Western culture’s relationship with eroticism and sexuality is surprisingly two-faced: most people consume commercial sex services, such as adult entertainment videos, yet adult entertainment creators are still publicly condemned.
A few months ago in Finland, there was a controversy about a primary school teacher who had published erotic content on their OnlyFans channel. The teacher’s actions were condemned even in the main editorial of the largest media house, but the hypocrisy is shown by the fact that no one asked whether teachers who have watched adult entertainment should also resign.
After many years, I returned to philosopher Michel Foucault’s The History of Sexuality and was delighted to find relevant analyses of how the stigmas of shame attached to sexuality seem to have been inherited from ancient Greek times. Even then, a man who offered erotic services for payment lost his citizenship rights.
Our culture has pornography in abundance, such as war porn, violence porn, and of course erotic porn, but it is remarkable that we celebrate highly violent films heroically, while creators of erotic films are condemned.
Our culture needs a mature approach to eroticism, because if sexuality is suppressed and locked in the basement, at worst only its most sadistic forms emerge. Sexuality and eroticism are such an essential part of humanity that all its beautiful forms should be celebrated rather than shamed.