In light of recent campus events, the link between sex and violence is on everyone’s mind. Since then, many worried discussions have proven a known truth about human nature: we are inherently flawed.
Our society has created rules, punishments and guilt to "tame" our nature.
They acknowledge and attempt to correct the fact that we are instinctively violent. Our collective obsessions with sex and violence in art and entertainment–pornography in particular–prove this. The relationship between sex and violence is deemed socially unnatural, and it is due to society’s ingrained guilt that we see this relationship as perverse, denying the truth of human nature.
Sex is in no way immoral as nothing natural can be immoral. The controversy surrounding pornographic images, sexual violence and crimes that are sexual in nature only further illustrates humanity’s violent nature.
Take the act of rape, for instance. It is sexual, violent and without mutual consent. It violates the victim’s natural and legal rights. It is a crime and rightfully so.
However, rape is not a question of sex, it is a question of power. The act of rape, seen through the eyes of a rapist, isn’t necessarily viewed as wrong. Yet by punishing the rapist we don’t better their nature, we merely taint their outlook. We have a society that deems the act of rape perverse and wrong without properly delineating between violent sex (born of lust and wholly natural) and sexual dominance (born of a need for power and generally destructive).
As one of our most natural instincts, sex is often labelled by society as immoral, perverse, and unnatural. The negative connotations embodied in this natural urge create a society that shames human nature. We are what we are, and society cannot change our flaws.
The link between sex and violence is oftentimes denied, ignoring the root of the "problem." Sex is violent because of human nature. To mask this, society creates myths of love, social contracts of marriage, religion, and other "righteous" ideals. We’ve created a society that cannot accept that which makes us human. Our society views sex as an immoral act outside the bond of marriage. Explicit images of sex are often censored and pornographic materials are only socially accepted when viewed in the privacy of our own homes.
At some point we’ve all seen some sort of pornographic material. What we haven’t realized is that the very content of porn depicts–with its subtle concept of the male sadist and the female masochist–that which is true about human nature. Yet society is all too quick to label this perverse.
Well forgive me Father, for I have sinned. I have indulged in the most natural of instincts and, believe it or not, I have come to terms with my oh-so-flawed nature.
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