[Greta Christina] A Skeptic’s View of Sexual Transcendence
For some reason, the sex- positive community is also, very often, a spiritual community. (At least in the San Francisco Bay Area, where I live.) It’s not often a conventionally religious community; but many varieties of Wicca, Goddess worship, shamanism, Tantra, astrology, chi, chakras, belief in a collective metaphysical consciousness, and other forms of New Age belief and magical thinking permeate it, both privately and publicly.
This troubles me. I am a hard- core atheist/ materialist/ naturalist/ humanist/ skeptic/ whatever you want to call someone who doesn’t believe in any supernatural entities or substances. And I’m just as unconvinced — and almost as troubled — by the ideas of the Goddess and chi energy and immortal consciousness and so on, as I am by the ideas of God and angels and Hell.
Now, I’m not writing this piece to argue against religion. I may yet write a piece criticizing spiritual beliefs and practices in the sex- positive community . . . but it’s not what I’m doing here. (If you want to see my reasons and arguments for my lack of spiritual belief, you can do so here, and here, and here and here and here.)
What I want to do here is offer an alternative.
I want to offer a positive way of looking at sexuality and sexual transcendence that doesn’t involve any sort of belief in the supernatural. I want to offer a sex- positive philosophy that is entirely materialist. The materialist view of life in general and sex in particular is often viewed as cold, bleak, narrow, mechanical, reductionist, and generally a downer. I don’t think it is. And I want to talk about why.
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The materialist view says that there is no supernatural world. At all. There is only the physical world. All those things that seem non- physical — thoughts, feelings, choices, selfhood, transcendent sexual ecstasy, consciousness in general — are actually products of the brain, and of the brain’s interactions with the rest of the body and the rest of the world. We don’t yet know exactly how this works — the science of neuropsychology is still in its infancy — but the overwhelming evidence we have so far is that this seems to be so.
And to me, this is not a downer. This is magnificent.
To me, the idea that, out of nothing but earth and water and sunlight, these wildly complex living beings have developed, not only with the capacity for consciousness but with the capacity to create the experience of ecstasy for ourselves and one another . . . that is just jaw-droppingly astonishing. We can create the experience of joy, of deep, expansive pleasure that takes us out of ourselves and into one another . . . and we do it through a complex re-arrangement of the energy of the sun, and the atoms and molecules of the planet.
That is magnificent. That, more than any spiritual belief I ever had, makes me feel both humble and proud. That makes me feel intimately connected with the rest of the Universe . . . in a way that no spiritual practice ever did. What’s that old hippie song about how we’re stardust, made of billion- year- old carbon? You don’t have to believe in metaphysical energy to think that that is wicked cool.
There’s something else, too. When you look at human beings from a materialist and evolutionary standpoint, not as special spiritual entities or children of the Goddess but simply as another twig on the evolutionary tree . . . that view puts sex squarely front and center in the human experience. Sex has an immensely important place in the evolutionary scheme. Darwin wrote an entire book about it.
Why does sex feel so good? Sex feels so good because it evolved to feel good. Sex feels profoundly, transcendently amazing because evolutionary forces strongly favor animals who really, really like to boff. That’s an oversimplification — for one thing, evolution can also favor animals who are picky about their sex partners — but it is a huge part of the picture.
Of course, birth control and other non- reproductive sexual practices have been shifting this picture somewhat for humans, putting reproduction into our conscious control and increasingly setting it apart from sexual pleasure. And as a queer spanking fetishist who neither has nor wants kids, I’m very much in favor of that. My DNA is apparently under the impression that it’s going to replicate by spanking other women, and I’m happy to let it dream on. But it is undeniable that these evolutionary forces are where the roots of sexual pleasure lie . . . roots that go back hundreds of millions of years.
In other words: According to a materialist viewpoint, the capacity for transcendent sexual joy is hard- wired into our brains . . . and it’s deeply and powerfully hard- wired, as a crucial and central feature of our lives, by hundreds of millions of years of evolution. And this doesn’t just mean that suppressing or trivializing sex is stupid and futile, dangerous and harmful, a cruel and pointless crusade against the deeply- laid grain of our nature. (Although it certainly does mean that.)
It means that the act of sex, and the experience of sexual pleasure, connects us to every other living thing on earth. We are the cousins of everything that lives on this planet, with a common ancestor of primordial soup going back billions of years . . . and we are all related, not entirely but substantially, because of sex.
That is awesome. That makes me want to go fuck right now, just so I can feel connected with my fish and tetrapod and primate ancestors. That is entirely made of win.
And finally:
When you don’t believe in God or the soul or any sort of afterlife — when you believe that this short life is all that we have — then making the most of that short life, and taking advantage of the joyful experiences it has to offer, suddenly becomes a whole lot more important. It’s almost a moral obligation. The odds against you, personally, having been born into this life, are beyond astronomical. Are you going to waste that life by not giving yourself, and other people, as much joy as you possibly can?
Now, this doesn’t mean, as many anti- atheists claim, that without a belief in God or an afterlife, we can and would behave entirely selfishly and with no moral compass. It doesn’t mean that even a little bit. But it does mean than we can base our morality — including our sexual morality — on how our behavior demonstrably affects people in this life, and not on how it supposedly affects invisible beings in an unproven hypothetical life after this one. And it means that — as long as we don’t cause harm to people in this life — it is not only acceptable, but a positive and meaningful good, to engage in any activities that bring joy and epiphany and meaning to ourselves and the people around us. Including, and maybe even especially, sex.
In other words:
I don’t think we need to see sex as spiritual in order to see it as transcendent.
I don’t think we need to see sex as blessed by the Goddess, or a telepathic connection between souls, or a channeling of the chi energy, or as any form of worship or spiritual practice, in order to see it as valuable. I think we can see sex as a physical act between animals . . . and still see it as richly, deeply valuable and meaningful. I think we can see sex as a physical act , and still see it as an act that connects us intimately, not only with ourselves and with one another, but with all of life, and with the expanse of history, and with the vastness of the universe.
This entry was posted on Friday, 1 May 2009 at 12:00 am and is filed under Culture. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
on Friday, 1 May 2009 at 9:08 am Kala Pierson wrote:
Beautiful thoughts — thank you! For my part, I understand the overlapping of sex-positive and sacred-sex communities (and that’s certainly more than a west coast phenomenon) as rooted in the critical mass, built over the last few decades, of people who were raised in deeply sex-negative religions but eventually managed to create some new belief systems/contexts for sex and pleasure.
I can imagine that if I grew up being told all non-procreational sex is sinful and shameful, I might later find it very important to reframe sex specifically as the opposite of sin — as sacred, as explicitly blessed.
Personally, I wasn’t raised in any religion (I’m second-generation in that critical mass, born to a good hippie mom who was consciously aiming for much healthier childrearing than her conservative religious parents had given her). I think that’s a position of great luck and luxury from which I can see transcendence, magnificence and sacredness purely in the physical acts themselves, without a strong instinct to recontextualize / ’spiritualize’ those acts. But I don’t think I can draw clear lines between my notions of sex and more explicitly spiritual notions of sex.
For one thing, the divisions seem artifical to some extent, more a matter of language and different ways of articulating ‘belief’ (not to mention the different levels of abstraction, e.g., my believing sex itself is sacred, believing focus and deep attention are sacred, and believing behaviors like honesty and honoring SSC/safety agreements are sacred).
For another thing, all partner sex is inherently a mixing of two (or more) people’s belief systems. When I partner with a more explicitly spiritual person, I *am* a spiritual partner in that union. And I don’t mean just ‘from the other partner’s perspective’; I mean that for me the union of the belief systems is as fundamental as the union of the bodies. Maybe most broadly, for me, ’sacred’ sex is that mirroring and mixing, which expresses itself in arguably universal phenomena — focus, ritual, transformation, transcendence — that various people just assign various labels, spiritual or otherwise.
on Friday, 1 May 2009 at 9:13 am The Beautiful Kind wrote:
This essay is awesome! As an atheist, I, too, have felt uncomfortable with all the new agey hippie dippy tantric wiccan stuff I see going on with the poly perverts in my area.
I was SO honored to meet Annie Sprinkle and think she is awesome, but wow did her “Sluts & Goddesses” DVD give me nightmares - I mean, pause.
Thanks to her, tho, I’ve been playing around with sacred sex and 10 minute orgasms, and I am LOVING it, but I’m embracing my inner animal and amazing body, not piggybacking on some higher power. The energy I am grooving on comes from within myself and my partner. Note lack of chi. The extended orgasms DO feel like nirvana - like legal drugs.
See my post here for more details, tho I hope the feds don’t see it, or they’ll try and crack down! ha ha
http://www.thebeautifulkind.com/2009/04/13/cum-bunny/
on Friday, 1 May 2009 at 4:19 pm Cand86 wrote:
Well-said. I don’t think I could ever really classify myself as an atheist (though I’ve never felt particularly religious, either), but I think this is a sentiment that should be discussed far more often- how incredibly amazing and awe-inspiring life truly is, and how you don’t need religion or supernatural beliefs in order to feel your heart swell with hope and joy. So, yeah. Cool.
on Friday, 1 May 2009 at 5:47 pm Teleprompter wrote:
It’s “Woodstock” by Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young.
I love that song.
“We are stardust. We are golden. We are billion-year-old carbon.”
on Saturday, 2 May 2009 at 6:52 am Serenegoose wrote:
Well said - Though many who know me would think it odd, the ability to give pleasure to one of my partners gives me a very strong sense of being connected to them and thankful that life and the world can be so rich. I’m pleased for the opportunity to give them that bliss now, and it always bugs me when people who do believe in spiritual insult the material world for being superficial and ‘meaningless’ when it’s the deepest, most complex and vibrant existance I can conceive of. I think it’s important though to not play down that you don’t have to be the one achieving orgasm to feel trancendant with sex. As an asexual, pleasing my partners is what gives me that trancendant feeling.
on Saturday, 2 May 2009 at 2:07 pm Juliana Marie wrote:
Serendipity - catching up on my blog-writing today, I wrote a bit of atheism, and sex. And in reponse to a commenter, of how my core ideas about sex & relationships came to me at age 17. (Heh heh, “came.”) And that those ideas did not include my parents’ belief that god invented making love just for married people to make more (catholic) babies.
Later, I go to catch up on blog-reading, and find this! Happy, happy, happy fun. Thanks!
p.s. Of course, 17-year-old me did not know of sexuality what I do now - I just knew I was having fun learning to fuck, even with the emotional complications & melodrama of teenage relationships!
on Monday, 4 May 2009 at 12:36 am ToppHogg wrote:
While I agree with your materialist approach to sex, I have to disagree with the idea that there is no “there” hereafter. That minor disagreement is of little import, however, when religion concerns itself with your carnal activities. Controlling the sex lives of the followers through denial has been a time-dishonored tradition of religion.
Yet lately, the fundamentalist religions have rediscovered that good sex is vital to their followers having a normal and healthy relationship. I was reading about a woman who offered her husband sex every night for a full year and then wrote a book about it. Other fundamentalist sects are promoting non-traditional and non-procreational sex practices and assuring that such desires are OK with their deity.
I read such facts as demonstrating that good old human nature was winning converts away from the supernatural, and the self-appointed guardians of supernaturality have had to admit defeat. They have had to do as their demons do to keep some kind of hold on their captive audiences. One can’t pass a plate if there is no one to pass it to! After all, most religions really worship Mammon when the facts are examined!
Keep up the fine writing! I enjoy your work very much.
on Wednesday, 6 May 2009 at 3:26 am cognitive dissident wrote:
This is just wonderful! The “stardust” reference was perfect, as it helped to crystallize something I’ve been thinking about for a while–ever since I re-watched Carl Sagan’s Cosmos last year. It’s so amazing that we’re here at all, let alone able to think about our place in the universe as links in the great chain.
Thank you so much!
on Wednesday, 6 May 2009 at 4:29 pm Jared Goddard wrote:
Greta, you’ve managed to put these feelings into words where I could not. As an atheist, I’ve thought of sex as one of the things closest to a religious experience I could have. It never really occurred to me why (or solidified in my mind) until I read this:
“It means that the act of sex, and the experience of sexual pleasure, connects us to every other living thing on earth. We are the cousins of everything that lives on this planet, with a common ancestor of primordial soup going back billions of years . . . and we are all related, not entirely but substantially, because of sex.
That is awesome. That makes me want to go fuck right now, just so I can feel connected with my fish and tetrapod and primate ancestors. That is entirely made of win.
…
I don’t think we need to see sex as spiritual in order to see it as transcendent.
I don’t think we need to see sex as blessed by the Goddess, or a telepathic connection between souls, or a channeling of the chi energy, or as any form of worship or spiritual practice, in order to see it as valuable. I think we can see sex as a physical act between animals . . . and still see it as richly, deeply valuable and meaningful. I think we can see sex as a physical act , and still see it as an act that connects us intimately, not only with ourselves and with one another, but with all of life, and with the expanse of history, and with the vastness of the universe.”
Also, “that is awesome” and “that is entirely made of win” made me laugh. I think I’ll need to share this with a few of my friends. Thank you so much for writing this.
on Thursday, 14 May 2009 at 7:10 am Breakup Girl » But what do they scream at the moment of surcease? wrote:
[…] Do atheists have better sex? Over at the Blowfish Blog (via Alternet), materialist girl Greta Christina says yes, yes, yes. […]
on Friday, 15 May 2009 at 7:01 pm Greta Christina and Good Atheist Sex « Life Without a Net wrote:
[…] All that being said, I have to give props to Greta Christina (one of my favorite atheist bloggers, by the way). In THIS ARTICLE, she has pretty much encapsulated my own views on sex from a rational materialist point of view. […]
on Friday, 15 May 2009 at 7:08 pm Hambydammit wrote:
What a great article. There are times when I wish I could lead two or three lives simultaneously. I am full to the brim trying to maintain a blog on rational materialism, science and atheism, but damn, I wish I had the time to be an advocate for sex-positive non-theist living.
Having made the progression from fundamentalist Christian monogamist to something significantly more sex-positive (That’s my business… sorry…) I can say first hand that there is nothing so eye-opening as realizing that you’ve spent half your life being literally less than fully human. I can’t imagine going back to my previous attitude towards sex. It breaks my heart that so many of my friends, even my atheist friends, are so caught up in the cultural myths and lies that create so much sex-negativity.
For what it’s worth, I wrote a rather extensively researched article on the cultural sexual myths, their origins, and their impact on modern society on my blog.
http://hambydammit.wordpress.com/2009/01/29/myth-sexuality-and-culture/
on Saturday, 6 June 2009 at 9:50 am [greta Christina] Tantric Orgasms and Sacred Sex: New Age Spirituality in the Sex Community | Blowfish Blog wrote:
[…] A few weeks ago, I wrote a piece on this blog about my skeptical, materialist, atheist, entire non- spiritual view of sexual transcendence, and why you don’t need to see sex as metaphysical to see it as magnificent and meaningful. […]
on Wednesday, 10 June 2009 at 10:55 am Solar Hero wrote:
First: great writing, you are a favorite.
Second: you succeeded in laying out a non-supernatural explanation of why sex feels so good.
There may be other factors, besides just selection, that makes sex great.
I’m with Nietszche who wanted to do away with “worlds behind the world,” but I think this world is incredibly complex and — despite the word’s connotations — mysterious.
What if all the “woo woo” of religious and/or magical thinking is “actually products of the brain, and of the brain’s interactions with the rest of the body and the rest of the world”?
on Saturday, 20 June 2009 at 7:10 am Revolusjonært roteloft » Lørdagsnerding og lesetips wrote:
[…] Gretha Christina: A Skeptic’s View of Sexual Transcendence: Dette er ikke et angrep på mer åndelige måter å se på seksualitet, det er en hyllest til sex fra et evolusjonært synspunkt. Fordi naturen ikke trenger noe overnaturlig for å være fantastisk. […]
on Tuesday, 21 July 2009 at 9:26 am An Alternative To Sex-Positive Supernaturalism?? Greta Christina Goes Contrarian | The SmackDog Chronicles (Ver. 2.6) wrote:
[…] For those of you on the materialist side, though, who do take these issues seriousley enough, you now have a powerful ally in Greta Christina, who just posted to her blog (also crossposted to the Blowfish blog, too) an essay that makes a strong case for a more secular approach to sexuality that doesn’t neccessarily have to involve Goddess worship, chakras, Wicca, or any other type of New Age woo-woo. Some snippage follows: […]