… human sexuality is somehow bound up with the whole person in a unique way. It has a deeply personal meaning that we cannot simply construct for ourselves. If the meaning of sexuality is wholly conventional—if sex is merely a biological event—then the seriousness of sexual assault and ubiquity of sexual shame make no sense.
In fact, in human experience, the meaning of sexuality is closely connected with a particular desire, the desire for embodied union with another person. … This desire is not simply reducible to biology, although it is certainly inseparable from it. Each of our other organs can fulfill its complete organic function within our own bodies. The genitals alone, as reproductive organs, can be organically actualized only in sexual intercourse, when a man and a woman become a single, complete organism.
This reality suggests that sexual intercourse will always mean a wholly personal union, whatever the partners to that union may intend or think. In other words, sexuality has its own language, which human beings cannot completely change. They can only choose to live the truth of their bodies with integrity or to contradict and falsify that truth with their bodies, damaging their own integrity as well as that of their sexual partners. In sexual intercourse, the body uniquely says “I give my whole self to you, and I receive your whole self, which you are giving me.”
Elizabeth Schlueter and Nathan Schlueter, What #MeToo and Hooking Up Teach Us About The Meaning of Sex
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