what sexual repression has to do with all forms of totalitarianism, particularly fascism
Ripping freely off Lorraine's diary and the discussion there, a few brief thoughts. (Really brief - at least for me - I have errands and things to run.)
I'm hearing people say that the sexual repression::fascism equation doesn't make sense. That it's coincidence. It isn't. Ignore me if you want - but remember I'm the defector, the ex-Theocon, self-deprogrammed now but raised in the hallowed memory of Karen Ann Quinlan, the Terri Schiavo of the 1970s--
Here, from 1984, is a good deal of the secret unlocked.
Consorting with prostitutes was forbidden, of course, but it was one of those rules that you could occasionally nerve yourself to break. It was dangerous, but it was not a life-and-death matter. To be caught with a prostitute might mean five years in a forced-labour camp: not more, if you had committed no other offence. And it was easy enough, provided that you could avoid being caught in the act. The poorer quarters swarmed with women who were ready to sell themselves. Some could even be purchased for a bottle of gin, which the proles were not supposed to drink. Tacitly the Party was even inclined to encourage prostitution, as an outlet for instincts which could not be altogether suppressed. Mere debauchery did not matter very much, so long as it was furtive and joyless and only involved the women of a submerged and despised class. The unforgivable crime was promiscuity between Party members. But -- though this was one of the crimes that the accused in the great purges invariably confessed to -- it was difficult to imagine any such thing actually happening.
The aim of the Party was not merely to prevent men and women from forming loyalties which it might not be able to control. Its real, undeclared purpose was to remove all pleasure from the sexual act. Not love so much as eroticism was the enemy, inside marriage as well as outside it. All marriages between Party members had to be approved by a committee appointed for the purpose, and -- though the principle was never clearly stated -- permission was always refused if the couple concerned gave the impression of being physically attracted to one another. The only recognized purpose of marriage was to beget children for the service of the Party. Sexual intercourse was to be looked on as a slightly disgusting minor operation, like having an enema. This again was never put into plain words, but in an indirect way it was rubbed into every Party member from childhood onwards. There were even organizations such as the Junior Anti-Sex League, which advocated complete celibacy for both sexes. All children were to be begotten by artificial insemination (artsem, it was called in Newspeak) and brought up in public institutions. This, Winston was aware, was not meant altogether seriously, but somehow it fitted in with the general ideology of the Party. The Party was trying to kill the sex instinct, or, if it could not be killed, then to distort it and dirty it. He did not know why this was so, but it seemed natural that it should be so. And as far as the women were concerned, the Party's efforts were largely successful.
But no worries, hypocrisy abounds: if you're a Prole you can still get your pr0n fix!
And the Records Department, after all, was itself only a single branch of the Ministry of Truth, whose primary job was not to reconstruct the past but to supply the citizens of Oceania with newspapers, films, textbooks, telescreen programmes, plays, novels -- with every conceivable kind of information, instruction, or entertainment, from a statue to a slogan, from a lyric poem to a biological treatise, and from a child's spelling-book to a Newspeak dictionary. And the Ministry had not only to supply the multifarious needs of the party, but also to repeat the whole operation at a lower level for the benefit of the proletariat. There was a whole chain of separate departments dealing with proletarian literature, music, drama, and entertainment generally. Here were produced rubbishy newspapers containing almost nothing except sport, crime and astrology, sensational five-cent novelettes, films oozing with sex, and sentimental songs which were composed entirely by mechanical means on a special kind of kaleidoscope known as a versificator. There was even a whole sub-section -- Pornosec, it was called in Newspeak -- engaged in producing the lowest kind of pornography, which was sent out in sealed packets and which no Party member, other than those who worked on it, was permitted to look at.
Conservatives, reading 1984 as a textbook of what our enemies, the Russians and Liberals, would do if we didn't stop them, looked at this as an example of how even a great author could go wrong...
But militaristic regimes need cannon fodder, and totalitarian regimes need wars, so the two needs are symbiotic - you need loveless breeding, mating without romance or pleasure, and no sex that does not yield children.
Now, factor in the fear of being outbred by the brown folk, of The Coming Race War, and you get all that you need to explain the Volkists' homophobia, dread of feminism, loathing of not only abortion but also contraception, at least among the Proles, and at root, a conditioning that makes it a knee-jerk reflex to hate all these things...
I may update this later. But now I must go on my wanton ways, taking jobs away from husbands and fathers, lasciviously buying novels and wasting my time on them, sinfully indulging my individualism and lack of society as I persist in being happily single and childless...so what if I'm celibate, living chastely according to my station? I'm still a failure, since I'm not a nun, serving mankind selflessly and at below minimum wage...
(Did I say deprogrammed? Say, mostly.)