Figleaf's Real Adult Sex

For some reason I’m suddenly discovering all these cool bloggers who’ve been well known for years. To everyone except, seemingly, to me. Oh well, I’ve alway been a slow learner. For instance…

Kelly Diels of Cleavage recently wrote so passionately about why she blogs about sex that it made me wish it was why I did.

The first time I had sex, I said, Let’s do that AGAIN!

Read the quote in context here.

She talks about how unflappably happy she was in her newfound discovery of herself, of her partner… of what can be done, of her transformation.

Slings and arrows and fashion digs aside, I glowed all day. I wondered if it was obvious I was glowing. I glowed about glowing.

And all these flowing, glowing paragraphs of giddiness she writes of has a lovely, polemical, political purpose… to confront how uncomfortable societies can be with such newfound ecstasy.

Virginity, she says, can not be lost because there is no loss, there is only gain.

Feeling uncomfortable yet? I have to admit little winces here and caveats there — oooh, it’s not so wonderful for everyone. Oooh, he could get a disease. Ooh, she could get a reputation. Ooooh, they could be exploiting each other. Oooh, the first time isn’t so great for lots of people. You know what I mean, right? You read something as obliviously joyous as that and you find yourself thinking “that’s wonderful, hon, and sure it’s like that for some people but…”

And as if in anticipation, and maybe to illustrate on of her main points, she writes

This, of course, is why there are so many rules about sex. Sexuality is a basis for power and agency and awe. Stepping over the divine line into the miracles of body and self makes you wonder: what else is possible? What could possibly be impossible?

This is why cults encourage celibacy or polygamy. Dyads are dangerous to cult authority. They give you an ally. Directing your passion towards the cult with celibacy or fracturing your affection across multiple relationships is a great way to ensure that your first loyalty is your guru. Religions, too, encourage celibacy or monogamy or rigidly circumscribed polygamy. How would the Vatican get rich if priests had families? Families tend to accrete resources rather than direct them to the Church. In any case, in any system, the first order of business is to regulate sexuality.

Which gets to what motivated me to blog about sex: if you pay attention you begin to notice, as Diels does, that pretty much all the negative consequences of sex derive from our negative attitudes about sex. Even religious ones. Even feminist ones. Even irresponsible, over-the-top exploitative ones. Even 70’s-style mafia-tainted pornographer ones. Even mine. Even yours.

STIs? Unwanted, unplanned pregnancy? Exploitation? Yep. “Love-em-and-leave-em?” Yep. Sexual assault and rape? Yep. The extraordinarily banal way that sex as selling is smeared across magazine cover after billboard after police procedural after liquor bottle? Yep, yep, and yep. (I’ve skipped the details but if provoked I can bloviate about them for… longer than you probably care to read about it.)

Even things claimed by “natural law” conservatives like that whole homophobia business are frowned on for exactly the same reason contraception and abortion are: it short-circuits sexual scarcity, without which… um… well, trust them when they say the end of sexual scarcity would be a Really Bad Thing. And, really, if you didn’t trust them there wouldn’t be anything bad about sex at all.

All of which makes Diels’ orthodoxy anathema even to people who grin grimly and assure us they’re “sex positive:”

Sex is a language. Kisses and touch and connection are the vocabulary of personal, heartfelt, libidinous expression.

Despite what our culture tells us – that chick flicks and chick lit and pursuit of romance and love are frothy and frivolous – relationships can provide a grammar for growth.

And that’s why I write about sex. I write about sex as an antidote to the titillate and condemn, titillate and condemn, again-and-again pornification of our world. I write about sex because sex is a school and love is an ashram. They are sacred sites for learning, laughing, growing, stretching, unfurling.

It’s ok if such unbridled exuberance makes you a little nervous. But if it does please take a little time to ask yourself why. Especially if you think it’s obvious why.

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Along similar lines see: Amanda Marcotte’s “The ‘Sex Addiction’ model isn’t harmless“ or Heather Corinna’s “With Pleasure: A View of Whole Sexual Anatomy for Every Body“