America is far from a sexually repressed society, or there would not be so many Americans contributing to industries that are worth billions of dollars! Americans are obsessed with sex and romance in all of its forms, from the socially and politically marginalized religious groups which see sex as sin, to the hedonistic underground cultures which welcome sexual deviation in all of it’s forms, Americana are far from repressed in dealing with issues of sex.
From the advertising which bombards us in every forum and through every medium, “Sex sells.” Sex in advertising has been a major area of study in business schools, social science programs, and graphic arts and advertising curriculum. Lawyers are constantly having to deal with the limits on what can be said and presented where. Websites that claim to be “family oriented” are constantly having to deal with issues of language and graphic representations of material that can be considered to be overly sexually explicit.
Even the Bible has notorious passages that describe sexuality and sexual deviance. In teaching about the Immaculate Conception, children must learn something about normal conception in order to understand the miracle involved.
Sex is most commonly dealt with within the context of romance, romantic love, and the goals of establishing committed, legally recognized permanent relationships. Most Americans are more interested in issues about sex within the context of a stable, committed relationship that begins with romantic love. In other words, “the whole package” is just as important as getting sexual gratification.
Even subsets of American society who appoint themselves to be the moral arbiters of what is acceptable, engage in enough sex to carry on with generation after generation, while still producing enough deviants and sexual criminals to show that they are actually as human and fallible as the rest of society, if not more fallible.
America cannot possibly be a sexually repressed society when the levels of prostitution, the sales figures for pornographic material, the graphic sexual content of films and television shows, and the booming business in male and female strip clubs and “exotic dancing” shows is considered.
Americans love to study. Americans love to study other cultures, and no other place on the planet, except, perhaps for Great Britain, has a more comprehensive access to understanding the sexual mores, habits and processes of other cultures and countries.
From the Kama Sutra to Kinsey; from Madam Mattie Silks to Doctor Ruth, from “let’s spoon”, to “Make love, not war”. Americans have had the least repressed attitude toward sex in the history of the world, while having the false reputation for not knowing what to do about sex at all.
