I realize that most of the ideology in our posts is limited to the religion of hating Tyra Banks and worshiping the magic box that is television. This particular post will be a little more nakedly opinionated on current events and politics. If you're here for the funny, feel free to skip it, but I feel a rant coming on...
The American public amuses me to no end with our simultaneous ability to be both entertained and horrified, never more so than on the subject of sex. I love a good sex scandal, because all of the voyeurs who can't get enough of reading the story also have the humorous nerve to act outraged.
Political sex scandals I have no problem with, because they're usually exposing some hilarious form of hypocrisy. But really, the hypocrisy wouldn't exist in the first place if we weren't all so pent up about sex. Senators wouldn't have to deny that they're gay or occassionally like kinky sex acts that the well-bred wives they're forced to marry won't perform, forcing them into the discreet arms of a high-class hooker.
Life would be a lot better if we threw the puritanical opinion elite off a cliff and just admitted that sex is fun and any way you want to do it should be fine and no one's damn business. Let's look at the sex stories of late...
I already mentioned the McSteamy so-not-sex-to-my-incredible-disappointment tape. Good looking guy and his good looking wife want to get naked with a good looking ex-beauty queen and I would hope have a lot more fun than we saw on that tape, what do you care? Like you've never had a threesome fantasy? Really? Or made a sex tape with your partner? C'mon. I'll say it again: the only interest in that tape should be seeing attractive people naked. There really shouldn't be any incredible scandal to it.
Along the same lines, the front page, above the fold "exclusive" story in the Washington Times today (disclaimer: I'm forced to read that publication) is about how much porn the dear people over at the National Science Foundation look at at work. Personally, I'm not that comfortable looking at porn at work...I want to look at porn somewhere where it can do me some good, and alas, my office has a glass door and thin walls. But hey, if it works for you, rock on (so to speak.)
The larger point here, is that I don't have a problem with porn. Why should I? Why should anyone? I once heard that a family friend doesn't have internet in their house because the husband has a "porn problem." To which I have to wonder, what precisely would a problem with porn be? Fat people? That's a problem with porn for me.
And last but never least, dear ACORN. I don't really have a problem with them providing advice to prostitutes about how to report their profession to the IRS. In fact, had that been a real prostitute, I'd be impressed with her wanting to report her earnings. Prostitution should just be legal--it's good for tax coffers and for public health. Regulating the industry limits forced and under aged prostitution, it ensures condom use and regular STD checks, and it rids us of the capitalistic hypocrisy that you can profit from any unique skills you're willing to perform except sex.
I get that an entity that receives tax dollars shouldn't advise people on how to skirt the law--especially not these people--but the law is stupid, and disadvantageous to women and the poor, particularly because cops often can't prove prostitution and instead bust sex workers on tax evasion. But they definitely should have drawn the line when the suggestion turned to under aged and forced prostitution.
Long story short, sex has become intertwined with politics and with entertainment, but above all, it should be personal. If we all felt personally comfortable with our sexual selves, I doubt we'd need to make this stuff a big deal. The fact that it still is bugs me.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
I don’t think we’re uncomfortable with sex. That it’s splashed all over the media constantly and porn is as big an industry as it is tells us we’re pretty ok with sex, in whatever form it takes.
ReplyDeleteAnd that bothers us. We’re uncomfortable with how comfortable with sex we’ve become. It’s not the elite who have done this to us, they’re the ones selling his-n-her pleasure condoms and boner pills and personal massagers, all because we want to get it on, a lot. I think it’s more that we’re uncomfortable openly admitting to everyone something that makes us vulnerable. When someone else’s comfort with sex bursts out, they in some respects become vulnerable to us; that it could happen to us is terrifying. Keeping our comfort with sex in the closet gives us an illusion of control.
If we all busted out of the closet at the same time and everyone was comfortable with how comfortable everyone else was with sex, I’m still not sure that would change things. Sex is deeply personal, no matter how it’s abused, and being freely open with something that fundamentally private is always going to make us squeamish.
I have to thoroughly disagree. First, sex can be personal, but by no means has to be. We've endowed sex with a lot of emotion as part of our puritanical past, but it needn't be any more personal than buying your morning coffee, unless you want it to be.
ReplyDeleteIn fact, I blame that puritanical ideal for blurring the lines between sex and love and ultimately dis-servicing a pretty sizable portion of the female population.
In order not to be a slut, we've been taught that sex is something special, something personal, something emotional, a decision not to be made lightly, and thereby dangerous. It just doesn't need to be. In fact, once we're in the sought after marriage relationship, we overthrow that entire narrative. The predominant narrative about marital sex is that it is routine, a chore, or a sacrifice.
So no, I don't think the personal nature of sex is what makes us uncomfortable. I think it's the taboo. We're not uncomfortable with how comfortable we are with sex--we're just plain uncomfortable at the fact that we like it. We like it despite the taboo and that's uncomfortable, so we put porn in paper bags and we use cute little euphemisms and obscure language in Viagra and KY commercials and we have abstinence only sex education as a national policy.
That sex industries make money because sex is fun. The societal safeguards are because our puritanical past taught us that it's wrong to think so.
If the facts lined up with that assessment, I'd probably agree. Sex is a lot of fun, we've always konwn that, and been ok with it. The fact is even in puritanical times (like actual Salem, Massachusetts puritanical times, not how the coasts view down their nose at Middle America today) fully one third of first born children were born within seven months of their parents' wedding day. It's easy to beat up on sermons from the grave, but the numbers don't lie. The absolute moralists' culture is not the culture we actually inherited.
ReplyDeleteAnd sex is fundamentally personal, not because I say so, but because biology demands it. The brain cannot sustain the hits of oxytocin and vasopressin released during intercourse without intense reactions of trust and pair-bonding. We may be able to rationalize it away after the fact, but the fear of toying with neurotransmitters that powerful--to say nothing of making babies--is not rooted in a 300 year old mythical past that lefty elites like to hold over the heads of today's common folk. Three million years of human evolution tells us not to screw around with sex and we observe this admonition in almost every human society.
The predominant narrative about sex in marriage is that it's boring and repetitive, which actually speaks to the strength of the relationships and almost nothing about our culture's comfotrt with sex. But again the numbers don't lie. The average married couple is having sex 2-3 times a week, and when controlled for age and health, is not significantly different from sexually active unmarried couples, and both sets report the same satisfaction with sex. That the narrative says differently has more to do with selling sex products to enhance the sex or for lame jokes on lame sitcoms. But neither is how real poeple view their real lives.
"We're just plain uncomfortable at the fact that we like it." We like it because we're comfortable with it. We know what it is and what it does to us and our partners and our relationships, and we like it. But that sort of power makes us uncomfortable, like having a loaded gun around all the time. Flaunting that power (ie being slutty) and being irresponsibile with it (ie cheating or one night stands) is what's taboo, not the joy or the passion of sex.
Abstinence only education doesn't work and has no place in public policy. But there again, the motivation behind it isn't about making sex taboo, it's about making irresponsible sex taboo. That's what our past has taught us, not just the puritans, and there's a reason most people agree with those lessons today.
I disagree with your definition of "irresponsible" sex. I don't think there's anything wrong with "being slutty" or having a one night stand. And I don't think abstinence-only sex ed is about "irresponsible" sex, I think the people who teach and support abstinence-only sex ed think that all premarital sex is irresponsible...and I say this as one who's been through that class.
ReplyDeleteI don't think liking something and being comfortable with it are the same thing. In fact, I think the line you're drawing between "like," "comfort," and "discomfort" is so blurry that you should just admit that I'm right.
As for the personal nature of sex, I don't know where you're getting your neurobiology information from or who is translating them, but there are plenty of anthropological studies out there to prove you wrong. I still maintain that, minus a puritanical cultural history (creepy stuff like missions and everything that comes with) we're all in Mead's Coming of Age in Samoa.