Congress WAS, Sydney 2007

THE BENEFITS OF SEXUALITY ON SOCIAL,
EMOTIONAL AND SPIRITUAL HEALTH
Terry Hull
Pleasure may be the key to the successful working of the reproductive
systems of humans, but for all the enjoyment sexual relationships
can provide, there are countervailing forces of guilt and disappointment
at work on the individual psyche. Religious and social
norms enforce limits on sexual expressiveness. These controls are
defended as means to protect individuals and their partners from
unhappiness due to infidelity. The contrasting balance of potential
pleasure on the one hand and deeply felt self controls on the other
gives rise to many problems of sexual health. Couples with discordant
expectations about sexual pleasures can find their relationships
crumbling. Deeply planted understandings about inappropriate
behavior can cause individuals to feel shame or fear when faced
with choices about their sexuality and particularly their desires.
People unable to achieve desired pleasures due to physical handicaps
experience a loss of wellbeing that can be extremely distressing.
Simultaneously society struggles to control the individual
expression of harmful sexual behavior such as pederasty while
protecting the rights of individuals to enjoy personal satisfaction.
The recognition and promotion of sexual pleasure as an integral part of
wellbeing is one of the most challenging elements of the sexual
health agenda. Progress in this area requires extraordinary efforts
by professional groups and political leaders to forge a forthright
understanding of the meaning of pleasure in peoples lives, and the
priority of promoting healthy sexuality as a part of a global health
agenda.