Politicization of Sexual Freedom in Morocco: “the Hidden Ideology”

By Mohamed El Azzouzi

Taroudant, Morocco – The issue of sexual freedom has become a very controversial issue in Moroccan media recently. Since its emergence as a new issue within the political scene, many debates, articles and videos have been produced about it. These expressions oscillate between accepting the issue and /or refusing it for its anti-religion attitudes.

Throughout history, sexuality has proven itself as an efficient discourse that manipulates the masses’ consciousness. This issue of sexuality can be a new ideology, which aims at controlling the increasing awareness of the Moroccan “intellectuals.”In this respect, I will try to unveil how “sexual freedom” might be utilized as a misleading discursive institution that aims at restricting the individual freedom within the illusion of “freedom” itself.

It is problematic when the debate shifts to talk about the importance of sexuality as a way to save the human race or for its psycho-instinctual nature. As the founding father of the theory of psychoanalysis, Sigmund S. Freud stated in his controversial book “Civilization and its Discontents,” (1929) those whom we see as neurotics are those who failed to endure their sexual frustrations.

Put differently, civilized societies aim at bringing happiness and gratification to its individual subjects at the expense of these members’ freedom. These so called “civilized societies” create laws to regulate individual conduct within certain discursive institutions and orders. For example, utilizing different institutions that restrict public nudity, homosexuality and lesbianism. One of these ideological/repressive state apparatuses is the “institution of marriage.” This process of institutionalizing sexuality is as problematic as it is contradictory.

Personally speaking, I believe that the current government has recognized the importance of this as a new weapon to targets the individual psyche in a very subversive way. In our “conservative” society, an individual’s sexual freedom–by means of the article 490–is repressed and forbidden outside the institution of marriage. Nonetheless, individuals seek to satisfy their sexual needs in illegal unprotected ways which exposes them to different infectious detrimental sexual diseases.

Furthermore, under this current partial repression of sexual freedom, individuals are under the threat of developing abnormal or neurotic personalities. This is reflected in the above quote by Sigmund Freud. Sex for such individuals becomes the center of their lives and thoughts, which may hinder the process of any social, cultural, educational and scientific development. These unpredictable side effects of sexual restriction are found to be of great help to dominate the individual consciousness.

When sexuality becomes the ultimate goal of human existence –which is the case here –we announce the revival of a primitive side of our animalism as we become docile subjects –to use M. Foucault’s term. Within this ambivalent situation, individual may suffer a split of personality. They are torn between satisfying their sexual instinct –which is a must for any normal individual –and the religious, moral and legal limitations.

The media also has a great role in the reconstruction of the new discourse of “sexual freedom.” With a compulsive use of the discourse of sexuality in different movies –including Mexican, Egyptian, Turkish, Syrian and so on–people’s understanding and conception of sexuality has been domesticated and tainted. What is sexuality? Is it a human activity as we know it; or is it a commodified hyper-activity as they depict it to us in such “popular” movies? Under this obsessive and recurrent use, the media de-familiarizes “inter-cultural sexuality” in order to normalize a universal sexual discourse. In other words, sexuality turns to be that desirable far reached and globalized target of the layman.

Disguised behind a “legal-religious” anti-individual freedom discourse, the political use of the issue of “sexual freedom” in Morocco aims at dominating the individual frame of thought. In the current situation of the Moroccan government, sexuality is the most effective weapon that may disorient the intellectual critical attention. As a discourse, it is capable of diverting the attention of the masses from other important issues such as the sudden increase in the price of fuel. Also, it can be said that this problematic issue under scrutiny here is a prelude that foregrounds the way to a new coming discourse that is related to “Ramadan.” So let everyone be weary of what is going on around them.

Edited by Laura Cooper

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Morocco World News’ editorial policy