It's a strange time to be writing about sex and erotica.
I'd thought that the pandemic would generate a new batch of sex blogs and would see a revitalization of phone sex and erotic exchanges via email. I'd hoped that the pandemic might even lead to people sending love letters and erotic missives. After all, there must be some people who'd prefer to lie awake in bed and read over handwritten fantasies from a lover (or even an alluring stranger) than scroll through their texts.
I know that I for one would rather read a handwritten erotic letter or even an email than scroll through sexts. I've never been able to sext. Text-speak isn't a way I can construct any fantasies that interest me.
Somehow, though, the Red Death did nothing to put new life into sex. If anything, the world after 2020 seems more sex-negative.
I remember adding "Gender Wars" as a content label here back when I first started writing here. In those days, "gender wars" meant male-female hostilities. It meant things like the Dublin Elevator Encounter and #MeToo. Now it means the Trans Wars, the GCs versus the TRAs. And there's been a spillover from the Trans Wars into disdain for sex-- both the activity and the biological idea.
Look, I do agree with the GC side that humans come in two sexes only, and that one's sex is fixed at birth. That shouldn't be taken to mean that trans people need to be "erased" or that they shouldn't have full civil rights and access to medical treatment. It does mean that socially presenting as another sex doesn't make you a member of that sex and that there should still be single-sex spaces.
What bothers me about the GC side is that they've gone from arguing something simple-- two biological sexes, no changing biological sex, gender as socially constructed --to becoming increasingly anti sex-as-activity. There's far too much Second Wave prudery on the GC side these days. They don't like the idea of Pride being a kind of Carnevale, they don't like kink, and they don't like fetishes. And you might guess that I've been fascinated with kink all my life. I like the idea of sexual adventuring and exploration. Reading GC advocates attack kink and fetishes makes my teeth grind. I also dislike the way they create an image of the "woke" enemy as university girls with blue hair. My clubland days were back in the lost land of the Eighties, and I always liked girls who ran through hair colours every few weeks. I had a white slash dyed through my hair for a couple of years in those days, and I did like that. I hate it that the GC side, much of whose thought I agree with, sounds increasingly prudish.
Now the trans side draws my disdain for other reasons. Look, I do not believe that TWAW. I do believe that socially presenting as the other sex is LARPing. There's nothing wrong with LARPing, by the way. If a certain social presentation feels more natural, then present yourself that way. Wear a dress if you want. Call yourself by whatever name you prefer. Your life may be better that way, and that's all to the good. But you haven't changed biological sex, and the search for "authenticity" will always end badly.
I do not believe TRA assertions that pansexuality is the only moral or ethical kind of sex. I dislike the way that the TRAs are trying to destroy the idea of being gay, lesbian, or bi--- I dislike that more than I dislike the GC hostility to the idea of "queer" as a category that includes things like S/M or role-playing.
I dislike the way that both sides are against the idea of sex as adventure and pleasure rather than some sort of moral-political statement. I dislike the way that both sides are so ready to mock cis-het preferences and cis-het sex as either boring or morally bankrupt. Though at least the GC side believes that cis-het does exist, whereas the TRA side believes that it doesn't (or shouldn't) really exist.
2022 is winding down, and there are so many economic and political nightmares hovering just at the edge of our vision. I had hoped that this year there would be new sex blogs with clever tales of adventure. I'd thought that after two years of dealing with the pandemic and its one million dead we'd be ready to explore the possibilities of pleasure. That hasn't happened, though.
It's hard for me to imagine a world without desire and kink and a sense of aesthetic play. But we seem to be coming to that.
