What forces might have made Jimmy Savile a sexual predator and allowed him to get away with it all his life? Ben Belenus on our personal sex gods.
This was previously published on the sex god—No Mud No Lotus.
I felt it worthwhile to offer a perspective on why men behave so recklessly with their dicks.
I read the news today.
The headlines were about sex and the sexually deviant way of the world; children’s TV personalities molesting patients, raped forests, government ministers into fetish parties, abused reefs, bank chiefs and hotel maids, and the exploitation of toxic fish. The damaged masculine makes the news.
But then I guess we aren’t governed by leaders or entertained by stars that are willing to take a vow of celibacy, are we. Not like the church, where celibacy vows might allow the powerful to be more in touch with their subjects; perhaps dipping a finger into the ass of a young lad or practicing celibacy with the youthful genitals of a parishioner’s daughter?
Something needs fixing
Isn’t it amazing how sex is all over the media, and yet it is a subject that most people cannot talk about honestly. If they do talk about the way that sex moves in their body it is often behind closed doors in hushed tones. Maybe our whole generation needs sexually healing? If our peoples were healed it would save us having to keep locking them up.
In our world today sex, pornography, sexual deviance and the broken ways in the world are all high visibility subjects. I can see that something has warped in our culture’s relationship to sex and it is detrimentally affecting the way we all honour men, women and the Earth. This cultural damage is reflected in the media’s obsession with sex. The media propagates the shadow of our culture.
Jim’ll molest it
There’s a major sexual furor developing in the UK at this time. At the centre of the storm is a deceased children’s TV personality named Jimmy Savile. Savile was a TV mega star known by every child of the 60s, 70s, and 80s. His was most famous for his BBC show “Jim’ll Fix It.”
He always felt a bit creepy to me.
The metropolitan police are currently investigating 120 lines of inquiry against him involving rape and sexual abuse while being a children’s TV presenter and charity fundraiser. Allegations against the deceased star continue to mount with ex-patients at high security psychiatric hospitals coming forward and claiming that they were molested. He behaved in that way and got away with it because he was in a culture where it was acceptable to behave that way and get away with it.
There is significant debate and much hand wringing going on about him. A fallen star, he is now referred to as a despicable sexual predator. TV channels are in a tizz and the story is making front page headlines daily. While traditional media pursues its post humus witch hunt, I felt it worthwhile to offer a perspective on why men behave so recklessly with their dicks. Savile was a man who had it all, why would he risk everything to cop a feel of some vulnerable underage women?
This is a sad story that reflects on us all. What he did to one, he did to us all.
Savile had a “sex god” that was out of control
Every person has within them a sexual impulse. I call that impulse “the sex god.” Most people are bigger than their sex god fueled animal instincts. They do not behave sexually irresponsibly, most of the time. Sex gods manifest in many guises though: Savile had a penchant for young vulnerable women, while for another it might be porn addiction, building tall buildings, cheating on a husband or denuding a forest. Savile’s sex god was so unruly that it would have him make all manner of harmful choices. Just so he could get “some of the other” at any cost.
The past few generations have been unable to talk about their sex god’s honestly. Sex talk was either a private matter or the subject of media fueled tittle tattle. If there was an honest dialogue, it would be exposed that many men feel powerless around pussy.
Where did Savile’s unruly sex god come from?
All of humanity bears wounds, pain held within our global subconscious. Our ancestors were ravaged by the needs of male egos, of warring peoples, horror, suppression, violence, pestilence and hunger. The belief that ours is the most gloriously sexual of ages, rooted in endless fun and rebellious novelty is widely held—but our ancestors also all had sex gods of their own. It doesn’t take too big an intellect to see that rape, abuse, subjugation and other vile ways of the sexual landscape will have been rife back through all history—and that their legacy of sexual abuse and damage will have been amply passed onto us. Those ways are still rife. Those ways shape our world.
So here we are in the second millennia and our world is very different to the one that our ancestors inhabited. My guess is that there was something about Savile’s ancestral lineage, about his social and cultural conditioning that made it okay for him to go fan fondling. There was something about the culture that he lived in that made it okay for him to spend a life time molesting without anybody calling him to task. If he was honest about his sex god, he might have stood up and said, “Brothers, my lustiness feels out of control. What should I do about it?” But then perhaps it was expected behaviour of a national personality; further endorsed by TV producers who would surround him with screaming teenies on Top of the Pops.
And what of his victims? I would go so far as to say that today we live in a world where women are sedated and controlled; they are only allowed to be whores or mothers, or to behave like men. It simply wasn’t acceptable for them to stand up to the institutions of the time and declare that Savile had crossed a boundary without permission.
I shed tears for our sad burden; that we should all be born of a culture where damaged masculine ways can operate and not be healed.
Jim needed fixing
When we heal our relationship to sex, our relationship to ourselves, other people and the Earth will also heal.
Where do the psychic wounds come from that need to be healed, to be energetically neutralised? Some wounds result from direct experience within our own lives, perhaps from encounters with wounded-others. Many wounds are inflicted when we witness inconsistencies-with-Truth while growing up. Much of our conditioning stems from the parent/child relationship and ancestral inheritance. We allowed our parents to be experts who know. We didn’t question them. We adopted their wounded conditioning. Our parents inherited their conditioning (wounds and all) from their parents, and so on stretching back through all of time. Anytime there was a wound or trauma in the lives of forebears the energy of that incident would be passed on through the generations and then eventually onto Savile—the same goes for you.
We are all the latest link in a long chain of ancestral pain, a complex chain of entanglements from the past. The day we are born, we become the next link in that chain.
Sex shapes our lives.
Jim could have fixed it
In every moment we have a choice. Our choice can allow some small part of our ancestral wounding to be healed; for our children and future generations. Actions always leave behind an energetic effect and that effect radiates outwards into the All. Nothing exists in isolation. Every choice we make has an effect that touches all the people around us, always. Savile wasn’t apparently very discerning in the choices that he is alleged to have made.
But we can be discerning about the choices we make, especially when driven by our sex god.
The deep imperative of an ancestral healing might be possible with a healthy choice. Somewhere within every one of us is a heart-conscience that somehow knows whether a choice contributes to the evolution of humanity, its illumination, or not.
We can fix it
The media is reflecting the damaged inner relationship that we all have to our sexual impulse.
When we acknowledge that we have within us primal animal urges as well as sacred propensity we can embrace our whole self. It’s a bit late for Savile to do so but we can learn from the ugliness of his legacy. Especially if we are ready to take an honest and vulnerable look at our relationship to sex.
Sex is beautiful. It is what has brought every one of us here to earth. It should be celebrated, not banished to the provenance of tittle-tattle about molestation, domination and hidden jerk-offs in an upstairs bedrooms.
Celebration of our sex requires that we all get honest about what it has us do. It requires that we see our bodies as temples of earthly pleasure. It requires that intimate boundaries are understood and respected. It is only when we truly love ourselves that we can truly love another.
If we all celebrated and talked openly about our sexuality, maybe there would be fewer prisoners, men would respect women and we would all respect the earth.
Read more: Sex at Dawn
This article contains many extracts from Ben’s recently published book, ‘the sex god—No Mud No Lotus’ © Copyright 2012 Ben Belenus
Image credit: surprise truck/Flickr
I thought that was the whole point of working for the BBC if you were “queer”. A bit like working for the Devon police if you were a fesbian. Sympathetic employer – no questions asked.
Once I read the following from this post, “All of humanity bears wounds, pain held within our global subconscious. Our ancestors were ravaged by the needs of male egos,…” I was done.
It’s not only sexual predators that get the red carpet treatment, and who are enabled to get on with their heinous acts by those who stand to gain from them, while society is expected to lionise them or close both eyes. http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20121016/blogs/let-s-pretend.441348
I think this is supposed to be a case study of the things that are wrong with ‘western culture’ when it comes to sex. Maybe it’s not a really good example though. Still it is easy to imagine that if the BBC lived up to the ideals of sex-positive feminism this guy would have been arrested and/or fired from his prestigious job pretty early on. Few people can really be said to be responsible for these predatory pedophiles. However there is a sexual culture that helps them, and that in turn is connected to the sexual cultures that various men… Read more »
A caution: I certainly don’t believe in child molestation, but this article is subtly anti-sexual, I think. It makes certain strong assumptions about sexual appropriateness that are results of alienation and repression, not our real, physical sexualities. Belenus’s way of calling out many sexual practices as “vile” is a giveaway, here. I’d probably agree with him on much or porn, and other commodified forms of sexuality, and I certainly believe that many of us may choose to approach sex in considered, Appolonian ways. But I believe that sex comes from the body, and there are Dionesian ways toward it as… Read more »
I’m tired of this trope of all men have to be held accountable for the abusive conduct of the few. Savile was a man who had it all, why would he risk everything to cop a feel of some vulnerable underage women? This is a sad story that reflects on us all. What he did to one, he did to us all. Why did he do it? Because He Could! It requires no more understanding than that! How did he get away with it? Combinations of the Time, the Place, Blackmail and quite a few other premeditated actions. Jimmy Saville… Read more »