Lyrics Sexual Conditioning - William S. Burroughs

Sexual Conditioning

My first reading tonight is an extension and amplification of an article I
wrote for «The Gay Liberation Book» which was published by Ramparts Press, and it was
called «Sexual Conditioning».
Sexual morality in the western world is based on the Bible, and especially on
the teachings of Saint Paul, which presume to impose one arbitrary and dogmatic
standard of sexual behavior on all people everywhere and forever.
The teachings of Saint Paul are now dead and unworkable.
Dead, since the pill has seperated sexual pleasure from reproduction.
Dead, since overpopulation has made reproduction something to be curtailed
rather than encouraged.
Dead, since experiments have shown that sexual desire is a matter of
stimulating certain brain areas, and that such stimulation is purely arbitrary.
Admittedly, homosexuals can be conditioned to react sexually to a woman or to
an old boot, for that matter.
In fact, both homo and heterosexual experimental subjects have been conditioned
to react sexually to a boot.
To an old boot.
You can save a lot of money that way.
In the same way, heterosexual males can be conditioned to react sexually to
other men.
Who is to say that one is more desirable than the other?
And who is competent to lay down sexual dogmas and impose them on others?
The latter-day apologists of Saint Paul, who call themselves psychiatrists,
have little to recommend them but their bad statistics.
Psychiatrists say they need more money and more personnel to deal with the
ever-growing problem of mental illness, and the more money and personnel
channeled into this bottomless pit, the higher the statistics on mental illness
climb.
It is indeed an ever-growing problem at this rate.
Personally, I think that mental illness is largely a psychiatric invention.
On December 3rd, 1973, the American Psychiatric Association decided that
homosexuality would no longer be considered a mental deviation.
Well, if they have more mental patients now than they can handle,
it would seem to be a step in the right direction to remove homosexuals from
this category.
But the decision has caused a storm of protest.
One psychiatrist compared the decision to a «psychiatric Watergate,
which we hope won’t be our Waterloo».
They just don’t like to see any prospective patients escaping.
It could start a mass walkout.
Dr.
Charles Socarides, associate clinical professor of psychiatry at the Albert
Einstein clinic, staunchly opposes the new APA approach: «The APA has done what all civilizations have trembled to do…
tamper with the biologic row between the sexes.»
Well just fancy that.
And in a letter to «Playboy» in June of 1970, Dr.
Socarides says, «500 million years of evolution have established the
male/female standard as the functionally healthy pattern of human sexual
fulfillment.»
Now just a minute here, Doctor.
The human species is not more than one million years old, according to the
earliest human remains so far discovered.
Now, other species have had a longer run.
300 million years have established a big mouth that can bite almost anything
off, and a gut that can digest it as a functionally healthy pattern for sharks.
Some millions of years, I think about 130 million years, more or less,
established large size as functionally healthy for dinosaurs.
What may be functionally healthy at one time, is not necessarily so under
altered conditions, as the bones of discontinued models bear silent witness.
But sharks, dinosaurs, and psychiatrists don’t want to change.
The sexual revolution is now moving into the electronic stage.
Recent experiments in electric brain stimulation indicate that sexual
excitement and orgasm can be produced at push-button control or push-button
choice, depending on who is pushing the button.
Control buttons to the people.
None of these bits of technology are in the future;
the knowledge and most of
the hardware exists today.
In terms of human sexuality, what could it mean?
It could mean you can plug in anything you want.
Experiments in autonomic shaping have demonstrated that subjects can learn to
control these responses and reproduce them at will, once they learn where the
neuro-buttons are located.
Just decide what you want and your local sex adjustment center will match your
brainwaves and provide you with a suitable mate of whatever sex,
real or imaginary, while you wait.
It is now possible to provide every man and woman with the best sex kicks he or
she can tolerate without blowing a fuse.
Any candidate running on that ticket should poll a lot of votes and bring a lot
of issues right out into the open.