Why Sex is Taboo
When social stability collides with individual adventurousness
Why is there a taboo around sexual behaviour?
Sex is pleasurable, essential for our species’ survival, and experienced in some form by nearly every adult human being who has ever lived. Yet it’s not something most feel able to talk freely about. An obscuring social convention seems to have been thrown around it, an awkwardness, not quite an outright prohibition, but a collective prudishness nonetheless.
I believe this taboo arises because of a tension between two fundamental human needs. On one hand there’s our need for security, which manifests itself as a desire for order and predictability. We formalise this need through customs and traditions. Following the rules keeps our tribe safe and power consolidated in the hands of those who possess it. This is the philosophy of conservatism.
On the other hand there’s the equally strong need for adventure. To challenge rules, make new connections and push outward into new territory. This is enshrined in the philosophy of liberalism.
Sex for procreation, with legitimised offspring that will guarantee the inherited transform of power is inherently conservative. This belief seeks to minimise and control sexual activity to a small number of officially sanctioned relationships. This keeps society stable and predictable.
Sex for recreation, unconstrained by social conventions, is more disruptive. This belief seeks to maximise the number of human relationships. This sounds great to modern ears, but without any rules, society can become unstable, and risks degenerating into individualism and libertine sex cults.
You can see these forces represented Jan van Eyck’s extraordinary Ghent Altarpiece, just above the figures of Adam and Eve, their nakedness coyly covered by fig leaves in compliance with 15th century morals. On one side is social order, depicted by a bountiful harvest and a dutiful sacrifice. On the other side is disorder, envy, and murder.
Human societies have evolved to find a sweet spot between these two extremes, which in the last 2000 years has been closer to conservatism. In Thomas Hobbes’ highly influential book Leviathan, he describes the underlying reason, how all societies collectively choose to make a social compact: trading their freedom for safety.
Sex is no different. For hundreds of generations, our ancestors have traded sexual freedom for social safety. Initially the sanction for crossing sexual boundaries would have been shame and ostracism. Expulsion from a tribe being a severe, often lethal, outcome. Then as laws became codified, the agreed sexual boundaries were enforced by financial penalties and violence.
Sexual shame exists to keep society stable, like a gravitational pull that stops its individuals flying off in all directions. Stable societies have a selection advantage, they grow faster, last longer, and most crucially, each successive generation eventually agrees to adopt the prevailing social norms.
This is why so few talk about sex outside the bedroom. Sex is a chaotic, destabilising force in a closely choreographed society that requires order to function. That’s why there are rules on public decency and nakedness. Why laws exist to regulate sexual behaviour and relationships. Why complete sexual candour doesn’t exist. Why even though we intuitively know that sex is quite natural and everyone does it, yet talking about it can feel awkward, even creepy.
But this is not a post arguing we should be aiming for a new kind of sexual enlightenment, to free our minds and do away with taboos that imprison us. The reason why taboos exist is because they bring some important positive social benefits.
Taboos help prevent the emergence of sexual anarchy, by setting our society’s ethical expectations, ensuring the strong do not exploit the weak. This is crucial to enforcing fundamental concepts like informed consent and the age of consent, prohibiting exploitation and ensuring victims are defended by the force of law.
That’s why sexual taboos exist, not because sex is inherently bad or filthy, but because we have collectively decided to trade some of our sexual freedom for something much more valuable: civilisation.
Hence the existence of sexual shame should not be resented, but acknowledged. We should appreciate the stability it brings to the societies we inhabit. If shame didn’t exist, you wouldn’t necessarily achieve the liberated life of abundant sexual opportunity you might imagine in your dreams. It would more likely be a seedy predatory dystopia, ruled by those prepared to use force, if anything goes, there’d be no willingness to ensure boundaries like consent are respected.
The right to have a private life is the compromise that has evolved between social stability and individuals’ desire for sexual freedom. Through the ages societies have tacitly accepted activities that were officially frowned upon, like adultery (mistresses), prostitution, and homosexuality — as long as these were done in private, with willing participants.
If you do feel inhibited by sexual shame, just remember you still have every right to your own fantasies. You deserve to have a private life, with your own sexual privacy, and the right to choose what you’re comfortable disclosing and with whom. This is particularly important for those whose interests lie outside the sexual mainstream, such as kinks and fetishes.
It’s perfectly fine to enjoy kinks in private, there’s a huge difference between living a lie, and just being discreet so you can be true to yourself. Keeping your sexual interests to yourself doesn’t make you a deviant, it makes you a respectful grown-up.
Carl Jung knew this when he proposed the concept of The Shadow. Every light casts a shadow, and we’re biologically wired to perceive shadows as dark, but we shouldn’t forget that the beautiful, unique and wondrous light that cast the shadow — is You. The Light is your public persona: the showcase of your personality, everything you want to be, and want to project.
Your Shadow, by contrast, is composed of all things we’d rather keep hidden, the secrets and thoughts we decide to keep to ourselves, often because of social taboos. We are social creatures, and society functions because we have masks to wear and roles to play. As we grow up we learn to be discreet, deciding what side of ourselves to present in public. But that’s ok, our culture might unravel if everyone was suddenly completely candid with each other, there’s nothing wrong with keeping certain thoughts and desires private.
Jung believed our Shadow self also contains our frustrations, anxieties, and insecurities — but also that was there was gold in the Shadow. That it wasn’t a mental dumping ground, some toxic cache of shame and humiliation, but a vital creative resource. It was a private playground, out of sight of society’s potentially disapproving eye. A region to explore, and ultimately embrace — after all, our Shadow is as much part of us as our hands.
Seen this way, the nature of our Shadows is nothing to be embarrassed about. Your Shadow is not your Dark Side, or some evil simulacrum of you. It is your Private Side. Whatever turns you on, whatever fantasies you harbour, that’s fine. Everyone has a right to mental privacy, to decide what they reveal about themselves, and what they keep secret. Proponents of surveillance insist “if you’ve nothing to hide, you’ve nothing to fear”. But they’re wrong, we all have something to hide, and every right to continue hiding it.
Jung acknowledged the rational basis of taboos, and the importance of not demonising what we might hesitate to admit to. That we should not be disturbed by our private desires or recoil from them, that we should seek to understand and accommodate this side of ourselves, rather than repress it.
So, if you’re reading this because you’ve had a secret interest in spanking for as long as you can remember, and you’re worried that you’ve been forced into leading a weird clandestine life: do not be concerned. Everyone has their own kinks and erotic peculiarities, it’s just they’re all hidden, just like yours.
And, don’t forget, there is another very positive side of illicitness. We often eroticise things we fear to say aloud. If they weren’t quite so forbidden, they wouldn’t be anywhere near as hot.
If you enjoy thought-provoking conversations on kink and sexuality, you should join us Backstage in our new readers’ community.
