By: Ugochukwu Anadị

What we have is the sanctification and consecration of sex — you know that activity that brings together in a pronounced, sweet and sweetened sense (a sense which I sincerely think is euphoric) two or more bodies. The pervasive and prevalent teachings about this state of great intimacy, especially from the religious quarters is filled with the concept and thoughts of sacredness sanctity and sacrosanctity.

It’s filled with rules and regulations, principles and policies, dos and donts, and it hurts when this claim of sacredness which cannot be corroborated either by science or rationality is endorsed by the state. It’s heart wrenching and brain depleting to think that States makes laws that hunts and hurts people for doing absolutely nothing wrong but for offending the moral sense of sexuality of some religious fundamentalists. These religious fundamentalists and their fundamental principles on the issue of human sexuality and sex are supposed to be scorned, disregarded and discarded for they have shown over time to hold in high esteem, preposterous ideas which are degrading to humanity.

We’re meant to believe that these superfluous and unnecessary regulations are not only Divine Mandates but done with the best intentions. I wish not to commit any single space in this immaculate slate on the ‘Divine Mandate Argument’, but I’ve found the ‘Best of Intentions Argument’ to be like the proverbial fly, which even though hitting it will lead to the damage of some delicate eggs housed by the scrotum, must be made to leave. Why do I say so?

We have some regulations which tell us that a man shouldn’t and mustn’t copulate with a boy. This policy is a body of water that fills to the acme, the deepest well of positivity there exist. But when this same policy is extended to prohibit sexual intimacy between two men, even when it’s consensual , it not only drains this well of positivity, but also fills it with the roughest of rocks there is. It means that a body which have been floating on this water, not only hits the unpleasant bottom, but is buried by objects that makes a mockery of its flesh.

It’s at this point, at this point that we have the policies telling us that a girl cannot be with another girl, or a woman with another woman, but must be with either a boy or a man, even if the blossoming flowers of the girl or woman dies at the mere touch of a boy or man, that we must hit that stubborn fly that have left all the trees and flowers that abound in the environment to settle in a bag that houses the future of humanity, and be rest assured that our eggs are safe.

These policies that tend to cage man like man has done animals over the years, leads to the overhyping of sex. Sex is elevated to a level in which it competes for the zenith with the Divine (maybe that’s why there’s a Divine Mandate against it). It becomes a portal through which demons, even when they haven’t been shown to exist, possess, torment and destroy men and women and all who do not fall under the society’s classification of gender, alike.  It takes sex out of the physical cum psychological cum biological realm to the spiritual realm. But apart from this spiritualization of that which is physical (which on its own is a substantial problem: problems of hallucinations and delusions), we have the over commercialisation of that which is physical due to a false-sense-of-morality induced overhype.

While we claim to be against commodification of sex, while we’ve invented words like sluts, drabs, hookers etc. to degrade and devalue the humanity and humaneness of sex workers, we are the major promoters of it. We are the ones who have taught our young ones, especially the females, that sex must come with a price, that sex is not a mutual engagement, that’s it’s all about ‘giving’ and ‘taking’ whereby she’s giving and the guy is taking. What we do not know when we say those  things is that we’re telling them that they mustn’t allow themselves to be ‘exploited’, that they must collect something in return for what they offer (better if it’s of lots of material worth) before giving themselves. And you know what? That’s exactly what commercial sex workers do.

And our men have come to internalize the wrong notion that they’re just ‘receivers’ or ‘collectors’ depending on whether you want to be passive or active. So they pay. And one problem with this payment is that it objectifies those who receives them. So we make women mere objects, exchanged for some notes, some crisp, others as ugly as the policies that initiated the exchange.

And this, as bad and counterproductive as it is, has found its way into every form of sexual relationship in our society today. The ‘bottom’ guy now feels that he’s doing the ‘top’ guy a favour and the ‘top’ guy sees nothing wrong in returning this favour with some amount of money.

Is there a way out? Yes. That way is the path that leads to the liberalisation of sex. The way out is that we stop voting out our leaders not because they have failed in governance, but because a video of a consensual sexual engagement which in the enlightened sense of it, is not offensive to anyone was leaked. The way out is that we don’t all claim not to watch porn, yet porn industries continue to generate the highest income in the entertainment industry. The way out is that consenting adults should be able to consummate their love, without having any course to be ashamed of it, or speak of it only mutedly. People should able to say or write penis, as they would write hand or any other part of the body, if not for any other thing, for the sake of minors who are highly vulnerable to sexual assaults; they cannot report the violation of their bodies when they do not have the words for the parts. Vagina should always be written as vagina, and not v*gina or v-gina. Scenes where ‘fuck’ is said in movies should be left in peace without having to mute them and making the actor look stupid for some brief period of time, no matter how little those seconds are.

This may not be all the solutions needed, but I’m optimistic that this is a dais, standing upon which we can see the others.