https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/07/opinion/sex-consent-dating-boundaries.html r
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/04/11/how-everyone-got-so-lonely-laura-kipnis-noreena-hertz
A spate of recent articles, including those in the New Yorker and The New York Times, report on the lack of sex among people in general, even or especially during Covid, and the youth in particular. This a group of people who according to hormones and present liberal sexual norms should be having lots and lots of sex. So what is going on? I speculate on this question only from point of view of heterosexual a woman with only several casual gay encounters. I, under no circumstances am willing or able to speak for a gender fluid or even a gay individual.
Is one reason for decline in sex the meteoric rise of porn, or rather its availability? Gone are the days of my parents' film reels, or my venture to a Times Square theatre with my gay friend as escort and protector to see an X rated movie; gone are even the days of trying to enter the X rated section of the video store without wondering whether you will get raped or recognized. Now, porn is in private and at our fingertips. Have we decided that sex is easier and even better with ourselves? Perhaps. But masturbation has been around from beginning of time, for most of that time considered a sin by many. And that is my friend point. Sin.
Sex as forbidden, sex as mysterious, mystifying thing, sex as something only adults do, naughty naughty sex. Well, sex is no longer naughty or forbidden (in most of the western world) or a mysterious, mystifying thing, or even a thing that can tickle our naughty bone. So, the rebellion against "propriety" and the excitement of transgression long associated with sex are gone. Sex, in our society is no longer bad. It is good. And that is a good thing. Too many people have suffered under repression of their natural desires and have in turn hurt others because of their fear, guilt and shame. Still. Sex has lost one dimension that made it attractive. The thrill of being bad.
Returning to porn: although it has made masturbation much easier and more pleasurable and perhaps more prevalent, it has done women no service. Many men are bad in bed. Why? Because they think what pleases them pleases women. Wrong. They need to learn, and only real life women can teach them what to do to become better sexual partners. The funny thing is that it has nothing to do with virility or sexual prowess and everything to do with teachable techniques. It isn't innate; it's learned. If young men, however, think that porn is real sex; they are more in trouble than their "ancestors" who didn't get to see so much sex and had to figure it out with a real life partner. No one explains to these young fools that the women are getting paid, paid much better than the men. That the squeals are fake, grimaces sometimes are more from pain than pleasure and "dirty" words uttered are to speed up the damn male orgasm. That is my one beef with porn. I hope parents and educators step in to preclude unreasonable sexual expectation in young men, because then they really won't get any sex, or will have to unlearn most of what they have seen before they can learn what real life sex is.
One of the old-fashioned things that come to mind about sex in our society is not only that it is so prevalent and easy to have but that science and liberal culture has emptied it off its importance, it's beauty, it commitment. Although, abandoning of gender roles are good for both men and women in so many ways, it hasn't helped our sex lives. Men where the protectors, the providers. They were sexy because of this. Evolutionary psychology tells us because women found them good future parents for their offspring and so good mates--sexy. Now that women provide for themselves and for most part protect themselves, they have less "use" for the male. But don't forget our lizard brains still long for that evolutionary kink of finding "benevolent authority" eternally sexy. Just remember the insane success of Shades of Gray, a terribly written novel depicting S&M a la Disney, but with an aggressive/assertive, benevolent male lead.
As to men: It's hard being a man. All that darn testosterone making them aggressive and competitive. Living among men is hard, not only for women, but for men. Imagine all of that competition and pressure and alpha races. So, what men sought in women? A respite, an oasis, a soft warm place away from the harshness of the world they have created outside of the home for themselves. But we women are too busy trying to imitate them, taking care of ourselves to take care of them. In our insistence on equality we are erasing differences. Equality yes, decency yes, but we are vastly different and thank God for that. The biology, chemistry and physiology of us are different. That is why it makes me laugh when some hot teacher seduces a sixteen year old guy and people call it rape. If you came, it ain't rape. And that is why women, unless armed with a pole, can't rape men. On the other hand there is the ridiculously schizophrenic modern female culture of baring half your ass but getting mad when men look. Really?! On one hand, a bunch of people can't stop shouting, #Metoo, on the other celebrities and influencers are more and more bare in photos and online.
Also funny that although we are far from the promised "maid" robot, except those vacuums that don't even pick up a shoe to vacuum under it, we already have sexbots. Instead, men and women should talk to one another about sex and not be afraid to engage in a give and take as opposed to everyone for him/herself. Isn't that what sex is? A give and take and at its most beautiful becomes one--the give is take and the take is give. Sex, after all, is two people complimenting and completing each other.
Sex is the intersection of the trivial (not brain surgery) and the divine (our only real connection to the greater universe). When we take the mental and the emotional out of it, we just become two people rubbing against each other. And that is pretty much not sexy. As we are going, there soon will be no definable sexuality and so no sex. We will become a society of equal androgynous beings who don't need anyone to procreate. I wonder how we humans will feel when such a fundamental reason for our existence is gone.
No comments:
Post a Comment