Beautiful words by a man named Todd. By Todd Berntson The comedian Doug Stanhope once talked about womens breasts as being regulated like handguns. It is fine to have them out in the privacy of your own home, but if you whip one out in public, you will be arrested. While the audience roared with laughter throughout his whole routine on womens breasts, his message speaks to a disturbing truth about the dysfunctional relationship that most cultures have with the human body and sex. There have been numerous incidents where people have been arrested for indecent exposure for doing things as innocuous as breastfeeding a baby or being naked in their own home. One recent incident involved a young man in Virginia who was making breakfast in his own home when a woman walking through his front yard happened to see him through his front window. She felt so offended and when she noticed he was naked that she called the police, and he was arrested. The number of stories of people who are shamed, arrested, or harassed simply for having daylight hit parts of their body is staggering. But why? Why is it that there is so much anxiety and disgust about the human body? THE BODY GETS A BAD RAP While it may not be entirely fair to lay the blame of all our current anxieties at the feet of any one thing, it is fair to say that much of our moral repugnance about the human body and sex arose from early religious doctrine. For example, St. Augustine spoke of sex as this diabolical excitement of the genitals that drew man away from a relationship with God. John Calvin, whose philosophy is the basis of Presbyterianism, stated: We are all made of mud, and this mud is not just on the hem of our gown, or on the sole of our boot, or in our shoes. We are full of it. We are nothing but mud and filth both inside and out. John Lambert in the 1700s warned, you must regard every kind of touching of your own and others bodies, every liberty, as the most serious of sins; although these lewd acts may indeed be , they are loathsome in Gods sight. In a Catholic sermon from the same time says to treat ones body as a sworn enemy, and subdue it through work, fasts, hairshirts, and other mortifications. The Christian philosopher, Boethius, wrote that a woman is a temple built upon a sewer, which is unflattering, to say the least. While many people today try to take a much more naturalistic view of the human body and sex, we are still burdened with a cultural framework that holds the human body in contempt. We have a complicated lovehate relationship with sex and the human body. This manifests in many ways. In the earlier example, the fact that the woman was so traumatized by simply viewing a naked man in his own home suggests that there are some very unhealthy ways in which we view the human body. It would be easy to dismiss her reaction as a simply her own personal issue if it werent for the fact that there are literally thousands of cases like this—people being arrested for simply exposing their body, whether they are skinny dipping, breastfeeding, playfully flashing people at a party, or simply having someone see them in the nude.  THE ILLNESS MODEL OF SEX The evolution of our anxiety around the body and sex has, unfortunately, had additional layers of anxiety added to the mix. While much of the early messaging around sex has to do with moral decay, sin, uncleanliness, and being bad, the more recent messaging has been around what I call the Illness Model of sex. This introduces the idea that sex has an element of sickness to it. Sex as sickness emerged with the development of the field of psychology and became a new tool as the influence of religion became less central to public life. This introduced the idea that people who enjoy sex too much, or enjoy the wrong kind of sex, are sick or suffer from mental illness. For example, a man who enjoys masturbating to porn, or a woman who enjoys having sex with multiple partners often carries the baggage of not only being wrong or bad, but that they are sick—there is something wrong with them. This contributes to an emotional revulsion and disgust that becomes intertwined with our sense of erotic pleasure. While there is little doubt that there are those who suffer from mental illness in the context of sexuality, whether that is compulsive sexual behavior, , or even selfloathing, most sexual behaviors that emerge from the erotic mind are simply part of the variety of our nature as human beings and are perfectly healthy. FINDING A NEW LANGUAGE Have you ever wondered why we dont have any positive or affirming language around the body or sex? What we have are terms like dirty, slut, whore, bad, , sick, stupid, crazy, and filth to describe what is one of the most beautiful dimensions of our lives. Most of these terms arise from either the immoral model or illness model of sex. So, by using phrases like I have a dirty mind to communicate I have a lot of intense sexual thoughts, or you filthy slut to communicate you have a robust sexual appetite, we do two things simultaneously: First, we use the words we have to give voice to what we are experiencing. Second, and more importantly, we are giving messages to the subconscious mind that affect how we feel about ourselves and the other person—and even how the other person feels about themselves. Obviously, I have a dirty mind has a ring to it that sounds less clinical than I have a lot of intense sexual thoughts. At the same time, that dirty language has a lot of power. Language carries with it a lot of implication that structures how we find meaning in our experience and how we engage the world. While some words like slut can be reclaimed to mean something positive, words that we use in our everyday language to describe states of decay, sickness, guilt, and shame, are not helpful in creating a more enlightened relationship with the human body and sex. The truth is that the world would be a much better place if we could remove the fear and anxiety we have around our sexual selves; a place where women and men could be naked without people reacting in unhealthy ways toward them; and a place where sex is seen as lifeaffirming and is celebrated. An important component to creating a more sexuallyenlightened world is the language that we use. We need to start using words like beautiful, awesome, and inspiring if a woman is turned on by having several guys cum on her stomach, or a group of friends want to get together and engage in sexual play, or a guy likes to masturbate while watching his partner having sex with another person. All of these things are simply engaging in the erotic pleasure that is at the core of our humanity, and we need to reframe how we understand and experience them. My challenge to you is to find new language to describe and communicate about even your deepest, most intense, sexual thoughts, and find more affirming ways to celebrate the human body—including your own.