sexuality

Virginia Rutter (the gal who brought us “Who Votes Their Gender?” the other week) took time out from writing college lectures to pen this excellent review of Juno from the perspective of a sex researcher. As you likely know by now, Juno was just nominated by the Academy for four Oscars, including Best Film, and Best Actress (Ellen Page). We’re bound to see a continued discussion of the issues the film raises in coming months, and here Virginia calls our attention to something other reviewers have overlooked: the way our culture talks about–or rather, doesn’t talk about–luuuvvv. -GWP

Can We Talk about Love, Please?

The movies are giving demographers, sociologists, and sex researchers a boost these days. Movies about unwanted pregnancy that eschew abortion, such as Juno, Knocked Up, and Waitress, are giving gifted columnists (like Ellen Goodman and Carrie Rickey) a chance to contemplate where the culture stands with respect to unwanted pregnancy, early motherhood, and all things youthful, tawdry, and anxiety producing for those of us who consider ourselves grown ups now. Those kids are different from us grown ups, and the problems that they have are about the mechanics of sex, and the rules and practices around abortion, adoption, and teen delivery.

Meanwhile, it is Christmas in January for a sex researcher. There is a lot of important teen sex and unwanted pregnancy news out there, too. Abortion rates are down, Guttmacher reports. The fantasized link between teen pregnancy and poverty is screwy, as reported to the Council on Contemporary Families, and instead, poverty is caused by (who’d a thunk it?) the economy. Ouch. How unromantic.

But I don’t want to write about that, any more than I want to write my sociology lectures or finish my latest sex data analysis, right now. The cultural theme that Juno raised for a lot of commentators is whether we as a society are making sex and reproductive decisions look too easy and too simple.

Mind you, the main theme, focused on a woman’s body, seems to have crowded up some other ideas that matter. I have wondered why we haven’t detected a cultural story to be told here in this movie about the fact that:

1. Consequences of sex are a component of the plot in Juno, just as they are in Knocked Up; and

2. The boy, Paulie Bleeker (played by Michael Cera), though not as touched by the pregnancy crisis as the girl, Juno MacGuff (played by Ellen Page) remains a large focus of the unfolding story of the consequences of sex.

But, like I said, none of this grips me. You know what grips me? Love. And I’m convinced that we just don’t talk about it enough.
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The value and pleasure of Juno was that it was a story of love—where the kids sing to each other “you’re a part time lover and full time friend.” In the messy, dull, weird world of conformity and reticence that dominates high school relationships, Juno sweetly offers a story of shy, sweet, but steadfast friendship and romantic love.

Family love was there too. I was touched by the love and acceptance that the father showed his daughter, even as he was befuddled by her choices. I cheered at the loyalty portrayed by the stepmother when she dressed down the judgmental ultrasound operator. This is the kind of love we can live with, the kind of love that we need in order to live, survive, thrive, and just be good people. It isn’t “kill yourself love” like we get from movies like Titanic, which is the kind of love we are more likely to glamorize and talk about.

Cultural commentators, chief among them Stephanie Coontz, highlight the way in which marriage itself has been transformed from an institution based on commitment to an institution based on love. We’ve got a host of politicians who respond to this reality with hand-wringing about the loss of old-fashioned commitment. But we will do well to contemplate, elucidate, illustrate and talk about ways to love skillfully, kindly, and with compassion and acceptance that were illustrated in Juno. In the end, love—doable, realistic, everyday love–was the protective envelope (not marriage, not traditional values) that made us see that Juno the teen mother was going to be okay. In other words, love, done right, serves the kind of social purpose that commitment and traditional values do. And jeepers, the songs are so sweet when they are about love.

Since, despite my impulses, I have to keep working on my sociology lectures and my sex research, I have a nice little social science illustration for why love matters that brings us full circle to thinking about teen sex. In her research, Amy Schalet (UMass-Amherst) contrasted how teens and their parents in the United States think about and communicate about sexuality as compared to in The Netherlands. She found that Dutch parents and teens actually believe that young people can experience love, can be in love, and that love is an important prerequisite to sexual activity, while in the United States, parents are skeptical of their teenagers’ capacity to be in love, and instead keep expressing the view that boys and girls must be in some kind of antagonistic, sexual arms race. The lesson in Professor Schalet’s work: the age of first sex is higher and the rates of unwanted pregnancy and STDs are lower among Dutch versus American youth. Valuing love works. Don’t forget it.

I say, up with Juno! Up with love! Now, to write lectures and look at data.

Esther Perel is a Belgium-born therapist whose book, Mating in Captivity: Reconciling the Domestic and the Erotic,–just out in paper–has been said to read like a cross between Jaques Lacan and French Women Don’t Get Fat. Personally, I think it’s Fear of Flying meets Jane Sexes It Up—an implicitly sexy and intellectually fearless 21st century manifesto on sex inside marriage, for both women and men. According to Perel, mating in captivity is not a problem to solve. Rather, it’s a paradox to manage. And manage we can.

I recently had the chance to sit down with this brilliant, vivacious thinker at her Manhattan home. Snippets from our follow-up below.

THE BOOK

DS: What made you decide to write this book?

EP: There were a number of converging motivations. At the time of the Clinton affair I was intrigued at how adultery could become a matter of national political agenda in the US. Why was it I wondered, that this country showed a lot of tolerance for divorce, but was rather intransigent vis a vis infidelity when the rest of the world had traditionally been more tolerant of infidelity and less so of divorce.

In my professional life, I would attend conferences and be struck by an overemphasis on pathology and dysfunction and a tendency to leave out of the conversations the notions of pleasure and eroticism when addressing a couple’s sexual life.

The claim that sexual problems were always the result of relational problem and that one should fix the relation and the sex would follow, did not bear true for me. I saw many couples who’s relationship would improve significantly and it would do little to their sex life. I would see loving caring couples whose desire flat lined and not because of a breakdown in intimacy. I began to rethink what had often struck me, that it isn’t always the lack of closeness that stifles desire, but sometimes too much closeness. So I started to question a host of assumptions on the nature of erotic desire over the long haul that are held as truths and could use deeper examination. A number of questions occupied me: Why does great sex so often fade in couples who claim to love each other as much as ever? Can we want what we already have? Why is the forbidden so erotic? Why does good intimacy not guarantee great sex? And why does the transition to parenthood so often spell erotic disaster in couples?

DS: Your book is being published in 22 countries and 20 languages, and has just come out in paperback. I loved seeing all the different covers all lined up on your shelf. What aspect has surprised you the most about the book’s international reception?

EP: I originally wrote MIC from the position of a foreign therapist observing American sexuality. Now that the book has been translated broadly, what stands out is the pervasiveness of the breakdown of desire in all societies where the romantic ideal has entered. Never before did we have a model of long-term sexuality that was rooted in desire. People had sex for reproduction, or out of marital duty. Bringing lust home is the next taboo. Everywhere people are wondering about this fading of desire, they fill pages of books and magazine to spice things up. But if it were so simple, we wouldn’t need a new recipe each week.

The covers alone speak volumes about how each society deals with sexuality.
In my travels to 16 countries this year I got to experience some the unique tensions and changes that are at play in each society. It was as if in each country there was a theme that emerged: female infidelity in Argentina and Mexico, homosexuality in Turkey, the shift from reproductive sexuality when people had 12 children on the farms of Norway to the 2 or 3 kid family or the sexual consequences of the egalitarian model of Sweden to name but a few.

ON SEX, EGALITARIANISM, AND FEMINISM

DS: I’ve been thinking a lot these days about the word “egalitarianism”—or rather, the expectation women my generation grew up with here in the U.S. that our relationships with men would be marked by this sense of reciprocity and mutuality in all realms. Including the bedroom. And I’m interested in your argument that “mutuality,” “democracy.” and “equity” in bed result in very boring sex. Did feminism do something to sex? Tell us more about why what you call politically incorrect sex is so important for couples today.

EP: Indeed I do think that America’s best features–the belief in democracy, equality, consensus, fairness, mutual tolerance—can, when carried too punctiliously in the bedroom, result in very boring sex. Feminism fought hard to eradicate differences, and abuses of power, and we are still far from victorious. While I very much recognize these momentous achievements, I do think that it brought with it unanticipated consequences. To extricate power, aggression, difference is antithetical to erotic desire.

Sexual desire doesn’t always play by the rules of good citizenship. What excites us most at night is sometimes the very thing we fight against in daytime. There is a subversion at play in the erotic realm. The erotic mind is politically incorrect, thriving on power plays, role reversals, unfair advantages, imperious demands, seductive manipulations, and subtle cruelties. if we all fantasized about a bed of roses, we would not have such a hard time talking about all this, but the erotic mind is not always neat, or docile. There is a whole other side to eros.

DS: Have you had any particularly interesting conversations with feminist thinkers on this point of late that you can share? And generally speaking, what has been the feminist response to your book? (Not that there’s ever just one feminist response of course…But just curious!)

EP: I read the French feminist psychoanalysts like Luce Irigaray, and Elizabeth Badinter. I found the writings of Camille Paglia and Laura Kipnis most interesting. I was in a conversation with her at the New York Public Library and, as is often the case, any open conversation on the vicissitudes of desire leads to talking about the limits of monogamy.

The feminist thinkers in my field listen to me apprehensively sometimes wondering if I undervalue the importance for the need for security and safety for women to experience sex.

Others have engaged with me in conversations about how I choose to define the word “Intimacy”. But mostly I have received very positive feedback from feminist writers and practitioners that has really touched me. I feared that I may be taken to an extreme I did not mean to go, and it did not happen luckily. Mostly I am told that I wrote what we all know, think, feel and don’t say out loud. Now in the last months I have been preparing a series of talks on female sexual desire, or lack thereof, where I am introducing a different way to conceptualize female desire than the dominant models, and we shall see.

DS: I personally don’t buy into the concept of postfemnism, but is there such a thing as postfeminist sex? What would it look like? (Will I know it when I see it?)

EP: A few points come to mind: a focus that that expands from sexual sovereignty to sexual pleasure. The idea that we don’t have one sexuality, but a few sexualities in the course of our life. The shift to a more androgynous view of love that transcends the binary models of gender thinking. And an understanding that what is emotionally nurturing isn’t the same as what is sexually exciting. These are two different needs that spring from different sources and pull us in different directions.

MEN

DS: You write, “American men and women, shaped by the feminist movement and its egalitarian ideas, often find themselves challenged by these contradictions.” Please say more about how younger men—the sons of feminism, that is—are challenged by contradictions. Of what sort?

EP: In heterosexual couples, I see men who struggle to find a place for themselves sexually with their partner, and with how to express a masculinity that includes a striving force, a drive, assertiveness and that will be welcomed by the women. They are reluctant to reveal their sexual turn ons to their partner for fear of insulting her. Moreover, having lost the male privilege of a woman who’ll perform her wifely duty, they need to keep her erotically engaged, seduce her, make her feel desirable and interested in him. The idea that committed sex is intentional, premeditated consciously willed clashes against the myth of spontaneity. Another point is that if women can do all what the man does, where does that leave him? What is specific to him? Ou est la difference?

It is important for him to convey to her that the language of intimacy for him is often not verbal, but physical and sexual. Additionally, he wonders how to bring the erotic home, be safely ruthless with the woman he loves and respects.

Given the power shifts, men often struggle to integrate masculinity and sexuality in their intimate relationships.

DS: When we last spoke, you mentioned that you’ve seen more and more men struggling with a loss of sexual desire at younger and younger ages. Why do men seem to be experiencing this loss so early on? What’s changed? The women? Or the men?

EP: Well, we live in a time that focuses on instant gratification. The current generation of boys and girls, raised in a way where they never have to feel any frustration nor boredom, is turning out to be the one with the greatest difficulties with sustaining desire. If you have never wanted something, longed for it etc., you cannot know desire. Where there is no frustration there is no desire.

I am interested in the role of porn in the lives of coupled men, as well as the degree of sexual honesty and communication in relationships. The all-out exposure of sex on billboards does not translate in the privacy of our bedrooms.

To order Mating in Captivity, click here

I remain slightly stunned that Hillary came in not second but third in Iowa last night. And at the way she is painted the establishment candidate. And at the strength of the venom against her. More election commentary coming soon from guest poster, sociologist Virginia Rutter. In the meantime, a quick bit on two books, just out:

Men Speak Out: Views on Gender, Sex and Power–a new anthology edited by Shira Tarrant–compiles the voices of 40 men who explore issues of masculinity, sexuality, identity, and positive change. The book lays issues on the table that are sure to stimulate a lively debate. It’s starting already at myspace and facebook. Check it.

Next up, Making Love, Playing Power: Men, Women, & the Rewards of Intimate Justice, by family therapist and organizational consultant Ken Dolan-Del Vecchio, debunks superficial theories about communication styles and geder roles and, according to the book’s description, “gets to the real reason so many relationships are in trouble — misuse of power.” The book reveals how gender, race, sexual orientation, and money set the foundation for personal power, and how power as domination drives most conflicts whether between nations, interest groups, or individuals. Join Ken at Bluestockings Bookstore in Manhattan on February 13 for a reading…!

What better way to kick off the new year than with the gift of sex? Sex writing, I mean of course. Rachel Kramer Bussel’s new anthology, Best Sex Writing 2008, looks like a must-read. Salon calls it “A fun, nimble book that never loses its sense of humor about itself.” The press release says it “captures the heart and soul of what’s happening behind the bedroom door, where lust, desire, gender, identity, sex work, and politics collide.” But Rachel puts in best in the opening line of her introduction: “Sex. One little word, so much drama.” Love that in the very first graf, Rachel looks back with a reference to Carole Vance’s anthology from the 1982 conference “Toward a Politics of Sexuality” at Barnard College, called Pleasure and Danger, noting how sex is an ever-evolving set of acts, philosophies, and identities that “teaches us, thrills us, empowers us, confuses us, electrifies us.” In all sorts of complex ways.

Check out the book’s blog, read the intro, and, if in NYC, join Rachel and friends at the book release party on January 22 at, where else, Rapture Cafe. There will be cupcakes. Details here. And stay tuned–I hope to be writing a bit more on the collection here on GWP.

Just when you were craving another book that pits “bad girls” (ie, feminists, and those who have nonmonogamous sex) against “good girls” (the ones who don’t) comes Carol Platt Liebau’s Prude: How the Sex-Obsessed Culture Damages Girls (and America, Too!). While I’m guessing the parens and exclamation point are for earnest emphasis, I can’t help but think of Steven Colbert’s recent title, I Am America (and So Can You!) whenever I see this now. And so, I confess to taking the tone of it all a little tongue-in-cheek. That is not, however, the author’s intention.

The prolific and ever-savvy sex writer Rachel Kramer Bussel has written about the book over at AlterNet. Charges Rachel,

Liebau is not simply bemoaning the fact that it’s easier, and more socially acceptable, for young girls to be sexually active, but also that adult women dare to act this way as well.

…She makes the same tired mistake that so many do, assuming that “sexual freedom” means living in a world where sex doesn’t matter, to anyone. Whether we call that “do-me” or “wham, bam, thank you, ma’am,” there is so much more to true sexual freedom. But in her world, you’re either in a committed, monogamous relationship, or out there screwing anything that moves.

While I’m not all that interested in reading this book (and am grateful to Rachel for doing so for me), I am interested in the chapter titled “Do-Me Feminists and Doom-Me Feminism,” if only for the sake of seeing how recent feminist history, once again, gets played.

For more on this exciting trend, of course, see Wendy Shalit’s Girls Gone Mild.

As a follow up to Courseconnections’s comment the other day here about a correlation between the rise in teenage pregnancy and the Bush administration’s support of abstinence-only education, here’s Cynthia Tucker of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, reminding us that the recent rise in teen births stands in stark contrast to more than a decade of decline:

[T]hat stunning drop was by no means mere coincidence. Activists and community volunteers who genuinely wanted to curb adolescent pregnancy — as opposed to those who just wanted to rail against abortion and inflict their rigid moral codes on others — worked hard to find programs that actually worked. They formed clubs for teen girls. They wrote scripts for role-playing, teaching teenagers how to say “no” to sex. (Those activists, too, believe in abstinence, but they’re not naive about its utility.)

High school teachers assigned homework in which students spent a week caring for crying, fidgeting, diaper-wetting baby dolls, so adolescents would learn how difficult and demanding infants can be. They handed out contraceptives, including Depo-Provera, an injection that proved effective with teenaged girls who were unlikely to remember daily pills.

Through the 1990s, that overlapping network of programs was supported and partially funded by the Clinton White House, which believed in a pragmatic response to social problems. While President Clinton supported a woman’s right to choose, he also said abortions should be “safe, legal and rare.” The same pragmatism brought federal support for crime prevention efforts, including federal funds for hiring police officers.

By contrast, the Bush White House has turned back to a conservative ideology that mocks government as the source of problems — unless taxpayer funds can be used to further far-right objectives. So Depo-Provera is out, but abstinence pledges are in.

Maybe it’s just coincidence that more adolescent girls are having babies. More likely, it’s the inevitable result of a raft of foolish policies.

I’ll say. A raft that sure don’t float.

On Dec. 5, the Centers for Disease Control reported that, after 14 years of decline, the birthrate for women between the ages of 15 and 19 had increased. In 2006, there were 41.9 births for every 1,000 girls in that age range, a 3% rise from 2005.

Why has the teenage birthrate increased after years of decline? Experts are trying to figure it out (experts–please post?) but in the meantime, check out Saturday’s op-ed from Meghan Daum of the Los Angeles Times. Writes Daum, after some interesting meditations (which I related to) on being in high school in the 1980s,

Some experts say it’s because condoms are not quite the must-have item they once were now that AIDS is increasingly being perceived, rightly or wrongly, as a manageable disease rather than a death sentence. But I also have to wonder if, in the grand scheme of things, pregnancy is just not as frightening to the current crop of teens as it was to past generations. Considering that kids have been forced to think in a very real way about things that can actually kill you, like terrorist attacks and school shootings and, yes, HIV infection, getting pregnant — and even raising a child — might seem like a lesser inconvenience. As for embarrassment, these are kids who post their diaries on MySpace. Do we really expect them to abstain because they’re afraid of gossip?

Thoughts?

Alison Bower of Womens eNews has the low down on where the presidential hopefuls stand on the issue of sex education. She reminds us that the U.S. has spent about $1 billion on abstinence-only education in the last decade and the White House seeks $28 million more. Infuriating doesn’t begin to describe it. Read more, here.

Do more “hook ups” mean less marriage? Well, the December 2007 issue of the Journal of Marriage and Family kind of points that way, but I wouldn’t base everything on one study. Still, according to the authors of an article titled “Of Sex and Romance: Late Adolescent Relationships and Young Adult Union Formation,” adolescents involved in romantic relationships at the end of high school are more likely to marry and to cohabit in early adulthood, while those involved in “nonromantic sexual relationships” tend to just shack up. But wait–aren’t we getting married later and later these days? And so I ask the sociologists out there: a study that ends in early adulthood isn’t going to tell us much about the longterm prospects for marriage, oui?

(Image cred)

This just came to me via the Council on Contemporary Families:

Programs that focus exclusively on abstinence have not been shown to affect teenage sexual behavior, although they are eligible for tens of millions of dollars in federal grants, according to a study released by a nonpartisan group that seeks to reduce teen pregnancies. The report is being released today by the nonpartisan National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy. A spending bill before Congress for the Department of Health and Human Services would provide $141 million in assistance for community-based, abstinence-only sex education programs, $4 million more than President Bush requested. The study – conducted by a senior research scientist at ETR Associates – says that while abstinence-only efforts appear to have little positive impact, more comprehensive sex-education programs were having “positive outcomes,” including teenagers “delaying the initiation of sex, reducing the frequency of sex, reducing the number of sexual partners and increasing condom or contraceptive use.” ETR Associates developed and markets several of the sex-education curricula reviewed in the report.

Come on kids. Are we surprised? Read more about it in this past Wednesday’s Arizona Daily Star.