Divorced From Reality
So, as of late I've noticed a strange trend in my gay friends. Well, my straight friends, too. This trend, you see, is defining sex as a verb. What is sex? Is it different than hooking up? What about getting off? Is hooking up different than fucking? I, for one, am at a loss. According to two of my very good friends (one of them being my roommate, the other my neighbor), sex is defined as penetration. Hooking up/getting off is anything that doesn't involve penetration. I don't understand that definition for a couple reasons, but that doesn't mean these definitions are any less valid. What is problematic for me is how these seperate definitions divorce the act from the emotion (if there is any emotive context). Simply put, divorcing the definitions of sex and hooking up only confounds the parochial-patriarchal system of heteronormative behavior. I.E.: Penetration equals power, so being penetrated means you are giving up power, or being the penetrator means you are exercising power over someone. If there is no penetration, there is no power. This type of causal logic is what sustains the system. If X then Y. If I penetrate/get penetrated then I am building an emotive context to create meaning couched in behavior. X=penetration, Y= emotive context. The emotive context creates a foundation to sustain the system of sex as perversion of power, rather than as the critical foundation for deliberate power. I propose here that seperating the definitions of sex and hooking up only prove to further divorce us from a social reality wherein sex (as action) is used as a tool of the dominants to control subordinates. By combining and recognizing the two as inherently equal, that penetration is equal in meaning to getting off, then we build a foundation on which sex as action can be used to liberate rather than to dominate. Of course, this based entirely on the assumption that sex as action carries with it some emotive, rational meaning. But I'll leave that to the psychologists to sort out. I'm more interested in what these divorced meanings say about western sexual culture and the heternormative behavior our culture practices, but that's all for another day.
posted by Alaska @ 9:33 AM
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