Figleaf's Real Adult Sex

Apparently I have a taste for men in a crouching position; this is by far my favorite of the shower photos to date.

I’m in full agreement on the food/sex analogies. (Computers and music are useful that way too.) Also full agreement with your prof.

Sunflower

[Glad you enjoyed the photo, Sunflower. I happen to think the food/sex analogy is more complex than the author presents (as, it looks like, a lot of people further down in comments believe as well) but for me that’s a problem with the author’s use of the analogy, not the analogy itself. —fl]

Figleaf—

The additional passage you quote states that

“While there are many examples of how our world is different from this food-positive one (as anyone who becomes vegetarian in a family of meat eaters knows,) it isn’t too hard to imagine this place.”

Yes, I agree that this is one aspect of non-food-positivity. But I think it’s important to recognize that food can be a site not only of coercion, but of violence, just like sex. As a former anorexic, I’d have to include something like the following qualification as to the extent to which our society is really food positive:

“Despite the fact that food is both necessary to life and a source of great pleasure, and despite the fact that much of our cultural energy focuses on the acquisition of foodstuff and the money to buy it, on the creation of elaborate and expensive meals, on the marketing not only of food but of lifestyles associated with particular types of food, and on both enjoying and celebrating the pleasure that consuming food provides, a great deal of energy is also expended on shaming people whose consumption of food is somehow seen as deviant or inappropriate. Fat people are seen as gross gluttons devoid of self-control and discerning tastes, and few people are brave enough to be seen eating with a fat person, because a taint of undesirability will rub off on them too.

“In particular, young women are made to understand that they must partake sparingly of food, or no one will want to eat with them. This leads to a situation where young women—although increasingly young men—will avoid food, and are literally nauseated by the thought of consuming it, though at some point their bodies’ need for it becomes so great that they binge uncontrollably, after which they often purge violently and punish themselves for their weakness with grueling exercise or by cutting themselves, etc. Society’s unrealistic expectations for how young women should interact with food leads to a situation where their relationship to food is profoundly shameful: it is shameful to want it; it is shameful to eat it; it is shameful to enjoy it; but it is also shameful to go without it. The only thing that is not shameful is to prepare it for others, so some anorexics are often very good cooks, because that way they can be seen to participate in this so-called ‘food positive’ society, while not actually enjoying all the benefits or suffering all the negative consequences of food consumption.”

While I recognize the value of analogies involving food and sex, or of eating disorders and substance addictions, I think it’s important to remember certain differences. The fact that they all involve appetites doesn’t mean those appetites are equivalent. Unlike food, sex is something you can live without your whole life—people do it, more or less well, more or less happily. I’m not saying I think that should be a goal society preaches but for some people, it’s the right choice. The analogy you quote stipulates that “nobody is ever forced to eat anything.” What does that really mean? And consider that absolutely denying a person food is criminal, while absolutely refusing to have sex with someone is a right.

You can’t give up food and stay alive. Recovering from anorexia would have been a—well, not a piece of cake, but a walk in the park, maybe—if I could have done the 12-step thing and said I was powerless before it, and simply vowed never to eat again. But I couldn’t do that and stay alive. I had to work out a decent relationship with food, and I had to do it every stinkin’ day, several times a day.

I don’t know. It’s complicated. As someone who has obsessed about food for a lot longer than I’ve obsessed about sex, I guess I would agree that while we all know what a food- and sex-negative society might look like, I would disagree about how easy it is to imagine what a food- and sex-positive society would involve. Does a food positive-society allow the consumption of Twinkies? The slaughter of sick dairy cows for beef, because we are all so fond of allowing people to eat however they want? Letting elementary school children drink diet coke for breakfast? Or would a food-positive society emphasize health benefits? Would we all eat organic field greens sold in plastic clam shell packages for lunch, and organic oatmeal with organic rice milk for breakfast? Who prepares this food, and how are they compensated? What is the status of the person who dispenses or withholds twinkies, who buys the organic salad and makes the organic oatmeal, not only in individual families, but in general?

[Hi Holly, I actually haven’t gone there for a while but I used to post enough sex-and-food analogies that I had a separate category for them, and I know at least one of the posts on the subject spoke directly to the social constructions of “good” vs. “bad” food compared to “good” sex vs. “bad” sex. I’m going to stick with Glickman’s analogy because it really does speak to the narrow point he’s trying to make but I totally acknowledge now (as perhaps I should have in the post itself) that there’s quite a bit more to it than that. —fl]

OK, here’s the thing, here’s one reason the food-positive analogy doesn’t work for me:

it’s too much about WHO ONE EATS WITH rather than WHAT ONE EATS.

Before we can imagine what a food-positive society would look like, we’d have to agree on what food IS. But worldwide, there’s a lot of disagreement about what is actually food.

Are dogs food, or are they pets?

Are cows food, or are they sacred?

Are whales food, or are they endangered animals we ought to protect?

Are worms and insects food, or are they filth?

Are those pink snowball things food, or are they junk?

Is diet coke food, or is it a noxious chemical soup?

Are peanuts food, or are they poison?

Is wheat food, or is it something that makes entire populations sick, because human beings aren’t really adapted to digest it? If it’s both, how much do we as a society rely on it as a staple?

Is some “food,” for whatever reason—the suffering inflicted on animals we eat, the cost to the environment to produce it, the harm done to human bodies when it’s consumed—immoral?

And those are basic questions, before we even get to more advanced ones like how we reward (or don’t reward) those who are responsible for food preparation, or how we ensure that our food is “safe” (which can mean a lot of different things, depending on what you consider “dangerous”) or how we teach children to eat their vegetables, or how often children are rewarded for good behavior with candy, and what all that means to society.

Sorry if I’m being a downer here, but really, this is fraught topic for me and I’m a little annoyed at seeing it treated so simplistically.

[While I agree that there’s lots of other stuff to analogize about, the good thing about analogies is that you can sort of pick aspects, Holly. I’m pretty sure Glickman was trying to make a point about the “who’s” of the respective categories and, as often happens with analogies, he hand-waved at all other aspects. Rhetorically that’s not actually invalid but… one hallmark of good rhetoric is that your analogies don’t have other, higher-voltage associations that drag your attempted point down. Anyway, I still think that in dimension of who, but not what his analogy stands. But yes, other dimensions it obviously doesn’t. (Another case? Another case: one often can, in fact, be obliged if not outright coerced to share food at certain holidays where the “who’s” are not of one’s choosing.) —fl]

I was going to comment on this earlier but went away to think about it and now Holly (Self-portrait as) has not only beaten me to it, but expressed it much more eloquently. There are huge food-negative issues of all sorts around for many people.

I know analogies always break down at some point but there are real differences between food and sex (for one you aren’t going to die, no matter how you feel, if you don’t have sex) and they can be very sensitive issues for those concerned.

[I agree it’s not a perfect analogy, A, and I’m not comfortable disputing whether the average person can go a lifetime with no physiological sexual expression without consequences. On the other hand I think there are wonderful opportunities to reflect on people’s fears about dying not if they fail to eat food but if they eat the “wrong” ones, and comparing that to people’s equally perilous concerns about not just dying but going to Hell if they have the “wrong” sex. But here’s the critical thing I’m starting to arrive at regarding this post: perhaps food and sex make good analogies not because one is “positive” and the other “negative” but because for large chunks of the population they’re actually both negative. Thanks. —fl]

What the conversation has done for me is convince me that talk about how we should be “sex-positive” or “food-positive” misses the mark. We don’t need to be sex-positive or food-positive—or sex-negative or food-negative—any more than we need to be financial-profits-positive or possessions-positive. Profits and possessions are good in some ways and not good in others; it’s a matter of what is sacrificed in order to achieve profits and acquire possessions—not only for oneself, but for the world in general. You can’t take something as simultaneously complicated and varied as food or sex and say, “Oh, it’s all good!” because it’s not; it depends on the context, on the negotiations people have to make in order to have their needs met and meet the needs of others. We don’t need to be sex-positive; we need to be sex-sensible, sex-intelligent, sex-ethical, sex-accepting, sex-tolerant, sex-generous, sex-willing-to-learn-from-our-mistakes (to use your approach), etc. Because I don’t think a monolithic “sex is good, end of discussion” approach will really help us understand the nuances of pleasure, pain, risk and reward sex (and food) involve.

[When you actually look at the list of principles set out in what might be a “sex-positive” manefesto, or at least those identified in lecture, they tend to be far more nuanced than “all good, mon.” In terms of interpersonal communication theory (which I don’t talk about so much here) there’s a concept of a communications “climate” that, while never particularly showing up as a subject of discussion in its own right has an overall influence over all other communication, and that’s more what I think people mean by “sex culture.” And why I think it’s not really any more accurate to label individuals than it would be to point to last year’s temperatures as either confirmation or refutation of global warming. But I do think that terms like overall positivity or negativity are useful. One example that I think is appropriate is, for instance, that “society’s perpetual surprise, anger, or bitterness at hints of variant sexual behavior among conservatives is an indication of an overall negative sex climate.” The evidence being not the behavior, or even the negative reaction, but the consistent registration of surprise. Thanks, Holly. —fl]