Of all the human desires, sexuality is by far the most interesting one. Many people, in fact I suspect a majority of all people, approach this dionysian energy in a fearsome manner. Any arena where the ego might lose its illusory sense of being on top of the world creates such a sense of dread. And, as we all know, the mind boggling mine field of potential emotional devastation that is human sexuality drives the frightened little monkeys to all sorts of twisted strategies. 

We like to classify things. It seems like the right thing to do to sort things into neat categories so that we can relate to them with our lazy auto pilot, rather than having to think anew at every new corner of our way. Let's take such a thing as homosexuality, which is probably the most common "deviation" out there. It's really hard for a lot of people to relate to that. Many men already have a troubled relation to their sexuality - in the sense that they are afraid of women and they feel clumsy and awkward around them - so they feel that the last thing they need is having to think of other men as sexual beings as well. And yet they have this ferocious drive inside them, so they seek alternative outlets. 

All men masturbate. If they say that they don't, they lie. It's not something you can choose to do or not do, the only avenue of choice that you have is the mode of expression. I call it the sexual toilet function, because that's really what it is about: To let out the remains of that which have been stewed, chewed and digested in the sexual awareness of fantasies and desires. A relatively new arena for this sexual toilet function is Internet Based Masturbation, or IBM. This can be anything from just watching pornography to having "cybersex" in chatrooms, from interactive "cam whores" (which is an interesting upgrade of the old peep shows) to full fledged online relationships with all the passion and drama we know from "the real world". 

In my opinion, a lot of people don't really have sex, they are rather doing something we can call masturbation with a partner. There is no real exchange, no inspiration or connection beyond the mere fucking, including whatever is going on in the fantasies of whichever party that's involved in the situation. This is commonly referred to as just sex (as in no emotions involved), or casual sex, or swinging, or a lot of other things, which isn't really the point here, the point is that I question the use of the term sex for that sort of thing alltogether. To me, it looks like masturbation, i.e. an outlet for the sexual toilet function, however elaborate and rooftop advanced its technical expressivity. 

Real sex involves a real power exchange. It involves an ill defined "connection" with the partner which stretches above and beyond the act itself. Everybody wants to experience this, and yet at the same time they are afraid of it, afraid of losing themselves to the powers of the dark and unknown. We can say this is the paradox of sex. It is where fear and desire meet to perform an abstract dance of energies. So many want so badly to find that particular magic that will blow them away, but at the same time they are deathly afraid of losing themselves, causing a massive display of defence systems to kick into gear as soon as this fear-desire seems to threaten the ego's comfort zone.