acknowledged that Australian sex education was patchy and started too late.

The program had a representative from the Catholic Church who looked uncomfortable and troubled most of the time. My reading of his discomfort was that the teens were clearly ignoring what he had to say and one teen asked him about his personal sexual experience. Anyway, it conforms to my view that the Church has lost a great deal of moral authority over the issue.

Another surprise was a fifteen year-old who calmly admitted she first had sex when she was 12. When asked if she regretted it and thought it was too young she said ‘no’. When asked later she said that if she had known more about STIs she might have decided not to.

There seemed to be a general agreement amongst the teens that education should start at around age 9/10 and that the early teen years should focus on relationships. What some teens most wanted to understand was why they were attracted to certain people and how to manage the emotions around the attraction. I support this. Then in late teens they can return to a deeper look at sexuality, the history of sexuality, cultural variations, the psychology of sex, etc…

Another thing the teens seemed to agree on was that sex education should contain more information on how to have good sex.

The problem in the Anglo/American (Canada being the most progressive) world is that there is a taboo about discussing sex. This means that many parents feel embarrassed talking to their kids about sex and because schools are public institutions they shouldn’t talk about sex either, so kids are left to find out for themselves. I was encouraged to see so many teens appearing to be very comfortable ‘talking’ about sex.

There is still appalling ignorance out there but I’m encouraged things will improve. And thank God the idiotic abstinence approach has been largely rejected in Oz.

On a final and perhaps challenging note. As part of my research into my novel I started exploring the biographical details of prominent porn stars. I know that there is a risk much of it may be fabricated, but we also have to accept that much of it may be genuine. What interests me is the effect of the porn narrative on society. Porn is widespread and many teens access it. What are they making of it? The topic of porn was mentioned last night and the teens seemed to understand that it was fantasy, with one boy noting the use of viagra and over-sized actors. But the thing that intrigues me is that as porn becomes more acceptable the individual stories of the porn actors become better known. Actors like Jenna Jameson become minor celebrities. These narratives are subversive of the normal stereotypes and transgress normal perceptions of sexuality. Take the example of one Latino porn star. She first saw porn when she was 9. Had her first sexual experience with another girl when she was 11, with a man when she was 12. She loved sex and decided to be a porn star when she was 15 and as soon as she turned 18 did her first shoot. She says she regularly orgasms during porn shoots (including anal orgasms) and loves her work. She is doing well for herself and has a plan to leave the industry when she is around 25. You see, the stereotype is of a stupid, oppressed woman forced to do porn because of poverty, drugs or a pimp boyfriend. They do exist, but less so. Jenna Jameson has created her own multi-million dollar company.

I suspect there is a memetic earthquake going on, a gap between what Gen Y thinks of sex and what the Boomers think. This Latino porn star is Gen Y. I’ve encountered the bios of other 18/19/20 year-olds entering the porn industry. Many seem to do it for fun and are happy to do the most explicit and taboo things. Of course exhibitionists are attracted to porn – but the point is this. In the past the nymphomaniac and exhibitionist was derided and shunned, they were problematized and pathologized. But as porn becomes more mainstream their stories get told.

So it doesn’t surprise me to hear a soft spoken teen girl with thick glasses and braces on her teeth say that she sees nothing wrong with being curious about sex and experimenting at the age of 12.

The public debate is still controlled by old conservative men who are not in touch with what the emerging generation think about sex.

Any ‘integral’ sexology needs to consider the pre-conscious aspects of human sexuality. It is now understood that pheromones play a part in sexual attraction. Our mind might tell us we are attracted for this or that reason after the pheromones kick in, but our immediate attraction may be subliminal.

This makes sense. Sex needs to be instinctual. But this raises interesting questions about how much we are actually in control. Of course it is perfectly reasonable to expect people to exercise control over our impulses but the existance of pheromones suggest that such control may be difficult at times.

The really controversial aspect about this biochemistry is that it doesn’t care about age. We already know that parent’s and children are attuned to each other’s pheromones, but the above information suggests that children are susceptible to all pheromones. In crude biochemistry terms any fertile female will be subject to any fertile male’s pheromones. This may (in part) explain the fatal attraction of students to teachers and vice versa – and stepchildren to stepparents. There may an extent to which some boundary crossing is pheromone driven and to which the precocious activity of a girl is beyond her control.

The question then becomes how much conscious control can we exert? Another factor here is the biochemistry of long term relationships. If a certain degree of ‘falling in love’ is a pheromone induced breeding fenzy then long-term monogamy may not be normal. After a few years the pheromone rush wears off and both sexes face the temptation of new genetic possibilities. It might be a better genetic strategy for a mother to have children of different fathers, especially in low populations because it lessens the problems of inbreeding.

On another biochemical front – girls in the West are entering puberty at younger ages. One factor may be that improved diet and lifestyles tell the body it can become fertile earlier.

But not all of this makes sense. Whilst the girl might be fertile her young body is not ready to give birth. Young women are more likely to die in childbirth and give birth to underweight babies. Why would Mother Nature make immature females fertile? Perhaps it’s a numbers game? Enough females and babies survive to make it a worthwhile strategy. So much for intelligent design.

And on that ID note – here’s another great example of God’s infinite wisdom. There was a case in Oz recently where a child was born with part of its esophagus missing. This meant he couldn’t swallow food coz his throat wasn’t connected to his stomach. Now that’s really intelligent design.

I’m not surprised by this trend but what can an integral sexology make of such a trend? First, how wide spread is it in ‘Western’ countries including Canada and the US? I expect the results will be similar. Young girls in particular are influenced by the activities of older role models. A few years ago a trend started amongst late adolescent and early adult women of the girl crush and lesbian fling. Young women were prepared to kiss each other in public and be open to threesomes. A number of celebrities have been linked to this trend and no doubt these girls are very well aware of it.

But is this a bad thing? I’m beginning to see signs of a profound sexual revolution amongst Western kids born since 1980. We are now getting to the children of Wilber’s much loved Gen X – the Boomers are grandparents now. That revolution is an increased casual attitude to sex. It doesn’t carry the weight of ‘very’ serious that it used to. A Canadian documentary (I think I’ve mentioned it before) mentioned the ease at which girls gave oral sex to boys. It wasn’t really sex they said. Again the youngest had been 12. The girls in the Diva article didn’t seem to take their explorations all that seriously, although one or two were quite engaged. The overall impression these girls gave was that it was fun.

Now what do I mean by ‘very’ serious? Basically there was a good deal of stuff loaded onto the sex act. Part of the stress and conflict with teenage experimentation was not due to the rather simple physical act but all the moral and social memes attached to the act. The consequences of being ‘caught’ could be severe and the wayward adolescent could face extreme censure from both parents and external authorities, mainly school, church and the law. In other words the consequences came not from the act but from breaking all the rules attached to the act. Except for the US, which still has highly punitive laws in many states, most Western countries now treat adolescent sex lightly. Many constituencies have a peer provision which tolerates peers within a few years of each other (once again it varies and is usually 2-4 years) the ability to consent. In Victoria, Australia this begins at 10 and is a 2 year period. So it is legal for a 14 year-old to seduce a 12 year-old. This peer exception was introduced to replace the old ‘carnal knowledge’ provisions where a 16 year-old boy could get into trouble for having sex with his 15 year-old girlfriend. Interestingly I doubt the police would ever have been notified in the case of our young adolescent lesbians, although young lesbians were certainly deemed to be in moral danger (see Heavenly Creatures, Kate Winslet’s first film directed by Peter Jackson and based on a true story).

The thing that struck me the most however was just how lusty some of the girls were. There is evidence from male gay literature that many gay men experience desire early, some even pre-puberty. I would suggest that the gay and lesbian scene tolerates and allows early awareness and parents are more likely to hope their children will ‘grow’ out of it. Which, in a round about way, brings me to why this may be happening. Early heterosexual experimentation is still problematic, for two reasons; one is practical and the other cultural. The first is pregnancy and these girls were well aware of the risks of heterosexual sex. The second is the old idea that one should retain one’s virginity. Most of these girls said they were still physically virgins.

I have argued elsewhere that young adolescents are quite capable of sexual desire. Yet conservative moralists persist in the idea of childhood innocence. How innocent are these girls? One described locking herself in her room with her girlfriend on the pretext of study and then having sex ‘all day’ (her words, probably an exaggeration). This story is yet another example of just how wrong these conservatives are.

Another interesting point was that the adult writer of the article, herself a lesbian, was uncomfortable at the frankness of these girls. She commented that one girl had complained that her friend had said at school that she was lousy in bed and wondered if the girl was emotionally mature enough to handle the accusation. I must admit I laughed. Anyone who knows how vicious young adolescent girls can be knows that this is standard behaviour. The thing is that such a rumour can be spread about a girl who has never had sex. There seems to be an inability to separate the physical act from the ‘alleged’ emotional effects. One of the memes attached to the act is the alleged emotional cost. Again, young adolescents can be extremely hard on each other with considerable bullying and emotional abuse. In other words the emotional stress happens anyway as any ‘virgin’ who has been bullied for being frigid can attest. In other words, there can often be intense emotional consequences to not having sex – a reason some girls make the decision to ‘give it away’ – to stop the pressure. As for having their ‘heart’ broken – how many people remember their first love as traumatic. The point is that a nonsexual first romance can send teens into an emotional spin. The fact is that sex may or ‘may not’ make it worse.

This is why I think the critical thing at this age group is teaching them how to negotiate relationships and peer groups. By the time they enter this volatile period they should already know the basics. Remember, one of the girls had her first experience when she was 11. It’s time we stopped being in denial.

I also think it odd that some people can profess a desire to protect children from the alleged emotional trauma of young sex but then be unmoved about school bullying claiming that it will toughen them up. Curiously moral conservatives seem to like ‘tough love’ programs. In which case I can digress into Reich on Fascism and its origins in sexual repression.