Illustration by Andreas Hykade. Courtesy of Chris Robinson.

Monthly provocative, drunken, idiotic ramblings from the North...

...Speaking of sex...

"What is peculiar to modern societies is not that they consigned sex to a shadow existence, but that they dedicated themselves to speaking of it ad infinitum, while exploiting it as the secret." -- Michel Foucault

In Philip Roth's book, The Human Stain, he talks about the Clinton scandal and how it brought out "the righteous, grandstanding creeps, crazy to blame, deplore, and punish, [who] were everywhere out moralizing to beat the band." This is an era when cocksucking offends people more than the sale of weapons to Taiwan or the increasing fragility of global peace in the hands of G.W. Bush.

The Clinton affair not only reminds us how hypocritical our society is, but also how repressed we are. We are all intimate with illicit sex in some form or other, yet we keep it under lock and key because we are told it is indecent and taboo. This is a prime example of how many of us take history for granted. We assume something is natural when it is indeed linked to power and authority. Besides if it isn't repressed why do we need to talk about it all the time? Why are the Presidents (Jefferson, Kennedy and Clinton to name a few) of the 'free world' doin' other women? Why is there an increase in sex crimes, divorces and adultery? Why is sex used to seduce consumers? Why does Vince McMahon use barely dressed women to sell football? That I even notice this stuff and talk about it shows how ingrained we are with Victorian codes of sex.

French egghead, Michel Foucault, links this stifling view of sex back to the 17th century. There was a time, he says, when "sexual practices had little need of secrecy; words were said without undue reticence, and things were done without too much concealment; one had a tolerant familiarity with the illicit." (Notice how even Foucault uses the safe words 'practices,' 'things,' 'words,' 'the illicit.') Then came the Victorians. Sex was confined to the home under the custody of the family and specifically the heterosexual couple. Sex as pleasure was replaced by sex as a function of reproduction. Sex outside of this accepted realm was deemed taboo. It became silenced or moved to acceptable, confined places like mental hospitals and brothels.