The Food Issue: February 2008 Archives

So yesterday during a brief lecture on what was meant by "sex-negative" culture, our professor presented a very cool statement about food:

Try to imagine the following world: Accurate information about food is freely available and exists for all ages in appropriate ways. Talking about what sorts of food you like and negotiating with a dinner partner is a simple and relaxed experience. Different preferences, whether personal or cultural, are important for the information they provide and are no more or less important than hair color or family history, unless people are trying to figure out what to eat together. Some people prefer to eat with the same person indefinitely, others prefer to eat in a group and still others eat with a variety of partners as the mood suits them and nobody is ever forced to eat anything or with anyone. Each person is an expert in their desires and needs around food and their choices are respected.

Now what was missing from the presentation was the source of that quote. Once I got home and started Googling around I'm pretty sure the source must have been The Language of Sex Positivity, by Charlie Glickman, from Electronic Journal of Human Sexuality, Volume 3, July 6, 2000. It contains the preceding paragraph and adds a nice follow-up...

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. Now go back through the last paragraph and substitute “sex” for “food” and “have sex” for “eat.” How much more difficult is this world to imagine? How much more work would it take to make this happen?

On the other hand, our professor's version contained a modified version of the first that didn't require us to imagine...

Try to imagine the following world: Accurate information about sex is freely available and exists for all ages in appropriate ways. Talking about what sorts of sex you like and negotiating with a sex partner is a simple and relaxed experience. Different preferences, whether personal or cultural, are important for the information they provide and are no more or less important than hair color or family history, unless people are trying to figure out what kind of sex to have together. Some people prefer to have sex with the same person indefinitely, others prefer to have sex in a group and still others have sex with a variety of partners as the mood suits them and nobody is ever forced to be sexual or have sex with anyone. Each person is an expert in their desires and needs around sex and their choices are respected.

Our professor suggested that for all of society's bragging about this or tisk-tisking about that, the fact that the two versions of the paragraph have highly different implications suggests that we have a sex-negative society. And *I* would add that the simple fact that we'd consider making the comparison in the first place is evidence of the same thing.

I adore food/sex analogies -- I think they're each wonderful metaphors for the other.