A basic tenet of behavior is that frustration leads to fixation. Starve a puppy and the grown dog will just never seem to get enough to eat. In 21st Century America, sex is the commodity that is doled out on a starvation ration and the result is a population with an insatiable appetite for anything even remotely related to a carnal act.
Radio talk show personalities entertain vast audiences with behind the barn humor, television sitcoms provide a steady diet of innuendo, corporations use sexy ads to sell their products, and even national news anchors are not above a lengthy wallow in the president's latest peccadilloes.
The fact is, ladies and gentleman, this is a society hooked on sex; a perfectly normal, healthy, wholesome pleasure has been turned into a full-blown religion complete with high priests spouting dogma, irrational beliefs, runaway emotions and the threat of retribution at every turn.
Can you imagine Mother Nature scratching her head? "I give 'em a simple treat and they build a damn cathedral!"
Now, lest you think I exaggerate, consider the next few news items and then tell me if indeed this is not a sick, sexually dysfunctional society.
While a female trainer was examining the leg of a University of Tennessee football player - who had complained of a possible game related injury - the young man suddenly stood up and playfully mooned a teammate. On finding herself suddenly next to a bare male butt, the distressed trainer fled the locker room, began three months of medical leave and subsequently sued the school for $300,000. One can only assume that if the poor woman had been subjected to full frontal nudity, she may well have been disabled for life.
So you smile and nod your head at yet another silly suit making it through the courts but consider the fact that there are a significant number of potential jurors out there who actually believe that the mere act of viewing certain body parts can disable an otherwise healthy individual. Tell you what - you send me $14.95 and a picture of any body part you got and I'll look at it - in fact, if I really like it, maybe I'll send you $14.95!
Moving right along, a community in North Carolina ordered that three chapters be cut from a high school textbook because they dealt with contraception and sexually transmitted disease. Of course this is not to be confused with book burning, which is a bad thing, as technically this was nothing more than a case of chapter burning - which the elected officials in North Carolina obviously feel is a good thing.
So let's see how this works: You remove textbook references to sex and, low and behold, that particular subject will never occur to teenagers. OK-OK, I can hear all the shouts from all the school board members: "Of course some teenagers will be drawn to evil no matter how hard we try to protect them - we know this - we're not stupid after all." So I stand corrected. Ignorance is bliss. And I suppose too that there is no small satisfaction in knowing that a fair number of those students who do sin, despite their community's best efforts, will at least wind up pregnant and/or diseased. Serves 'em right!
In the nation's capitol, lawmakers have been busy budgeting $250 million in subsidies that are to be used promoting something called Abstinence Education. The curricula must teach that sexual activity outside of marriage is likely to have harmful psychological and/or physical effects. Any deviation from this unconditional doctrine will result in an immediate loss of government funding.
A quote from an approved AE textbook reads "There's no way to have premarital sex without hurting someone", and that pretty much says it all; one penis, one vagina, fifty years. In any risk-to-benefit analysis of this position the risks of premarital sex are absolute while the benefits are nil. There is no mention of the thrill, the joy, the pleasure, the enormous sense of mental and physical well-being that accompanies a sensuous commingling of bodies.
With a one-sided, heavy-handed message like that, you just know AE is going to provide an irresistible attraction for kids; anything adults say is that bad must really be something! And so it continues through yet another generation - ZAP: you're fixated.
And finally, how about a few facts from a recent issue of American Demographics. It seems that the National Opinion Research Center has found, after extensive surveys, that less than 15% of the population engage in more than 50% of all sexual behavior. The average adult has sex once a week; one in 5 haven't had it in over a year, and only one in 20 enjoy it as often as two or three times a week.
A reporter commenting on these findings said that Americans seemed "fascinated with the details of other people's sex lives", and that this suggested "something quirky." In her opinion, those to whom she referred to as "the sexy few" were clearly unhealthy - using sex to "escape from an unhappy community life or to compensate for a general attitude of suspicion toward everyone else." Right on lady, there's nothing wrong with you. It's all those other people - those compensating, suspicious, sexy people - who are sick.
Contact the author at DrSBMason at @aol.com