Sinful Sex?

In Coming Out ... To Myself, Part 2 I said, "If a gay, bisexual, or lesbian, etc., person achieves Self-realization through his or her particular sexual orientation, he or she need not feel that sexual orientation to be sinful." This was a conclusion I drew from interpreting my own inner experience as a male, 61-year-old lifelong urolagnic — someone who derives erotic pleasure from the sight or thought of (in my case, female) urination.

A Jungian archetype, the Androgyne, has been shouting to me from my unconscious all my life, I said in that post, saying, "You are all boy and then some" — the "then some" being the female side of this quintessentially male-female archetype. For me, the archetype symbolizes its power in the form of an intense interest in women's distinctive "plumbing" on my part, which then gets displaced in my conscious sexual imagination and becomes a source of heterosexual erotic delight.

Sinful? Evil? Perverted? I don't think so. Rather, I'd say the Androgyne becomes the ally of the Self, the image of God within the human soul that calls us to put all our inner potencies into balance. It is only when they are out of balance that they become evil.


Is that a prescription for no-holds-barred, total sexual abandon? Again, I don't think so.

Rather, I would put it this way. There is no kind of sexual practice, activity, or orientation that is intrinsically bad. But any kind can morph into an occasion for sin.

Even conjugal, heterosexual relationships can turn evil: they can turn into a lifetime of outright abuse.

On the other hand, such practices as bondage-discipline-sadomasochism can, I'd say, help their practitioners along their way to Self-realization. Ditto, gay and lesbian sex, and the other forms of so-called "unnatural" sex.

So, what distinguishes good sex from bad? The keys:

• Sex must be between consenting adults
  
• It must not involve children
• It must not constitute cheating on a spouse or significant other
• It must not be coercive
  
• It must not involve physical harm
• It must not involve hateful, abusive behavior, but rather incorporate mutual respect
  

Now, BDSM practitioners engage in mock violations of those last three — but it is tacitly understood that the mock coercion and acting out must not cross the line to actual abuse and harm.


Yet, in my opinion, anyone who actually despises members of the opposite sex has a problem. If a man habitually thinks of women as sluts, whores, bitches, and the like, I fail to see how this can be at all Self-actualizing for him.

Jung said all men incorporate an "inner female," the archetype he called the Anima. (Women have an "inner male," the Animus.) Self-realization can come only by way of accepting the Anima/Animus in all its dimensions. If a man insistently deprecates women, his Anima has taken on a purely negative cast. To realize the Self, he must accept both the positive and negative aspects of his own Anima.

So a man who beats up, abuses, and denigrates women, even as he is heterosexually active with them, is not on the right path. That kind of sex is sinful.