A dozen notes and quotes on sex
July 1st 2010 03:51
What the hell is an "adult book exchange"? -- I went up last night to take a look, and I discovered the place was misnamed.
Adults don't read books, you see -- only magazines and DVD covers.
"Porn causes unrealistic attitudes."
If this is true, is the best response to ban it? Why not, instead, analyze porn at school, discussing what's real and what's not real, and forcing people to critically examine?
If you call someone sexy, you usually imply that you've been in some sense aroused.
In contrast, beautiful's standard is more flexible. The word is more easily used of mere recognition, and its emotions can be calmer.
Consider that I can say, "She is beautiful, but leaves me cold" -- whereas it would be strange to say, "She's sexy, but does nothing for me".
In males, beauty and sex elicit differing responses (albeit often with overlap) -- different neurochemicals, different pleasures. Human beauty objects need not be sex objects, and vice versa. For instance, no one would accuse Gwyneth Paltrow or Nicole Kidman of being sexy, and there's many an irresistible pornstar who's unbeautiful.
You can enjoy looking at someone, with no desire for intercourse, just as you can contemplate a sunset without wanting to fuck it.
In fact, the two responses can interfere with each other. On the one hand, salivation can render you insensitive to aesthetics. On the other hand, the recognition of beauty can melt your hard on (not to mention the sort of distanced reflection to which beauty leads).
"Too pretty for porn" -- too beautiful to fuck.
Just because you enjoy watching doesn't mean you'd enjoy doing. The two are quite different activities, are experienced in different ways, activate different senses.
And this sort of mistake isn't uncommon -- foods that smell great but taste awful, or smell awful but taste great...
Food can promise and actually deliver -- it can look yummy, and then taste yummy. You're led on from visual consumption to gustatory.
But in matters of sex and beauty, you're attracted to eyes, smiles, dimples, laughs -- and there's nothing behind the immediate pleasure of company, or of a face, a voice, an aroma. What enjoyment you now have is all the enjoyment you'll ever get. Such pleasures are valuable for themselves, and don't truly signify beyond themselves: -- appearance, in this case, is reality.
Neither beauty nor sexiness can be fucked or consumed -- though one wants to.
Half-dressed is often sexier than dressed. -- Why?
Well, is this really so surprising?
To be sexy is to provoke arousal, and why presume that nakedness provokes more arousal than anything else? -- We're conditioned to react to what we're conditioned to react to.
Almost as if the point of sexuality is not the consumption, and the signs take on a life of their own.
The appearance, at times, of a world of empty signifiers, empty promises -- meanings on meanings -- at play with one another -- cut off from biological bedrock and final reference.
-- Situations are more erotic than bodies. Eg: fantasizing about sex at school, sex in a doctor's surgery, sex while swimming...
-- Attitudes are more erotic than bodies -- whether the person is strong, playful, feisty, coquettish... The same counts for attraction generally -- confidence, conversational ability, humour are much more important than looks. (Pick-up artists know this.)
-- Possibilities are more erotic than bodies -- the promise or the mystery as opposed to the delivery. The body half-clothed rather than naked. The chase rather than the act.
-- Meanings are more erotic than mere bodies -- eg, the meaning of you as powerful, or as dominant or submissive, or as a character type; or the meanings of sexual acts; or the meanings of particular presentations of body parts.
Seeing as. "Surely it is an excellent plan, when you are seated before delicacies and choice foods, to impress upon your imagination that this is the dead body of a fish, that the dead body of a bird or a pig; and again, that the Falernian wine is grape juice and that robe of purple a lamb's fleece dipped in a shell-fish's blood; and in matters of sex intercourse, that it is attrition of an entrail and a convulsive expulsion of mere mucus. Surely these are excellent imaginations, going to the heart of actual facts and penetrating them so as to see the kind of things they really are..." -- Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 6.13
The growing of arousal in both domme and sub requires the heightening of "using" -- of treatment as object; and the more the person is reduced to mere material, the greater the heat.
However, there is little eroticism in dealing with a table or a chair. So the movement towards objecthood cannot be completed; or if it is completed, then sexual interest dissipates.
La petite mort indeed. Always one says to oneself: "I am treating a person AS an object. Never: "This is an object". So personhoood cannot be denied, by the logic of the perception.
Sartre, in similar vein, writes: "[M]asochism is and must be itself a failure. In order to cause myself to be fascinated by my self-as-object, I should necessarily have to be able to realize the intuitive apprehension of this object such as it is for the Other, a thing which is on principle impossible... It is useless for the masochist to get down on his knees, to show himself in ridiculous positions, to cause himself to be used as a simple lifeless instrument... The more he tries to taste his objectivity, the more he will be submerged by the consciousness of his subjectivity -- to the point of anguish." (Being and nothingness, 1943, translation by Hazel E Barnes)
Why was there so much rape when allied forces entered Germany?
The explanation is surely as much social as biological, to do with the meanings of sex and rape, with attendant beliefs, and with various types of "seeing as". I mean, clearly, this was a sort of revenge, enacted upon individuals regarded as representing Germany.
So what are the relevant meanings of sex and rape? -- Well, from both rapist's and victim's perspectives, sex as domination and proof of power, sex as humiliation, sex as taking possession (if I fuck you, then in some sense you're mine; cf gamer slang "rape" and "ownage").
Such meanings heighten the rapist's delight, and increase the victim's agony; and they flow out of many things, including religious valorisation of sex, and paradigms of behaviour, whereby it's the male's part to pursue, and the female's to concede.
Cf Lizzy Amazon's "Slut Manifesto", where she discusses the idea, perhaps rather simplistic, that women have a market interest in disparaging sluts, in order to maintain a scarcity economy of vaginas.
Say you go down on me, under the table at a restaurant; or I have sex with you while you're calmly reading a book.
Why would anyone consider these situations erotic?
-- Firstly, for the unusualness of them. (I've sort of discussed the interest of the unusual in relation to anonymous sex -- novel experience; the forbidden and the taboo; excess; challenge; profaning the sacred; and absurdity or humour.)
-- Secondly, for the game of them -- for instance, trying to elicit a response, on the one hand, and trying to maintain composure, on the other. (It's nice, also, to have something definite to work against; like having a definite goal while delivering a line on stage.)
-- Thirdly, in the case of restaurant sex, there is the risk of being caught. That emotion, and that knowledge of danger, somehow feed into one's erotic matrix and interact with other thoughts and conditionings to fuel arousal.
-- Fourthly, there is a sort of phenomenological fascination here consisting of an exploration of duality. For instance: quiet, bookish, nice-girl with a secret wild side. Or mannered, height-of-civilization restaurant, which conceals animality. -- The nicer she is, the better. The posher the restaurant, the better.
The mind grapples with the apparent contradiction, tries to parse it, tries to meld it into a synthesis; and it's not a logical process, but a process like getting to know something, becoming familiar with and unalarmed by it.
Sade writes somewhere that sex is about provoking involuntary responses.
The thought is insightful in many ways; and, if it's true that porn consumers are continually drawn to harder material, perhaps it's partly the promise of "more authentic" response that lures them (vs drugged-out lack of enthusiasm and jaded going through the motions).
But response? -- Well, I don't think Sade understands necrophilia. I mean, it's not as if the necrophile believes the corpse is alive, or as if he's only fucking a dead person because he's too repulsive to the living.
The act, surely, is more to do with taboo and unusualness, with the meanings of sex and death, with the duality person/body, and with the very lack of response of the partner.
In non-necrophiliac situations, enthusiasm and desire are huge turn ons, so it's certainly erotic if you're into it. But, pace Sade, and though this is horrible to say, it's also erotic if you're not into it, because indifference and lack of response have their own meanings, which feed into the erotic matrix.
Adults don't read books, you see -- only magazines and DVD covers.
***
"Porn causes unrealistic attitudes."
If this is true, is the best response to ban it? Why not, instead, analyze porn at school, discussing what's real and what's not real, and forcing people to critically examine?
***
If you call someone sexy, you usually imply that you've been in some sense aroused.
In contrast, beautiful's standard is more flexible. The word is more easily used of mere recognition, and its emotions can be calmer.
Consider that I can say, "She is beautiful, but leaves me cold" -- whereas it would be strange to say, "She's sexy, but does nothing for me".
***
In males, beauty and sex elicit differing responses (albeit often with overlap) -- different neurochemicals, different pleasures. Human beauty objects need not be sex objects, and vice versa. For instance, no one would accuse Gwyneth Paltrow or Nicole Kidman of being sexy, and there's many an irresistible pornstar who's unbeautiful.
You can enjoy looking at someone, with no desire for intercourse, just as you can contemplate a sunset without wanting to fuck it.
In fact, the two responses can interfere with each other. On the one hand, salivation can render you insensitive to aesthetics. On the other hand, the recognition of beauty can melt your hard on (not to mention the sort of distanced reflection to which beauty leads).
"Too pretty for porn" -- too beautiful to fuck.
***
Just because you enjoy watching doesn't mean you'd enjoy doing. The two are quite different activities, are experienced in different ways, activate different senses.
And this sort of mistake isn't uncommon -- foods that smell great but taste awful, or smell awful but taste great...
***
Food can promise and actually deliver -- it can look yummy, and then taste yummy. You're led on from visual consumption to gustatory.
But in matters of sex and beauty, you're attracted to eyes, smiles, dimples, laughs -- and there's nothing behind the immediate pleasure of company, or of a face, a voice, an aroma. What enjoyment you now have is all the enjoyment you'll ever get. Such pleasures are valuable for themselves, and don't truly signify beyond themselves: -- appearance, in this case, is reality.
Neither beauty nor sexiness can be fucked or consumed -- though one wants to.
***
Half-dressed is often sexier than dressed. -- Why?
Well, is this really so surprising?
To be sexy is to provoke arousal, and why presume that nakedness provokes more arousal than anything else? -- We're conditioned to react to what we're conditioned to react to.
Almost as if the point of sexuality is not the consumption, and the signs take on a life of their own.
The appearance, at times, of a world of empty signifiers, empty promises -- meanings on meanings -- at play with one another -- cut off from biological bedrock and final reference.
***
-- Situations are more erotic than bodies. Eg: fantasizing about sex at school, sex in a doctor's surgery, sex while swimming...
-- Attitudes are more erotic than bodies -- whether the person is strong, playful, feisty, coquettish... The same counts for attraction generally -- confidence, conversational ability, humour are much more important than looks. (Pick-up artists know this.)
-- Possibilities are more erotic than bodies -- the promise or the mystery as opposed to the delivery. The body half-clothed rather than naked. The chase rather than the act.
-- Meanings are more erotic than mere bodies -- eg, the meaning of you as powerful, or as dominant or submissive, or as a character type; or the meanings of sexual acts; or the meanings of particular presentations of body parts.
***
Seeing as. "Surely it is an excellent plan, when you are seated before delicacies and choice foods, to impress upon your imagination that this is the dead body of a fish, that the dead body of a bird or a pig; and again, that the Falernian wine is grape juice and that robe of purple a lamb's fleece dipped in a shell-fish's blood; and in matters of sex intercourse, that it is attrition of an entrail and a convulsive expulsion of mere mucus. Surely these are excellent imaginations, going to the heart of actual facts and penetrating them so as to see the kind of things they really are..." -- Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 6.13
***
The growing of arousal in both domme and sub requires the heightening of "using" -- of treatment as object; and the more the person is reduced to mere material, the greater the heat.
However, there is little eroticism in dealing with a table or a chair. So the movement towards objecthood cannot be completed; or if it is completed, then sexual interest dissipates.
La petite mort indeed. Always one says to oneself: "I am treating a person AS an object. Never: "This is an object". So personhoood cannot be denied, by the logic of the perception.
Sartre, in similar vein, writes: "[M]asochism is and must be itself a failure. In order to cause myself to be fascinated by my self-as-object, I should necessarily have to be able to realize the intuitive apprehension of this object such as it is for the Other, a thing which is on principle impossible... It is useless for the masochist to get down on his knees, to show himself in ridiculous positions, to cause himself to be used as a simple lifeless instrument... The more he tries to taste his objectivity, the more he will be submerged by the consciousness of his subjectivity -- to the point of anguish." (Being and nothingness, 1943, translation by Hazel E Barnes)
***
Why was there so much rape when allied forces entered Germany?
The explanation is surely as much social as biological, to do with the meanings of sex and rape, with attendant beliefs, and with various types of "seeing as". I mean, clearly, this was a sort of revenge, enacted upon individuals regarded as representing Germany.
So what are the relevant meanings of sex and rape? -- Well, from both rapist's and victim's perspectives, sex as domination and proof of power, sex as humiliation, sex as taking possession (if I fuck you, then in some sense you're mine; cf gamer slang "rape" and "ownage").
Such meanings heighten the rapist's delight, and increase the victim's agony; and they flow out of many things, including religious valorisation of sex, and paradigms of behaviour, whereby it's the male's part to pursue, and the female's to concede.
Cf Lizzy Amazon's "Slut Manifesto", where she discusses the idea, perhaps rather simplistic, that women have a market interest in disparaging sluts, in order to maintain a scarcity economy of vaginas.
***
Say you go down on me, under the table at a restaurant; or I have sex with you while you're calmly reading a book.
Why would anyone consider these situations erotic?
-- Firstly, for the unusualness of them. (I've sort of discussed the interest of the unusual in relation to anonymous sex -- novel experience; the forbidden and the taboo; excess; challenge; profaning the sacred; and absurdity or humour.)
-- Secondly, for the game of them -- for instance, trying to elicit a response, on the one hand, and trying to maintain composure, on the other. (It's nice, also, to have something definite to work against; like having a definite goal while delivering a line on stage.)
-- Thirdly, in the case of restaurant sex, there is the risk of being caught. That emotion, and that knowledge of danger, somehow feed into one's erotic matrix and interact with other thoughts and conditionings to fuel arousal.
-- Fourthly, there is a sort of phenomenological fascination here consisting of an exploration of duality. For instance: quiet, bookish, nice-girl with a secret wild side. Or mannered, height-of-civilization restaurant, which conceals animality. -- The nicer she is, the better. The posher the restaurant, the better.
The mind grapples with the apparent contradiction, tries to parse it, tries to meld it into a synthesis; and it's not a logical process, but a process like getting to know something, becoming familiar with and unalarmed by it.
***
Sade writes somewhere that sex is about provoking involuntary responses.
The thought is insightful in many ways; and, if it's true that porn consumers are continually drawn to harder material, perhaps it's partly the promise of "more authentic" response that lures them (vs drugged-out lack of enthusiasm and jaded going through the motions).
But response? -- Well, I don't think Sade understands necrophilia. I mean, it's not as if the necrophile believes the corpse is alive, or as if he's only fucking a dead person because he's too repulsive to the living.
The act, surely, is more to do with taboo and unusualness, with the meanings of sex and death, with the duality person/body, and with the very lack of response of the partner.
In non-necrophiliac situations, enthusiasm and desire are huge turn ons, so it's certainly erotic if you're into it. But, pace Sade, and though this is horrible to say, it's also erotic if you're not into it, because indifference and lack of response have their own meanings, which feed into the erotic matrix.
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