I am afraid of sex as sex is defined by the dominant culture, as practiced all around me, and projected onto magazine pages, billboards, and movie screens. I am afraid of sex because I am afraid of domination, cruelty, violence and death. I am afraid of sex because sex has hurt me and hurt lots of people I know, and because I have hurt others with sex in the past. I know that there are people out there who have been hurt by sex in ways that are beyond words, who have experienced a depth of pain that I will never fully understand...
Yes, I am afraid of sex. How could I not be?
Not a sense of victim-hood, but a desire to do no harm, to not visit violence by "fucking." That to "fuck someone" and to "fuck someone up" are not that dissimilar.
That in our society, women who consider themselves sexually empowered still wish to "be fucked", that they consider acting towards their sexuality as men have been engendered to do is a healthy feminist goal--it visits a horrible crime on themselves and their very "liberated, empowered" sexuality is then sold back to men as a desirable commodity? And all we are left with is men and women playing out patriarchal sexual roles and a bunch of people "fucking" each other [over].
2 comments:
Let's hope there's a bit more left than that. I'd like to think that it is somehow possible to create moments of refuge from both patriarchy and capitalism--not a full-scale undoing, but little interruptions in which men and women can connect with each other as something approaching whole beings. In fact, I'd like to think that, on some level, that's the whole point of relationship, which I mean in the broadest possible sense. If not, then we are all just cogs in a machine that is so much bigger than us, which leaves no room for hope. And that's not a very sexy place to be, is it?
Oh, I think that sparking at true intimacy does have that refuge- but building it into your life in the long term may be hard to do- especially without a stable partner who is looking for the same thing.
I really don't know- I just started looking at it from this perspective, I may have over-stated it. Let you know in a few months.
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