The War over Amanda’s vagina, actually everyone who has one’s vagina (and penis), got me thinking about an earlier dustup Amanda had with the purity fetishists. I don’t feel like going back through all the comments in all the threads, but one of the reasons for the PF’s objections to both the PP ad and the playful, mocking way that liberals responded, was that they “take sex seriously.” The reason we liberals joke about sex, talk about it openly, hell, enjoy it is because we don’t take it seriously. I’d offer this in response: The reason we’re able to joke about it, talk about it, and have a hell of a good time doing it is because we take sex seriously.
Taking sex seriously means recognizing its complexity. Sex is messy, intimate, threatening, intimidating, intimate, spiritual, profane, exciting, mundane, pleasurable, awkward, intense…and funny. (C’mon, y’all know you have stories where somebody fell off the bed or pulled a muscle or farted at an inopportune moment or made the ugliest face you’ve ever seen or woke your parents…) In order to understand this complexity, to deal with it in our own lives, we must first recognize it. We simply cannot give sex a singular meaning without doing violence to it.
Taking sex seriously means placing it within the context of actual people’s lives. People have sex for lots of reasons. It isn’t always the perfect ending to an intimate and romantic evening. Sometimes you do it because you know your partner will go to sleep sooner. Sometimes, it’s because you’re feeling lonely. Sometimes it’s because you’re just horny. Dressing sex up in romantic fantasies and tossing Fabio on the cover might make you some money, but it’s not a very good representation of the ways most people experience sex.
Taking sex seriously means being realistic about our bodies. We exist as embodied selves. The bones, blood, muscles, tendons, organs, nerves and brains that constitute our bodies are frighteningly fragile and immensely pleasurable. Contrary to what some may think, it is possible to hold both of these bodily potentials–and many more–in our minds at the same time. Actually, a serious approach to sex would probably demand it.
I’d like to delve into this by looking at a comment in another skirmish in the Vagina Wars, as well as an anti-masturbation, (er, anti-auteroticism) post by Bonnie.
First, the comment itself:
Fucking is fun
Fuck, yeah!! Let’s all just fucking blow common fucking sense to fucking hell for the fucking sake of fifteen fucking minutes of fucking pleasure. Caution to the fucking wind, baby!
And if the fucking sperm penetrates the fucking egg, then just swallow a fucking load of fucking RU486 to get rid of the little fucker.
No fucking worries, mate!
Just fuck, fuck, fuck to your fucking heart’s content and never mind about fucking HIV, herpes, warts, crabs, or the fucking clap.
No need for fucking marriage! Who the fuck fucks with matrimony these fucking days, anyway? Just fucking shack up and save on your fucking taxes.
Have a nice fucking day!
OK, then. Big assumption here that the recognition that Fucking is Fun! forces the recognition that sex is also risky out of people’s tiny little minds. The engorgement of penises and clitorises must cause shrinkage in our brains. Sex causes the body, physical and social, to decay. We can see the purity fetishists taking such an approach constantly. It’s in the lies they tell (pdf) in abstinence-only education. It’s in their speech about remaining “pure” until marriage. Sex is a contaminent.
That’s really the amazing thing about this attitude, though: sex itself is the pathogen. Sex will give you a disease. Sex will leave you with regrets. Sex will lead to negative consequences.
Sex is all-powerful as well. We can see it when Paul Cameron says, ” if all you are looking for is orgasm….It’s pure sexuality. It’s almost like pure heroin. It’s such a rush.” To proclaim that Fucking is Fun is to lose all self-control to the omnipotent orgasm.
Those of use who openly declare that Fucking is Fun also tend to be folks who support a more effective approach to sexuality education than what the FPs offer. Maybe, just maybe, the reason we don’t imbue sex with quite as much danger as the purity fetishists–as though actually saying “masturbation” will cause an angry God to strike us dead (see below)–is that we take the risks for granted and don’t feel the need to emphasize them at every opportunity. We take them so seriously that we try to ensure that sexuality education includes information on them and how to avoid them. We even include not having sex in our curricula.
Flat out telling people, “The best way to avoid contracting a disease or having an unwanted pregnancy is to not have sex” is not enough of the PFs, though. Because some sex can lead to babies, all sex must be of that sort. Every other sort of sex contaminates. This means every other sort:
Fundamental to the morality of autoerotism are two issues: ownership of the body, and the purpose of sex. Since one’s body and accompanying personhood have been created by God for God, then they belong to God. They are not one’s own. The body is a living temple to be used in service to Him (Romans 12:1-2 and I Corinthians 6:12-20.) Though sexuality is clearly God-given, it can be perverted in many ways (some of them subtle) as can the view and use of other functions of the body. An awareness of ones God-given sexuality is to be distinguished from exploration of and indulgence of it in the wrong context. The wrong context would be anything outside of the sexual union of a man and wife.
Here’s the bumper sticker form: Sex is Dirty. Save it for someone you love. Even something as simple as listening to your iPod could be a moment of infection. A condom is no prophylactic for this disease.
In the realm of cultural morality, to say that something dark is light is to say that morality is relative. When sexuality is relativized (when a merely personal view is taken, or one that confuses spirituality with intense feeling, both physical and emotional), values such as pleasure, gratification, and expression become higher purposes of sex than marital relationship and family-building. In our brave new world of the sexual free-for-all, emphasis is on the present, temporary situation in which adults and children may engage in sexual behavior unrestricted by anything except an absence of mutual consent. There is precious little attention paid to the importance of maturity or the value of continuity and long-term relationship (which usually involves the creating and long-term nurturing of a family, though it may not in the case of infertility).
God did a pretty bad design job for expressing his purposes. If the only purpose of sex is to make babies and the only form of sex is that which has the potential to make babies, why did God make so many other parts of our bodies capable of providing sexual pleasure? And if masturbation defeats the “purpose” of sex, why is it good for you? Not very intelligent.
The Bible doesn’t address it specifically, but this doesn’t necessarily mean that autoerotism is not sin. The Bible expresses the importance and exclusivity of the marital sexual union and of the heritage and blessing that children are, which sheds light on the purpose of sex. Sin is that which separates one from God. Can it truthfully be said that autoerotism brings one closer to God, or, at the very least, does not separate one from God, if it indeed represents a use of sex for which it was not designed?
I can honestly say there have been a few nights of flogging the bishop when I have felt a little closer to the divine. I always let it know how grateful I am for the design errors.
Being a sexual being and having related thoughts is different from using that sexuality for oneself by exploring, developing, or otherwise using it on one’s own. Sexuality is meant to be shared. To whom is one making love when one manipulates oneself?
The married person’s body belongs to his/her spouse (I Corinthians 7:4). A person’s sexuality is not for him/herself, it’s for the spouse, and vice-versa. This is not to say that one’s own sexual satisfaction is not important, but such concern belongs to the spouse. It’s also not to say that a person may have no sexual life of mind outside of sex with his/her spouse; mental awareness is a major part of one’s sexuality. Yet it needn’t proceed into fantasy, nor serve/indulge the self.
Here’s the heart of it. We do not own our own sexual pleasure. If your spouse isn’t providing sexual pleasure, it’s none of your concern. You probably shouldn’t even raise the issue; it’s not your concern. Your pleasure has nothing to do with you. Vaginas belong to husbands and penises belong to wives. Clitorises belong to…well, they’re not important. To use those body parts without them is to infect that which your spouse owns. Acknowledging that Fucking is Fun implies that each of us has a claim to our own pleasure.
Regarding the elements of the performance of a sexual act, it’s what these elements are connected to that’s most important. We are sensory beings, and sex is obviously very sensual. If one is unleashing one’s sexuality with and within oneself, there is sensual connection occurring with one’s thoughts, one’s environment, and one’s self. This is the problem, because sex is meant to be a duet, not a solo.
Well, I’d say that, like good jazz, good sex can involve solos or combos of various sizes. Bonnie doesn’t really see it that way, though. Underlying her apologia lies a disgust for pleasure, for existing as a sensual being. Pleasure is to be denied (it’s not your concern) unless taken by your spouse. Unless, of course, it is the pleasure of writing about sexual pleasure in such a way that sucks all the pleasure out of it. Bonnie’s “analytic” tone, her use of “autoeroticism” instead of “masturbation” (or any other fun variation), her seeming reluctance to even speak of such a thing , all point to a desire to distance herself from the subject, while still being compelled to write about it (But she must because she’s troubled by the fact no one else seems to be adequately discussing the dread topic). This compulsion is disease of sex.
Under every claim that Fucking is Fun, they see a world of sexul chaos. It’s not just that people will be enjoying themselves, but that society will collapse. Instead of going to work, we’ll fuck. Instead of taking care of our children, we’ll fuck. Instead of cooking dinner, we’ll fuck. The omnipotent orgasm of the purity fetishists’ fantasies is what makes them so unserious. It is in this fantasy realm where mystified, otherworldy, detachable genitalia become the property of others…and even learn to write letters.
As I said at the top of this thing, sex is complex. Taking it seriously means that we treat it as a real-world phenomenon, in all of it’s complexity. Investing it with diseased phantasms is not taking it, or its risks, seriously. Yes, even as we proclaim that Fucking is Fun we recognize that sex carries risks. We queers are acutely aware of the risks. We also recognize that the getting people to engage in lower risk behaviors doesn’t come from preaching. It comes from taking the ways that people have sex, and the roles that sex play in their lives, and talking explicitly about how to reduce their risk of contracting a disease.
In his book The Trouble With Normal, Michael Warner writes:
In those circles where queerness has been most cultivated, the ground rule is that one doesn’t pretend to be above the indignity of sex….
The rule is: Get over yourself.
p. 35 of the hardcover edition
By disembodying genitalia and giving control over their use to another; by purging concern over one’s own sexual pleasure; by conflating sex with disease and defilement; and by investing the orgasm with the fantastic ability to obliterate rational decision making and destroy society, the purity fetishists are setting themselves apart from and above sex. Despite their hushed protestations that the seriousness of sex requires modesty in describing sex–even (especially) that sex which shouldn’t be described–their approach to sex is quite unserious.
Talking frankly about sex, joking about it, admitting that Fucking is Fun isn’t giving license to do the nasty in the middle of the street. It’s being adult enough to talk about sex honestly and realistically becaus, let’s be honest, sex really is funny.
Crossposted at CultureKitchen.