Mind-body dualism

"Again, there's a clear underlying assumption. Baseball, music, literature and philosophy are healthy things for boys to become interested in, even if they have some ulterior motive for doing so. Sex, for some reason, is not." In a culture in which there exists a strong presumption that the mind and the body are distinct entities, narratives about the nature of identity will favor the characterization of the mind as the repository of the self. Sex, unlike philosophy, treats the body as its object rather than the mind despite the fact that all thoughts, feelings and bodily sensations take place within the brain. Therefore sex, in the Western mind, is especially liable to being cast as objectifying. To engage with the body rather than with the mind, it is held, is to reduce someone to the status of a mere object, something to be used with the kind of emotional detachment one might bear towards a discarded piece of tissue paper. Attributing this double-standard to some superstitious holdover from the hey-day of a Judeo-Christian zeitgeist would seem to lack explanatory power in an increasingly secular age. A more holistic view of the self which integrates mind and body, rational cogitation and animal impulse, would perhaps do much to alleviate preoccupations about sexual impropriety and its purported alienating effects upon the psyche which young minds are held to be unprepared for.