Zarinah Agnew

“Man is by nature a social animal; an individual who is unsocial naturally and not accidentally is either beneath our notice or more than human. Society is something that precedes the individual. Anyone who either cannot lead the common life or is so self-sufficient as not to need to, and therefore does not partake of society, is either a beast or a god.”

Humans are inherently social, and social intimacy takes many forms. Physical touch, which includes sexual touch is one form that comprises an integral part of human behavior - throughout our lifespans, humans need to be touched, and to touch others.

At the same time, we view both non-sexual and sexual touching as an intimate action that implies an invasion of the individual's personal, private space.

For many humans, touch and sexual intimacy is something they are lacking. Even in situations we commonly associate with touch abundance such as dyadic relations, a desire discrepancy is the one of most highly cited problems brought to sex therapists. It's estimated that one out of every three couples experiences this discrepancy, and thus one party is left lacking.

What are the consequences of a lack of touch and access to sexual intimacy for humans as a group? How do we reconcile the ideas that the individual has the right to their own body, and also that as a group we may have created an artificial scarcity of physical intimacy. Whilst many of us agree that solitary confinement is ethically treacherous, can we apply this same thinking to sexual solitary confinement? What would it look like if we recognized access to sexual intimacy as a human right?