Sex: Sex Liberation And Ripened Revolution:

The world is at the height of the most modern sexual liberation; a maturity of the sexual revolution that began in the 1970s in the Western world, and like osmosis has permeated every nook and cranny of the globe. We live in the most sexually liberated times of human history. Access to information on sex and sexuality are only clicks away to any and everyone with access to technologies, whether it is phone, television, computer, or cinemas. The sexual liberation has also brought with it, increasing acceptance of different ways and manners as well as sexual orientations only spoken of, in whispers. For instance, it was unheard-of to openly claim to be homosexual, lesbian, be single or divorced, in relationship and practicing premarital or swinging sex, or two ways polygamy. But these days, such thinking, acceptance, declaration, no longer sounds obnoxious except in certain quarters where they are practiced but never admitted or spoken of. In thinking about the above trend, I began to wonder what influences today’s proliferation of sex and sexuality has on the generality of people. I was curious and wondrous if as a result of the trend, the society has taken on with it, such social ills and ailments of sex, sex and nothing but sex as priority over and above everything else, and to establish whether it is so or not, I needed to do some digging and where such digging uncover and established there is trouble with our priorities, proffer possible solutions.

Such was my soul-searching that I began to discuss and asking questions to see whether there are links between ongoing sex and sexual revolution and the upsurge in premarital sex, the watching and distribution of pornography, sex offenses such as rape, child molestation, inclusive of such sexual violence, leading to death. As a social scientist, I’m familiar with methods of assessments, theorising, drawing upon literature and models in search of possible answers, etc but since I was not doing an academic paper or project, I thought of the quickest way which was, carry out the examination by calling up some of my friends to ask their opinions, specifically requiring that they volunteer information about their impression and inclination to thoughts about sex and how often they think of the act compared to say, daily thoughts about food, money, etc.

I’ll let you known my impression from the onset; as far as I know, matter of sex and sexuality is not straight forward. The complications border on the fact that, there are probably as many sexual orientations and learned habits as there are the actual acts. Same way, as there are sexual experiences, good, bad, and confusing: so also are preferences varying from persons to persons as, from one region to another. One of the friends I called engaged me much more than others, he blamed what orientation there is today; what sexual proclivity, are the handiwork of, devious and non godly western world. According to him, African culture has been corrupted: when we were growing up, he said, we had moral compass based on African culture, tradition and socialization that guided us. We were never exposed to any of today’s sexual propensity, or laxity of morals that today’s youths and some adults exhibits, and, that the society tolerates. I reminded him that rape, child molestation, polygamy, promiscuity, are as old as the bible. The difference is, I pointed out, is that technology and the revolutions have only exposed our previously covert deeds and tendencies.

His retort to my position was predictably dismissive. Of course, he said, I was talking, rubbished because, the likes of me, according to him, are part of today’s problems. The sexual troubles we are in today were and are caused by Writers, particularly journalists who would always look for what are not; conjecturing sexual and pornographic fictional stories and importing western style life style to lure and corrupt the Africans. He cited, “Dauda the Sexy Guy” that first was being published in “Lagos Weekend,” metamorphosed in “Lolly Magazine” around 1982, and, got renamed, “Nackson.” Then, there were others such as Ikebe Super, etc. He even volunteered that, as a student he was always looking forward to reading about “Dauda!,” habit that nearly got him into trouble.

There were even worse responses than I cannot write about here. But I can, from the discussions only able to conclude that people speaking about their sex lives, making equities about their feeling and wanting them to actually volunteer personal information that relates happenings between the sheets is like embarking on shadows chasing; reactions and what people are willing to volunteer varies so much and are often coloured by embellishment, bravado about exploits, ego, taboo that no survey, no matter how small or wide can fully capture the essence of what really are the reality.

So, the qualitative statistics that follows should be read more like a general indication rather than true representation. I asked about thirty of my friends equal numbers males and females with ages ranging from 20 years to 55 years. I asked them the same questions; to say how many times they think of sex on a daily basis-frequency, compared to how they thought of money, food, and any other things incidental to daily living.

Counting the responses, most men, 8, representing (53%) of the total men sampled admitted they do, 4 or 5 times a day while only 3 women (20%) of the sampled 15 of the women, admitted having had thoughts about sex once or twice a day. Majority of the women, 12 (80%) claimed their thoughts are majorly about family, food, and hardly about sex in that priority order while the remaining men, 7 (47%), said their priority were in order of money, food, and then, sex.

So, despite that my friend may have been unwilling to openly discuss their sexual feeling with me, I doubt that though because these are people I’m very close to. However, I do agree, that some may have felt embarrassed about admitting to having sexual thoughts over and above all else, particularly the married ones, and therefore not telling me the truth or telling all. Whatever the doubt, the result suggests the relative unimportance of sex in the lives of the majority of all who responded and directly unrelated to the myth that suggests, given the prevalence bombardment of sex and sexuality on movies, magazines, the social media, and easily accessible through mobile phones, etc, that most people would have been affected by the sexual explosion resulting from ongoing sexual liberation and revolution.