Sex Addiction as a Masculine Ideal…

Levine SB (2010). What is sexual addiction? Journal of sex & marital therapy, 36 (3), 261-75 PMID: 20432125

Stephen Levine (2010) asks the serious question: ‘what is sexual addiction?’ (p.261). He refers to such addiction as a loss of control over one’s own sexual behaviours that inevitably clashes with the constricted mores of courtship, marriage, and monogamy (2010, pp.261-262). As it does for many behaviours that are just excessively out there, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM, Mark V [pending]) offers salvation for troubled souls and reassurance for the rest of us that ‘skank’ is not merely an impolite way to describe who we really are (2010, p.263). Addiction to drugs, alcohol, gambling, coffee, gaming, and yes, to sex, has served the useful purpose of obviating individual responsibility and deflecting attention away from social causation. Over time, unpleasant meanderings are transformed from bad choices to genetically impaired neurology (2010, p.264). That is, ‘the addictions’.

What Levine uncovers is that by looking at the blob of men (yes, the literature does consider this to be a predominantly male problem) who supposedly suffer with sex addiction, we can learn much about who might truly have this disorder by distinguishing them from those men who definitely do not (2010, p.271). Just needing to root a lot does not necessarily make you a sex addict, although popular culture would have us believe that it does. When we think sex addiction, if we must think of it as an addiction at all, we need to reflect on what Levine (2010) calls the ‘spiral of deterioration’ that destroys relationships, careers, and even lives (pp.271 & 273). Men who cannot function because of their sexual behaviours might perhaps be ‘sick’. Except, I would say that this is an argument skewed in favour of morality, since every living moment human beings make dubious choices that result in extreme outcomes.

Who knows where the masculine ideal of hyper-sexuality ends and the mental disorder of sexual addiction begins (2010, p.269)?