only people with certain kinds of sexual conflict get caught.

[G_j]

http://www.americanhumanist.org/HNN/details/2011-06-anthony-weiners-bad-judgement-that-is-so-not-the-poi


Anthony Weiner’s “Bad Judgement”? That is So Not the Point
By Dr. Marty Klein


<snip>

And that’s the problem: Everyone in America is conflicted about sex. But only people with certain kinds of sexual conflict get caught.

Some people conflicted about sex never masturbate, never ask a woman what time it is just to stand next to her, never look at porn, never choose a table or subway seat based on who they get to look at, never fantasize when they walk past a dress shop, never read a romance novel, never think about what’s under those tight NFL pants, never look up old boyfriends on Facebook, never wear a plunging neckline, never own a vibrator, never smell their spouse’s underwear.

They never think of sex, feel little passion, and rarely do it.

Such people’s sexual conflicts are never exposed to public scrutiny, because they’re rarely acted out in ways we can easily see. But the internal crippling of sex phobias, the terror that one might not be 100% heterosexual, the rage against others’ sexual self-acceptance—these qualities in our public servants should concern us far more than the phone sex of Anthony Weiner, the love child of Arnold Schwarzenegger, and the prostitutes of David Vitter or Elliot Spitzer.

The problem with all the moralistic, self-satisfied, judgmental crap being thrown at, on, and around Anthony Weiner is that it affirms the idea that sex gets us in trouble—and that if we stay away from it, we’re OK. It affirms the idea that people who are conflicted about sex and act it out (in Weiner’s case, playfully, consensually, and—let’s remember—without meeting or touching) are somehow less trustworthy and less emotionally stable than people whose sexual conflicts leave them with frozen hearts, frozen bodies, and a complete lack of a paper trail. The grief of a spouse emotionally abandoned by a sex-phobe is always considered more acceptable than the grief of a spouse who’s been cheated on—a naïve and mean-spirited reading of human emotion.

<snip>

[Cleita]

1. I think in the case of politicians, having a D after your

name defines the sexual conflict pretty well. It's not okay for Democrats but IOKIYAR.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

2. "..sex is the most awful, filthy thing on earth and you should save it for someone you love."

"Life in Lubbock, Texas, taught me two things: One is that God loves you and you're going to burn in hell. The other is that sex is the most awful, filthy thing on earth and you should save it for someone you love." - Butch Hancock

[RKP5637]

5. They say that sh** around here too. Everyones a sinner and going to hell. And

others talk in tongues. And my response is, they're some good opportunities for psychiatrists in this area.

[yodermon]

10. What a brilliant quote. n/t

[madmom]

3. No way in hell will I sniff my spouses underwear...never!

[Catbird]

4. Wash yes. Sniff, no thanks.

[RKP5637]

7. Scratch and Sniff!!! LOL n/t

[AnnetteJacobs]

6. Exactly. I'm trying to teach my children that sex is natural and normal

How can I do that if we're constantly told to be "horrified" by politicians' sexual activities?

[RKP5637]

8. Brainwashed America. In all my decades in many ways it's never

changed. It's still the sexually repressed place in many ways that Europeans used to laugh at and still so.

[G_j]

21. it really seems to be

a consistent theme, that and violence..

[Maraya1969]

9. A part of the article that needs to be known.

"For example, what if a politician privately sends hot emails to his own wife? Takes explicit pictures of their monogamous bedroom activities and keeps them private? Or, with her encouragement, sends them to the couple’s best friend? No one’s hurt, no one complains, it’s all private. Does the desire to do this, or the willingness to do it, mean a public servant can’t be trusted?

Why not? And why is this worse than electing someone who, it turns out, believes that their sexual fantasies are going to damn them to everlasting hell?"

[Doctor_J]

11. No, only people with a certain party affiliation get caught

Insipid articles like this make things worse by clouding the real issue.

[InkAddict]

12. What's the real issue? We're all born as quintessential

narcissists, and this conflict of meeting OUR own libidinal needs versus those of OTHERS' needs sits like a white elephant in our core being - I enjoyed the OP's link which recognizes there IS perversity at the the opposite end of our sex-sells saturated culture as well.

[G_j]

17. well said

:thumbsup:

[LadyHawkAZ]

15. Both parties get CAUGHT. Ours gets HOUNDED.

[lumberjack_jeff]

19. That's it. Sex is awful and dirty and if you get caught doing it, they keep you around as an example

Vitter: "Diapers and prostitutes? *sniff* I'm Soooooo sorry! I hope gawd forgives me!!!"
GOP: "This reinforces our belief that sex, government and people are all fundamentally bad. How better to demonstrate the correctness of our views than to keep you in the Senate?"

Weiner: "Sorry. Chatting with these women was a big lapse in judgment."
Democrats: "This conflicts with our belief that sex, government and progressives are all beautiful and fundamentally perfect - just like me. We won't tolerate any elected progressives who challenge that view. It's embarrassing. To me."

[JDPriestly]

13. Beautifully said.

This is about basic psychiatry.

Wilhelm Reich -- The Emotional Plague

The term “emotional plague” is not a derogatory phrase. It does not connote conscious malevolence, moral or biological degeneracy, immorality, etc. An organism whose natural mobility has been continually thwarted from birth develops artificial forms of movement. It limps or walks on crutches. In the same way, a man goes through life on the crutches of the emotional plague when the natural self-regulating life expressions are suppressed from birth. The person afflicted with the emotional plague limps characterologically. The emotional plague is a chronic biopathy of the organism. It made an inroad into human society with the first mass suppression of genital sexuality; it became an endemic disease which has been tormenting people the world over for thousands of years. There are no grounds for assuming that the emotional plague is passed on from mother to child in a hereditary way. According to our knowledge, it is implanted in the child from the first days of life. It is an endemic illness, like schizophrenia or cancer, with one notable difference, i.e., it is essentially manifested in social life. Schizophrenia and cancer are biopathies which we can look upon as the results of the ravages of the emotional plague in social life. The effects of the emotional plague can be seen in the human organism as well as in the life of society. Every so often, the emotional plague develops into an epidemic just like any other contagious disease, such as the bubonic plague or cholera. Epidemic outbreaks of the emotional plague become manifest in widespread and violent breakthroughs of sadism and criminality, on a small and large scale. One such epidemic outbreak was the Catholic Inquisition of the Middle Ages; the international fascism of the twentieth century is another.

http://cassiopaea.org/forum/index.php?topic=11529.0

I happen to be in a long and happy marriage, and I don't sex text anyone other than my spouse (and not even him), but I do think that unacknowledged sexual frustration is a problem in our society. One of its manifestations is the preoccupation we seem to have with sexual exhibitionism and sexual exhibitionists. We are condemning a symptom of our neurosis about sexuality rather than being honest about the fact that sexuality is for most of us a healthy part of our lives and not something to be obsessed with or embarrassed about.

In my very subjective view, a person who is well adjusted sexually will respect the privacy of others. If you watch TV, you realize that on sitcoms, at least every third joke involves some sort of sexual innuendo. It gets tiresome and reflects the fact that an awful lot of Americans have not been able to put sex into a context in their lives that allows them to develop good relationships with other people.

Even brilliant professional women are rated according to their sexual attractiveness in many situations. It seems that we are just obsessed by sex in an unhealthy way. Makes me, as an older woman, very tired.

[LadyHawkAZ]

14. Wow. Yes. That!

Fantastic article.

[girl gone mad]

16. I'm stunned by the attitude that getting caught with a prostitute would have been more acceptable.

As if, it's okay for a man to cheat, so long as it's a business transaction and the woman involved doesn't enjoy the sex, too.

It's very regressive and sexist and I feel bad for young people who have to navigate their way through this type of sexual environment.

[seabeyond]

18. "I feel bad for young people who have to navigate their way through". point

i hear so much ridiculous in trying to label everything adn everyone... prude and pearl clutcher.

and kids are pretty damn tired of it too. new study, kids are saying fuck it to sex. tired of the mess. quite literally. we are really messing them up with our messed up adult sexual world and insisting they play with us

[lumberjack_jeff]

20. It's not about the sex. It's about the person's supporters.

If your core belief is that sex, people and government are all bad, keeping Vitter in the senate is a no-brainer.