Let's Talk...

  Let's talk about sex.

  Well, that got your attention.

  This is awkward.

  Anyway, isn't odd how something so incredibly ordinary to human experience has become such a taboo subject? Palahniuk's Survivor has quite a bit to say on this phenomena:

Survivor by Chuck Palahniuk

- “Adam says, the cultures that don't castrate you to make you a slave, they castrate your mind. They make sex so filthy and evil and dangerous that no matter how good you know it would feel to have sexual relations, you won't. That's how most religions in the outside world do, Adam says. That's how the Creedish did it.”

-"And if you never have sex," Adam's saying, "you never gain a sense of power. You never gain a voice or an identity of your own. Sex is the act that separates us from our parents. Children from adults. It's by having sex that adolescents first rebel."And if you never have sex, Adam tells me, you never grow beyond everything else your parents taught you. If you never break the rule against sex, you won't break any other rule.”

-"The Vietnam War didn't cause the mess of the 1960s," Adam says. "Drugs didn't cause it. Well, only one drug did. It was the birth control pill. For the first time in history, everybody could have all the sex they wanted. Everybody could have that kind of power."

    Palahniuk really seems to hit the idea of sexuality on the nose. Sexuality is shunned or greatly restricted by most cultures and religions. Parents feel obligated to discourage sexual relations and many, such as my own, speak little of its reality. Yet, it is all very real and a basic component of human functioning. But it symbolizes something so much more, as Palahniuk expresses. Sex gives us agency over our lives in a world full of external controls. Becoming intact with one’s sexuality allows us to form our own unique identity, and is disapproved of by a society that wants exactly the opposite to occur.
    Yes, we all have a body. Sex organs. But the concept of sexuality goes beyond our physical self in the nude, rather it is the incredible intimacy of sexual relations that permeates our experiences and leads to its widespread taboo.
  Sexuality requires personal initiative, demands a personal drive. In Survivor, Tender Branson is submissive to all authority, a servant to humanity who does strictly as he is told. But sexual desire is innate, and as much as Tender tries to oppress it, it is a very real part of him  Religions, such as the Creedish cult Tender was apart of, teach you to be guilty, that sexual urges are vile, lustful and only reserved for very specific, outlined purposes. This is all done in an attempt to dismantle our faith on self-reliance, on our ability to be independent, by degrading the natural, pleasurable urges of our body.  They say, the physical body is impure, and the sensations and urges you experience are but temptations trying to lead you astray. And from this, shame develops, and we come to rely on the others for guidance.  If we cannot trust ourselves, the thoughts that run through our head and the physical sensations we feel, we are forced to draw upon the insight of the scriptures and religious leaders. It is this willing submission to the authority of the church which religions can only hope for.

    In a family unit, sex serves as the pinnacle of separation from your family. It defines you as an individual. It tells others that you have a mind and desires of your own separate from your upbringing. It takes guts to be willing to escape the cage of your family’s values, but, according to Palahniuk, this departure from your roots is necessary to pave your own individual identity. For an adolescent, sex can serve as that beautiful opportunity to assert oneself in a world that attempts to mold you. It empowers you to gratify your own physical body and accept the urges that are innately yours. But society shames the act in adolescents, and oppresses such an independent identity because it is dangerous to the social order of things. Nevertheless,  for many sexual rebellion can stand as a significant point in growing up. Some, like Tender, never achieve this milestone of rebellion; they never learn to breech the authority of others. They become nothing more than a reserved and obedient child responding to every beck and call of their masters. And so, they are drilled to become stable, non-distinguishable components of society.
    To Palahniuk, sexuality is a symbol of independence that sets us apart from mindless robots completing tasks day in and day out for others. Living a passive life such as Tender is unnatural, and each and every one of us have ambitions, desires, and needs that we should embrace as our own. But it is this sense of ego, the recognition of self which becomes insulted by religious leaders as greedy, selfish, or lustful. Great thinkers such as the likes of Ayn Rand practically worshiped the human ego and sense of "self" that goes along with it, but these ideas have been silenced as pretentious by the rest of society.
    Sexuality stands at the height of individuality, it permits us to gratify ourselves as we please with who we please. A sheltered individual like Tender fears such an agency over his life. Up to this point in the novel where the above quotes were acquired, such power is something  Tender has never experienced, and he openly admits that he prefers to follow his daily planner that others have created for him than prescribe his own path. Yet by doing so he is only enabling a continued dependency on others. Sexuality should be emboldening: it liberates us to discriminate who and how we express ourselves sexually, yet Tender, brainwashed from a cult, not unalike many of our own experiences with religion, only associates it with sinfulness.