Why Does Sex Come with Guilt?

A guilt-ridden person is easier to manipulate

Geldings, any farmer will tell you, are easier to control
than stallions. Western propaganda inculcates sexual
repression for precisely this reason.

Those of us who believe in sexual freedom are a minority.
If there is one generalization that truly applies to
the majority of men and women in all civilizations,
everywhere, it is that they fear sexual freedom more
than anything else, more than death itself.

If we take a deliberately superficial view, why does
the “man in the street” fear sexual freedom?

What reason would he himself give for the
irrational taboos to which he submits and
tries to inflict upon others?

The answer is a truism. “Sexual freedom,”
the man in the street will tell you,
“leads to anarchy and the collapse of order.”

Sexual Persecution

The architect of modern anarchism, Michael Bakunin, wrote in his God and the State that without “God,” the State is impossible. He gives as proof the Republics of France and the United States.

Both were founded by free-thinkers and atheists, but both embraced the “God” idea very rapidly when the practical details of governing had to be faced.

Wilhelm Reich’s Sexual Revolution and Mass Psychology of Fascism states that pro-State attitudes and authoritarianism are usually joined with dogmatic religion and anti-sex fears but anti-State and libertarian attitudes are generally coupled with free thought and pro-sex affirmation.

Adorno’s classic Authoritarian Personality gives reams of statistical proof of the Reichian thesis. A governor, we can safely say, has less problems in enforcing obedience if his subjects are mystical, religious and frightened of sex.

The reason for this is easy to understand. Sex denial is very close to being absolutely impossible. As the subtle Jesuits knew long before Freud, even when the would-be ascetic thinks he has “triumphed” over the flesh, it sneaks up on him from a new direction and takes him by surprise.

The inevitable consequence of sex denial is guilt. That special guilt which comes of continual failure to accomplish that which you consider ‘good’.

A guilt-ridden man is an easy man to manipulate and force to your own will, because self-respect is the prerequisite of independence and rebellion, and the guilt-ridden person can have no self-respect.

Modern advertising revolves around this central fact as a great safe lock pivots on a single jewel. From deodorants to the soap that makes you feel ‘clean all over’, advertising has inculcated self-doubt and guilt to persuade us that the sponsor’s panacea will cure these very doubts which the sponsor through his ad agency has created!

What does “government” mean, after all? Control of one class by another, the subordination of one man’s will to another’s.

We’ve been taught that society can’t exist without government and that this subordination of wills is existentially necessary and unchangeable. We are expected to accept it.

But anthropology presents a different picture. As Kathleen Gough has written: “The State as a social form has existed for about one-two-hundredth part of man’s history. It may be one of the shortest-lived forms of human society.”

What we call anarchy has been man’s dominant pattern for 99% of his history. It should be no surprise that these pre-State societies were not sexually repressed and didn’t fear sexual freedom to the utmost extent.

Geldings, any farmer will tell you, are easier to control than stallions. Governments, which were sophisticated slave-states, inculcate sexual repression for precisely this reason. Besides creating guilt and self-doubt, enforcing conformity and the subjugation of all of us to the will of the State.