It’s been quite the Scorpio Full Moon, hasn’t it? We are in sex scandal du jour mode at the moment. However: is yesterday’s revelation (all over the news today) that Arnie fathered a kid with a household staff member really such a shock?
Doesn’t everyone want to fuck a movie star? I mean, maybe not Arnie, but wouldn’t you?
That, and I’m wondering how it’s news that people have sex, and that sex sometimes leads to pregnancy. I’m guessing that all the people who currently work as news reporters were subjected to abstinence-only sex ‘education’ indoctrination in school and have no clue about the birds and the bees. In case you didn’t hear it on CNN, sex is natural. Marriage is another story.
This would not be a story were it not for this concept of marriage as the magic fidelity-maker — one ring to rule them all. I’m not against marriage, per se — I just have some issues regarding what people believe about it. It is not magic. It does not change human nature. It’s barely part of human nature, though sometimes it may be. We have no way to tell, personally, because we cannot relive our lives without having the concept cracked over our heads 24 hours a day.
If we set aside the huge surprise associated with sex and biology, this would not be a story if not for the marriage-related scandal. It would not be a story had Arnie not been governator.
Then we have Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the head of the trillion-dollar International Monetary Fund, who is sitting in Riker’s Island after being accused of orally raping a maid in the $3,000 a night hotel suite he was staying in, trying to tear off her clothes, then boarding an Air France flight to run his presidential campaign back home.
Yesterday, I wrote to a friend: “The IMF, unlawful imprisonment, stalking the working class and oral rape. How apropos.” Jon Stewart last night pointed out that the accuser is an African immigrant. He said that Strauss-Kahn was “posing for his own political cartoon.” Read a little about the IMF and you’ll get the picture. What is not being said is that anyone who does this kind of thing — not merely this guy being accused of it — has some serious emotional problems that our society is not equipped to deal with.
Here is the thing we don’t really notice, though: scandal is about repression. There’s a book I love, called Eros Denied: Sex in Western Society. It’s by a guy named Wayland Young. I don’t have it with me at the moment, so I cannot quote the passage exactly, but the idea is this. He describes sexual repression as having four manifestations: accident, absence, suicide and scandal.
I know, this is not intuitive. Who thinks of suicide as being about sexual repression? We’re so accustomed to thinking that the priest (or your mother) telling you that sex is bad is sexual repression. Wayland has a lot to say about religion — the book is about religion, in fact — but in this particular section he steps outside of that framework and looks directly at the mechanisms of repression and those are the four that he lists. I will leave you to ponder the first three; it does not take long to figure out how they work, or to see their impact on the community around us.
Scandal, though, may be the most obvious of the four. It sends a message that you will get caught, and you will be publicly shamed. It’s not about them. It’s about us. That message goes a long way toward adding lard to the vegan salad dressing. Sex, in an environment of potential scandal, is infused with a temporary thrill and then, in the long run (and there is always a long run) with the constant expectation of being held up to ridicule in such an intimate way. This kind of impression is not value neutral. In fact, it’s about as charged up with negativity as you can get. The entire environment is influenced. There is nobody vaguely sensitive who does not identify with the shame these men are being subjected to — as well as the woman allegedly attacked by the IMF guy, and Arnie’s wife and family and former mistress. In the process of publicizing these scandals, everyone is shamed.
And who, exactly, considers the alternative?
Sadge, laughed the whole way through your post–very good for the soul and I was feeling the PPI quotient was escalating too, so here’s to the treehouse tonight, the kayak tomorrow, and shades all the way Home….
Heya Burning,
sorry for the silence the last couple of days, I’ve been following though, just sometimes I prefer to be quiet…seems like a lot of people (poor things) have been succumbing to the Drama rather than the Love…..ahhh.. whadya gonna do???
I say, Maintain your Sense of Humor!! got to- not optional…. for me anyway..
now this may not be appropriate during these troubling times, with rapists and victims and oh my! all this dark stuff… wow.
but- to maintain MY sanity, I need to remember the p.l.e.a.s.u.r.e. part of ‘sex’, which for me, involves tickles and lots of laughing. yah. I’m not v. sophisticated. true. my bunny slippers and cow print kimono, well, aren’t the ooh-la-la, $$$$$lingerie people are looking for…these days.
all the same,
bedroom geeks need love too!! right? right.
so on that note I have some comments on your proposals:
now, Gooconcensex, can also stand for goofy consensual sex , keeping the same meaning you gave: for pleasure and pleasure alone , but more for instances like when you are suddenly compelled to have sex going down a slide, on a jungle gym. or something. (watch the landing)
and I love the “positive physical interaction”, PPI, which to me, screams -pleasure per square inch (of your body, not ahem, yah) !! whadya think? ha!!
love you Burning! & thanks for talking to me through your posts during my silence. much appreciated- it really helps uplift my Spirit.
now I wish I could be enjoying a little PPI myself, but duty calls and there are some crabby people out there, who just need to be loved a little bit more- now where is that pin I use to pop those drama balloons????….oh right there. good!
peace
ps- much respect to those who have chosen to share your not-so lighthearted journeys with us. bless you.
Dear Yeshe and aword, thanks so much for this new angle on sex and rape. Because as I was reading your comments I thought about my 40 year marriage-and am coming to realize how many years were spent in prostitution by me– not outside but within the marriage. I guess that is why I want to know what we could call true conscious consensual sex, b rcause when it is an act done in order to avoid real or imagined fears and dangers I put it in the “sex” category of the word. When it is clearly being forced by one on another I consider that rape and not sex at all. Maybe if there is any exchange other than pleasure (8th house stuff, shared commodities) maybe then it can be called sex. For me, gooconcensex is about pleasure and pleasure alone as the payoff, the payment, the reward for positive physical interaction (fucking, if you will, Eric, sometimes). May that increase in our experience here on Mother Earth. Dear Yeshe, my heart weeps for you. So glad the light can now shine onto that darkness.
Yeshe. Yes. Very good, thank you for posting this message. I wonder how many of us have played this mind-game in order to just continue forward. Sorting out these experiences along the way – and coming to consciousness about my truth about them – is part of my ongoing personal healing process. All the times we choose to “give” sex in order to dis-allow something we fear (more than un-wanted sex).
Funny how the synchronicities can be linked with the astrology. A couple weeks ago I wrote a piece about an incident when I was 17 years old and forced to give oral sex to a stranger. I had never told the incident to anyone and the memory of it was triggered by a friend, recently put in the same position, who asked: “Have you ever been faced with a crossroads between sex and rape? If you label it rape, in your mind, it may be far more uncomfortable and difficult to go through than if you label it sex, in your mind, especially if the threat of death is looming near.” I replied, “Yes, I have.” And the story was written and read aloud to my writing group. There is a line between sex and rape, and the mind can play tricks in order to make an intolerable scenario tolerable.
Carre, I am so WITH you (and Sadge) about the powerful feeling of liberation and a sort of delight when dropping the F bombs. But readng about that whole page of fucks sent me over the edge. Ha! fuckfuckfuckfuckfuckwitfuckwitfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckwitfuckfuckfuckfuckfuck
There.
But it feels different than sex to me.
We can keep working on it. Fuck is definitely here to stay. ( I wonder when it finally made it into the dictionary).
My issue still is removing fuck and sex from the concept/word rape. Rape is violence, assault. Too much assaulting of women and children (male and female) being called sex. Vaginal asault. Rectal assault.
Clarity with words changes consciousness. Changed consciousness changes the world.
I can’t speak for all women but I use the word “fuck” more often (and according to the interviewer on “Inside the Actor’s Studio” women use it far more than men) because I love the harshness of it to emphasize how strongly I feel about something. “That’s so fucking disgusting” works better than “that’s so disgusting.” “Fuck that!” sounds pretty strong. My mouth also likes saying it because in my family, other than racial or cultural or religious slurs (which were THE worst words), fuck was THE bad word because it was connected to sex and as Christians, we were taught that sex and pleasure are BAD. So the the biggest bad-ass word was fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck. See how fun that is?
When I was 15, my older brother, who was a messed up thinker, read the book “The Rape of the A.P.E (American Puritan Ethic) in which there was a whole page with just the word “fuck” printed over and over, filling the whole page. He showed it to me and said “See this page? See this word? SAY it. Say it again. It is just a word, it only means what it does because WE put that meaning on it. It is our programming that makes it a “bad” word.” He was so right. He always helped me see my own programming. Then when I was in my early 20’s, I read the book “Promethius Rising” by Robert Anton Wilson. This book showed me the metaprogrammer and how we all can think about what we think about and be aware. But I ramble…..
LOVE the discussion. Ethics–yeah! Consciousness! Yeah. Fuck only means fuck. (Love it Eric.) Yeah! BUT perhaps it is that I want to differntiate RAPE from FUCK? My origninal intent was to differntiate RAPE from SEX. What the HELL do we mean whe we say “we had sex?” (I do not think “making Love” really fills the bill at all. Another euphemism used for all of it, conscious and consensual or not.)
And to those of us who thoroughly agree with how this topic can take us away from what is very important (I totally agree with you Carrie about the radiation, and as far as I am conscernd it looks like we wil be doing anti-radiation diets for the rest of our lives–maybe just not so high intensity. That pregnant daughter of mine is my biggest worry because she used to eat miso all the time and when she got pregnant this time her morning sickness totally turned her off to miso. I am concocting some recipes to cover up the taste.)
All that said, we have to admit, don’t we, that we really like good conscious sex and all I am doing is trying to find the one word that says that. Sex is complicated, I guess. But should it be this complicated that we do not have one positive word for the ideal positve experience? And, my Sadge, I am so with you about not wanting to give up the F bomb. Do women use the F bomb more frequenly and passionately becuase of our own personal non-perfect expereinces with fucking? More than men?.
And I love your mentioning, patti, of the the distrust of censorship in the press at any level. Smacks of the good old USSR in the Cold War days. Right there in the UK, now , is it? We have quite a world to be watching out for. That’s why we need to take good care of our “sex” lives, perhaps.
Anyway. How about Gooconcensex lives?
Hugs
Hmmm. Fuck is a good word but used for so many other things to connotate emphasis that it may be unusable for the consensual sex idea.
I agree with Patti; we Americans (especially Americans) love to get all worked up about other people’s sex lives to the point that we completely ignore greater important issues. Issues like: what’s going on at Fukushima and is radiation still pouring into our oceans and atmosphere and how long do I have to keep feeding my kids preventative supplements, seaweed, miso and other healthy stuff as a preventative for all that radiation?
Sexual repression makes the society in which it happens easily manipulated; just flash an illicit sex encounter for well-known (or if it is considered “kinky,” even less well known) people and everyone fixates on that while forgetting everything else (ignore-the-issue-behind-the-curtain sort of thing). Sexual repressive societies are more violent ones (studies have shown that) and also have more violence toward women and children. So a great way to control people is to make sex Bad and repress pleasure. This in turn causes all sorts of ills as a ripple effect.
I always hesitate to enter the sex discussions on PW cause I always end up feeling kind of on my own. Not my intention to suck the juice out of the topic but a couple of thoughts occur.
I appreciate the idea of challenging the accepted language of sex. Always a good thing to do. But given the personal nature of sex and the varied personal experiences of it, isn’t trying to find a name for sex (that excludes the act of rape) a bit like trying to find a name for a Supreme Being. What you call it depends on how you experience it as an individual and as consenting adults and as part of a culture.
Also, I wonder if the real issue is the name or even whether the act itself is consensual? Isn’t the issue how much consciousness we bring to sex? Consent is part of consciousness but it isn’t the whole thing. Consciousness is a whole other matter – and much harder to pin down! I find it hard to believe that any rape – with its negation of ‘the other’ and repression of what fuels the impulse to commit rape – is a conscious act. Surely it’s only ‘sex’ or ‘fucking’ or whatever if both individuals are conscious and aware of what they are bringing to the experience?
I agree with GraffitiGrammarian that some sexual relationships are probably inappropriate precisely because the power dynamics are not (and in some instances cannot be) equal. But I also wonder, when we talk about inappropriate sex it isn’t really unconscious sex?
In my earlier comment I mentioned the UK’s superinjunctions being used to cover up stories of sexual indiscretion. For me this is more crucial than it might seem at first. The personal is political is what we keep saying here. I guess what I am working towards is that unconscious sex is so open to manipulation by much higher powers than we normally associate with this discussion. I see it being used/being allowed to be used as a testing ground for laws that are designed to eventually cover up bad behaviour outside of the bedroom. The conspiracy theorist in me wonders if the government doesn’t just love a society that is in sexual disarray because when people are so screwed up about something so fundamental they have less energy to devote to politics, culture change, legal dirty pool, activism etc (in much the same way, other forms of personal disarray – being sick , polluted, poisoned, broke, marginalised – work to the advantage of government/big business too).
Whenever stories like this break it’s a good moment to do a mental/emotional inventory of how your own sex/marital/relationship life is going – whether you are living according to your values, whether you are happy, whether something has run its course etc (rather than just choosing a side to identify with and arguing from that in a vague sort of way). But also I often want to ask – what do these stories allow us to ignore? What’s being buried on page 8 of the newspaper while everyone’s focus is on someone elses’s sexual disarray?
On a personal note, I can say as a Scorpio woman (ref Kelly) that in terms of sex and relationships the last two years or so have been pretty fucking tough! 😉
Well just for the sake of argument, I’ll say that there some kinds of sex that people should avoid because it would be unethical. And that’s not repression.
For instance it’s generally unethical for a teacher to sleep with his or her student because the teacher is a position of power over the student.
The same is true with bosses and employees, by and large. And you could point to all kinds of professional jobs where the person should avoid any kind of close interpersonal relationship with people who might influence him or her — a judge, for instance, should not have sex with lawyers who argue cases in front of him. Likewise, a procurement officer at a big company should not have sex with his vendors, and so on.
These are very ordinary ethical standards that we ask people to live up to, and most people see the sense of them and abide by them most of the time.
I think Schwarzenegger’s affair with the housekeeper could be considered improper because of the employer/employee relationship, and for that reason it would be news without any issue of sexual repression or marriage being in play.
Maria Shriver and Hilary Clinton are Scorpio women. And, the Terminator Arnie, and Bill Clinton are both Leo.
mm.
I see what you mean.
signed,
the Wholesome Grain part of me.
One little thing is, fuck is the only word in English that means fuck.
By that I mean: not a foreign word; not a Latin word; not a euphemism. Not a byword, like intercourse, which also can mean a conversation.
Fuck is the only word that means fuck.
“Should fuck be the word that will only mean mutually consented to sex?”
NO.
voting NO on that.
it may capture some of the qualities but certainly not the potentially beautiful exquisiteness.
that some people experience.
also that would mean half my ‘street’ vocabulary would have to be redesigned. since I drop a lot of f*bombs. (but not as many as Madonna).
No, Mutally Consented to Sex That Idea!! it’s too long! plus it carries the opposite meaning.
“Go do the Dishes, Now!”
“NO, MUTUALLY CONSENT TO SEX!” ughh. that wouldn’t work.
peace.
ps: nice plums.
might be headlines for many, but here in tinsel-town no one’s interested in Arnie’s sex life. He did a fine job as governor and has made some fun movies as an actor. done.
The only conversation I’ve heard is people wondering who the hell we are to mess up the kid’s life by making his existence into a side-show.
first of all, I have to say this is none of my fucking business, or most of it isn’t. It really makes me barf when what goes on in people’s private lives HAS to become the Headline issues we talk about as a World. I’m sure, well, I know many disagree with me because you think it is telling you something about their values or how they do their job. and maybe it is.
there’s just something gross and indecent about it to me.
where is the line drawn between public and private life? and if you are a public figure, is it a given you trash any semblance of a private life? damn. I’m reminded of this a lot when I’m kickin’ it in W.Hollywood and watch how crazy and whack people become when ‘celebrities’ cross paths with us ‘regular’ folks. if you ask my sister, who is a resident, she tells me to “calm down, that’s what they signed up for, that’s the price you pay, they love it.” (I don’t agree- I’ve helped Miley crawl out of a bathroom window. she definitely wasn’t lovin’ it -it’s nuts.)…go for it. with the jokes…..
back at the ranch: if I do ponder any of these dramatic situations the kinds of things I would be thinking would be, did the wife leave him because she wanted to? or because social conventions deemed it necessary to? did all the parties try to work something out, or did any of them want to, or who wanted to, why not? is the issue not telling the truth, breaking of ‘vows’, jealousy, or ?? can you even work something out if the media is hounding you 24/7? why don’t we hear stories of inclusiveness? of how everyone acknowledged everyone, esp. for the sake of a child???why is it there is no talk of basic human nature, common sense, decency, dealing with pain, etc. vs. finger-pointing bullshit.
relationships can be complex, passionate, creative things why are they always continually reduced to rules, regulations, appearances, and their upkeep? ugh.
I guess I don’t get how people feel so comfortable sitting in their armchairs and digging into these people’s lives, who they do not know, and assuming information fr. the media is “what is going on”. newsflash! public persons are not perfect! and likely, neither are you, so why can we not see this and focus on alternate plans, like making the world a better place-one step at a time, one issue at a time, in our OWN lives?
and realizing certain rules & regulations are seriously outdated. please.
sorry if that did not make much sense. many interruptions on a Tues. pm.
ps. not condoning any parties’ actions, I say I don’t know. but I DO feel compassion for all involved.
can’t we all just get along?
peace.
At my first reading I was thinking “well to me it is obvious–rape is NOT sex”. But then Eric mentioned that most sex is not consensual–which I know for a fact is true, but would not have put that act in the category of rape, necessarily, even though it probably technically really is– a violent act done to one’s self for not speaking up for one’s self and a violent act by another who just doesn’t care (or, just doesn’t give a fuck, so to speak) So my question became, well then, since rape and sex as we know them today in our current society mean practically the same thing then why don’t we have a word or sentence that means mutually consensual______what ? Any ides for a new word? I think Eric will vote for fucking (which isn’t new, but has become a stand-by, I guess). Should fuck be the word that will only mean mutually consented to sex? If that would be the word chosen for consensual sex then I would like to make it into a sentence: “A really good fuck.”
Just thinking, y’all. HUGS in the meantime.
Amanda,
i like your take on it. What would possess anyone to want to negate the existence of another? Yet, it happens all the time, in all sorts of power-over scenarios. It is sad that so many of those with power can only feel it by negating the existence of another. Just think of all the good that could be done by using that power to affirm, validate and empower others instead.
Half that ideology of sex having a victim seems to come from the idea that people are not suposed to want sex or admit to wanting it….especially women. I can’t tell you how may times women got down on me for admitting my desire for sex for the sake of orgasm alone. They were really nasty to me over it. I think that is because as soon as we admit to wanting it, we can no longer delude ourselves that “he seduced me” or “he pressured me” as the cop-out for doing what we really wanted to do in the first place but were afraid to say. Men are tired of being blamed for the lust women have.
I am not saying that rape is women’s fault, I am saying that blame-and-victim game that makes consent so fuzzy happens partly because women have been conditioned that their only choices are pristine/virgin-madonna or disgusting/social-pariah whore. Where is the joyously, openly, sexual woman fit into that?
Yes we do have that little issue in our society — we are still learning the difference between rape and sex. We typically refuse to admit there is a cycle of violence, a game, that is culture wide and has many permutations. Let’s put it this way: if actual consent were involved in sex, most sex would not happen. There is tacit consent, and that’s a step on the way to rape. Un-rape is all about actual consent. Fuzzy consent blends right into rape. Few want consent. It’s a lot of responsibility, and then the groundwork is in place for a culture of rape as sex; or more accurately, a culture where sex must have a victim.
“Yes Newt is one of the innovators of ‘fellatio is not really sex’.”
of course, in light of mr. IMF, this begs the question, “Is rape really sex?” that is, of course it uses a sexual mechanism, but i think there’s argument to be made that it’s more about violence and power and control; not ‘either/or’, just ‘more’. could we day that in being an attack, it’s an imposition of one existence in a way that negates, if momentarily, the existence of another?
In the UK the sex scandal/denial theme has taken a pretty crazy turn with what are called ‘superinjunctions’. Actors, footballers, politicians screw around, then take out an injunction to stop the press reporting it, then take out a second injunction to stop the press reporting on the fact that the first injunction has been taken out. They do this to ‘protect’ themselves and their loved ones, to shore up the mythology of marriages that are clearly no longer working, and of course to keep their bank accounts intact and not be seen to commit career suicide and OK you can argue that such stories are not really, or not always, in the public interest. But one day the same legal process will be used to cover up something very important, which is one reason why it has caused such a huge stink.
“There is nobody vaguely sensitive who does not identify with the shame these men are being subjected to ”
Sorry Eric, I do not identify with the shame these rich men are being subjected to.
One is head of the biggest loan-shark, rip-off companies in the world and his behaviour just expresses his controlling mind; the other is an over-the-hill body-builder who had no mercy when he (dispite protests and pleas) sent a repentant and changed murderer to the gas-chamber some twenty years after his confessed crime.
So..no Eric let them rot where they may. I couldn’t give a damn!
But I do identify with the horror felt be the woman.
I Continue to be attracted to your articles.
I was! What, I don’t mention his name? Yes Newt is one of the innovators of “fellatio is not really sex.”
Perfect timing, Eric.
In pretty much every society, female fertility is regulated. Pregnancy is such a taboo thing that from the time of puberty to menopause, females are regulated, often segregated, and confined within socially derived constructs (such as marriage) to keep their sacred fertility under the control of some male. Her fertility is so valuable, even other women will have a betrayng hand in controlling it.
This regulation includes the denial of female pleasure; women cannot have pleasure because to allow them that means allowing them freedom to engage in sex without the strictures. The regulation of female fertility is also why abortion is so abhorrent to males; giving any woman the freedom to annhilate the “seed” of a male means she can deny him the furtherance of his genetic material AND she can enjoy sex as he does (and want the freedom of having it without those controls) without the burden of carrying some man’s seed to fruition and all the responsibility (and personal physical risk) that goes with it. How DARE any female desire to set herself above male wants and desires! How dare anyone have sex without those restrictions (marriage, fidelity) firmly in place. Would this have even been an issue (much less headlines) if the parties involved were honest, open, and willing to have poly relationships? Especially if society removed those regulations on female fertility and on poly sex relationships and openly embraced both?
Women are only free before puberty and after menopause. This is what makes the “scandal” of Ahnold’s sex life; the having of sex outside of “marriage ” (a stricture set up to benefit males and control female fertility) and the child of that sex. As though the fact of the child makes it somehow even worse. A life, conceived in lust or love, is still a life and to be treasured, not relegated to a shame.
Lust, fertility, sex, pregnancy, controls, shame. Very Scorpio.
“…trying to tear off her clothes, then boarding an Air France flight to run his presidential campaign back home.”
eric:
For a minute I did a double take. I thought you were referring to Newt Gingrich.
Wow. Thank you for an excellent and timely piece that contributes to the cause of healing and personal freedom. You affirm life and living.