Sexual frustration and social aggression

I had been noticing for quite some time the increasingly aggressive and unreasonable nature of most debates. There is no sense of compromise or even a willingness to listen attentively before assuming. I had noticed that the most energy seems to lie around power/control and sex/gender related discussions, and things started falling into place.

Sexual frustration is the root cause of most social aggression #tweetlikeFreud
Vidyut
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Sexual frustration and social aggression 2August 4, 2011

Sexual awareness is something humans around the world share. We come into it in the same way, we are curious about it in much the same way. Experimentation with the new sense of self is a preoccupation with teenagers around the world.

We come into sexual ability at puberty. Then, we spend a few years getting used to the idea.
Vidyut
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And that is natural. It is like exploring the space where a tooth was, with your tongue, or testing the edge of the emerging tooth.

It is changes in the body and instincts that we reorient our sense of self around. Some of the most important years in life in terms of personality.
Then, we spend a lot of years – the sexual peak, actually for men – twiddling thumbs, because sexuality is becoming increasingly taboo
Vidyut
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This is actually sad, because the natural instinct of any animal, humans included is to reach maturity and begin preparing for reproduction – on a biological, hormonal level. Emotionally, it is a time of a lot of suppressed desires. The new self image is quite fragile and needs the reassurance of being “functional” – as in, capable of attracting a mate and having a relationship.

Whether the relationship lasts is immaterial, courtship is a natural instinct. However, our society looks down on it as something undesirable.
This largely stems from old fashioned concerns about the woman being “used”, meaning, had sex with and abandoned – often pregnant. So it is actually a protective norm gone way out of its original context.
From advising women to refuse men “physical relations” as sex is euphemised, to forbidding, monitoring and controlling the contact of unmarried girls with men, this is a journey that is taking us down the rabbit hole where interacting with men “unnecessarily” or for pleasure is seen as a mark of “bad character”.
The choice is very clearly between losing respect or acting on desire.
If you consider 30 as the average age of marriage, that is approximately 16 years since wanting to have sex and getting it
Vidyut
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Add to this the increasing corporate culture and stress on being self-sufficient before marriage and increasing inflation and the age of marriage has moved past 30 for many people.

I have even heard match making mamas chitter among each other that settling down before marriage is such greate incentive for becoming secure in life! The classic carrot and stick circus.
What people don’t realize in this process is the physical, emotional and psychological toll it takes to not do something that is a spontaneous instinct.
So, you have no easy source for sex, and the age of marriage is going further and further away.
Vidyut
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Sexual frustration and social aggression 2August 4, 2011
And this is a cause of great frustration among young people. Why young people? Even with 30 something unmarried people. Sex is taboo.

The age old service that prostitutes have been providing for mankind for precisely these reasons is now under attack from both sides. The traditional view sees it as immoral while the modern view sees it as the mark of a person unable to attract a woman.
In essence, if you are living with family, you can expect to be ready for sex sometime around 14 years of age, and not get it till about twice that age – usually longer. Those who don’t live with family have it slightly easier from the lack of immediate shame and taboos.
That is a heck of a lot of frustration. Then you have a lot of frustrated, short tempered people getting offended at everything.
Vidyut
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It is difficult to realize the extent to which this suppression of natural instincts disturbs the victims. Some rebel, some break off ties, others get into aggressive, repetitive  arguments. Still others entertain themselves with passing women.
You have people “copping a feel” of a woman, hungrily looking at any woman as a sexual opportunity to be grabbed or lost….
Vidyut
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Sexual frustration and social aggression 2August 4, 2011

#Eveteasing is a crime of opportunity and aggression.  One way or the other, the suppressed feelings will explode out. There are many who hunger for a woman so much, that they end up staring at women they see and knowing that it is wrong, they will create explanations about how that particular target is not worthy of respect or in other words, allowed.

It is a process of suffering and dishing out anger too. When a part of the mind is preoccupied with something it cannot legitimately get, the mind is disturbed and overloaded causing irritation and anger to spill over into their interactions with people.
Women are no longer people, but objects of entertainment to be judged and abused. And not just women, it is about anyone who seems to be an opportunity to get sexual experiences. Grandmothers and small children have been raped too!!! It isn’t at all about actions inviting rape. That is an excuse.
Many suggest the solution for sexual harassment like eve teasing or rapes be harsh. That is a band aid. An emergency fix of a bad situation
Vidyut
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Most people get angry with predatory men, and there are calls for severe punishments ranging from intricate tweaks of laws to make them more stringent to demanding that police act more strictly against complaints, to outright recommendations of castration for rapists.

Without calling any method of punishment better or worse, I want to stress that punishment, however light or severe is post facto. A heavy punishment will be some deterrence, but a bully rarely sees himself in negative light, so doesn’t think of himself as criminal for the deterrence to matter.
On the other hand, I do see how a strong, well publicized punishment goes a long way than mere words. In any case, these are punishments. They rarely get to the root of what causes such criminals to be formed in society.
The real solution can only come if people have ways to engage in natural, hormonal, emotional instincts without being shamed for it.
Vidyut
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Sexual frustration and social aggression 2August 4, 2011

We need to get real about these things. While it is important that young adults are safe, it creates more problems than it solves if we go the other end of the scale and police them for something as natural as attraction and developing relationships. It only leads to hidden affairs and increased risk rather than decreased. Or it adds to suppressed sexual desires causing frustrations that warp other aspects of behaviour.

It creates a classic sour grapes mentality around women. We see already that misogyny has gone beyond being an attitude to being a very real danger to women with many instances of life threatening harm or deaths. The methods of victimization can be physical/mental or actual physical attacks or murders. The common fact, whether it is a catcall or a rape+murder is simple and obvious – the woman is overruled about her own self.
I am in no way excusing criminals, but I do think that in the process of segregating genders and shaming attraction, we deprive our own of very vital tools for dealing functionally with the other gender, as well as the much needed interactions that are so important for mental well being.
It is no coincidence that the more rigid a society it is, the more hot tempered people there are.
Vidyut
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And not just about sex. Hot tempered, intolerant people about anything. A person with frustrated desires is irritable and looking for ways to push people away. Doesn’t take too long to categorize large swathes of people as one kind and be angry with them for their real or imagined qualities.
This unnatural moralizing also creates other problems. Gender roles are changing. People enter marriages clueless no compromise needed.
Vidyut
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Sexual frustration and social aggression 2August 4, 2011
The woman of today is very different from the women of twenty years ago. And still different from one thirty years ago, and so on. The world has opened to women. Opportunities, responsibilities, freedoms beyond anything women might have imagined thirty years before.

As such, traditional attitudes around marriage are often unfair, because they don’t appreciate the expanding influence of the woman that didn’t exist earlier, and their recommendations for women are often very unreasonable for a working woman.
Yet, without the socialization, very few couples actually get time to integrate with each other and families and the marriage is very often quite similar to a leap of faith.
And there IS no reason why all this should happen. It really is not necessary at all to interfere in the sexual life of someone else – unless you are their partner and thus subject to their choices.
Seeing as how we now have excellent contraceptives, there is no reason young adults can’t be educated in their use and allowed to BE.
Vidyut
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Sexual frustration and social aggression 2August 4, 2011

A father once berated me for saying such things, because according to him, something like this will get his daughter pregnant by a creep, her life destroyed. This is not true.

If a woman is likely to get attracted to a creep, I think it is much better she have an affair with him openly than hide and eventually marry and remain tied to him. If children are not budy hiding from parents, vital conversations around morality, safe sex, emotional needs etc can happen and empower young people to make far more responsible choices.
Like I mentioned, contraception exists, and even if it fails, it really isn’t the end of the world enough for the girl any more. Social acceptability is improving, as are the opportunities for earning and independence for women.
Most importantly, it is still better than a daughter pregnant and married to a creep.
It is a fallacy to think that shaming people from having relationships actually prevents them – it only renders some young people more vulnerable to other people who may exploit them.
It gives legitimacy to people victimizing women who are open about their relationships as though the woman is a public object without the right to have preferences or refuse.
If you consider 30 as the average age of marriage, that is approximately 16 years since wanting to have sex and getting it
Vidyut
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Sexual frustration and social aggression 2August 4, 2011
That is more than half the age till then. That is more than schooling years. A loooooong time of intense feeling spent in forced denial
Vidyut
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Sexual frustration and social aggression 2August 4, 2011

Very important. What does it mean, when we design our world so that fertile, interested people are kept away from each other by design for their most reproductive years and most intense desires?

What a depressing thought that if you are fourteen when you hit puberty, you have the duration of your life so far stretched ahead before you actually do anything about that ability.
The idea that another can dictate sexual norms itself stinks of seeing mts own children as possessions.
Vidyut
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Sexual frustration and social aggression 2August 4, 2011

 

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14 thoughts on “Sexual frustration and social aggression”

  1. excellent, excellent, excellent!!
    why aren’t there more comments?!!
    this goes with each and every opinion i have on this issue…
    why don’t more people think like this? it’s not just the grown ups, more youth need to have such a mentality, instead, they get stuck in the old rot and thinking style of their conservative parents..
    thay may have gone through all the repression and frustrations like you described, but they end up doing the same to their children…
    the important question is, how can this be changed? do you have any ideas?
    i know it is impossible to make everyone think in the same way, but on an average the mindset has to change… and the change has to start with the 20 somethings who are facing all this right now.. they need to understand that 10 years from now, when they have children, they don’t have to fall back into the same old traps of the society…
    the question keeps boggling me.. how can we change this situation? writing books, educating people, discussions, seminars are very slow in producing change.. in fact the change that has happened in the past 30 years is mainly because of that and the improved economic situation of the people… but 30 years is toooo slow….
    solutions, we need solutions! i’m clueless myself.. 🙁

  2. excellent, excellent, excellent!!
    why aren’t there more comments?!!
    this goes with each and every opinion i have on this issue…
    why don’t more people think like this? it’s not just the grown ups, more youth need to have such a mentality, instead, they get stuck in the old rot and thinking style of their conservative parents..
    thay may have gone through all the repression and frustrations like you described, but they end up doing the same to their children…
    the important question is, how can this be changed? do you have any ideas?
    i know it is impossible to make everyone think in the same way, but on an average the mindset has to change… and the change has to start with the 20 somethings who are facing all this right now.. they need to understand that 10 years from now, when they have children, they don’t have to fall back into the same old traps of the society…
    the question keeps boggling me.. how can we change this situation? writing books, educating people, discussions, seminars are very slow in producing change.. in fact the change that has happened in the past 30 years is mainly because of that and the improved economic situation of the people… but 30 years is toooo slow….
    solutions, we need solutions! i’m clueless myself.. 🙁

  3. verry important issue, vidyut…
    and i suspect… supression of sexuality and creativity go hand in hand.both are castration.and it – as i am exploring – seems to stem from our shaming of our sensual and physical nature.

    biren

  4. verry important issue, vidyut…
    and i suspect… supression of sexuality and creativity go hand in hand.both are castration.and it – as i am exploring – seems to stem from our shaming of our sensual and physical nature.

    biren

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