The Sex Industries and RC
The sex industries have become a growing factor in all of our lives, whether we realize it or not and regardless of any current or past relationship to them. They also have a growing influence on the RC Communities. Some basic RC understandings are useful to remember when thinking about this issue:
- Each of us is completely good. This is true regardless of whether or how we are caught in our material [distress].
- We are different from our material and can think outside of it, even when our actions reflect undischarged distress recordings.
- Being connected to other humans, through our minds and with touch, is an inherent need.
- Sex is a human instinct under the command of our intelligence. Not that long ago it was desperately important for the survival of our species, and distress recordings from that time have been passed on to us.
- Sex is not a personal “need” or “right,” but it can enhance human connections under the right conditions.
- We are all in this together—every individual, every group.
THERE IS NOTHING USEFUL ABOUT THE SEX INDUSTRIES
The activities of the sex industries are only harmful, and everyone who participates in them is victimized by them. Some groups—women, young people, Gay people, people of color, and poor and working-class people—are particularly targeted for harm.
It is understandable that many people justify or defend their involvement with these industries or keep it hidden. No one is to blame for being involved. This multi-billion-dollar industry heavily targets people and skillfully manipulates their early hurts for commercial gain. It may take much good counseling to free oneself of addictions and activity in this area. However, one can commit to opposing the sex industries even while working to become free from entanglement with them.
The sex industries take advantage of heavy discouragements, other early hurts, oppression, and lack of opportunity, to exploit and confuse oppressed people into “choosing” to provide sex for financial and other compensation. Of course the overwhelming majority of these people are forced into the behavior by means of threats and violence.
EVERYTHING ABOUT THE SEX INDUSTRIES IS ANTITHETICAL TO RC
- RC is based on a commitment to act on thinking rather than feelings and encourages people to attempt to act rationally in all situations. It is about recovering the ability to use our minds fully.
The sex industries promote acting on feelings, and actively encourage people to follow the pull of distress recordings. Victims of the sex industries lose control over their minds, which results in irrational behavior.
- RC is about uncovering reality from pseudo-reality. It assumes that understanding reality is important and that acting on it will lead to the best results.
The sex industries promote a belief in pseudo-reality and fantasy worlds. They offer an appearance of hope, help, and even liberation from distress but in reality, do not provide any of these.
- The purpose of RC is to free individuals from the effects of past distress experiences by means of discharge and re-evaluation, and the sharing of theory and insights achieved through this process.
The purpose of the sex industries is profit, which is achieved by restimulating and installing distress recordings and using violence and other forms of coercion and exploitation.
- RC is committed to ending all forms of exploitation and oppression.
The sex industries carry out, depend on, and reinforce exploitation and oppression. By keeping users distracted, numb, and compromised, they are extremely helpful to the oppressive forces of global capitalism.
- RC encourages people to look at any behaviors that are harmful to others and helps them free themselves from hurts that have led to lack of integrity.
The sex industries undermine people’s sense of right and wrong and require that people compromise their integrity. They manipulate distresses to get people to justify and support kidnapping, sex trafficking, violence, and other forms of exploitation--things they would otherwise never condone.
- RC supports people to feel and discharge, not act on, early hurts (that often feel unbearable).
The sex industries prey on and profit from early hurts. They addict people to acting out irrational behaviors that are based on these hurts.
- RC encourages caring, connected, and real relationships of all kinds that support each person’s re-emergence.
The sex industries commodify sex and the appearance of connection. They promote fantasy relationships and exploitative encounters that distort the potential good role of sex in people’s lives. They especially confuse young people as they’re learning about post-puberty relationships and sex.
NEWER RCERS NEED OUR THEORY ABOUT LOVE, SEX, AND AFFECTION
Many members of the RC Communities were fortunate to have been exposed to the understandings of RC before the explosion and normalization of the sex industries facilitated by the Internet and other factors. Many other Co-Counselors were subjected to systematic targeting by the sex industries, especially as young people and young adults, before they had the benefit of RC insights. It is understandable that many of these younger Co-Counselors have unawarely adopted perspectives promoted by the sex industries without realizing their harmful nature. It is especially important to teach people newer to the RC Communities our theory about love, sex, and affection and to give them sustained opportunities to work on their early sexual memories. This work and the exposure to our theory are key to people understanding the true nature of the sex industries.
Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA
(Present Time 192, July 2018)