Sexual repression

Sexual repression is a state in which a person is prevented from expressing their own sexuality. Sexual repression is often linked with feelings of guilt or shame being associated with sexual impulses. The concept and practice of sexual repression has historically varied between societies and different historical periods. The behaviours and attitudes which constitute sexual repression can differ across cultures, religious communities and moral systems. The ways in which individuals and groups undertake sexual repression can also be diverse in practice as either physical, mental, or both.

Sexual repression is enforced through legislation in certain countries, many of which are located in the Middle East and North Africa region, and South Asia. Some means of sexual repression include child marriage, female genital mutilation and male circumcision. Individuals believed to have engaged in behaviours which contradict social, religious or cultural expectations of sexual repression, such as same-sex sexual activity, may be punished through honor killings, persecution or the death penalty.

However, there are also other causes, which are unrelated to personal bias or cultural beliefs. Sometimes, sexual repression can be developed unconsciously through what people experienced in their childhood, such as what they absorb from people around them or undesirable sexual experiences.

History

Sigmund Freud was the first to use the term 'sexual repression' widely, and argued that it was one of the roots of many problems in Western society. Freud believed that people's naturally strong instincts toward sexuality were repressed by people in order to meet the constraints imposed on them by civilized life. Among many others, Freud believed renowned artist Leonardo da Vinci to have been a repressed homosexual, who he believed "sublimated" his sexual desires so as to achieve artistic brilliance. However, Freud's ideas about sexual repression have been subject to heavy criticism. According to sex therapist Bernard Apfelbaum, Freud did not base his belief in universal innate, natural sexuality on the strength of sexual desire he saw in people, but rather on its weakness.

In some periods of Indian history anaphrodisiacs were utilised in order to lower libidos.

In contemporary society, medication may be prescribed to registered sex offenders in order to lower the libido and ensure that further offences are less likely. Chemical castration has been elsewhere in history for various other reasons.

Religious Perspective

Further information: Religion and sexuality, Christianity and homosexuality, Christianity and sexual orientation, Islamic sexual jurisprudence, LGBT in Islam, Hinduism and LGBT topics, and Kama

Sexual repression is commonly connected to religious factors because in many religious contexts, there are different types of restrictions on sexuality.

Most forms of Christianity discourage homosexual behavior.

Many forms of Islam have strict sexual codes which include banning homosexuality, demanding virginity before marriage accompanied by a ban on fornication, and can require modest dress-codes for men and women.

In addition to this, there was a long tradition of chemically castrating male choristers prior to puberty to ensure that their vocal range remained unchanged. This practice of creating "Castrati" was common until the 18th century, and after a decline in popularity were only used in the Vatican up until the beginning of the twentieth century.

Given these long existing religious rituals, it helps to explain why sexual repression exists. However, religions may not be the sole cause for the existence of sexual repression.

Marriage

Further information: Child marriage

Marriage has historically been seen as means of controlling sexuality. Some forms of marriage, such as child marriage, are often practiced as a means of regulating the sexuality of girls, by ensuring they do not have multiple partners, thus preserving their virginity for the future husbands. According to the BBC World Service:

In some cases, parents willingly marry off their young girls in order to increase the family income or protect the girl from the risk of unwanted sexual advances or even promiscuity.

Abnormal marriage arrangement can contribute to the probability of experiencing sexual repression because people may experience unpleasant sexual behaviours at inappropriate ages, which can change their attitudes for sexual activities.

Female genital mutilation

Prevalence of FGM in Africa

Main article: Female genital mutilation

Female genital mutilation (FGM), also known as female genital cutting or female circumcision, "comprises all procedures that involve partial or total removal of the external female genitalia, or other injury to the female genital organs for non-medical reasons". The practice is concentrated in 27 countries in Africa as well as Iraqi Kurdistan, Yemen and Indonesia; and more than 125 million girls and women today are estimated to have been subjected to FGM.

FGM does not have any health benefits, and has serious negative effects on health; including complications during childbirth.

FGM is used as a way of controlling female sexuality; the World Health Organization (WHO) states:

FGM is often motivated by beliefs about what is considered proper sexual behaviour, linking procedures to premarital virginity and marital fidelity. FGM is in many communities believed to reduce a woman's libido and therefore believed to help her resist "illicit" sexual acts.

FGM is condemned by international human rights instruments. The Istanbul Convention prohibits FGM (Article 38). FGM is also considered a form a violence against women by the Declaration on the Elimination of Violence Against Women which was adopted by the United Nations in 1993; according to which: Article Two: Violence against women shall be understood to encompass, but not be limited to, the following: (a) Physical, sexual and psychological violence occurring in the family, including [...] female genital mutilation [...].

Male circumcision

Main article: Circumcision

See also: Circumcision controversies, Circumcision and law, Ethics of circumcision, and Religious male circumcision

Male circumcision prevalence by country according to a World Health Organization's 2007 review.

Male circumcision has been practiced as a surgical means of sexual repression in some cultures, although it may be practiced for various reasons, with the World Health Organization recommending it as a means of reducing HIV/AIDS. Circumcision is also a religious tradition in Judaism and Islam. According to medieval Jewish theologian Moses Maimonides, the "reason" for male circumcision is "the wish to bring about a decrease in sexual intercourse and a weakening of the organ in question, so that this activity be diminished and the organ be in as quiet a state as possible."

In the late-nineteenth century, circumcision of the penis was prescribed by John Harvey Kellogg as a "cure" for masturbation. William Acton, a leading authority on sexuality in mid-Victorian Britain, advocated male circumcision in order to prevent "undue excitement of the sexual desires … which it is our object to repress."

A "biocultural analysis" of male circumcision supports the hypothesis "that a practical consequence of circumcision, complementary to any religious-symbolic function, is to make a circumcised male less sexually excitable and distractible, and, hence, more amenable to his group's authority figures."

Honor killings

Main article: Honor killing

An honor killing is the homicide of a member of a family or social group by other members, due to the perpetrators' belief that the victim has brought shame or dishonor upon the family or community, usually for reasons such as refusing to enter an arranged marriage, being in a relationship that is disapproved by their relatives, having sex outside marriage, becoming the victim of rape, dressing in ways which are deemed inappropriate, or engaging in homosexual relations. According to a UN Expert Group Meeting on good practices in legislation to address harmful practices against women:

They [honor killings] stem from the deeply-rooted social belief that male family members (in some cases, mothers and other women are involved in planning or carrying out honor crimes) should control the sexuality of or protect the reputation of women in the family, and that they may contain their movements or kill them for blemishing family honor, even when rumors or false gossip are the reason for public suspicion.

Same-sex sexual activity

Further information: Sodomy law

Homosexual sexual expression is considered as a sensitive topic in many societies. As of 2014, same-sex sexual acts are punishable by prison in 70 countries, and in five other countries and in parts of two others, homosexuality is punishable with the death penalty. Apart from criminal prosecution, LGBT individuals may also face social stigmatization and serious violence (see violence against LGBT people).

Although the world is changing its attitude and widen the acceptance for diversities in sexuality, the restrictions in certain countries and religions are still an obstacle for homosexual group. When homosexual persons engage with opposite genders due to social pressure and family pressure, it can become a difficult time during sexual activities. Thus, to a certain extent, it may increase the probability of experiencing sexual repression.

Research Findings

Researchers such as Peggy Reeves Sanday have proposed a relationship between sexual repression and rape. Evidence has been found to contradict this hypothesis, with a study by Jaffee and Straus finding "no relationship between sexually liberal attitudes and rape." Whether the tremendous difficulty of measuring sexual repression is to blame, or whether the theory is simply false, is unknown.

Sexual repression is often viewed as a key issue within feminism, although feminist views on sexuality vary widely.

Michel Foucault

Michel Foucault, in his History of Sexuality, neither refutes nor confirms what he calls the "repressive hypothesis." Instead, he says sexuality has become an important topic to understand and manipulate for the purpose of nation building. Through categorization of sexuality, the idea of repression was born. While he agrees sexuality has become much more controlled, he equates it to necessity. Furthermore, it is through psychiatric and medical discourse on sexuality that it has become repressed.

Foucault argues that religious confession as well as psychiatric procedure codify confession within as a means of extracting truth. By integrating mechanisms of sex into the beginnings of a scientific discourse, the nineteenth century altered the scope of confession, as it was elusive by nature and its mechanisms. Confession tended no longer to be concerned solely with what the subject wished to hide but with what was hidden from himself. It had to be extracted by force, since it involved something that tried to stay hidden. This relationship of truth scientifically validated the view of the confessed which could assimilate, record, and verify this obscure truth.

Alfred Kinsey

Dr. Alfred Kinsey was a biologist that conducted one of the largest studies on human sexual behavior in history. Kinsey published the first portion of his findings in "Sexual Behavior in the Human Male” in 1948, and the companion, “Sexual Behavior in the Human Female” in 1953. His research consisted of thousands of interviews, where around 500 questions were asked, of a diverse field of people in terms of profession and class. These two volumes had many revelations presented through Kinsey's data and findings that changed the outdated ideals of the Victorian view on sex that had persisted in society until this point in time. One of the most influential pieces of information from this study was Kinsey's finding that not only is female masturbation as commonplace as male, but a female orgasm is more dependent on stimulation of the clitoris and outer labial portion. The vaginal canal was not as important as previously believed, which disproved the ideals that female sexual satisfaction was tied to penetration by male genitalia. The other well known portion of Kinsey's findings found about 37% of men had participated in homosexual acts. Kinsey argued that the binary of heterosexuality and homosexuality presented in society was incorrect and then presented the Kinsey Scale. This tool was to be used to measure ones sexuality, and consisted of a scale with the two ends being heterosexual and homosexual, implying there were sexualities in between the two ends. Overall Kinsey's study changed the view of human sexuality for American society greatly and has influenced modern perceptions equally.

Repression in various countries

China

Reproduction-based sex was urged by Mao Zedong, but later politicians instituted a one-child policy. In a country where atheism is popular, the restriction cannot be ascribed to religion but to nationalist motives.

India

According to R.P. Bhatia, a New Delhi psychoanalyst and psychotherapist, middle-class India's "very strong repressive attitude" has made it impossible for many married couples to function well sexually, or even to function at all.

United States

In the last few decades the United States has been gradually removing much of the legislation tied to sexual repression of various groups. The influence of religious and conservative groups however continues to influence American society and how sex is viewed, working to influence governmental affairs, pharmaceutical companies, and education.

Birth control

The first half of the 1960s saw contraceptions such as the birth control pill and Intrauterine Device (IUD) become widely available, which contributed to sexual freedom for many people without having to rely on less reliable and uncomfortable physical contraceptives such as condoms or diaphragms. However, religious and conservative lobbying groups as well as the influence of neo-eugenics created push back on some other forms of birth control such as emergency contraception and tubal ligation. Emergency contraception was being developed and produced by Hoechst under the name RU-486. Conservative lobbyist groups with ties to various religious powers such as the Vatican, originally were promoting limiting healthcare coverage of items such as birth control, and once RU-486was made public knowledge these groups actively worked to threaten Hoechst by claiming they would cause the company financial hardship if they did not cease all activity pertaining to RU-486.

In terms of more permanent forms of birth control such as tubal ligation and hysterectomies, there has been a long history of eugenicists pushing for forced sterilization of women not considered to be contributing to the betterment of American society, usually non-white and poor women. However, neo-eugenics, which is the more modern iteration of the eugenics movement is not only advocating for the normalization of permanent birth control in order to promote forced sterilization covertly, but also working to limit access of procedures of sterilization from those they deem “fit” to reproduce. This population are mostly white middle-class women, and their ability to remove the possibility of pregnancy from their sexual activity was greatly limited.

Sex education

During the late 1990s and the Bush Administration (2000–2008) abstinence-only sexual education groups were given considerable government funding to develop programming for schools. Groups promoting abstinence-only sex education are mostly represented as Christian and actively claim their work to be a direct response to what they view as the movement of society towards a sex-based culture which is directly against the Christian values these groups follow. Abstinence only groups generally focus on promoting no sexual contact before specifically heterosexual marriage which creates a repressive culture to not only adolescent sexual behaviors, but also LGBTQ+ individuals in that age range, with their school presenting programming only promoting marriage between a man and woman. Research about the effectiveness of different forms of sex education for adolescents shows the highest success from comprehensive sex education, which includes giving students information on a wide variety of topics such as forms of birth control and how to use them, and sexual anatomy. The Obama Administration (2008-2016) worked towards promotion of comprehensive sex education programming and pulled much of the government funding supporting abstinence-only program development.

Symptoms of Sexual Repression

Sexual repression can be expressed but not limited to the following:

- lack of sexual attraction

- disinterest in sexual activities

- shame and distress with sexual activities

- guilt or other negative feelings after having sex

- believing your body is unattractive or unworthy of sex

See also

• Age of consent
• Antisexualism
• Asexuality
• Bodily integrity
• Delayed ejaculation
• Erotophobia
• Free love
• Freedom of speech
• Heterosexism
• Human sexual activity
• Human sexuality
• Libertine
• Opposition to pornography
• Reproductive rights
• Right to sexuality
• Sex-positive movement
• Sexual and reproductive health and rights
• Sexual norm
• Sexual revolution
• Sexuality in China
• Victorian morality