Rule 34 summarizes everything about sexuality.
According to the Urban Dictionary, Rule 34 is a “[g]enerally accepted internet rule that states that pornography or sexually related material exists for any conceivable subject.”
7 Fascinating Things Rule 34 Explains About Human Sexuality
1. Rule 34 says that human sexual fantasy is limitless.
It says that anything can be eroticized, can be arousing, can be life-affirming. It reminds us that any ideas we have about what’s normal sex are about us, not about sex.
I’m always telling patients, “Don’t blame sex for your ideas about sex.”
2. Rule 34 reminds us exactly what pornography is: a library of human eroticism.
Pornography is a celebration of how humans can stretch their erotic imagination — sometimes in ways that disturb you or me. Nevertheless, pornography celebrates the erotic imagination beyond specific content.
Like the ability to imagine the future, and the knowledge that we’re going to die, the enormous range of pornography is uniquely human.
3. Rule 34 also reminds us that people don’t necessarily want to do what they fantasize about.
Sex with Kramer, George, and Jerry at the same time?
Sex with a dolphin? Sex with someone about to be guillotined for stealing a loaf of bread? Sex with your grandmother at high noon on Times Square? A threesome with Batman and Robin?
4. Rule 34 also reminds us of the coin’s other side — that none of us can imagine the entire range of human eroticism.
That should keep us humble. It’s somewhat like a gourmet traveling to a far-off, isolated country and discovering they eat something there he never considered food — say, fried worms. The issue isn’t so much does the gourmet want to eat fried worms; rather, it’s the idea that there’s “food” that he never considered food.
And if that’s true about fried worms, about how many other “foods” might that also be true?
5. Rule 34 shows us all knit together in an erotic brotherhood and sisterhood.
If the human project of eroticism is bigger than both you and me, your turn-on and my turn-on that appear so different from each other are really small parts of a much bigger whole. And there are others who are into your turn-on (which I find so exotic), and there are others — perhaps many others — who think my turn-on is so very exotic.
Imagine traveling to another country whose customs may be unfamiliar.
We go to Italy and see adults and children topless together on the same beach. We go to India and see cows on the street. We go to Vietnam and see old women doing manual labor on construction sites. We go to Denmark and see men and women nude in a sauna together. We go to Russia and learn we have to bribe taxi drivers with Marlboros if we want them to pick us up.
International travel teaches us about our own customs: when I return from a trip I’ve always learned something about the way we do things because I’ve been to a place where they don’t do that.
Photo: anuchit kamsongmueang / ภาพของAnuchit Kamsongmueang via Canva
I learned that my way isn’t the right way, it’s just my way. No matter how much I prefer it, no matter how much it’s right for me, it’s just my way, not the right way.
6. Rule 34 helps us understand this about sexuality. Your porn isn’t right, it’s just your porn.
That goes for No Porn, and Gentle Porn, too: it isn’t right, it’s just your way. And that goes for our sexuality in general — our way isn’t the right way, it’s just our way.
A good sexual relationship involves people whose respective ways mesh: one person expands their vocabulary, or both do, or one narrows theirs, or both do. As long as people can fit together with dignity and celebration (um, there’s my values again), it doesn’t matter what they do.
7. Rule 34: Everyone else is different from you.
But governments, religions, and activists try to whitewash almost every kind of sexuality except the version they approve of.
As biologist Mickey Diamond says, “Nature loves variety; unfortunately, society hates it.”
Dr. Marty Klein is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist and Certified Sex Therapist who has focused his entire career toward a single set of goals: telling the truth about sexuality, helping people feel sexually adequate and powerful, and supporting the healthy sexual and intimate expression and exploration. He is the author of the book His Porn, Her Pain: Confronting America’s PornPanic With Honest Talk About Sex.
This article was originally published at MartyKlein.com. Reprinted with permission from the author.