Most Americans do not want to discuss sexual issues rationally. Their sexuality poisoned by the culture, they just want their emotional pain taken away. To people afraid of sexuality, censorship looks attractive. It appears to be a solution to the pain. This pain, this fear of sexuality, leads people to support censorship.
Take all the predictions of Jules Verne, Nostradamus, and Ray Bradbury. Throw in the scary prophecies of TV evangelists, the best scammers of the Psychic Friends Network, and just for fun, Nancy Reagan’s astrologer.
None of these visionaries or soothsayers predicted one of the oddest medical breakthroughs of our age. No, it isn’t a cure for cancer or AIDS. It’s a pill that creates erections: a half-hour after taking it, if a man gets any mental or physical stimulation at all, he gets hard.
If convicted mass murderer Ted Bundy had said that watching Bill Cosby reruns motivated his awful crimes, he would have been dismissed as a deranged sociopath. Instead, Bundy has said his pornography addiction made him do it–which many people treated as the conclusion of a thoughtful social scientist. Why?
“Slut!”
Like children telling stories about a scary old man, women criticize each other’s sexuality–from a safe distance.
“Slut!” is what women call a woman who is “too” sexual. It’s someone who can enjoy sex without being in love. Someone who admits she enjoys sex more than a woman “should.” In other words, it’s a woman who can enjoy sex the way only men are supposed to be able to.
I’m a sex therapist. I spend most of my time in the private worlds of 25 patients a week. I treat undependable penises and vaginas, desires that trouble partners, orgasms that don’t please, and fantasies that frighten. Hour after hour in a comfortable chair listening to uncomfortable people, I sit in a sunlit room bearing witness to the darkest parts of people’s lives.
I’m very much against people being mean or violent to each other. But although I’ve spent my entire career promoting gender equality, current efforts designed to protect people from others’ sexual energy feels misplaced, even dangerous to me.
These days it seems that people are looking at gender relationships, being reminded of sex, and reacting as if all unwanted attention men give women is best understood as sexual–and therefore damaging.