Having Moral Sex?
BROOKS, DAVID
How-To Having Moral Sex? By David Brooks You buy a brand of ice cream that sends proceeds to benefit the rain forest. You channel your savings into socially responsible investment funds. Your...
...Having quit your day job in order to complete these exercises, you will have ample time to talk about your own sexual feelings...
...For example, a recent issue of Libido carried dozens of photographs of naked people who are young and attractive...
...Later in the same issue, K.J...
...The image of a group of socially concerned people, in which each individual tends to his own concerns, seems somehow to capture the enlightened aspirations of the age...
...There is as much writing in the enlightened literature about female self-knowledge as about any other act...
...Yet every other day, after the credits roll on Charlie Rose, you and your partner engage in an activity that has no social implications...
...Spend an hour of uninterrupted sensual time with yourself...
...Joani Blank attended the conference and two years later founded Good Vibrations, the equipment catalogue...
...Most of this communication should be done with your partner(s...
...Conventional notions of beauty have oppressed generations of men and women whose own appearances have constituted a challenge to prevailing aesthetic norms...
...Many of the challenges that face our living planet have to be solved within...
...In Sweden, as is well known, people do not enjoy sex, they do it because they think it is good for them, like jumping jacks...
...Finally, there are many how-to guides that offer exhaustive advice on performing sex acts in high-minded ways...
...Communication is vital, all the guides, journals, and catalogues agree...
...In the back of magazines such as Mother Jones, Harper's and the New Republic, there are advertisements from organizations that can help us put our phallus in touch with our consciousness...
...And, astonishingly, it's always the case that when you set out to do something for humanity, you usually end up giving pleasure to yourself...
...While none is specific, it seems that for every hour you spend actually having sex, at least 12 hours should be spent talking about it...
...But don't stop there...
...Indeed, one of the most delightful things about sex is that it can serve as an ethnicity substitute for white people...
...In her guide to enlightened lesbian sex, JoAnn Loulan offers the following exercises, which apply to heterosexuals as well: "Look at your genitals every day in the mirror...
...The participants sit in a circle and, well, give themselves self-love...
...It has to be admitted that not all the catalogues and journals are completely liberated in this regard...
...You may be a white, upper-middle-class Protestant, but if you are a compulsive nudist you automatically count as a member of a scorned group, and thus deserving of support...
...Your bath products do not rely on animal testing and you rarely go to a rock concert that isn't sponsored by Amnesty International...
...Talk with all parts of your body...
...The authors have a harder time ascribing political content to heterosexual male desires...
...Male sexuality is described as something artificial, like the Grand Coulee Dam...
...Of course this puts a strain on a consciousness so finely tuned as your own...
...Thinking persons can pursue positive social change by eradicating received ideas of beauty and ugliness...
...Gratify yourself] for an hour...
...The contrast is especially wide on the subject of masturbation...
...If you have a sexual feeling, you should immediately describe it at length on the Internet or with the instructors of your pottery class...
...Spend an hour touching your genitals without the purpose of having an orgasm...
...Write a letter to your genitals...
...The basic theme of this branch of sexual activism is that self-esteem should not be Platonic...
...These include foot fetishists (mustard tone), uniform fetishists (olive drab), Victorian scene aficionados (white lace), piercists (purple), and 15 other categories...
...Anthropologist Martha C. Ward was once asked by a large national foundation how it could set up a program in Louisiana to increase the self-esteem and empowerment of young women...
...In 1973, the National Organization for Women held the "Women's Sexuality Conference: To Explore, Define and Celebrate Our Own Sexuality," which placed emphasis on sexual independence for women...
...But socially principled people do not get so carried away by sexual pleasure that they forget that certain groups are disempowered in our culture...
...The favored group in the literature remains Persons of Gender, otherwise known as "women...
...Spend an hour stroking yourself all over your nude body...
...Female sexuality is considered in light of the wider feminist empowerment movement...
...But put a woman in the same bathroom and suddenly we have social activism on the order of, say, Dorothy Day...
...Look at yourself in the mirror for an hour...
...Thank Gaia, the forces of social concern have enabled us to mobilize our commitment to larger moral questions every second of every day, including in our sex lives...
...Some of these organizations, such as Good Vibrations, sell the tools that allow "thinking persons" to experience sexual energies in enlightened ways...
...Draw a picture of your genitals...
...But consider the dinner parties you've attended in New York City-isn't the same principle at work...
...Americans have not reached that level of matter-of-factness...
...For nearly an hour every week, you are expending energy in a way that will aid neither the endangered rain forests nor the oppressed women on the Indian subcontinent...
...Betty Dodson participated in the 1973 NOW conference, presenting a slide show of 100 photographs of what used to be known as "private parts...
...As Freud would say, sometimes a penis is just a penis...
...At first some people may feel uncomfortable with the notion of gathering with a group of people, and then focusing entirely on one's own concerns...
...I replied that given their goals and limitations," Ward writes, "the best strategy would be to teach teenagers creative masturbation with a view toward feminist consciousness raising...
...Indeed, many of the movement's major figures began as self-love pioneers...
...That which Portnoy did in the bathroom is not considered a positive political act...
...Barrett contributes a poem entitled "Adult Children of Sex-Addicted Parents" on that long neglected social group...
...As the community of those who pursue social change grows more mature, it has discovered that formal political mobilizations are only part of the answer...
...She lies on her partially paralyzed right side, propping herself with pillows so that she's not increasing the pain in a damaged nerve, and so she can touch me with her good left side...
...She describes the seminars (she has not yet taken to calling them colloquia) in an article in Libido...
...Female sexuality is described in this literature as natural and Earth Motherish...
...To take full advantage of these resources, you must first understand that sex is the most important aspect of your life, the node for personal liberation, and that exploring this inner world will take time...
...Journals such as Blue Moon and Libido merge sex and sensibility, and offer turn-ons that fuse with larger concerns, such as environmental degradation and income inequality...
...no aspect of our personal lives can neglect larger issues...
...The lead story by Lydia Swartz depicts lesbian scenes in which one of the women is in the advanced stages of AIDS: "She bites my neck (carefully) .. . while I gel my hands and fumble into my own gloves...
...Ever since she has led "Physical and Sexual Consciousness Raising Groups," or, as she now calls them, "Sexuality Seminars," now for both women and men...
...The rule in the literature is: Ugly people having sex is highbrow...
...In its sexual empowerment manifesto, "Coming to Power," the Samois Collective includes a chart of various sexual ethnicities-and the handkerchief colors they could use to identify each other...
...In fact, by practicing self-love, women will develop the self-confidence to make their way in a world that is arrayed against them...
...Pretty people having sex is lowbrow...
...She received a standing ovation...
...The socially enlightened realize that the things we do on our futons can make a tremendous difference to powerless peoples in the developing world and even in our own troubled nation...
...She is the author of I Am My Lover, one of the many books that show how the most personal act can be the most revolutionary...
...Fortunately, the articles were more mature, and depicted sex that is admirably gloomy...
Vol. 1 • September 1995 • No. 1
