The Sex Thing
We are a society tortured by conflict over a basic, human need. Okay, I guess food could be the subject, since most people don't view sex as a "need" per se. For me, it's a need. Same for a lot of people.
If you watch an R rated movie from the 1970s or 80s, you will get a very different R than if you watched one today. Yesterday's Rs were racy. I mean....racy. I recently watched one of my favorite movies: a play adapted for the big screen called Same Time Next Year. The premise is this: two married people (not married to each other) have an affair one weekend. Then they come back and have the same affair with each other for thirty years, the same weekend every year. The interesting thing to note is that both people loved their spouses and fully intended to stay married to them, while still loving each other. The nuances were sublime. The film was made in 1978. It was a beautiful love story, and to my mind, highly moral.
A film like that would never be made today. As a culture, we have gotten more prudish about sex, love and marriage, not less. As we approached the 90s, we got films like Fatal Attraction. The message was clear--anything other than sanctioned marital sex can kill you. That, and Glenn Close with a butcher knife. By 1994 we were getting movies like Disclosure, another Michael Douglas film about playing with sexual fire. Hollywood always captures the zeitgeist of the age.
Yet, if we take a look around today, sex permeates everything. It is more accessible than ever before. Our media and advertising culture is rife with it. Porn viewing is at an all-time high thanks to the advent of Internet access. We are bombarded with sex, yet we are also wagging our collective fingers at it. Now, if you see a movie with sex in it, it's not as graphic, or it's a scene filled with a didactic sense of morality. Sex in comedies has been reduced to the banal and crude. Hollywood reflects just how conflicted we are.
There's a significant portion of the population that has been affected negatively by the permeation of sex in our culture--namely the pervasive "porn culture." Young women are fighting to act and be and look like porn stars, while young men get their sexual education online and have expectations that are not only unrealistic, but fantastical in nature. This isn't me saying porn is good or bad, but I am saying it's impact on our culture is something to note.
We need to have a civilized and grown-up discussion about sex. We need to pull it out of the bedroom shadows and place it on the world stage without shame or judgement. What are we doing sexually as a culture? And most importantly, why?
We also need to incorporate the sex and porn culture into our conversations with our children. That's where it starts. Ignorance is a breeding ground for disillusionment, disappointment, guilt and/or shame.
I have a thirteen year-old son and he has his own computer. There's going to come a day when sex is going to invade his whole psyche and he's going to get curious. If I take a stand and tell him that he is not to look at porn, then he's going to want to look at it and he'll find a way. It's the equivalent of "abstinence-only" education. It won't work. However, I'm sure as shootin' not going to show him the best porn sites and say "have at it, son." So what's the answer?
I think creating an open forum of communication is key. I can tell him what he will find if he starts looking and I can give him reality checks about what he finds. It would be foolish if I decided to let the Fast and Furious movies teach him how to operate a vehicle. Obviously, those movies are pure fantasy, for entertainment only. Same with porn. I'm not going to allow pornography to be his sex instructions. I'm going to tell him that porn is also fantasy, and the reality of sexual relationships look nothing like how it's portrayed in porn. And that's all I can really do.
Coming from a religious background where sex was linked to shame and guilt, I can see how making him feel guilty about his sexuality and curiosity can turn out: it can warp a healthy sexual attitude. So I think I'll borrow a line from a Hollywood movie and tweak it a little: "With great sex comes great responsibility." I will tell him about basic safety and mindfulness. I will talk to him about love, commitment and how women should be treated. I will talk to him about how he should be treated. I'll contrast the reality with the fantasy. Then, all I can do is keep the lines of communication open and hope for the best.
Our culture is reacting to the pervasiveness of sex by stumbling back into the morality and strictures of the 1950s. We need to stop being shocked and start talking. Sex is a part of the human experience. There's no shame in it and there need not be any guilt. But we do need to give it the gravitas it demands. If we do, it will no longer be something we have to fight against as a culture. It can be embraced and become as natural and uplifting as we make it.
