Philip Roth spent his incredibly productive career portraying our sexuality: our irrational lust, our solipsistic passions, the messy surprises. Many people resented this—not because he was wrong, but because he was right.
The idea of deriding something as “just like a woman” has gone out of fashion, and I daresay no modern woman would stand for it.
So why has “just like a man” become increasingly acceptable?
Way back in 2004 there was Superbowl XXXVIII. The halftime show featured a Janet Jackson-Justin Timberlake duet. Timberlake wore what guys wear in Denny’s, and Jackson wore a black leather bustier over a red lace undergarment.
They closed their song with Timberlake dramatically pulling off the bustier cup covering Jackson’s right breast. For exactly one-half second (I am NOT making this up), half the planet saw her nipple. How do you suppose this story will be re-told in a post-Harvey Weinstein world?
The Metropolitan Museum of Art is now displaying a painting some people don’t like. I’m tired of censors obsessively seeing sex everywhere they look. They try to protect themselves–and the world–by getting rid of anything they can interpret as erotic.
Millions of Americans have a bizarre attitude toward pregnancy: “If it happens, it happens.”
I do understand people who want a child. I also understand people who don’t want a child. I even understand people who definitely want a baby someday, but not now. This is all true regardless of whether people already have kids.
Whether or not to have a baby is the single biggest decision an adult can make. It affects you—male or female—during pregnancy, for 18 years after that, and actually, for most people, until they die. It affects your primary relationship, your sex life, your job/career, your finances, where you live, and who your friends are.
In America, sex is always in the news. (Note: it’s actually not like that in most other countries.)
That news provides a chance for sincere, well-informed people to disagree. But these days, unfortunately, people are using the day’s sex news more as a chance to choose up sides—to define what your opinion means about you and all your other opinions.
~ “I disagree” has been replaced by “You’re misogynist”…