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Key points
- Shame can be a potent emotional torment that can inhibit some people from living their best lives.
- Bodily and sexual shame can combine to influence how people feel about their sexualities and relationships.
- Religions and capitalism have the potential to give sex-negative messages that could encourage shame.
Shame is a potent emotion that can have serious impacts on people’s abilities to enjoy themselves or even live authentically. Whether they are coming from a religion that said sexual desire was bad and seeking pleasure sinful or a culture steeped in unrealistic ideas about how bodies look and function, there is no shortage of messages seeking to shame people for their bodies and sexualities. Because bodies are so deeply integrated into sex for most people, even non-sexual messages about body shame can influence how people feel about themselves sexually.
Religious Shame
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For some religions, self-acceptance is an important element of a personal relationship with the divine and a pathway to growth or perhaps even enlightenment. These religions often see sexual pleasure as more of a distraction from divine focus than as an evil force that must be denied. Other religions, however, that view sexuality as dangerous and pleasure as sinful may be more likely to emphasize bodily shame and sexual self-control—especially for women—as a moral imperative. For people who grew up in these religious traditions, it can be very difficult to relax and enjoy themselves when part of them thinks that what they are doing is a bad thing, against divine will, or sinful. Even if they no longer practice that religion, those early childhood messages about bodies and morality sink into a subconscious level beyond the control of the conscious mind. Shame is one of those deep-seated emotions with childhood roots that can shape adults’ attitudes, feelings, and behaviors—even when they don’t want it to.
Capitalist Shame
Without sexual and bodily shame and the personal and relationship dissatisfaction they spawn, capitalism would be missing out on a significant source of income. From entire industries devoted to adding or removing hair from various locations on people’s bodies to countless products designed to mask, enhance, or alter bodies’ smells, appearance, texture, and shapes, creating issues around bodies and sex is a capitalist success story across generations and social classes.
The availability and rise in use of pornography has been a huge capitalist success, and brought images of idealized bodies onto screens of all sizes. Pornography has driven technological development since the invention of the camera, and really took off with the VCR. Since then, demand for pornography has fueled everything from webcams to social media and AI.
Technology’s love affair with sex has produced millions, perhaps even billions, of images of nude bodies. Not since people started wearing clothes has a society been so excruciatingly informed on every minute detail of naked bodies and taken to heart how we collectively should look and behave. There are (at least) two major issues with that. First, the range of bodies displayed on our screens is incredibly narrow and in no way represents how most people look or function. With airbrushing and Photoshopping, even those people don’t really look like that most of the time. Young, slender, large-breasted or penised, mostly hairless bodies grace mainstream pornography in which the actors are always ready for sex and ejaculation is the main event. Older—I mean really older, not 37—disabled, fat, and hairy bodies are relegated to the alternative side for kinky folks but not cast as conventionally sexy.
Second, the lavish smorgasbord of pornography is filling the space left by the atrocious level of sex education people may receive in the United States. The vast majority of publicly funded sex education programs are required to teach abstinence only and provide little scientific information or useful tips about how to manage sexuality if abstinence doesn’t work or is unappealing. Assuming people will simply not have sex if they are not married turns out to be poor public policy, with high rates of accidental pregnancies and sexually transmitted infections demonstrating the failure of the “just say no” attitude towards sex. Pornography is abundant and at least shows that people do have sex, and suggests some ways to do it for those who have not yet figured that part out. It might be better than nothing, but it comes with the shame of body nonconformity and often masturbation which is religiously verboten for some people.
Sex Positivity Is Free
Instead of literally buying into shame and the damaging effects it inflicts on people and relationships, people can turn to sex positivity as an antidote that counteracts shame by focusing on pleasure and consent. Where sex negativity views bodies as a source of corruption, desire as dangerous, and pleasure as sinful, sex positivity sees consensual sexual activity as a source of connection, joy, emotional expression, intimacy, and fun. Sex positivity also embraces the rights and legitimacy of asexual people who do not feel sexual desire and/or wish to have sex. Body positivity is a significant element of sex positivity, which celebrates everybody’s access to sexuality regardless of (dis)ability, size, race, and form. In sex-positive thought, bodies with fat, stretch marks, scars, assistive devices, missing pieces, and all sorts of variation are worthy of not only acceptance, but adoration, desire, and orgasms if they want them.
Accepting ourselves for who we are and enjoying our merely mortal/less-than-perfect bodies because they bring pleasure is something that people can access for free. It is dangerous for capitalism, because people who are satisfied with themselves are much less likely to spend money to fix artificially created problems. It is also dangerous for some religions that use shame as a source of social control, and it has been an especially effective tool in keeping women in subordinate positions through claims of pollution, temptation, and evil. Accepting sex positivity means letting go of that hold on people’s emotions and especially control of women.
Emily Prior, the executive director of the Center for Positive Sexuality,* views sex positivity as a source of social good. “Positive sexuality acknowledges the importance of sexual diversity; the multitude of sexual identities, orientations, and practices; the need for open and safe communication and education concerning all aspects of sexuality; empowerment of sexual minorities; and collaboration to help resolve sexual problems within society. We also believe that positive sexuality goes well beyond just personal identities, practices, and sexuality—this is a larger concept that can help alleviate many social issues including health care, housing, employment, family support, and much more.”
Finding Sex Positivity
Surrounded by abundant religious and capitalist sex-negative messages ready to instill shame, where can people find access to positive sexual messages? The Center for Positive Sexuality is hosting a free interactive virtual Zoom event on September 3 that includes presentations, short workshops, and discussions to show support for the positive sexuality community at large and the many ways people can define and utilize sex positivity. Details on the event and registration are here.
*For full disclosure, I serve as a Research Affiliate with the Center for Positive Sexuality.
References
Bohrer, A. J. (2019). Marxism and intersectionality: Race, gender, class and sexuality under contemporary capitalism. transcript Verlag.
Federici, S. (2020). Beyond the periphery of the skin: Rethinking, remaking, and reclaiming the body in contemporary capitalism. PM Press.
Jensen, N., & Dyett, J. (2020). Gendered Exploitation under Contemporary Capitalism. Perspectives on Global Development and Technology, 19(1-2), 201-216.
