Petit,
I really think this is a bit of a faux epistolary but we had to get started somehow.
I wanna talk about sex!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
And I Want to get you blogging again Pretty please
I am getting really really scared or annoyed or whatever it is that happens when I spend any extended period of time in the bookstore.
Maybe it was the World's Sexiest Man issue where I spent most of the time going " my loins they rare not moved"
Or earlier that gray rape BULLSHIT ( from all involved)
or the constant sexualization of youth for "feminist" and " anti feminist aims"
or the way everyone feels really comfortable talking shit about the Pussycat Dolls while at the same time claiming to be sex positive
Or the wholey invented ( in my mind) " raunch culture thing.
But I figured your old ass and my old ass ( WOHOOOO one of us can finally rent a car) could talk about it?
SO what do you say?
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I guess where i want to start is where I always end up starting and half finishing and failing for the past two years.
Responsibility ,accountability , and mystery.
But the big one for this entry is mystery .
Glamour ( I just quoted Glamour on this blog help us all) has this survey and it shows up every three or four months in the other magazines as well , touting the " sexual standards /Shocking thing 78.6 percent of women/ what's totally normal"
And it bothers me because once again something very intimate and personal is being normalized
First of it presents sexuality as this great mystery that needs to be unraveled by public vote. Not to mention it concentrates on doing so in a manner that emphasizes you not being " out of the norm" No seriously it's called the do's and don'ts of sex.
On one hand it's trying to convince you that your sexual expression is normal by emphasizing the fact it's not unique?!
I guess why is every one trying to convince me ( I am still young enough to be in most youth target audiences ) that sex is no big deal , no mystery, that long as we cover condoms and consent it's AOK.
Ilyka linked me to this post by Jezebel and I think my brain fucking exploded.
First of all I am so UNamused by the " well so many people have it whats the problem method of adult reasoning" I could fork myself in the eye. Also the whoa is me people like me less than the fat crazy or drug addicted is a bit CRAZY MAKING.
Of course STD's shouldn't be stigmatized, and no people aren't " bad people" for having them.
But sorry y'all it's still
A BIG FUCKING DEAL.
and I'll curb my observation that social stigma tends to work in specific rarefied airs.
But the constant and unrelenting message of Fuck it , it's not serious, no big deal?
WHAT?!
Sex is a big deal, having an std BIG DAMN deal, (especially when for all the hair tossing bullshit that std is only actually manageable if you have health care)
YES Y'ALL BIG DAMN DEAL
and
KNOW WHAT WE"RE ALL WORTH A BIG DAMN DEAL.
If you got it through sexual contact something went WRONG. You're n ot a horrible person, you still should have a fulfilling sex life, and the ability to have sex only with caring willing understanding partners
BUT NO IT'S NOT FUCKING BENIGN.
Petit explain this to me, what the heck is with everyone ratcheting DOWN the stakes. Self care sexual care big fucking deal
and you know what we'll make mistakes.
and they'll be serious one.
Isn't it bad and wrong to be convincing people that being healthy and RESPONSIBLE is no big damn deal.
As if self care isn't hard?
OF course it is
but
here's my shocking belief
WE'RE WORTH IT!
Having sex with a person is a big damn deal , having sex with a person with or WITHOUT herpes is a big damn deal.
And big damn deal doesn't necessarily equal death sentence or moroseness but yes some responsibility and not this everyone's doing it/got it
I think it does something no one planned on or is paying attention to in their rush for " erasing social stigma"
It gives out this message that if nothing is serious , we're not worth seriousness.
and that to me is
A BIG FUCKING DEAL
Sunday, December 02, 2007
SO whats the big damn deal.. I'll tell you
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
15 comments:
This post is brilliant. You've expressed so many thoughts that are always in my head when this subject comes up.
I think one thing that just made my jaw drop in that Jezebel post was the comments. So much fat-hate and hate against people with mental health disorders(of which I'm one) and saying they'd rather have a sex partner with herpes than a 350-lbs schizophrenic. Gah!
Why do people have to hit new lows when it comes to sex?
Whoa, glad I did not read through the comments, there, then.
Side and irrelevant note - I feel comfortable rolling my eyes about the PSD while at the same time claiming to be short-tempered about bullshit. I will say, on the fair-and-balanced-side, that the way the lead singer sounds like a just-coming-out-of-anesthesia cat going "rrorrr" when she sings "raw" now gives me a laugh, mainly because I think she means to sound sexy and not incapacitated. And I do appreciate being given a laugh in this life.
I am not sure I truly get what you're saying on the big-deal front. I mean I think I do, but then...I feel split, with what I think you're saying (and if I'm right, something I feel strongly in agreement with) on one side and what my personal approach to my own sex life has been on the other side.
As in, it goddamn kills me that sex information, especially for people newly learning about it, seems to be a choice between abstinence and physical arming-against-viral-invasions-or-babies. And/or winkwink no-context here's an armload of sex toys ain't it grand.
I see kids in that age group that is most in need of learning what the hell is up with sex, and I never see them getting told anything about what an intense thing it is, and that it IS hard to take care of your self in that area. It's hard because of physical and emotional impulses, and ideas about how entitlted any of us are to decide ANYTHING specific to us and what we want. Or how little control we have over what it feels like to be that close to another human being - including everything about it - physical pleasure or awkwardness or distaste or god knows what-all, plus longing and fear and frustration and hope and expectation and confusion... I mean, sex for me is one of the most big fucking deal things I experience as a human being, on all fronts.
And - I have wanted it to not-be. I don't at all speak for anyone else's no-big-deal attitude, obviously, but on my end I for sure have wanted it to be as diminished in importance as possible. Not in the sense of sex not being important enough to HAVE, but in wanting everything that gets stirred up around it to just shrink down to a manageable size. Something maybe to even shrug off - it is so comfortable to not care! For me anyway.
I would like it if something I'm this compelled to do were something I enjoyed as freely on the emotional side as I do on the physical. I DEFINITELY wish for others to have that. To be okay with it being a big deal, and to be up for handling it.
I don't know if any of that had to do with stuff you said in this post, but as usual I did love reading what you had to say.
as a person with HPV (an STI that is similiar to herpes in a lot of ways), i really identify with a lot of the things in that jezebal post. as a person without stable access to health care, i identify with the things you say here. hpv is usually no big deal as long as you have regular checkups; if not, it can develop into cervical cancer. this is really state violence. like i'm doomed to cancer JUST because i don't have insurance?
the things about the common prevalence of these STIs is that once you start talking about them, you find (or at least i did) that almost all my friends have STIs and those who don't or don't know are almost always the ones who either have no health insurance or are scared to go to the doctor.
Like nadia, I can see the points in both this post and the Jezebel post. I don't have an STD/I, but the only person I know who has one (that I know about) has had sex with all of two people in her life, both of whom she either was married to at the time or married later. And I know tons of people who have oral herpes, which you can get from something as simple as sharing a drink with someone.
I think herpes, in particular, is generally not a big deal because (from what I understand of it), it's not a life-threatening disease--unlike HPV, it doesn't lead to cervical cancer. In many cases, a person with herpes will experience no symptoms, or will only have one outbreak, or will have subsequent outbreaks that will be comparativly very mild and infrequent. So yeah, I've been known to say herpes--not other STDs, just herpes--is no big deal because, well, if herpes is your biggest concern in life, I would like to trade lives with you please.
I agree with your point that we are worth seriousness. I guess the message I would like to see sent out about sex is that in terms of health/safety/consent/etc. (the biggest) yes you should always take it very seriously, as seriously as possible. But on an emotional level I'd like to see people feeling that they are allowed to take it as seriously as they want to. No one feeling pressured to only have sex if they're in love, but also no one feeling pressured to feel it less seriously than they do. Some people can only enjoy sex in a committed relationship; for others that's not a requirement. Sometimes these two groups are the same people, at different points in their lives--in your twenties vs. in your thirties, or in your marriage vs. after your divorce, or with your boyfriend that you're open with but love vs. with the boy you're using that openness with--which I think is also okay; we change, and our relationships to other desires change, so why would we expect our relationship with sex to be any different, if that makes sense.
manageable size. Something maybe to even shrug off - it is so comfortable to not care! For me anyway.
I would like it if something I'm this compelled to do were something I enjoyed as freely on the emotional side as I do on the physical.
And i think thats what I woudl like to have for kids andfor ME as well.( my long sordid avoidance of the sex we will discuss later when I'm drunker)
But i don't think teh route is to go oh hey fuck it or hey it's not a big deal.
No its a big damn deal
and it's gonna suck and it will change and move and grow
AND YOU CAN DEAL WITH IT
not cause its not a huge concern but because your life is worth learning how to deal with HUGE fucking concerns.
That's for me is about this really prevalent sense that we're trying to make social and cultural change on diminishing folks feeling s and reactions to some gawd awful norm that doesn't exist .
Part of our identities ( a part big enough peopel get KILLED for is this sex thing here) so why is it a mission by everyone to down play it in terms of
" oh dont worry your not special everyone goes through that
rather than
" you are special your gonna be hurt and battered about but you CAN deal with it and if your responsible it wont end your life and if you do mes sup its serious but not something that you have to hang you r head about"
WHy do we concentrate on diminishing the impact rather than creating people strong enough to deal with it and informed enough and secure enough to make their own choices
Nadia-
Word. I think thats what cheesed me off a bout teh JEzebel post teh most. BEcause valtrex requires a doctor for you herpes to jsut me something that gets you mean comments and doesnt have you worrying about your future fertility requires a doctor.
That wasn't about destigmatization of sex it was bout making sure they werent at the bottom of the sexual choice barrell, because hey everyone is doing it.
IT destigmatization by popularity rather than actual effects
its should be destigmatized caus emost sti " concern" is thinkly veiled slut shaming
its hould be destigmatized because lots of em result form piss poor sex ed
and that teh healthcare offered is essentially state violence
and shoddy helath care
but simply cuase everyone s got em
and oops people like em less than the real nasty things liek fat people and mental disorders?
And thats not fair cause we brandishing our health care and other things are more acceptable in every way BUT this
why cant people LAY off us WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAh
uh no
"WHy do we concentrate on diminishing the impact rather than creating people strong enough to deal with it and informed enough and secure enough to make their own choices"
I do have a lot of opinions on why we do this, but I will discuss later when you're drunker.
On the non-joking side, what you said above is what I just fantasize the fuck out of, it is my idea of paradise. Sexuality and sexual experience for me is such a foundation-level human rights issue. And although sexual harm, in its politicized ways, are part of what I mean, so is everything you're talking about here. It is NOT enough, for my taste anyway, that everything boils down to
You're either for or against it!
???
It's like, the complexity of masturbation-shaming. The major bum-out about it, to me, is not that omgunspentbonerz!!! Or holyshitshedoesn'tknowhowtomakeherselfcome!! It's that - when you tell people - kids!! it starts when they're kids!! - that touching their own fucking bodies - the only physical thing we will ever in our lives actually own, and the thing we most need to be in true relationship with in order to successfully navigate every goddamn other thing...when you pathologize connection to self by making ownership of your own genitals for god's sake into something embarrassing or evil...
It is so not about "masturbation isn't a big deal everyone does it, let's move on."
Because now, even people who DO it, don't necessarily have an intact relationship with themselves.
I went to - I don't care if any of you laugh, you're in the privacy of your computer space and I will not police you - but I went to a sexaholics anonymous type thing for a little while. And there are people on this planet whose relationship to masturbation is as problematic when they're doing it as when they're not. So it' not just, eh, whatever, have at it!
Anyway, that's just one tiny example for me. Don't mean to hijack this into a jerkoff-worshipping tangent, ahem.
And also, I had not thought about the healthcare angle re: STI's and it's not-big-deal-ness framing. And what you said about a subtle point regarding stigma and "specific rarefied airs" - agreed, totally.
And, hm, I am compelled to say this although I know it's neither here nor there. And this is not an attempt to hit on you, even though I have publicly proposed second-wifery elswhere.
What I want to say is that I am pre-emptively happy for whoever gets to have sex with you, whenever that ends up happening. I mean presuming they are somebody who I will be also happy for you to get to have sex with. But seriously. The idea of being that close to you, with how you are - kind of breathtaking.
Hello, I'm Daisy, I just started reading your blog in the last few weeks. I'm impressed and fascinated by everything I read here, so thank you. I've already learned a lot.
I agree with all the sentiments in this post. When I was younger I very much felt like sex wasn't a big deal at all. That feeling didn't come from enlightenment or liberation, but from the fact that I was completely divorced from my sexual self (heteronormativity being what it is). Once I understood what sex actually is, what it actually can be, I came to all the conclusions you wrote here.
I want to add another dimension to your criticism of the Glamour piece: I think it's specifically the "do's and dont's" of foreplay. The whole idea of "foreplay" -- that real sex involves penetration with a penis, and everything else is just something you do in preparation for that -- is extremely, ridiculously sexist and heterosexist. It makes the whole existence lesbian sex (the kind I have) a sort of logical impossibility, which is of course bullshit. That article very much reflects this kind of thinking.
I don't usually comment on blogs, but I read you often and I think this post is excellent, it definitely verbalized some thoughts I've had on the whole topic having just officially finished college/grad school this year. I especially agree with your ending-I think to blow off the importance of sex and caring for our bodies (and being careful) does insinuate something about our self-worth and I think that's a big deal too!
It scares me how much I love this post.
I for sure have wanted it to be as diminished in importance as possible. Not in the sense of sex not being important enough to HAVE, but in wanting everything that gets stirred up around it to just shrink down to a manageable size. Something maybe to even shrug off - it is so comfortable to not care! For me anyway.
Me too, Joan. It's probably a natural-enough human impulse to want to shrink things down to manageable just so we can cope. Like you said, it's intense just being that close to another human being, and it involves for me the very thing I fear most: Loss of control. My first instinct is to run away from what I can't be in charge of.
Blackamazon, if I'm reading you right though, you're saying we should work instead on building ourselves up to be big enough, worth it enough, to negotiate the complexities of sex, instead of trying to bring those complexities back down to a "smaller," more manageable, more controllable size.
No its a big damn deal
and it's gonna suck and it will change and move and grow
AND YOU CAN DEAL WITH IT
not cause its not a huge concern but because your life is worth learning how to deal with HUGE fucking concerns.
I love this. Valuing ourselves instead of devaluing sex--that should not be a radical concept in 2007, yet it is.
(This will not further the discussion in any meaningful way but I have to say, Joan, that "omgunspentbonerz" is cracking me up.)
The whole idea of "foreplay" -- that real sex involves penetration with a penis, and everything else is just something you do in preparation for that -- is extremely, ridiculously sexist and heterosexist. It makes the whole existence lesbian sex (the kind I have) a sort of logical impossibility, which is of course bullshit.
Daisy, hear hear! I don't think it really does wonders for het sex, either--calling it "foreplay" partitions off all the parts I find most enjoyable into this separate "pre-game" warmup to be rushed through/gotten over with as quickly as possible by an insensitive partner. Thanks for nothing, Glamour!
Daisy I always am boggled about that . SO lesbians don't have sex did I miss something? It's lklike were FOR Women
LONG AS TEHY LIKE SEX WITH MEN
THe other ones well yall yall can be uncomfortable we dont care
*GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR*
Welcome isabel.
Welcome anacaona and isabel!
DOnt be scared ilyka
But it is a radicla concept valuing ourselves and not as peopel tof it some mold or to make controversy or
but a s humans
Joan:
*blushes*
Can you send tehis luckyp erson soon . I'm kind of peaked
But yes i Think tahts part of my issue with sex posiitive masturbation as well .
It's designed to often to make someon feel bad in SOME way its not about making us feel ready and able adn comofrtable to make these choices but to sponsor some sort of conformist self centered but non self valuing cheer squad
its dangerous and intimate and so are we to other peopel and we cna deal with it.
Mmm dangerous
"But on an emotional level I'd like to see people feeling that they are allowed to take it as seriously as they want to."
i agree with this. we are worth seriousness, yes. but sometimes it's just not that serious, for all of us, in the same ways.
"that real sex involves penetration with a penis, and everything else is just something you do in preparation for that -- is extremely, ridiculously sexist and heterosexist."
this is so true...do you know how many women have sex with other women but don't think of themselves as gay because they don't think of it as sex?
P.S. a year later -
BA I hear you on the peaked thing.
Ilyka, exactly, wanting to "run away from things I can't be in charge of." It's also why I blow a gasket around pop culture phenomenon like "He's just not that into you" (among other reasons) - okay so mostly I am into women but when it comes to wanting to have sex with men and be comfortable in any way with them, it is MY natural setting to want to pursue, and I am pretty repelled by men pursuing me. The "men are DNA-mandated to chase, ladies, so you must set aside your own urge if it pops up lest you be an old maid!" thing makes me berzerk.
I know that is off topic, but still. Some of my discomfort with the uncontrollable alchemy of sexuality and closeness is learned and - for me, speaking for me - pathological. Definitely not anything I want to pass on under the guise of sex ed for fuck's sake! It's a different subject though from being attracted to intimacy and sexual collision but just from a not-typically-female-passive perspective. I'm not talking about "there must be a hierarchy and so I would prefer to be on top," it's something else. And I have rambled enough and avoided enough work today so I'll leave it at that.
Having sex with a person is a big damn deal , having sex with a person with or WITHOUT herpes is a big damn deal.
===========
Best. Shit. ALL. I've. Seen. ALL. DAY.
Post a Comment