" ... Austria has, more than any other nation, turned the issue of sex away from the Church, and toward science and humanity. Besides Freud's Oedipal Complex and Penis Envy, nobleman Baron Richard von Krafft-Ebing, the world's first sexologist, spent a good deal of the 1800s fastidiously studying the sexual habits of his countrymen, from homosexuality to fetishes to masochism (he actually coined the word). Austrian sex psychiatrist Wilhelm Reich was so sure that orgasms were a cure for neuroses and a guarantee of a healthy life that he went so far (too far, his peers said) as to invent an "orgone simulator," under which patients sat to improve their health and vitality.
And Austrians are right smack at the top of the list when it comes to the sexually satisfied, according to a recent world survey by a condom company; they are also more likely to have one-night stands, and tend to start having sex at a younger age than their Western counterparts — all apparently without a whole lot of guilt and shame. In its Germanic pragmatism, this country has made sex about life, not about God, and in so doing, has rendered the Vatican impotent in controlling this little land.
This is why a village priest can keep an open secret about living with his girlfriend and kids; why prostitution is legal; why contraception is aggressively employed; and why the Austrian school system, which requires mandatory religion class, will also include a stop at the Museum of Contraception and Abortion during each school's annual Vienna field trip.
The religious stigma around contraception has been neutralized because Austrians have made it clear that the Church is not to intervene in their sexual behavior. But the social taboo regarding abortion still exists. The motive behind the museum is to erase a moral issue by utilizing the same Germanic sensibility used to defuse the Church's authority in the bedroom: To present abortion as a solution to a problem, not the problem itself; to turn the issue away from God and toward science and education. ... "
And Austrians are right smack at the top of the list when it comes to the sexually satisfied, according to a recent world survey by a condom company; they are also more likely to have one-night stands, and tend to start having sex at a younger age than their Western counterparts — all apparently without a whole lot of guilt and shame. In its Germanic pragmatism, this country has made sex about life, not about God, and in so doing, has rendered the Vatican impotent in controlling this little land.
This is why a village priest can keep an open secret about living with his girlfriend and kids; why prostitution is legal; why contraception is aggressively employed; and why the Austrian school system, which requires mandatory religion class, will also include a stop at the Museum of Contraception and Abortion during each school's annual Vienna field trip.
The religious stigma around contraception has been neutralized because Austrians have made it clear that the Church is not to intervene in their sexual behavior. But the social taboo regarding abortion still exists. The motive behind the museum is to erase a moral issue by utilizing the same Germanic sensibility used to defuse the Church's authority in the bedroom: To present abortion as a solution to a problem, not the problem itself; to turn the issue away from God and toward science and education. ... "
No comments:
Post a Comment