Romanticizing the Crudity of Sex

Gnosticism, courtly love, and hypermodern disenchantment.

Image by Alex Iby, from Unsplash

We tell stories about everything, including sex and romantic love, to avoid confronting some harsh truths. We’ve always done so, and we still do despite the relatively recent ideal of scientific objectivity.

The question is whether any of the uplifting fictions we live by are honorable…