Annajcook of Future Feminist Librarian-Activist re-reads Freud’s Five Lectures and asks a great question:

While none of his basic views were startlingly new to me, I was struck as I read this chapter by two things: 1) how closely Freud’s description of childhood sexuality corresponds with current, twenty-first century progressive, feminist views of human sexuality, and 2) how strongly Freud seems to feel the need to contain, organize, and channel that sexuality within the circumscribed space of heterosexual intercourse for the purposes of reproduction.

Of childhood sexuality he writes:

A child’s sexual instinct turns out to be put together of a number of factors; it is capable of being divided into numerous components . . . independent of the reproductive function . . . it serves for the acquisition of pleasurable feeling, which, basing ourselves on analogies and connections, we bring together under the idea of sexual pleasure.

He describes masturbation, dominance/submission activities, the “desire for looking,” fantasy, sexual play and emotional bonds all under this broad umbrella. He also points out that “at this early period of childhood difference in sex plays no decisive part.” In sum, “widespread and copious” is the sexual life of children, loosely organized around the principle of pleasure (p. 46-48).

It is only after this rich description of sexuality, replete with possibility for variation, fluidity, and individuality which (crucially, in my opinion) places the recognition of pleasure at the heart of sexual feeling, that Freud retrenches. In the paragraph immediately following the descriptions above, he suggests that all of this abundant energy must, in order for “mature” adult sexuality to emerge, be “brought together and organized” into genitally-centered, reproductive activity (p. 48).

. . . Why? What is so terrifying to Freud (and any others who resist it) the first, “childhood,” model of sexual-sensual experience? This week in class, I’m looking forward to sitting down with this fear and trying to understand what, exactly, is so freaky about “widespread and copious” pleasure.

Read the quote in context here.

It’s a great, great question. Especially considering that the life of adults as described by Freud (especially the perpetually angry, violent, alienated, weak outside the home but tyrannical at home men of Victorian-era Germany and elsewhere in Europe and the U.K.) makes one wonder what the benefit was supposed to be.

This doesn’t mean, by the way, that I think we should all remain as sexually unfocused or even unconcerned as small children can be. Grown ups really are better at, better equipped for, and more broadly prepared for, well, a lot of things than are children. It’s just that since people who are more sexually expressive really do seem to be better adjusted adults than are people who are more sexually repressed it’s probably a good idea to nurture healthy, adult expression instead of trying to channel (pervert?) it to the single, and singularly rare function of intentional reproduction.

I think (obviously for someone with my blog title) it’s more appropriate to encourage sexual expression in adults after we’ve gone through a lot of healthy identity formation. (One of the problems with children, ironically, is that because they’re polymorphous they’re more easily manipulated down convenient-for-adult narrow pathways (gee, sound familiar?)... as opposed to organically developing their own.

Oh, also note: there I go trying to be all purposeful about it instead of acknowledging that there’s nothing wrong with adults enjoying “widespread and copious pleasure.” As long as (as Freud said elsewhere… or maybe it’s just the DSM-IV) it doesn’t impair everyday function.

Bridget Crawford of Feminist Law Professors says

I’ve written before that pornography is not necessarily a good form of sex ed. Depends on the porn, in theory.  To me, this much is clear: when porn embraces abuse, degradation, humiliation, torture, that’s not sex ed.  

Consider the question’s flip side: is sex ed a “good” form of pornography? Depends on the sex-ed, I suppose.  I’m reserving judgment for now, but I appreciate the well-done Cherry TV website (subtitle: “Juicy Talk for Women”) for its lively, informative discussions.  It’s far less how-to-please-your-man than Cosmo, and infinitely more interesting than those sex ed films I remember from the 1970s.

She said it here.

See also Holly of The Pervocracy’s discussion of biology texts vs romantic porn in Anything’s wankable when you’re 13. And like Holly I too was far more aroused by the at least nominally (and usually actually) medical/psychological/anthropological references I found on a high shelf than by intentionally pornographic materials I also found such as books of Beardsley prints and the Victorian “The Pearl.”

Which, when you think about it, makes a ton of sense. Porn has a tendency to exaggerate regular sex. Sex-ed manuals have a tendency to show you how to have sex in the first place! Mainstream/industrial porn remains reluctant to leave its Victorian-era roots of guilt, transgression, and resentment. Sex-ed has a tendency to assume sex is healthy, normal, and most important, not so scarce it’s more likely to happen with a stranger on an elevator than with a partner at home. :-)

And finally? Before I had sex with anyone I cheerfully masturbated through the occasional Victorian novel by “anonymous” but I wore out the pages… and myself… on academic works like Masters and Johnson, pop-sexology books like The Sensuous Couple, and the original and then-totally-groundbreaking The Joy of Sex.

As Holly put it

“Among both sexes, the excitement phase results in an increase in heart rate (tachycardia), an increase in breathing rate, and a rise in blood pressure. An erection of the nipples, especially upon direct stimulation, will occur in nearly all females and approximately 60% of males.”

Mmmm

“During the plateau phase, the male urinary bladder closes (so as to prevent urine from mixing with semen, and guard against retrograde ejaculation) and muscles at the base of the penis begin a steady rhythmic contraction. Males may start to secrete seminal fluid and the testicles rise closer to the body.”

OH BABY OH WOW

“Orgasm is the conclusion of the plateau phase of the sexual response cycle, and is experienced by both males and females. It is accompanied by quick cycles of muscle contraction in the lower pelvic muscles, which surround both the anus and the primary sexual organs. Women also experience uterine and vaginal contractions. “

OH YEAH OH YEAH OHMYGODOHMYGODDDD

Yeah.

Ditto that yeah.

But ditto also when she says

The upshot is that I accidentally became very well educated on sexual anatomy and physiology at a very young age. Not just the obvious parts; being a very thorough reader and rereading the same three pages for months, I learned all the little internal bits with Latin names as well.

Cherry.tv, by the way, really is a cool resource — one that should have been in my blogroll for months (it’s there now.) Its video-style panel-discussion format of mostly young, mostly professional and academic women is perfectly straightforward education today, but attempting anything like that the year the now utterly fusty old Everything You Wanted to Know About Sex came out would have landed all of them in jail on obscenity charges. (Goodness! They don’t just admit having clitorises or knowing about penises, they admit touching them!)

Photo from 100% Injury Rate’s blog.

Yet another point rising out of comments (have I ever mentioned just how inspiring you all are, by the way?) Reacting to my reaction to Anastasia’s reaction to the notion of teaching pole dancing to children, Holly (of The Pervocracy, who said)

There are a million forms of exercise that build coordination and self-esteem and the reason pole-dancing was chosen over karate or basketball or gymnastics can’t be random.

And the sad part is that it probably doesn’t stem from any kind of truly sinister intention, but probably from an honest belief that looking sexy leads to self-esteem. Which it can! But not for children, and not when you don’t admit what you’re doing.

Denying that spreading your legs around a pole is sexual does two different harms: it puts children into inappropriately sexual situations, and it denies the ability for these same situations to be very sexy among adults.

Holly said this here

Yup. It’s sort of like teaching children self-defense by taping “kick me” to their backs without letting them know. Teaching children a) to do things that look sexual to other people while b) claiming to the actual child there’s nothing sexual about it is exactly what sexualization is all about.

On the other hand, and just to be clear, I wouldn’t worry at all about adults promoting pole dancing to each other as a tremendous combination of skill, strength, coordination, and intentional eroticism.

[Quick note: The post by 100% Injury Rate, the source of the version of photo I used, above, mentions that the Australian program teaches girls and boys, which is at least one step in a positive direction, although it sounds like it’s for kids as early as age seven. —fl]

Photo by Flickr user The Infamous Gdub. Used under a Creative Commons license.

In comments to last year’s post, SnowDropExplodes expands on my hasty conclusion with a reminder

Rather than having it taken away, it is rigorously enforced by social expectation, and the boy becomes identified only with his sex drive and little else. On the face of it, that looks like fun, and is experienced that way by some, but the competition with other boys to prove oneself to be identified with sex in particular, is endless and impossible to satisfy.

I’ve been brooding for a day or two about another new book by Evolutionary Behavior grandpa Desmond Morris that Abby O’Reilly mentions (Big theme in the book? Surprise! Men behave the way we do because we’re “expendable,” who knew? And guess what? It’s genetic! So, I guess, that means it’s ok plus we can’t change it! Also, presumably, get used to those genetic high-heels girls, God, or at least Darwin says you want ‘em. E!#$&@!!) But searches to make the memes more inescapable, unavoidable, and animalistically unalterable notwithstanding, moving into the next year I’m going to try to spend more time examining, and inviting others to examine, ideas about expendability of male sexuality. (Note: Victorian men referred to orgasms as “spending!” Not quite for the same reasons but… hmmm.) I’m also going to note pretty much the only thing I ever learned and liked from Newt Gingrich and that’s that humans tend to waste, expend, and otherwise misuse that which they perceive to be free or cheap. And whereas the “no-sex” class paradigm both prescribes, describes, and perhaps proscribes women’s sexuality as difficult, even dangerous to obtain (in every dimension from frequency to orgasmic difficulty) for men as the sex class orgasms are cheap, disposable, and — even when pregnancy is a wanted, planned outcome — at best a minor contribution.

Bottom lines for exploration in 2008: – Continue unpacking the lie that women must be incredibly high-cost sexual and social female eunuchs as defined by Germaine Greer – Continue unpacking the lie that men, for all that conservative, anti-feminist happy talk, are sexually and social cheap and interchangeable. – Find ways to better encourage men to begin noticing and responding to feminist overtures with the result that, eventually, even the seemingly intractably bitter who comment at Men’s News Daily and the seemingly no-less bitter women who comment at Women’s Space discover that even if they never become bestest friends they at least recognize they’re Scott-Adams’-style natural allies. (Despite drawing Dilbert, and writing, um, generously chain-pulling posts, Adams also comes up with shockingly sensible observations and proposals. Occasionally. Like this time.) – Oh yeah, and especially for those of us who are heterosexual, as long as we’re exploring, let’s explore some new ways to be healthy, happy, and horny-together human beings without dragging quite so many misery-inducing stereotypes into bed with us.