Ok, so I keep coming back to this question in different ways. I guess because I’m still not satisfied. And I don’t think I’ve asked it this directly:

Do you have sex only for the orgasms or is there something else that makes it attractive?

I ask this for several reasons. The big one being the biological imperative theory of orgasms: if we didn’t have them we wouldn’t have sex, and if we didn’t have sex we wouldn’t reproduce, and if we didn’t reproduce we’d go extinct.

The other relates, not surprisingly to food. I started composing this post in my head as I was making lunch just now. (I’m typing between bites right now.) I was flipping starved! I had an aching, empty longing for food. I had a sincere biological imperiative to eat. There’s a reproductive survival component here: If I don’t eat I can’t work. If I can’t work I can’t feed my children. If I can’t feed my children they won’t grow up to reproduce and my selfish little genes will go extinct. Mostly I was shakey hungry though and dying to eat.

Sometimes I have an aching, empty longing for sex. I can have an orgasm pretty much any time I want but that usually only whets my appetite for sex. A few years ago I took some medications that made it very, very to have an orgasm at all and virtually impossible to have one during any kind of sex with someone else. It didn’t make me want sex any less. So if aching/empty is good enough for eating, and aching/empty is there for sex too…

So what do you want sex for? The orgasms? Or something (maybe *everything) else?

[Yes, I should have put on my shoes too but the suit was coming back off almost instantly so… —fl]

As you’ve probably noticed I analogize frequently between food and sex and occasionally I post expressly about it. See my introduction to The Food Issue. I was just about to shut up about paleo-chauvinist Leon Kass (who I promise I’m not really obsessed about) when I ran across the following in comments to Amanda Marcotte’s Pandagon post.

From Kass, Leon: The Hungry Soul. University of Chicago Press, 1994, 1999) pages 148-149

Worst of all from this point of view are those more uncivilized forms of eating, like licking an ice cream cone —a catlike activity that has been made acceptable in informal America but that still offends those who know eating in public is offensive.
“I fear I may by this remark lose the sympathy of many reader, people who will condescendingly regard as quaint or even priggish the view that eating in the street is for dogs. Modern America’s rising tide of informality has already washed out many long-standing traditions — their reasons long before forgotten — that served well to regulate the boundary between public and private; and in many quarters complete shamelessness is treated as proof of genuine liberation from the allegedly arbitrary constraints of manners.
To cite one small example: yawning with uncovered mouth. Not just the uneducated rustic but children of the cultural elite are now regularly seen yawning openly in public (not so much brazenly or forgetfully as indifferently and “naturally”), unaware that it is an embarrassment to human self-command to be caught in the grip of involuntary bodily movements (like sneezing, belching, and hiccuping and even the involuntary bodily display of embarrassment itself, blushing). But eating on the street — even when undertaken, say, because one is between appointments and has no other time to eat — displays in fact precisely such lack of self-control: It beckons enslavement to the belly. Hunger must be sated now; it cannot wait. Though the walking street eater still moves in the direction of his vision, he shows himself as a being led by his appetites. Lacking utensils for cutting and lifting to mouth, he will often be seen using his teeth for tearing off chewable portions, just like any animal. Eating on the run does not even allow the human way of enjoying one’s food, for it is more like simple fueling; it is hard to savor or even to know what one is eating when the main point is to hurriedly fill the belly, now running on empty. This doglike feeding, if one must engage in it, ought to be kept from public view, where, even if WE feel no shame, others are compelled to witness our shameful behavior.

Note: I have not verified the quote from Kass’s text, but if it’s a hoax a quick check on Google suggests it’s very widespread.

I’m not necessarily planning to include a photo a day forever. However I did say a while back that I was going to try out an extended series. At this point in the series I’ve finished removed my street clothes and I’m putting on a suit. Once the suit’s buttoned up (it’ll be a day or two) it starts coming back off again. Here’s today’s installment.

Yet another nice takedown of Leon Kass, this time on part two of his essay, “The End of Courtship,” where he comes down very hard on use of birth-control pills. The post is by Amanda Marcotte of the generally non-sex blog Pandagon.

Before I get into excerpts from Amanda’s post I want to explain quickly why I keep harping on the guy. Yes, there are obvious reasons: he’s deeply contemptuous of men on the one hand, and coddling/patronizing of us on the other; he strongly wishes to impose his own unfoundedly-but-traditionally romantic ideals of women on walking, talking, autonomous human beings; having evidently monogamously sequestered himself since marriage his assessments are based on the unfocused (and admittedly sometimes chaotic) behavior of very young adult sex rather than, well, real adult sex! The real reason I keep returning to Kass is that his beliefs are very widely shared by an increasingly influential, though also increasingly ungrounded, group of radical idealists. In the 1960s I was alarmed by radical libertines who proposed that the solution to everything was to smoke pot and screw — which was going to far and really didn’t solve any of the problems they were sure it would and created others — and now I’m worried about the new tendency to fishtail into prudish self-repression — which is also not going to solve any problems and will create others of it’s own.

That said, here’s Amanda (with indented quotes from Kass)

The sexual revolution that liberated (especially) female sexual desire from the confines of marriage, and even from love and intimacy, would almost certainly not have occurred had there not been available cheap and effective female birth control — the pill — which for the first time severed female sexual activity from its generative consequences.

Yes, I know. I had the same thought as anyone who knows jack about history. “But Mr. Kass, people used diaphrams, condoms and vasectomies before the pill was invented. What about that?” That’s where you have to pay special attention to the fact that the pill is female birth control, and as I said before, a particularly sneaky kind of birth control, what with the making the pill pack look like Clariol put it out and all. (Devious ladies who are thwarting your man’s good-hearted intentions to keep you pregnant all the time—since god knows there is nothing more romantic than swollen feet, weight gain, and labor pains—I recommend slapping like a L’Oreal sticker on your pills. Bwah ha ha! He’ll never know!) In summary, the problem was that women shouldn’t be allowed to get away with this shit.

...

Her sexuality unlinked to procreation, its exercise no longer needs to be concerned with the character of her partner and whether he is suitable to be the father and co-rearer of her yet-to-be-born children.

The only reason women ever worried about the characters of men they dated in the past was to make sure they’d be good fathers, which was pretty stupid considering that women did the majority of the child-rearing and a man’s parenting skills weren’t a major issue. Women now size up their sex partners by looking for compatibility and love. This is bad because everyone knows that a couple’s relationship with each other has no bearing on their children. Or something like that.

...

True sex education is an education of the heart; it concerns itself with beautiful and worthy beloveds, with elevating transports of the soul. The energy of sexual desire, if properly sublimated, is transformable into genuine and lofty longings — not only for love and romance but for all the other higher human yearnings.

Mind you, he just railed against the use of birth control. Meaning, that nothing is more romantic than the fear of knocking someone up because you have no options. Sounds to me like someone has a risk-taking fetish that would be better satisfied by fucking in the middle of Central Park or something. Anything but using the law to force others to have more children than they want.

Read Amanda’s whole post here.

One other thing: Throughout the essay Kass dumps over and over again on modern sex education’s emphasis on strict biology, technology, and on pregnancy and disease avoidance. He decries its lack of emotional, romantica, and/or erotic values. I could post endlessly on that little jewel. Instead I’ll say that any sex-education program that went anywhere near those elements of sex, even from a conservative/monogamous perspective, would get blasted into the stone age by none other than Leon Kass and his sympathizers.

$%!_$@#~$#%!$#

Making out in the back of a mini-van, seats down. There’s a reason you never see “if I’m rockin’ don’t come knocking” stickers on Corvettes. (25 words)

Cherry Bomb of Queen of Cream, discussing the uncertainty and awe she feels for people who can pose naked said

“Maybe it’s exposing that confusion and lack of control to the world that really terrifies me…putting it out there and then letting it be interpreted however it will be. Because in the end, it’s not really about what the audience is seeing when they look. I mean, other people are generally oblivious to the kinds of physical “flawsâ€? over which most of us obsess, and besides, you’re never going to be everyone’s type anyway. In the end it’s just about being able to take in the whole picture and admire what you’re seeing in between your own spread legs.”

Read her whole post here.

Part of the vulnerability of exposing one’s self is that you no longer control the interpretation of your body image. It’s frustrating when people are oblivious to “flaws” we find obvious — mores when they’re not even being oblivious because there’s no flaw. Other people assess us against what they see instead of what we’d prefer to be.

For instance I had terrible asthma growing up and into my middle twenties was painfully, gauntly chicken-chested and sickly. I used to dream endlessly of looking like Spiderman or Superman. Even though I’m grown up now, and strong enough to sweep you off your feet, carry you upstairs, push you back on the bed, and ravish you (or more prosaically load a refrigerator, stove, and washer/dryer into a pickup) I look at myself and see… still no Spiderman shoulders, no Superman chest, and so I find myself wanting. That’s my interpretation of myself based on years and years of no-longer-valid images of myself. (I also still think of myself as small even though now I’m six foot three and weigh 200 pounds, but that’s part of the same phenomenon.)

When others look at me they don’t see the childhood me. You don’t see the isn’t-Spiderman me. You just see me the way I am and not how I wish to be. When you see me I lose control of the interpretation. Objectively that’s not a bad thing but it is a bit of a subjective shock when other interpretations contradict mine. First I want to argue, then I can’t believe you’re serious, finally I start to reassess. I don’t know if I’ll ever lose my interpretation but the confrontation with my self image, the reality checks of other people’s remarks, is forcing alterations.

I bring this up because I’m seeing the same thing happening over and over with the new sex-blog phenomenon of Half Nekkid Thursday that Obasso started. In case you’ve been off line for the last six months Half Nekkid Thursday photos (now HNT for short) crop up now in hundreds of blogs. There’s now even at least one official animated logo. (You can see a partial list of participants in Obasso’s sidebar here.)

People start out really shy. Early on they started out outright coy, often posting just a wrist on a steering wheel or a belly-button peeking out from under a t-shirt. But here’s the thing: comments are overwhelmingly positive. More to the point, when some clueless young person pipes in “but your boobs aren’t as big as Angelina Jolie’s,” he or she gets pounded in further comments.

And here’s the deal with that: Strictly speaking the comments are true — the HNT poster’s boobs probably aren’t as big as Angelina Jolie’s, nor is her waist as tiny as Kira Knightly’s, nor her butt as round as Queen Latifa’s or whatever. The problem is there’s more than one standard of beauty, and for the most part most of us fit at least one of those other standards. (Case in point: Knightly’s boobs aren’t as big as Jolie’s. Jolie’s waist isn’t as narrow as Knightly’s. So why aren’t more people complaining about them? There’s more than one, or ten, or (as my six year old would say) eleven thousand sixty million jillion billion “standards.”) The point? Actually there are two.

Point #1: It’s stunning how often one troll amidst sometimes a hundred complements can bring the poster down. Why? I understand the feeling — I feel it myself — but I don’t get it.

Point #2: Ninety nine out of a hundred HNT-post commenters can’t be wrong. (And since I generally agree with the ninety-nine and I’m an excellent judge I can say with authority they’re not.) We’re all pretty attractive, enough that we have to pay attention when people tell us.

Cherry Bomb also says one “can’t be everyone’s type.” I’d like to challenge that construction. Usually there’s only a narrow section of people who’s type we can’t be. Few people are so limited (and presumably lonely since I think Jolie’s still dating Brad Pitt) that they can’t appreciate your type. Not being the right people for that little slice is important only when one is one’s self a member of that unpleasable group… and I think that’s why the one negative comment in a hundred devastates people. They’re affirming rather than contradicting our interpretation of ourselves and when you think about it that’s a shame. The other ninety nine still can’t be wrong. We might wish they were, but they can’t be. They can’t all just be “just being nice.”

—-

I’m just not self-disciplined enough to formally participate in HNT. I’m calendrically dyslexic so instead I post half-nekkidly at random intervals. But the principle still applies. If you’ve ever thought about participating though I’d really like to encourage you to try it. I think you’ll be surprised. (Remember, it only has to be half-nekkid, and you can get away with more or less than half and still qualify.

Ok, so years ago — many, many years ago, I wrote some lyrics after hearing about a guy who begged his girlfriend to sneak out the window to have sex with him, with the encouraging words “C’mon, it’ll only take a second.”

At the time it was unquestionably meant to be sung to a very twangy country-western tune but lately it’s been percolating back up as light pop. I’ve been thinking of trying podcasting so I’m gonna ask you which way you’d rather hear it.

Well it’s grunt twice, groan then come and it’s all over
Then I give your little cheek a kiss
You’re living with the worlds greatest lover
And that’s a thing nobody’d want to miss

(Chorus)
So baby come into my arms
Let me show you all my charms
It only takes a minute and a half
Oh baby come to your lover boy
I know my loving brings you joy
Every time that I get through you laugh

When I get hot my nerves get all a tingle and a thrum
My loving is a gift that I can’t keep
I know I only wiggle twice before I come
But before I’m through you’re so tired out
You yawn and fall asleep

(Repeat chorus)

Copyright © the artist currently known as figleaf 1975 :-)

Ok, maybe you’d prefer three choices:
1) Country
2) Pop
3) Don’t bother

[Before I started this blog I was pretty active in some sex-related discussion groups. Going through my notes I found this entry from August, 2002. —fl]

I had a facinating experience at the checkout stand this afternoon. The customer closest to the register was a pleasant woman with a lovely body, wearing tight jeans and a light, fairly tight green sweater. The customers in line between us were a young couple with their five-month-old baby in a stroller.

I realized I have a slight preference for goo-googling at babies to ogling women. Only a slight preference, mind you, but not how I was taught to expect men to behave.

I hope it’s ok to enjoy both sex and small children. It certainly feels good if for entirely different reasons.

[Note: Yes, I’m getting dressed again here but I had to put on the rest of the suit before I could take it all the way off. —fl]

Lynn Gazis-Sax of Noli Irritare Leones has several thoughtful posts on the weird scolding manefestos of Kass and Mansfield here and here brings up another interesting problem.

Just one more quick post on the Mansfield and Kass articles. Let’s assume (it’s not, after all, a huge leap) that men are, in fact, more willing to engage in casual, or promiscuous, or multiple partner sex than women. Let’s further assume that the reason for this isn’t entirely cultural, and that women are, in fact, by nature more inclined to sexual stability and monogamy, for whatever combination of reasons (we have lower sex drives, we know darn well that the physical consequences fall more heavily on us and after a while that sinks in, whatever). What moral conclusions ought one to draw from such a fact?

Read her whole post here.

I think that “...than men think they would be if the shoe were on the other foot” is the critical part of this premise but let’s also take a look at “...after a while that sinks in.”

For whatever reasons — an assumption about greater natural reticence is as good as social conditioning here — women almost never do proposition men. Consequently men tend only to imagine what they’d do. (I would add that when they do think about it selection bias prompts them to assume the woman propositioning them would be attractive to them.)

Several social science studies suggest that men are indeed more willing to accept a spontaneous invitation to a woman’s dorm room, however my direct experience and observations of male friends in similar circumstances suggests our reactions are based more on social expectations than genuine enthusiasm. (If you’re wondering, in college I had a lot of sexually assertive women friends.)

I’m not sure I’m composing this very well, but I think that our dominant men propose / women decide dating structure. Whatever men think they might do is probably very different from what they’d do after they’d been propositioned enough for it to sink in — for the novelty to wear off.

I might add that, were pixie dust to fly and men and women were permitted to make propositions entirely as they saw fit, one would see entirely more sympathy on both sides for the other.

This is an appropriate time of year to bring this up as I’ve most often been propositioned out of the blue at Halloween costume parties. (Presumably because when I’m wearing face paint I didn’t trigger the “you look like your brother” effect created by the fact that I do indeed look like everybody’s brother.) The first time it happened I followed blindly and I can’t say it turned out well. I thought that was a fluke. The second time didn’t turn out so well either a few years later. The third time I was far more wary but I’d been propositioned by two women, roommates, and though I was vaguely flattered I was pretty sure it wasn’t going to turn out well this time either so, in the end, I declined.

Anyway, the point is that Lynn’s thought experiment is valid but the context is limited. I’m pretty confident that if women were more inclined to proposition men (which in time they might if Kass’s “gloomy” fears are born out) we’d likely see a corresponding decrease in unrealistic propositions from men.

What do you think? Have you ever propositioned a man out of the (semi) blue? Been propositioned out of the blue by a woman? Did it go as you expected?

—-

Aside: Maybe twenty years ago now I ran into a woman I hadn’t seen for years. I’d admired her quite a lot, learned a great deal about gender issues from her, and had generally been pretty intimidated. She’d since developed some pretty severe personality disorders and, to top it off, she’d become a street prostitute. And not, it turns out, a very successful one. Her method evidently involved going up to men she thought were likely and bluntly saying they could have sex with her for money and she was pretty irked that they almost always declined because it contradicted the image of men she’d constructed for herself. I’m aware that the money angle made the refusals less clear cut, but I’m pretty confident she’d have had little better luck if she’d just been looking for sex. What men might imagine they’d do and what they’d actually do aren’t at all the same things.

Alyssa, of Welcome to Alyssa has a cute joke:

World’s Shortest Fairy Tale
Once upon a time,
a guy asked a girl “Will you marry me?”

The girl said “NO!”

And the guy lived happily ever after and went fishing played golf a lot drank beer and farted whenever he wanted.

As it happens, this isn’t entirely true. In a very nice takedown of Leon Kass and fellow middle-aged male Professor Harvey Mansfield of Harvard University, Meghan O’Rourke of Slate Magazine points out that…

In fact, the evidence is thin that a woman should be concerned that giving out a “sample” will make a man less prone to marriage—or a future husband less likely to want to stay with her. First of all, according to the National Marriage Project at Rutgers University, “only 36% of single men agree that ‘single men have better sex lives than married men.’ “ And only 22 percent of unmarried men report feeling that marriage is “personally” not for them, even if they’re not interested in marriage in their immediate future. Second, engaging in premarital sex with the partner you eventually marry apparently does not make you more likely to get a divorce, according to a 2003 study cited by the National Marriage Project. Kass complains that “the elite, those who in previous generations would have defined the conventions in these matters, lack a cultural script whose denouement is marriage.” But is this the case? The majority of “elites” still get married, according to recent reports. And if they get married a little older—as Kass complains they do—this only seems to make their marriages more stable. The National Marriage Project reports that getting married after the age of 25 reduces the chance of divorce.

See her entire article here.

I ought to mention that O’Rourke’s piece is far more cogent than mine. “The need to tell young women how to behave often comes over middle-aged men—it’s an itch right up there with buying a flashy new car.” Yikes!

Note: I’m still hacked off that Kass chose to say that by being less chaste modern women “lower” themselves to the level of men. Screw that!