Is There a Place for Sexual Shame?

This post is accidentally safe for work. Sorry. I didn’t have time to put in pictures before posting it.

I saw a post with this title on the Naked Truth blog, and thought it was a great idea for a post. My plan, as usual, was to read it and then come here and talk about essentially the same thing, linking back to the article. Except then I read it and it turned out to just be talking about masturbation and why men feel shame after they yank it – even men (as with the case of the blogger’s husband and subject of the post) who weren’t raised to think of masturbation as shameful.

That’s an interesting question, and one that’s worthy of a blog post, but when I saw the title my mind went in a different direction: are there types of shame which are actually valid? Are there times when we should feel shame? In other words, literally: is there a place for shame?

When we hear the word “shame” these days I’m guessing that many of us think of some variant of slut shaming. We want every girl to become a pornstar in the bedroom but we shame them and call them sluts (sometimes publicly) when they do. Longtime readers (all hundreds of thousands of you) will know that I’m against slut shaming; I’m definitely in favour of girls becoming sluts, and don’t think it’s anything to be ashamed of – though neither do I want their photos to get spread across the internet outside of their wishes. That being said, neither do I think girls (or anyone) should feel ashamed if they don’t get all porn-y in the bedroom; if you decide to remain a virgin until you get married that’s nothing to be ashamed of either, regardless of what you see on the internet or what your friend claim they’re doing. So to sum up this paragraph: Become a slut and I’ll be happy, be celibate and that’s still fine; either way there’s nothing to be ashamed of.

So I’m clearly against this type of shame. I’m also against being ashamed of sexual identity, and being ashamed of your own body, and a whole lot of other kinds of shame, too. Does that mean there’s no place for shame? No, personally I would say there are times when we should feel shame – but the hard part would be getting people to agree on when we should feel shame and when we shouldn’t.

• Should people feel ashamed about masturbating?
• Should people feel ashamed about consuming pornography?
• Should people feel ashamed about having sex outside of marriage? Or for feelings of lust for someone other than a spouse?
• Should people feel ashamed about committing adultery?
• Should people feel ashamed about same-sex attraction, or homosexual acts?
• Should people feel ashamed about group situations, which combines a bunch of the items above into one, glorious event?

We wouldn’t get unanimous agreement on any of those points. We’d be closer on some than others, but none would be unanimous.

And what about pornography (which this blog is concerned with)?

• Should people feel ashamed about consuming gay porn? (Does lesbian porn count?)
• Should people feel ashamed about consuming “rough” porn (bondage, slapping, etc.)?
• Should people feel ashamed about consuming incest porn?
• Should people feel ashamed about consuming racist porn?
• Should people feel ashamed about consuming beastiality porn?
• Should people feel ashamed about consuming child porn?

Some of these are easy; almost everyone would agree that people should feel ashamed about consuming child porn, the only people who would disagree are the ones who consume it themselves, who (according to me) should feel ashamed of themselves so I don't care what they think on the matter: they’re wrong. This is one of those cases where “playing devil’s advocate” means that you really are, literally, advocating on behalf of the devil.

Probably most of us would agree in theory that people should feel ashamed about consuming racist porn, but then there’d be disagreement on what’s actually racist and what’s not. (Mostly from white people.)

My guess, though, is that this is a strange post for people to read for my readers because we don’t tend to think in terms of shame anymore. We think in terms of societal harm (e.g. child porn harms children, adultery harms marriages), but we don’t think in terms of right and wrong or in terms of shame. And that leads to muddy thinking: if you only think in terms of societal harm then you can easily make a case for it being OK to consume child porn as long as you yourself don’t harm any children (though those arguments are fairly easy to shoot down because someone had to be harmed in order to make it), and you can easily make a case for it being OK to consume incest porn if you yourself aren’t actually committing incestuous acts (“someone else fucked his daughter, all I’m doing is looking at the video and pulling my pud”).

But I think we should be looking beyond societal harm – especially since it’s so easy to come up with arguments to get around specific cases – and start thinking in terms of actual right and wrong. I personally believe that one should be ashamed of consuming child porn because it’s wrong, and even if you’re consuming child porn in the form of cartoons or fiction, in which no actual child gets harmed, you should still be ashamed.

I’m guessing that a lot of people would react against that, even people who are firmly against child porn (but in favour of porn in general): the idea that you should be ashamed of something that doesn’t harm anyone else doesn’t sit well in a post-modern world. They might even turn this into a slippery slope argument: if you’re against child porn, if you think it’s “wrong,” then who’s to say that other forms of porn aren’t “wrong?” Who’s to say that porn isn’t “wrong” altogether?

And personally, to the probable surprise of my readers, I think these are the right questions to ask. If I’m right that some things are actually “wrong” when it comes to sex/porn (but others aren’t), then it’s a valid question to ask where that line should be drawn.

Most people, by the way, are actually on board with the idea that some things are “wrong,” they’re just not comfortable with the fact that they’re on board with it because it’s too restrictive a way to be thinking – we prefer relativism in the 21st Century – and so they don’t think of it in those terms. Using the child porn example, most people think it’s “wrong” (other than the consumers of it), but they don’t call it “wrong” they call it “harmful,” and when they slip up and accidentally use the word “wrong” in conversation it makes them uncomfortable because they’ve stated something absolute when they feel they should be more relativistic. So in general they do their best to think in terms of social harm instead of right and wrong. So if you could come up with a form of child porn where no children get harmed, then in theory they’d be on board with it, right? Except that, despite what they say, in their hearts they aren’t comfortable with that concept, they know that it’s wrong.

Yes, I’m quite fine speaking on behalf of the entirety of Western civilization. I’m a blogger, it’s what we do.

But if it’s valid to say that some things are actually wrong, then it’s also valid to ask who gets to decide, right?

Personally, I vote for me.