Stop what you're thinking right now! If you've wandered here for a bit of smut, go away. Seriously. Go Google something that has a lot of xxx's.

I've lived an interesting life. Bad bits in my childhood, good bits in my twenties, weird and I mean weird bits in my thirties and now, well... I'm kind of drifting into reflection.

Sex featured prominently in all of the above. Having had the misfortune to be exposed to it before I'd gained any understanding, I've spent my life since seeking to understand, and perhaps in the doing-so, expunge some of the associated consequences.

So why is sex a tool? Well because we have turned it into one. Simple. We have taken what was once a beautiful physical exchange between two people - and largely the by-product of something called 'love' - and turned it into... an industry? This industry has sprouted factories and these factories are pumping out many tools we buy and use.

I'm not talking sex-aids here - again, go away!

I am talking about tools such as the human body now presented as a sexual object - no matter the age. The objectification and sexualisation of children; I'm talking about the 'selfies' in the bathroom with boobs and abs on display, used to lure and attract a group around the person - like a security blanket a small child clutches.

I'm talking about the messages everywhere, pulsing and throbbing, oozing lust. You are not buying a car; you are buying this impossibly perfect female form draped seductively across the bonnet. You are not buying perfume; you are buying those impossibly seductive male eyes, gazing at you. At YOU!

Everything is gyrating around sex. This is not some revolution like Women's Liberation, or Equal Rights or any other noble movement. This is a systematic and meticulously planned approach to both de-sensitize people and also accustom people into accepting sex as a tool.

This unfortunately spills over into 'real life' often with both intended and unintended consequences.

The pressure on the young especially is unfathomable from where I stand. I truly cannot see how they are able to navigate their formative years with all these sexual messages invading every aspect of their living. Songs, movies, videos, advertisements... All pumping out the same message: "Sex is a tool, so go ahead and use it." And they use it. Having known nothing else, having no previous experiences to use as comparisons, they are consuming, and in turn becoming objectified...

The adults among us? How many of you sneak peeks at porn right? No real harm but is any of that REAL? When you watch it, why are you watching it? Is it because you are lacking these impossible to recreate scenarios in your own life? Do you feel inadequate, awash in all these scenes full of sounds and expressions you have never encountered in 'real life'? Are you escaping your own - presumed mediocre and 'boring' by comparison - attempts at love-making? Does your partner fail to BE this tool willing to do absolutely anything and everything... satisfying you through these short bursts of fantasy?

How many of you look at your partner and compare him or her with these flawless faces and perfectly toned bodies surrounding you... and feel a slight disappointment, a sense of having lucked out, or perhaps (in a complete turn-around) look at your own selves and feel inadequate, feel responsible for attracting this less than perfect partner... or else harbour doubts and insecurities about being not deserving of this seemingly more perfect 'mate'?

We are all tools. The corporations behind this drive use us. They create a problem, get us to the point of acknowledging it and then magically present us with the solution. Want younger/firmer looking skin? Want to tighten those sags and lose the 'spare tyre'? Want to smell like some pheromone guaranteed to attract the opposite sex? Want to whiten your teeth and boost your cleavage and hide those lumps and bumps? It's all out there, waiting for you. Buy. Buy. Buy.

So we buy, chasing this illusive perfection and flawless sexuality... We buy into the "you too can look/feel like this", never understanding that there was nothing 'wrong' with us to begin with. We had no problems! Somehow, all these problems invaded and consumed our thinking however... and voila! The solutions were only a few dollars - or for those who could 'afford' them, significant dollars away...

Heard of the "Problem/reaction/solution" technique also formally known as "The Hegelian Dialectic"? A German philosopher by the name of Heinrich Moritz Chalybäus thought this one up and in philosophic speak it reads like this:

·       A thesis, giving rise to its reaction,

·       an antithesis which contradicts or negates the thesis,

·       and the tension between the two being resolved by means of a synthesis.

Yeah, sounds too bloody difficult to take in, I know. I studied this in some detail a while back.

In 'plain-speak', it can be described as the following:

·       Someone creates or exploits a problem blaming it on others - anything can be applied here from the effects of the sun to terrorism.

·       People react by asking for help - this can also be applied to anything and often involves giving up something in return. (Money?)

·       The corporations/institutions/governments offer solutions planned long before the problem 'existed' in people's minds.

So in effect, a problem/need is generated AFTER the solution is already in place. I will not speak about other examples of this formula in use, but I will apply it to the topic at hand, so you can better understand how we 'got' here.

Corporations produce stuff they want you to buy. Now I studied Maslow's "Hierarchy of needs pyramid" and I'm sure many of you had to do so as well in school? If not, look it up, quite intriguing. Anyway. I bring this up because right at the top of this 'pyramid' is what he calls self-actualization', a term used to describe self-discovery, spiritual enlightenment, or in a nutshell, achieving one's 'full potential'.

Here's the thing though. To get there, all those other needs in the lower layers of the pyramid must be met first. Meaning you must satisfy the physiological needs, e.g. food, water, shelter, sex. Then move onto the 'safety' issues including personal security, health and well-being, financial security and plans for unexpected 'emergencies' that may arise.  

After satisfying these, you need to address the need of belonging, the intimacy of family, friendships and relationships. After that, comes esteem. Respect from others, recognition, confidence, independenceand so forth.

Then the last area to be 'satisfied' is you achieving your full potential as a human being.

The only constant in all these layers is sex.

I studied Maslow as part of my Commerce/Marketing degree. In the Sales area? Learned how Corporations can 'use' this hierarchy to produce stuff, then create the 'need' and then offer the 'ready' product as a solution. Most of these strategies - even back then - directly targeted sexual desires. Yeah, sex sells. Brought you to this update didn't it?

The point of all this? I am tired of sex. I am visually tired of seeing perfection and the myriad ways of attaining it. I am exhausted by the sheer volume of naked flesh I am exposed to daily - and I don't mean normal people flesh, I mean that perfect, flawless, retouched skin... without a single blemish.

I am jaded by all this nudity and the sex scenes where everything is so seamless, so damn easy! I am way past the point of caring really whether actors have sex or not. I can write every plot and every sex scene... what's the point of watching something I already 'wrote'?

Call me old-fashioned. I like a little mystery; I don't want my every purchase to be accompanied by flesh and/or suggestiveness... I don't want to see boobs and bums and other perfectly toned bits in my movies. I don't want to see ads with women performing sexual acts with everything from shampoo to ice-cream... And I certainly don't want to see young children in cartoons and 'family fantasy movies' presented as 'smaller women'. I want to see them as children!

We have been suckered into expecting and even 'needing' our daily dose of sex. Every product comes with the promise/premise that its purchase will somehow enhance our sexuality and in turn make us 'attract/be attractive to' the opposite sex.

I miss the mystery. I miss most of all the subtleties... the words, the looks passed between people, the silences where the mind wonders and hopes and perhaps anticipates... now it's all out there. Love-making is sex. Intimacy is fucking. Language is crude and frankly, discrediting the former beauty and wonder of discovery. There is nothing to 'discover' anymore; there is no verbal dance as such. You meet, you share a drink then you fuck. Then you move on to the next drink - the one you drink because the ad showed a couple drinking it and their eyes were sparkling and their mouths were suggestively licking lips between sips...

A friend recently suggested I watch 'Somewhere in time'. An 80's movie, the plot somewhat corny today... But there was an instance where their eyes met and I saw in that instance all that is missing today. And I ached, I longed for those days when sex was not a tool but rather a point arrived at... A point in time when two people understood and appreciated the moment... unaided by deodorants and face creams and scents and alcohol and drugs and... all the tools we have at our disposal today.

You know, sometimes down on the coast, we'd get visitors from afar. Women in the water with their bodies fully covered - out of the water, only their eyes visible... I met a few, strange creature that I am... Talked about cultures and traditions... One conversation stands out and is pertinent here (this is not me passing judgement either way, just relating a particular conversation...)

"Does it bother you that you are not able to enjoy the sun? Having to cover up?"

"No, I don't see it that way. I can enjoy the sun at home all I like. I just don't want others ogling at my body."

"But you do realise you are seen as a symbol of 'oppression'?"

"One can only be oppressed by force. I am not oppressed, this is my choice."

"Yes, but is this choice based on your culture or by viewing both sides and coming to a personal conclusion?"

"I was raised non-traditionally as a youngster. I embraced this later on."

"Can I ask why?"

"Look at my eyes..." She did have the most incredibly expressive eyes. They captivated. They drew you in. They were the most eloquent eyes I had ever seen, and I study people right?

"When you talk to me, you are looking straight into my eyes, yes? There's nothing else to see, nothing to distract you. The rest of me is a mystery..."

Damn she was right! Even I as a woman wanted to know more of her, to discover the person behind the black fabric... And I could only do this through conversation, and gazing into those allusive eyes!

We had quite a long chat over a couple of frappes. Don't know where the men in her life were or even whether she had 'a man'. But the hour or so spent chatting with her... It changed something in me. Or rather reinforced all the above?

There is no mystery left.  That's what I came away with. I am not advocating that women should all immediately go and put on black sheets and cut a couple of holes in them. Hell, I am guilty of putting it all out there - minus the most private - come summer.

I just feel nostalgic. And jaded. And really, out of time, out of place...

Have I reached the very top of Maslow's pyramid? Perhaps. For the most part, I have satisfied those needs without the use of 'tools'. For the most part... but there's always - and with age deconstructing me - always the guilt in the back of the mind: Should I be doing something about it? What about some Botox - a little won't matter right? Or re-visiting the gym - full of people who really shouldn't be there, because I rarely see someone overweight, only perfect or near perfect bodies in tight, all-revealing 'gym gear'... the same gym wear they put on to go shopping for those tools...

Nuh. Screw the guilt. This is me, and I am the product of a life spent in rhythm with nature and with time... You want something else, go find a tool.