The pleasure principle and why there's no point in preaching to teenagers

Ah yes, I am retreating back to my blog after having been embroiled in another angry exchange of words on Facebook. You see, a fellow blogger has shared my previous blog post which featured a true story from a JC in Singapore and this guy made a big deal about the two students in the story being "not supposed to have sex". I challenged him on that point - pointing out that they are both of the age of consent and if the sex was consensual, then who was he to judge if they were supposed to have sex or not? He turned around and accused me of condoning teenagers having sex and being "pro-teen sex". I found that laughable. His arguments were ridiculous, he talked about teenagers in America brandishing guns and causing mass shootings in high schools. And I'm like, huh? What the hell are you on about? Okay, yes I get it - this guy is a prude, he's probably a 40 year old virgin, a religious one at that.

Stuff your morals - it is not match for the pleasure principle.

So let me answer that question, do I condone teenagers having sex? I think you're asking the wrong question. You see, my nephew has just celebrated his 13th birthday so he is officially a teenager now, so this is a good time for me to talk about this issue. Quite frankly, I think there is no point in me (or anyone) discussing whether teenagers should have sex for the simple reason: teenagers are not young children, they will make up their minds on such issues regardless of what you try to preach to them. So it is a completely moot point whether or not we think teenagers should be sexually active or not since we can't influence the outcome of their decision. What will determine their stance on the issue is the pleasure principle: it is a really simple concept. It is our basic instinct to seek pleasure and avoid pain - so if sex can bring a person pleasure, then s/he will seek it and find it.

However, it is not that simple. Allow me to give you an analogy: when I was in secondary school, I was fanatical about gymnastics - it gave me great pleasure, I loved learning new skills and I won loads of gold medals at the competitions. Participating in gymnastics gave me a lot of pleasure, so I wanted to spend a lot of time training. I had this friend, let's call him Ken (not his real name) - he got involved in gymnastics in secondary school and initially, he found it fun but he kept getting injured. He was plagued with injuries and even when he took part in competitions, he would finish in the middle of the pact rather than on the medal podium. He never actually ever won a medal despite trying very hard. Eventually, after nearly two years, he decided he was better off doing something else as he wasn't really doing that well as a gymnast. So it is clear that Ken and I had quite different experiences doing the same activity: gymnastics. I continued even up till today, because it gave me pleasure. Ken gave up as it brought him more pain than pleasure.

You see, a lot of people ignore the vital role that the pleasure principle plays in terms of our choices in life. There isn't two just two extremes: pain or pleasure, but there is the vast grey area between those two extremes. For example, I'm not that fussed about durian. If my dad offered me some when I am visiting, I may eat a bit for old times' sake. So my father who loves durian asked me if I ate durian in London and I said no, I don't. He then went on to assume that since I didn't hate the smell and taste durian, it was not available in London and I had to point out to him that it wasn't true - all you had to do was to go to any of the big supermarkets in Chinatown and they always had durian (along with other durian products like durian cake). Like all imported Asian food, it wasn't cheap of course, but if you certainly could buy it in London if you wanted durian. I don't dislike durian, just don't like durian that much - there are probably a thousand other things I would rather buy in a Chinatown supermarket than durian. Durian neither brings me pleasure or pain - and for some people, sex is just like that. They are not fussed about sex as it is neither all that fun nor all that unpleasant either. Monogamous, older, married couples probably fall into that category.

So you may have your personal opinions about any activity like gymnastics or computer games. You may see gymnastics as a risky sport where one may risk injuries. You may worry that modern computer games are so addictive that it may become a major distraction. Then again, you think that gymnastics is actually very good for training one's confidence, or that interesting computer games are an innovative way for young people to learn about computers. But what will each individual's choice be ultimately based on? You can stuff all the logical arguments at the end of the day, we will only do an activity if it will bring us pleasure, more pleasure than pain. Sex is no different by that token, an individual will only choose to be sexually active it that means being able to enjoy good sex that will be pleasurable. We're not talking about watching porn on the internet, we're talking about finding others willing to have sex with you.

Now a lot of Asian parents are going to be squeamish at this point and think that we shouldn't talk about sex or that we should discourage teenagers from having sex - but let's talk about sex for a moment. Bad sex can be awkward, painful and anything but pleasurable if you don't know what you're doing. Never mind teenagers, a lot of adults are actually relatively inexperienced when it comes to sex and thus by that token are pretty useless in bed. Not many people have actually had all that many sexual partners and I'm afraid sex is not something you can learn from books or the internet - it'll be like trying to learn how to play tennis by watching a Youtube video. Sure you may gain some useful knowledge about the sport from the video, but will you be able to play like Andy Murray the moment I put that racket in your hand and the balls start flying towards you? No, the only way to get good at tennis is by playing loads of opponents and learning from them in the process. You think Novak Djokovic or Roger Federer got this good at tennis?

This actually reminds me of a scene from the classic movie Thelma and Louise, Thelma had ran away from her husband (they have a lousy sex life) and meets a young man called JD (played by Brad Pitt). The sparks fly and they have amazing sex - it was clear that it was the first time that Thelma had actually enjoyed sex and she was buzzing with excitement as she told her friend Louise about it the next morning. That pretty much summarizes the experience of sex for a lot of people out there. Sex can be good, sex can be bad, sex can be average, sex can be excellent, sex can be boring. sex can be exciting - but it really depends on so many factors and it is just silly to treat it like a monolithic entity and assume that it is somehow always going to be pleasurable for everyone who tries to have sex.

Furthermore, we live in the age of the internet and virtually all young people have seen porn on the internet. This does change everything the moment they have watched a big budget porn movie professionally produced in California. Think about beautiful porn stars with perfect bodies performing on camera: they are confident, they know what they want and they have great fun having sex. In the absence of a comprehensive sex education programme, this is often how teenagers end up learning about sex, simply by watching porn on the internet. But this also sets their expectations very high if they start to believe, "oh so this is what sex ought to be like, as performed by the experts." So when they start comparing when they can get versus what this benchmark set by  the idealized image of perfect sex as depicted through high-budget porn productions, this actually discourages them from trying because they are afraid that what they are capable of will simply fall so far below this benchmark.

Let me give you an analogy: below is the video of  Japanese world champion gymnast Kenzo Shirai giving you a master class in gymnastics. He is showing you what gymnastics ought to be like - you may marvel at his physical ability in performing, in making these extremely difficult tricks look so easy. In this routine, he performs the world's most difficult skill in floor exercise: a triple twisting double layout. But how many of you would say, "Yeah I wanna do that to, just like him! I'm going to join my local gymnastics club and start learning today!" and how many of you would say, "That guy is clearly amazing, that was a fun video but I think I'd leave gymnastics to the experts." Remember the pleasure principle: if you don't have the talent to perform gymnastics like Kenzo Shirai, then trying to train gymnastics the way he does is going to bring you a lot of pain and very little pleasure. We like pleasure and seek it, we avoid pain.

The effect of watching porn on the internet has created this idealized image of what sex ought to be like and how it should be like: we're not just talking about hardcore pornography but anything from fashion advertising to music videos to TV programmes have embraced beautiful sex because it sells, it makes the product popular. What this creates however, is a situation whereby the kind of sex most teenagers in Singapore can get is a far cry from the idealized image of sex that has been sold to them through the media - their expectations are extremely high, unrealistically high in fact because it is often based on a kind of idealized image of sex and what they can actually get will pale in comparison. So why is sex so ridiculously difficult to perform well? It is a lot more than just sexual chemistry: it depends on the following conditions being present:

1. You need to find someone you are attracted to.
2. That person needs to be attracted to you in return.
3. You need to be willing and able to please that person.
4. That person needs to be willing and able to please you in return.
5. You need to take pleasure in pleasing that person in bed.
6. That person needs to take pleasure in pleasing you in bed.

Remove any of those six preconditions for good sex to happen and it all falls apart quite quickly. There is nothing more awkward than trying to have sex and sensing that it is all going desperately wrong - it is hard not to take it personally when that happens. If you want to be good at sex, gosh, you need to be good looking, you need to have a charming personality and most of all, you need to know how to please the other person sexually and know how to ask the other person to please you sexually. So even if you are good looking and have a charming personality, the last part is the most difficult as nobody teaches us how to have sex. We have lessons to learn how to play a musical instrument, how to drive a car, how to speak a foreign language, but we're just supposed to know how to perform sex without any instructions? That is why so many people are totally clueless and have bad sex, really awful sex without any useful instructions. Oh and there's no one size fits all approach to sex - everyone likes something different as well, so trying to figure out what to do is harder than you think!

I remember this story from my youth: there was a story of a Singaporean Christian couple who never consummated their marriage after many years because they had no idea how to make sex work in their marriage, but were simply too embarrassed to ask for help. It was only discovered years later when a doctor realized that the woman was still a virgin during a check up despite having been married for many years. Her hymen was still intact, her husband had never penetrated her. It seems that the husband couldn't get hard enough to actually make sex happen and the wife had no idea what to do to make him aroused. Neither of them had received any sex education or even any helpful tips as to how to begin to have sex - all they were taught was that sex was dirty, sinful and to be avoided. Sure they understood the biological process of how babies were made, so it was not like they didn't know what to put in which hole, they just couldn't get aroused to make it work. For men, sex cannot even begin to happen without pleasure causing an erection. When questioned by the doctor, they confessed that their awkward attempts at sex during the first few months of their marriage were so very unpleasant and embarrassing for both parties that they just gave up trying after a while as neither derived any pleasure from it. Remember what I said about how the pleasure principle works?

The husband had no idea what to do with his wife.

Sex can be really scary for those who are shy and lack self-confidence. It can make you feel very vulnerable - imagine if you are not confident about your self-image and are worried about what others may say about your body. Taking your clothes off in front of another person to show them parts of yourself that you don't show in public must be a nerve wrecking experience: you fear rejection and criticism, you worry about what they would think about your body. It takes a lot of confidence to present yourself to another person like that in the firm belief that the other person will desire you - many people just don't have that kind of confidence and thus for them, they would rather visit the dentist and get their teeth drilled than to have sex. Remember, the pleasure principle states that we not only seek pleasure but will also actively try to avoid pain: and if sex represents pain, discomfort, agony, frustration and fear, then you sure as hell are going to go out of your way to avoid it. Thus people who do not have sex are not necessarily abstaining because of moral or religious reasons: it could be just because sex just doesn't bring them any pleasure at all, it's that simple.

How do people become good at sex then? Well, the honest answer is usually through trial and error - gaining experience along the way and becoming more and more confident when it comes to sex. The same way nobody is actually any good at tennis the first time they try the sport, virgins are usually terrible at sex and anyone who is inexperienced is usually so nervous because they just don't know what to do. I am reminded of my experience snowboarding in Slovakia last December - I am a skier, I don't know how to snowboard but I just decided to try something new for a change. I fell so many times that morning and after three hours, I swear everything hurt. My wrists were killing me, my lower back was hurting so bad and I couldn't stay up for more than a few seconds at a time. Snowboarding was anything but fun - it was just pain, fear, frustration, agony and more pain. After three hours I thought, this is crazy, I'm on holiday! I'm meant to have fun and enjoy myself, not put myself through this crazy torture just to prove that I can snowboard. Fuck this, I then walked back to the equipment rental shop and asked if I could swap the snowboard for a pair of skis instead. Remember what I said about the pleasure principle? I gave up on snowboarding, pretty much the same way that Christian couple gave up on sex - because it was simply not fun for me.

When I told my friends about my snowboarding mishaps, they said to me that I couldn't realistically expect to learn how to snowboard in a few hours. It is not easy at all - learning how to snowboard usually takes at least a few days before you could master the basics - then once you are no longer afraid of falling, snowboarding becomes fun. I had given up too soon because I gave in to pain and fear. You would be amazed how many people are motivated by the desire to avoid fear and pain. But like snowboarding, some people do get past the first few awkward sexual encounters to gain confidence when it comes to sex - so when someone gets to that stage, then sex becomes fun, enjoyable and a pleasure. Such people will enjoy sex and want to get more sex. However, there will be plenty more who just give up after a few attempts - much the way I gave up on snowboarding.

So where does the pleasure principle leave us with teenagers and sex? Simple: there's no point in trying to preach to them about what they should or should not do when ultimately, they will not listen to us but be guided by the pleasure principle. If sex is something that brings them pleasure, then they will seek it. But if as I suspect, that sex is probably something that scares them and brings them no joy, then they will avoid it. Your valiant attempts to preach, encourage or influence their decision on the issue would be simply overruled by the pleasure principle. The desire to seek pleasure as well as the desire to avoid pain are so strong that they operate on a totally different level, beyond reason and morals. I look at my nephew and I've already made it very clear about how I feel about him spending way too much time on computer games - yet I know I am powerless to influence his desire to seek pleasure from those computer games and any attempt to stop him from playing his favourite computer games will only make him hate me.

Parents' will vs the pleasure principle: who will win?

If it is the parents' will vs the pleasure principle, the pleasure principle will triumph almost every single time. Smart parents know that and those who don't recognize that are just in denial - oh please, your geeky teenagers are probably not having sex because they cannot get laid and even if they could, it is likely to be such an awkward, uncomfortable experience bereft of any pleasure at all. Thus they do not crave sex because it will not bring them any pleasure, not because they adhere to some moral or religious code that you have dictated to them about sex before marriage. The fact that you actually got the result that you want (ie. your teenage children are not sexually active and don't intend to be) is just a happy coincidence that resulted from the pleasure principle - it is not evidence of your effective parenting. But hey, you know what Asian parents are like. All I can do is shake my head in disbelief at the way they can be so delusional at times. Instead of ignoring the pleasure principle, you need to understand how it works.

So, what do you make of the pleasure principle? Do you see how the pleasure principle plays a bit part in the decision you make everyday? Do you think it is possible to influence teenagers today? How do you think parents should try to control their teenagers when it comes to sex? Do let me know what you think please, many thanks for reading.