I found sex liberating when I was younger. Rather than feel insecure about it like many do it brought comfort and confidence. That may just have been a matter of luck like having attributes that went down well enough with the girls. With age as these attributes fade I am beginning to feel intimidated by others more attractive than me, specifically when they are younger. When that combines with the culture's blatant imaging of sexuality these days, something that would hitherto have given me bounce now does the opposite. It is not a huge discomfort yet but a discomfort nevertheless.

From this I might get a sense of the insecurity some feel throughout their lives about sexuality. Such feelings might be part the reason sex has been repressed historically and why its explicitness makes that old style moral majority recoil. Monogamy became the gold standard partly as a way of accommodating such shortcomings into an ethical framework.

With sex on display more than it used to be I imagine those with deeper seated inadequacies are reminded that they can never measure up. They see women impossibly groomed in the glossies, over-endowed men in porno movies fucking unfeasibly sexy girls; they see the ubiquitous parading of looks in general as the height of aspiration. These and their likes assure that the anxieties of the less fortunate are kept at a peak.

This is not an argument for a return to the repression of sexuality but is a demand that it be approached with some intelligence. Respect, reverence, restraint and sensitivity wouldn't go amiss either.