The Sex-Full, Love-Empty Individual

An anonymous commenter wrote:

This is the stupidest bunch of bull[****] I’ve ever read. First of all, am I happy that I slept around before I got married? Yes I am. Am I happy that I am sexually active now that I’m divorced? Yes, I am. Why? Because I know what I like, and I know what it takes to please me sexually.
When are people going to learn that love and sex are two separate things?

Source: anonymous, comment, November 14, 2013, on "Abstinence Is Unrealistic and Old Fashioned," The Matt Walsh Blog, November 9, 2013, accessed November 15, 2013, http://themattwalshblog.com/2013/11/09/abstinence-is-unrealistic-and-old-fashioned/

This comment, following a blog post in support of abstinence until marriage (http://themattwalshblog.com/2013/11/09/abstinence-is-unrealistic-and-old-fashioned/), was met with many other comment responses in refutation of or reaction to it. But the comment itself is revealing on so many levels.

I might first note that the refutation of the blog post's argument is an appeal to the commenter's present level of sexual satisfaction, which the commenter equates with her happiness. Would that mean, by the commenter's apparent logic, if the commenter was not sexually satisfied in the present that the blog post's argument would be sound?

But the second is that this comment, soaked in individualistic, post-Enlightenment, and libertarian discourse ("I," "happy," "sexually active," "divorced," "like," "takes to please," "love," "separate"), the mentality that fuels and places individual autonomy and rights above everything else, pays no concern to anything other than the individual, and even then, it is the individual on the conscious level. But what about the individual on the unconscious level?

Notice three facts about this comment: 1) it was made anonymously; 2) it was posted; 3) it ends: "When are people going to learn that love and sex are two separate things?"

Both the commenter and the people addressed are left undefined, presumably left to be filled in by context. But in fact, even if the commenter had a name (and pictures and a profile, etc.), we could have no assurance that the apparent identity we see on the web was in fact the true identity of the poster. It's one of the possibilities of the internet that what you see is not what you get. Such falsified identities occur all the time, and in some contexts are systematically encouraged, such as in message boards or online gaming. (A question related to this issue: what does such phenomena do to the individual identity, to the notion of self?) My point being: a comment in the comment box is in most circumstances intrinsically anonymous for the average reader.

The comment is an appeal by an anonymous victim to an anonymous "Other," the Other that instills in us much of our desires and beliefs, the Other that St. John calls the world and the devil.

And what is the appeal? "Learn that sex and love are two separate things."

And what is the woman doing now? Sex.

Which means she isn't getting: Love.

And that is the issue, and no amount of comment responses will show her otherwise. Prayers and acts of love by people striving for holiness alone will show her the truth that abstinence is love, and the sexual act should be an expression of love reserved for the lifelong bond of marriage.