Monday, December 21, 2009

Surprise! Sex Is Not Psychologically Damaging

It always makes me laugh when people go all wide-eyed and self-righteous and start telling me that the American society is "sexually permissive," "porned," and "raunchy." These are the people who believe that a lot of talking about sex somehow equals having a lot of sex, which, of course, is silly and untrue. A recent study on the psychological effects of casual sex is a perfect example of how insane the sex-based discourse is in this country.

This is how the study in question announces the context of the research:
Speculation in public discourse suggests that sexual encounters outside a committed romantic relationship may be emotionally damaging for young people, and federal abstinence education policy has required teaching that sexual activity outside of a marital relationship is likely to have harmful psychological consequences.
So the researches set out to prove that casual sex does not damage the participants psychologically (even though it obviously does a lot of damage to the sex-deprived journalists and members of the public, who cannot get over the idea that somebody somewhere is actually having sex and maybe even - the horror! the horror! - enjoting it.)

The results of this study were not surprising: casual sex or "sexual activity outside of a marital relationship" does not cause psychological damage. Why it is necessary to waste resources and time on proving something that is so obvious is beyond my comprehension. Every sane individual must surely know that it's the absence of sex that causes grave psychological harm. It is sad that scientists are forced to dedicate themselves to proving self-evident things simply because a large group of sexually repressed maniacs has colonized public discourse.

4 comments:

ktravula said...

LOL

NancyP said...

Absence of sex doesn't cause grave psychological harm for all people - it is perfectly normal to not have (or have) sex in some situations or stages in life. Some people (1 to 2%?) are just fine with being celibate life-long. Some people frequent basis. Sometimes absence of sex may be a symptom of psychological disease, not a cause.

N.B. "grave psychological harm" doesn't mean: cross, horny, bearably lonely or sad once in a while, or other minor condition of living.

Clarissa said...

If the absence of sex causes people to bomb abortion clinics, froth at the mouth at the thought of anybody having sex, invest millions of taxpayer dollars into purity balls and abstinence only education, bomb other countries to vent their frustrations, etc., we can safely assume that the absence of sex has inflicted grave harm upon these particular individuals.

Anonymous said...

I'm hoping the author of the article isn't trying to suggest the researchers had a motive with the analysis: "So the researches set out to prove that casual sex does not damage the participants psychologically". But sex isn't a simple topic. Everyone interprets it different, and what I mean is that for some there is no "meaning", it is only an action. For others it does. And for those that it does mean something, casual sex, when encountered, can be less than blissful. And usually the ones having casual sex are the ones who don't define sex as being meaningful all of the time. In which case, this research is not complete.