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Overcoming Religious Sexual Shame

Trackdayguy

Speed doesn't kill, it's hitting the wall
Great article

Should be compulsory reading for everyone

https://www.psychologytoday.com/ca/blog/women-who-stray/201708/overcoming-religious-sexual-shame

Sexual shame is a visceral feeling of humiliation and disgust toward one’s own body and identity as a sexual being, and a belief of being abnormal, inferior and unworthy. This feeling can be internalized but also manifests in interpersonal relationships having a negative impact on trust, communication, and physical and emotional intimacy. Sexual shame develops across the lifespan in interactions with interpersonal relationships, one’s culture and society, and subsequent critical self-appraisal (a continuous feedback loop). There is also a fear and uncertainty related to one’s power or right to make decisions, including safety decisions, related to sexual encounters, along with an internalized judgement toward one’s own sexual desire."

From the dissertation work of Dr. Noel Clark at Seattle Pacific University, 2017
 
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Sunstone

De Diablo Del Fora
Premium Member
I wasn't too impressed with the article. The author did make a number of good points, but I think he failed to correctly identify the most fundamental cause of sexual shame. As a consequence, much of his advice seems a bit superficial to me.

If you take a look at cultures around the earth, you will sooner or later notice that every culture has various taboos against sex. Furthermore, almost all of the cultures seem to have one thing in common -- no matter how much they otherwise vary one from the other. That is, they restrict public sex.

In other words, there is evidence that humans have an innate, genetically based taboo against sex in public.

That doesn't mean it's never done, but it does perhaps account for why it's done so seldom. Public sex is not mainstream anywhere. At most, it's the kink of a relatively few people within a culture.

Put more concretely, people tend to feel embarrassment, shame, guilt, anxiety, etc both at making a public display of sex themselves, and at the sight of a public display by others.

Now in America, it seems there are aspects of our culture that play upon that taboo and fan it. That is, they take its fire and dump gasoline on it. And that's when the author of the article starts having a point. He is correct that we do all sorts of things to encourage and promote sexual shame. It's just that sexual shame has roots that go much deeper than what we do to encourage and promote it.
 

Skwim

Veteran Member
Yup, religion, especially Christians in the western world, have done a lot of harm in their zeal to inculcate it's believers with their sense of warped sexual morality.

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Skwim

Veteran Member
I wasn't too impressed with the article. The author did make a number of good points, but I think he failed to correctly identify the most fundamental cause of sexual shame. As a consequence, much of his advice seems a bit superficial to me.
Which you see as what?

.
 

Trackdayguy

Speed doesn't kill, it's hitting the wall
Several years ago I was seeing a mid 30's Japanese lady. One Saturday afternoon we spend a very erotic afternoon in her room, she was a real screamer when she was orgasmic and on this occasion had several climaxes. She lived in a small condo on the 3rd floor, during her climax a women down stairs shouted out, " for Gods sake Iv'e got children down her" Initially we laughed. During supper we talked about sexual shame and how this dreadful women had sent a very clear message to these kids that what was happening was dirty and wrong.

How amazing it would have been if she'd had said to her kids "Two people upstairs are enjoying themselves and loving each other"

How sad
 

Saint Frankenstein

Wanderer From Afar
Premium Member
Several years ago I was seeing a mid 30's Japanese lady. One Saturday afternoon we spend a very erotic afternoon in her room, she was a real screamer when she was orgasmic and on this occasion had several climaxes. She lived in a small condo on the 3rd floor, during her and during her climax a women down stairs shouted out, " for Gods sake I got children down her" Initially we laughed. During supper we talked about sexual shame and how this dreadful women had sent a very clear message to these kids that what was happening was dirty and wrong.

How amazing it would have been if she'd had said to her kids "Two people upstairs are enjoying themselves and loving each other"

How sad
It's not sexual shame to not want to hear your neighbors making loud noises. You both should learn to be more respectful and she should learn to control her loudness. I don't enjoy hearing my upstairs neighbor humping away at whatever girl he has up there and her fake porn star moaning, especially when it's right above my head and I'm trying to sleep at night. It's basic courtesy.
 

Estro Felino

Believer in free will
Premium Member
Shame as pudor doesn't bother me.

Puritanism is what freaks me out. Aka Victorian hypocrisy...that is people who claim they're disgusted to talk aboit sex...and then they practice the most squalid and lascivious kama sutra in bed.
 
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Estro Felino

Believer in free will
Premium Member
Several years ago I was seeing a mid 30's Japanese lady. One Saturday afternoon we spend a very erotic afternoon in her room, she was a real screamer when she was orgasmic and on this occasion had several climaxes. She lived in a small condo on the 3rd floor, during her climax a women down stairs shouted out, " for Gods sake Iv'e got children down her" Initially we laughed. During supper we talked about sexual shame and how this dreadful women had sent a very clear message to these kids that what was happening was dirty and wrong.

How amazing it would have been if she'd had said to her kids "Two people upstairs are enjoying themselves and loving each other"

How sad
very sad indeed. As if that woman downstairs was Saint Mary Goretti
 

wellwisher

Well-Known Member
In the olden days, humans did not have all the modern medical and social prosthesis that is currently used to deal with the down side of free ranging and open sex. There was no abortion for unwanted pregnancies. This meant more unwanted children who need to be taken care of by the orphanages, or else starved in the streets. It also meant that there would be all types of STD's that had no prevention or cure. Besides the STD's impacting the horny, this would also have an impact on the health of the next generation of children of infected parents. Taboos were needed to minimize these and other consequences of impulsive living.

Marriage and monogamy were allowed since this was the time proven natural way to minimize these problems, without a lot of prosthesis. Monogamous couples rarely create disease. While children born to a married couple, end up with two parents who both have an initial instinct for them. Shame was a tool to create an inhibition so people would have more will power, even when nobody is looking. The goal was to funnel sexuality down the natural path of least stress on the cultural ecosystem.

A good experiment to show the hidden strings of modern sexuality would be to cut off all resources currently used to combat the consequences of free and open sexuality. This would include divorce, abortion, medicines, and condoms, as well as all the welfare needed for broken homes and unwanted children. If we did this for a year, and let the problem compound, culture could get a feel for the extent of the prosthesis needed to combat the natural harm that is done. This natural harm is currently hidden under a pile of money and political slogans. Shame was a cost effective way to restore efficiency, which is the hallmark of natural.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates that there are approximately 20 million new STD infections each year—almost half of them among young people ages 15 to 24.3 The cost of STDs to the U.S. health care system is estimated to be as much as $16 billion annually.
 

Trackdayguy

Speed doesn't kill, it's hitting the wall
In the olden days, humans did not have all the modern medical and social prosthesis that is currently used to deal with the down side of free ranging and open sex. There was no abortion for unwanted pregnancies. This meant more unwanted children who need to be taken care of by the orphanages, or else starved in the streets. It also meant that there would be all types of STD's that had no prevention or cure. Besides the STD's impacting the horny, this would also have an impact on the health of the next generation of children of infected parents. Taboos were needed to minimize these and other consequences of impulsive living.

Marriage and monogamy were allowed since this was the time proven natural way to minimize these problems, without a lot of prosthesis. Monogamous couples rarely create disease. While children born to a married couple, end up with two parents who both have an initial instinct for them. Shame was a tool to create an inhibition so people would have more will power, even when nobody is looking. The goal was to funnel sexuality down the natural path of least stress on the cultural ecosystem.

A good experiment to show the hidden strings of modern sexuality would be to cut off all resources currently used to combat the consequences of free and open sexuality. This would include divorce, abortion, medicines, and condoms, as well as all the welfare needed for broken homes and unwanted children. If we did this for a year, and let the problem compound, culture could get a feel for the extent of the prosthesis needed to combat the natural harm that is done. This natural harm is currently hidden under a pile of money and political slogans. Shame was a cost effective way to restore efficiency, which is the hallmark of natural.

Do you not think that we have created a social system that none of us can live up to. The social welfare system has removed the consequences of peoples behaviour, so in essence I agree with your suggestions, however shaming people is border line abuse. Rather than shame people so they change their behaviour we need to allow them to experience the consequences of their choices in order that the change that's needed first takes place on the inside, then we will have a society of adults instead of children.

My other issues with the lady down stairs was firstly she had no idea of the status of our relationship she wasn't only shaming us she was shaming the sexual act and all the noises that go with it.

Just my thoughts
 
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