#Unherd of sex series

Taking a different approach to this fusion, more radical thinkers demonstratively agree with Mackinnon that sex is inherently pathetic and hurtful. This is where the search for a solid basis of consent to separate good sex from bad sex culminates in a total confusion of sex with rape. She expanded on this point On the way to a feminist theory of the state, where she asserted that women as a group lack “power” compared to men and therefore they can never consent. As early as 1981, feminist legal theorist Catherine Mackinnon argued that any sex after which a woman feels “hurt” is rape, whether she consented to it or not. But consent is a trickier concept than it seems. Progressives in their churches – universities – also believe in a magical frontier that transforms the degrading into the delightful. The Lesson: This is what will happen to your soul and possibly your genitals if you don’t wait until marriage. Her petals were plucked off one by one by a line of young, leaving her with a bare stalk. Once after the chapel, they organized a skit in which a girl held a rose. However, they warn us that sex outside of marriage is demeaning. It was more effective abstinence education than all the STD and abortion videos they showed us. They quoted the song of Solomon or, worse, talked about how great sex was with their spouses. Growing up in an evangelical church in the American South during the Clinton and Bush years, I was often told by teachers and pastors that sex is a wonderful, beautiful experience-for married heterosexual couples. One is to separate “good” sex from “bad” sex, a strategy familiar to both conservatives and progressives. There are several ways we try to ignore the non-consensual essence of sex. Sex with a partner works when and to the extent that it does, in part because we let go of our inhibitions and want things without having to admit to ourselves that we want them. We notice how attractive the “wrong” person is - a friend’s brother, an ex, a colleague, a student - and feel hurt by our own urges. It can be a distraction, an excruciating deprivation, even a source of catastrophic humiliation. It can conjure up feelings of disgust and embarrassment. We are born, we mature, and at some point in the process we discover that we are prisoners of our sexuality. This relationship is not consensual but something we experience as given. The original sexual relationship – prior to the one we have with a particular person – is our relationship to sex itself. Indeed, the enjoyment of sex seems to involve a certain suspension of our usual relationship with ourselves, a relationship in which we are overtaken not so much by the other person as by sex itself. In other words, while we can and should maintain a distinction between consensual and non-consensual acts, there is one important aspect in which we can never say “yes” to sex. But the deeper problem with this model is that it produces, or rather reveals, what it is designed to avoid, namely the ineradicable ambivalence at the heart of sex. This consent model has been criticized for relieving erotic tension, leading to sometimes pathetic campaigns insisting that “consent is sexy” (“If asking for consent ruins sex, what are you? A rapist, bad at talking dirty?” reads a viral Tumblr post). The purpose is to make sex – and all its actions – something that can and should be said directly “yes” or “no” to, a contract negotiated between individuals. At the core of this ethic is explicitness. With a doubt I was beginning to sense in my own cravings exactly what this type of interrogation was meant to avoid.rather than accepting consent as simply as saying “yes,” these questions had plunged me into a deeply unsexy insecurity.īy reading me his sexual questionnaire, my partner showed me that he had internalized the ethic of “consent” that had become the dominant liberal framework for distinguishing between moral and immoral sex over the past decade. But it’s one thing to want someone in a vague way, quite another to list what you actually want from them. “Is that ok? And that?” I soon began to wonder, “ is Is it okay?” I thought it would be when I told him to come over. Instead, with a chuckle and what I hoped was a seductive “ok,” I tried to look like I had to get my restraint out of me. I assume he was expecting or hoping for an enthusiastic “Yes!” signaling what Orientation Day workshops on college campuses call “affirmative approval.” But it didn’t occur to me to respond with the eagerness of a child agreeing to dessert.

#Unherd of sex series

“Is it okay if I touch you?” Half an hour after I started chatting with this guy on Grindr, he was in my bedroom and started with a series of questions, leading from touching to a series of other actions should.