5 Bizarre Ways the Brain Links Sex With Shame [View all]

[IronLionZion]

http://www.cracked.com/blog/5-bizarre-ways-brain-links-sex-with-shame/

How shameful is your sex life? More or less than you're comfortable with? What about your fantasy life? As is patently obvious, I have severe sexual dysfunctions that amuse me to no end, so recently I thought to wrap up some of you, my readers, in my own depravity by way of a sex survey and see if there's anything we can learn about sex, fantasy, and shame together in a friendly yet uncomfortable way. Does everyone feel the same way about their sexuality and sexual past? Surely not, but there must be some interesting similarities men and women share among their fantasies and reactions to them. If not, this'll be a way short article, and maybe all the ensuing paragraphs are just rants I wrote about the shoddy state of modern snack foods. When is someone going to invent a beer-filled Hot Pocket, for God's sake?

Toward the end of 2012, a curious article was published online, in various media outlets, about how sexual arousal suppresses disgust. Just hearing the words "arousal" and "disgust" was more than enough to get my attention, and the article was pretty fascinating, and also, if we're being honest with ourselves, oddly obvious. You will do things and say things in the heat of the moment that you probably are not cool with when you're riding on a city bus, or attending Mass.

The gist of the article was that, statistically speaking, there is a correlation between arousal and your willingness to do things you would otherwise deem gross. Sexually gross. Regular gross was statistically irrelevant, but sexually gross was a big deal. This no doubt explains why Gene Simmons has a sex life at all.

So what does that mean, anyway? In the test, it meant women who were sexually aroused were more willing to put their hands in a bucket of used condoms than women who were not aroused, and, speaking as a currently not-aroused man, that's pretty gross and disturbingly creative. Good job, scientists! But obviously, for the purposes of my article, I couldn't very well carry a bucket of used jimmy hats around to see if any of you wanted a feel. Instead, I wrote a little survey, and about 90 people replied, which is a pretty decent number, I suppose. The survey asked your opinion on a number of different sexual fantasies ranging from what I felt was pretty commonplace to what was pretty insane. (Fact: Almost none of you are into bestiality. Or at least very few of you admitted it. The ASPCA thanks you.) And then I asked you about shame. Have you ever had a sexual experience you were ashamed of? What was it, and why? Let's learn some stuff together.

This is a very interesting article connecting the psychology of arousal and shame for the exact same thing. Nature wants us to be turned on by gross things. Otherwise, humans would end up like pandas who are too fat and lazy to make baby pandas on their own without help.

Just because someone tries to shame you, is no reason to be ashamed. Many of the shamers are trying to repress their own guilt. Just look at the family values conservatives who get caught in compromising situations.