Closer to Free
Aug. 7th, 2007 04:23 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
omorkaWith all respect to George Clinton (and, for that matter, En Vogue), free your ass and your mind will follow. Good, hot sex that breaks a taboo is the best mind-expanding trip there is. Even better than sleep deprivation, caffeine, and too much sucrose, good as that is.
So someone said in an IM conversation:
Of course, that precise situation is why I am rabidly pro-sex. The myriad tiny sexual assaults that every woman experiences every day, and the larger sexual assaults that so many of us are scarred by, are not what I mean by sex. Sex is a duet (or trio or quartet or . . .), an activity that can be merely as fluffy fun as a game of Scrabble or badminton, as simultaneously wild and structured as a jazz improv group, or as transcendent as the interaction between worshippers and their God/dess/e/s. But it is a verb, an action, and it requires multiple participants. One person using another as a sex toy is not sex, although it may be masturbation if the user successfully gets off on it and isn't just using it for the power thrill. And the best way to combat that is to promote good sex in all its forms. (Note, by the way, that I'm not in any way anti-masturbation; I'm opposed to using people.)
Sex is not an object, any more than dance is an object or jogging is an object. It is certainly not something that women 'own' and men can take by force, or even something that women give to men or men give to women or lesbians give to each other. Making sex an object seems very clearly related to making women objects, especially since the worst historical patriarchal cultures seem to associate women with nothing except sex and its consequences.
We need a better word, though. 'Sex' is in common usage a noun, and 'sex up' has the same failing as 'fuck,' 'screw,' 'boink,' 'shag,' and all the other rough terms and euphemisms - it's transitive. Subject fucks object. That won't do, either; that all too easily implies a power differential, and while I'm all for nice, sane, consensual* power differentials, I want that to be something explicitly negotiated, not a default assumption and certainly not one coded in the language. 'Copulate' is intransitive, but it's terribly clinical. 'Have sex [with]' looks okay, but if you poke at it, it's making sex an object again, albeit in this case one that one shares like a food item. Dick had a large pepperoni pizza with Jane, and then Jane had sex with Dick. Nope, still don't like it. 'Coitus' is too clinical and it's a noun. That makes me mad, as if it were a verb it would be great and a multilingual pun; the source is Latin, coire, from the co- prefix meaning 'with' and the verb (in this form, the infinitive) ire meaning 'to go' or 'to come' depending on context. I'm all for coming, obviously ;-) , and that with-ness is part of the meaning I want (although the original implication in the Latin is probably a john going with a prostitute up to her workroom - not quite the image I had in mind).
This is the oppressor's language. These are the master's tools. Yet I refuse to believe that we cannot use them to dismantle the master's house; a hammer is a hammer is a hammer, morning or evening. Is there a word we can use? We have a few already - polyamory, polyfidelity, compersion - that the Down-Presser-Man's language didn't have before. Can we come up with a good one, an equal one, for sex-as-a-verb?
*Note that I'm trying to avoid the term "consent" for non-power-exchange sex. Again, language issues: to "consent" to something implies that it is being done to you, not with you. Highly appropriate for Dom/sub relations, and possibly top/bottom ones, but not for egalitarian ones.
So someone said in an IM conversation:
It was very hard to be pro sex when I was surrounded by so many stories of women who couldn't enjoy themselves anymore. Or never could.
Of course, that precise situation is why I am rabidly pro-sex. The myriad tiny sexual assaults that every woman experiences every day, and the larger sexual assaults that so many of us are scarred by, are not what I mean by sex. Sex is a duet (or trio or quartet or . . .), an activity that can be merely as fluffy fun as a game of Scrabble or badminton, as simultaneously wild and structured as a jazz improv group, or as transcendent as the interaction between worshippers and their God/dess/e/s. But it is a verb, an action, and it requires multiple participants. One person using another as a sex toy is not sex, although it may be masturbation if the user successfully gets off on it and isn't just using it for the power thrill. And the best way to combat that is to promote good sex in all its forms. (Note, by the way, that I'm not in any way anti-masturbation; I'm opposed to using people.)
Sex is not an object, any more than dance is an object or jogging is an object. It is certainly not something that women 'own' and men can take by force, or even something that women give to men or men give to women or lesbians give to each other. Making sex an object seems very clearly related to making women objects, especially since the worst historical patriarchal cultures seem to associate women with nothing except sex and its consequences.
We need a better word, though. 'Sex' is in common usage a noun, and 'sex up' has the same failing as 'fuck,' 'screw,' 'boink,' 'shag,' and all the other rough terms and euphemisms - it's transitive. Subject fucks object. That won't do, either; that all too easily implies a power differential, and while I'm all for nice, sane, consensual* power differentials, I want that to be something explicitly negotiated, not a default assumption and certainly not one coded in the language. 'Copulate' is intransitive, but it's terribly clinical. 'Have sex [with]' looks okay, but if you poke at it, it's making sex an object again, albeit in this case one that one shares like a food item. Dick had a large pepperoni pizza with Jane, and then Jane had sex with Dick. Nope, still don't like it. 'Coitus' is too clinical and it's a noun. That makes me mad, as if it were a verb it would be great and a multilingual pun; the source is Latin, coire, from the co- prefix meaning 'with' and the verb (in this form, the infinitive) ire meaning 'to go' or 'to come' depending on context. I'm all for coming, obviously ;-) , and that with-ness is part of the meaning I want (although the original implication in the Latin is probably a john going with a prostitute up to her workroom - not quite the image I had in mind).
This is the oppressor's language. These are the master's tools. Yet I refuse to believe that we cannot use them to dismantle the master's house; a hammer is a hammer is a hammer, morning or evening. Is there a word we can use? We have a few already - polyamory, polyfidelity, compersion - that the Down-Presser-Man's language didn't have before. Can we come up with a good one, an equal one, for sex-as-a-verb?
*Note that I'm trying to avoid the term "consent" for non-power-exchange sex. Again, language issues: to "consent" to something implies that it is being done to you, not with you. Highly appropriate for Dom/sub relations, and possibly top/bottom ones, but not for egalitarian ones.
