I got tired of writing about sex. I got tired of reading about sex. I would be tired of having sex, probably, if we weren't cat-sitting (in Austin TX) at the apartment-from-hell, so befouled, so entirely reeking of feline shit that mutually agreed upon abstinence has ensued from the team effort to avoid all unnecessary squalor-to-skin contact.
My hanky-panky fatigue started on a seemingly benign Friday night two weeks ago when, waiting to judge an Iron Chef contest [1], I stumbled across Courtney Martin [2] and Hannah Seligson's Huffington Post diagnosis of the "Carrie Bradshaw Effect" and was launched into a state of existential sex blogger angst. I couldn't help but wonder (to lift a rhetorical prompt from none other than Bushnell's Bradshaw herself) . . . whether I was suffering from--and complicit in--The Effect? And, if so, was there a cure?
We are, in other words, joining the ranks of women who leverage their sexuality to carve out a sliver of power in traditionally male-dominated realms. Like the legendary Lysistrata who convinced Greek women to withhold nooky until their horny husbands called off the Pelopennesian War, the 1950s housewives who strategically timed sexual favors, or Ariel Levy's female chauvinist pig who, to impress men, flash their boobs on Girls Gone Wild and flaunt porn-star T-and-A while justifying it as faux-feminist liberation, women who resort to sex in order to sell articles and get choice blogging gigs confirm the lack of actual power and prestige women writers wield.
This is prostitution of the oldest and most insidious sort: the sort that reinforces gender inequality rather than challenging it. So, I got concerned. I am an young woman writer, and a sex writer to boot. It seemed to me that the complications of each subsequent affiliation (young . . . woman . . . writer . . . sex writer) compounded to produce a worryingly high risk of self-prostitution and soul-sacrifice. I feared waking up with a start some future morning to find my semi-nude photo next to my banally risque sex column and wondering why I wanted all this in the first place.
Here's what I thought: First, as a starry-eyed, energetic newcomer to any competitive field, you're asked to do the shit work. In the case of a fledgling sex writer, it just so happens (as the result, you know, of the longstanding relegation of women to sexual object-hood) that the shit work is Lena Chen-style debauched detail disclosure and, for the lucky, hardworking, and smart women who develop a public voice and following, an Emily Gould-esque opportunity to pen pithy, high-diction overshares for prestigious publications [3]. Second, for women writers of all stripes, it seems pretty clear, there's some socially-ingrained hesitance to show ambition in staking out a place among the Men Who Get To Talk About Important Shit (the "War and Truth" set), aptly described by Anna Clark as the "Ambition Condition" in the latest Bitch. Finally, there's the young woman sex writer, afflicted with the Carrie Bradshaw Effect and the Sex Writer = Dumb Nympho Slut Syndrome (I coined that one myself). And here, the sum of sequence becomes a lively and demoralizing FUBAR situation, replete with Shit Work and Conditions and Effects and Syndromes, and all of the sudden I'm tired of writing about sex and reading about sex and have developed some paralyzing sex blogger form of hypochondria about being a prostitute [4].
Here's what I thought: First, as a starry-eyed, energetic newcomer to any competitive field, you're asked to do the shit work. In the case of a fledgling sex writer, it just so happens (as the result, you know, of the longstanding relegation of women to sexual object-hood) that the shit work is Lena Chen-style debauched detail disclosure and, for the lucky, hardworking, and smart women who develop a public voice and following, an Emily Gould-esque opportunity to pen pithy, high-diction overshares for prestigious publications [3]. Second, for women writers of all stripes, it seems pretty clear, there's some socially-ingrained hesitance to show ambition in staking out a place among the Men Who Get To Talk About Important Shit (the "War and Truth" set), aptly described by Anna Clark as the "Ambition Condition" in the latest Bitch. Finally, there's the young woman sex writer, afflicted with the Carrie Bradshaw Effect and the Sex Writer = Dumb Nympho Slut Syndrome (I coined that one myself). And here, the sum of sequence becomes a lively and demoralizing FUBAR situation, replete with Shit Work and Conditions and Effects and Syndromes, and all of the sudden I'm tired of writing about sex and reading about sex and have developed some paralyzing sex blogger form of hypochondria about being a prostitute [4].
So I'm a hypocrite, you're thinking--writing about not feeling comfortable writing about sex, which is, of course, writing about sex all the same. The truth is I wouldn't have started writing this post if I hadn't begun feeling a renewed optimism about the whole sex thing, if I hadn't shaken free of this paralysis. Really, it all comes down to this question, posited to me through anonymous index card by a tenth-grade woman in an underfunded Louisiana high school where 95% of the students receive free or reduced lunches, where my friend Teach[es] For America and let me, against all rules (Louisiana boasts the Governor's Program on Abstinence) and with actual consequences when the principal got wind of what went down, talk to his class about sex:
"COULD YOU GET PREGNANT IF YOU SUCK A BOY'S DICK AND HE NUTS?"
I realized, broaching this question to the twenty-five women in the classroom who had cheered, literally and loudly, at the chance to have a period of sex talk, who hurried their teacher and male classmates out of the room so that we could get down and dirty, who filled the whole forty-five minute time with non-stop question upon question...
"Do you think that oral sex is normal?!"
"Why do boys like it when you give them head but call you a slut after?!"
"What does the clitoris do?!"
"What does it mean to have a fat cat?!"
"If you masturbate, does that mean you're not a virgin anymore?!"
"Do you think threesomes, foursomes, and fivesomes are healthy?!
"Why do boys like it when you give them head but call you a slut after?!"
"What does the clitoris do?!"
"What does it mean to have a fat cat?!"
"If you masturbate, does that mean you're not a virgin anymore?!"
"Do you think threesomes, foursomes, and fivesomes are healthy?!
...that I will never get tired of talking about sex or about whether you can get pregnant if you suck a boy's dick and he nuts. (Answer: No.) Nutting never gets old (including, of course, the Wordsworth version...which is not what we were talking about on that particular day) and neither, I suspect, will the sort of inspiration I got from talking to these high-school women who want to know where their G-spot is, how to find birth control, or why they alone shoulder the aftermath of unprotected sex and teenage pregnancy when their male partners were the ones who didn't want to use a condom in the first place.
Sex is so intricately connected to all matter of personal identity and public concern that there are always people who are eager and enthused to be talking about these intricacies, people with something they want to say, something they want to know, or some private concern it's nice to realize others share. Like the curious, boisterous tenth graders in Louisiana. Like asexual people alienated by the pervasive assumption that we're all trolling sex fiends. Men wondering if they are alone in faking orgasms. People rationalizing the pedophilic pricks of shame they experience when their masturbatory minds drift toward fucking Miley Cyrus. Like, I'm assuming, the readers of Nerve.com, Salon.com, Sex and the Ivy and all the other Ghettos Where Sex Writers Go To Marginalize Themselves and Perish. Economics 101: it's difficult to glut a market with a product nobody wants. Sex 101: there's usually a reason behind people's desires.
Sex has all the elements of a raw, alternately tortured and blissful story that (like nutting!) never gets old. It is a story that we keep coming back to, because it is the story we embody daily: the scary emotional shit, connected to the most shameful and private of our desires and fears and the most nourishing, liberating and downright feel good aspects of being human.
It's not like sex writers these days have so much new material to cover. Rather, good sex writing (like the deed itself) is open, honest, adventurous and, yes, a little repetitive. After all, no matter how many times you re-read I Love Female Orgasm: An Extraordinary Orgasm Guide, how many Double-Reverse-Twisted-Cowgirls and Japanese bondage techniques are whipped out, or what kind of sex toys get tagged into the ring, the actual sensations of an orgasm only vary so much and, when you find something and someone you like, innovation feels exquisite but so does repetition. When it's all said and done, the appeal of sex gets down to the basic human stuff of confronting our shame and loneliness and alienation, exposing ourselves, being accepted and embraced for who we are and, you know, finding consummate pleasure beyond the shell of the Self. The sheer humanness and empathetic interplay of sex can even be downright religious, which is why people as diverse as Rev. Ed Young and the folks at Global Orgasm Day are preaching its benefits. My first orgasm, I have to admit, made little ol' culturally Catholic, religiously agnostic me reconsider the possibility of resoundingly and unflinchingly believing in God. This is all to say, of course, that sex writing (a public, accessible, mass version of sex talk) is as inevitable--and necessary--as making L-O-V-E-heart-double-heart itself. This is true even if part of the reason women like myself get involved in the whole ordeal is, as Katha Pollitt (yes! a Woman Talking About Important Shit and who has, seemingly, not bartered her soul on the black market!) describes, a calculated move to give the people what they want. I.E. it's easier for women to get gigs writing about "women's issues."
In an ideal world, Sex Writers will join their Food Writer-Travel Writer-Sports Writer brethren, crafting new angles on topics that have been dissected ad nauseum, not because there is evermore to say, but because these areas of passion are so intimately related to what it means to be human and alive. EXPLORE! EAT! COMPETE! We don't need fancy commercials or social manipulations to convince s us that Food, Travel, and Sports are intrinsic components of a pleasurable life. Similarly, even in the absence of the commercialization of sexuality, many of us would still want to get our freak on and still want to talk about it.
As it stands today, those of us who care about writing and talking openly about bodies and desire, double standards and golden showers, are navigating a slope from sexploration to sexploitation that is Astroglide slippery [5]. It's right to be wary of The Effect. But renouncing Carrie Bradshaw and adopting the popular pastime of lambasting Emily Gould (for, no less, her attempt to offer an personal account of sexploitation's hazards) won't get us off the lubed-up Slip 'n Slide. It was people willing to risk the Scary Ghetto who carried off important social tasks like making knowledge of AIDS widespread and documenting the once little-acknowledged fact that women actually care about sex and that yes, thank you very much, we like to get off too. Sex writing is a tradition to be proud of, one that educates and informs and makes people a bit less lonely in our bodies.
The requisite shame and exhortations of "No! I am NOT a Dumb Nympho Slut!" and "No! I will not take a sexy picture!" that come with the territory of sex writing evidence the fact that we need thoughtful public discussions of sexuality in the first place. We still have too little real information about how our bodies work, too much shame about what we should and should not be doing and desiring, and inadequate responses to the commercialization of sexuality. When being a woman who discusses sexuality openly and frankly does not relegate you to anything that can be described as "Scary" or a "Ghetto," then I'll set the whole Carrie Bradshaw precedent to rest and get cozy next to Food and Travel and Sports. In the meantime, there is, not to be melodramatic or anything, no easy cure.
That's why we started the HBlog, in the hopes that we can bring people together for intimate, intelligent, free-wheeling and creative discussions of the ins and outs of sexuality in our society without the pressure to get nekkid on camera or offer meticulous and witty depictions last night's rendezvous. It's hard, but not impossible. For inspiration, look no further than Dan ("What's Not To Love?") Savage: The Only Man Publicly Saying That, Yes, Sex Is Important Shit [6] Too! Please join us. Joining may involve the aforementioned litany of risks, but these risks are, by the very nature of their existence, ones worth taking.
(Dan Savage! Inspired!)
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[1] Gotta (foot)note that Courtney Martin, a Woodhull Fellow and Feministing blogger, is doing something that younger folks look up to: writing about often overlooked feminist and social justice topics that desperately need more attention and doing so successfully! And, of course, being honest, ethical, and self-aware in the process.
[2] Greg won the Iron Chef contest! And he didn't resort to any sleeping-with-the-judge (i.e. me) tactics; Greg can prepare a damn fine portobello mushroom!
[3] I'm tired of Emily Gould-bashing. Read her blog. She's insightful. She's not the problem. It's what it takes for women to get a voice and a space in the public dialogue that's the problem.
[4] Some people are actual prostitutes, others are metaphorical ones, and there's not exactly a clear line that divides the two. For more on prostitution and sex workers rights see RH Reality Check, this excerpt from "Instigations from the Whore Revolution: A Third Wave Feminist Response to the Sex Work 'Controversy,'" the Huffington Post's "The Sex Workers Speak: True Life Tales of the Oldest Profession," or check out the rad folks that put together the Sex Workers' Art Show.
[5] My own tiny foray into the wet and wild sexploration: The Harvard Crimson was photographing me for this article on campus sex talk. Everyone had to pose on a pool table and, due the nature of my piece, the photographer asked me to "do something sexy with the stick." I said no, thank you very much, I'd rather not, and opted for a playful pose that I was confident could not be construed as containing any even remotely phallic elements. When the article came out, I found my smiling, pool-stickless self with the caption, "Jenna Mellor is comfortable playing with balls!" Way to work in the male genitals, Crimson.
[6] My use of "shit" here may be colloquial, but literary explorations of scatology are makin' a splash in Germany and are sure to hit the US soon...!