Nymphomaniacs and Satyriasis and Tigers, Oh My!
March 11, 2010 9:00 AM
The most interesting part of Tiger Woods’ latest escapades? The plethora of puns his name enables, “Tiger: Lion Cheetah” being amongst the most used. While the term “interesting” is used, at best, lightly to describe these headlines, my interest peaks at bad jokes, and falls considerably short when talking about Woods’ actions.
Woods stated in his apology speech to the public that he believes many issues surrounding his extra-marital affairs are between him and his wife, and not to be aired on a public stage. I personally have no great desire to speak about his private life, and could hardly do so with any authority; what I feel we are entitled to speak about is how cultural notions of proper sexual behaviour have informed how this scenario played out and what consequences this may have on the concept of sex addiction.
The concept of sex addiction is hazy at best, yet it continues to be put in the spotlight.
There are two main camps when it comes to diagnosing sex addiction. One theoretical side stresses chemical dependence, much like that found in drug addicts. They believe that because dopamine, the brain’s pleasure-creating neurotransmitter, is released during orgasm one can develop chemical dependence on it.
Dutch neuroscientist Gert Holstege stated in a 2003 Journal of Neuroscience study that brain scans taken during orgasm resemble those taken during a heroin rush. It is therefore concluded that sex addicts are not addicted to sex itself “but to the dopamine and endorphin rewards that flow from the feeling of being desired and desirable.”
Many people find this explanation less than satisfying. Personally, I believe the chemical process, if one does exist, must be considerably more complex.
After all, we all have the ability to produce “feel good” drugs like dopamine and endorphins through easy means like sex and masturbation, so should not more of us descend into drug addiction? Indeed, “procuring” sex is considerably easier than procuring drugs with similar neurological effects.
A second camp takes a more behavioural approach, claiming that addiction to sex is rooted in more social and behavioural causes. These researchers cite Patrick Carnes’ research, which found that 42 per cent of sex addicts were also dependent on alcohol or drugs, 38 per cent had eating disorders, and 81 per cent reported a history of sexual abuse.
This tends to suggest that those with so called “personalities prone to addiction” as well as those who have suffered events which lower self-esteem and understanding of healthy sexual relationships are prone to developing a sex addiction.
If indeed sex addiction is an affliction in medical terms, chances are that it involves both psychological and biological factors.
Despite active debate, the current Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Psychiatric Disorders does not recognise sex addiction as a disorder, at least not in a definite form.
Medicinenet.com, an online medical resource, describes it more plainly as a person who engages in compulsive masturbation, multiple affairs, multiple or anonymous sexual partners and/or one night stands, consistent use of pornography, unsafe sex, phone or computer sex, prostitution or use of prostitutes, exhibitionism, obsessive dating through personal ads, voyeurism, sexual harassment and molestation and rape.
Looking at these symptoms it is easy to imagine how easily “sex addiction” could be diagnosed in several people you are acquainted with. The vagueness of the definition hinges on “compulsive” which is a rather subjective term.
Unfortunately, such common sources as PsychCentral.com claim that “about 71 percent of child molesters are sex addicts. For many, their problems are so severe that imprisonment is the only way to ensure society’s safety against them.”
Infuriatingly, the website goes on to state that “society has accepted that sex offenders act not for sexual gratification, but rather out of a disturbed need for power, dominance, control or revenge, or a perverted expression of anger. More recently, however, an awareness of brain changes and brain reward associated with sexual behaviour has led us to understand that there are also powerful sexual drives that motivate sex offenses.”
This dangerously masks the fact that rape is a crime of power, not a crime of sex. This is a fundamental point that must be understood if we ever hope to properly and effectively address issues of sexual abuse against women and children.
Using sex addiction as an excuse for violence simply allows us to “deal with” the perpetrators by ascribing their tendencies to biology and incarcerating them, as the above quote indicates, rather than addressing more deeply rooted social issues that cause sexual violence.
The concept of “sexual addiction” is therefore a very ambiguous one and chances are that many who claim to have sexual addictions do not fall into the bracket caused by biological or psychological “abnormalities.”
While there are no doubt individuals for whom sex causes considerable strife and becomes an unhealthy obsession, the “guilt and shame” associated with sex addiction are, in my opinion, not a product of having a “disorder” but of the intolerance our society has towards those who don’t conform to culturally defined sets of “normal” sexual practices.
What is most important to consider when discussing sexual addiction is that sex is not an act undertaken within a cultural vacuum; sex and expectations for sexual behaviour are fundamentally culturally constructed.
Therefore what qualifies as sexual addiction to a demographic population such as Canadian adults between 40 and 50 may be the activities a 20 year old engages in each Saturday night, and sexual excess to Canadians is normal sexual behaviour within other cultures.
It is also important to understand that the concept of “abnormal” is not a universal. Often language surrounding sex divides behaviours into normal vs. abnormal. However, in our society the “normal” behavior continues to be monogamous heterosexual relationships with nary a hint of kink.
While most of us engage in practices outside of this framework, very few of us would run home to tell our parents about out latest sexual exploits because things like one-night stands remain taboo in our society.
Woods’ apology explains well how this concept of normal affects those who perhaps don’t want to fit into the accepted range of sexual behaviours. He states that he did not follow the “boundaries a married couple should live by” and that “boundaries that apply to everyone apply to me.”
Boundaries are cultural concepts, they are not natural and they are not the result of how much dopamine is released into our brain. The fact that breaching these boundaries is such a publicly disgracing thing to do reveals a lot about why we call people who have more than “the daily dose of sex,” or masturbation or porn, addicts.
Deceiving loved ones and cheating on spouses is something worthy of apologizing about, having sexual desires or relationship styles that do not conform to societal pressures is not.
Woods’ personal life is his business, not that of the media; that we make it our business reflects how closely our culture associates decency and moral character with a narrow view of sexual practice.
For the everyday individual, the pressure to “grow up” or “grow out of the experimental phase” is embodied in the common assumption that people get married, stay monogamous, have children, and live happily ever after. That those who don’t want to conform are labelled deviant using concepts such as sex addiction reflects how little our culture has truly moved past heteronormative concepts of sexual decency.
