Sex and Delusion

audio journal transcript, driving to work

This morning I was thinking about sex and delusion. Actually, I was thinking about the social construction of sex. I had been reading Maha Boowa’s biography of Acariya Mun (both well-known Buddhist monks in the Thai Forest tradition) and was thinking about how Theravadan monks can’t touch women. Actually, if you think of it, it kind of make sense; if you become a monk at a young age and haven’t had any experience—have I already said this?—haven’t had any experience being socialized with women, being around women in their various roles as people and as different parts of society, when those hormones kick in, you only have one source of information: what your hormones are telling you. That’s never a good thing. We know that.

I could see in that context trying to continue to keep women cloistered is a strategy that kinda makes sense. Whereas if you bring kids up with a more humanistic view of—or with humanistic socialization where people are individuals and not just their social role or gender identity—you would have maybe more awareness of or control over that kind of reaction that’s prompted just by sheer instinct. I say awareness of/control over because I think it’s clearly the awareness part that that helps. Control over is not so helpful without the awareness, cuz then you’re just kind of repressing something by brute force without really examining it.

The reason I say that is cuz two things. I was sitting in mediation yesterday, and this has happened not unfrequently, and just this very kind of antisocial, id-ish type thought would leap into my mind every so often. I’m like, “Wait a second! Where did that come from? I’m not that person! I don’t think like that! Is that what they call the id? I don’t even know if I believe in the id.”

Then I was reading the Acariya Mun biography. The biographer actually mentioned something about kilesas or defilements in that respect, that these things are no joking matter. You really don’t know what you’re dealing with. I forget how he put it, but it made me realize that might be what I’m encountering in my practice.

It did make me think of desire as being partly a social construct. In addition to it actually being an instinctual part of—cuz like the argument for subjugation of women in patriarchal cultures is that men can’t control themselves around women. Which, as we know, is simply that men WON’T control themselves around women and they exist embedded in a social structure which facilitates rape and abuse and violence against women. I’m saying that non-ironically. It seems to me pretty self-evident. You don’t have to be Andrea Dworkin, you don’t have to take things that far. All you have to do is open your eyes.

[Digression into local human trafficking news, psychological manipulation techniques and reflections upon certain bird mating displays]

The same kind of social rituals that go into manipulation and victimization of these people [trafficking victims] are also in another sense erotic. To me, to a lot of people, some of them. That’s completely terrifying. If you don’t know where to draw the line, that is completely terrifying. How do you know where to draw the line?

Somehow, some of us figure out where to draw a line. Apparently, it’s possible! Hence, what I say about the institutionalized misogyny being at some level a choice. If it’s a choice, you can become aware of it and you can choose not to do it. If you think that’s worth doing, if you think that women are people, etcetera, etcetera.

This was all in the shower. I thought as an added kind of proof of that idea, of that concept, you have women who for centuries now have been subjugating their sex drive, being non-orgasmic, not being aware of the sexual aspect of their being and suffering the consequences of what happens when you do that. Cuz it’s painful, it’s difficult, it’s hard and it sucks, but if you’re risking your life to project a sexual identity and try to get sexual satisfaction, you’re probably gonna learn how to suppress that.

What men would say is, “Women, they just—they’re non-orgasmic, they’re not as into sex.” I’ve had my guy friends say this to me, ones from older generations especially, but I’m sure lots of younger ones still think it. That’s not the case at all. It’s just that it’s too dangerous to show it, to let it show its face. It will strip you of your freedom, your ability to survive, a lot of that shit.

Yes, in part desire is socially constructed. If women can learn to subjugate their sexual identity in the interest of their sheer survival, then men can learn to control themselves around women and no longer have to project onto women their raging, uncontrolled hormonal impulses and make it out like women are the feeble, tainted, etcetera etcetera sex.

Maybe someone somewhere will start to doubt that any of it is even real.