Sexual ritual

Sexual rituals fall into two categories: culture-created, and natural behaviour, the human animal having developed sex rituals from evolutionary instincts for reproduction, which are then integrated into society, and elaborated to include aspects such as marriage rites, dances, etc. Sometimes sexual rituals are highly formalized and/or part of religious activity, as in the cases of hieros gamos, the hierodule, and Ordo Templi Orientis (O.T.O.).

Part of the rites of passage of growing up are what have been termed "rites of separation from the asexual world... followed by rites of incorporation into the world of sexuality". These may be formal or semi-formal—"for some students, going to college is partly a sexual ritual, like the ceremonial dances of the whooping crane"—or take the form of a more private induction: "formal and artificial... the impression that a long-established rite was to be enacted, among Staffordshire figurs and papier-mâché trays, with the compelling, detached formality of nightmare".

Freud was particularly interested in ethnological accounts of "the 'ceremonial' (purely formal, ritual, or official) coitus, which takes place" in connection with "the taboo of virginity".

Freud also noted that in "numerous examples of marriage ceremonies, there can be no doubt that people other than the bridegroom, for example his assistants and companions (our traditional 'groomsmen'), were granted full sexual access to the bride". To his followers, "the wedding as orgy, with the bride taking on all the men present, is the clear historical reality behind the modern jokes... and the climactic line-up or 'gang'-kissing of the bride, by all the men present".

In such a view, "other examples of sacred or permitted public coitus of all women with all men do survive, in similarly modified 'kissing' form", as under the mistletoe "to revive the dying sun at the winter solstice, when the strongest human 'life-magic', namely ritual intercourse, is to be deployed".

To the sociologist looking upon "sexual intercourse as interaction ritual... sexual intercourse is the ritual of love; it both creates and recreates the social tie (since Durkheimian rituals need to be repeated periodically, as solidarity runs down), and symbolizes it". In similar fashion, Margot Anand has pointed out that "rituals pervade our daily life and give it a sense of ceremony and celebration (...) a ritual, through your own unique symbolic gestures... will help you transform your lovemaking into a special and sacred act".

Erving Goffman has noted, however, "the considerable informational delicacy of this form of interaction", and how "individuals may use darkness to ensure strategic ambiguity".

In perversion, sexual rituals may emerge as a necessary part of sexual activity. For the criminologist, "sexual ritual involves repeatedly engaging in an act or series of acts in a certain manner because of a sexual need". Within a relationship, "the Compulsive libido type takes advantages of opportunities to use the specific sexual ritual that causes intense arousal, and in its stronger form, the Compulsive lover can only arouse using the sexual object or ritual". In any relationship, however, "a sexual habit that becomes routine or stylised... can lead to a sexual ritual", so that "if you don't have a way to talk to your partner about your sexual relationship, you may find yourself... stuck in sexual rituals that could be limiting your sexual enjoyment": as a wife might say, "Same old technique, same old Lewis. It's you all right, I'd know that old routine anywhere." Thus one's sex life may all "be about rituals: the ritual of sex in the morning, or the ritual of sex at night; and the ritual of sex at anniversaries, and the ritual of sex at Christmas".