The God in the Body

“If you’re a child who wants to succumb to “temptation” anyway, banishing the god who can peer under blankets must be at least a bit easier (especially in a dark room where you’re not so afraid of eyes) than blocking out the sensory perception of the product of the pleasure taken in your body, namely, that feeling that you’ve dirtied yourself when your vagina turns damp from rubbing or when semen drops onto your stomach after you masturbate. The “all-seeing” god lives inside your own skin, in your peripheral areas, in your body’s orifices and musculature. He is a part of the perception of pleasure itself; he is the one who converts pleasure into anxiety. The punitive god-figure owes his effectiveness… to the fear that phenomena of dissolution may occur along the borders of the body. The same fear makes the protective god-figure possible.” ((Theweleit, Klaus. Male Fantasies: Women, Floods, Bodies, History. University of Minnesota Press,1987. 413.))