You buy a brand of ice cream that sends proceeds to benefit the rain forest. You channel your savings into socially responsible investment funds. Your bath products do not rely on animal testing and you rarely go to a ” rock concert that isn’t sponsored by Amnesty International. Yet every other day, after the credits roll on Charlie Rose, you and your partner engage in an activity that has no social implications. For nearly an hour every week, you are expending energy in a way that will aid neither the endangered rain forests nor the oppressed women on the Indian subcontinent. Of course this puts a strain on a consciousness so finely tuned as your own.
Thank Gaia, the forces of social concern have enabled us to mobilize our commitment to larger ‘moral questions every second of every day, including in our sex lives. In the back of magazines such as Mother Jones, Harper’s and the New Republic, there are advertisements from organizations that can help us put our phallus in touch with our consciousness. Some of these organizations, such as Good Vibrations, sell the tools that allow “thinking persons” to experience sexual energies in enlightened ways. Journals such as Blue Moon and Libido merge sex and sensibility, and offer turn-ons that fuse with larger concerns, such as environmental degradation and income inequality. Finally, there are many how-to guides that offer exhaustive advice on performing sex acts in high-minded ways.
To take full advantage of these resources, you must first understand that sex is the most important aspect of your life, the node for personal liberation, and that exploring this inner world will ake time. In her guide to enlightened lesbian sex, JoAnn Loulan offers the following exercises, whichi apply to heterosexuals as well:
“Look at your genitals everyday in the mirror… Draw a picture of your genitals ….Write a letter to your genitals ….Spend an hour of uninterrupted sensual time with yourself… Look at yourself in the mirror for an hour. Talk with all parts of your body… Spend an hour stroking yourself all over your nude body… Spend an hour touching your genitals without the purpose of having an orgasm.!…
[Gratify yourself] for an hour…” Having quit your day job in order to complete these exercises,i you will have ample time to talk about your own sexual feelings. Communication is vital, all the guides, journals, and catalogues agree.
While none is specific, it seems that for every hour you spend actually having sex, at least 12 hours should be spent talking about it.
Most of this communication should be done with your part- ner(s). But don’t stop there. If you have a sexual feeling, you should immediately describe it at length on the Internet or with the instructors of your pottery class. Conventional notions of beauty have oppressed generations of men and women whose own appearances have constituted a (hal- lenge to prevailing aesthetic norms.
Thinking persons can pursue positive social change by eradicating received ideas of beauty and ugliness.
The rule in the literature is: Ugly people having sex is highbrow. Pretty people having sex is lowbrow.
It has to be admitted that not all the catalogues and journals are completely liberated in this regard.
For example, a recent issue Libido carried dozens of photographs of naked people who are young and attractive. Fortunately, the articles were more mature, and depicted sex that is admirably gloomy. The lead story by Lydia Swartz depicts lesbian scenes in which one of the women is in the advanced stages of AIDS: “She bites my neck (carefully) . while I gel my hands and fumble into my own gloves. She lies on her partially paralyzed right side, propping herself with pillows so that she’s not increasing the pain in a damaged nerve, and so she can touch me with her good left side.” Later in the same issue, K.J. Barrett contributes a poem entitled “Adult Children of Sex- Addicted Parents” on that long neglected social group.
In Sweden, as is well known, people do not enjoy sex, they do it because they think it is good for them, like jumping jacks. Americans have not reached that level of matter-of-factness. But socially principled people do not get so carried away by sexual pleasure that they forget that certain groups are disempowered in our culture.
Indeed, one of the most delightful things about sex is that it can serve as an ethnicity substitute for white people. You may be a white, upper-middle- class Protestant, but if you are a compulsive nudist you automatically count as a member of a scorned group, and thus deserving of support. In its sexual empowerment manifesto, “Coming to Power,” the Samois Collective includes a chart of various sexual ethnicities — and the handkerchief coors they could use to identify each other. These include foot fetishists (mustard tone), uniform fetishists (olive drab), Victorian scene aficionados (white lace), piercists (purple), and 15 other categories.
The favored group in the literature remains Persons of Gender, otherwise known as “women.” Fe- male sexuality is described in this literature as natural and Earth Motherish. Male sexuality is de- scribed as something artificial, like the Grand Coulee Dam. Female sexuality is considered in light of the wider feminist empowerment movement. The authors have a harder time ascribing political con- tent to heterosexual male desires.
As Freud would say, sometimes a penis is just a penis.
The contrast is especially wide on the subject of masturbation.
That which Portnoy did in the bathroom is not considered a posi- tive political act. But put a woman in the same bathroom and sudden- ly we have social activism on the order of, say, Dorothy Day.
There is as much writing in the enlightened literature about female self- knowledge as about any other act. Indeed, many of the move- ment’s major figures began as self- love pioneers. In 1973, the National Organization for Women held the “Women’s Sexuality Conference:
To Explore, Define and Celebrate Our Own Sexuality,” which placed emphasis on sexual independence for women. Joani Blank attended the conference and two years later founded Good Vibrations, the equipment catalogue. She is the au- thor oflAm My Lover, one of the many books that show how the most personal act can be the most revolutionary.
The basic theme of this branch of sexual activism is that self- esteem should not be Platonic. In fact, by practicing self4ove, women will develop the self-confidence to make their way in a world that is arrayed against them. Anthropolo- gist Martha C. Ward was once asked by a large national founda- tion how it could set up a program in Louisiana to increase the self- esteem and empowerment of young women. “I replied that given their goals and limitations,” Ward writes, “the best strategy would be to teach teenagers creative masturbation with a view toward feminist con- sciousness raising.” Betty Dodson participated in the 1973 NOW conference, present!ng a slide show of 100 photographs[ of what used to be known as “privte parts.” She received a standing oya- tion. Ever since she has led “Physi- cal and Sexual Consciousness Rais- ing Groups,” or, as she now calls them, “Sexuality Seminars,” now for both women and men.
She describes the seminars (he has not yet taken to calling thm colloquia) in an article in Libido.
The participants sit in a circle ad, well, give themselves self-love.
At first some people may feel comfortable with the notioni of gathering with a group of people, and then focusing entirely on one’s own concerns. But consider he dinner parties you’ve attended in New York City — isn’t the same principle at work?
The image of a group of socially concerned people, in which each individual tends to his own con- cerns, seems somehow to capture the enlightened aspirations of the age. As the community of those who pursue social change grows more mature, it has discovered that formal political mobilizations are only part of the answer. Many of the challenges that face our living planet have to be solved within; no aspect of our personal lives can ne- glect larger issues.
The socially enlightened realize that the things we do on our futons can make a tremendous difference to powerless peoples in the devel- oping world and even in our own troubled nation. And, astonishing- ly, it’s always the case that when you set out to do something for hu- manity, you usually end up giving pleasure to yourself.
By David Brooks
