ABSTRACT
If people look closely at mass media’s representation of sexual desire or at debates over sexuality they find that sex tends to be placed in a distinct category. It would seem unlike other phenomena, even those with which it has much in common, like hunger, thirst or sleep. All four are sensory experiences, all impossible to suppress and all are integral to being human. If sex is a physical impetus it should share similarities with other impulses. Unlike food, water or sleep, one can live without sex; many do, whether by their own volition or to meet a social or religious requirement. The prevailing construct would regard sexual abstinence as requiring herculean self-denial. Sex is a practice that is similar to, and dissimilar from, other life practices. Part of the burden it has had to carry has been the attribution to it of extraordinariness. Social conservatives moralise against it on this basis and sexual libertarians valorise it in response.
