Why does the party hate sex?

 To me, one of the more intriguing questions from Book 1 from 1984 is why the party hates sex, and spends time and energy battling this natural interest of its members. I believe the leaders of the party are worried about how sex can cultivate individualism, something that is extremely dangerous for the state. These ideas (perpetrated by the Party in 1984) have serious parallels to Marxism. Marx also argued that nothing should get in the way of the state, and argued that things like family and religion would not be needed in his utopia. Since loyalties to gods, lovers, parents, and siblings could obfuscate one’s loyalty to the state, Marxists regimes have historically seen these competing loyalties as dangerous and have worked to remove them. For instance, Stalin’s Russia taught children to rat out their parents if they lacked loyalty to the state and ruthlessly persecuted Jews and Russian Orthodox clergy through the 1930s. In 1984, sex is referred to as “our duty to the party” a euphemism that strips any form of pleasure or individuality for the act, making it synonymous with loyalty to the state.

8.6.1