I've waxed long and hard about large concepts involving the evolutionary tree of mankind. Societal influences and cultural narratives. Why, oh why, am I doing this?
My large point, and one I've harped on for a few years now, is that we (as a society) do not talk about sex enough. When we do talk about sex, it's largely biological in nature, images of static diagrams in highschool sex ed classes. Urethra. Ovaries. Prostate.
We are bombarded with images of sexuality (see: beer commercials) and the sexualization of people at younger and younger ages (see: kids beauty pangeants) and yet there's no real discussion about the reality of sex. The full reality of sex. The biological, the emotional, the societal, the cultural. Sex at Dawn does an amazing job at looking at why our culture has evolved the sexual taboos it has, why our sexual narrative has played out in this particular way, and how it relates to our current sexual world.
I took an amazing class in university on human sexuality. At one point, our teacher showed images from various text books regarding the human body, the sexy bits in particular. She asked the class if any of the images of the various vulvas looked anything like the real deal. (Note that I didn't use the word vagina. Vulva is the outside bits, vagina is the inside bit that you can't see without a speculum or a camera. Mistake #1 in almost all textbooks). The consensus was a giggling no. She then showed us the art of Georgia O'Keefe. Seriously, go google images Georgia O'Keefe and tell me that her flowers aren't just a wee bit erotic. They certainly did a better job of conveying the reality and variety of vulvas better than any of the textbooks we had did. (And they're just paintings of flowers, so totally work safe).
We're terrified of talking about the reality of sex, but we're obsessed with it. As well we should be, it's a major social bonding medium. I call shenanigans that sex is for reproduction. For the majority of the animal kingdom it is, but primates are unique in their enjoyment of sex. There's a reason we enjoy it. Yet heaven forbid we talk about how good it feels.
Let me just quote some fairly stunning numbers that made me laugh out loud from Sex at Dawn:
The American Medical Association reports that some 42 percent of American women suffer from sexual dysfunction, while Viagra breaks sales records year after year. Worldwide, pornography is reported to rake in anywhere form fifty-seven billion to a hundred billion dollars annually. In the United States, it generates more revenue than CBS, NBC, and ABC combined and more than all professional football, baseball, and basketball franchises. According to U.S News and World Report, "Americans spend more money at strip clubs than at Broadway, off-Broadway, regional and nonprofit theatres, the opera, the ballet and jazz and classical music performances--combined." ... This split-personality relationship with our true sexual nature is anything but news to entertainment corporations, who have long reflected the same fractured sensibility between public pronouncement and private desire. In 2000, under the headline "Wall Street Meets Pornography," The New York Times reported that General Motors sold more graphic sex films than Larry Flynt, owner of the Hustler empire. Over eight million American subscribers to DirecTV, a General Motors subsidiary, were spending about $200 million a year on pay-per-view sex films from satellite providers. Similarly, Rupert Murdoch, owner of the Fox News Network and the nation's leading conservative newspaper, The Wall Street Journal, was pulling in more porn money through a satellite company than Playboy made with its magazine, cable, and Internet businesses combined. AT&T, also a supported of conservative values, sells hard-core porn to over a million hotel rooms throughout the country via its Hot Network.If the sexual narrative we are currently living out is "how it's suppose to be", why are divorce rates rising, marriage rates declining, and the prevalence of mates seeking sexual satisfaction outside of this supposedly natural "central family unit" obviously so high?
You may not agree with the ideas set forth in Sex at Dawn. You may not be comfortable talking about sex. The church wasn't too comfortable talking about the earth moving around the sun in it's spherical shape. To me, I think the evidence is piling up that our sexual narrative isn't working for us anymore.
I'm of the firm opinion that dialog is good. It's about damn time we had some serious, open dialog regarding sex.
