Sex File [Directory]

Sexual passion--its nature read more

Hierarchy and pornographobia read more

Handedness and orgasm read more

Why do we toss sex into the gutter? Why do we negativize sex? read more

===================================================

Sexual passion--its nature

I think sex is so important to human life--including yours, mine, and alex'--that it needs to be treated in new ways. it ain't a dead commodity. it's a verb with two souls attached, souls moving in directions they may never have forseen. For all the talk, the trash, the writing, and the magazines about sex, the heart of the mystery remains unexplored. And when it comes to wetware, sex drives the hormone-neuron mix like nothing else on earth. I'd like to see the honest story of one person's sex life each issue--just one human's real life tale--complete with all the stuff that's never confessed, the insecurities, the nightmare seconds, hours, and days, the pains, the pleasures, the fantasies that pounce and carry us away. No dildos, condums, poppers, quaaludes, nothing, just the naked human-ness of the tale. I get these kind of stories out of people--the real thing squirming, painful, making us like worms, yet pulling evanescence, luminous sparks, beyond belief from time to time--sparks that make the darkness of the thing worthwhile. What other writers go diving for this stuff, I don't know, especially contemporary writers. I used to love Anne Tyler's work and the work of Laurie Colvin...they had subtle emotional insight. But Laurie died six years ago and Anne is probably too old for this magazine. Who can write from the within his own heart and the hearts of others? Again, I keep going back to Douglas Rushkoff.
________
THE USUAL SERIES OF TELEPHONIC GIRLFRIENDS. TURNS OUT THE ONE THE SIGHT OF WHOM I CAN'T STAND BUT WHOSE SOUL I LOVE I'M LITERALLY ALERGIC TO IN PERSON. SEX IS SOUL STUFF, IKE. MAKING LOVE IS ALL ABOUT SOUL. DON'T KNOW ABOUT YOU, BUT THE CHACKRA OR WHATEVER OF MY SOUL SEEMS TO BE LEGITAMATELY IN MY PENIS. STRANGE GODS OOZE OUT OF ME, THUNDERING IN MY THROAT WITH SEISMIC LANGUAGES I DIDN'T UNDERSTAND UNTIL RECENTLY WHEN I MAKE LOVE. TOSSES UP NEAT STUFF FOR PONDERING, ALL THESE HIDDEN SELVES WITH THEIR OWN HEAVING VOCABULARIES OF EMOTIONAL CONTENT THE PUNY LITTLE SELF-DECLARED "I" IN ME DIDN'T KNOW WERE UNDER THE SURFACE OF THE LINOLEUM AND WENT DOWN SIX HUNDRED MILES DEEP. FORTUNATELY, MY CURRENT TELEPHONIC GIRLFRIEND'S SOUL (OR HUNDREDS OF THEM) IS IN HER VAGINA, SO WE COMMUNICATE ON LEVELS WORDS AREN'T MADE TO FIT. BUT SHE MAKES MY NOISES AND FREES ME TO NARRATE, PUTTING THE INEFFABLE INTO SENTENCES. TAKES US AN HOUR AND A HALF TO MAKE LOVE--ANY LESS TIME IS THOROUGHLY INADEQUATE. AND UNTIL THE LAST WEEK OR TWO, WHEN MY WORK AND CFS HAVE OVERWHELMED ME SIMULTANEOUSLY, WE WERE DOING IT TWICE A DAY. FORMED AN EMOTIONAL BASE FROM WHICH BOTH OF US COULD WORK THE THING CALLED REALITY ONCE WE WERE APART. BUT I THINK I'D LIKE TO BE MARRIED AGAIN AND HAVE SOMETHING IN PERSON AND PERMANENT. BUT WITH MY 8 AM TO 4 AM WORKDAY, I'M NOT SURE THERE'S TIME AND SPACE. THE LIBRARY HERE--COMPLETE PERIODICALS COLLECTION PLUS GOD KNOWS HOW MANY BOOKS--HAS NOW SPILLED OVER INTO EVERY ROOM. AND I DO MEAN RESEARCH LIBRARY IN THE HOME. I CAN'T WALK TO THE SEVEN-STORY LIBRARY HALF A MILE AWAY. IF YA CAN'T LEAVE YER HOUSE, YA GOTTA FIND ANOTHER WAY, RIGHT? I MEAN NOTHING STOPS A DEDICATED WORKAHOLIC. AM FLIRTING WITH ANOTHER GIRL WHO THINKS I'M A GENIUS, BUT I KNOW WE COULD NEVER WORK OUT PERMANENTLY. HOWEVER SHE MAY COME TO VISIT SOMEDAY. AND I GENERALLY REQUIRE THAT MY HIGHLY INFREQUENT FEMALE VISITORS SHED THEIR CLOTHES SOON AFTER ARRIVAL. WHO WANTS RITUAL AND SUPERFICIALITY? I WANT TO KNOW WHAT'S INSIDE THE REAL THEM AND WHAT THEY WILL BRING OUT OF THE REAL ME. WITH EVERY NEW WOMAN, THE YOU THAT EMERGES TAKES YOU TOTALLY BY SURPRISE. HOW'S THAT FOR A SMALL SAMPLER OF YER NUTTY UNKLE'S LOVE LIFE?

Hierarchy and pornographobia

Val Geist makes an extremely interesting point about hierarchical behavior in his _Life Strategies_ (p. 62-63). We've spoken often and in many forms, from discussions of bullying on up, about a simple fact of dominance hierarchies: those one one rung of the ladder accept aggression from those above them, then direct the resulting frustrated aggression within themselves toward those below them or toward outsiders.

Val has pointed out something remarkably simple. By attacking those below us, we increase their level of defensive arousal. This activates debilitating stress hormones, robs them of physical health, and increases the activity of their immune system. It also burns up their calories by forcing them to be on the lookout for a drubing when those of us who drub them, subject to less violence, are able to store energy by going about our business in relative peace. The higher one is on the ladder, the more security and less attack one is subject to. The lower on the ladder, the more one becomes hen-pecked to the point of featherlessness and perpetual fear.

Here comes Val's point. By tossing our subordinates into a hormonal and energy-draining traffic jam of stressors, we decrease their reproductive possibilities, increase the share of the group's resources available to ourselves, and hence expand the size of our own reproductive slot. Primate and other mamalian studies have born Val out in many forms, demonstrating that in the wild low animals on the totem pole are, indeed, harassed to the point of virtual infertility, and showing the hormonal mechanisms through which continual stress turns off the reproductive hormones and results in what Val calls "virtual castration," or, in the case of females, which Val doesn't mention and in which this is a pretty vicious inter-female process, virtual hysterectomy.

Yesterday I mentioned one of the subjects I've studied at some length (and over which I've battled with a lady named Tipper Gore)--pornophobia. In his book _The Secret Museum: Pornography In Modern Culture_ (New York: Viking, 1987), Walter Kendrick makes a point that would cause any good Marxist or Foucaultian great satisfaction: that when nudity and copulation are treated in material only available to the wealthy, the result is considered "art" and is socially acceptable. When it is presented in a form available to the lower classes, it is considered "pornography" and is socially unacceptable, a good cause for furious attack. Poor Marxists and Foucaultians. They think that they've got the pig by the tail because they can attribute all this to the twisted ways of capitalism. However it is a mammalian, avian, and reptilian universal, and may, for all I know, extend further downward to invertebrates as well. It exists wherever there is a more or less linear dominance hierarchy. And alas for the Marxists, very few field mice, kangaroos, flocks of starlings, etc. have been misshapen by capitalist-greed, labor exploitation, and ownership of the means of production.

Kenyon is right, but for basic, instinctual and hierarchical reasons. We humans, like our brethren and sisteren along the evolutionary chain, take punishment from those above us, and mete it out to those below us. Those above us theoretically attempt to maximize their reproduction. We theoretically attempt to minimize the production of those below us to save the resources of reproduction for ourselves. Actually, it doesn't quite work out this way in humans, but that's another subject. The fact is, the instincts are in us, one way or the other.

Hence our attacks on the sexually explicit material of those below us are disguised outbursts of an inherited reflex, our attempts to deny our subordinates reproductive possibilities. The anti-pornography campaigns of the Ayatollahs, the Christian right and their occasional puppets like Tipper Gore can be viewed in terms of Geistian theory as attempts to harrass those on the bottom, increasing the stress on them, forcing them to take defensive positions, and draining them of the resources for sucessful reproduction.

In a sense, the collective "moral indignation" at the sexual exploits of the poor amd those of members of outgroups (who are traditionally accused of sexual perversion--a charge made, for example, by the Romans against the early Christians) may have an indirect sort of success. The modern urban underclass may spawn in numbers that would make a middle or upper class person gasp. But the fact of the matter is that the progeny of this process come out socially unfit and many kill each other off. The upper and middle classes follow a strategy which I believe Geist says is universal among animals adapted to a wide range of environments (and hence to fast-paced change)--long-term nurturing of just a few offspring. Hence a class of "informationally privileged" and "informationally underprivileged." But to an extent these privileges are earned. Those who put few resources and little attention into each child, but cover their bets by having a great number of them are guilty of underprivileging their children from the git-go. It's hard to think of a more serious crime than committing half a dozen innocent children to a lifetime of horrors in this way.

However, they are following an old pre-mammalian pattern too--choosing an r-strategy instead of the k-strategy. K, it turns out, produces those who can live more on their wits and adapt more readily no matter what the species or the alteration in circumstance.

The bottom line is that if monkeys and mountain goats had sexually explicit pictures to gawk at, the alphas would be praised for possessing theirs and the omegas would be hounded into shredding theirs. It ain't a matter of industrial society--its more a matter of elementary biology. Howard

P.S. Meanwhile, perhaps Marxists (including Stephen Jay Gould) attacked those who viewed behavior through an evolutionary lens so vehemently back in the early days of sociobiology because with our hierarchical, cross-species observations, we threaten to deprive them of their pastureland--the myth of the monstrous modern capitalist society. After all, if wild birds and mountain rams are victims of class warfare too, how capitalist can it be?
________

Handedness and orgasm
________
(replies to a comment made by anonymous story about how masturbation was not able to be achieved with the left hand but with the right.) THIS IS AN AMAZING FACT AND SEEMS TO HINT AT THE USE OF DIFFERENT BRAIN MODULES OR ORGANS INVOLVED WITH EACH HAND. THIS, OF COURSE, IS SOMETHING WE KNOW TO BE FACT??THE LEFT BRAIN CONTROLS THE RIGHT HAND AND VICE VERSA. NOW WHY IN THE WORLD WOULD IT BE THAT ONLY LEFT BRAIN COMPONENTS TO BE SEXUALLY SATISFYING? WHICH MODULE NEEDS TO BECKON TO ANOTHER THROUGH HER HAND TO GIVE HER SEXUAL SATISFACTION. AND WHAT IS THE NEUROBIOLOGY OF SEXUAL SATISFACTION, ANYWAY? I IMAGINE IT'S LOCATED LARGELY IN THE HIPPOCAMPUS, HYPOTHALAMUS, AMYGDALA, AND OTHER LIMBIC COMPONENTS. BUT IN HUMANS WE KNOW SEXUAL SATISFACTION ALSO INVOLVES A COMPLETION OF CERTAIN EMOTIONALLY CHARGED VISUAL IMAGES??LIKE THAT OF A CERTAIN KIND OF MALE ACTING IN A CERTAIN MANNER??AND EVEN FULL VISUAL SCRIPTS. THESE, I'D SUSPECT, WOULD BE A JOINT PROJECT OF THE LIMBIC SYSTEM AND THE CORTEX. STILL, WHY THIS STRANGE MYSTERY OF ONE HAND DOING THE WRITING AND THE OTHER BRINGING TO ORGASM? THEN PERHAPS HER RIGHT HAND IS ASSOCIATED WITH CONTROL AND OTHER SUCH MASCULINE THINGS AND SHE IS RESPONDING SEXUALLY TO THE FANTASY OF A STRONG SEXUAL PARTNER, ONE WHO CAN EXERCISE SOME CONTROL AND POWER OVER HER?, DEXTERITY??THE ABILITY TO MANIPULATE THINGS WITH PRECISION ON A SMALL SCALE IS MORE PRONOUNCED IN WOMEN THAN IN MEN. THIS WOULD SUPPORT THE NOTION THAT HER RIGHT HAND REPRESENTS MALENESS AND HER LEFT FEMALENESS TO HER. MALENESS AND FEMALENESS UNFOLD IN THE BRAIN VIA THE OPERATIONS OF ANDROGENS AND ESTROGENS ON THE DEVELOPING FOETUS, SO PRESUMABLY DIFFERENT BRAIN STRUCTURES ARE INVOLVED IN EACH. ANYONE KNOW MORE ABOUT HIS THAN I DO? (FRANKLY, YOUR AVERAGE LAB RAT KNOWS MORE ABOUT THIS THAN I DO.)

________

Why do we toss sex into the gutter? Why do we negativize sex?
_________
why do we have these unexpected attractions? ones we're not supposed to have? sometimes our pubic appendages or indentations do the talking and we're just dragged along for the ride. men are often led around by the penis and women are led around by what--the clitoris, the vagina, the g-spot--it all depends on which woman you're talking about. what did they used to call it in New Orleans? Jelly roll. Here we are, a planet of pricks and pussies and we think we're bright enough to discuss whether we should be bombing each other or not. Is Iraq a schlong or a twat? Sorry for all the gutter language, but why do we imagine that our sexuality is gutter stuff? Isn't that being a little harsh on a very important part of who we are?