The Blowfish Blog

Some Evolving Thoughts About Weight and Sex

I want to start by saying this: I am just talking about myself here, and what’s true for me. These issues are heavily loaded, emotionally and psychologically and politically, so I want to spell that out right from the start. I’m not evangelizing for weight loss; I’m personally finding it to be beneficial, erotically as well as in other ways, but I’ve also found it to be complicated and a whole lot of hard work, and I know that the cost- benefit analysis about it is different for everyone. I’m not talking about what’s right or true for anyone else. I’m talking about what’s right and true for me.

As regular readers of my other blog (the cleverly- named Greta Christina’s Blog) know by now, I’ve been losing weight for close to a year now, and have so far lost 50 pounds. This isn’t something I’m doing for aesthetic reasons, btw: I’m doing it primarily for health reasons (mostly a bad knee that was getting worse).

But the weight loss is having a complicated set of effects on my sexuality: on my libido, my sexual self-image, my feelings about my sexual history, my cultural politics about sex and bodies. Mostly good . . . but complicated. And I haven’t seen a lot of writing elsewhere about these effects. Most of the writing I’ve seen about weight and sex has either been your standard “Lose weight and magically fix your sex life!” jargon (which I think is bullshit), or fat-positive, body-positive, “fight body fascism and connect erotically with the body you have” activism (which I more or less support, but with a few serious caveats). I haven’t seen much writing about weight and sex from people who are controlling their weight and feel good about it . . . but who are still informed by the cultural criticism about how our society views weight and sexuality.

So, as usual, when I don’t like the news, I’m making some of my own.

•

The main effect that weight loss has had on my sexuality has been on my libido. Which has gotten cranked up to eleven, and beyond. (Not that it was exactly low-key before . . .) Being in better health, being stronger and getting more exercise, feeling more conscious of my body, feeling more comfortable and more at home in my body, being happier with how I look and how I fit into my clothes, getting more compliments and attention . . . all of this is brewing into an explosive libidinous mix that’s making me feel like I’ve been shot out of a cannon. Just walking down the street is an exquisitely erotic experience: like my skin is humming, like I’m erotically at one with the universe, like I want to stop and hump tree trunks. I feel like I’m exploding in a hundred directions at once. I feel like I want to masturbate twenty times a day.

A lot of this has to do with just being in better health. The things I’m doing to lose weight — eating a healthier diet, getting tons of exercise — have increased my physical energy, my mental health, my ability to sleep, etc . . .. all of which are increasing my libido. A lot of it, too, has to do with not being in a state of cognitive dissonance. Before I started losing weight, I was in serious denial about my health and my body and how I felt about it . . . and cognitive dissonance about your body is not a mental state that’s conducive to feeling connected with it. And some of it, I’ll acknowledge, has to do with the increased compliments and sexual attention I’ve been getting as my weight has gone down. (Although . . . well, that’s complicated. More on that in a minute.)

But a huge amount of it, I think, has to do with the simple fact that I’m paying closer attention to my body now, in overwhelmingly positive ways. (I’m not talking about being self-conscious, btw; I know that paying close attention to one’s body, in a critical and self-loathing way, can have a terrible affect on libido and sexuality. I’m not talking about that. I’m just talking about being conscious.) I think about my body way more than I ever did: how it feels, how it looks, what it wants in terms of food and exercise and sleep, how it’s changing, how it’s the same. I’m not living in my head as much as I used to: I’m inhabiting my body now, more than I ever have at any time in my life. And that means I’m inhabiting my sexuality more.

A lot more. Hoo, boy.

Which is good. More than a bit frustrating at times — my life is not currently structured to let me masturbate twenty times a day, and our societal norms do not permit the public humping of tree trunks — but good. Being intensely horny is a complicated pleasure . . . but as long as I’m getting laid fairly regularly, it is nevertheless a pleasure.

The compliments and increased attention, on the other hand . . . that’s a lot more tricky. It’s not that it sucks. Of course I like compliments and attention. Human beings are social animals, and while it might be lovely if our self-esteem came entirely from within and didn’t have any basis on the approval of peers blah blah blah, the reality is that our self-esteem doesn’t exist in a vacuum. It’s a complex, mirrors- reflecting- mirrors jumble of how others see us and how we see ourselves. So of course I like compliments and attention, and of course they make me feel better about myself.

But at the same time, the compliments and increased attention I’ve gotten as I’ve lost weight have been a seriously mixed blessing. When people get really effusive about how amazing I look now, a big part of me is resentfully thinking, “So what did you think of me when I was fat? You think I look amazing now — did you think I looked disgusting then?” The line between feeling flattered by compliments and feeling defensive and pissy about them is razor-thin. Especially from people who knew me before I lost the weight . . . and only started paying sexual attention to me afterwards. (Some people — especially gay men, for some reason — do have the knack of paying good, tactful compliments to people who are losing weight. If you want to pay a compliment to someone who’s losing weight, you can’t go wrong with, “You look really good, really healthy — have you been working out?”)

The thing is, though? I honestly don’t know how much of this increased attention is because my body is now a type that more people find attractive . . . and how much of it is because I feel more attractive, and more libidinous. There is nothing hotter than someone who feels good about themselves, someone who loves their body and their sexuality. And there is nothing less hot than someone who, as a Facebook friend put it, is “slouching and sulking as if they are simultaneously angry at the world and apologizing for existing.” Am I getting more attention now because a lot more people prefer thinner women to fat women? Or is it because I’m walking down the street radiating sexual joy and looking like I want to hump tree trunks? I suspect it’s some of both. I really wish I could tease them out. It would give me a better sense of when to get pissy about compliments, and when to just let them in already. (People who meet me for the first time now, since I’ve lost the weight, have no idea what an advantage they have: they don’t have to deal with my hair-trigger, “So what did you think I was before — chopped liver?” defensiveness.)

And I do realize that this pissy defensiveness isn’t entirely fair. I mean, I have preferences myself about what body types I do and don’t find attractive. Most of them aren’t absolute deal-breakers . . . but it’s not like they don’t exist. So it’s a little unfair for me to expect other people not to have their own preferences.

It’s a delicate balance. How do we critique overly rigid cultural ideals of sexual attractiveness . . . while still acknowledging people’s right to be attracted to whoever they’re attracted to? How do we ask people to question and critique their — our — desires, to look carefully at the ways that a sexist, consumerist, celebrity- obsessed culture shapes our libidos . . . while still acknowledging that people don’t really have control over who we do and don’t have the hots for?

I don’t know. It’s a mess. And of course I know that the “effusive compliment” people mean well. I know that in our culture, “You look like you’ve lost weight!” is almost universally considered a compliment. And my weight loss project has, in fact, involved a lot of hard work . . . so when people get really effusive about how great I look now, I try to hear it as praise for the accomplishment, not as an insult to how I looked before.

But that’s hard. Especially since the “You looked like such a fat slob before!” implication of “You look so much better now!” plays right into another part of what’s making this process sexually complicated — the disconnect I’m feeling with my sexual history.

A huge amount of my libido right now is focused on the changes my body is going through, and the ways it’s different from what it was before. Which is understandable: things that are in flux get more attention than things that are in relative stasis. But this has had the unfortunate effect of making me feel weirdly disconnected from my body and my sexuality of the past. My willingness to accept how unhappy I used to be with my body, and how much in denial/ cognitive dissonance I was about it, is making it hard to remember that I did, in fact, like my body at least some of the time when I was fat, and that at least some people found that body attractive, and that I did get a substantial amount of sexual pleasure from it.

I know that this disconnectedness is totally irrational. I know that fat bodies can be happily experienced as sexual, both from the inside and the outside. There are, for instance, plenty of fat people who I see as intensely sexual and would do in a hot second. And I know that it’s seriously counter-productive. I was a fat woman for years — years in which I lived out some of the most powerful and formative aspects of my sexuality, and years in which I had some of the best sex of my life. I know that I have to find a way to inhabit my current sexual body, and at the same time make peace with my old one. (If anyone has any suggestions or experience about this, btw, I’m all ears. This is a tough one.)

And while I mostly feel happier and less self-conscious about my body than I used to, there are still aspects of my body and my appearance that I’m not thrilled about. It’s been weird to accept the fact that even when I reach my target weight, I’m still not going to be the cultural ideal of female attractiveness, and I never will be. And while I’ve been letting go of a lot of my old body dislikes, I’ve also been picking up one or two new ones. (Let me tell you about loose skin sometime.) Losing weight doesn’t mean dropping the battle against body fascism — either externally or internally.

I don’t know. It’s a mess. A mess that on the whole I feel good about, but a mess nonetheless.

Thoughts?

Greta Christina, copyright © 2010. Be sure to check out Greta’s blog.

Share This

Sex Writers, Drooling Horndogs, and the Suspectability of Male Sexuality

Why is the “sex writer” field so dominated by women?

I’ve been thinking about this question for many years. The publisher of this very blog brought it up in a conversation we were having, and it’s been on my mind off and on ever since. It came up again at a recent salon of sex writers and activists; it came up yet again, although more obliquely, in a conversation I was having with a porn writing friend of mine.

Why is the “sex writer” field so dominated by women?

There are exceptions, obviously. Arguably the most famous and influential sex writer right now is the sex advice columnist Dan Savage. And there are others, of course: David Steinberg, Dr. Marty Klein, Charlie Glickman, I could keep going. And of course, there’s plenty of dumb, generic, Maxim-magazine type sex writing from men; in some senses it’s silly to complain about sex writing as female-dominated, given how much of the dumb crap there is. But it does seem as if sex writing — serious, intellectual sex writing, at any rate — is one of those rare fields that’s largely taken up by women, and in which women are both more visible and more generally respected.

And thinking about this question is making me think about the suspectability of male sexuality.

I think that when women write about sex, we’re assumed, in some ways, to be dispassionate observers. Of course we get targeted as sluts and whores and whatnot. But we’re also seen as bringing a fresh perspective to the subject, and a cooler eye, and a more thoughtful point of view.

When men write about sex, on the other hand, they’re assumed to be drooling horndogs.

Of course men have sex on the brain, this assumption goes. They’re men. They think with their dicks. That’s what men do. Who cares what they think about sex? We all know what they think about sex. What men think about sex is that they want it.

The very fact that sex is seen as a primarily male experience makes male sex writers, paradoxically, seem less serious. Our society sees sex as being about maleness: male desires, male insecurities, male satisfaction. Our culture is sexually obsessed with women, of course; but it’s sexually obsessed with women as — and I’m turning into a ’70s lesbian feminist as I write this — the objects of desire, rather than the subjects of it. Sex is seen as a male topic. But therefore, we all too often assume that we know what men think about sex, and how they feel about it. Male sexual desire is assumed to be simple: an animal urge to put a dick in a wet hole. With, occasionally, some variations in the way of orientation and paraphilias. And I think this makes it harder for male sex writers to be taken seriously. Anything they have to say on the subject is likely to be seen as suspect.

Now, I’m not writing this to complain about the terrible unfairness of this reverse discrimination. Yes, this is to some extent unfair. It’s unfair to men to assume that the only thinking they do about sex is with their dicks, and that they therefore don’t have anything to contribute to a serious conversation about it. (Also, I feel compelled to point out, men aren’t the only ones who sometimes think with the little head instead of the big one. Believe me, I speak from experience.) But given how much regular discrimination women deal with in almost every other occupation, I’m not crying a river over the fact that this one little field of endeavor has a more female stamp on it.

That’s not the point of this.

The point of this is twofold. One is this: I, selfishly, want to read more of what men have to say about sex. I want to read more about the varieties of male sexuality, from people who are living it from the inside. I want to read more about the varieties of female sexuality, from people who are seeing it from the outside. I want to read more about how men feel about this “animal urge horndog” label they’ve gotten stuck with: to what extent they think it’s true, to what extent they think it isn’t, how the reality and the unreality of it weave together in their experience of their sexuality. Sex is too interesting and too important a topic to limit most of the serious thought about it to one gender. And in addition to hearing what men, qua men, think about sex, I want to hear what individual men think about it: what Dan and David and Marty and Charlie and so on have to say. Sex is too interesting and too important a topic to limit the voices who can talk about it seriously to the voices that are attached to vaginas. (Psychological and emotional vaginas, as well as the physical ones.)

A porn writing friend of mine was talking with me recently about a story he’d written; a kink-themed story, in which a male character was using economic leverage to take sexual advantage of a female character. My friend found this fantasy scenario hot (as do I — hoo, boy!) . . . but he was finding himself somewhat uneasy about it as well. In particular, as a good feminist, he felt uneasy about eroticizing these gender dynamics and the economic power that men have over women.

And yet, if the story had been written by a woman, telling the story from the female victim’s point of view instead of the male perpetrator’s, I doubt that he would have felt any qualms about reading and enjoying it. It bugged me a little that he felt that way about writing it. It made me wonder how many other good male porn writers had considered writing stories like this, had even started to write stories like this . . . and had stayed their hand, for fear of being seen as, or indeed for fear of being, drooling sexist male horndogs who just want to take sexual advantage of women. If so — that sucks. I, selfishly, as a fan of kinky porn in which men do fucked-up things to women, would like to read more stories like this that are written by men. I know what this fantasy feels like from my end of it. I want to learn more about what it feels like from the other end, from thoughtful feminist men who get off on it, too.

So that’s my first point. My second point is this:

I’ve lived my whole life dealing with the various and sundry ways that female sexuality gets demeaned, by being ignored or trivialized or assumed to not exist.

Thinking about this topic is making me realize the various and sundry ways that male sexuality gets demeaned . . . by the mirror image of that process. It’s making me realize that the amplification of male sexuality — the funhouse mirror that takes the image of a man and distorts it into a drooling tongue and a hard dick — has the effect of demeaning it as well.

And that sucks for all of us.

Greta Christina, copyright © 2010. Be sure to check out Greta’s blog.

Share This

[Greta Christina] A Cornucopia of Climaxes

I’ve been thinking about orgasms.

Just for a change.

Orgasms, I think we can all agree, are great. (I know — what a controversial and groundbreaking assertion! Alert the media!) But lately, I’ve been thinking about the vast variety of climactic sexual experiences that aren’t, technically speaking, orgasms. I’ve been thinking about sexual experiences that feel, in some sense, like an orgasm, or like a second cousin of an orgasm — a shiver, an explosion of energy, a feeling of relaxation and release — but that probably wouldn’t register as “orgasm” if I was hooked up to a Masters and Johnson orgasm- measuring machine.

We have a poverty of language about sexual pleasure. And this includes a poverty of language about climactic sexual pleasure. Every time I read about the four stages of human sexual response cycle (excitement, plateau, orgasm, and resolution), I feel like I’m looking at a map of a forest that’s only mapping out the one path from the parking lot to the main lodge, without showing any of the trails and creeks and pastures. Technically, I suppose these not-quite-climactic climaxes fall into the “excitement” or “plateau” phase of the response cycle . . . but that language doesn’t capture the feeling of rich, complex satisfaction these other trails have to offer.

So here are some of the not-exactly-orgasmic sexual climaxes I’ve experienced, and the language I’ve come up with to describe them. If you have some of your own, please speak up about them in the comments!

Mini-gasms. When I’m on my way to coming, I’ll often have a series of little mini-climaxes. They’re not technically orgasms; they’re not all-encompassing the way an orgasm is, and they don’t make me feel satisfied, except for just a second. In fact, they actually wind me up more. But they’re definitely in the same family: the “over the top of the rollercoaster” peak, the shuddering release of tension and energy. It’s just a smaller rollercoaster. They’re like the amuse-bouche of the sexual world: in giving a little taste of what’s to come, a taste that’s nowhere nearly large enough to be filling, they excite the hunger rather than satisfying it.

Not that that’s a bad thing.

Thrill-gasms. If I’m really wound up — if I’ve been thinking about a sexual encounter for hours or days before I have it — I’ll sometimes have a little shiver of a climax the moment my partner first touches me. Or a not so little shiver. Or several shivers. The moment after a long period of anticipation, when my body feels the erotic touch of my partner and realizes that it’s finally about to get laid . . . it feels in an odd way like the moment after a long period of foreplay when my body finally gets to come.

Pain-gasms. All the masochists in the audience are nodding their heads. For some of us, pain — the right kind of pain, in the right context — can feel not only as arousing and exciting as more conventional sexual stimulation, but as climatically satisfying as well. It’s like a sexual response cycle in a parallel universe: the excitement of the first few warm-up blows, the plateau of the high-flying endorphin high, the climactic shudders when the pain pushes the envelope, the rich feeling of peace and dissolving into the dark when it’s all over. It just doesn’t involve the involuntary rhythmic contractions of the genital muscles. (Except when it does. The parallel universes do sometimes bleed into each other. I can’t be the only person in the world who’s come from a beating.)

Nipple-gasms. This one is different. This one, I think, legitimately counts as a Masters and Johnson orgasm. I’ve even been known to ejaculate from having my nipples played with. But it has a significantly different flavor to it than a standard “genital sensation” orgasm. Coming without any physical stimulation coming anywhere near my genitals . . . to me, it’s a radically different experience. Different enough that it needs its own name.

Think-gasms. I love this one. Walking to work; sitting at my computer at the cafe; sitting on the bus staring out the window . . . if I’m fiercely fantasizing about a sexual scenario, the imaginary orgasm will sometimes shiver through my real body. It’s not quite like an orgasm itself (which is just as well for the other people at the cafe or on the bus). It’s like an echo of an orgasm. Or a shadow of one.

Finishing off. This one doesn’t quite fit into my list, as it definitely counts as an actual, no-questions genital orgasm. But I’m including it anyway, since I think our language for different kinds of orgasms is even more impoverished than our language for non-orgasmic climaxes.

This is the flip side of the mini-gasm. Sometimes when I’m having sex, I’ll have a series of orgasms — real, honest- to- Loki, Masters and Johnson orgasms, orgasms complete with the peak and the release and the coming down, orgasms that feel shattering and render me speechless — but that don’t quite leave me feeling . . . finished. In order to feel completely satisfied, completely done, I need to have the One Last Orgasm That Finishes Me Off. I don’t know if the One Last Orgasm is physiologically different from a regular one, I don’t know if it would register any differently if I was hooked up to an orgasm detection machine . . . but it feels radically, qualitatively different from other orgasms. Almost as different as coming feels from not coming at all.

Aftershocks. Damn, these are fun. They’re almost better in some ways than the actual orgasms themselves. These are the shivering tremors I sometimes get after I’ve come: when I’m still feeling all open and aroused and sexual, but am totally relaxed and done with the “excitement/ plateau/ orgasm/ rinse and repeat” cycle. I don’t really experience them in my genitals; I feel them more on the surface of my skin (especially if my partner is touching me just right), and deep down in the core of my body. It’s almost as if my muscles and bones are having the orgasm, instead of my clit and my cunt. And they’re a lot more Zen than a regular orgasm: since I’ve already come and am no longer straining frenetically towards that delightful but sometimes elusive goal, I can just lie back and enjoy them.

So those are a few of my trails in the woods; a few samples from my climactic cornucopia.

What are yours?

Greta Christina, copyright © 2010. Be sure to check out Greta’s blog.

Share This

[Greta Christina] Gay Mafiosi and Group Marriage Monotheists: Sex, “Caprica,” and a Changing World

Well, I wasn’t expecting this.

I’ve recently gotten sucked into “Caprica,” the prequel series to “Battlestar Galactica” airing on the SyFy Channel. (Yes, this is about sex — hear me out.) I hadn’t planned to put yet another hour-long drama on my TV schedule, and Loki knows I don’t have time for it; but I watched fifteen minutes of the pilot when I was channel surfing, and I got hooked. I’m such a slut. Give me a complex, thoughtful, nuanced exploration of consciousness and selfhood, and I’m anybody’s.

And the show has had some surprising plot developments in the sexual arena — developments that were all the more surprising for how unceremoniously they were introduced.

A quick precis, for those who aren’t familiar: The weekly science fiction TV series, “Caprica,” takes place in a world that’s eerily parallel to Earth. But the world has some interesting differences from ours, and at the time this story takes place, they’re a few years/ decades ahead of us. Technologically, and socially.

And “socially” is where the sex comes in. (Caution: Spoiler alert. Multiple spoilers. Suck it up.) There’s a major gay character in “Caprica,” and there’s a major polyamorous character. And the way these characters and their sexualities get woven into the story shows a huge leap forward in the way our culture has started to view alternative sexualities . . . and an enormous leap forward in how we view our sexual future.

Let’s start with the gay character.

There’s an equivalent of the Mafia in “Caprica,” a criminal organization called the Ha’la’tha. One of the story’s major characters, Joseph Adama (Esai Morales), is a renowned defense attorney with deep connections to the Mob, and his brother, Sam Adama (Sasha Roiz), is one of the Mob’s enforcers.

And a few episodes into the show, we learn that Sam is gay.

But this development isn’t presented as a shocker. It isn’t presented as The Big Gay Revelation. Here’s how we find out: Sam’s young nephew William (Sina Najafi) is at dinner with Sam and his husband, Larry (Julius Chapple), and he’s asking them why they never had kids. That’s it. That’s the Big Gay Moment. It isn’t even remotely a big effing deal. It’s just the moment in the story when we find out more about Sam Adama and his home life . . . and Sam’s home life includes his husband, Larry.

And as the story unfolds, it becomes clear that Larry is completely accepted as Sam’s husband, by Sam’s brother as well as his nephew — and, as far as I can tell, by everyone else in the story. When Joseph is desperately trying to find Sam, he calls Larry — just like you’d call anyone’s husband or wife if you were desperately trying to reach them. Joseph is freaked out that he can’t reach his brother . . . but his attitude towards Larry, and the fact of his marriage with his brother, is entirely nonchalant. And as of this writing, there’s nothing in the story to indicate that Sam is in the closet, or that his Mob colleagues have any issues at all with his gayness.

This would be surprising enough for any character on a mainstream TV series. (If the SyFy channel counts as “mainstream,” that is.) Even when a TV series is gay positive, it almost always has to make the gayness a major plot point or the central defining feature of the gay character in question. A gay character in mainstream TV is almost always The Gay Character.

But given the character of Sam Adama, this fact is downright flabbergasting. Sam is a freaking Mafia enforcer. He throws trash cans through store windows, and kidnaps the wives of industry leaders, and murders politicians by knifing them to death in their sleep. The guy wears wife-beaters, for heaven’s sake. He’s about as far from a gay stereotype as you can get. You might expect to see a gay TV character who’s a graphic designer or a struggling actor/ waiter, or even a doctor or a lawyer. But a gay character who’s a macho thug? Entrenched in a criminal organization based on macho thuggery?

This, to me, speaks of the normalization of homosexuality . . . more than a hundred episodes of “Will and Grace.” It speaks of a world that recognizes the simple fact that anybody can be gay. It speaks of a world that recognizes that gayness is only one part of a gay person’s life . . . and often not the most interesting part. And it speaks of a world that recognizes the fact of gayness as a simple fact of human life.

So that’s the gayness. Now let’s move on to the group marriage. There’s another interesting major character in “Caprica”: Clarice Willow (Polly Walker), the headmistress of an exclusive private high school, the Athena Academy. (Caprican society is largely polytheistic, believing in a version of the old Greek gods.) And, as it turns out a few episodes into the show, she’s a member of a group marriage.

Now, Clarice’s group marriage isn’t treated quite as casually as Sam’s marriage to Larry. It’s introduced with a bit of . . . not fanfare exactly, but surprise. One of Clarice’s students, Lacy Rand (Magda Apanowicz), comes to her house for a visit — and discovers that she lives with multiple husbands, and multiple wives. And Lacy has a little frisson of nervous excitement when she realizes this. “I knew a few kids from group marriages — it’s cool,” she says . . . in a voice indicating that she actually doesn’t actually know that much about group marriage, and thinks it’s “cool” in the sense of “edgy and slightly outre.”

But at no point is there any implication that Clarice could get into trouble for bringing her student to her group marriage home. Or indeed, for being in a group marriage in the first place. There’s no indication that she’s endangering her job — her job, I’ll remind you, as the head of a high school, attended by underaged teenagers and everything — by being in a group marriage, and inviting one of her students home to visit it.

It’s more than a little comparable to what being gay is like now. Here on Earth, I mean. Being gay is still a little bit shocking (for some people), still a conversation piece (more so in some parts of the country and the world than others). But, at least with the more politically moderate people and places, it’s entirely legal, more or less accepted, only mildly surprising, and not something that will get you drummed out of town or fired from your job for corrupting the morals of the children.

And like Sam Adama’s gayness, Clarice Willow’s group marriage isn’t presented as the most interesting or important aspect of her character. It’s played a little more for curiosity and titillation than Sam’s marriage with Larry; especially in the scene with four people all in bed together (switching partners at an unspoken signal — this seems to be an “everyone’s on a schedule of who sleeps with whom” version of group marriage, not free-form polyamory), and in the scenes when it seems like Clarice might be trying to draw Lacy into the arrangement by introducing her to one of her younger, dishier husbands. But the group marriage is presented as a familiar arrangement in this society, if a somewhat unusual one. And it’s presented as an essentially unthreatening arrangement. The fact that Clarice turns out to be a monotheist — now, that’s a serious threat to Caprican society. (Especially from what we know from “Battlestar Galactica” about how this story turns out.) The fact that she has multiple husbands and wives — that’s seen as relatively normal.

And all of this is a huge departure for mainstream TV dramas. Even in “Big Love,” the most famous current TV show featuring multiple relationships (it’s the show about Mormon polygamy), the fact of the characters’ polygamy is the central defining feature of their lives, and the lynchpin on which the entire storyline turns. I’m hard-pressed to think of another TV program aside from “Caprica” in which multiple relationships are seen as a standard, if somewhat edgy, form of romantic interaction that a stable society could incorporate . . . and in which same-sex relationships are seen as so normal as to need no further comment.

Now. It could be argued that these two characters still perpetuate stereotypes about unconventional sexuality . . . since neither of them is exactly a moral paragon. Sam Adama is, after all, a Mafia enforcer, a criminal who threatens/ beats up/ murders people for money. And Clarice Willow turns out to be involved in an extremist monotheistic terrorist organization. (In “Caprica,” again, the society is mostly polytheistic . . . and monotheists are looked upon as dangerous, radical religious fanatics with an inflexible morality and a close-minded hatred of anyone with different beliefs. Much the way Islam is seen in much of the Western world.) It could be argued that these characters perpetuate the stereotype of sexual minorities as amoral: self-centered pursuers of their own desires, with no concern for decency or social stability.

But . . . well, I have two Buts here. One is that in “Caprica,” pretty much all the characters are morally ambiguous. This is a complex, thoughtful, nuanced story — morally as well as in other ways — and it doesn’t trade in obvious villains and heroes. Sam Adama and Clarice Willow are morally troubling characters . . . but so are Daniel Graystone, and Joseph Adama, and Lacy, and Zoe, and Amanda, and pretty much every single character in the show. Sam and Clarice are fucked-up people doing terrible things for noble reasons, or what they see as noble reasons . . . and in this story, that makes them fit right in.

My other “But” is this: Yes, Sam, and Clarice are morally troubling characters. But there’s no implication that their sexual lives are the cause of their moral shakiness. What makes Clarice bad is her religious fanaticism, not her unconventional marital arrangement; and at this point in the story, it’s not even clear whether her husbands or wives are even aware of her involvement in religious extremism. And Sam Adama’s marriage to Larry is one of the best things about him: a humanizing element, giving his character motivation and depth. Their ethics are deeply problematic; their sexuality is fine.

It’s wonderful to see. And it’s especially wonderful to see in a science fiction show. “Caprica” is technically set in the distant past; but it’s clearly providing an “alternate reality” version of humanity’s future. I so want science fiction to be more visionary about sexuality than conventional fiction . . . and all too often, it so is not. (The various iterations of “Star Trek,” for instance, were so far behind the curve on gayness, it was embarrassing.) It’s a nice sign of how far we’ve come sexually that a regular TV series — and a critically acclaimed one at that — could be this imaginative and forward- thinking about sexuality, and still get on the air. And it’s comforting to think that “Caprica’s” vision of a sexual culture might someday be ours.

If the Cylons don’t get us, that is.

Greta Christina, copyright © 2010. Be sure to check out Greta’s blog.

Share This

[Greta Christina] Sex and the Off-Label Use of Our Bodies

What are our bodies meant for?

One of the most common condemnations of non-standard sex — from homosexuality to masturbation — is “that’s not what those body parts were meant for.” Genitals and sexual desire were supposedly designed for reproduction, and reproduction alone: by God (as the argument most commonly goes), or by evolution (as the argument occasionally gets made). To use these parts/ desires for any other purpose is dangerous at best and sinful at worst.

Okay. Let’s set aside for a moment the question of whether there even is a God, much less one who purposely designed the human body to fulfill his divine plan. The most common counter to this accusation is that it doesn’t get applied consistently. Not even by people who do believe in a God who created our bodies. As Dan Savage once pointed out: Our noses weren’t “designed” for us to rest our glasses on — and nobody gets their knickers in a twist over that. Off-label uses of our bodies are ridiculously common. I could come up with them all day. Our feet weren’t “meant” for us to operate the pedals of a car. Our mouths weren’t “meant” for us to play the harmonica. Our heads weren’t “meant” for us to display giant novelty foam-rubber cheese wedges and other oversized signals of allegiance to sports teams. Our hands weren’t “meant” for us to type on computer keyboards. (Boy howdy, were they ever not. My recent tendinitis flare-up is evidence enough of that.) And that doesn’t stop anyone from doing these things.

So why should sex be an exception? No, our mouths and assholes weren’t “designed” for sex, by God or by evolution. So what? We use our bodies in lots of ways and for lots of purposes that they weren’t “designed” for . . . and nobody considers that immoral. Computers and harmonicas and giant novelty cheese wedges are seen as acceptable and even positively neat. Why is anal sex somehow a perversion of the natural order?

A good argument. And one I frequently make myself.

But today, I’m going to take it a step further.

Off-label uses of body parts and biological functions aren’t just acceptable and morally neutral. They are some of the most beautiful, honorable, and deeply treasured parts of the human experience.

Human beings took our animal need for palatable food . . . and turned it into chocolate souffles with salted caramel cream. We took our ability to co-operate as a social species . . . and turned it into craft circles and bowling leagues and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. We took our capacity to make and use tools . . . and turned it into the Apollo moon landing. We took our uniquely precise ability to communicate through language . . . and turned it into King Lear.

None of these things are necessary for survival and reproduction. That is exactly what makes them so splendid. When we take our basic evolutionary wiring and transform it into something far beyond any prosaic matters of survival and reproduction . . . that’s when humanity is at its best. That’s when we show ourselves to be capable of creating meaning and joy, for ourselves and for one another. That’s when we’re most uniquely human.

And the same is true for sex. Human beings have a deep, hard-wired urge to replicate our DNA, instilled in us by millions of years of evolution. And we’ve turned it into an intense and delightful form of communication, intimacy, creativity, community, personal expression, transcendence, joy, pleasure, and love. Regardless of whether any DNA gets replicated in the process.

Why should we see this as sinful?

What makes this any different from chocolate souffles and King Lear?

Rigid moralists — of the “don’t use your asshole for sex, that’s not what it’s meant for” variety — are often fond of talking about “what separates us from the animals.” Our self-restraint, our ability to delay gratification, our ethical judgment . . . these things supposedly make us finer and more noble than the animals, those base creatures who live only to eat and avoid predators and produce the next generation.

I, for one, don’t think anything separates us from the animals. We are animals. We tend to forget that. And in fact, recent research is showing that many non-human animals also have ethics and the ability to delay gratification and whatnot. We’re not as unique as we like to think.

But I do think we’re special animals. I do think we have abilities that make us different from other animals. And at the top of that list is our ability to take our animal instincts, and transform them into pursuits and achievements that have nothing whatsoever to do with their original functions of survival and reproduction — pursuits and achievements that serve no purpose but to create meaning, and connection, and knowledge, and joy.

Sex is most definitely one of those pursuits.

It deserves as much respect as any other.

Greta Christina, copyright © 2010. Be sure to check out Greta’s blog.

Share This

[Greta Christina] Porn, Relationships, and What It’s Reasonable to Ask For

When you’re beginning a relationship, is it reasonable to ask your partner not to watch porn?

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a column here about porn. I was writing in response to an advice column by Scarleteen, an answer to a letter from a young woman who was upset because her boyfriend watched porn. I posed the question, “In a monogamous relationship, is it reasonable to expect your partner not to watch porn?” And I concluded that it was not. I concluded that people have the right to watch whatever they want when they’re by themselves and on their own time, and that asking a partner not to watch porn is no more defensible then asking them not to watch reality TV or read true crime. I concluded that trying to regulate your partner’s private cultural pleasures — pornographic or otherwise — is like trying to regulate their imagination.

But some readers thought I’d misread Scarleteen’s advice. They said Scarleteen’s point wasn’t that people have the right to ask their existing partners not to watch porn . . . but rather that if someone objects to porn, they should spell that out at the beginning of a relationship. And on re-reading the Scarleteen column, I think they’re right. In my defense, the situation I was writing about was, in fact, the situation described in the letter — dealing with an existing partner who watched porn, and trying to decide what to say to them. But I do think I misread Scarleteen’s intention in their response, and for that, I apologize.

So now I’m going to address the position Scarleteen took: that people who object to porn and are beginning to date someone should spell out their position early, and should state clearly that they don’t want to be involved with someone who watches it.

And I’m basically going to stand by my original position.

Which is that this is an unreasonable, overly controlling thing for an adult to ask another adult. It’s somewhat less unreasonable than asking it of a partner you’re already involved with, someone who’s already gotten emotionally invested in your relationship before you dropped your “It’s me or the porn” ultimatum. But I still think this is seriously pushing the line between “reasonable negotiation of desires and limits in a relationship,” and “controlling attempt to regulate not only your partner’s behavior, but their imagination.”

Here’s why.

Like I did in the previous column, I’m going to take this question out of an erotic context, to give it some perspective. (I am, however, going to keep it gendered for the moment, since much of the previous conversation was about gender and sexism.)

Let’s say a single straight woman has objections to televised sports. She thinks they’re immoral, or politically objectionable, or she simply finds them upsetting. (Which some women do — as do some men.) And let’s say she tells all her potential partners, “I just don’t want to be involved with someone who watches sports. Ever. Even when I’m not around. Even on their own time. Even if it’s just when they’re hanging around with their friends. If we’re going to get involved, you have to be someone who doesn’t like watching sports on TV, and you have to promise never to do so.”

Would that be a reasonable thing to ask?

I would argue No.

And I’d argue it pretty darned strongly.

At my most sympathetic and calm, my response to that would be, “You should know that an awful lot of men watch sports on TV. And plenty of those men don’t fit the stereotype of the sports-obsessed Neanderthal. You seem to be making a lot of assumptions about what kind of man likes to watch sports on TV, and whether those men could share your basic values — assumptions that really aren’t warranted. If you’re going to rule out all men who ever like to watch sports on TV, you’re going to limit yourself to a very small dating pool indeed . . . without a very strong or reality-based reason for doing so. You might want to rethink this. You might want to look more carefully at why you feel so strongly about sports — and at whether there might be a better way to handle those feelings than refusing to be involved with anyone who enjoys them.”

If I were feeling less sympathetic and calm, my response would be, “Are you out of your mind? What difference does it make what your partner watches on TV when you’re not around? How is that any of your business? Again — you seem to be making a lot of assumptions about what kind of man likes to watch sports on TV . . . assumptions that really aren’t warranted. What on earth makes you think that’s a reasonable thing for one adult to ask another?”

And frankly, if I were dating that woman, I’d end things as soon as I could after that conversation — even if I didn’t like sports. I’d see it as a huge red flag that she had a very controlling side of her. I’d see it as a huge red flag that she was a seriously insecure person — one who dealt with her insecurities by expecting her partner to tiptoe around them. I’d be out the door as fast as I could — even if I never planned to watch another sporting event in my life.

Why should porn be different?

If watching porn didn’t carry the stigma that it does — if any and all pursuits of sexual pleasure didn’t carry the stigma that they do — would we see these two situations as any different? If it weren’t the case that sports are a generally accepted cultural activity and porn is emphatically not, would we even be having this conversation? If there weren’t a stigma around porn, would anyone seriously consider asking their partner never to watch it . . . and if there weren’t shame around porn, would anyone who was asked not to watch it take the request seriously?

Now. To be fair, it’s certainly true that in relationships, we get a few “I know I’m being irrational, but I feel strongly about this, so can you please just humor me?” free passes. I think we do, anyway. But when we ask for those free passes, I think we need to acknowledge that that’s what we’re doing. I think we need to acknowledge that we’re asking for something unreasonable, above and beyond the call of duty — and not act as if we have the moral high ground.

And we need to recognize that not everyone is going to say Yes. We need to recognize that a lot of smart, thoughtful, decent people are going to turn us down. Especially when the activity we’re asking our partners to forgo is something that’s both ridiculously common and generally harmless.

Like watching sports on TV.

Or watching porn.

Does my hypothetical woman have the right to ask her potential partners not to watch sports on TV, even when she’s not around? Sure, she has the right to ask. We have the right to ask for pretty much anything. We have the right to ask our potential relationship partners to not smoke, to tie us up on a semi- regular basis, to take Argentine tango lessons, to watch the entire DVD set of “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” in a one-weekend marathon, to wear polka dotted underwear every Friday without fail.

But does that make it a reasonable thing to ask?

Is “don’t ever watch sports on TV, even when I’m not around” a reasonable thing for one adult to ask of another? Is it reasonable to expect that people will say Yes? Is it reasonable to expect people to even take this request seriously?

I don’t think so.

There are lots of things that we have the right to do, which are still not right or reasonable for us to do. We tend to make that mistake a lot: the mistake of thinking that because we have the right to do something, we should therefore just charge on in and do it. It’s not clear thinking. We have the right to scream bigoted epithets on the street corner, too. That doesn’t make it right or reasonable to do it.

Now.

I will qualify all this by adding: If someone is very firm in their anti-porn position — if they’ve thought it through carefully after being exposed to many sides of the debate about it, and their feelings against it are still as strong as ever — then yes, they should warn their partners up front that this is the case. I don’t think it’s a reasonable thing for them to ask . . . but reasonable or not, if it’s a dealbreaker for them, then by all means, they should ask it. If I were dating someone who felt this way, I sure as hell would want to be warned upfront, before I’d invested a lot of time and emotional energy in the relationship. I’d want to run screaming sooner rather than later.

But here’s the thing. In this particular letter, in the letter to Scarleteen that started this whole conversation, I did not get that impression at all. Nothing about this letter gave me the impression that it was from a confirmed, hard-core anti-porn feminist who was familiar with feminist arguments in favor of porn and had rejected them. Everything about it seemed to be from a young person who was upset by porn, and who ascribed much her of her upset to the supposed sexism of porn . . . without ever really thinking about it carefully, and without ever being exposed to feminism that enjoys and supports porn. (Scarleteen seems to have gotten the same impression, since they made sure to tell her that being anti-porn wasn’t the only way to be feminist, and they provided links to a wide variety of feminist writings on porn.)

So my advice to her would not be, “If you’re opposed to porn, to the point where you’re not willing to be involved with someone who ever watches it, you need to spell that out early in a relationship.”

My advice would be, “If you’re opposed to porn, to the point where you’re not willing to be involved with someone who ever watches it, you need to seriously rethink whether that’s a reasonable thing for one adult to ask another. If you’re assuming that a shared opposition to porn means you’ll have shared values about sex and gender and politics, you need to seriously rethink that assumption. You need to be aware that there are a lot of pro-porn feminists in the world — women and men both — and that opposition to porn isn’t the default feminist position. You need to be aware that an awful lot of men watch porn, and it doesn’t automatically make them sexist objectifiers of women. You need to be aware that refusing to be involved with any man who watches porn is going to seriously limit your dating opportunities — and is likely going to rule out a fair number of men who might otherwise be great for you. You need to be aware that asking someone to limit what they do and don’t watch when they’re not with you is likely to come across as insecure and controlling . . . even to people who share your basic tastes. And you need to be aware that since there’s so much shame and stigma around porn, a lot of men aren’t going to feel comfortable standing up for their right and desire to watch it, and you may not get a straight answer about it. You might want to think about whether there’s a better way to deal with your insecurities than asking your potential partners to never even look at erotic photos or videos of other women.

“And if, after all of that, you’re still opposed to porn, to the point where you’re not willing to be involved with someone who ever watches it — then yes, you need to spell that out early in a relationship. But you need to be aware that you’re asking for a lot. And you need to not take the moral high ground about it.”

Being a feminist means, among other things, recognizing people’s right to sexual autonomy. Women’s and men’s. If you’re going to deal with your bad feelings about porn by expecting your partners to forgo a private sexual activity that doesn’t involve you in any way, you need to consider whether that’s really consistent with your feminism.

Greta Christina, copyright © 2010. Be sure to check out Greta’s blog.

Share This

[Greta Christina] Is Monogamy Fair?

In any romantic/ sexual relationship, is it reasonable to expect your partner to limit their sexual activity in any way?

Weird question, I know. Here’s why I’m asking it.

In my last column, I talked about porn in relationships. I asked, “In a monogamous relationship, is it reasonable to expect your partner to not watch porn?” And I concluded that it was not. I argued that, for the same reason people don’t have the right to expect their partners not to watch reality TV or read true crime — on their own time, when they don’t have any obligations and their partner isn’t around — people don’t have the right to expect their partners not to enjoy porn. I argued that people have some basic rights to privacy and autonomy — yes, strangely enough, even when they’re in serious committed relationships — and that the things people do on their own time, in ways that don’t have any significant impact on their partner, are entirely their own damn business.

But when I was writing this, I realized that some non-monogamist hard-liners would say the same thing about any sort of sexual activity outside a relationship. Some non-monogamy advocates — not many, but some — would argue that the right to make your own decisions about how to spend your own time extends to having sex with other people. I wrote that people had no more right to expect their partners not to watch porn than to expect them not to watch reality TV . . . and as I wrote it, I could hear voices in the back of my head saying, “But how is sex different from porn? If watching porn is no different from watching reality TV, then how is having sex with someone outside the relationship any different than seeing a basketball game with someone outside the relationship?”

Now, as you may have guessed, I don’t agree with those voices. I do, however, think this is a harder question than it might seem on the surface, and a murkier one, without an obvious place to draw the line. (To some extent, this is one of my “thinking out loud” pieces, and I’m not sure I’ve got the answer quite right.) Ultimately, though, I do think there’s a difference — even if it’s a murky and non-obvious difference — between watching depictions of other people having sex, and actually having sex with other people.

The difference is . . . well, other people.

I think non-monogamy changes a relationship, in a way that porn does not. I think non-monogamy changes a relationship — because it brings other people into it.

For starters, those other people have desires of their own, and limits of their own, and rights of their own . . . desires and limits and rights that have to be taken into consideration.

The porn video doesn’t care if you don’t see it for months at a time. The dirty novel doesn’t have a special new kink that it really wants to explore with you. The book of French postcards doesn’t have a preference about whether or not you discuss it with your partner. The adult comic book doesn’t get hurt if you throw it away without so much as a phone call. Other people do. And they have the right to expect that their cares and kinks and preferences and feelings will get some attention. From both partners in a relationship — not just the one they’re boffing.

Which means that non-monogamy changes the relationship. For everyone in it. Even if you have the simplest, most limited kind of non-monogamous relationship — say, the “You and I are a primary couple, we can have sex with other people but only on our own time, and those other people won’t get involved in our romantic or social life” kind — the other people you’re involved with are still living, breathing, autonomous people, with lives and selves of their own. So both partners in that relationship have to treat the outside person’s desires and limits and rights as if they matter . . . even if only one of those partners is getting the outside nookie.

Plus, other people have emotions of their own — emotions that aren’t always predictable. Porn isn’t going to get obsessed with you and stalk you, or fall in love with you even though you clearly said upfront that that wasn’t an option. And you probably aren’t going to fall in love with your porn. Okay, yes, some people do get fixated on porn to an unhealthy degree. People can get fixated on anything to an unhealthy degree, from weightlifting to “Star Trek” to collecting porcelain pigs. But sexual relationships with other people carry a degree of risk that sexual relationships with books or photos or Internet videos just don’t. (And that’s not even mentioning the physical risk of STI’s and whatnot.)

Finally — for now, anyway — other people change. They change in ways you can’t expect, and ways you have to adapt to. The only way your copy of “Deep Inside Annie Sprinkle” is going to change is when it comes out in a new 30th anniversary edition loaded with DVD extras. (We hope!) But with other people, you can have a nice, neat arrangement that makes everybody happy . . . and then what does that other person go and do but be human, and want something more than they used to, or something less, or something different. Which you then have to accept, or reject, or re-negotiate.

All of which means that non-monogamy requires a level of involvement and negotiation and processing that porn simply doesn’t demand — involvement and negotiation and processing that can have a significant impact on your relationship. It can be a good impact, mind you: a great impact even, an impact that keeps communication open and eroticism alive. But it’s an impact, and we shouldn’t pretend otherwise.

I mean, when it comes to porn, what do you have to negotiate? “Don’t look at it when I’m around.” Or, “If you’re going to look at it when I’m around, let’s pick something we both want to watch together.” Or, “If you watch it so much that you can’t pay your bills and we never have sex, we’re going to have deep trouble.” Or, “Keep the volume down when I’m trying to sleep.” Your arrangements about it don’t have to be any more complicated than your arrangements about any other book or magazine, TV show or Internet site. And they’re entirely between the two of you. They involve your wants and feelings and nobody else’s, and they only have to change if the two of you change.

So that’s why porn and sex are different.

Now, there is an area where this moderately clear distinction starts to get murky. And that area is sex work: prostitution, stripping, pro domination, other forms of live professional sexual entertainment.

Here’s why sex work is murkier. Sex workers are people, obviously. I hope I’m not going to get any debate about that. But with a few exceptions, they’re people who aren’t going to have expectations or make demands outside the professional encounter itself. They’re, you know, professionals, and whatever feelings they might have about their encounters with you, they’re skilled at drawing boundaries between their personal feelings and their professional responsibilities. With a few exceptions, sex workers aren’t going to ask to see you more often, or ask for something sexually that’s outside your agreement with your partner, or stalk you because they think you’re their soulmate. I’m not saying it never happens — but it’s rare.

So it could be argued that the non-monogamy issues I’m talking about here — the concern that other people have needs, desires, emotions, changes, any of which could affect your relationship — don’t apply to sex workers. And it could therefore be argued that, while it might be reasonable to want your partner to not have (shall we say) amateur sex outside your relationship, it’s not reasonable to expect them not to see strippers or pro dominants or prostitutes . . . since encounters with strippers or pro dominants or prostitutes aren’t likely to seriously affect the relationship.

I don’t know. It still seems somehow different to me. But I’m not sure exactly why. I haven’t gotten that far yet.

Thoughts?

Greta Christina, copyright © 2010. Be sure to check out Greta’s blog.

Share This