Bush, Sex & Repression

Like the Puritans of old and subsequent evangelicals, he seems to take literally the notion of original sin, in which the most intimate human relation is contaminated, forever scarring all subsequent generations.

His sexuality seems to be one of prohibition, a sexuality infused with a shame of the physical body and its wilder passions.

One can only suspect that this repression is rooted in a deep, personal knowledge--and fear--of the excesses of self-indulgence, an outgrowth of W's equally threatening excesses of alcohol and cocaine.

The Bush presidency is today's incarnation of the long-festering Puritan curse.

But keeping with the times, Bush's public sexuality embodies a highly fetishized eroticism, replete with all kinds of symbolic meaning.

Strutting about in his Top Gun uniform or with his sleeves rolled up while he ineptly asserted command amidst the debacle of Hurricane Katrina, Bush is a fetishist's dream come true.

He understands (if only unconsciously) that the trappings of power, the costumes, the proclamations, the public presentations, are as essential as its exercise, the wars conducted, the deals cut, the legislation passed.

Whether in a Top Gun outfit, a business suit or swaggering in a cowboy getup, Bush's uniforms codify a fetishistic representation of power.

The Sexual Politics of Wilhem Reich

What has prevented the growth of Socialist consciousness amongst the working class even though the material conditions for the immediate establishment of Socialism have been in existence for at least three-quarters of a century?

Why, when Socialism is so obviously in their interest, do workers continue to support and maintain capitalism?

Why is the political behaviour of the working class so irrational?

For Wilhelm Reich the answer could be summed up in two words: sexual repression. In his view, the restrictions on sexual activity imposed through the father-dominated family structure produced people dependent on authority and incapable of independent thought and action.

As a medical student in Vienna after the first world war he became interested first in the physiology and then in the psychology of sex. He joined the circle around Freud, the psychoanalysist, and became one of his close disciples.

Freud had been teaching since before the turn of the century that most mental illness was caused by "sexual repression" dating from early childhood; and that every human being was born with a "sexual instinct" which had to be tamed before he could become a fit member of society and that in fact this is what, from the psychological point of view, growing up and becoming socialized meant.

Sexual repression is a very important socializing device

For a long time I was interested in Reich and the role of sexual repression in making people the kind of accepting, non-complaining, pliable workers and citizens that capitalism needs. I did a fare amount of thinking and writing about the roles sexual repression plays on the intellects and emotions of people.

Let me make a parallel with what happened to the analysis some people made to the role that sexual repression plays on young people.

It's not well known, but the March 22nd movement in France -- which was the group that triggered off the events in May of 1968 -- this group was a group of students at Monterre university (a branch of the University of Paris) who got together, primarily because of a protest they made at the women's dormitories.

Their protest was over the rules that forbade men from being in these women's dormitories after a certain hour in the evening. The students, male and female, took over the dormitory.

They refused to leave, saying this wasn't just a policy to keep fellows from seeing their girlfriends, but that this was a conscious effort on the part of the state -- it was a public university -- to repress them sexually in order to make them the kind of people capitalism needs to run its enterprises.

The reason they took that line is there had been a talk given at the Monterre University by a French Marxist named Boris Frankel.

I was at that talk. There were about 500 people in the hall and he was very well received. Frankel had just translated some of Reich's work into French. His talk was on Reich and the social function of repression.

Afterwards, Frankel's little booklet, his French edition of Reich's work on this subject, was sold door to door by some students at the dormitories.

Reading this booklet and discussing these ideas, these students were able to engage in an action that would, then and now, I suppose, be a version of a panty raid at a university in the United States.

But in France it had a really political content and because of that action this group got started.

The students were thrown out of the women's dormitories by the police. They protested. Some of them got expelled. The police broke them up. They went with some followers to Paris.

They called upon students in Paris to join them. There was a larger protest that the police broke up with some violence, leading to massive student protests which led to workers taking over their enterprises after the cops got involved. And then you have the famous May events of 1968 in France.

At its origins, you have a protest by students over rules forbidding them from entering the female dormitories; a protest based on a Marxist-Freudian understanding of the role of sexual repression in the social life of the society. Bertell Ollman

tags: sex  repression  liberation  authoritarian  capitalism  ideology  reich  freud  

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