sex

A couple of years ago, I started a new blog dedicated to my research on sex and sexuality called ThinkNaughty.com. Unfortunately, ThinkNaughty.com was swallowed whole when LeafyHost, my former webhost, collapsed last year. I still haven't been able to get the domain name unlocked or access to the files there.

Fortunately, I had a fairly recent backup when LeafyHost went under. Since it doesn't look like I'll be able to get control of my domain name back, I've decided to import the posts here. That means there's some slightly risque material on the site now, but nothing prurient or gratuitous, I promise -- this is research, folks, not porn.

This post is a response to the increasingly heated thread at Feministe on Female Genital Cutting (FGC). Nearly every mention of FGC in our society elicits condemnation of the practices and the people who practice them as "bestial", "barbarian", "inhuman", "uncivilized", "heinous", etc., which has a tendency to set me off. For a long time I've wondered about the incredible and disproportional response FGC incites in Westerners, feminists and non-feminists alike, responses which generally are very far removed from the reported responses and experiences of women who have undergone some form of FGC.

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Zuzu at Feministe comments on a site advocating "organic sex", which turns out to be an apparent appropriation of the language of the organic food/healthy living movement in the service of religious anti-sex, anti-contraceptive goals. This sort of appropriation is clearly not new (e.g. "greenwashing" in the corporate world) but it is new for the anti-sex crowd, I think. While this sort of thing doesn't post much threat to people with a solid background in sexual health, I agree with the final assessment offered in zuzu's post -- it makes the dissemination of accurate information that much more difficult when misinformation is passed on under seemingly well-intentioned health concerns.

With the issue of what people do with their genitals looming larger with every passing day, I've been thinking about the way people talk about the function of sex. "It's for procreation", they say. Asked why, they may point to Genesis, saying "God said so." Or they may point to Darwin, claiming "natural selection says so." Underlying even sex-postivist, ethical slut, reclaiming cunt attitudes is a sense that reproduction is the primary function of intercourse -- they just believe we're lucky enough to be smart enough to figure out ways to forestall reproduction and still have the sex.

Hypothesis: Nudity, pornography, and open sexuality have absolutely no harmful effects on children (when the child is not the subject of sexual behavior).

Discuss.

Twisty of I Blame the Patriarchy offers the flipside of my recent discussion of BDSM in two posts about the patriarchy-affirming nature of even the safest, sanest, and consensualist BDSM sexplay.

Emily Jenkins in Salon writes on sexual moderates, people who like sex just fine but don't obsess over it, don't feel the need to define every aspect of their lives in relation to sex -- and the way our culture marginalizes what is probably a pretty normal attitude about sex as weird, dysfunctional, frigid, etc.:

I'm Pro-Choice and I Fuck by Rachel Kramer Bussel

Originally posted at Savage Minds on December 14, 2005.

Bondage and Patriarchy
Fabulous post and comment thread on Alas, a Blog about BDSM -- the eroticisation of power, the operation and definition of consent, the role of fantasy, and more.