Date: Wed, 1 Apr 1998 20:55:55 +0200 From: Hugh Rodwell <m-14970-AT-mailbox.swipnet.se> Subject: M-TH: Re: Socially necessary sex and socially free sex I wrote: >>There's just as little point in claiming that sex isn't a biological >>necessity. No sex -- no more human beings (forget utopian Brave New World >>test tube dreams!). No more human beings -- species death. But the survival >>aspect is just the necessary foundation of sex, whose significance for the >>development of humanity will only become clear when society has made this >>foundation rock solid and freed up the creative uses of sex -- in other >>words, the benefits we'll get from *free* sex as opposed to *necessary*, >>compulsory sex will only become clear under socialism. >> >>A certain minimal amount of sexual time will be necessary for the >>biological needs of the species, all the rest will be ours to dispose of as >>we wish. and James contradicted me: >This sounds good like a good analogy, but isn't. The analogy does not >work. A society does not *need* sex in the same way that it needs work. I thought I made this clear enough -- "No sex -- no more human beings (forget utopian Brave New World test tube dreams!). No more human beings -- species death." That's what I call necessary. It's primitive sex, the same as hunting and gathering is primitive work, and as different from sex in our society as work in our society is from hunting and gathering -- but you still can't wish either function away! >It is conceivable (though unlikely) that all procreation could be by >artificial insemination. Huxley conceived this kind of conception in Brave New World, and some sci-fi uses it, but it's so utopian and crackpot as an alternative for our society or the foreseeable future that's it's typical of James to bring it in as a serious argument. Unlike a number of our skilled rhetoricians (no names, no pack drill -- at least for today) who dress the most hair-raising implausibilities in honeyed words and brazenly take them out for Sunday walks, James has the masochistic grit to roll them out warts and all. "In your faces, unworthy, unappreciative mob!" -- Odi profanum vulgus et arceo! Here's a typical Protestant male perspective: >Sex take a moment (at least it does with me). >Work dominates our lives. The sex act is just a small component of the >overall reproduction of the human species. Work is the reproduction of >the human species. Sex is not just reduced to a very foreshortened conception of the sex act, but to the climax itself. But these things differ (at last a *use* for reading Henry Miller!), for instance, some people ejaculate longer than others fuck. Strindberg had problems with this (and he wondered why his wives didn't appreciate him) -- a typical uptight petty-bourgeois writer/artist swinging wildly between devil-may-care bohemian and authoritarian patriarch. Anyway he abhorred what he called "the endless toil of frogs in the swamp" and preferred the way "birds alight briefly and wing off back to the heavens" (frog quote is exact, except for slight poetic licence; bird quote is approximate). He was also much preoccupied by the "lesbian threat" -- one of his plays is called "Night of the Tribades [pronounced tribberds = lesbians]" But what all this does is to ignore the place of sex in our lives and thus in society. It's a time-and-motion study gone mad, cos it doesn't know what it's looking at. Just think of all the manoeuvering and positioning and posturing and preening going on to prepare for a sexual encounter, preferably a lasting and satisfying one. Just think of all the thought directly and indirectly connected with preparing, executing and evaluating sexual encounters. And most importantly think of the imbecility of the following immortal words (which have earned a place on my wall in a golden frame): The sex act is just a small component of the overall reproduction of the human species. So that's all right, then. Let's forget all this silliness and be Real Serious Thinkers. Feel uncomfortable? Go to the bog and have a quick Sherman, so we can get on with the meeting. >There is nothing intrisic to the sex act itself that makes it the focus >of the massively inflated (!) realm of the erotic, the domestic realm, >social intercourse and so on. These things are historical features that >sieze hold of the natural sex act as the canvass on which to elaborate >their social meanings. Look, James, why should this one act of all the millions of possible human acts (like picking your nose or wiping your arse) have been singled out as the focus for all the apparatus you describe? Pure chance? An ideological conspiracy on the part of ruling class propagandists? But in that case why do advertisers use it as the single most effective way of getting us to part with what fruits of our labour we dispose of? What's intrinsic to the sex act is that it is the basis of our survival as a species. It's so powerful that it's like the sun, extremely difficult to see, even if it's there all the time and we'd be dead without it. It's more than the sun, it's the black hole at the galactic centre of human experience, with an irresistible gravitational pull and limitless power over everything that comes into its vicinity, including anti-social individuals full of hang-ups (ie most of us) who find the barriers between themselves and others at least temporarily torn down in a way that can give rise to acute existential development. It's the crucible of human alchemy. The womb and pregnancy and birth are all part and parcel of this great bedrock of shared human experience, but the division into sexes has given women a biological monopoly of this sphere, as opposed to fertilization, so I'll pass on this for the moment. Now given all this, the control we now have over reproduction (slight as it is) allows us to navigate a little more safely on the great ocean of sex, but we're still floating on it in our flimsy craft and very much at its mercy. Our new control allows several more degrees of freedom in relation to fertilization and pregnancy (including avoidance and termination). Together with advances in public health and hygiene, and greater awareness of the importance of sex and greater opportunities for having it, it means a lot more people are having a lot more sex for a lot longer (years, not minutes!) these days than they ever have before, and in a greater variety of ways. Also a lot more people are turning on to sex and enjoying it a lot more fully than used to be the case. >Freeing the sex act, as you argue, might well mean freeing sexuality >from the sex act: we are alreay well on the way. But wanking is also a sex act... Perhaps James means "from the sex act with a member of the opposite sex"`? or "from the sex act with another human being"? No sex, please, we're British! Dicks out now! Down with erections! Sexuality good, sex act bad! Close your eyes and think of your .... work! James for Pope! ciao4now, mimi PS Here's a little poem that might amuse some of you: Andra aktens final Finale of Act II (Culex) (Culex) *Idyllen* sl=F6t sitt gyllene gap The *Idyll* closed its golden jaw, med dessa p=E5 sin tunga: our heroes on its tongue: f=F6rtvivlan =E4r en egenskap despair's a way of feeling sore som passar f=F6r de unga, that's suited to the young, men p=E5 Medel=E5lderns arm Middle age provides an arm sover Lyckan trygg och varm for Luck to sleep on safe and warm och i ett stadigt *=E4ktenskap* and in robust marriage evermore ska Gl=E4djen st=E4ndigt sjunga. will hymns to Joy be sung. (Anopheles) (Anopheles) *Libido* bjuder upp till dans *Libido* calls us to our feet och alla m=E5ste hoppa, and all must join the hop, ty d=E4r den ljuva kl=E5dan fanns for when we feel that itch so sweet fick ingen makt att stoppa: there's none can make it stop: du som stel och tillkn=E4ppt g=E5r rigid, silent, tightly knit, pl=F6tsligt du en raptus f=E5r suddenly you'll have a fit som bet dig *pulex irritans*, as if a flea had bit your seat (det =E4r: en vanlig loppa). (that's *pulex irritans*, the lop). (From Gradiva och andra dikter/Gradiva and other poems by Goeran Printz-Paahlson, Bonniers, Stockholm, 1966. My translation.) --- from list marxism-thaxis-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
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