Societal norms affect sexual urges

Slutty behavior is pretty normal for us.

Human beings are animals and our animal nature compels us to make as many damn babies as possible. Whether or not having a baby with that particular orifice is possible doesn’t matter much to us, as long as it feels good. And yet most of my classes are uninterrupted by spontaneous sex.

It’s not because we don’t feel like having sex, it’s because we don’t want to have sex in front of people. Although most of us recognize that sex is great, it is still seen as a shameful activity.

From a young age, we were taught that there were parts of our body that we shouldn’t talk about, touch in public, or show to our Aunt Kayla. It just wasn’t polite; it was dirty. Why the “dirty” stigma? Well, bluntly, most of our excretion comes from that region somehow, so it probably isn’t very healthy to rub it on whatever you want. But then again, our mouths and noses are pretty nasty too and we say hello with one of them.

I do have the feeling that the associations with uncleanliness are related to sex, or at least the adult perspective of it. I don’t think that I have to explain why pedophilia is wrong. Before puberty, we just aren’t interested in having sex, so whether we have pants on doesn’t really matter all that much. However, it matters to adults who are afraid of being mistaken for pedophiles, which could be why people work so hard to instill modesty in kids at a young age. After all, there is no get-out-of-jail-free card.

So we’re taught to keep ourselves under wraps, and not just physically. We could get through elementary school without knowing what sex is. Sex-ed classes are awkward because previously forbidden knowledge is suddenly offered to students. In addition, no matter how liberal your parents are, they probably cringe at the slightest hint that you have sex (but then again, we do the same to them).

And of course, there’s the festive cheer of “Get a room.” No other animal on earth ever gets a room. We are a special species — we know shame.

The idea that sex should not take place in public is so ingrained in our society, that it is almost hard to understand. Most laws against public indecency say that such acts could be offensive to bystanders, although the rarity (because of the laws) probably make it more surprising than anything else.

More accurately, when observers witness sex (or even just too much PDA), it brings back the feelings of shame we’ve been trained to feel. So public sex is wrong because we feel that it’s wrong. That makes sense.

So what does this have to do with you? Well, without the silencing of sex by society, there would be a lot more sex to be had. People don’t have sex in the middle of a lecture because they don’t want to be judged. Even though you may not know anyone personally, they all go to school here and it’s not a huge campus. And the Internet is swiftly making it impossible to get away from anything; even if you moved away from San Luis Obispo in shame, there would be videos on the Internet in less than an hour, just waiting to be discovered by your parents.

Things are, slowly, getting better, unless your definition of better means “without all of that horrible sex.” Ever since the ’60s, society has been more and more comfortable talking about sex. We may never get to the point where people actually are doing it class, but perhaps in a few decades people won’t stress out so much about sex. It’s perfectly natural after all. And a lot more fun than taking notes.