The
Dark Side of Eros
by
JOHN YATES Eros
has been viewed as part of the primal life force in all living
creatures, and those of a metaphysical viewpoint might extend this
outward to include the entire universe. It is hard to imagine a more
fitting symbol of life itself than the dance of our sexual energy. Yet
it also is impossible to deny that eros is capable of becoming a force
of death: a force of what might be called “anti-life.” There is
strong evidence to point to the possibility that the anti-life aspects
of eroticism have swept to the forefront in the modern era in the actual
sexual values and practices of many people. Some of those dark aspects
of sexuality – such as the rapid rise of bondage, discipline, sadism
and masochism (BD/SM) to the status of mainstream in our culture – are
solely within the confines of individual psyches. Many things, however,
are openly predatory to other people, such as worldwide surges in child
pornography, child sexual abuse, cults of rape and literal sexual
slavery. Things that were unthinkable even a decade ago have entered the
realm of the commonplace. When
those things are considered, it is hard not to conclude that our culture
has entered the Dark Ages of eros. Perhaps we have never left it. Some Background
Some
people see sexuality as a celebration of life, love, joy and beauty.
This has been the view of a few people over the centuries, but it
entered the mainstream only during the so-called “Sexual Revolution”
that began in the 1960’s. It was not much of a revolution, however,
and little of it went more than skin deep into people’s lives. Sexual
idealism degenerated into simple gratification, as our culture pursued
zipless fucks, thundering orgasms and quantified experiences. Even this
soon was replaced by the excesses of pornography and the cult of
objectification, which reduced people to sexual objects to be consumed,
spit out and disposed of like trash. This, too, came crashing to a halt
with the rapid spread of the AIDS epidemic worldwide. AIDS was the final
coffin nail in the sexual revolution. Conservative
forces were quick to pound this coffin nail in as deep as they could.
Fundamentalist and Catholic churches used AIDS as evidence of a vengeful
god punishing the sinful, and found strange allies with liberal social
reformers and feminists who were justifiably disgusted by the sexual
objectification of women during the era of pornography, and revelations
about the frequency and severity of sexual exploitation of women and
children. The
result was that eros was driven underground, deep within the hidden
places of the human heart and mind. Open expression of sexuality was
repressed and suppressed in equal measures in both individual people and
within the culture as a whole. Expressing even the healthiest aspects of
sexuality was viewed as somewhat akin to lighting up a cigarette in a
child care center: distasteful and vulgar.
Streetwalkers in Nicaragua, (c) 2004 Piet den Blanken When
sexual health was driven into the shadows in a social climate of
sterility, it is not surprising that the dark forces of eros gained
strength. Repression and suppression are classic ways of allowing demons
to grow stronger in the human soul. In place of sexual beauty and
touching the divine, our culture once again identified sexuality along a
spectrum of values ranging from an unfortunate untidy impulse, to a
literal enslavement to Medieval ideas of sin and evil.
With greatly increased frequency, sexuality is being expressed as
a ceremony of death, hatred, despair and unrelieved ugliness. The
dark side of erotic duality only rarely (if at all) is examined and
discussed openly in the hope of understanding who we are both as
individuals and as a culture. It also is a subject that – because of a
tendency toward black and white duality – is impossible to discuss
objectively and without bias. I want to state clearly that my bias is a
strong belief in eros as a source of life, love, joy and beauty. It
is important to say that the subject of erotic duality is not a matter
of “good” and “evil” in conventional definitions of the terms.
The strongly Judeo-Christian background of our culture makes no bones
about defining what it sees as evil in our erotic natures, but considers
“good” merely to be a
denial of all erotic expression that is not tightly constrained by the
rules. In other words, “good” is not defined as something in
particular; it is defined in the negative, as the absence of “evil.”
This is not merely a semantic exercise. Within this Judeo-Christian
framework, joyful and open sexuality is seen as only slightly less evil
than rape. Both require confessions before a priest, paying substantial
penance and begging for forgiveness. Both are considered mortal sins
along a path leading straight to Hell. Likewise,
social reformers always are quick to spot exploitation, but are equally
prone to view the other side of the duality as suspect, threatening and
potentially dangerous. They are quick to condemn rapists, but implicitly
condemn all men – and eros itself - in the same breath as potential
rapists. They hone in on the ugliness of child pornography, and in the
process make it impossible for ordinary people to take pictures of their
baby in the bathwater (besides, Walmart won’t even develop the film). Within
this closeted climate of denial, the forces of darkness have thrived.
Our culture has given us an anorexic view of feminine beauty that can be
achieved only by self-denial bordering on self-punishment. Never in the
worst excesses of the Playboy
era were “boob jobs,” penis “enhancements” and body-altering
plastic surgery anywhere near as common as they are today. While John
Wayne might not have been an ideal role model for men, it is hard to
imagine him donning his cowboy hat and spitting out gansta rap. Not even
in the darkest days of my grandfather’s generation was there half as
much child pornography and sexual abuse of children, and Elvis Presley
would not have been able to even force himself to think about imitating
Eminem’s best selling songs about locking a woman in a car trunk, or
murdering her and having her young daughter help to dispose of the
corpse. My father was not exactly an icon of erotic enlightenment, but
even he would have been appalled at the fact that today 500,000 women a
year are bought and sold into slavery as forced prostitutes. Even he
would have been horrified by anyone who would define sexual pleasure as
chaining one’s partner to a Medieval torture device and whipping her
until she screams and begs for mercy. In
an era of denial on the one hand, and unrelenting ugliness on the other,
who will speak for eros as a force of life and a source of human beauty?
To do so is to expose oneself to attacks by priests, reformers and
perverts alike. Fetish and
Fantasy as God
One
of the major tenets of the so-called Sexual Revolution was that it is
healthy to “let it all hang out” and to live out one’s fantasies.
The theory behind this is that fantasies are a key to understanding
one’s own psyche, and that liberating one’s fantasies is to, in
effect, liberate oneself from the effects of repression and suppression. But
a funny thing happened on the way to liberation: the fantasies took on a
life of their own, and liberation was forgotten. One’s sexual
fantasies became personal identity and an absolute definition of one’s
personal sense of eros. Instead of liberation, fantasies were enshrined. It’s
one thing to fantasize about being covered with whipped cream that your
partner licks off with glee. It’s another thing altogether to
fantasize about raping or being raped, degrading or being degraded,
torturing or being tortured. The dimension is enlarged when
“liberation” is defined simply as living out fantasies, and not as
moving beyond them or healing from their causes. One
cannot rationally criticize another person for fantasizing that he or
she wishes to be raped, for example. If we are compassionate and
perceptive, it is easy to understand how these feelings might result
from the anguished aspects of American sexuality and the painful loss of
self-esteem that many children experience. A terrible fact is that many
people are psychologically wounded, and that these wounds run deep.
However, this situation is carried into another dimension when the
person idealizes his or her wounds, defines them as normal and
acceptable, keeps rubbing them raw, and comes to believe that acting out
the wounded part of the psyche is the definition of personal identity.
This is not a rationalization. It is reality for many people when it
comes to sexuality.
Prostitute at a gold-seeker's brothel in Ecuador (c)2004 Piet den Blanken Perhaps
it might be more clear to first look at this on a purely physical level,
to see how the process works. Imagine that someone had an untreated
wound that had become infected, and had started to fester and ooze pus.
Most people would be compassionate about this problem, and do everything
they could to help someone clear up the infection and heal the wound.
But what if the person said his or her wound was good? What if the
festering wound became the person’s definition of health? What if the
person continually shoved the pus-filled wound into your face and asked
you to love it? What if the person sought out only other people whose
wounds were infected, and used this shared reality as the primary basis
for forming relationships? That
is exactly what has happened, on a psychological level, with the sexual
wounds experienced by many people in our culture. Festering wounds have
become part of the erotic mainstream, and they appear to be feeding on
themselves and expanding exponentially throughout a culture that has
come to view victimization as the norm, and somehow even as a status
symbol. By
mainstream, I mean that something is widespread throughout the culture
and is accepted as within the realm of normalcy by a large percentage of
people. As an experiment, I went to the Yahoo.com search engine for
websites on the Internet. A search for bondage websites yielded 13.2
million entries. Pornography yielded 2.3 million; sadism, 243,000;
masochism, 383,000; dominance and submission, 14,600; BD/SM, 449,000;
and rape fantasies, 42,600. Google and Alta Vista search engines yielded
comparable results. In
contrast, Yahoo searches yielded only 254,000 web sites for a
combination of love and sex, there were only 17,600 websites for
“healthy sexuality” and only 14,100 websites under the heading of
sacred sexuality. The comparison speaks rather dramatically about the
mainstream of modern culture. Unfortunately,
many people might use those large numbers to justify their own practices
of BD/SM. Another characteristic of many Americans is the tendency to
view large numbers as an indication of value and worth, as if ethics
boils down to a popularity contest. Given the popularity of BD/SM in its
many variations, it sometimes can be hard to visualize what’s wrong
with it. What is wrong with it? After all, both partners in BD/SM usually are
willing participants. The answer is twofold. One part of the answer
involves cause, and the other centers on effect. All
forms of BD/SM involve power. Its proponents call it a “power
exchange.” One partner yields power, and the other takes it. One
partner whips, and the other one is whipped. One partner is bound and
gagged, while the other is in control. One partner is humiliated, while
another does the humiliating. One partner is raped, while the other is
the rapist. In all cases, one partner has power, and the other has none
(at least on the surface).
What
causes this exchange of power? Let’s look at this question
psychologically. Power really boils down to personal power and control
over one’s own life. Someone who seeks power over another person
almost always feels utterly powerless about him-herself, or feels that
her/his life is out of control. Someone who relinquishes power over
her-himself, does so because of feelings of inadequacy to meet the
demands of responsibility to one’s self and to life. Both stem from
serious deficiencies in self-esteem. Both stem from feelings of
incompetence and unworthiness. Thus, the first thing that is wrong with
BD/SM is that it enshrines low self-esteem and feelings of
powerlessness. It is the psychology of victimization with the ironic
twist of defining victimization as health. It is the language of
hopelessness and despair, concluding that human beings are as powerless
as blowing leaves in a universe raging out of control. It is the erotic
equivalent of saying, “life sucks and then you die.” In sexual
terms, it says that you and I are nothing at all: just meaningless and
pointless illusions being tossed around in a meaningless and pointless
life. As
such, it is anti-human. It is anti-life. BD/SM exists in the service of
death, psychically, spiritually and pragmatically. The
second thing that’s wrong with BD/SM has to do with its effect. By
enshrining victimization, wounded self-esteem, pointlessness,
hopelessness and meaninglessness, BD/SM is spreading the spirit of death
and despair throughout the world and into the future. The negative
aspects of BD/SM are not confined to the bedroom, but help to concretize
a person’s self-image and image of life that is projected to his or
her children, and outward into the whole world. I am a believer in what
might be called practical karma. That means that each one of us impacts
the world, be it for good or for ill. If we are filled with anger, our
anger spreads all around us and extends like the ripples of a stone cast
into still water. We infect another person with our anger, and that
person, in turn, passes it on to someone else, and in a very short
period of time it has traveled around the world and comes back to us.
It’s a definition of a vicious circle: My boss kicks me, I kick my
wife, my wife kicks the kid, the kid kicks the dog, the dog bites the
cat…ad infinitum. When
applied specifically to eros, BD/SM reinforces a lot of the things that
are horribly wrong with the world. While consensual rape might be a
fantasy, it keeps alive the idea of rape and the psychological impulse
to use rape to terrorize and control. If one acts out fantasies of
humiliation, one keeps the need to humiliate and be humiliated alive in
the psyche. This cannot help but be projected onto other parts of life,
such as a boss who intimidates her employees or a father who uses
humiliation to discipline his children. This also boils down to using
eros in the service of death. |
When
it comes to an individual person, animal or plant, it is clear that all
life stems from the union of male and female, and that this is central
to understanding the nature of the erotic. New life springs from the
loins of sexuality. Biologists probably would tell us that the purpose
of eros is reproduction: making babies. From a strictly functional
point of view, that makes some sense. From a human point of view,
however, it is almost laughable in its shallowness. To anyone who has
had her first kiss, or felt drawn to a partner in his dreams, there is
no doubt that eros means much more than it’s biological explanation.
The urge to join another person in sexual dance – even a purely
physical sexual act – strikes us to the core of who we are. Our entire
identity is wrapped up in our sexuality. In this regard, I make no
distinction between a horny woman who wants to get laid, a man who
sincerely practices Tantra as transcendent spirituality, or someone who
wants to dominate or degrade her partner. In all three cases (and for
everyone along the entire spectrum in-between these extremes), sexuality
is at the heart of personal identity in both the present and over the
course of his or her life. Our sexuality is one of the ways we know we
are alive. Its power and pervasiveness in human life is undeniable.
