Profile
Photos
Comments
By Jurriaan Kamp and Tijn Touber
During the 10th and 11th centuries in the Indian town of Khajuraho a
remarkable series of “sex temples” was built. Temples with the most
explicit images of erotic encounters. All that in structures reaching
up to God. Sex, it was thought, was the path to spirituality. The
Khajuraho built their temples to exhibit the secret potential of sex to
all.
During that same era, Western societies were doing everything they
could to suppress sexuality and keep it behind closed doors. They lived
for centuries without having a clue about the positive nature of sex.
Taboos were used to restrain this tremendous, startling power. Sex was
the night, sex was mysterious and dirty; something to be played out
secretly in the dark.
Europe hit a turning point in the 1960s. Subjects that had been off
limits for ages were suddenly opened up for discussion. For many this
was a liberating breakthrough. Oppressed women found freedom.
Homosexuals who had stayed “in the closet” for fear of public
disapproval, no longer had to suppress their feelings. Then things
started to move fast. Once the dams had burst, sex rushed from the
darkness past the light and into the floodlights. Or rather, into the
television lights. According to the new adage, everything had to be
public and television producers were only to happy to go with the flow.
Now sex is everywhere. Increasingly explicit, in more and more
programs on more and more channels. Nearly every television commercial,
advertisement, billboard and music video makes an implicit reference to
sex. The financial and moral barriers that kept prostitution and porn
films out of the public eye have been eliminated by the arrival of so
many commercial television channels and websites.
More on Health & Wellness (118 articles available)
More from Veronica, selected from Ode magazine
The Spirituality of Sex
posted by Veronica, selected from Ode magazine Apr 2, 2009 4:48 pm