Once upon a time a magazine ran the following joke with a picture of a little boy and girl. The boy says, ,To tell you the truth, I wish I had been born before sex., From this one could almost conclude that ‘sex’ was invented in the sixties.
All and everyone
Suddenly everything and everyone started talking about ‘sex’ at every opportunity and opportunity and everyone was urged to focus all their energy on our sexuality, sexual experience, sexual relationship, sex this and sex that. Few other things seemed to no longer matter or be important. Some of the women who expressed their views said that the sexual revolution placed an over-emphasis on sexuality and that they felt this could be very oppressive to some people. ,Sex is making me sick,, said one woman, sex, sex and more sex everywhere! So what? Life does not stand or fall on sex alone. It is very beautiful but there is more.’ Another said: ‘On one hand I almost long for the mysterious days of the past, when people just didn’t talk about sex. Not because it was dirty, but because it was a private matter, something that only affected you and your partner. Yet another noted that the idea that sexual intercourse is necessary for health has become a commercial issue.
Television, radio, newspapers and other media
The way this idea is presented by advertisers, psychiatrists, sexual counselors, television, radio, newspapers and other media sometimes frightens a woman. Another said the following: ‘If I haven’t had sexual intercourse for a while, strangely enough my desire disappears and that worries me a bit. I then start to wonder if there is something wrong with me. And that makes me feel obliged to have sex. I then think ‘oh, it’s been a while since I did it’. And then I think it’s about time again!’ A woman who had a satisfying sexual relationship confessed that the myth that regular and imaginative intercourse is essential for health had also influenced her. ‘I think,’ she said, ‘that sexuality has its right place in my life: it expresses our love. Yet I still feel bothered by this fairy tale every now and then. And I sometimes wonder whether we are doing it right. Perhaps sexual intercourse is less important to me than to others.’ Some are very concerned with the fear of whether they are having intercourse often enough and whether they are doing it in the right way. They are based on the idea that sexual intercourse is something that some people have to learn and for which others have a special aptitude. As if there was such a thing as a sex expert! This means that they tend to worry about whether they are performing sufficiently sexually.
Men and women
Men are especially prone to such concerns. Because despite women’s emancipation, many men consider it their duty to take the initiative in the sexual act and to show their sexual experience to their partner. Anxiety about this can be especially high among those men for whom a series of sexual conquests is the most important achievement in their lives. Women also feel obliged to have an orgasm on command, otherwise they will be labeled as frigid (literally: cold). The result of this concern about sex expertise is that the technique becomes an obsession, although mastery in this area yields little. If sexual freedom has any meaning, it should include both the freedom to love and the freedom not to love, without feeling guilty or inferior.
The last free area
It is said that modern man is so preoccupied with sexuality because it is the last free area in an industrialized society. But is it a free area? There is no freedom when there is coercion. Alexander Lowen has commented: ‘Today one can easily detect a compulsive attitude in work, leisure, and sexual intercourse. If sexual intercourse is reduced to a technique and if this last great mystery in life is converted into a formula, man will become an automaton, completely controlled by his ego, his ‘I’, and stripped of all passion and lust. ‘