There’s this thing that I do sexually. It’s kind of funny, but it’s also kind of irritating, and at times it drives me nuts. So I’m wondering if anyone else does it . . . and if so, how they deal with it.
It’s this:
I seem to be incapable of having sex fantasies that are implausible.
I’m not talking about supernatural or sci-fi sex fantasies and my general disinterest therein. I’m talking about perfectly ordinary, non-fantastical, physically possible sex fantasies . . . in which people simply don’t act the way they would in real life.
Examples. If I’m trying to have a fantasy about having sex with a famous person, I first have to come up with a backstory: not only about how we met, but about why, among all the people in the world who are probably throwing themselves at this person, they would pick me. (That’s probably why my “famous person” fantasies tend to be about only moderately famous people rather than global superstars. Supporting actors on cult TV shows; obscure alternative musicians; big fish in small ponds. Alyson Hannigan, yes. Madonna, no.)
If I’m trying to have a fantasy about someone I know, and in real life that someone is in a monogamous relationship, I first have to come up with an excuse for why it’s ethically okay. The couple is experimenting with non-monogamy, or the other partner is watching, or they’ve given their blessing as a one-time birthday dispensation, or something.
If I’m trying to have a fantasy about having kinky sex in the bathroom of a particular cafe, I first have to come up with some explanation for why the other cafe patrons aren’t getting irritated at us for hogging the bathroom.
That’s actually the one that’s been bugging me lately, the one that inspired me to write this piece. There’s a lovely new kink-themed cafe in San Francisco, Wicked Grounds, with a lovely bathroom very suitable for a kinky tryst. So I was having a fantasy about meeting someone at the cafe to negotiate a scene, and spontaneously deciding to go do it right then and there in the bathroom. But because this bathroom is the only one in the cafe, and having sex there for more than five minutes would definitely constitute hogging it, the fantasy got totally bogged down in this stupid detail. I finally had to switch it to a fantasy where we ask a cafe worker if we can play in their storage room. (And she says yes, of course . . . but only if she can watch. Which is a perfectly wonderful fantasy. But it’s not the same as the fantasy about getting spanked in the cafe bathroom. I still have not successfully had the fantasy about getting spanked in the cafe bathroom.)
And even when I do have supernatural sex fantasies — as with my surprisingly persistent Snape fantasies — I still have a need for something resembling plausibility. I don’t much care that magic isn’t real; I don’t even care that my fantasies are wildly inconsistent with the canonical storyline. But I do care if my fantasies aren’t internally consistent: either with the core personality of the character in the books, or with themselves. As the religious apologist Karen Armstrong might say, I don’t need the story to be literally true . . . but I need it to be psychologically true.
And if it’s not psychologically true? If I can’t convince myself that my friend’s partner would really give their blessing to our one-time birthday tryst? If I can’t convince myself that Alyson Hannigan would really stumble across my blog, become a fan, introduce herself at a reading, and ask me to be the customer in her long-time prostitute fantasy? If I can’t convince myself that nobody in the Wicked Grounds cafe is going to need the bathroom for the entire forty-five minutes that my date and I are hogging it?
Then I can’t have the fantasy.
Really.
I have to switch gears. I have to find a plausible twist on this one, or else switch to a different fantasy entirely. Otherwise, I’ll spend my entire whack-off session in my head instead of my clit: tinkering with my story, finding holes in it, editing it and re-editing it, and eventually either abandoning it or having a puny, detached, not terribly satisfying orgasm.
I’m even like this in my sex dreams. More than once, I’ve had dreams in which I almost have sex with someone I shouldn’t . . . but we decide it’s a bad idea, and don’t. (And then I wake up, totally frustrated with myself, going, “It was a dream! Nobody would have gotten hurt! I could have done it, and enjoyed it, and not had any reason to feel guilty!”)
Now, the plus side of this ridiculous habit is that, IMO, it’s one of the main reasons I write good porn. (Assuming you agree that my porn is good.) My bone-deep reflex to come up with plausible sex fantasies, sex fantasies with rich, complex characters and believable backstories . . . this carries over to the fantasies I decide are interesting enough to flesh out in print.
But I still have to wonder:
What the fuck?
They’re fantasies, for fuck’s sake. The whole point of fantasies is that they’re not real, and don’t have to be. The whole point of fantasies is that they’re for my enjoyment, in the entirely consensual privacy of my own head. That’s the whole point of having a fantasy about getting spanked in the cafe bathroom, instead of actually doing something. And if I enjoy thinking about getting spanked in the cafe bathroom, then I should be able to enjoy thinking about getting spanked in the cafe bathroom . . . without worrying about whether actually getting spanked in the cafe bathroom would be an unacceptable breach of cafe etiquette.
But that’s just the point. Fantasies are for my enjoyment . . . and if they’re not plausible, I don’t enjoy them. If they’re not plausible, I can’t get lost in them. I can’t get immersed in them to the point where they feel real. With a good fantasy, once I’ve built the foundation, once I’ve sketched out the characters and the situation and the backstory, I can forget about it, and just play the images in my head. And the richer and more real the characters/ situation/ backstory are, the more deeply and thoroughly I can savor those images. If there’s no plausibility, that immersion just doesn’t happen.
In this episode, Diana Cage, sex writer, radio personality, and the founder of our podcast returns to chat with Christophe about life, sex, her forthcoming book, and porn and its discontents.
Are We Having Sex Now . . . And Why Should We Care? by Greta Christina
Does (X) count as having sex?
And does it matter?
I recently read a letter to Dan Savage’s “Savage Love” sex advice column recently, on the topic of whether a particular activity counted as “having sex with someone” or not. Because of my slightly- famous Are We Having Sex Now or What? piece, I always feel a little proprietary when this topic comes up, and I often feel called upon to gas on about it a bit.
In this particular case, a woman had, in the past, had an encounter with a man in which he undressed her and held a vibrator against her until she came . . . at which point she stopped the action, and it went no further. This woman doesn’t define what she did with this guy as sex (mostly because he never undressed or took his cock out); her current partner does; they were now asking Dan Savage to act as umpire and settle the question with a definitive answer.
Now, I don’t really agree with Savage’s “Of course that counted as sex” reply. It’s true that, for me personally, if I’d done what this letter writer did, I’d call it sex without hesitation. But I also think — as I’ve written before, in Are We Having Sex Now or What? and elsewhere — that “sex” is a slippery and difficult concept to define. Among other things, there are plenty of activities that many people will adamantly define as “having sex,” and that many other people adamantly won’t . . . and that still other people will respond to by saying, “Hm, that’s an interesting gray area.” There are plenty of specific activities that most people would firmly define as “sex” in some contexts, but not in others. (Having someone stick their fingers in your vagina or anus is a fine example. If your lover does it to make you come, then that’s sex; if your doctor does it to palpate your cervix or your prostate, not so much.)
And people’s definitions change with time and experience. Today, I’d definitely say that being naked while someone makes me come with a vibrator counts as “sex” . . . but I might not have when I was younger and less experienced. And I do think a case can be made for “If you thought it counted at the time you did it, then it counted; if you thought it didn’t, then it didn’t.”
So largely because defining “sex” is so difficult, and so slippery, and so personal, I definitely think that nobody has the right to define it for anyone else. Unless they’ve been asked to do so. Which, to be fair, Savage was. But even then . . . well, if someone had asked me this question, I’d be very clear right upfront with my “Sex is hard to define and you have the right to define it for yourself” bet-hedging, before barging in with my “Yes, according to my personal definitions, you definitely had sex” opinion.
But I do think Savage was moving in the right direction here.
And that right direction was his “What would you think if someone else did this sex act?” response.
Savage didn’t just reply, “Yes, that was sex.” He replied, “Imagine if someone else engaged in this activity. Imagine if, say, your boyfriend engaged in this activity. Would you call it sex then? Would your ‘He didn’t take his clothes off or his cock out, so it wasn’t sex’ definition hold up then?”
And that, I think, points to an important principle in this fuzzy topic.
That principle being:
“However you define sex — whatever you think of as Definitely Sex, Definitely Not Sex, and Gray Area — it’s important to be consistent. It’s important to apply those definitions the same way to yourself as you do to other people. And it’s important to not be completely self-serving in your definitions of sex: to not have those definitions be solely based on convenience, on what allows you to think of yourself, and other people, the way you want to.”
But why?
Why is the Consistency Principle important?
If it gives someone comfort and lets them feel good about themselves to define sex in whatever self-serving way they choose, what difference does it make?
Well, anyone who’s read my writing about atheism knows that I am almost never going to come down in favor of, “Tell yourself whatever pretty story you like, who cares if it’s consistent with itself or with reality.” But in this case, because we’re talking about subjective questions of “How does each person define this thing for themselves?” (as opposed to objective questions of “Does this thing actually exist in the real, observable world?”), the “Why does it matter?” question becomes a little less obvious. And I have to think it through a little more thoroughly.
For starters, the Consistency Principle matters for pragmatic reasons. Sexual definitions affect sexual ethics. To take the most obvious example: If you have an agreement to not have sex outside your relationship, and you conveniently decide that “having sex” doesn’t include getting blowjobs and sticking a cigar in someone’s pussy . . . well, that’s a pretty serious ethical problem. (Especially if you then use those convenient definitions as an excuse for lying under oath.) I’ve definitely taken advantage of these self-serving definitions of sex: the one time I fooled around on my terminally unfaithful boyfriend David without his knowledge, I convinced myself that I was still the faithful, martyred, hard- done- by girlfriend . . . because what I’d done with that other guy wasn’t “going all the way,” and didn’t count as sex. Yeah, I know. Weak. Fail.
And it matters for other pragmatic reasons as well. If you’ve convinced yourself that oral and anal sex aren’t “real” sex, for instance, then you may not protect yourself from sexually transmitted infections when you’re having this purported non-sex. How we define sex affects how we behave sexually — and for obvious reasons, that matters.
But I think the Consistency Principle is important for less obvious reasons as well. And I think those reasons, while more subtle, may be just as important in the long run.
I think the Consistency Principle is important because integrity is always important. Integrity enables us to be better people, and to live with ourselves more easily. Integrity enables us to make clear choices, and to live with them. Integrity lets us face complicated decisions and conflicting values, with some degree of confidence that we’re making the right choices . . . or at least, that we’re making them for the right reasons.
And that’s just as true for sex as it is for anything else. When we know that, however we’re defining sex, we’re defining it consistently for both ourselves and for others, and are defining it that way for solid, non- self- serving reasons . . . it lets us live with our sexual selves more comfortably. It lets us know that our assessments of our sex lives and our sexual history — and of the sex lives and histories of other people — are based on reality, not rationalization. It lets us make our sexual decisions with some degree of confidence that we’re not lying to ourselves about what we’re doing.
All of which, of course, are valuable goals in themselves. And all of which also bring us back around to pragmatism and ethics. If we’re being honest with ourselves, we’re more likely to be honest with other people.
Sure, when I think back on my relationship with David, it’d be easier to think of myself as the faithful martyred girlfriend, and it’s a little hard to remember that I did, in fact, cheat on him that one time. But it was harder to always be dodging away from that memory, to always be juggling my rationalizations, in a slippery attempt to cast myself in the role of the Perfect Patient Girlfriend Who Got Shafted. In the long run, I have more fun with sex, and am more relaxed and comfortable with sex, and make better decisions about sex, when I’m honest with myself about what I think sex really is.
I’ve been thinking about the shaving of public hair.
More specifically: I’ve been thinking about a social trend I keep hearing about. If what I’m hearing is correct (and it may not be — it’s not like I’ve done a rigorous, statistically representative, peer-reviewed study on the subject), then shaving and/or trimming pubic hair has become fairly standard among the new generation of sexually active adults. (At least in the U.S. and Europe.) It’s become understood, apparently, that pretty much everyone shaves or at least trims their pubic hair, as just a normal part of modern civilized grooming procedures.
And I have very mixed feelings about this.
First, let me spell this out up front: I have absolutely no issues with the shaving of pubic hair itself. I have some personal aesthetic and erotic opinions about it; but as a socio- politico- sexual phenomenon, participated in or not by other people who I’m not having sex with, I have no opinion about it whatsoever. I consider it an entirely private, none- of- my- business decision. (And even my personal aesthetic and erotic opinions about it are pretty non-committal, amounting to, “Yeah, shaved or trimmed is nice, but it’s not that big a deal, it’s really fine either way.”)
My mixed feelings aren’t about shaving itself. They’re about the degree to which shaving has become de rigueur.
(If indeed that’s true. See disclaimer above.)
My initial reaction is to be against it. I don’t like the idea of any specific form of sexual expression being de rigueur. I think that sex is too personal, and too important, for it to be controlled by the whims of fashion. I don’t like the idea of people shaving their pubic hair just because all the cool kids are doing it . . . any more than I like the idea of people doing bondage, or having three-ways, or saving their virginity for marriage, just because all the cool kids are doing it. Sex is too special for that — and people’s sexualities are too unique, and too idiosyncratic, for that.
And I have issues with what I strongly suspect is the source of this trend: namely, mainstream commercial porn. I hate the idea of porn being the trendsetter, the sexual yardstick by which our sexual activity is measured. The sex in mainstream commercial porn is highly exaggerated; it’s choreographed primarily to look good on camera, not to feel good for the participants; it focuses largely on male pleasure at the expense of female pleasure; and it’s standardized to an almost ritualistic degree that would be laughable if it weren’t so sad. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: Porn is not sex education. It scares and saddens me to think of an entire generation of sexually active adults getting their ideas about what is and isn’t normal/ acceptable/ desirable in sex from porn.
So. All that bugs me.
But. Yet. On the other hand.
I will also say this:
I like the casualness that the standardness of pubic shaving reveals. I like how it treats genitals as just another body part, like armpits or legs or faces — just another body part that people shave or trim to make themselves more sexually appealing. I think this shows a healthy, relaxed attitude towards sex: an attitude that treats one’s genitals as an integral part of one’s body, and sex as an integral part of one’s life.
And I like the way it treats sex as important and valuable, worth preparing for ahead of time. As I’ve written before: The idea that sex always has to be completely spontaneous in order to be truly valuable, and that preparing or planning for sex makes it antiseptic and lifeless . . . it’s one of the most pernicious sexual myths we have. If the new generation of sexually active adults is showing the value they place on sex, and their willingness to take responsibility for it, by grooming their genitals for sex ahead of time — not just for special occasions, but as a matter of everyday practice — then maybe that’s not such a bad thing.
I’m not wild about the idea of it becoming de rigueur. But then, I’m not wild about the fact that women have to shave our legs and armpits if we don’t want to be seen as crunchy granola hippies or bomb-throwing radicals. Or that men have to cut their hair and shave or at least trim their beards if they don’t want to be seen as . . . well, as crunchy granola hippies or bomb-throwing radicals.
And I’ve nevertheless come to terms with it. I get that dress and grooming are languages, symbols we use to signal our segment of society and to express our attitudes towards it. And I get that that this language shifts over time, in much the same way that regular language shifts over time. If the meaning of pubic shaving is changing — socially and erotically — from “weird kinky fetish” to “porn star slutty” to “standard for sexually active young cosmopolitan adults” . . . well, it’s not that much weirder than the way the meaning of makeup changed in the last century or so, from “prostitute” to “daring and fashionable” to “respectable and conventional.”
So I’m not wild about the idea of pubic shaving becoming de rigueur. So what. I wasn’t wild about bell-bottoms coming back into style, either. If pubic shaving is becoming a standard part of the sexual language — and if what’s being said in that language is, “Sex is a normal and integral part of our lives, and it’s a valuable part that’s worth taking some time to prepare for” — I think I can live with that.
You’ve almost certainly heard this story already. Michael Schwartz, chief of staff to Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Oklahoma), recently told an audience at the conservative Values Voters Summit that “all pornography is homosexual pornography because all pornography turns your sexual drive inwards.” And the media, including the blogosphere, went Foom, with scornful, unrestrained, finger- pointing hilarity. If it were physically possible for the media to piss itself laughing, it would have.
It’s been an easy story to make fun of. (Fun, too!) And I absolutely think it’s a story that’s worth making fun of. I plan to make fun of it here myself. But a lot of the fun-making about this story has, I think, missed one of its most interesting angles.
Granted, there are an awful lot of ways to go with this story. You can go with the “Are you fucking kidding me?” angle, a.k.a. the “This is so stupid it’s laughable” angle, a.k.a. the “If what Schwartz says were true, our species would have turned gay and died out generations ago” angle. You can go with the “Yippee, let’s instill homophobia and sex-phobia in our kids all at once, using the one to whip up the other” angle. You can even go with the “What are you going to do when your kids figure out you’re lying to them? What will that do to your family values?” angle.
All of which is intriguing, and all of which has informed my thinking on this topic. But it’s not what I’m finding truly fascinating.
What I’m finding truly fascinating is the profound futility, to the point of delusion, of the ultimate purpose behind Schwartz’s bizarre connection between straight porn and homosexuality.
Schwartz’s ultimate point wasn’t “Straight porn makes you gay.” I’m not even sure he believes that himself. (In fact, he backpedaled from it just a few sentences later in his speech, saying, “If it [porn] doesn’t turn you homosexual, it at least renders you less capable of loving your wife.”) His ultimate point wasn’t that. His ultimate point was, “Teaching ten- year- old boys that straight porn makes them gay is a great way to keep them away from porn.” His point was that ten- and eleven- year- old boys are profoundly grossed-out by homosexuality . . . and therefore, telling them that porn will make them gay is a nifty way to make them not want porn.
To me, that’s the money quote. Not the one about how all porn is really gay porn. To me, the money quote is, quote: “If you tell an 11-year-old boy about that, do you think he’s going to want to go out and get a copy of Playboy? I’m pretty sure he’ll lose interest. That’s the last thing he wants.”
So here’s what I want to know.
Does Michael Schwartz truly believe that you can keep pre- and early- pubescent straight boys from being interested in pictures of naked women, just by telling them it’ll make them gay?
Does Michael Schwartz know any pre- and early- pubescent boys?
Has Michael Schwartz ever been a pre- and early- pubescent boy?
There is just about no force on earth that could keep pre- and early- pubescent straight boys from being interested in pictures of naked women. You could bar their paths with oceans of fire, mountains of jagged rocks, canyons filled with snakes and poisons and pop quizzes . . . and pre- and early- pubescent straight boys would still find their way to pictures of naked women.
Does Schwartz really think that saying “Straight porn will make you gay” is going to do the trick?
Is he so deluded, so out of touch with the realities of human sexuality, that he thinks this pathetic bit of propaganda is going to have any effect whatsoever?
Come to think of it, it might have an effect. Telling kids that straight porn will make them gay might well contribute to the toxic mess of shame and guilt and mixed messages they’re already being taught about sex. (Especially if their parents are Values Voters.) And it could easily create a serious rift of mistrust between parents and children. Telling your kids such a transparent falsehood is very likely going to •make them mistrust anything else you say about sex . . . or any other topic, for that matter. (See above, re: “What are you going to do when your kids figure out you’re lying to them? What will that do to your family values?”)
But if Michael Schwartz seriously thinks his “straight porn will make you gay” propaganda is going to keep pre- and early- pubescent straight boys from being interested in pictures of naked women, he’s deluded. Deeply, profoundly, almost hallucinatorily deluded. It would frighten me if it weren’t so funny. In fact, it does frighten me, even though it’s so funny. It’s probably so funny, at least in part, because it’s so frightening. The man is so out of touch with the realities of sexual desire that an entire nation could only gasp in shock and then fall all over itself in fits of hysterical giggles.
And that profound delusion is exactly where reflexive sex-negativity leads to.
Sex-negativity isn’t just about viewing sex as wicked and disgusting (and thus a treasured gift you should save for the person you love). Sex-negativity is about ignoring or denying the realities of sex. It’s about pretending that teenagers will abstain from sex if the schools scare them enough. It’s about pretending that gay people don’t come that way from a very early age, that they can change if they really try, that their lives will be miserable if they don’t try. It’s about pretending that pre- and early- pubescent straight boys won’t be interested in pictures of naked women if you only tell them an idiotic lie about how it’ll make them gay. It’s about prioritizing your personal view of the sexual world you wished we lived in — rigid, narrow, confined, with only a handful of situations in which people have sex and only one partner they have it with — over, you know, reality.
And it’s not just about doing all this as deliberate propaganda (a.k.a. “lies”). It’s about getting so deeply enmeshed in the propaganda that you believe it yourself.
I’m not convinced that even Michael Schwartz believes straight porn makes you gay. But he does seem to believe — sincerely, and with all his heart — that telling 10- year- old boys “Straight porn makes you gay” will keep them away from porn.
He seems to have swallowed his own Kool-Aid.
And that’s not just scary. It’s not even just scary and hilariously funny. It’s both of those things . . . and at the same time, it’s one of the saddest things I can imagine.
