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*Editor’s Note: Elephant Journal articles represent the personal views of the authors, and can not possibly reflect Elephant Journal as a whole. Disagree with an Op-Ed or opinion? We’re happy to share your experience here.
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In this series, Sexual Literacy and the Shadows We Refuse to Name, I explore the concept of Sexual Literacy and Sexual Intelligence (SQ) and aim to reposition sexuality from something hidden, misused and sensationalized to something educational, developmental, and foundational to leadership and humanity itself.
The purpose of this series is to bring sexuality out of the shadows and into conscious awareness as a missing pillar of human development, and a necessary step in the evolution of a more conscious humanity.
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In recent years, the world has watched as powerful men built hidden worlds of sexual exploitation while large-scale institutions looked away.
These incidents were not isolated moral failures as much as they were symptoms of a culture so far behind in sexual intelligence, so deeply uncomfortable with sexual truth.
What we call “scandal” is the visible expression of what has been moving unseen all along.
A sexually illiterate culture that has never been taught how to understand the relationship between sexuality, power, and responsibility.
Our culture then responds in the way it knows best—individualizing the problem as “one person.”
This is a collective safety mechanism our culture uses to distance ourselves from the “person” and preserve the illusion that the problem exists outside of ourselves.
To create distance between “them” and “us.”
But what if “them” is not separate?
What if these individuals are an amplified expression of our collective sexual illiteracy made more visible through positions of power?
Because we are sexual beings, our sexuality does not disappear with success, status, intelligence, or leadership.
It is actually amplified.
It becomes louder.
And when sexual illiteracy becomes louder, it looks like unconscious Eros, sexuality appearing as distortion.
When sexual literacy becomes louder, it looks like conscious Eros, sexuality expressed as intimacy, creativity, and love.
Power, Money, and Secrecy.
Power concentrates energy.
The more power a person holds—financially, socially, politically—the more influence their presence, attention, and desire carry.
And this can be seen most clearly in the expression of desire itself.
The safest adult in the room is the one who is able to claim to (1) self and (2) other in a safe space—their desires. Most specifically, desires that carry a charge of intensity, control, are volatile, dominating, and potentially harmful of others.
An example is an adult who has a desire to rape another. To take from another. Acknowledging this desire to self is the first step in sexual literacy. A second step is to acknowledge this desire in a safe space with another who can hold that level of vulnerability. This example would show sexual intelligence as the individual works to integrate this desire in their psyche to understand what the desire is telling them.
This is conscious Eros. Where desire can be spoken. Named. Witnessed. Understood for what it is. An energy moving through the body. Information into the psyche. Not a directive that must be acted upon.
There is space for it to be expressed verbally, there is an acute awareness around it, there is a responsibility in how it is held. And there is a relief to the verbal expression, because it is brought into the light and it does not need to move in secrecy.
However, in a sexually illiterate culture, that same desire cannot be spoken.
It is buried in the self and psyche. Layered with conditioning, shame, and trauma. Pushed down. Denied. Hidden from the self and others.
Just because a desire remains hidden does not mean that it disappears.
It actually intensifies and moves in secrecy. When it is ready to come out, it leaks out through unconscious Eros and distorted sexual action.
This is the difference between conscious Eros and unconscious Eros.
The difference between a sexually literate and sexually illiterate culture.
One can be felt, named, and integrated.
The other is suppressed, secretive, and far more likely to be enacted without awareness of its impact.
When unconscious sexual desires take root in secrecy and are amplified by power, unconscious Eros moves from the personal into the systemic.
(And while this has been most visible in men in positions of power, this is not a gendered dynamic; it is a human one that emerges wherever sexuality is left unconscious).
What Our Scandals Reveal About Our Stage of Development
Power amplifies desire.
The scandals bubbling to the surface of our culture are not random. They are revealing of where we are at as a culture as it is being asked to mature.
The scandals are pointing to a crucial intersection of power and sex.
One of the pieces that is confusing about this dynamic is that both power and sexuality are primarily energetic.
And yet—both are portrayed in our culture as a 100 percent physical experience.
Power looks like status, wealth, titles, and hierarchy.
Sexuality looks sensationalized like pornography.
It is within sexual literacy where the intersection of power and sexuality can be explored. As it is an energetic that begins to weave long before bodies meet, long before the act of penetrative sex, and felt in power long before an interaction is made.
And it continues long after a physical encounter has ended.
This means a suppressed sexual desire mixed with power can also be felt, long before the act occurs.
Because sexuality is primarily energetic.
A sexually mature culture would be able to meet that desire in the energetic, before it moves into form.
A sexually mature culture would not be shocked by the vulnerability of naming desire. A sexually mature culture would be able to meet desire in the energetic, before it moves into form.
It would be able to feel it. Name it. Understand it. Before it becomes behavior.
But we do not currently live in a sexually mature culture.
We live in a culture that does not know how to read what it is feeling because of our general sexual illiteracy.
So we sit at a pivotal point in our humanity where harmful desires go unrecognized, become amplified by power, and secrecy protects it as the desire moves into action, instead of into a sexually literate awareness.
This is what our scandals are revealing. Not just individual failure. But a collective developmental arrest and inability to meet desire before it becomes form.
The magnitude of what is being revealed is not random; it reflects how systemic and unexamined this dynamic has become.
My work is rooted in three pillars I feel are essential to humanity’s growth at this time:
Consciousness: as consciousness and beingness of the teacher.
Sexuality: as the cultivation of sexual literacy and intelligence within our culture.
Love: as the unraveling of attachment wounds from the frequency of love.
Until we are willing to understand sexuality beyond its physical expression and begin to see how it operates through power, attention, and influence, we will continue to be shocked by patterns we are collectively creating.
These scandals are a call for humanity to grow up in its relationship with sexuality.
In Part III, we will explore what it means to grow up sexually, what responsibility actually looks like, and how sexual literacy becomes foundational not just to intimacy, but to the future of humanity itself.
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Read part one of this series: We are All Sexual Beings: Why Sexual Illiteracy is a Cultural Crisis.
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