Good
grief. I simply don't understand the "sex is violence" meme. That is
not how I see it--and I find those experiences, all vicarious for me
since I have never been party to violent sex, the opposite of inspiring.
Unless the point was to make me want to avoid intercourse (and maybe
fight someone, or least punch something).
The
idea that one could have sex without any emotional hang-ups is
similarly ludicrous to me. I just don't get it. There is no way I find
myself in the position of not caring what happens to someone I know
that way. So I don't understand the "sex is meaningless fun" meme,
either. I do not think of myself as particularly prudish (though I
certainly was that way at one point in my life). Even when I was a
prude, that prudishness was something I aspired to apply primarily to
myself (sometimes pretty harshly) rather than to others (whom it was
never my place to judge). Getting married was very helpful when it came
to defeating the negative aspects of this prudishness where these
existed (primarily as reflections of self-loathing on my part); but that
did not make sex meaningless for me, something that didn't particularly
matter or connect me with other people (as people). More like the
opposite: I became more acutely aware that people matter, that one
cannot relate effectively to caricatures or stereotypes, that real
love-making is about building people rather than breaking them.
Breaking
people isn't even fun, from my perspective. If I were offered the
chance to have sex without natural consequences, without emotions--I
would not want it. The same way I wouldn't want to eat 'food products'
deprived of all their nutritious value. The prospect of being allowed
to eat meals of empty foodstuffs constantly (or ingest endless rounds of
cheap alcohol or another 'fun' drug) would not make me happy. I would not choose it. In the
same way, I would not choose to have sex without any emotional
consequences, without any kind of relationship existing outside the
particular expression of love that sex is. Eating one breakfast means
not eating another one, at some point. Making love with one person
means not making love to someone else. We cannot relate equally to all
human beings. We cannot love all alike (unless we deliberately isolate
ourselves from the kind of particular relationships that are familial,
becoming monks and nuns, who are often celibate--not because they are
prudes, but because they recognize the consequences of sex and seek to
avoid them, to cultivate goods that sex obviates or negates). I think
there are people for whom non-monogamy works better than it will work
for others. But even these folks must recognize some limits, some
boundaries beyond which they do not pass--unless they want to dissolve
their relationships (and that will be hard, often really devastating,
even if the relationship in question is a bad one).
We
used to advise people to "think of the children" when letting their
romantic fancies roam. We might also advise them to think of their
spouse(s), who will always have (strong) feelings about the integrity of
their relationship. We might even advise them to think of themselves,
as beings incapable of transcending the need for human companionship
that is more than momentary, that has more than sex to sustain it. To
me it seems that the fetishization of sex, its reduction to the most
important activity in romantic relationships, has impaired our ability
(collectively anyway) to recognize that other things are at least as
important, that sex without those things is not really worth much.
