How a Critical Theorist Influenced the Sexualization of Everything

Herbert Marcuse, Sigmund Freud, and the Oppression of Reality

Herbert Marcuse is one of the most fascinating of the critical theorists. He was born in 1898 and died in 1979. His reputation among American activists in the 1960s is legendary. One of Marcuse’s key books is his 1955 Eros and Civilization, subtitled A Philosophical Inquiry into Freud.¹ His thesis in Eros and Civilization is quite clear: Every effort must be made to liberate people from anything that inhibits a proper kind of erotic pleasure. Marcuse spoke positively of “polymorphous sexuality,” writing, “The new direction of progress would depend completely on the opportunity to activate repressed or arrested organic, biological needs: to make the human body an instrument of pleasure rather than labor.”² In short, Marcuse was arguing that the forces and reality of “civilization” militate against erotic satisfaction. He wrote, “The erotic energy of the Life Instincts cannot be freed under the dehumanizing conditions of profitable affluence.”³

Marcuse took for granted “Freud’s proposition that civilization is based on the permanent subjugation of the human instincts.”⁴ Indeed, “free gratification of man’s instinctual needs is incompatible with civilized society: renunciation and delay in satisfaction are the prerequisites of progress.”⁵ And again, he said, “The methodological sacrifice of libido, its rigidly enforced deflection to socially useful activities and expressions, is culture.”⁶ Hence, culture is the culprit, for culture by its very existence hampers or impedes the “free gratification of man’s instinctual needs.”⁷

What Is Critical Theory?

Bradley G. Green

In this book, Bradley G. Green offers a thoughtful Christian analysis of critical theory, its key philosophers, and their views regarding creation and reality; sin and the human dilemma; and redemption, history, and eschatology.

Marcuse summarized Freud by saying that there exists both a “pleasure principle” and a “reality principle.”⁸ The pleasure principle is just that—man is driven to various forms of pleasure, including (or especially) sexual pleasure. The reality principle is that in any given society, several barriers keep people from seeking to fulfill the pleasure principle. That is, the reality principle is the fact that to have order and society, there must be significant constraint on one’s sexual desires. These two principles are—in fact—in fundamental conflict.⁹ Like other critical theorists, Marcuse held that “society” or “civilization” (the reality principle) militates against true human freedom (the pleasure principle). As Marcuse wrote, “The replacement of the pleasure principle by the reality principle is the great traumatic event in the development of man.”¹⁰

A New Sexualized Reality

Freud, however, was wrong to think that this conflict of principles was insurmountable. That is, there is a way for a culture to—in a sense—have its cake and eat it too.

The way forward, as Marcuse saw it, is to overcome what only appears to be an intractable conflict between the reality principle and the pleasure principle. What is needed is a new reality principle. This new reality principle is essentially a sexualized reality principle. Rather than simply thinking in terms of genital pleasure, Marcuse argued that the whole of a person’s body needs to be conceived as an organ, or means, of sexual pleasure.

In short, all reality had to become sexualized. If this were to happen, there would be a fundamental reshaping of the metaphysical structure of the universe. As Marcuse saw this, the key realities that stood in the way of this fundamental restructuring (i.e., sexualizing) of the universe were things such as the traditional family and traditional religious institutions.

This framework of looking at reality helps explain a certain phenomenon occurring in public schools. Some educational leaders and administrators have argued that if a public school student wants to be called by certain pronouns that don’t correspond with his or her biological sex or if a student is “identifying” as transgender, public school officials should not tell the parents of that child. That is, some public school officials believe it is inappropriate and a transgression against the student to tell parents what is happening in the student’s life.¹¹

In the state of Tennessee, in the spring of 2024, the Tennessee legislature passed legislation requiring public schools to notify parents if a student wants to use pronouns not aligning with his or her biological sex or if the student is “identifying” as transgender. One state senator, Raumesh Akbari of Memphis, was said to have called such a bill, in the words of the reporter, “a license to discriminate against transgender kids.”¹²

As Marcuse saw this, the key realities that stood in the way of this fundamental restructuring (i.e., sexualizing) of the universe were things such as the traditional family and traditional religious institutions.

It is unlikely that the state senators in the Tennessee legislature are spending their evenings reading Herbert Marcuse. But conceptually, at least a number of those in the Tennessee legislature (and certainly around the nation) are living in a Marcusian universe. The Minnesota state legislature also recently passed legislation but of a very different kind. The Minnesota legislature put into state law the complete and full normalization of virtually any gender or sexual expression—particularly in public schools, as of legislation passed in time for the 2024–2025 school year. A group called Gender Justice has this as its mission statement: “We work to create a world where everyone can thrive no matter their gender, gender identity or expression, or sexual orientation. Central to this work is dismantling the legal, political, and structural barriers to gender equity.”¹³ Herbert Marcuse could have hardly done better in putting his metaphysical vision into a short and pithy statement—even including the language “to create a world.”

The group Gender Justice summarizes current Minnesota law as follows. Transgender students in Minnesota public schools are free to do the following:

• Use the same restrooms, locker rooms, and other facilities as other students
• Use the restrooms, locker rooms, and facilities that align with their gender identity
• Participate in school-related activities, including on athletic teams, in a way that aligns with their gender identity
• Be protected from bullying

Gender Justice goes on to say that, while not law, the Minnesota Department of Education recommends the following:

Schools should not assume a student’s name, gender identity or pronoun. School officials should ask the student and use the requested name and pronouns. Students need not provide the schools with legal documents to correct their first name or gender within their student records.¹⁴

Again, one need not argue that the people at Gender Justice or the members of the Minnesota legislature are spending time delving into the works of Herbert Marcuse. But conceptually, these worlds are very similar. If anything, people at Gender Justice have radicalized the perspective of Herbert Marcuse. One wonders if Herbert Marcuse would have ever considered if the ten-year-old boy living a few houses down could actually be a little girl or if the sweet twelve-year-old girl on the other side of his street was actually a little boy. It is tempting to think that if Marcuse could travel in time to our day, he might scratch his head and say, “My, I should have thought of this. I could never have imagined we would reach this stage.”

With the confusion about what it means to be a boy or man and what it means to be a girl or woman, with numerous boys and men having surgeries to become girls and women, and with numerous girls and women having surgeries to become boys and men, we see the ghost of Marcuse haunting—perhaps even ruling—the twenty-first-century landscape. As we have already seen, Marcuse was a man on a mission. For true liberty and freedom to finally emerge in the world, there had to be the creation of a “new man.” There had to be a transformation of what it means to be human. There had to be a redeeming of our current situation, and only through this redemption could mankind be finally liberated into true freedom.

This article is adapted from What Is Critical Theory?: A Concise Christian Analysis by Bradley G. Green.

Bradley G. Green (PhD, Baylor University) is professor of Philosophy and Christian Theology at the Southern Baptist Theoloical Seminary and cofounder of Augustine School, a Christian liberal arts school in Jackson, Tennessee. He is the author of The Gospel and the Mind and What Is Critical Theory? 

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