Welt und Zeit—Disgusting Sexuality, Sex & Disgust, 20:35—23. February 2025

The intersection of sexuality is struck with the immediate affective realm of disgust, and one is invariably drawn into an ever-expanding contemplation that touches upon the most fundamental nature of being. The trajectory of this reflection, framed within the broader horizon often invoked by the name of World & Time, finds itself confronted by contradictions, tensions, and uncanny combinations of human desire and revulsion. Within this sphere, it becomes inevitable to acknowledge how intimate bodily drives become shaped and contorted by the tumultuous currents of the broader socio-political world, although one seems isolated. One cannot turn away from this undercurrent—indeed, contemporary life bears witness to escalating global crises that unearth deep-seated anxieties, from intense ideological battles across nations to the re-emergence of forces that challenge our common sense of decency. Yet it is precisely in the realm of sexuality, coupled with disgust, where these anxieties can be analyzed for the deeper structures they reveal.

The complexity arises because sexuality so often dwells beneath the veneer of polite discourse, overshadowed by taboos that relegate it to the margins. Disgust, meanwhile, signifies a moral and corporeal boundary, a refusal that the body expresses in physical or symbolic retching against that which it deems unacceptable or repugnant. In the quiet corners of psychoanalytic thought, sexuality is not merely about the gratification of desire; it is a site of tension, of yearning for completion in the face of an unassailable sense of lack. When this domain is amplified by the impossibility of contemporary global politics—an environment rife with polarization, mass migration crises, economic uncertainty, and the persistent rumblings of conflict—its hidden intensities become even more concentrated. Power structures intersect with primal drives, shaping what is deemed disgusting and what is deemed sexually alluring, reflecting larger historical legacies of ideological manipulation. This confluence means we cannot simply parse the question of sexual disgust from the standpoint of isolated individuals; rather, we must consider how entire social orders demarcate certain sexual practices, partners, or identities as abject while elevating others to the realm of acceptable desire.

Such valuations are rarely transparent. They are guided, in ways often only discoverable through a deeper analytic working through, by the subterranean currents of the unconscious. In many cases, the social impetus to cast certain forms of sexuality as disgusting is inextricably linked to modes of power that operate through stigmatization, moral condemnation, and the threat of exclusion. In that exclusion, we see the negative face of community formation: to unite through the condemnation of a deviant other. And yet, from another perspective, there remains a fascination at work in the dynamic of disgust, an attraction to the very thing that repulses us. This dual movement is reminiscent of the tension between the pure bodily reflex, which seeks to expel, and the inquisitive, transgressive dimension of desire, which cannot help but circle around what it forbids itself to touch.

Examining sexuality from the vantage of philosophical ontology, we encounter something fundamental about the instability of human subjectivity itself. There is a persistent sense of incompleteness, a constitutive void that spurs the subject to reach for the Other in hopes of a unity that never fully arrives. This dynamic can breed both fascination and loathing. While many yearn for an idealized fusion—perhaps fantasizing a perfect harmony that erases all conflict—the actual encounter with flesh, with fluids, with the rawness of the body can evoke precisely that recoil we label disgust. It arises from a confrontation with the limits of individuality; we are reminded that one’s own corporality inevitably merges into the world, dissolving the illusion of a pristine autonomy. And in that dissolution, a feeling of defilement emerges, as though the very boundaries of selfhood were under siege.

Beyond any mere biological response, however, disgust also carries cultural significance. Different societies mark different boundaries around what is considered polluting, what is conducive to shame, and what must remain hidden. These invisible lines inform the codes of conduct that govern intimate life, serving not only to regulate personal morality but also to sustain an entire social order. Yet in numerous pockets of the contemporary global climate, these boundaries are in flux. Movements championing inclusivity, sexual freedom, and an unembarrassed affirmation of desire collide with conservative forces that invoke moral panic. These tensions become especially fraught where political currents exploit sexuality as a scapegoat for deeper economic or social anxieties. In times of cultural upheaval, narratives of national purity or righteousness often revolve around controlling sexual norms, stoking fear by painting certain expressions of sexuality as repugnant threats to collective identity.

Within the space of psychoanalysis, one often finds repeated insistence on the incommensurability that arises between the fantasies of desire and their actual fulfillment. It is a gap that implicates the impossibility of a fully harmonious sexual relationship, leaving in its wake a sense of persistent craving and dissatisfaction. Yet the question of disgust intensifies this gap, adding an extra dimension that highlights the boundary where desire recoils against its object. The subject experiences both a longing for the other’s corporeal presence and a revulsion at the fluids, odors, or raw vitality that accompany that presence. There is thus a shocking collision of the idealized image of erotic union with the messy realities of organic life, a drama that pervades the everyday world and resonates profoundly in times of heightened political stress.

In the present global moment, wherein borders become sites of conflict and myriad groups vie for ideological supremacy, one can observe a parallel phenomenon: revulsion at otherness often merges with fantasies of domination or purity. So, too, in personal relationships, illusions of total unity or seamless compatibility come face-to-face with the inescapable realization that one’s partner is an Other who can never be completely assimilated.

Disgust arises not only in the encounter with a foreign body but also when individuals realize their own desires are riddled with contradictions and transgressions. Indeed, the taboo, that precarious boundary between moral order and transgression, frequently elicits a nauseating fascination, both horrifying and tantalizing. Politics itself, one might argue, is rife with this dynamic: populist figures stir up collective disgust for targeted groups, transforming complex social dilemmas into simpler problems of contamination and purity. The same rhetorical gesture can be found in the moral condemnation of particular sexual orientations, practices, or expressions—a phenomenon repeated throughout history whenever a community looks for scapegoats to maintain its cohesive image of itself.

Understood from an ontological vantage, disgust can also be read as a significant signpost pointing to the limited capacity of any symbolic system to capture the fullness of lived, embodied experience. There is always an excess that slips through the net of representation, a remainder that cannot be wholly integrated into social or conceptual frameworks. This remainder often appears as the disgusting element—something that confounds classification and thus provokes a visceral response. Sexuality thrives within and because of this excess. Desire, in its rawest form, partakes of the same dimension. It resists complete assimilation by moral codes, doctrinal statements, or political platforms. In moments of political crisis, attempts to domesticate or regulate desire can reach fever pitch, but the ultimate failure of such attempts reveals the irrepressible nature of the drives and the impossibility of forging a completely sanitized communal identity.

In acknowledging these dynamics, one confronts the notion that disgust is not merely negative. It can operate as a gateway to insight precisely because it exposes the fragile scaffolding upon which our sense of self and the communal order rests. The bodily shudder, the impulse to retch, the feeling of contamination—these experiences underscore the precariousness of our illusions of purity and signal that the boundaries between self and world, or self and other, are never as solid as we would prefer to imagine. Sexuality, in its capacity to unsettle normative frameworks and reveal the subject’s innermost vulnerabilities, brings this precariousness to the fore. Thus, sexuality can serve as a philosophical stage upon which the confrontation with disgust illuminates broader existential truths.

Simultaneously, in a climate fraught with political agitation, it is essential to recognize that what repels us is intimately connected with what draws us in. Authoritarian figures frequently capitalize on this ambivalence, urging citizens to despise certain groups or sexual identities, while at the same time fanning the flames of a barely concealed fascination with what they claim to abhor. This phenomenon mirrors the structure of sexual disgust, where the boundary that separates the object of repulsion from that of desire can become deliriously thin. One sees the theme repeated in the collective psychosocial sphere, as entire communities can become infatuated with the deviance they outwardly reject. The lesson gleaned from such a pattern is that no matter how vehemently individuals or societies proclaim their revulsion, they are entwined with what they find repugnant, and a deeper recognition of that entwinement is crucial for any genuine understanding of the forces at play.

The illusions of a clean break—whereby we can neatly separate what is pure from what is monstrous—become unsustainable when confronted by the complexities of global events. Wars, displacements, and crises lay bare how easily civilized comportment can slip into barbarity. In the same stroke, they reveal that the lines we draw around ourselves to delineate acceptable sexual or affective practices are neither infallible nor innocent. They are shaped by historical contingencies and reinforced by institutions that often have their own agendas. When the political dimension intensifies, these social codes can harden into dogmatic beliefs, fueling hatred or fear of the alien, the different, or the transgressive. And yet the underside of this phenomenon is the unspoken erotic curiosity that runs through even the most vehement condemnation. History bears witness to many crusaders for purity who have themselves been entranced by the allure of the taboo they professed to detest.

In this context, it becomes fruitful to consider how unconscious processes shape political landscapes, infusing them with energies that revolve around sex and disgust. The illusions of moral righteousness often conceal deeper fantasies and anxieties, while the rational rhetoric used to justify political actions may mask the raw drives operating beneath the surface. Moreover, the notion of universal kinship that is sometimes heralded at times of global cooperation remains haunted by the awareness that such a universal might fail to account for the singularities of embodied desire. The friction generated by these contradictions does not diminish their philosophical importance. Rather, it underscores how essential it is to incorporate an ontology of desire—and, by extension, an ontology of disgust—into discussions of today’s political climate. Through this lens, the so-called rational sphere of policy-making is consistently laced with the domain of visceral, affective, and sexual energies.

Nor can we ignore that while collective mobilizations often take shape around moral injunctions related to purity, corruption, or deviance, individuals are simultaneously grappling with their own intimate complexities. The gap between one’s own transgressive fantasies and the social norms one enforces upon others can become a fertile breeding ground for hypocrisy. Disgust becomes a handy mechanism to fortify the boundaries between the normative self and the forbidden. Yet, ironically, each act of expressing disgust also keeps the forbidden object close at hand, reinforcing its perverse appeal. This cyclical dynamic is an essential part of what might be labeled the psychic economy of the subject. It demonstrates that the more vehemently a subject or community disavows a particular form of sexuality, the more intractable that sexuality’s symbolic power becomes. Thus, despite efforts to cast it out, the notion of the disgusting uncleanliness reasserts itself, often in disguised forms.

In many ways, an appreciation of the interplay between sex and disgust can be likened to an ontological excavation of hidden layers in human existence. One must probe beneath the veneer of social correctness or personal decency, confronting what might be deemed the abject core that both unsettles and animates desire. It is not merely a question of whether we can rid ourselves of disgust or neutralize it; rather, it is the realization that disgust is a vital, if unsettling, thread in the variety of our being-in-the-world. It marks the point where we are forced to acknowledge our own vulnerability, our precarious embodiment, and the illusions that sustain our sense of moral and psychic integrity. Far from being a minor affect to be superseded by reason, disgust demands a place in our inquiry as a fundamental mode of response to the irreducible strangeness of bodies, both our own and those of others.

In the swirl of rapidly changing global contexts, the topic of sexuality remains intricately bound up with questions of identity, power, and resistance. Movements that challenge traditional norms often find themselves dismissed as disgusting by those who hold power or cling to rigid moral codes. This label, however, frequently serves as an indication that these movements are touching upon something deeply unsettling to the established order—specifically, they threaten the illusion of the stable subject free of contradictions. By confronting established paradigms with displays of alternative sexualities or with an unapologetic acceptance of bodily differences, these movements provoke a strong affective reaction that reveals the tenuousness of social cohesion. Indeed, the intensity of the backlash often corresponds directly to the intensity of the threat that taboo-shattering gestures pose to the reigning symbolic structures.

If one surveys the cultural and political landscape today, one sees numerous flashpoints where debates about sexuality become entangled with issues such as freedom of speech, censorship, censorship’s counter-impulse of open expression, and the fundamental question of individual autonomy. These debates are not merely intellectual exercises; they have real consequences for human lives, shaping legal frameworks that govern what is permissible or punishable. And at each juncture, the language of disgust emerges, whether it is aimed at the hypothetical corruption of children, the perceived moral decline of society, or a host of other justifications that stir up primal anxieties about contamination and impurity. What remains constant is how central the interplay between sexuality and revulsion is for mobilizing political energy and moral fervor.

Hidden within the folds of this interplay is a silent acknowledgment that sexuality, in its disconcerting directness, can never be fully exhausted by the categories we impose upon it. The drive that animates erotic life perpetually seeks expressions beyond the carefully orchestrated constraints of social mores. When it transgresses these constraints, it often provokes a reciprocal intensification of disgust, a protective reaction that attempts to preserve the established order. From an ontological perspective, this cyclical tension—where each new transgression meets an ever-more rigid boundary—points to the fundamental restlessness of human existence. The being who inhabits the world is torn between a yearning for a unity that is always out of reach and the stark realization that all intimacy is haunted by an irreducible dimension of otherness.

Such restlessness can become especially acute in times of political upheaval. War, for instance, rips the social fabric and exposes the fragility of the structures that once insulated everyday life. In these conditions, the extremes of bodily vulnerability are made visible: corpses, wounds, bodily fluids, all the phenomena from which society ordinarily averts its gaze. Sexual violence, too, can become a weapon, a demonstration of dominance and a form of terror. In these extreme contexts, the boundary between disgust and desire can become dangerously blurred. While revulsion at violence stands side by side with a horrifying fascination, the raw interplay of drives emerges stripped of the usual niceties. And in the aftermath of such brutal exposures, communities often attempt to restore moral clarity by reestablishing boundaries of disgust—condemning the monstrous acts as utterly outside the scope of humanity. This move can be necessary for ethical reasons, yet it invariably involves a struggle to reckon with the disquieting truth that such acts originate within human potentiality itself.

Meanwhile, in less extreme but still turbulent times, we witness an incessant negotiation of sexual norms. Conversations about what is permissible, what is obscene, and what is repulsive bubble to the surface of culture. Laws are proposed or rescinded, public campaigns gather momentum, and within the swirl of media commentary, invocations of disgust are plentiful. They remain, however, intimately connected to underlying erotic or sexual tensions, even if such tensions seldom find open acknowledgment. They reverberate with the structure of an unspoken prohibition that ironically draws even more attention to what it forbids. The repeated emphasis on repugnance entices a certain measure of transgressive curiosity. This interplay, arguably, is part of what keeps sexuality at the center of cultural discourse across eras and geographies, ensuring that the debate never fully subsides.

In the face of this ceaseless interplay of sex and disgust, reflection on the being of the world—the aspiration of any serious ontological project—discloses that we cannot conceive of ourselves as purely rational creatures who transcend our bodily nature. Rather, we exist in constant negotiation with our drives, fantasies, and the reflexes of disgust that spring up in our attempts to manage these drives. Our political structures mirror these tensions on a grand scale, erecting laws and punishments to demarcate moral boundaries, while also being propelled forward by the energies that swirl around those boundaries. Consequently, the repeated resurgence of debates on sexuality, censorship, and revulsion reveals not a failure of resolution but an intrinsic condition of our social and existential reality.

No matter how earnestly one seeks to detach sexuality from disgust, the two remain inseparable, particularly in periods when the quest for moral righteousness or ideological purity intensifies. Contemporary signs of cultural fragmentation, the fracturing of global alliances, and the rise of authoritarian tendencies can all be read through this dual lens. They echo the tension between the wish to unify and the horrifying suspicion that what truly unifies us is our shared capacity for desire and its accompanying transgressions. Outbreaks of social disgust thus become the site where communities attempt to distance themselves from what they find terrifyingly alluring or disturbingly familiar. To treat these outbreaks simply as superficial mass phenomena misses the subterranean dimension that keeps them alive, that is, the repeated attempt to define an identity by repudiating any stain of the abject.

The question of sexuality and disgust is a question of how we come to terms with our own corporeality and the corporeality of others, both in its capacity to enchant and repulse. This tension carries ethical significance, prompting us to consider how we might organize our collective life without succumbing to either an uncritical embrace of transgression or a suffocating moralism. The current global scene, with its shifting alliances and emergent crises, underscores the urgency of this ethical reflection, for it is precisely at the level of intimate, bodily encounters that ideological battles find some of their fiercest expressions. The revulsion directed at certain sexual identities or practices is rarely just about those identities or practices themselves; it is about the underlying fear of dissolution, contamination, and the realization that human subjectivity is not as distinct or autonomous as it pretends to be.

In pressing this point further, one might say that disgust grants us a unique perspective on the negative space of desire—what we cannot or refuse to incorporate, yet what continues to shape us from the shadows. Therein lies an irony: attempts to eradicate disgust often reinforce its hold, since the boundary-building process itself intensifies awareness of that which is excluded. The dance between desire and disgust follows a logic that confounds simple moral distinctions. The reviled can become the coveted, the forbidden can become the enticing, and the boundary that was supposed to protect can turn into a threshold for transgression. If, in our quest to be wholly rid of disgust, we deny this ambivalence, we risk falling into a naive rationalism that fails to appreciate the deeper movements animating human thought and behavior.

Within the matrix of world events, this dynamics takes on a dramatic form as nations struggle with waves of migration, environmental catastrophes, and ideological fragmentation, each phenomenon bringing to light the precariousness of the boundaries we construct. While these events might seem far from the intimate realm of bodily desire, they are bound together by the same fundamental tension: where does one draw the line between what is acceptable and what must be repelled? Political demagogues exploit the fear of contamination to galvanize sentiment against outsiders, just as individuals might project their own sexual insecurities onto others, labeling them disgusting to maintain a fragile sense of self. One sees the same structural logic repeated: the other is cast as that which must be expelled, not merely from the physical territory but also from the symbolic realm of moral acceptability. And yet, inevitably, the more fervently it is expelled, the more it remains in psychic circulation, recurring in nightmares, fantasies, and moral panics.

If there is a difficult lesson to be gleaned here, it is that recognition of disgust’s entanglement with sexuality can serve as a stepping stone to a more nuanced ethical and political awareness. To acknowledge that we are drawn to what disgusts us, even if only to define ourselves in opposition to it, is to confront the paradoxical nature of desire itself. This confrontation may not eradicate disgust, but it can mitigate its potential for fueling violence and oppression. By situating disgust within a continuum of human affect, rather than treating it as a mere reflex, we grant ourselves the possibility of reflecting on its deeper resonance. We can then ask how certain expressions of sexuality become singled out for condemnation or how entire populations are cast as monstrous or unclean. And in so doing, we can begin to articulate alternative ways of engaging with the unsettling truths that sexuality reveals about our embodied condition.

The possibility emerges that what we label disgusting is an essential part of our collective and individual attempt to grapple with the inescapable lacks and impossibilities woven into erotic life. Far from being an anomaly or a defect, these lacks constitute the very condition of our desire to seek union, even as union remains perpetually incomplete. Disgust, in turn, provides the negative moment that shields us from too quickly embracing that unresolvable tension; it is the protest of the body and psyche against being overtaken by that which threatens to dissolve our sense of boundaries. Yet this protest itself is incomplete, for it remains haunted by the seductive pull of that which it rejects. Hence, we dwell in an interminable oscillation, producing layer upon layer of cultural, political, and psychological responses in an effort to handle the interplay of sex and disgust.

In the broad variety of human thought, every epoch offers its own unique spin on these themes, but the underlying structure remains recognizable. Today’s global tumult has amplified the volume of this discourse, revealing that neither liberal ideals of tolerance nor reactionary demands for purity fully grapple with the root ambiguities. To do so demands a more penetrating examination—one that views sexuality as not merely an object of rational regulation but as the site where existential contradictions become acutely felt. Disgust is an index of that contradiction, a stark reminder that we are, at root, vulnerable, fleshy beings beset by desires whose objects refuse easy categorization. Our inability to reconcile these facts in a neat conceptual package is not a failure; it is a fundamental aspect of what it means to be human.

Thus, the question of whether sex can ever truly detach itself from an undercurrent of disgust remains open, tethered to the broader question of how we navigate the tensions of embodiment. We find ourselves returning time and again to the inextricable link between the repellent and the alluring, recognizing that this link pulses through the corridors of power, ideology, and personal intimacy. And in the final analysis, if there is any possibility of forging a less destructive relationship with this duality, it likely lies in developing a rigorous awareness of how our impulses to exclude, to condemn, and to revile mirror our own latent desires. By illuminating that mirror, we can perhaps approach a world that does not so readily convert its anxieties into forms of hatred or violence, acknowledging instead that disgust itself is part of the very texture of sexuality, and, by extension, of our collective and individual attempts to make sense of being-in-the-world.

If this realization can be internalized—albeit never fully or permanently—then a space may open for a more subtle and careful negotiation of sexual difference, taboo, and morality. One might still experience the visceral recoil that signals a boundary has been crossed, but this recoil can be interrogated rather than simply obeyed. In the swirling backdrop of political tensions that rage across the globe, such interrogation could counterbalance the forces that exploit disgust to incite division or cruelty. It might transform rigid condemnation into a more reflective stance, allowing us to see how our own vulnerabilities feed into the condemnation we direct outward. In this sense, the study of sexuality’s entanglement with disgust becomes a necessary project for those who strive to understand the deeper currents animating human history and to search for paths that might lead beyond endless cycles of fear, exclusion, and violence.

Yet it would be naïve to conclude with a simple assurance that heightened understanding alone dissolves these issues. Rather, the interplay of desire and revulsion endures, inexorable as any fundamental aspect of our being. The best we can hope for is to maintain a productive tension, a lucid awareness that neither disregards the intense affective pull of disgust nor succumbs to its reactive impetus. If disgust illuminates the fault lines in our conception of self and other, then it also points us toward the possibility of new, more encompassing modes of relation, even if these modes remain shadowed by the inescapable negativity that desire can generate. This is the paradox, and perhaps the promise, of exploring disgusting sexuality: it discloses truths about our common entanglement in the world, about the fluid boundaries that connect and separate us, and about the illusions we harbor concerning our own purity or completion.

Such contemplations echo throughout the philosophical and psychoanalytic traditions, bearing witness to the fact that the lines we draw between theoretical reflection and lived experience are permeable. While the impetus of rational thought might strive for clarity, the bodily dimension, with its capacity for visceral disgust and sexual longing, continually disrupts any sense of stable categorization. This disruption is not something to be lamented as a mere impediment to reason; it is, rather, a clue to the complexities of existence as we find it. One might even say that without this tension, we would lose sight of the deeper layers of meaning that undergird our relationships, our communities, and our attempts to dwell in a shared world. Therefore, the problem of disgusting sexuality, far from being a peripheral concern, can be read as an essential opening onto the unsolved puzzles that define us.

In the ceaselessly shifting reality of Welt und Zeit, with all the crises that occupy headlines and unsettle daily life, the question of sex and disgust remains an undercurrent that cannot be ignored. It weaves through personal relationships and political rhetoric alike, shaping both interpersonal anxieties and collective fears. It reminds us that, for all our aspirations to transcendence, we remain bodies in contact with other bodies, subject to drives we cannot fully rationalize. That this contact is sometimes repulsive, sometimes enthralling, and often both at once, is precisely the crux from which a profound ontological insight can emerge. The recognition that the boundary between desire and disgust is not fixed but historically, socially, and psychically negotiated calls us to reflect on the ground of our judgments and the illusions we perpetuate in order to sustain them.

There is no final resolution that would eliminate disgust or sublimate sexuality into a purely abstract domain. Instead, what remains possible is an ongoing confrontation with this dynamic, an acknowledgment that disgust, far from being an incidental affect, is woven into the very fabric of how we approach bodily existence. Such an acknowledgment might not pacify the conflicts that continue to mark our era—both politically and interpersonally—but it can cultivate the necessary humility to approach them without the hypocrisy that arises from disavowing our own entwinement with the object of our revulsion. In doing so, we might begin to glimpse a path that, without relinquishing the indispensable moral distinctions that safeguard communal life, learns to navigate the inherent ambiguities that dwell at the intersection of sexuality and disgust.

This is not a simple path, nor is it one that offers the solace of neat conclusions. Yet it stands as one of the most critical tasks for anyone who wishes to grasp the complexities of human life under the pressure of contemporary exigencies. Disgusting sexuality is an inescapable phenomenon because it crystallizes the contradictory impulses of desire and repugnance that saturate our being. To delve into it is to attend to a dimension that has shaped countless cultures, influenced the rise and fall of political regimes, and continues to stir the depths of each personal psyche. In that attention, we find the seeds of an understanding that, though it can never be complete, might guide us toward a more honest reckoning with ourselves and the precarious world we share.

Simon Gros

Welt und Zeit—Disgusting Sexuality, Sex & Disgust, 20:35—23. February 2025

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Welt und Zeit—Disgusting Sexuality, Sex & Disgust, 20:35—23. February 2025

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