Oral

Oral sex a-go-go:
OR
why cunnilingus is the most-discussed sex act in pop music today, and why you should care

I know that the standard line on sexual explicitness in movies, music, tv, etc. is that the solution (it’s sort of unclear what the problem actually is, but more on that below) is less talk about sex, fewer mentions, less exposure. And it’s true that our culture is sex-soaked, hyper-sexual, high pressured, and that sex is routinely linked with things it’s not really all that related to, most notably consumption and beauty, particularly that disgusting conflation of the two that is found in the beauty industry. (If you don’t believe me about beauty having nothing to do with sex, you might want to stop reading here, because this is the least problematic of the claims to come. You might also take a look at Naomi Wolf’s book, The Beauty Myth, instead of watching the next installment of America’s Next Top Model.) This leaves that group of persons (and I think there are quite a lot of them out there, many of them parents) who want to say that sex is a good and positive thing but still don’t like what they see around them, and particularly don’t want their kids doing it. Clearly the solution (if this is really the problem; just not being sex-positive at all is a different problem) is not to go back to some kind of silent lack of all discussion sort of situation, such as what most people imagine that the 1950s were like. But most of us are so insecure about sex ourselves that we can’t figure out how to do the talking about it ourselves, especially not on a regular basis, especially not with our kids. So we stick to the mechanics of sex (by which we mean heterosexual intercourse, but more about that below, as well) and some vague notion that commitment or love will make some kind of difference in the quality and safety of our sex lives, and call it good enough. "You’re not old enough" comes up quite a bit in these discussions.

Here’s some stuff though, that you all know is true, and makes this a pitifully inadequate way of coping with the situation.

First, people are going to have sex, no matter what you say. Your children are part of this group – people – and they too are going to have sex, it’s just a matter of when and with whom. Hoping that your children are going to be part of that small minority of people who choose lives of celibacy, may make you feel better, but it won’t make them safe or happy, and it probably won’t come true.

Trying to give your kids the idea that sex is, itself, not bad, but that it needs to be praticed within certain kinds of socially-sanctioned boundaries because it is, itself, bad, leads to a whole mixed messages situation, particularly the claim that they should wait until they are married, or at least until they are "serious" or "in love". Even is your kids do fall into that slightly larger group of people who choose to wait, what are they waiting until? Marriage? Commitment? Love? Some kind of minimum age? What is it? What about gay people? They’re not permitted to get married, so what exactly are they supposed to be waiting for? The implication is that they should never have sex, because they aren’t normal or good, because normal and good children wait until they are married. While we’re at it, what constitutes sex for these people? Assuming that a little smooching, and maybe some other stuff is okay while sexual intercourse is something young people should wait on sort of implies that sexual intercourse between a man and a woman is all there is, and there is nothing else for us to talk about at all. It was implications for ALL of our sex lives, straight married people as well as everyone else. It’s not a good sign that we’re unable to imagine anything other than, or in addition to, penetrative intercourse between a man and a woman, and that all we can come up with at all is kissing and the extremely vague "foreplay." It’s an index of our level of discomfort, and how little we actually know about sex, even as adults. We all could use a little more sex education, and not just about saying yes or saying no.

I think that there are better solutions to be found, and that they are already under discussion in that most popular of mass market culture, pop music. The answer, too, is more, not less sexual explicitness.

Comments:

From check out our other cunningly linguistic sites..... [128.135.126.248] - 4/23/04 2:37 PM

From goatdog [128.135.181.163] - 4/23/04 2:32 PM