Towards a More Sex-Positive...Left

Gordon Fitch gcf at panix.com
Sun Oct 20 06:26:38 PDT 2002


Gordon Fitch writes:
> So, anyway, are you saying you object to thinking about sex,
> >discussing it, using long words in reference to it, or what?

catherine.driscoll at adelaide.edu.au:
> Well Gordon I'm quite happy to intellectualise sex with you.
>
> You think attention to orgasms is capitalist. That the idea that men defer
> orgasm till the end of a sexual encounter is also.... capitalist. Now I
> grant you that a guy's erection is not *necessary* to enjoyable sex -- yes,
> I think I can grant you that -- but if, let's say, there was something that
> you wanted from said erection, as another person in this sexual encounter,
> you might want it to last a little longer than the minimum period of time
> required to achieve his orgasm.

Actually, I was hypothesizing and seculating -- maybe attention to, even fetishization of orgasm or other attributes of a sexual encounter isn't particularly capitalist. It seems significant, though, that anthropologists have apparently run across people for whom it was not an object worthy of its own word. Of course, they could have been lying to the anthropologists.

In regard to the arrangement of sexual encounters, not long ago I read a book by a woman who said that when she had sex with a woman, she didn't know what was going to happen, but when she had sex with a man she always knew what was going to happen, and in what order, and approximately how long it would take. I thought that was a very interesting remark, because, allowing for a certain amount of hyperbole, and maybe not a large population of samples, there was probably a lot of truth in it of a very suggestive kind.

In my own experience, which is a small but very suggestive population for me, I've found that male orgasm at the beginning of the, uh, show, need not close the performance at all; in fact, it may be the best way of arranging things, or just letting them happen. There are many sexual things in the world besides the erect penis.


> I'm not totally convinced that this is about capitalism. I know everyone on
> this list will jump up and down (or jostle in their swivel chairs or
> something), but I'm going out on a limb to say I don't think absolutely
> everything is about capitalism. The circulation of images of sex, sure,
> absolutely (in fact your post reminded me of this Linda Williams book on
> porn films), I'm with you on that -- but actual sexual enjoyment does, in
> my experience, have dimensions that are at least not strictly *caused by*
> capitalism, however much capitalism may seek to mediate or profit from them.
>
> Awaiting your spectacular unravelling of my naivete.

What I was thinking was not that capitalism (or any other important social formation) _caused_ sexual pleasure but that it might affect the forms of sexual practice.

As to naivete, I've been trying to keep the naivete championship on this list and I doubt you'll be able to get it away from me.

-- Gordon



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