Disgust, Desire, and the Invisible Script
Thursday, November 6, 2025.
In a world that preaches “sex-positivity,” it turns out we still prefer our neighbors to be romantic, not sexual—especially if they’re women.
We’ve commodified empowerment into podcasts, merch, and TED-style “liberation,” but according to a new study in The Journal of Sex Research, Sexual Ageism or Sexual Stigma? Sexual Double Standards and Disgust Sensitivity in Judgments of Sexual and Romantic Behavior, our moral instincts still can’t tell the difference between germs and desire.
The study, led by Gabriella Rose Petruzzello at the University of New Brunswick, found that folks judge sexually expressive souls more harshly than “romantic” ones—particularly when the subject is female.
Apparently, we can handle affection, just not anatomy.
When “Ew” Becomes a Moral Compass
Let’s remember an essential fact. The disgust system evolved to keep us alive.
The brain’s insula region activates when we smell spoiled food—and, unhelpfully, when we encounter sexual behavior that violates cultural norms. The same neural alarm that once warned us off pathogens now blares when someone admits to having a “vibrant sex life.”
Disgust originally served the behavioral immune system: a set of defenses meant to keep early humans from infection. Culture hijacked this reflex and gave it moral authority. It stopped protecting us from disease and started protecting us from difference.
In Petruzzello’s experiment, participants rated a fictional neighbor—Elizabeth—who was either 25 or 65 and described as having either a “romantic life” or a “sex life.”
Those high in disgust sensitivity judged both young and old women described as sexual as riskier and less likable.
When the same scenario featured a man, the reaction flipped: disgust-sensitive participants viewed sexually active men more positively.
The same instinct that stops us from drinking bad milk now decides whose pleasure counts as socially respectable.
The Biology of Moral Panic
This overlap isn’t metaphorical—it’s neurological.
Brain-imaging work shows identical hemodynamic responses to both physical and moral disgust.
Evolutionary psychologist Val Curtis called disgust “an adaptive disease-avoidance system that drifted into moral policing.” Women tend to score higher in sexual disgust, possibly due to reproductive risk and parental-investment pressures (Al-Shawaf et al., 2017).
When society labels female sexuality as “impure,” it’s co-opting a biological reflex that was never ethical to begin with.
The Cultural Script: Same Reflex, Different Targets
According to Sexual Script Theory, every culture teaches its citizens who’s allowed to want what, when, and with whom.
Petruzzello’s data show that when sex and age intersect, disgust doesn’t fade—it mutates.
Older women aren’t viewed as asexual; they’re viewed as improperly sexual. The “romantic” label remains wholesome; “sex life” still sounds indecent.
As Bordini and Sperb (2013) demonstrated, the sexual double standard is socially constructed and stubbornly persistent.
Cross-cultural research continues to find that men’s sexual activity is framed as power while women’s is treated as risk (Borg & Baumeister, 2021).
Even as age blurs some gender differences in disgust sensitivity (PsyPost, 2025), moral double standards remain unchanged.
Disgust in the Therapy Room
In couples therapy, disgust rarely announces itself. It sneaks in disguised as resentment, loss of spark, or the fatal, “I just can’t stand how they breathe.”
Disgust is the body’s way of saying, “something feels contaminated.” In relationships, that translates to “your desire makes me unsafe.” Partners moralize discomfort instead of exploring it. “I’m afraid” becomes “You’re gross.”
That translation kills intimacy.
Contempt—the behavioral cousin of disgust—is the strongest predictor of divorce (Gottman & Silver, 2015).
Therapy helps couples decode disgust: What is this recoil protecting? Shame? Fear of aging? Fear of vitality? The goal isn’t to sanitize the marriage—it’s to make the mess conscious.
The Science of the “Ick” Factor
Modern research shows disgust operates along several domains.
Tybur, Lieberman & Griskevicius (2013) identified pathogen, sexual, and moral disgust—each predicting different moral attitudes.
Zhang, Sun, Wen & Santtila (2023) found that sexual disgust shapes mating preferences and perceived norms.
de Jong et al. (2009) linked high disgust sensitivity with sexual avoidance and dysfunction.
Disgust is not just moral; it’s regulatory. It tells us whom to approach, whom to avoid, and whom to judge for liking pineapple on pizza.
When Disgust Meets Aging
Research on sexuality in later life shows that aging adults face a cultural double bind: they’re expected to age gracefully but desire discreetly. Their sensuality is tolerated only if sentimental. DeLamater (2012) called ageism “the last socially sanctioned sexual prejudice.”
Disgust turns age into a moral category. The erotic body past midlife violates cultural hygiene standards— probably because it reminds us of our own mortality.
When couples externalize that reflex (“I learned to see aging as unsexy”), they can rewrite their script instead of surrendering to it.
FAQ
Why do people moralize sex through disgust?
Because it’s efficient. As Haidt (2001) argued, moral judgment is largely emotional—rationalized only after the gut reacts.
Does this mean older adults face less stigma?
No. We’ve simply democratized the shaming. Youth is fetishized, middle age ignored, and old age desexualized (DeLamater, 2012).
Can disgust sensitivity be changed?
Partly. Exposure, empathy, and curiosity help. A Frontiers in Psychology study (2018) found that arousal can suppress disgust—proof that desire and revulsion are uneasy roommates.
What should therapists do with this?
Invite disgust in for coffee. It’s rarely the problem—it’s the messenger. In therapy, the question isn’t “How do we get rid of this?” but “What moral story is it enforcing?”
Cultural Footnote: Disgust Goes to Hollywood
Disgust isn’t confined to research labs; it’s a cultural casting director.
Foe example, when Madonna appeared at the 2023 Grammys, social media responded as if she’d committed a public-health violation. The outrage wasn’t aesthetic—it was hygienic: How dare a sixty-something woman still have a face that moves?
Online “purity coaches” have rebranded abstinence as detox. Their gospel isn’t about salvation but rather a sense of sanitation: sex as contagion, chastity as Clorox.
Meanwhile, Florida’s 2024 textbook bans were justified using disease metaphors—protecting students from “exposure.”
Even aging actresses praised for “aging naturally” are expected to do so decorously, preferably without visible libido (Vanity Fair, 2023).
Every era claims to be liberated. What we really are is sanitized. Liberation without discomfort is just another strain of disgust.
Final Thoughts
Disgust feels moral.
It gives us the thrill of righteousness without the labor of reflection.
But as this new research reminds us, that moral shudder is often nothing more than the body’s old germ alarm—misfiring in the bedroom.
The work of intimacy is learning when to override it. To look at another person and think, “You’re human, not hazardous.”
If disgust were a person, it would live with its mother, file complaints about public displays of affection, and write angry letters every time someone mentioned menopause and pleasure in the same sentence.
The rest of us can choose to evolve instead.
Be Well, Stay Kind, and Godspeed.
REFERENCES:
Al-Shawaf, L., Lewis, D. M. G., Buss, D. M., & Conroy-Beam, D. (2017). Why are women more easily disgusted than men? University of Texas at Austin.
Bordini, G. S., & Sperb, T. M. (2013). Sexual double standard: Study on the social construction of sexuality. Psicologia: Reflexão e Crítica, 26(4), 713–721. https://doi.org/10.1590/S0102-79722013000400014
Borg, C., & Baumeister, R. F. (2021). The sexual double standard revisited: Cross-cultural evidence and evolutionary roots. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 25(3), 203–225. https://doi.org/10.1177/1088868320977177
Curtis, V., de Barra, M., & Aunger, R. (2011). Disgust as an adaptive system for disease avoidance behaviour. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, 366(1563), 389–401. https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2010.0117
de Jong, P. J., van Lankveld, J., Elgersma, S., & Borg, C. (2009). Correlational and experimental analyses of the relation between disgust sensitivity and sexual functioning. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 47(11), 936–940. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.brat.2009.07.008
DeLamater, J. (2012). Sexual expression in later life: A review and synthesis. Journal of Sex Research, 49(2–3), 125–141. https://doi.org/10.1080/00224499.2011.603168
Gottman, J. M., & Silver, N. (2015). The seven principles for making marriage work. Harmony Books.
Haidt, J. (2001). The emotional dog and its rational tail: A social intuitionist approach to moral judgment. Psychological Review, 108(4), 814–834. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-295X.108.4.814
Petruzzello, G. R., O’Sullivan, L. F., & Renstrom, R. A. (2025). Sexual ageism or sexual stigma? Sexual double standards and disgust sensitivity in judgments of sexual and romantic behavior. The Journal of Sex Research.https://doi.org/10.1080/00224499.2025.2565806
Stark, R., Schienle, A., Walter, B., Kirsch, P., Sammer, G., Ott, U., … Vaitl, D. (2005). Hemodynamic responses to fear and disgust-inducing pictures: An fMRI study. International Journal of Psychophysiology, 57(1), 61–73. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijpsycho.2005.01.011
Tybur, J. M., Lieberman, D., & Griskevicius, V. (2013). Microbes, mating, and morality: Individual differences in three functional domains of disgust. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 97(1), 103–122. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0030966
Zhang, Y. K., Sun, Q., Wen, G. J., & Santtila, P. (2023). Types of disgust sensitivity are differently associated with sexual strategies, mate preference, and perceived sexual norms. Evolutionary Psychological Science, 9, 163–176. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40806-022-00349-6