Sex & Disgust

The body is disgusting. It's an evolutionary necessity then for reproductive behaviour to waive this disgust and so it appears. In a state of sexual arousal what was previously disgusting is no longer disgusting. What was fearful is no longer fearful, making us braver. And the state of depression is also lifted by the cocktail of brain chemicals also. Sex is a very potent remover of barriers presumably underlining the fundamental importance to evolution of procreation. Any genetic based behaviours that do not result in childbirth will get lost, so in a reinforcing way those that get transmitted by sex must also promote sex.

Its an obvious thing to observe. If someone spits on your food you feel disgust at eating it. But if you kiss and mix your saliva somehow this is attractive. Clearly there are illusions at work here.

Now die hard romantics and sexaholics will argue that the true state is brave excited arousal and the state of disgust at spit on ones plate is just weakness. But stay aroused forever and see the flaws. Sooner or later all states decay and we enter a non-stimulated state. Call that depression perhaps and go in search of love again, and step aboard the conveyor belt. Or just accept that states come to an end. Nothing wrong in those states but see them for what they are.

So when excited states end we end up back at disgust. Seeing a corpse mouldy, full of maggots and leaking foul smelling fluids we are not aroused. Or perhaps there is a perverse kind of arousal that feeds on the disgust and taboo itself. The more disgusting the more aroused, in a rebel state of mind that negates. Someone says do not walk on the grass and we immediately want to walk on the grass kind of state of mind. We can just call that perversion because its based upon an understanding of disgust but just negates it, so its derivative and not truthful. Whichever way you turn you get to disgust of the body eventually. There is another version of disgust I realise which is the "dehumanising" side of sex. Have seen it argued before that the process of seduction is the willing process of dehumanisation the seduced and seducer allowing their layers of social construction and norms of behaviour to be stripped away literally. The removal of clothing that it such a fundamental part of social norms, the breaking of strict physical boundaries that are again so strictly enforced in social norms and so on. How weird and exciting that experience of meeting your night's sexual encounter by the office water fountain and exchanging knowing glances. So disgust is part of this too, that precisely what under normal mind states is disgusting under states of arousal is perverted into arousal, and breaking through these barriers is part of the process of dehumanising. In fact all forms of perversion can be seen like this. But whichever way you turn its all derivative and the true state is disgust. If we had no disgust then what is there to pervert!

So the body is disgusting, and sexual arousal needs to over come this to get people to engage in procreation.

Its an almost never acknowledged thing this. I wonder why? Perhaps its a subconscious part of social thinking that wants to protect the "attractive" side of sex to encourage it. The moment people realise that actually sex is disgusting we will all become monks and the population will fall? Certainly in the US there is a hugely powerful lobby group promoting marriage in film and media. When you see romantic films there is a good chance  money has come from this lobby group. Just like when you see war films money will have come from the CIA promoting US values and interests around the world and justifying the US militarisation of the world.

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So what if evolution is wrong. The above involved the argument that evolution promotes the spread of genes that themselves promote the spread of genes. What if there is some Divine Law or other reason for sex and procreation? Well that may be true but the fundamental point that sex is disgusting remains. God made saliva and he made the disgust that means when someone spits in your food you are less keen to eat it. But when you taste your lovers saliva you are not disgusted. He made this contradiction, and he clearly removed the disgust to enable sex.