Debunking Mystiques: Celibacy

There’s a mystique about celibacy. Supposedly it gives you superpowers:

• The cliche from martial arts movies of the Shaolin monk whose extraordinary kung fu prowess stems from his celibacy. I’ve even had friends (jokingly) refer to martial artists who aren’t celibate and vegetarian to “not be doing the real thing”.
• In Sex and the City, Samantha pursues her yoga teacher who is celibate. She sees this as arousing and mysterious. Of course it’s a challenge for her too but she is neither repulsed nor does she wonder which psychiatric hospital she should refer him to.
• In fact avoiding orgasms for a man is supposed to lead to a thousand tantric possibilities a million times greater than the “mundaneness” of material pleasures.
• and many more!

Funny how this mystique applies to Eastern religions only, huh? People are more likely to associate Catholic celibacy with pedophelia. Probably has a lot to do with the general mystique of things eastern in our “mundane” world, as tens of millions working soulless jobs yearn for More.

Funny how celibacy only has a mystique when it’s a man’s conscious choice, huh (look at the examples above)? In our society it wouldn’t make sense for a woman because it would be her rejection of the potential for a man’s affection which is never seen as justified.

Reality’s a lot less yummy (besides the obvious):

• Health problems. If you’re male, you need to ejaculate at least 4 times a week to stay healthy. If you’re female, for “some reason” this hasn’t been seen as a fit subject for study (compare these search results to these). But I’m willing to bet within 10 years scientific consensus will say the same thing: orgasms=health.
• Psychological problems. Rather than the paragons of enlightenment, celibates (west or east) are very often unstable and simply sexually frustrated. This leads to criminal cases like this, where a Thai monk lured a teenager through a social website and raped her.
• It doesn’t really exist. What do you think really happens when a large number of “celibates” of the same gender live in close communities? It’s been quite well documented in places like pre-Chinese-invasion Tibet: it was a very, very common occurrence for male monks to have sex with each other. Of course they tried to avoid breaking the vows too explicitly by engaging in “alternate” methods (like intercourse with another monk’s armpit).
• I’m deliberately ignoring “evolutionary purposes” arguments because these are problematic.

Can an ideology that places celibacy as an ideal be called anything but Evil? Making up some bullshit “higher” purpose that’s above the mundaneness of our physical bodies is elitist — and causes heaps of physical and psychological damage. So I’d say no. And it’s not really a person’s own choice if by being celibate they are causing damage to others (and placing a strain on the health system).

The monks’ example reminded me Tibet itself is under a related larger mystique. Will debunk next time.