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.
Once again Jeff, a great critical diary, keep’em coming.
A favorite topic of mine. I remember as a child during catechism class a nun telling us not to allow anyone to touch our bodies. If she said anyone in particular I didn’t hear that part. But I took her literally-(I use to be a GOOD catholic- wanted to be a nun at one point- Ugh!) Anyways I would say an act of contrition anytime someone even bumped into me- BUT then I was in high school- met my first Love, after a year of ‘electricity’ from holding hands, kissing and exploring we finally had sex- Well, it was pretty great. That’s when it dawned on me that the nun was wrong.
I had lots of sex partners through the years. Mostly just for the joy of connecting with another human being. (I was lucky to never have an unwanted pregnancy or contract an STD) but I was big on protection and cleanliness. Looking back it was mostly for ‘looking for love’ ‘needing a hug’ ‘feminine power’ and because I could.
But there were also date rapes, rape while hitch-hiking, abusive men galore. The innocence of sex was tainted early on, but I kept at it.
The older I get the less it interests me, much like food-I’ve cut back on that also. However, I do listen to MY body. When I’m hungry I eat, when I’m horny I fuck. Pretty black and white stuff. But sex always had a spiritual side to me. Aside from the rapes, I pretty much ‘loved the one I was with’ at that moment.
My daughter benefited by all of my lessons as I was not a hypocrit about sex and life with her- I told her the good and the bad of it all- and she listened and chose and acted wisely.
I read somewhere that GOD’s only mistake was creating the penis as men put far too much stock in it…
I don’t think it was the penis that was the mistake. The mistake was setting up the system such that an erection drains blood from the brain. Should’ve given it an independent supply.
Great diary, the pleasure hating, body hating side of Christianity has always been there,lurking and occasionally it goes it mainstream. And the constant voyeuristic concern with what everyone else is doing with their “naughty bits” is…well, pretty poor as a substitute for doing something fun with your own, which I can’t avoid thinking is the point. ‘I’ll avoid filthy urges by obsessing about someone else’s possible filthy urges’-the radical right christian version of pornography
I can still remember my shocked delight when I found that some religions actually celebrated sexuality/sensuality as a gift!
The purity league also reminds me uncomfortably of an anorexic’s obsession with food.
Strange and sad.
It says that men who don’t strive to please their wives sexually are not being good Jews (or something like that)! Why Oh Why couldn’t I have been born Jewish??
of Mad Magazine said something similar…and also that while the Catholic church encouraged their best minds to go into the priesthood and celibacy, Jewish men were encouraged to become rabbis, and marry and produce lots more children.
Yes, sex can be destructive, if used improperly…but as we’ve seen, so can religion…
A very good, thoughtful diary. And my hat is off to anyone who can wade through the hysterical missionary tripe the purity advocates spout (spew?). I plain would not have had the patience.
They don’t get that sex is also played out in one’s mind. Sure it’s physical but it’s also mental.
They have tiny brains.. maybe that’s why sexuality issues elude them.
They also tell people that if they do contract a STD it’s because they were BAD. They withhold treatments and research because only “bad people have sex”… they are sick individuals.
Great diary, Jeff!!!! I stand in line with the folks who enjoy sex.
I take sex very seriously but I take it much more seriously when I’m not having any. After my last divorce I realized I had some homework to do in the sex department. I had been married for many years, our sex life was seriously lacking for pretty profound reasons. One of the things I held onto after our heartwrenching separation was that I could have a relationship that was complete with a very healthy, active, satisfying, fanfukingtastic, balls to the wall, let’s use the kitchen counter kind of sex.
I knew to have that kind of sex I had to do some homework. I did all the things I do to set the stage with a man, I lit dozens of candles around the house, mainly in the bathroom, around the bubblebath tub, leading out into the hallway down to my bedroom. I put on great romantic music, I sprayed my favorite perfume around, I wore my sexiest, short, silk nightie with sexy panties to match. I put my favorite lotion by the bed.
I set out on a journey to learn how to make love to myself. I wasn’t ready to be intimate with a man just yet, I wanted to know that kind of intimacy with myself.
It opened up so many doors. I had never been a prude, on any measure I was always closer to a whore than an advocate of abstinence or anything close to it. I had a theory I developed in my summer of love phase, the world would have a chance at world peace, less violence and hate if people had more orgasms, with a partner or with yourself, orgasms can save the world.
One of the greatest things about my year of self-imposed masturbation was how freely I can talk about sex now. I’m no longer that high school girl who dreaded telling a boy I was on my period like it’s something shameful and disgusting. Now I’m willing and able to talk about it all. It’s refreshing, it’s sexy, it’s liberating and often it leads to really great fucking sex.
It’s time the world caught on, want to be happy, have yourself the kind or orgasms that rock your world. It’s really as simple as that.
I take it much more seriously too when I’m not having any. Having a spouse who has spent a lot of time away from home also really gets me in touch with that part of taking sex seriously. I remember one night when my husband phoned from Iraq and asked me what I was doing and I told him that I was taking another candlelit bubble bath and having myself AGAIN.
Ha!
I wonder when the Republican “Dominionist” Party will start demanding the military familes and servicemen sign an oath of not masterbating.
Masterbation is on the march!!!!
Let’s not even talk about the “sodomy laws” of the UMJC LOL
I’ve broken those laws sooooooooo many times as a good Navy wife would 🙂
Ok I admit it. I am telling a kid story.
Kid 1 as sitting in the tub one day and discovered herself. She was maybe three. She looks up in wonder and says, “Rubbing this little bump is wow. You have to try this.”
So I say, “Many girls find rubbing the little bump is wonderful. Almost every rubs their little bump. The bathtub is a good place to rub your bump. But like other potty-area activities it is good to do this in private. And it is good to wash your hands after wards.” So she has a lovely bump-rub that night in the tub and also some other nights. But every third night she has to wash her hair no matter what she wants to do.
Well, who knows what I should have said. But to look at her discovery and not smile would have definitely taken a miracle. How can that wow be evil?
redwagon
known bump-rubber.
try to say that 3 times fast:
rub her baby bump, rub her baby bump, rub her baby bump.
sorry, I couldn’t resist.
Reminds me of when I was bathing my 3 year old son with his brand new baby sister. I would wash a part of her and say “let’s wash her ears” or whatever, and my son would follow with a little rhyme…”let’s wash her little beers”…”let’s wash her little neck/beck (it didn’t have to make sense) etc. Since I was a modern, enlightened mom, I wanted them to learn the correct names for things so they wouldn’t say pee pee or wee wee like some other kids we knew. So when I got to her diaper area I said “let’s wash her little vagina”….and my son said without missing a beat “let’s wash her little North Carolina”…funny thing is we now live in North Carolina, but back then we lived in Ohio and I can’t imagine where he heard that. But it’s funny to recount the story now that they are 21 and 24.
No, not that kind.
This kind: I think that what really separtes the liberal from the conservative (esp. the Christy-Con) is that liberals can both take it and leave it with the same frame of reference in making the decision to do either.
And that is: 1) Sex is nothing but natural and 2) Won’t do it if the inclination, time, mood, and partner isn’t right.
For a Fundy, sex is never natural, it’s: 1) A Function God Intended in Order to Produce Kids; Therefore I Am Obedient and/or 2)Submitting to the Dominant Male in My Life to Show My Fear of and Obedience to God.
Put another way — for a liberal it’s simply a private personal choice; for a Christy-Con it’s never simply a private personal choice. And that’s consistent because many wing-nuts don’t believe in a fundamental right to privacy, nor in choice.
what is termed Sexual Addiction. Hmmmmmm, could there possibly be a connection?
about when one has that realization that for every single person you meet every single place, someone had to be doing something “naughty” in this culture for them to be here. She told me that for her on that day she recalls thinking that for something that is so naughty there sure is a whole bunch of it going on.
Great diary.
Sex is hilarious. To acknowledge that is simply to understand sex not as some necessarily quasi-religious super-duper idealized thing — a view that leaves people extra dissatisfied when not every sexual experience makes them “see God” — but to understand it as a real, normal, and complicated function and need of real, normal, and complicated humans.
That being said, it’s interesting to me how much people’s views on sex have tended wind up materializing around different camps, none of which I personally like very much. Anecdotally, working at the gay bookstore, I found a great number of people who were either dogmatic in their belief that all sex is great for you and you should have more of it (often coupled with mockery of people who don’t like SM, say) or absolute purists who thought anybody who had lots of sex or sex with multiple partners was… well, just slutty and dangerous.
I’ve known plenty of people in either “camp” whose views of sex were what I consider to be unhealthy. Sex isn’t all good or all bad, it’s complex. I think it’s great when people are willing to talk about that, joke about it, whatever. But I also get a little annoyed with the trend that I’ve perceived toward “sexual freedom” becoming, for some of my friends, “it’s healthy to fuck whomever we’d like, however we’d like, all the time, caution be damned”.
Sex is wonderful, and not necessarily inherently dangerous. But it can also be involved in very hurtful dynamics, both emotionally and physically, and I’m not sure why it’s such a difficult thing for some folks that I know to be open, happy, and as sexual as they’d like while still taking basic care of themselves and their sexual partners, understanding that sex can also carry heavy consequences beyond just STDs or what have you.
And just so I don’t get tossed into the “conventional purist” camp, bear in mind that I am in a three-people relationship and am personally very pro-sex and pro-open-relationship, though I tend to be cautious about it in my own life for reasons pertaining to past experiences. I am also very seriously bothered by the conventional wisdom that says that sex is between two people in love or else it’s baaaad.
I guess I’m mostly commenting on people’s tendancies toward dogma or easy answers or polarization into “sides”, no matter what the issue.
Sorry for the rambling, it’s been a long week already.
I agree with you about the “camps” issue…and honestly I find the “fuck whomever, whenever, wherever” attitude, and the downplaying of risks, tends to be more prominent among men. I think a big reason for that is that sex is often much riskier for women than for men. Now, that’s not universal (depends on activity, etc.).
But, you’re right, it comes down to a failure to recognize the complexity of it. Do I have sex I’ve regretted. Sure, some of it. (Often, it’s the “What the hell was I thinking when I slept with him.) But it’s far from the norm. I also have had sex that I want to repeat over and over and over. It’s the complexity we need to deal with–good and bad, pleasurable and painful, funny and serious…that’s when it starts to make more sense (as well as becoming more confusing).