Sex seems capable of creating anarchy, and those who are committed to predictability and order find themselves inevitably standing in opposition to it or trying to pretend that it doesn’t even exist.
My local newspaper, the New York Times, for example, does not include images of naked people. Many of its readers might enjoy it much more if it did, but those same readers still might not buy it if such images were in it, because it could no longer present the portrait of a normal, stable, adequate world—a world not ideal but still good enough—which is the function of the Times to present every day. Nudity somehow implies that anything could happen, but the Times is committed to telling its readers that many things will not happen, because the world is under control, benevolent people are looking out for us, the situation is not as bad as we tend to think, and although problems do exist, they can be solved by wise rulers. The contemplation of nudity or sex could tend to bring up the alarming idea that at any moment human passions might rise up and topple the world we know.
WALLACE SHAWN, from “Writing About Sex” in Essays. Haymarket Books, 2009
