We're repeatedly given messages that we live in sexually enlightened times.
That we belong to a liberated age and therefore the implication is that we
ought by now, to be finding sex a straightforward and un-troubling matter
we're not after all Victorians or prudes. The standard narrative of our release
from past inhibitions go something like this. For thousands of years
right across the globe due to a devilish combination of religious bigotry and
pedantic social customs people were afflicted by a ridiculous sense of
confusion and guilt around sex.
They thought their hands would fall off if they masturbated.
They believed they might be burned in a vat of oil because they ogle [look at] someone's ankle.
They had no clue about erections or clitorises. They will see that
sometime between the first World War and the launch of Sputnik 1,
things change for the better. Finally people started wearing bikinis, admitted
to masturbating, grew able to mention cunnilingus in social context, started to
watch porn films, and became deeply comfortable with a topic which had
almost unaccountably been a source of needless carotid frustration
for most of human history.
It seems almost inconceivable now how hung up our ancestors had been.
Sex came to be perceived as a useful, refreshing,
and physically reviving pass time: a bit like tennis.
The one that could sit perfectly well within the context of
bourgeois [middle class] family life once the kids were in bed.
This narrative of enlightenment and progress, however flattering
it may be to the modern age, conveniently skirts an unbutching fact.
We remain hugely conflicted, embarrassed, ashamed, and ought about sex.
Sex refuses to match up simply with love
and remains as difficult to subject as ever, with
one added complication: it's meant to be so simple.
In reality, none of us approaches sex
as we meant to: with a cheerful, sporting, non-obsessive, clean, loyal
well-adjusted outlook that we convinced ourselves is the norm.
We are universally odd around sex, but only in relation to
some highly and cruelly distorted ideals of normality.
Most of what we are sexually remains very frightening to communicate to
anyone whom we would want to think well of us.
People in love constantly, instinctively, hold back from
sharing more than a fraction of their desires and tastes out of a fear,
not without foundation, of generating intolerable disgust in their partners.
In the choice between being loved and being honest, most of us choose the former.
But we are then burdened by sexuality, which refuses to stop haunting us.
We suffer, and yet may find it easier to die without having had certain conversations.
The priority seems evident: to find a way to talk
to ourselves and our partners about who we really are, to tell one another
without setting off catastrophic panic, offense, or fear
what sex really makes us want. It may be someone else or them in a uniform.
At the heart of the dilemma is how simultaneously to appear normal
and yet achieve honesty about our sexual appetites.
Our commitment to feeling normal is important and touching.
It means being, or at least trying very hard to be: patient, gentle,
considerate, Democratic, intelligent, and devoted to treating people with
respect and loyalty, and yet, our sexual imaginations simply refuse
to bow to any normative parameters.
To start the list, here are just some of the unpalatable truths
that stir in our sexual imaginations.
It's very rare to maintain sexual interest in only
one person, however much one loves them, beyond more than a few years.
It's entirely possible to love one's partner and regularly want to have sex
with complete strangers. One can be a kind, respectable, and democratic person
and at the same time want to flog, hurt, and humiliate a sexual partner
who'll be on the receiving end of a very rough treatment.
It may be easier to be excited by someone one dislikes
or thinks nothing of, then by someone one loves and respects.
Though we may try to tame them, our sexual desires remain
often an absurd, irreconcilable conflict with many of our highest commitments and
values. We need to admit to ourselves that whatever the self congratulation,
sexual liberation has never, in fact, happened.
This is about more than the ability to wear a bikini. We remain imprisoned,
fearful, and ashamed, sometimes with few options but to life for the sake of love
true liberation is a challenge that remains before us as we patiently build
up the courage to admit to the nature of our desires and learn to talk to our
loved ones with pioneering honesty about the contents of our own minds.
[LIGHT SWITCH CLICKS]