Can political ideology sink its roots so deeply into thought that it comes to influence the sexual behavior, desire, and even fantasies of its militants? It would not be surprising at a time when everything, even the most inconsequential things, such as musical or aesthetic tastes, is judged through the prism of the activity of those who govern or aspire to govern. We must also take into account the irrefutable fact that for a large part of the population political ideology is, unfortunately, a disguise, a work uniform, a suit that they inherited from their parents or grandparents and that they continue to wear without knowing very well why. An attitude that can be seen in the fact that almost nobody reads the political program of the party they are going to vote for or in television statements where people recognize, without shame, that they will vote for X because it is the formation that has voted all their lives and will not change now. So we must not rule out that this 'hypocrisy' or 'unconsciousness' is only social and does not influence the private sphere of sexuality.
So, soon, most people would bet that leftists are more uninhibited between the sheets. Mainly because the harmful Catholic morality around sex affected them less or because they were raised by parents who did not swallow much of the sin of the flesh.
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In 2015, the psychologist and sexologist from Malaga Francisco Cabello, together with his colleagues Marina Cabello and Francisco Javier del Río, developed a questionnaire called Deseo to measure sexual desire and conducted a study for the Andalusian Institute of Sexology and Psychology, surveying 22,000 Spanish-speaking women from 71 countries on five continents. Years later, specifically in 2020, newspaper headlines announced: "Women on the left want more sex than women on the center or right", highlighting one of the conclusions, the most sensational, of the sample. But the study revealed other things, such as that bisexual and homosexual women had more desire than heterosexual women, that the desire increases at a higher level of education, that being a housewife does not help much to ignite and that Spanish women were the ones who had the most desire, if the sample was analyzed by countries.
Francisco Cabello explained to La Vanguardia that women who qualified as polyamorous "are the ones with the highest levels of desire. And they are followed, then, by those who have a partner, but do not live with her. From the erotic point of view, that would be the best model of coexistence," he said.
A 2015 study revealed that bisexual and homosexual women had more desire than heterosexual women; that the desire increases at a higher level of studies or that being a housewife does not help much to ignite. In the picture, two women in bed.filadendron (Getty Images)
Of course, there are studios for all tastes. Years ago, Binghamton University and the dating portal Match.com conducted a survey in the United States among 5,000 singles of both sexes, which revealed that liberals practiced sex more often, while those of conservative ideology had fewer but higher quality encounters. 53% of Republicans acknowledged having an orgasm every time they made love, while only 40% of Democrats did.
Socialist countries have always boasted of greater sexual freedom and there is quite a bit of literature on this. Why women enjoy sex more under socialism, Kristen Ghodsee's controversial essay published in 2019, emphasizes social and labor improvements for women in the former USSR or countries such as the GDR: network of nurseries, free state-funded canteens, aid to single mothers. All to maintain the right to maternity, at the moment in which the woman wanted to exercise it, without this not implying the end of her studies, her work or family life. Then and always, the sexual revolution passed and goes through economic independence, although later we see that the equation is not so simple and has other variables.
However, communist sexuality also had its shadows and excluded all those who did not conform to its discourse. The endocrinologist Mikhail Stern wrote in 1979, in his exile in Paris, Sex Life in the Soviet Union, a compendium of his experiences as a doctor in the USSR. On the opposite side to sexual liberation, free love and nudist manifestations was a population that "has no more room for rebellion than its sexual plot", as pointed out in the book. Without privacy in the homes, which had to be shared by several families, and under the shadow of police apparitions, which broke into the houses at any time of the day and night, spaces for privacy were scarce. Stern outlines a society where exhibitionists abounded, where prostitution and sex were bargaining chips for favors (such as a job) and where doctors recommended having sex only once a day and lasting no more than a minute. A universe where homosexuality was considered a crime, as skillfully portrayed in Michal Witkowski's book Lovetown, about the marginal life of two transvestites in a socialist country in the seventies and eighties. Not unlike what two similar figures could have in Franco's Spain.
"Sexually, the left and the right have always been extremely reactionary," says María Pérez Conchillo, doctor in psychology and sexology, founder of the Espill Institute, in Valencia, and deputy director of the Sexual Health program of the UNED. "Unfortunately, all societies have always regulated sexual behavior, because from it derives the birth rate and the issue of heirs, from the moment surplus value appears." The expert does not believe that there is a sex of the right and another of the left because intimate behaviors are not always in accordance with our ideology: "The British doctor and sexologist Havelock Ellis (1891-1916) already said it in his book Study of sexual psychology: 'Not everyone is like you, nor like your loved ones, friends or neighbors." For Pérez Conchillo, puritanism has to do with rigidity of thought "and that rigidity is found in all political ideologies, with very sharp rules that must be followed, without openness to difference or variability. And, worst of all, rigidity with oneself. Not allowing yourself to think, speak or act in a certain way because it does not go according to my line of thought, "he says.
"The root of Puritanism is in purity. In Christian morality, for example, it is considered that the hymen is the border that separates purity from impurity in the single woman, while, in the case of the married, the bulwark is in honor, "says Juan Soto Ivars, writer, columnist and author of titles such as The House of the Hangman. How the taboo suffocates Western democracy or Nobody is going to laugh, his latest work. "But the left also has its own concept of purity, which is updated over time," he says. The author cites as an example the classical Soviet literature that ridiculed the figure of Don Juan because it is the example of the individualist, bourgeois and corrupt, who has succumbed to the pleasures of the body, "in the same way that he repudiated pornography, libertines and homosexuals, unable to produce new soldiers for the cause." For Soto Ivars "the purity of the left has been established at a dizzying speed, with a new idea of consent that includes looks, obscene thoughts and with the policy of cancellation, which is nothing but a purge for anyone who deviates from what is right, because sins against purity no longer affect only individuals, but to the entire community, that is why collective policies and very specific regulations on the intimate are adopted, "says this writer.
Rocío Saiz in an image published on her social networks, after the controversy in her concert of Murcia.raquel quesada
According to Soto Ivars, the censored often become censors as soon as they acquire a little power. "It's the case of the queer movement; which, at first, might seem like absolute debauchery, but has been armored in the form of religion, in which any dissent or questioning (for example, the problem of trans athletes) is seen as heresy. This reminds me of the case of John Calvin. A heretic who, in the sixteenth century, flees from the Inquisition, goes to Geneva, becomes a Protestant, establishes a theocratic and despotic government and ends up burning Michael Servet at the stake."
Puritanism doesn't always burn us out so quickly. Sometimes it simmers or in the form of trauma. "We all remember the damage that conservative and Christian morality did to the sex lives of many people," Pérez Conchillo stresses, "but the idea of current sexuality can also affect. I see a lot of girls having sex without desire, just so they don't get to be labeled narrow or because it's the right thing to do. Having sex is not like having a beer. Our sexual behavior has its consequences, mobilizes emotions, produces changes ... both for oneself and for others."
Social networks are the modern gallows where the heretic, quintessence of new generation Puritanism, is whipped. We work for them for free and, in return, they censor and stone us. Soto Ivars recalls a particularly surreal episode in this regard: "We all remember the case of the singer Rocío Saiz, who was covered with an LGTBI flag for showing her breasts at a concert in Murcia. Well, in later performances her fans stripped naked in her concerts or showed parts of her anatomy to support her and as a protest to this censorship; But by uploading the photos to social networks they pixelated the breasts or genitals so as not to run the risk of having their accounts canceled."
Rita Abundancia is a journalist, sexologist and author of the website RitaReport.net.