The Politics of Lust PIVOTAL PRESS

During the federal election campaign of June 2004 John Ince will be touring Canada to
encourage politicians, the media and electors to support the repeal of anti-sexual laws.

...
“It is his life's mission to broaden our [erotic] repertoire.” — Ottawa Citizen
“A lawyer who has spent years battling Canada's antiquated sex laws.” — National Post
“You are brave...and wonderful.” — Vicki Gabereau

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"The Politics of Lust should convince any rational, reasonable, patriotic American jury
that cultural and mental rigidity and the growing influence of erotophobia pose an
increasing threat to our democratic way of life."
Robert T. Francoeur, Ph.D.
Editor, The Complete International Encyclopedia of Sexuality

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"Terrific book...If only everyone would read this book, our society would mature
sexually a
dozen fold."
Annie Sprinkle, Ph.D., porn star turned sexologist

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"He makes a convincing argument that society maintains unrealistic belief systems to
keep us all uptight around our sexuality. The result is we turn into easy-to-govern, docile
citizens."
Trina Read Calgary Herald

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"Ince argues that our cultural obsession with sex actually indicates a deeper fear of our
own sexuality."
Leah McLaren Globe and Mail

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"John Ince argues that our culture fears sex because we put control ahead of pleasure."
Paul Gallant Xtra
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Chapter Summaries

Introduction
Though modern society seems enthusiastic about sex, most of us secretly fear our own
sexuality and that of other people. This condition (called erotophobia) has deep roots in
our culture: the first reference in the Bible to human emotions involves the fear of
genitals, in the story of Adam and Eve. Yet few people are aware of the condition or the
complex political system that breeds it. This ignorance is unfortunate because
erotophobia powerfully affects not only our sexuality but also many other aspects of our
life. It even affects the way we vote!
Return to Table of Contents
Chapter 1 Solitary Fig-leafing
Like Adam and Eve, many people in the modern era are averse to seeing their own
genitals. They “fig-leaf” themselves even when they are alone. Example: women who
fear inspecting their own genitals with a mirror. A specific type of erotophobia, “genital
phobia” motivates this compulsive fig-leafing. A fascinating unconscious learning
process imprints genital phobia and all other types of erotophobia. This chapter
examines key elements of such learning, focusing on “fear conditioning” and
“rationalizing.”
Return to Table of Contents
Chapter 2 Social Fig-leafing
Genital phobia also inspires the fear of nudity in social situations. Examples: parents
who avoid family nudity, and people who avoid nude beaches. This fear is learned
by observing social negativity aimed at nudity in the home and elsewhere, and by
exposure to the false idea that nudity is harmful, spread by Freud, Dr. Spock, Ann
Landers, and even Playboy magazine. Such “experts” are themselves in the grip of
genital phobia, and they in turn help other people acquire it. Thus genital phobia is
contagious, and its virus is the negative behavior and misinformation it inspires.
Such an “infection system” is the key force spreading a variety of phobic sexual attitudes
into the minds of almost everyone.
Return to Table of Contents
Chapter 3 Genital Purdah
Most parents force clothes on children who would like to play in the nude; laws
forbid nudity in public parks or beaches. Such prohibitions are much like the
Moslem institution of purdah, which insists that all women hide their faces in any
public area. Such “genital purdah” is the product of genital phobia, and it in turn helps
generate more genital phobia: another example of the infection system.
Return to Table of Contents
Chapter 4 Genital Censorship
Nudity images (non-sexual) are heavily censored in the media. Institutions such as the
New York Times often overtly deface images so as to conceal genitals. Such action
violates basic journalistic ethics, yet is so routine that it is taken for granted. Genital
phobia motivates this unethical censorship. When it is observed by millions of people,
they too acquire phobic attitudes towards genitals. Esteemed social institutions believe
they are acting in the public interest but are actually harming society by spreading
phobic attitudes about normal body parts.
Return to Table of Contents
Chapter 5 Lust Phobia
The previous four chapters examine phobic attitudes toward genitals. This chapter
introduces a new concept, “lust phobia”, irrational fears about the experience of sex,
consisting of aversions to erotic sensations, and delusions about lustful behavior
(such as the myth that sexuality is overpowering and uncontrollable, or that sex is
somehow “dirty”.) The reader learns in general terms how this type of erotophobia is
acquired, and the toxic behaviors it prompts. Each of the next eight chapters illustrate
specific types of antisexual action that help cause lust phobia and that are motivated by it.
Return to Table of Contents
Chapter 6 The Enemies of Playful Sex
Sex is a wonderful type of play. But gleeful sex has many enemies. This chapter
examines social intolerance towards: non-marital sex, contraception, masturbation, oral
sex, and anal sex. Examples: religious injunctions against “living in sin”; laws that
prohibit “fornication”; the anti-masturbation ideas in Boy Scouts’ manuals;
prohibitions on the sale of vibrators. Such antisexualism, in turn, helps breed
irrational attitudes toward non-marital sex, masturbation, oral sex, anal sex, and
lust generally. The infection system is at work here again.
Return to Table of Contents
Chapter 7 Attacking Youthful Lust
Lust phobia motivates enormous hostility toward youthful sexuality. Examples:
parents who disallow teens the right to have a “sleep-over” with their lover; U.S.
federal funding for “abstinence education”; prohibitions on condoms at high-
schools; the absence of any “discourse of desire” in teen mass media. Such negativity
warps popular attitudes towards the sexuality of young people. Even teens
internalize these negative messages. A rational society would not stigmatize youthful
sexuality, but rather encourage its development through a process of “sexual
gradualism,” the same way we encourage our youth to learn to drive, ski, and do
other risky activities by actually performing them.
Return to Table of Contents
Chapter 8 Mandatory Monogamy
Most couples object to their partner having any sexual interest, no matter how slight, in
another person. That attitude is often (not always) irrational, the product of a variety of
sex-negative attitudes. This chapter challenges the legitimacy of the ethic of rigid
monogamy, and shows how intolerance toward non-exclusive sexual conduct helps
breed various types of erotophobia.
Return to Table of Contents
Chapter 9 The Sexual Hush
Most people are sexually tongue-tied. Open, honest sex discourse is non-existent even
in the intimate lives of most couples. Few parents can communicate intelligently to
their children about sex. Even the media is largely mute when sex is in issue, with
some important exceptions (exceptions which generate the myth that ours is a
sexually verbose culture). The pervasive sexual silence is driven by erotophobia and
helps breed more of that condition.
Return to Table of Contents
Chapter 10 Porn War
Explicit media designed for no purpose other than to elicit lust is highly controversial in
an erotophobic culture. Though much of the phobic censorship of the past is
subsiding, porn is still segregated outside the social mainstream. Erotophobia is a
key motive behind such exclusion. Blanket intolerance toward all porn leads to
violent, anti-social porn and such nasty material in turn generates negative attitudes
toward all explicit imagery.
Return to Table of Contents
Chapter 11 Secluding Sex
Though most people seek sexual privacy, some are comfortable expressing sexual energy
where bystanders can see it. This chapter examines negativity aimed at harmless
visible live sex, such as a child masturbating in a living room or a couple making
love in a car. Family and legal prohibitions directed at the visibility of live sex are
motivated largely by sex intolerance, and help cause more of the same.
Return to Table of Contents
Chapter 12 Prostitution Prohibitions
A professional masseur offends no law or social sensibility by stroking a client’s arms,
back, or legs. But the moment the genitals are included the service attracts enormous
social wrath. Such negativity is irrational, driven by erotophobia. Blanket social
discrimination against all sex workers is worthy of no truly democratic society. It
not only violates basic human rights, but also helps generate phobic attitudes
toward both sex work and sex itself.
Return to Table of Contents
Chapter 13 Homo Hatred
Homophobia is the best recognized type of erotophobia. Because the condition is already
so well documented this chapter only briefly examines it. Irrational negativity by
families, churches, and government toward gays and lesbians help breed more
homophobia.
Return to Table of Contents
Chapter 14 Nasty Sex
Exposures to nasty sexual experience such as sexual assault, sexual disease, or even
violent porn all help cause erotophobia. For example, victims of sexual assault are
prone to a host of phobic sexual aversions. Anxiety about getting pregnant or
becoming infected with a sexual disease, which often occurs during sexual acts, also
helps generate primitive aversions to the very feel of sex. Because nasty sex is
common in our society, so is erotophobia.
Return to Table of Contents
Chapter 15 Rigid People Fear Sex
This is the most challenging chapter in the book. While the preceding chapters show how
erotophobia is learned through negative experiences involving sex and genitals, this
chapter shows that erotophobia is also a by-product of common personality traits,
characterized by dogmatism, physical tension, and emotional inhibition. Such traits
can be acquired entirely outside the sexual domain of life. They are prevalent in
members of police and military organizations, fundamentalist religions, and social
elites. This chapter offers an exciting new perspective on the relationship of personal
rigidity and sexual fear.
Return to Table of Contents
Chapter 16 The Politics of Lust
The ultimate cause of erotophobia is social inequality. Hierarchic social
relationships in families and social institutions are especially conducive to the key
causes of erotophobia: antisexual behavior, nasty sex, and rigid personalities.
Further, erotophobia helps cause hierarchic relationships: social inequality and
irrational sexual fears are mutually causal! Here again, erotophobia helps produce the
very forces that cause it. Only when our society overcomes irrational sexual fear will it
truly embrace social equality and freedom.

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Q & A with author John Ince

1) Interview with Digital Journal Jan 13, 2005 here.

2) Interview with Pivotal Press editors (immediately below.)
What led you to write about sex and politics?
Since my teens I’ve had a strong personal interest in sexual experience and sexual
relationships. University in the 1970s exposed me to the classic sexual thinkers such as
Freud, Reich, and Kinsey, and to the new sexual perspectives of feminists and gays. After
called to the Bar in 1980 I devoted an area of my practice to civil rights cases involving
sex. I discovered that Canada’s sexual laws are largely incoherent, unlike any other body
of law. Prosecutors, judges, and politicians, who are normally articulate, often stammer
ineloquently when sex is in issue. I soon realized that the law’s sexual funk was a
microcosm of a much larger social problem. Understanding our culture’s sexual malaise
took twenty years of research, and the result is The Politics of Lust.
You say our culture fears sex? Give examples.
Consider the inability of most people to talk openly about sex. I call it “the sexual hush.”
Surveys indicate that even lovers cannot communicate honestly about what they like and
dislike in bed. Around their children, most parents are sexually tongue-tied. Even media
personalities like Oprah and Jane Fonda have trouble saying a word like “vagina.” Our
inability to discuss sex reveals our insecurity about it.
Sexual inhibition is also a sign of sexual squeamishness. Surveys show that most people
are sexual minimalists. A sexuality expert describes the life of the average couple as “not
a picture of much sexual action.”
Our institutions also intolerant towards genitals and sex. Recreational nudity in any
public place is a crime in Canada. Genitals are banished from the mainstream media.
Most religions regard masturbation and pre-marital sex as sins. The law forbids a broad
range of consensual and private sexual conduct, including group sex and sex work. All of
this points to fear about human sexuality.
Why the myth that our society is sexually hedonistic?
Sexual entertainment is a vast industry that reaches into millions of homes. The industry
misrepresents sexual reality by depicting only the sexuality of professional exhibitionists.
Most people have much more inhibited sexual attitudes, but their sexuality is never seen.
The result is the popular myth that we are all sexual libertines, like the sex stars.
The mainstream media does little to correct this distortion. Coverage of sexual issues in
the mainstream media is dismal. While most large Canadian newspapers have a reporter
covering niche subjects like wine, food, cars and gardening, not one has a reporter
specializing in sex. The reality of sexuality in our culture is not exposed.
But people who work in the field of sex, such as sex educators, sex therapists, sex toy
merchants, and sexual entertainers, all know the prevalence of sexual fear.
How do we acquire sexual fear?
We get it from a fascinating and complex system that operates largely unconsciously.
There are three different forces breeding sexual fear: a) social negativity aimed at sex, b)
nasty sexual experiences like rape, c) rigid personality traits.
The first is the most important. We internalize sex fear mainly by observing negativity
aimed specifically at genitals and sex by parents, siblings, peers, and social authorities.
For example, most parents disapprove of children romping in the nude, touching their
own genitals, or playing sexually with friends. Children quickly notice that any type of
sexual expression causes alarm. Pediatricians report that most children conclude that “sex
is dirty and genitals are shameful” by the time they are five! Teen experience reinforces
that attitude, as does much adult experience.
Nasty sexual experience such as sexual assault is also a potent cause of sexual fear. Many
victims report serious sexual problems even years after their ordeal. Unwanted
pregnancies, sexual disease, unhappy early sexual relationships, and even violent
pornography breed sexual fear too.
People with “rigid” personality traits are also prone to sexual fear. Rigidity is
characterized by high levels of anxiety, attraction to rigid social roles, and excessive self
control. People popularly known as “tight asses” or “control freaks” have such traits. For
reasons I discuss in the book, the spontaneous impulses of their own sexuality threatens
them.
Does the degree of sexual fear vary from person to person? Why?
Yes there is a large variation in the distribution of sexual fear, because everyone is
exposed to different levels of the three forces that breed it. For example, some families
are very sexually censorious, while others are much more relaxed. Sexual assault and
other nasty sexual experience afflict some people more than others. Some people have
rigid personality traits while others do not.
Everyone in our culture is exposed to some of these forces, so nobody escapes some
primitive fears about sex. But the intensity of those fears can vary widely. Most sexual
entertainers habour few such fears, while most fundamentalist preachers are full of them.
Is there a root cause of sexual fear?
One ultimate cause lies behind all of the forces that breed sexual fear: social
stratification. Amazingly, the more inequality in the relationships of any family, religion,
or community at large, the greater the sexual fear. Negative sexual attitudes are
ultimately the product of top-down social relationships! In contrast, sex-positive attitudes
are closely linked with social equality. Sex and politics are intimately connected, and the
title of The Politics of Lust draws attention to that curious and largely unexamined issue.
How do pecking orders cause sexual fears?
The greater the top-down political structure of any group, the more common are the three
causes of sexual fear: sexual punishments, nasty sex, and rigid personalities. For
example, a patriarchal family is intensely sexual restrictive. Kids are taught that pre-
marital sex and even masturbation are serious sins. Less traditional families have much
fewer sexual rules. Similarly, in the top-down structure of the Catholic Church, priests
are expected to remain virgins their entire lives! More egalitarian religions, such as the
Unitarian Church, impose no such burdens on their leaders. The more sex is punished, the
greater the fear.
Sexual assault is also more common the greater the inequality. For example, children are
easy prey for sexual predators in schools that teach that authorities must be obeyed
without question. In communities where men dominate women, females suffer high
levels of sexual abuse. The greater that abuse, the greater the fear about sex. Negative
sexual attitudes and top-down power structures go hand in hand.
What is the future of sexual fear?
Though our culture suffers from an unhealthy excess of sexual fear, the trend is clear, we
are gradually becoming more sexually relaxed. Every generation is less sexually uptight
than its parents.
The ultimate reason for that trend lies in the growing equality in human relationships.
Gender roles are loosening up. Women now can enjoy high powered careers and men can
opt to stay home and raise the kids. Child-rearing is becoming more humane; corporal
punishment is declining. Ethnic prejudice is waning as multiculturalism expands. The
greater the social equality the less powerful the forces that breed sexual fear.
Radical change is on the horizon in the way we deal with sex. Gay marriage is just the
start. Watch for the legalization of sex work, the loosening of controls over sexual media,
far greater sex education in schools, and more attention to sexual issues in the
mainstream press. Watch too for greater sexual experimentation in our private lives,
including more role play, more sex toys, even more people!

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