Being Amber Rhea

What Lux said: (yes, I’m quoting the whole damn thing)

We live in a sex-soaked world. Star-studded sex tapes flood the channels of media, mainstream blogs publish pornographic spreads, self-proclaimed whores offer sex commentary on tech gossip sites. So all this sex must mean we live in a sex-positive culture, right? It must mean we have healthy attitudes towards sex, that we’re comfortable discussing sexuality, that sex is viewed as just a normal, every day part of life, right? Right?

Yeah, not so much.

The media is all too happy to cover sex when it’s sensationalistic, when there’s a scandal, when they can cluck their tongues about what this world is coming to while simultaneously showing us Paris Hilton’s goodies for our masturbatory pleasure.

Bring on your sex toy busts, your celebrity sex tapes, your teen sex scandals: the media will eat it up and serve it back to us on a platter.

But try discussing sex in a healthy, rational way: try talking about sexuality in a rational, intelligent matter, giving the topic the sensitivity and insight it deserves. Suddenly you’re perverted, you’re sick, you’re unmarketable.

When the mainstream media shows us the latest celebrity sex tape, when it invites us to check out the latest Lindsay Lohan upskirt shot, it’s not a sign of progress. It’s not a sign that we’ve suddenly become okay with sex, that we can talk about sex - no, it’s just another iteration of the age old madonna/whore complex. It’s just another example of sex as the tempting, tantalizing bait that’s dangled in front of us; only to be snatched away when we try to examine it, try to talk about it, try to treat it as something more than the next cheap thrill.

Oh, and for that matter, what Figleaf said, too:

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.