craschworks

Probably the biggest obstacle facing anyone who thinks or writes about sexuality is that the body is always suspect. The idea that our bodies are inherently flawed and corrupt and that what matters is our abstract self — whether you call it soul, spirit, mind, or whatever — is only slightly less universal than 1+1=2. It’s central to the religious teachings of the Catholic Church and the Dalai Lama, but it’s also laced into the more secular ideas of feminists who write about objectification, and transhumanists who long for the day when they can upload their consciousness into a cloud of nanites.

Our bodies can be seen, heard, felt, weighed. They bleed and sweat and shit and come. They eventually age and die. And bizarrely, that very substance is why they’re considered the most superficial parts of ourselves. Perhaps the sickest, most perverse part of religion’s legacy is the lie that followers should ignore their worldly suffering in favor of the bliss that will come in the afterlife, when they can leave the soiled impurity of the mortal shell behind.

via Why Sex Is Not Spiritual – San Francisco Arts – The Exhibitionist.