I can understand why some people don't like sex because it reminds them of their status as animals, but it is the uniquely human take on sex that has always filled me with revulsion. Crude, animalistic sex seems innocent -- almost clean -- in comparison with the way more sophisticated people go about it. As an adolescent I had a very romantic view of the act which, I understand, is unusual for boys.
But it didn't last long.
I was thoroughly 'red-pilled' before I hit my mid-twenties, disgusted with the subtle but more often blatent psychological manipulation that occurs in even the most 'casual' sexual relationships. The filthiest piece of pornography I've ever read isn't de Sade's Philosophy of the Bedroom but de Laclos' Les Liaisons Dangereuses: an epistolary novel so archetypal in its depiction of 'love' that it hardly even qualifies as fiction.
I haven't read that French novel, but it's interesting how far back that stock character goes, the duplicitous seducer. It's rare to dislike the sex act itself since that act triggers the greatest pleasure centers of the human body. There are asexual individuals who are indifferent to or repulsed by sex, and there are ideologues who reject sex for religious or philosophical reasons. But indeed, the sex act is different from a cultural attitude towards sex.
In a way it's refreshing that animals have sex openly because they're unashamed. But the mating rituals of animals are often ludicrous, so animals are being clowned by their genes. The fact that they don't know that's so doesn't make them more admirable. Plus, animals practice something like rape.
You've probably seen one of the many film adaptions perhaps without realizing it. The most well known one was the 1988 American movie Dangerous Liaisons staring John Malkovich as Valmont, but I think the best of them was a 2003 Canadian miniseries of the same name which set the story in the nineteen sixties.
In the book Valmont doesn't seduce Cécile, he rapes her. Cécile is crestfallen at first but after being violated a few more times she actually begins to fall in love Valmont. When I first read it as a young man that part seemed not just obscene but absurd: surely no woman would ever fall in love with a man who repeatedly raped her. The obscene part, as I learned later in life, was that I was wrong & de Laclos knew what he was writing about -- which I guess illustrates your point that sex exposes us for the beasts that we are.
I did see that 1988 movie years ago. Maybe it's Stockholm syndrome that would make a woman love her rapist. Or that could be a satirical exaggeration, the point being the one commonly made in movies, that nice guys finish last and women prefer bad boys (vampires, tough guys, and so on).
This reminds me of pick-up culture which I looked into once (as fodder for writing). I wrote the article below on it.
I can understand why some people don't like sex because it reminds them of their status as animals, but it is the uniquely human take on sex that has always filled me with revulsion. Crude, animalistic sex seems innocent -- almost clean -- in comparison with the way more sophisticated people go about it. As an adolescent I had a very romantic view of the act which, I understand, is unusual for boys.
ReplyDeleteBut it didn't last long.
I was thoroughly 'red-pilled' before I hit my mid-twenties, disgusted with the subtle but more often blatent psychological manipulation that occurs in even the most 'casual' sexual relationships. The filthiest piece of pornography I've ever read isn't de Sade's Philosophy of the Bedroom but de Laclos' Les Liaisons Dangereuses: an epistolary novel so archetypal in its depiction of 'love' that it hardly even qualifies as fiction.
I haven't read that French novel, but it's interesting how far back that stock character goes, the duplicitous seducer. It's rare to dislike the sex act itself since that act triggers the greatest pleasure centers of the human body. There are asexual individuals who are indifferent to or repulsed by sex, and there are ideologues who reject sex for religious or philosophical reasons. But indeed, the sex act is different from a cultural attitude towards sex.
DeleteIn a way it's refreshing that animals have sex openly because they're unashamed. But the mating rituals of animals are often ludicrous, so animals are being clowned by their genes. The fact that they don't know that's so doesn't make them more admirable. Plus, animals practice something like rape.
You've probably seen one of the many film adaptions perhaps without realizing it. The most well known one was the 1988 American movie Dangerous Liaisons staring John Malkovich as Valmont, but I think the best of them was a 2003 Canadian miniseries of the same name which set the story in the nineteen sixties.
DeleteIn the book Valmont doesn't seduce Cécile, he rapes her. Cécile is crestfallen at first but after being violated a few more times she actually begins to fall in love Valmont. When I first read it as a young man that part seemed not just obscene but absurd: surely no woman would ever fall in love with a man who repeatedly raped her. The obscene part, as I learned later in life, was that I was wrong & de Laclos knew what he was writing about -- which I guess illustrates your point that sex exposes us for the beasts that we are.
I did see that 1988 movie years ago. Maybe it's Stockholm syndrome that would make a woman love her rapist. Or that could be a satirical exaggeration, the point being the one commonly made in movies, that nice guys finish last and women prefer bad boys (vampires, tough guys, and so on).
DeleteThis reminds me of pick-up culture which I looked into once (as fodder for writing). I wrote the article below on it.
http://rantswithintheundeadgod.blogspot.ca/2015/10/sexuality-and-individualism-critique-of.html