Friday, 19 June 2009
| 4:51 pm
| Culture
Like a lot of sex-positive sex writers, I spend a lot of time ranting and venting about things in our sexual culture that I don’t like.
Today, I want to do something different. Instead of bitching about the sexual culture we have, I’d like to present my vision for the sexual culture I’d like to see.
And the best way I can say it is to put it in a metaphor.
I would like us to treat sexuality — and differences in sexualities — much the same way we treat music.
We have a basic acceptance of the idea that different people like different kinds of music. We may strongly dislike the music other people like. We may even make some unfair personal judgments about the kind of person who likes, say, opera, or country, or rap music, or Barry Manilow. But as long as people aren’t forcing their music on us, we accept — even if grudgingly — their basic right to listen to whatever music they like.
I’d like to see us do the same with different sexual tastes. If people are personally grossed out by homosexuality, or SM, or furries, or whatever, I certainly would recognize their right to their gross-out. I just want people to see their gross-outs as an aesthetic judgment and not a moral one.
We understand that some people don’t care about music very much . . . and that some people care about it a great deal. We understand that some people care about music so much that they make it a central aspect of their lives: collecting music, reading about music, writing about music, playing music, watching musical performances, seeing music as a central source of inspiration and consolation in their lives, forming friendships and relationships with other people that are focused on music . . . even, perhaps, making a living at it. And we understand that for some people, music is just not that big a deal: they enjoy it, but they don’t go out of their way to make a big place for it in their lives.
I’d like to see us have the same understanding about sex. I’d like to see us treat people who like sex a lot and are very interested in it as . . . well, as people who like sex a lot and are very interested in it. Not as moral degenerates, not as selfish indulgers of our own petty whims, not as dangerous or pathetic addicts unable to control our base impulses . . . but as people whose interest in this basic human activity happens to be greater than average. (And for all of us sex fiends: I’d like to see us have a similar understanding about people who aren’t as interested in sex as we are.)
We understand that people’s tastes in music change over time. We don’t expect people to like the same music they did when they were in high school or college; and while many people do stay mostly interested in the music of their youth, we understand that many other people continue to explore different kinds of music throughout their lives, and may even find their preferences changing entirely over time. And we understand that some people like a wide variety of musical styles . . . while other people’s tastes tend to stay within one genre.
I’d like to see us have the same understanding about sex. I’d like to see us recognize and accept that people’s desires, even our basic orientations, can change over time, and understand that not everyone stays slotted in the same sexual category for their entire lives. When gay or lesbian people decide they’re bi; when bi people decide they’re really more straight or gay; when vanilla folks decide they’d like to try spanking; when committed polyamorists decide they want to be monogamous for a while . . . I’d like us to recognize it as the natural changes people go through in life. (If it affects us personally — if it’s our lover or spouse who suddenly announces that they’re into men or spanking or monogamy — of course our reactions are going to be different. But if it doesn’t, I’d like us to see it as interesting, but also as basically none of our business.)
In relationships, we often see music as one of the main bonds between us. When we get involved with someone new, we get excited about sharing the music we know about with our new loved one, and about discovering the music they like that we don’t know about. We sometimes have conflicts with our honeys over differences in musical tastes, especially early in a relationship; but we talk about it, joke about it, rib each other about it, find ways to enjoy our differences as well as our common ground. And as our relationships grow, we often explore new music together.
I’d like us to see sex the same way. I’d like for sex to be something couples can comfortably talk about, and laugh about. I’d like for couples to be as curious about their sexual differences as they are comfortable with their sexual similarities . . . not just early on in relationships, but as things grow and change. I’d like for couples to see sex as something that matters, something that’s worth working on. And if a couple has differences in what kinds of sex they like, or how much they even care about sex, I’d like for their friends and support systems and society in general to see both partners’ tastes and desires as equally valid and important.
And finally:
We understand — or at least, we’re beginning to understand — that music is a basic human activity, maybe even a basic human need. We understand that music exists in all human societies, and has existed in human society for tens of thousands of years. •We understand — or we’re beginning to understand — that music is a fundamental part of how our brains and our minds operate. We see music as an activity that is both necessary and joyful, a vital social bond, something that connects us to our history and projects us into our future.
I’d like us to see sex the same way. I’d like us to see sex as something that we couldn’t possibly get rid of, and wouldn’t want to get rid of even if we could. I’d like us to recognize that sex is one of the most fundamental ways that our minds are wired, one of the chief lenses through which we view the world . . . and not only recognize this fact, but accept it, and even celebrate it. I’d like us to see sex as one of the great joys, inspirations, consolations, forms of communication, forms of connection, and just pure forms of entertainment that the human race has. I’d like us to remember that sex is a link that connects us to the chain of human history: the way we got into this world, and — for many of us, anyway — one of the chief ways that part of us of will live on after we die.
And I’d like us to give it some gol-darned respect.
I understand that this analogy isn’t perfect. (No analogy is. That’s sort of the nature of analogies: they compare things that are different.) Most notably, sex has more potential than music to cause harm: from sexually transmitted infections to unwanted pregnancies, from jealous rages to broken hearts. Except for deafness, irritated neighbors, advertising jingles, and neo-Nazi death metal or the like, music just doesn’t have the same power to fuck people up. •And sex is a more primal desire than music: way more prominently positioned in our brains by evolution, and a whole lot older to boot. It’s probably always going to be more charged, more emotionally loaded, than music will ever be.
So it’s not a perfect analogy.
But it’s a start.
Greta Christina, copyright © 2009. Be sure to check out Greta’s blog.
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Now, don’t get me wrong — I’m all about gratuitous nudity and explicit sex. Few things make me happier. But there’s something to be said for the tease, and for subverting the expectations of a porn-jaded audience, and I bring you a few such enjoyable examples.
Consider the strange and amusing wonder of PG Porn from director James Gunn, which combines some of my favorite porn stars (like Belladonna and Sasha Grey and Roxy DeVille) and beloved actors (like Nathan Fillion and Alan Tudyk!) for short films that include all the qualities of porno . . . except for the sex. There’s bad acting, bad dialogue, and highly creative avoidance of the seemingly-inevitable sex.
Boob-happy tabloid Zoo has a great feature called “Strip, Please” (formerly called “Sex-Ray Specs”). The setup is pure genius: gorgeous models are photographed, fully glothed, doing some mundane task — ironing, gardening, getting ready for a night on the town — and are then photographed again, with the scene exactly the same, except they’re topless (and down to underwear otherwise). Enjoy, you nude housework fetishists! The series uses the power of art to charge everyday situations with erotic power! Also: yay, boobies!
What could be more wholesome than the Bible? (Which is, of course, a book full of war, slavery, massacre, genocide . . . but I’m getting distracted from my point.) Of course, there were still slammin’ hotties — to use the vernacular of our times — in the days of the Bible, and better yet, many of those Biblical women have been depicted on screen and elsewhere by hot modern ladies. Hence, the top 10 hottest babes of the Bible. “They liked to drink wine, many of them were into sexual immorality and they were topless all the time.” They make a good case!
How do wholesome people feel about porn? It stands to reason that people who oppose pornography wouldn’t look at it, let along pay money to see it . . . But a study released earlier this year indicates that conservatives love their porn. Turns out there’s not much difference in porn consumption in the various states of the USA . . . but that means red staters look at just as much porn as the heathens in the big coastal cities. And Utah, arguably the most conservative state we’ve got, was the leader, with about five and a half porno subscriptions per thousand broadband users. And that’s not counting the ones who watch the free stuff . . .
What’s so great about being wholesome, anyway?
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Tuesday, 16 June 2009
| 11:19 am
| Industry
Commercial porn, true to its nature, has become a clusterfuck the last few days. People both inside and outside the industry are scrambling to make their opinions known a reported case of HIV in an adult performer. It seems very important to everyone in the room that they be heard on this issue now.
Meanwhile, there’s been a perfect storm of misinformation, misunderstanding, and defensiveness. Hubris, hysteria and bullshit: All three are certified virulent.
Articles like this one show curious figures at best; independent producer Tony Comstock lays viciously in to the sex-positive community on this issue; mainstream producer Ernest Greene accuses the press of fucking things up royally.
That information is being fucked up royally by someone is a fact which is almost inarguable.
Just today (Tuesday), the LA times has published the thoughts of Darrin James, who was the epicenter of the 2004 outbreak. The Times is also responsible for that often-cited article mentioned above, stating that there were 16 “unpublicized” cases of HIV in the porn industry since the last outbreak — a number they seem to have gotten from LA County officials using some really wonky data.
For those of you who don’t know, producers of commercial straight porn in the U.S. generally require a negative HIV test. Most performers get their tests through the Adult Industry Medical Foundation. The Foundation routinely tests all or most performers in straight, above-board, commercial porn movies. In the straight industry, condoms are rarely used — but we’ll get to that. In the gay industry, HIV tests are not standard, condoms are more common, and “bareback” porn remains a very strong niche.
AIM sees to the straight industry; it does not “authorize” performers to work, but reports the results of their HIV tests to the industry through a database that reputable producers access before hiring someone. The foundation is headed by Dr. Sharon Mitchell, who holds a PhD from The Institute for the Advanced Study of Human Sexuality. She is not a physician.
AIM presents itself as an independent medical foundation, but in fact is BFFs with the porn industry and exists almost solely at its suffrage. In industry terms AIM is about as far from independent as a foundation can be; it is an adult industry institution. Which is not necessarily a bad thing, but you have to put these things in context.
The performer who tested positive through AIM is not being named, because AIM doesn’t do that. On June 4, the patient was tested at an AIM clinic because her previous test was then 36 days old. Industry producers accept HIV tests that are 10 to 30 days old, but somebody fudged on that. The fact that one producer fudged the dates shouldn’t necessarily tar the whole industry. If we are talking about a system that failed because it is not effective, that’s one thing — but if talking about a system that “failed” because someone didn’t follow the rules, that’s another thing entirely. These are rules that performers trust producers to follow; they should be sacrosanct. But they are not rules that are ever, in any way, “enforced.”
After her June 4 test, this unnamed woman performed in a scene June 5 and found out her test came back positive on June 6.
Some sources, however, reported that AIM received the test results on the 4th, which is impossible, or that AIM “authorized” the performer to work. The general public (and therefore porn performers) frequently misunderstand and/or disregard medical protocols, and here someone appears to have played it fast-and-loose with those protocols. Dr. Sharon Mitchell of AIM said the following in a statement published in AVN:
Since AIM does not authorize performers to work, but merely reports their current status to the industry, there is no way that the actress in question could believe that anyone at AIM told her she was cleared to work unless a negative written report had been received and the industry so notified. No such written report had been received before June 6th.
That seems to indicate that the performer and producers didn’t care about waiting for current HIV results, and probably didn’t take the risk seriously.
Regardless, additional rumors circulated that AIM had failed to “publicize” previous cases of HIV infection in the industry, which shows a fundamental misunderstanding about what AIM does or should do. Though Mitchell isn’t helping that much with explanations I, for one, don’t find all that clear. I’m not sure, for instance, what Mitchell is claiming she did or didn’t do here:
As to reports of other HIV cases not being disclosed, it is clear that most occurred under prior law which only required that the incident be reported and the postal zone address and a partial social security number of the person testing positively be disclosed. As to their being “unpublicized,” the AIM database, which is used by all production companies, lists actors and their current testing results. When an individual desires to go into the industry, he or she must initially be tested by AIM to go into the database. If they test positively, they do not go into the database and cannot work in the industry.
Mitchell appears to be addressing an issue with their compliance with reporting requirements to the LA County Health Department. But such a statement is guaranteed to get necessarily misconstrued in the press and by the general public — porn fans and performers — who are, no doubt, confused.
The short version: AIM publishes performer HIV test results to a database, accessible by subscribers (porn producers). They notify the performers’ partners within the industry. They also notify the County Health Department. They do not release the performer’s name to the press. They do not “publicize” an outbreak.
However, also to be considered are the comments by Dr. Peter Kerndt, an MD/MPh with the LA County Public Health Department. New HIV infection, as Mitchell implies in the above statement, must be reported to the Public Health Department within 7 days. Kerndt claims AIM didn’t report the case promptly because on the Friday the 12th, six calendar days after the positive result, it still hadn’t been reported.. He was quoted in a Saturday XBiz Article as saying that AIM was using this 7-day requirement as a stalling tactic, presumably to protect the industry. Said Kerndt:
AIM is not providing us with information sufficient to confirm what they are reporting . . . we are extremely concerned with the information that is coming in, but we are not surprised, since this industry has been out of compliance with Cal/OSHA requirements for barrier protection . . . What’s disturbing about this is that they’re using the regulation to withhold the information and delay an investigation of a serious health matter . . . They’re saying that this is not a major event. I think if they were to ask the performer, it’s a devastating, major, life-altering event for that individual. It’s inexcusable that it would occur in the workplace.
There is no indication at press time that the performer was infected on a set. She may have been infected outside of the industry, though she certainly exposed someone on the 5th, which unquestionably makes it an industry matter, and one for Cal/OSHA. AVN doesn’t appear to have reported yet, now well past the 7 day mark, whether LA County received the disclosures he was expecting from AIM.
But then again, in the same article, Kerndt manages to refer to “rectal sex,” which makes him sound like he has no fucking idea what he’s talking about. That’s late in the article, though, when Kerndt’s rabid recriminations have already set the tone for his comments.
If you’re expecting sex-positivity from the LA County Public Health Department, of course, you should look elsewhere, since it’s their job to manage contagion, not to pat your head and tell you it’s OK to do dirty things and sex is really all about love, intimacy, expression and sex-positive feminism. But is the LA County Public Health Department next going to tell me to avoid unprotected “rectal sex”? Are they going to continue to refer to the woman who tested HIV positive with the Orwellian and profoundly dehumanizing “Patient Zero?”
XBiz’s article from Friday says in the second paragraph that “Results of the June 4 test were received on June 6, but she performed in a scene on June 5, before the test results were back.” — but then in the second-to-last paragraph, “AIM said that people who tested positive through its facility never performed in the adult industry, which is why their positive tests were not publicized.”
Which is still more confusing. My query to Tod Hunter at XBiz clears this right up — AIM says on its website that people who do not receive a negative test do not work in the industry. But “Patient Zero” did. She broke the rules, and so did the producers — unless “Patient Zero” somehow forged her documents, which I find unlikely.
Again, if the system is broken because people don’t follow the rules, that’s different than the system being broken because its stated procedures are ineffective.
Maybe the system is broken. 100% safe sex 100% of the time was the public health message in the gay community in the early ’90s. 100% safe sex 100% of the time is just about guaranteed to protect you from HIV — but not everyone stuck to it. People slip. But producers who don’t wait for current AIM test results before letting talent work are not the same as guys who get turned on, have unsafe sex and think “Oh, shit.” Producers are professionals, or are supposed to be.
But then, AIM doesn’t make things any better by posting on their site:
There are no positive tests from exposures thus far, and AIM does not expect any.
I have a vague sense of what they mean, but I shouldn’t have to guess — and neither should anyone else. They mean there is a positive test from “exposures,” but no subsequent positive tests from exposures to “Patient Zero” on porn sets. But a statement that “there are no positive tests from exposures” requires an understanding of context that is explosively dangerous.
Similarly, AVN, surely without meaning to, is fueling the hysteria. It does so right alongside some relatively reasonable debunking, which has the self-stated goal of correcting misreported facts and rumors So why then title an article “AIDS Healthcare Foundation Wants Control Of Your Penis,” in a reactionary headline worthy of the “Libertarian” Fox News.
The article refers, of course, to the protest by the AIDS Healthcare Foundation outside Hustler Hollywood this past Monday night, in which the Foundation asked Larry Flynt, as an industry leader, to take a stand and make Hustler’s productions condom-only. In the original article, AVN claimed that the goal of this protest is not to get Hustler, or any other commercial producer, to go condom-only; it’s to get the California Legislature to require condoms in porn. But according to AVN’s article after-the-fact, And according to AVN, the AIDS Healthcare Foundation never showed up. AVN quoted Hustler’s Theresa Flynt as saying that the protesters were recruited by Lifestyles brand condoms, taking revenge on Hustler Hollywood for not stocking their brand.
I haven’t the foggiest fucking idea if she was kidding or not. It sounds like a joke, but then, a lot of things do lately.
Thomas Roche blogs at Thomasroche.com.
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The good people at excellent sex blog Fleshbot recently put up a nice little gallery of tart cards, the hooker advertisements you find in London phone booths. (There’s a whole book of them you can buy, too.) They’re a lot more charming than ads on Craigslist or the ads in the back of the free weekly paper, you know?
These rather elemental illustrations of the phrase “sex sells” — in this case, sex sells sex — reminded me that I had some nice advertising links piling up, so here are a few attempts to use the body in all its splendor to make you buy stuff or do things:
The Australian booze purveyor Skinny Blonde Beer has a boob-tastic website, which is fitting, considering their advertising gimmick. Their bottle label features a buxom blonde in a bikini, but as the beer warms up, her bikini disappears, leaving her topless. (Yes, just like those old novelty pens where the clothes on the ladies disappear.) There’s a “six pack” of real women on the website who magically disrobe if you click on a thermometer to raise the temperature. Nice to see the mystic and eternal association between beer and breasts in advertising continue.
While we’re on the subject of beverages, how about a tall cold can of pussy? That’s Pussy Natural Energy drink, so called because the name “shocks and demands attention.” Leaving aside the question of whether the word “pussy” is really that shocking to anyone in their target demographic, if the naming ploy is successful, imagine the names we could see on the sides of cans in the future — Cunt Cola, Anus Ale, Taint Ice Tea . . . the mind teems with possibilities. (I gotta say, though: it’s no Tentacle Grape. Clever beats merely vulgar every time.)
Finally, a little public shaming using larger-than-life body parts. This Chinese ad campaign, featuring giant images of ass cheeks with garbage and sewer pipes emerging from their sensitive areas, is meant to discourage people from dumping sewage into waterways, apparently a large problem over there. It’s a rather more socially aware reason for oversized nudity than, say, a five-story high billboard orgy meant to sell jeans. Not that I have anything against scantily-clad giants.
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Back in February, Amazon removed from its virtual shelves a Japanese video game called RapeLay. In RapeLay, according to an AVN story:
. . .the player stalks and rapes women. If one of the rape victims becomes pregnant, the player must force her to have a abortion. In one scenario, the player takes on the role of a criminal who rapes a mother and her two teenage daughters.
Yeah, I’m kinda shocked myself, and I’m not all that easy to shock, or at least it kind of seems like I shouldn’t be.
The Wikipedia page also mentions some other choice tidbits, like the fact that the point-of-view character summons a gust of wind to lift the female characters’ skirts on a subway platform — by saying a prayer. Oh, and the POV character for part of the game, Kimura, is a “chikan” — a subway groper, for which he is arrested at the beginning of the game, setting the stage for later revenge scenarios where he evens the score for his arrest with the family of his accusers. He can do this because Kimura’s father is an important and powerful politician. Yow!! God and the government’s on the rapist’s side!
The game is published by Yokohama-based company Illusion, which also publishes such games as Battle Raper, Artificial Girl, and Sexy Beach, according to the article in The Register. The company’s defense was that it had “done nothing wrong,” and that if Amazon didn’t like it then, well, tough. The game, said Illusion, was not intended for the US market and conformed to those Japanese standards.
It’s true that while Amazon banning the game is significant in the West, as far as Japanese games go, the game is within what has been done in Japanese games — but definitely the far edge of it. In short, there’s no law banning such games. RapeLay is far from the only example of a Japanese rape game, and every once in a while such games make their way to US news sources and create outrage.
This past week, AVN reported that RapeLay was “banned” in an emergency meeting by the Japanese Ethics Organization of Computer Software. Since games site Kotaku observed a few weeks ago that the Tokyo Broadcasting System had erroneously edited an interview to imply that the EOCS had already “banned” the game, WTF is going on? Are rape games banned in Japan or not? Nobody seems to know. AVN’s story claims the group said it would ban any material that “deviates extremely from social norms” and all “sexual torture software,” but also mentioned that they “will” draw up guidelines for video games that restrict sexual violence.
The truth is that the EOCS doesn’t have the power to “ban” anything. It is a non-governmental business organization. In fact, the relative ineffectuality of this organization is highlighted in the way it was formed. In 1991, a junior high school student in Japan stole a copy of Saori: The House of Beautiful Girls. This game shows a non-rape side of Japanese perversion, but still manages to be pretty extreme. With its themes of lesbian incest in a Shinto shrine, teacher-student sex in a classroom, and more (including a preponderance of incest scenarios), Saori outraged the populace and led to the formation of the EOCS.
Nowadays, the organization claims that 90 percent of the games in Japan carry its rating stickers. But even that claim appears to be largely unsupportable in Western sources. And even if it’s true, do you have any freakin’ idea how many video games are sold in Japan? That leaves a lot of games sold that haven’t been anointed by the EOCS.
This is, of course, an attempt for the industry in Japan to self-regulate, in response to the claims of the Japanese government that video games cause sex crimes.
Sound familiar? If you follow the video game industry you might remember the California legislation from 2005 penned by Democrat Leeland Yee and signed by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. It sought to ban sales to minors of any video game deemed violent, with the rationale, according to the Register article, that:
Exposing minors to depictions of violence in video games, including sexual and heinous violence, makes those minors more likely to experience feelings of aggression, to experience a reduction of activity in the frontal lobes of the brain, and to exhibit violent antisocial or aggressive behavior.
The legislation also claims that kids who don’t become more inclined to commit violence as a result of video games still experience psychological harm. I think someone said the same thing about comic books once upon a time. Is it true? Fuck if I know. I will, however, testify to the psychological harm caused by video games. Anyone who’s ever spent eight hours playing Doom while consuming nothing but Jolt Cola and Ho-Ho’s will back me up on this one.
The California law never took effect because of a pending federal appeal, and was was just rejected by the 9th Court of Appeals as being unconstitutional.
In the U.S., rape games are quite simply not considered OK, so it’s not usually an issue, but remember the Hot Coffee Incident?
Rape games in the US exist primarily as an underground — built largely out of games imported from Japan. They also exist in their own way on Fetlife, arranged not by malleable teens but by 40 and 50somethings of the “Meet my wife at the truck stop on I-5, she’ll be the one wearing pigtails and a schoolgirl outfit” variety.
Any accusations North Americans make that Japanese people are “weird” always feel rather spurious and glib to me. I do, however, confess to being stunned at the content of RapeLay.
Ultimately, in Japan as in the US, nothing has changed and nothing is likely to change. But the weird postscript is that Kotaku’s article mentions that:
[Erotic] game maker Syrup Soft is delaying its upcoming game Gang raped by the entire village—girls covered in milky liquid~ to re-moniker it The trap set by the entire village ~bodies covered in milky liquid~.
Huh? What? Fuck if I know. Random tildes in a video game title? Must be a Japanese thing. I’ll never understand it.
Thomas Roche blogs about sex and science fiction at ThomasRoche.com.
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Friday, 5 June 2009
| 12:00 am
| Culture
Why is New Age spirituality so prevalent in the sex- positive community?
A few weeks ago, I wrote a piece on this blog about my skeptical, materialist, atheist, entire non- spiritual view of sexual transcendence, and why you don’t need to see sex as metaphysical to see it as magnificent and meaningful.
I deliberately didn’t make the piece critical of spirituality and religion. Partly, that simply wasn’t the point of the piece: the point wasn’t to tear down the spiritual view of sex, but to offer an alternative to it. And partly, I’ll admit, it was because many of my friends and allies in the sex community have spiritual beliefs about sex, in some cases deeply held spiritual beliefs, and I was gun-shy about alienating them.
But I recently gave an interview to Greg Fish of the Weird Things blog, who read the piece and wanted to talk with me about it. And what Greg mostly wanted to know was the very question I’d been deliberately avoiding. He wanted to know why, in my opinion, so many people in the sex- positive community are so heavily invested in associating sex with spirituality and religion.
This is an attempt to answer that question.
•
I want to say something at the outset: This is pretty much speculation. Since I’m writing this piece from a skeptical point of view, I feel honor-bound to make that clear. It’s reasonably well-informed speculation; but it’s not based on double-blind, peer-reviewed research or anything. It’s just my opinion, based on my own observation and reading and thinking on the subject.
That being said:
Why is there so much New Age spirituality in the sex-positive community? I think there are three basic things going on.
The first is the extremely prevalent, deeply- rooted idea in our culture that being spiritual means being good and virtuous, and that the spiritual world is the important world, the most real world.
One of the central tropes of religion is that being a religious person makes you a good person, pretty much by definition. God is good, supposedly, so the closer you are to God, the better a person you are. And related to this is the notion that being a spiritual person means being connected with the most real, and most important, part of life and existence. The material world is hollow, according to this trope; a mere shell for the creamy metaphysical goodness that lies within. Focusing on the material world makes you shallow at best; focusing on the spiritual makes you deep.
Now, even when people reject conventional religion, these ideas can still be very pervasive. And if people have been brought up with any sort of religious teachings (which most people have), the ideas are learned from a very early age: they’re not necessarily conscious, but they’re deeply rooted nevertheless. And even people who aren’t brought up in religion usually still have this idea drilled into them by their surrounding culture.
So when people embrace sex as good and important, it seems natural to frame it as a spiritual experience. If you’ve absorbed the idea that the spiritual world is both the most good and the most real world there is, then once you reject the conventional view of sex as trivial and wicked — once you start reframing sex as valuable and beautiful and a central part of human life — it seems natural to see sex in spiritual terms. If the spiritual world is the most virtuous and precious part of the world, then seeing sex as a spiritual experience is a way of distancing it from the smear of being pointless, selfish, guttural, and evil, and repositioning it as honorable and worthwhile.
And so instead of saying, “Religion is wrong about sex being bad, therefore I’m going to reject religion,” many people say, “Religion is wrong about sex being bad, therefore I’m going to find — or make up — a new religion.”
Second: The sex-positive community tends overwhelmingly to be a progressive community: one that rejects, or at least questions, the mainstream. And unfortunately, a lot of progressive people see science as “the man” — part of the mainstream establishment.
So they throw the baby out with the bathwater. In rejecting the things that are genuinely troubling about mainstream institutions, they also reject science. Including the scientific principles that human judgment is fallible and needs to be rigorously tested and counter- checked, and that claims about the world should be backed up with solid evidence, and that your own personal intuition isn’t by itself enough reason to believe something about the world.
Principles that tend to put the kibosh on spiritual beliefs.
I’m not saying that science and spiritual belief are inherently incompatible. •But it does seem to be the case that a greater degree of familiarity with science — not just with scientific knowledge, but with how the scientific method works, and what its history is, and the degree to which it’s radically changed our understanding of the world — tends to make people more skeptical about religion and spirituality. So when they reject science as just another oppressive mainstream institution designed to deaden the human spirit, people in the sex positive community become more likely to embrace spirituality, almost by default.
Finally:
I think a big part of this phenomenon has to do with the nature of sex itself.
When it’s good, the experience of sex can feel very much like what people describe as a spiritual experience. It can take you out of your body; change your experience of time; give you an almost telepathic connection with another person; make you feel ecstatically transported out of ordinary physical experience; etc., etc. etc.
And again, even if you reject conventional religion, the deeply- rooted reflex in our culture is to see these kinds of experiences as metaphysical. Our culture doesn’t have a widely held framework for understanding and processing these experiences, other than a spiritual or religious one. The idea that the brain and the body, by themselves, can produce these altered states of consciousness — that’s not very prevalent, or very well- understood.
So when people start to have really good sex — the time- bending, body- transcending, ecstatically transporting kind of sex that seems like a religious experience — and when they start to take those experiences seriously and see them as both valuable and important . . . again, the reflex is to put those experiences into a spiritual framework. That’s the main framework we have in our culture for this kind of experience . . . and it’s not surprising that even people who whole- heartedly reject conventional religion as hateful and fearful of sexuality would still put transcendently ecstatic sexual experiences into a larger spiritual outlook.
Which is exactly why I wrote A Skeptic’s View of Sexual Transcendence: to offer an alternative framework, a way of experiencing and understanding sex and sexual transcendence that doesn’t rely on spiritual belief, one that is entirely rooted in the physical world.
Now, I can already hear some critics gearing up to ask, “Why do you care?” Why do I care what other people believe? Why do I feel compelled to poke holes in those beliefs, try to persuade people that they’re mistaken and unnecessary? Aren’t I being just as intolerant and evangelical as the sex-hating hard-core religious fanatics I oppose so strongly?
I don’t really have the space here to get into that discussion, in any detail that would do it justice. And in any case, a sex blog isn’t the right venue for it. If you are interested in why I think spiritual belief is mistaken, you can see my arguments (among other places) here, and here, and here and here and here. If you’re interested in why I think it’s harmful, you can look here, and here, and here and here and here (again, among many other places). And if you want to know why I care what other people believe, you can see my explanations here, and here, and here. Again, among many other places.
But if you want to know those arguments in a nutshell: I think spiritual belief is mistaken. I think that, on the whole, it does more harm than good. And I don’t see any reason why we shouldn’t discuss it and debate it and criticize it, just like we do with any other hypothesis about how the world works and why it is the way it is. The fact that I see spirituality as both mistaken and harmful is exactly the reason that I care.
And all of that is every bit as true in the sex-positive community as it is anywhere else.
So I plan to keep looking at where these spiritual beliefs about sex come from. I plan to keep critiquing them. And I plan to keep offering alternatives to them, whenever I can.
(Some of the ideas for this piece originated in my interview with Weird Things.)
Greta Christina, copyright © 2009. Be sure to check out Greta’s blog.
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In the course of my usual weekly wanderings through the various sex blogs, I came across a variety of kink I’d never encountered before — at least, never under a formal name: Clothed Female, Naked Male (or CFNM, as the internet prefers to abbreviate it). The concept isn’t new, even expressed this way; the Wikipedia entry for CFNM was created back in 2006. It’s just one of those little niches that escaped my notice until now, but it’s never too late to expand one’s horizons . . .
The concept is sort of fem-domish, with women dressed (and thus in power) while the men in the scenario are nude, or are forced to undress. There’s an element of humiliation in some cases, obviously. The top site of the bunch according to the magic of Google, is CNFM.net, “Clothed Female Nude Male Adventures”, which has some photosets enacting various scenarios, from naked swim meets to secret society initiations to plain old blackmail situations. (Attractive women never blackmail me for sex. Probably because I’m too virtuous and they can’t find any good material to use against me.) It’s a pay site, but there are enough sample images to give you the gist, and maybe provide some ideas for activities at the next company picnic . . .
Fans of forced male undressing might enjoy the photographs of David Blázquez, which feature naked guys used as furniture, like the human table photo above (though personally I’m partial to the living bookshelf!). The text of the website is in Spanish, so I can’t comment on his artistic intentions, but the results are certainly striking.
Adidas footwear — of all things — is happily complicit in males undressing at your command. Their website currently features a “Jersey Swap” . . . game? promotion? masturbation aid? . . . where you can choose any two of five athletes to swap shirts with one another. You’re rewarded with a video of them approaching one another and stripping off their jerseys. You can even watch a slow-motion replay, which makes it clear someone working on this campaign knew what they were up to.
And while it doesn’t involve compulsory nudity — except insofar as a photographer told some model to take his clothes off — I should also link to these photographs of a buff guy modeling Adidas shoes . . . and nothing else. If that doesn’t make you want to buy athletic shoes, nothing will.
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