I just finished reading “The “Pornification” of Sacred Sexuality” by Modern Love Muse. This combined with a comment recently left on my post on Cheating got me thinking about modern representations of sex.
We’re an odd species. Either we’re commodifying sex to the point where it’s just another thing we eat and shit out – along with the object of sexual desire – or we’re mystifying it and putting it on a pedestal – above rationality, beyond our reach and into the realm of the sacred.
We seem to be forever trapped in these wild swings of the pendulum between sperm receptacle and ethereal Madonna Goddess. I’m bored, can’t we just be something in the middle?
Can’t we just be rational and recognize that we have both a life of the body and an intellectual realm? Why can’t we be both flesh and spirit? The animal part of us likes things to be uncomplicated, carnal, urgent and base. The intellectual part of us wants to be seen as having intrinsic value and uniqueness, to have agency and power and authority.
Are we just so stupid that we can’t seem to fit both concepts into one package?
As much as I am deeply offended by the interminable representation of women as nothing but bukkake landing sites, I’m equally offended by a mad rush to go worship at the yoni altar and stick every woman up on a fucking pedestal just because she’s sporting tits and a womb.
When are we going to stop demanding simplistic extremes? When are we going to stop deluding ourselves that we’re either goddesses or we’re pieces of fuck meat? And there’s no point in just blaming men for this, because women are equally guilty.
We’re homo-sapiens. Thinking animals. Neither gods nor sheep for the slaughter. Is that just too much to take on board?
Yes, yes, and yes again.
I’m not sure if it so much stupidity than lazy thinking, or being unwilling to think. By that I mean it is so much easier to think in either/or ways, rather than conceiving the world as a blend of both. I suspect it’s a way of controlling it too – if sex is A, then I know how to handle, but if it’s sometimes A and sometimes B, then it gets all the more complicated. And if it’s a way we ourselves can control, then others would be more than willing to use that rigid thinking as a way of controlling other people.
Ur, if that makes any sense…
Why are you bored?
you are correct, we are sheep for god’s slaughter. but the middle is hard for most to find. the assimilation of spirit with animal is a deeply freeing experience, that most are to afraid to face.
thanks for writing.
I love how often I come over here, read something you’ve written and realise that you have pretty much summed up all my unconscious, fragmented thoughts. I completely agree; I am neither ” sperm receptacle” nor “Madonna goddess”.
Wouldn’t it be wonderful to live in a world where we can fuck, in all the ways our basest desires demand, and then sit up in bed and discuss Plato. Interested and interesting. “Thinking animals”.
I wonder if the problem comes from a lack of thinking, or from excessive over-thinking…
religious morality is the “root” of all evil
Most people just do sex, they don^t have to represent it. Representation requires that you have a place to stand. I think this is part of what keeps writing away from a middle way.
I think that a lot of what appears to be a representation of women in sex is realy an attempt for men to figure out what they’re supposed to do about sex now.
Men love porn and they love women. They can have a hard time reconciling the two. At one point the problem was resoloved by distinguishing between “easy” women that the laws of the porn universe can apply to and marriagable women who you slept with every night and who would become the mother of your children. The world isn’t like that any more (if it ever was). Marriagable women, choose to do many of the things easy women were known for. What’s more, they expect you to be good at them.
What’s a guy to do?
Worship?
Exploit?
Go down the pub and drink with his mates until he’s too drunk for the question to be relevant?
Well, Mike, what do you do when you have a male friend who is a body building, pick-up truck driving reader of Plato? You think: complex person, and treat them like an interesting human being. So I don’t see the problem unless you consider women another species altogether and have problems conceiving of them as part of your own.
I’m just don’t buy that most men are so incredibly IQ deficient that they can only think in an ‘either Madonna or Whore’ binary.
RG, I think it comes down to conscious action. If one can integrate the sexual desire with the real person of one’s desire, it is easier to have that precious middle way.
I have had men tell me that the penis says one thing, the brain says another. Society says do one thing but the body cries out for another.
Women have also told me that following the libido is not the best thing to do, when one is looking for a steady partner. Same concept, just worded differently.
Some of the constant pull to extremes is a lack of trust in ourselves. After all, we are thinking animals but we often feel the need to buck against the herd (a stable relationship). And bucking away(porn, strippers, sexy strangers in bars) tends to be a lot of fun.
To respect the duality of others, we must first accept it within ourselves.
We crave intimacy but we salivate for freedom, often. And as long as we do so, we will be caught hard against the pillar of cum receptacle and the rock of Holy Goddess Woman.
We might just be stupid and cannot merge the sacred and the profane into one glorious golden nugget. Alchemy loses again.