THE TRIUMPH OF THE BODY

SEX AS IDENTITY AND SEXUAL ACTIVISM

WARNING: This essay is, for the most part, about sex and sex-related issues. Some aspects of it may be outright disturbing to some people, not to mention weird! If you are a sensitive person who finds such writings uncomfortable, you might not want to read this essay. This essay also reaches conclusions that might bother some people – to put it mildly. On top of that it’s also long and rather heavy. You have been warned.

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If you enter a barn full of pigs, the first thing you’ll notice is the smell. It´s rather strong – but if you stay inside for some length of time you’ll stop noticing it. Your nose will adapt. The same will happen if pigs were to move into your house. It would smell bad but you would adapt. Pigs can adapt to almost anything, and so can humans.

Many of us have been able to adapt to a lot of changes in our societies in the last few years and decades. Considering how much has changed, our ability to adapt is truly amazing. The greatest of all these changes have been in people’s behavior. We seem to be emotionally out of control and often violent, we abuse food, we abuse drugs, we are sexually confused, and we are fearful. It’s like our emotions and urges have taken over and pushed introspection and rational thought into some dark corner in the attic.

Not all emotions are equal, much like the animals on Orwell’s farm – with some more equal than others. The strongest ones are also the oldest ones. They sit at the bottom of our psyche, ready to take over our minds and bodies – if we let them. These emotions are ancient instruction packages on how to survive – both as individuals and as a species. They motivate our behavior in certain circumstances, and what they tell us to do is not always pretty. They are fear, sex, violence and hunger. They tell us to procreate, to eat, when to run away and when to fight. A precondition for a civilization is their control and management. The control is exerted through upbringing and enforced by parents and society. If that fails, civilization may be in trouble.

It is interesting how many of our problems seem to be related to these four emotions. It is also interesting that all of them are associated with ideologies and activism. We have the LGBTQ activists with their sexual propaganda; we have the body-positivity activists who tell you that obesity is the best thing since sliced bread; we have the fear activists who tell you to mask up, get vaxxed, and to fear the carbon apocalypse; and we have the oppressive-narcissistic activists who want to kill or jail everyone they disagree with. It’s like the basement has taken over the entire building. How did this happen?

We don’t exactly live healthy lives. We are bombarded with violent and sexual content, we eat processed food designed to make us sick – laced with estrogen-mimicking chemicals – and we undergo hormone therapies because we are not happy in our skin. Every single hormone injection, or chemical which mimics a hormone, will affect our basic emotions and our bodies – and rarely in a good way. There is also a social trend at work – with no less impact. This trend is the subject matter of this essay.

Stranger in a strange land

For reasons unrelated to the subject matter of this essay, I recently had the opportunity to talk to a number of school administrators in elementary schools and preschools, as well as teachers and other people associated with their operation. This was all one-on-one and face-to-face. Some of these conversations took a surprising turn in the direction of blunt honesty. Among the issues we discussed were all kinds of problems they were having in their operations, including ‘human resources’ problems. I came to the conclusion that running a school was the last thing I would ever want to do.

Two issues stood out in these conversations. One was the problem of pedophiles among staff. This is a sensitive matter but it came up several times. Apparently, one of the problems they are having is filtering out people who would ‘behave inappropriately’ in the presence of children, particularly in the preschools. Most of these problem employees are apparently young men. The other problem is the interference from ‘sexual activists’ who are either involved in some ‘educational’ program or working for the municipality. The sexual activist is typically a young woman educated in pedagogy, psychology, or some type of social ‘science,’ who is desperate to push sexual material into elementary schools.

Some of the people I talked to even suggested that schools are basically under siege from people who want to associate children with sex, either ‘directly’ or ‘educationally.’ This is, apparently, a relatively recent development. A surprisingly large part of the last generation or two to reach adulthood no longer seems to regard sexuality as a taboo when it comes to children. It goes even further than that: children seem to have become an outright focus for some. It is very difficult to understand how someone becomes an activist in pushing sexual material on elementary school children.

There have been massive changes to sexual identity in the West in the last couple of decades. Some surveys have even shown that up to a third of Generation Z (born between 1997 and 2012) identifies with some aspect of LGBTQ. This is the culmination of a process which has been going on since Generation X. It will be interesting to see if the next generation after Gen Z will set a new record, or if this is the pinnacle. It seems clear that the ‘objects’ acceptable for the human sex drive are less fixed than before.

Triumph of the body

During the sexual liberation in the sixties and seventies, a peculiar trend was popular among women – particularly of the feminist persuasion. They started becoming obsessed with their own bodies, particularly their genitals. Books were published to inform women in detail about the main properties of their bodies with emphasis on the genitals, and special mirrors and other kinds of apparatus started to appear. Many feminists pondered over these books and spent quality time with these mirrors and associated gear – like they were looking for something profound.

This turned to be a part of a wider trend. The seventies saw increased focus on the body and outright body worship with emphasis on fitness, cosmetic surgery and an entire industry focused on physical looks and physical feel-good services, sarcastically described by someone as the ‘mani-pedi & spa industrial complex.’ None of this was exactly new, but the difference was that physical looks and physical gratification started to become a ‘lifestyle’ for a lot of people. In other words, people started defining themselves in terms of looks and physical comfort. Lifestyle, if fully embraced, may develop into identity – which is a ‘formal’ perception of one’s own personality. This means that people started to define their own personalities based on physical attributes and physical comfort – large scale. The body, along with physical sensations, slowly turned into the anchor of self-perception for a large part of western populations. This focus even spawned its own philosophies of self-attention and self-love, including ‘mindfulness.’ You are indeed the most important person in the world and you deserve to look and feel great. The narcissistic element in this trend soon became obvious.

As time went by, this anchor for self-perception became stronger and stronger – and exerted more and more influence. Instead of just focusing on looks and ‘wellbeing’ – people increasingly started becoming more proactive. Body modifications, tattoos, and other types of physical interventions became commonplace.

The most important issue here is the motivation behind all this – on an individual level. Tattoos, piercings, and various body modifications, are often attributed to a membership in a subculture, which is true, but the true motivation is different. When you define your ‘essence’ in terms of your body, you will also believe that you can change your essence by changing your body. This belief is usually subconscious – but very strong nonetheless. In other words, the belief that you could change your ‘core being’ by changing your body went mainstream. The body started to define the soul. This is essentially the same as becoming more confident after putting on a nice suit or a black dress. It is only more extreme and more focused on the body.

This escalated even further as could be expected – culminating in the trans-movement and the ‘physical-subjectivity’ philosophy. The belief that changes to the body could change the inner being moved into the ‘physical realm.’ Fixed ‘biological reality’ doesn’t quite work when the objective is to change the mind by changing the body. Biological reality therefore became an obstacle and started to get rejected. Genitals could now be changed or removed, breasts could be added or removed, hormone therapy could be administered – and this would actually change your gender. As in the earlier body-modification movement, people who do this believe that the change is real. A man who does this will not just look like a woman – he actually becomes a woman. In his mind he is a woman and his body must conform. This is just a more extreme version of the belief that a tattoo or an Armani suit will change who you really are.

All this has, for a good part of the population, blurred the distinction between the mental and the physical. The body and the mind have fused, with the body playing the leading role. This means that perceived problems with the body are increasingly translating directly into mental problems. The clearest evidence for this is the extreme increase in eating disorders in the West. It is not entirely clear how common disorders such as anorexia and bulimia are at the moment, but up to 20% of young people may be affected. Anorexia and bulimia are essentially caused by an extreme focus on the body, and subsequently, its takeover of the person’s identity and self-perception. They are basically unintended and involuntary body-modifications.

For someone who modifies his or her body, the physical transformation is specifically intended to transform their ‘inner’ reality. The inner reality, i.e. the identity developed, then starts to perceive the body as needed. A body mutilated by cosmetic or trans surgery is seen as beautiful. An emaciated anorexic body is seen as sexy. An obese body is seen as brave. The takeover by the physical can become absolute.

Tattoos and body modifications are nothing new. Warriors used to cut scars into their bodies and sharpen their teeth back in the day to impart fierceness into their souls. But why has this become so common now and why has it become so extreme? Why is the need to change the inner essence so great – and why use the body to do it rather than doing it through ‘philosophical’ means?

Reverting to the physical

What is described above can be seen as several unrelated trends, or as one escalating trend. Whichever you prefer, it seems clear that more and more people have been focusing on their physical aspects as opposed to their mental aspects in recent decades. As more and more people do this, more and more people do it in an extreme fashion – which is to be expected.

This trend of increased ‘body-centeredness’ closely follows the increase in narcissism during the same period. That is not a coincidence. Body-centeredness is technically not the same as narcissism but it has similar causes. Narcissists tend to be more focused on their bodies than others, but the correlation is not absolute. However, the overlap between the two is very significant – and a good part of body-centered people have narcissistic tendencies to a varying degree. So, what exactly is body-centeredness?

We are all physical beings, some more so than others. People differ greatly in the emphasis they place on all physical aspects. Food is very important to some people but less so to others. Sex is the center of life for some people but peripheral to life for others. Soaking in a hot bath is a pleasure for some but detested by others.

The main reason for this difference is the way our brains are ‘set up.’ Some brains have an inward focus while others have an outward focus. This can also be described as the conscious ‘access’ we have to our own thoughts and motivations. Some people have a lot of access while others have little access. People who have high access are inward looking, have high self-awareness, and active ‘inner life.’ People with low access are outward looking, have low self-awareness, and limited inner life. They depend on and focus on what happens in their environment. This outward focus is partly what makes people susceptible to narcissism as I have discussed in other essays.

When talking about focus on the environment we need to define what that environment actually is. In short, it’s everything else than the mind and its inner world. This includes other people, nature, and so on and so forth – and of course the body. What happens in and to a person’s body is the greatest part of the environment for an outward-looking person. It’s not a coincidence that people have been writing about the struggle between the mental/spiritual and the physical for centuries. The body is the greatest source of everything for an outward-looking person. Emotions are sensed physically to a great extent and stimulation of all types tends to be physical rather than mental. Sex is the ultimate sensation, and food and eating is not far behind.

The inward/outward dimension is, like other traits, normally distributed. We can expect about a third of the population to be body-centered – and the most extreme of those are going to be very body-centered. That includes obsession with physical things, including sex and food – and physical pleasure in general. It also includes the need to get the ‘rush’ by any means, whether it is through drugs or risk-taking behavior. The ‘rush’ is physical, and it has far greater meaning to physical people than the inward-looking types who see their bodies as less relevant than their inner life.

The main issue here is something many people won’t like to hear – but let’s say it anyway: About a third of the population is predisposed to a life which is based on physical things, including sex. This third is also more likely to have low self-awareness which gives them the ability to rationalize almost any behavior, and the resulting inability to embrace fixed morality on their own. In other words, if their behavior is not controlled by an external agency, and a fixed moral system is not enforced on them, they will revert to the physical – which is their ‘natural’ state.

Since the beginning of human societies, it has been one of the prime missions of tradition and social structures to keep the physical in check. Base behavior has been frowned upon and the spiritual has been offered as an alternative. Traditional upbringing focuses on this, as well as structured religions. The main objective was not just to combat immorality – it was to keep this part of the population under control because it can be a direct threat to society. A third of the population is a lot, and can do a lot of damage if control is lost. Losing control, however, is not the worst part. What happens if this third of the population is allowed to revert to the physical, and then allowed to define a civilization or even control it? Can a civilization survive that?

This seems to be the situation we currently have in the West – and increasingly globally. The body is now the main source of identity for about a third of the population, and those people don’t quite know how to deal with it.

A crisis of the self

The concept of ‘inner self’ is nebulous at best, and has often been defined as representing the base and the physical. However, when explaining identity formation, the physical is most certainly not a part of the inner self or the inner world that people develop. For people with high self-awareness, the physical is generally not very relevant. They build an inner world of fantasies, possibilities, analyses and scenarios, where they themselves become clearly defined. They basically run ‘simulations’ on themselves in all kinds of situations. This results in identity formation which is relatively solid and complicated. People with high self-awareness rarely struggle to find themselves.

People with low self-awareness do not have this detailed inner life. They do have fantasies but the internal structure they set up is not as detailed. They are more likely to live in the moment and they are constantly affected by the environment, which includes other people, nature, and all kinds of things – including their bodies. They tend to struggle with the formation of a rich and solid identity. If it is developed, it tends to be simpler and weaker than the identity developed by a highly self-aware person – and more easily changed or manipulated.

An identity can be said to be a sort of ‘conclusion’ we draw about our own personality or our ‘nature.’ It also defines what we ‘stand for’ generally. A very important part of an identity is morality, or a code we follow which states what we can/should do and what we can’t do. For a normal person, this is an extremely important anchor for his or her identity. A common way to break down an identity, with the aim of forming a new one, is to force a person to violate this code. If the code is violated, the rest may break down completely.

For the majority of the population, an identity with a moral code is internalized relatively easily. It comes from an upbringing which emphasizes emotional control, reinforcing proper behavior, and leading by example. It is then further reinforced and enforced in adulthood by tradition, as well as moral and legal codes and institutions.

A key aspect of this process is that an identity must be internalized properly and discovered by each person. Even if there are strict moral codes in society, people’s personalities differ – and proper identities must reflect that. In other words, to form a solid identity you must develop it on your own inside the moral limits set by the society you live in.

The moral code is essentially a fixed or ‘standardized’ set of rules which must be integrated into an identity at an early age and then enforced by parents and society. If a person has a problem forming an identity, it follows that he or she will have a problem internalizing a moral code. If this integration does not take place, morality will be perceived by the person as a separate issue. It’s just some set of rules out there which do not affect the person directly. It can be ignored or used as needed.

Regardless of our ability to form identities, we all have a need to define ourselves. Outward-looking people, when pondering who they really are in their childhood and teens, tend to encounter a void full of confusion. If they live in a society where the mechanisms for identity formation and moral codes are functioning, this will not be a serious problem. Their parents and society will basically supply them with an identity and then enforce it.

These identities can be anything as long as they are acceptable morally and are within tradition. They can be religious, intellectual, work-related, and even ideological. This ‘identity supply’ for this part of the population is extremely important for social cohesion and stability. When it breaks down, things really start to happen. The loss of the ‘identity supply’ will initially cause a general identity crisis among the physical part of the population. Young people will become increasingly confused and go on a search to find themselves. Faux spiritual solutions start appearing, and ideologies based on narcissism become popular.

The systems of identity formation and morality started to get lax after World War II in the West and the result was the ‘flower generation’ of the sixties and the seventies. This generation, partly having failed to adopt solid identities, was naturally unable to impart identities onto their children. This failure in upbringing escalated through the following generations resulting in the situation we have today. In fact, everybody who is predisposed to reversion to the physical and the accompanying identity crisis appears to have reverted already, with the proportion most likely standing at 30% or more of the population. This means that a third of the population doesn’t quite know who they are and feel that morality is a subjective phenomenon.

The reversion to the physical varies based on the level of body-centeredness and the level of narcissism, resulting in different identity-forming strategies. All the strategies involve a search for an ‘outside’ identity – or an identity based on something outside the mind. The most common strategies are the following:

• For the least body-centered and least narcissistic of the group, a faux spiritual identity is often formed. This tends to involve nature elements dressed in quasi-spiritual garb.

• The moderately body-centered/narcissistic often form faux intellectual identities where extreme emphasis is placed on education, intellect, ‘expertise,’ and ‘creativity.’ Social studies, fashion, and the arts are common playgrounds for developing faux intellectual identities.

• The more narcissistic tend to adopt ideological identities specifically designed to maintain their narcissistic model of the world. These identities/ideologies promote their superiority as human beings and usually involve oppressive narcissistic tendencies, expressed as activism.

• The most body-centered, heavily or moderately narcissistic, tend to go directly for physical identities. The signals they receive from their bodies are overwhelming, and because neither emotional nor social control has been installed, these signals take over their minds. The barrier between the physical and the mental may altogether disappear, and the body essentially fuses with the inner self. A physical identity is subsequently formed.

Note that this list is not complete. Also note that all the people using these strategies are physical from the moderate to the severe, which means that all the strategies incorporate physical identity to some degree.

The physical identity

The statement that the body can take over identity formation and can fuse with the inner self sounds improbable, and even crazy. It is therefore proper to provide an example that many people can relate to.

Anxiety is a common condition. It involves a mental-physical loop where, among other, real or possible events (usually embarrassing or otherwise disastrous) are examined compulsively. It may lead to isolation, general helplessness and depression. Incidentally, outward-looking physical people are far more likely to suffer from it than others. It is basically the default mental problem encountered by people like that.

Anxiety drugs are often administered, and they sometimes work to a degree. Those drugs do not treat the anxiety at all. They treat the physical symptoms which accompany the anxiety by suppressing them. Other drugs can do this too. Blood pressure medicines can sometimes decrease stress by lowering the signals coming from the body. The brain listens very closely to the signals coming from the body, and in the case of outward-looking physical people, it listens extremely well. The signals can, in fact, be overwhelming – even though the person doesn’t quite realize it.

In the case of anxiety, the signals fuel the mental condition and may possibly even cause it in the first place. A toxic loop forms where the mental situation creates more disarray in the body and more signals, which fuel the mental state further – and so on. The anxiety meds break this loop between the body and the mind. As the signals from the body decrease, the mind quiets down.

Now consider the inner world of a long-term anxiety sufferer. The physical situation creates mental states which are almost unbearable, thereby taking control of the mind. The sufferer may start to redefine himself in terms of the mental states. He or she is now an anxiety sufferer, or an anxiety patient, who perhaps becomes a ward of the healthcare system, poked and prodded by doctors and shrinks. This results in a reevaluation of self. He or she is now a patient, a victim, a weak person, a defective person – perhaps looking for someone to blame. This, given time, may develop into an identity where the defining aspect of the person’s essence is his weakness and suffering. He or she may even become an activist, raising awareness of the plight of anxiety sufferers.

The new sufferer-identity becomes a stabilizing force for him, a solution of sorts. It may even flip on its head where he is now strong instead of weak, because he has ‘conquered’ the suffering through ‘redefinition.’ He may have something to teach others.

What we have here is fear and associated emotions being constantly activated in a person who has three likely attributes simultaneously: 1) Body-centeredness and strong signals from the body; 2) high salience of emotions and limited emotional control; 3) weak identity and consequently limited ability to resist the situation. It really is the perfect storm.

When interpreting anxiety and the process described above, it is extremely important to understand its essence. It’s normal to be afraid of certain things and situations. However, what happens in anxiety is that fear has ‘widened’ and become attached to things that shouldn’t induce fear. That is basically what anxiety is. This creates mental turmoil and confusion, leading to a formation of a new identity as a solution.

Regarding the original cause of the situation we have a chicken and egg problem; is my heart pounding because I’m scared or am I scared because my heart is pounding? For a fearful person, both will do. Emotions always have physical responses, which in people like this are very strong, and may create an escalatory loop.

Now I want you to do me a little favor. Lean back in your chair and think about sex and sexual stimulation. Think about what turns you on and how strong the sexual urge can be when it gets going. Think about the times when you have lost control, when your mind has been completely filled with sexual urges, and you were powerless to resist.

Now go back to the beginning of this chapter and replace ‘anxiety’ with ‘sexual arousal’ and read it again.

Now imagine that your situation is like the anxiety sufferer, but instead of the fear-loop you are experiencing a sexual urge loop. You are getting sexual signals from your body and from the environment all the time, sometimes randomly. Thoughts pop into your head and you can’t push them away. Isn’t it likely that you’d be a little confused?

A key issue here is mental turmoil and confusion. In the case of anxiety, fear is generated by all kinds of situations which do not generate fear in non-afflicted people. A social function is a source of fear – you might meet someone you don’t want to meet. Driving a car is a source of fear – what if it breaks down in an intersection? Fear, in other words, gets associated with a huge number of things it shouldn’t get associated with. This is caused by the sheer number of fear signals and responses and their apparent randomness – and the inability to control them.

The same applies to sex. A person with an out of control physical-sexual urge loop will experience a lot of signals and subsequent intrusive thoughts. Those responses will be associated with a lot of things they are normally not associated with. It could be something specific like a fetish or something more general, such as inanimate objects, animals, old people, children, own sex, and so on and so forth. The main issue is that the signals create associations with more than just the ‘standard’ objects of sexual desire. They therefore widen the pool of objects for sexual association. Note that this does not explain homosexuality and other sexual preferences as such – only the widening of the object pool for sexual associations.

This results in sexual confusion, much like anxiety causes confusion regarding fear. Confusion and sex-related mental chaos are among the main symptoms of people struggling with this – driven by out of control associations caused by the out of control physical-sexual loop. The solution for many is a new sexual identity to control it or ‘conquer’ it – as discussed above.

So why exactly does this happen? Why does the physical-sexual loop widen the object pool for sexual association – and in some cases cause a fixation on a particular ‘unconventional’ object? This brings us back to the nature of the external/physical identity. ‘I’m not sure what I am but I think this is what I am’ is essentially how it works. Physical identities are uncertain, shallow, weak and unidimensional. They tend to consist of ‘that one thing’ which receives obsessive attention from the person instead of being composed of complex attributes like in inward-looking people. Shallow identities are fragile and vulnerable. They can easily change if something in the environment strikes the person’s fancy – and they can easily be manipulated.

A sexual identity is a weak and fragile identity – much like the fear identity. The only thing underpinning it is the physical-sexual loop and associated feelings/mental states. It only needs a tiny nudge to move within the sexual realm – and there is no shortage of nudges and suggestions from society. Also, remember that physical identities have a poorly integrated moral code (or none at all) and people with them tend to be narcissists with the ability to justify just about anything. Projecting sexuality onto children is not as big a step for that kind of person as you might think. The situation in our societies indicates that this is the case.

The evidence for the physical-sexual urge loop being correlated with sexual ‘confusion’ is very clear, but has become a taboo: People who have these characteristics are far more likely than others to be sexually charged. Their urge is stronger, the associations with sexual objects are more ambiguous, their confusion is greater, and they are more likely to develop identities based on sex. They are also more likely to become sexual activists who engage in sexual protests and promote the sexualization of children.

Both fear and the sex drive are extremely powerful emotions. They can both completely seize control of the mind and operate it like a puppet – that is if you don’t have the ability to keep them under control. The response to both tends to be the same: To form an identity to gain control of the situation – a physical identity.

Sexual activism

Sexual activism is among the more puzzling trends to emerge in western societies. Its initial objective was to normalize a sexual preference of choice and the sexual identity behind it. This has, in the West, more or less succeeded. The secondary objective goes further than normalization. It is the active promotion of the sexual preference and identity to a wider group, with children and teenagers as priority targets. This objective has the support of many people in western governments and western institutions, particularly educational institutions. It has become a significant social force.

Activism is an interesting phenomenon which can only be understood by analyzing the motivation behind it. From a motivation point of view, there are two basic types of activism: Moral activism and narcissistic-oppressive activism.

Moral activism is based on some kind of moral outrage over something. A person with strong moral convictions spots an injustice or something he perceives as dangerous to society and decides to fight against it. This can be anything, including child-trafficking, drug abuse, toxins in food, predatory lending, unsafe cars, and so on. Moral activism has no ‘ulterior motive’ beyond fighting against the perceived or real threat or injustice.

Narcissistic-oppressive activism is a disguised attempt by narcissists to force other people to do their bidding. It’s basically narcissistic oppression in the home extrapolated to society. Its purpose is the same – to reinforce the narcissistic model of self by controlling others, and degrading them to elevate oneself. Any moral justifications for this kind of activism are disguises intended to legitimize it. A large proportion of modern activism is of this sort, and its focus is usually ‘something good’ which necessitates curbing people’s freedom and independence.

The former type of activism is based on (fixed) morality; the second type is based on the absence of morality or ‘flexible’ morality.

Sexual activism is based on flexible morality, and usually narcissistic tendencies. People who have these characteristics along with a physical identity are compelled to validate their identity. They are compelled to do that because their identity is weak and out of tune with both tradition and physical reality. A weak and false identity must be validated.

This validation is first acquired through normalization of the identity. The normalization of the identity assures the person that he or she is normal, and neither weak nor a freak. This first step is never enough. As long as there are other people who question their identity or reject them, their identity will remain under attack and the turmoil will continue.

The only logical solution is therefore to go on the offense: ‘If everybody were to be like me, there would be no challenges and I would be safe.’ This requires what is essentially a ‘body-modification’ of the entire society.

This is essentially the same as the motivation for narcissistic oppression and manipulation. Narcissists manipulate people because their model of the world is false – and because it’s false it can’t survive clashes with reality. They therefore go on the offense until everybody accepts their delusional model. Then they are safe from the ‘attacks’ on their model – which represents their self. The final solution for narcissists is therefore the absolute subjugation of everyone else.

This, at least partly, explains the extreme urge to push sexual propaganda on children. The sexual activists instinctively realize that the most efficient way to change society is to target children. Children are the future, and through them the future will be one where we can all feel safe in our (modified) skin.