Communities around the extremes (bdsm etc.) are easy to find but whenever I browse most of these communities I just don’t feel much affinity to them. Sometimes they are vulgar, other times they are kitsch, or in some cases they are just plain sick.
On the other hand you have boring conventionalism around sexuality (what is broadly called “Vanilla sex”) hitting you in the face everyday. Men should be sweet, accommodating, kind, egalitarian….in other words, boring and castrated. That is because we are reacting to an age where men were all spine and no heart into thinking that we should swing to the opposite: men with all heart but no spine. Which is a recipe for boredom and a yearning for some biker, rockstar or any type of “bad boy” who will make a woman feel alive again! Women had to overcome their own obstacles, being seen as subordinate to men for centuries, while any woman who dared to express her healthy dark side was immediately labeled as a “slut”, “whore” and so on.
The truth of the matter, I believe, lies somewhere in the middle. People have a light and a dark side. Some people have more of the one and less of the other, but one thing seems certain: a healthy and exciting sexual life requires an expression of both. When it comes to the vast majority we are taught to repress the dark side and express only our light side. Even though an amount of repression and difficulty in life is necessary for the healthy development of our personality, a consistent rejection of certain parts of ourselves eventually has harmful effects. A boring sex life is not a healthy one and it occurs exactly because of a failure to cultivate and express both our light and our dark sides. Of course, the worst perversions occur when a complete expression of one’s sexuality is prohibited…an unhealthy predicament which has had considerable support in the past due to an inaccurate understanding of human nature and its needs.
The history of the dark side of sexuality is long. Sigmund Freud was the first modern scientist to explore the dark side of sexuality, and shed light to its relation to aggression and of course the unconscious. But going back further you always find references to a dark side in sexuality. For instance, the mythical Maenads of ancient Greece are a good example. East and West, you will find times, people and places where both sides of sexuality were explored and deemed sacred. The Kama Sutra in India and the whole philosophy of Tantra; the many Chinese texts on sexual techniques and their contribution to a better life (see for example “The Tao of Love and Sex”) all point to the obvious. It is what you do with your sexuality that determines whether it will harm or benefit your growth. There is no point denying it or trying to uproot it. One should cultivate it with care and make it part of the garden of one’s soul.
There are people who express darkness in their sexuality because their soul has no light. A soul without light ultimately ends up in unhealthy behaviors that do not enrich life. But there are those whose souls are filled with so much light that there bound to be shadows…only those belong to the realm of Dark Vanilla.
They enjoy cultivating the erotic as an art…true artists of desire. They aren’t ashamed of enjoying earthly delights nor afraid to reach out for heavenly love. Love so deep where borders between us start to fade away. It’s a realm for women who want to be loved gently and fucked hard (and vice versa)…and men who know how to do that.
It’s a realm for people who give expression to both their light and dark sides and enjoy the full range of sexual diversity, without being perverts or prudes. In short, sane people with an edge; having enough madness to dare be themselves.
The name of its philosophy should be called Sexistentialism. A succinct definition would be that a sexistentialist is an existentialist in which love and sexuality has replaced nihilism and gloom [1]. Haven’t you noticed how the founders of existentialism had problems with their love lives? Nietzsche might have been a virgin for all we know (let alone his misogynism, which is, however, subtler than most people think) and Kierkegaard pushed away perhaps the only love of his life.
The meaning of a philosopher is “the lover of wisdom”. If you wanted to learn how to love women you would go to those that don’t just love them but are loved back. For wisdom is like a woman. She does not give herself to you simply because you want her. That is something that mere professors of philosophy don’t understand. The difference between professors of philosophy and real philosophers is the difference between lovers who are never loved and lovers who are. A philosopher is someone who not only loves wisdom but wisdom loves him back. Which also explains why professors of philosophy engage in so much intellectual masturbation. In fact, the silence of philosophers throughout history on the topic of masturbation only heightens our suspicion…
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Notes:
[1] And no, I am not implying the way to overcome nihilism and gloom is to freely abandon yourself in bouts of senseless hedonism. What I am saying is that an existence in which love and sexuality are missing tends to become gloomy and nihilistic.
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