Destigmatizing “Unholy” Sexual Desires
It’s Perfectly Normal To Be A Sexual Being
I appreciated Sam Smith and Kim Petras’s Grammys performance of their hit song Unholy because moments like that force Americans to face the fact that we are sexual beings with sexual desires.
Many of these fantasies and desires if said out loud would be called weird, abnormal, or dirty. Ironically, by the same people who are secretly fantasizing about the same thing.
If you found the kinky apparel and themes in the Unholy video or Grammy performances as a turn-on, that doesn't mean anything is wrong with you and you’re definitely not alone.
Research shows most Americans admit to fantasizing about kinky sex and group play when they are surveyed anonymously. But refuse to talk about it with their friends, partner, and publicly because they are too ashamed.
I can’t blame them.
We live in a culture that shames people for basic sexual encounters like one-night stands, watching porn, and masturbation. Those topics feel taboo enough, I can’t imagine the amount of shame and embarrassment that you have to feel to start a conversation about wanting to try sex toys or having sex with more than one person at a time.
That’s the goal of this article and probably the goal of Smith and Petras’s performance, to start conversations about the sexual fantasies we go through our whole life repressing. The only way we can normalize these topics are by talking about them, especially since they are so common and normal.
There once was a world in which oral and anal sex were seen as taboo, sinful, and abnormal then as a culture we matured to understand that those are both normal parts of the human sexual experience. Now I want to start conversations on kink, group sex, and non-monogamy so Americans can stop missing out on the full playground that is human sexuality.
The Numbers
Before I break down the surveys I want to acknowledge that no matter what the number says; if you don’t personally know anyone that has the same sexual fantasies as you then knowing the numbers still won’t make you feel any less lonely.
The reason why I am showing you these survey numbers is to reaffirm to you that no matter how you feel, you’re not alone and you’re not different. The reason why you don’t know anyone who has the same desires as you is not because there’s something wrong with you but because other people have been conditioned to repress and hide those desires just like you.
Nonetheless here are the numbers.
Social psychologist, sex researcher, and Kinsey Institute fellow, Dr. Justin Lehmiller conducted the largest anonymous survey of 4,000 Americans on their sexual desires and fantasies and published the results in his book “Tell Me What You Want: The Science of Sexual Desires and How it Can Help You Improve Your Sex Life”. What he found made me question the ideas of what we consider “normal” sexual desires.
According to Dr. Lehmiller’s surveys, 97% of Americans fantasize about sex. This doesn’t sound too abnormal until further looking at the survey of what we regularly fantasize about.
- 89% of Americans fantasize about threesomes
- 74% fantasize about group sex (more than three)
- 60% fantasize about inflicting pain during sex
- 65% fantasize about receiving pain during sex
- Around 33% actively participate in kinky sex on at least a monthly basis
- Around 33% of Americans have acted out their sexual fantasies.
These findings mirror the results that NYU professor Dr. Zhana Vrangalova found in her research, though her research focused specifically on the sexual fantasies of people in monogamous relationships.
Interestingly enough the desires of people in monogamous relationships really don’t differ that much from those in the population at large.
Similarly, about a third of people in and out of relationships said that non-monogamy is their ideal relationship dynamic and about 24% of Americans are actively participating in a non-monogamous relationship.
I do want to note that there is a participation bias. People who are willing to participate in anonymous online surveys on their sexual fantasies are probably going to have a more positive attitude toward sex.
However, these biases wouldn't be enough to skew the results enough to disprove the takeaway from the survey that the majority of Americans secretly desire these types of sex.
Shame
In truth, American purity culture fucked up our perception of sexuality so much that we can’t even talk about the fun stuff because many people are still ashamed of things like porn, masturbation, and sex in general.
It’s not individual Americans' fault for burdening these feelings of embarrassment for everyday sexual behaviors because we were born into a culture that shames us for being sexual beings.
Historically major institutions like religious institutions, the medical and mental health community, and the government have not been friendly to any form of sexual expression that wasn’t focused on a penis going into a vagina.
These institutions conditioned us that there are normal and abnormal ways to desire and participate in sex. Then labeled the people who desired sex in any other way than penile and vagina as sinful, pathological, weird, and perverted.
This cultural conditioning works so well that over 50% of Americans are too scared to tell their sexual fantasies to even a long-term sexual partner.
Repression
If most people desire more from sex than just the typical penis and vagina penetration then why don’t more people participate in various forms of sex?
Well remember about a third of the country participates in kink and about a fifth to a quarter are actively participating in some form of non-monogamy. Admittedly there’s probably a big overlap between people who participate in kink and non-monogamy due to the attitudes of sexual liberation and the ability to defy social norms around sex.
Either way, there are a lot of people out there experiencing the full breadth of human sexuality but due to shame, embarrassment, and the cultural conditioning that sex lives should be private, most people who participate in these activities just don’t talk about it.
The less people talk about various forms of sexual expressions, the rarer it feels and the more it’s stigmatized.
Then there are other groups of people who routinely fantasize and desire kink and nonmonogamy but just simply repress it. I feel bad for those people to know that sexually you would receive such fulfillment from an experience but due to stigma and shame never experience it.
Have you ever heard the statement: “there are more queer people now than there were 100 years ago”. It’s not because queer people didn’t exist 100 years ago, it’s because a lot of people simply were forced to repress their sexual identities due to the stigmatization, discrimination, and unfriendly cultural environment.
Same with people when it comes to different sexualities today. Most people just conform to what society tells them they should like because it’s hard to accept the consequences and the stigmatization that comes with admitting to ourselves and others the truth of our sexual desires.
Conformity can be a way to avoid confronting your sexual desires. It’s freedom from freedom in a beautifully ironic way. If you are ashamed of your sexuality, conformity is a way to relinquish responsibility and allow society to decide for you what you should desire.
Due to everlasting shame and embarrassment of our sexualities, conformity for many people is the only way that they can convince themselves to enjoy their sex life.
Sure you will have to deal with repression for the rest of your life but most of us would rather deal with repression than feel abnormal and guilty about our sex lives.
Internal Resentment
There’s one major issue with conformity and repression, you will always have to deal with yourself. I don’t think we truly understand how deep internal shame about sex goes until we start trying to unpack it.
Many of us still deal with the feelings that our sexual desires make us feel dirty, icky, and wrong. Though according to Dr. Lehmiller’s work, the overwhelming majority of these sexual fantasies are consensual and safe.
We aren’t resenting our sexual fantasies because they hurt others. We resent our sexual fantasies because society has conditioned us to. We were lied to and told that it’s not normal to desire the things that most of us fantasize about.
We know this is a lie because when we can anonymously and shamefully absorb these topics, we do. Kinky posts on TikTok go viral on regular bases, 50 Shades of Grey is a bestseller book series with three movies, the porn we watch is normally either group or kink-focused and anonymous surveys have two-thirds of Americans regularly fantasizing about taboo sexual acts.
When we have the cover of anonymity we get to be our true selves. The problem still lies that many of us hate our true selves because there’s a notion that what we want is bad or unnatural. Many Americans still feel “guilty” about watching porn or even desiring sex at all. They hate themselves for being themselves.
I have a theory that this self-hatred is what makes us compensate by condemning publically what we secretly desire privately. Explaining why two-thirds of our population can regularly fantasize about kink and group sex but there is still such a cultural stigma.
A Path to Self Love
The most important thing when dealing with sexual self-resentment is to reaffirm to yourself that you’re normal. Remember that you’re a sexual being and that other people are sexual beings, and it’s only natural to have sexual desires.
The second thing is to embrace your sexual desires as not something to be ashamed of but as something that is part of your identity. It’s no different than your favorite food, favorite hobbies, and places to travel. By destigmatizing sexual fantasies internally then you can work to destigmatize sexual fantasies in our culture.
Which is the final point. We need a community to undo the harm purity culture has done. However, we will never progress on this topic if the only conversation and discourse around sex continue to be either products of purity culture or the medical community's failure to speak on pleasure-focused sex.
Therefore I suggest Googling the things that you are into for resources and communities near you. There you can find people who have already moved past social conditioning and the internal repression of sexuality. Followed by honest and consensual conversations around sexuality with your friends and loved ones that could be struggling with the same type of repression that you are.
Hopefully, then we can move into a sexual culture that we can all truly enjoy.
