Margaret Mead Japan China Religie en seks Moral panics Seks en robots Seksuele ontwikkeling Seksualisering Leeftijdverschillen Geweld en misbruik Consent Sexting Prostitutie Pornografie"The bond of loyalty between a couple is apt to grow stronger with every increase in rudeness." Alain DE BOTTON - How To Think More About Sex, p.32
Alain DE BOTTON"Despite being one of the most private of activities, sex is nonetheless surrounded by a range of powerful socially sanctioned ideas that codify how normal people are meant to feel about and deal with the matter."(3)
"This narrative of enlightenment and progress, however flattering it may be to our powers of reason and our pagan sensibilities, conveniently skirts an unbudging fact: sex is not something that we can ever expect to feel easily liberated from. It was not by mere coincidence that sex so disturbed us for thousands of years: repressive religious dictates and social taboos grew out of aspects of our nature that cannot now just be wished away. We were bothered by sex because it is a fundamentally disruptive, overwhelming and demented force, strongly at odds with the majority of our ambitions and all but incapable of being discreetly integrated within civilized society." [mijn nadruk] (6)
[Onze natuur? Biologisch begrepen? ]
"Despite our best efforts to clean it of its peculiarities, sex will never be either simple or nice in the ways we might like it to be. It is not fundamentally democratic or kind; it is bound up with cruelty, transgression and the desire for subjugation and humiliation. It refuses to sit neatly on top of love, as it should.(...) Sex remains in absurd, and perhaps irreconcilable, conflict with some of our highest commitments and values."(6)
[Hier wordt een hoop beweerd, maar het is vaag en niet onderbouwd. ]
"This evolutionary–biological thesis clearly isn’t wrong. It is, however, blunt, disconnected from our actual experiences of sex – and in the end a little boring. While it successfully explains why sex exists, it doesn’t begin to shed light on our conscious motivations for wanting to sleep with particular people or on the range of pleasures we derive from doing so. Evolutionary biology may provide us with an overall motive for our actions, but it doesn’t develop any reasons that we actually have in our own minds while we invite someone for dinner and later try to unbutton their jeans on the sofa – and on this basis, it doesn’t provide us with a very satisfactory account of why sex should really matter to us as reflexive humans." [mijn nadruk] (12)
[Die evbio thesis is wel degelijk verkeerd. Maar inderdaad: hoe dan ook hebben we concreet niks aan die beweringen. ]
"There is doubtless a biological explanation for the sexual excitement this couple are feeling, connected to an unconscious narrative about reproduction and genetics, but the man and the woman are also turned on by the overcoming of the many barriers to intimacy that exist in normal life – and it is this dimension we can focus on to explain the greater part of the eroticism they will experience on their way to the bedroom." [mijn nadruk] (16)
[Er is helemaal geen 'onbewust narratief over voortplanting' gaande in zo'n situatie. ]
"It goes almost without saying that the majority of people we encounter will be not merely uninterested in having sex with us but positively revolted by the idea."(17)
[Dat is nu net iets wat verklaard zou moeten worden en waar de evbio these ook helemaal niet uitkomt. ]
"It could sound disgusting – and that’s the point. Nothing is erotic that isn’t also, with the wrong person, revolting, which is precisely what makes erotic moments so intense: at the precise juncture where disgust could be at its height, we find only welcome and permission. The privileged nature of the union between two people is sealed by an act that, with someone else, would have horrified them both." [mijn nadruk] (18)
"Whatever we may make of the biblical origins of this feeling of corporeal shame, it is evident that we wear clothes not only to keep warm but also – and perhaps even primarily – for fear of provoking repulsion in others by the sight of our flesh. Our bodies never look quite as we would want them to; even in the most beguiling and athletic moments of our youth, we are rarely lacking a long list of features we would prefer to alter." [mijn nadruk] (20)
[Kom nou toch. ]
"A division begins between our ordinary public selves on the one hand and our sexual and private identities on the other. A large portion of who we are as adults, from our sexual fantasies to our parted legs, becomes impossible to share with almost anyone we know."(21)
[Dus dat zou het gevolg zijn van schaamte? Onzin.]
"Erections and lubrication simply cannot be effected by willpower and are therefore particularly true and honest indices of interest. In a world in which fake enthusiasms are rife, in which it is often hard to tell whether people really like us or whether they are being kind to us merely out of a sense of duty, the wet vagina and the stiff penis function as unambiguous agents of sincerity."(24)
[O, dus vrouwen die uit onzekerheid niet nat worden of mannen die uit onzekerheid geen erectie krijgen zijn niet oprecht? Volgt een generaliserend kletsverhaal over opwinding door formele situaties waar je normaal geen seks hebt, opwinding door agressie en pijn doen.]
"We are granted an extraordinary opportunity to feel comfortable in our own skin when a willing and generous lover invites us to say or do the very worst things we can imagine."(31)
"The bond of loyalty between a couple is apt to grow stronger with every increase in rudeness. The more horrifying we believe our behaviour would seem to the larger, judgemental society we normally live in, the more we feel as if we are building a paradise of mutual acceptance. Such rudeness makes no sense from an evolutionary– biological point of view; it is only through a psychological lens that being slapped, half strangled, tied to a bed and almost raped starts to feel like a proof of acceptance." [mijn nadruk] (32)
[Wat een geklets.]
"There are of course ways to have an orgasm that have very little to do with finding common purpose with another person, but these must be thought of as a greater or lesser betrayal of what sex should really be about. At the near end of the spectrum, this explains the hollow, lonely feeling that normally follows masturbation; at the far end, it justifies the outrage we feel on hearing about cases of bestiality, rape and paedophilia – activities where the pleasure one party takes in the other is appallingly lacking in mutuality." [mijn nadruk] (41)
[O, orgasmes hoort bij gezamenlijke seks? Al die simpele oordelen van de man, het is ongelooflijk.]
"Post-coital sadness often settles over a couple. One partner or both may have an impulse to fall asleep, to read the newspaper or to run away."(42)
[Idem. ]
"When we say that we like someone because he or she looks ‘sexy’, it can sound as if we were evaluating another human being by an insultingly superficial standard. Our culture is strict on this point: announcing that we approve of people on the sole basis of their appearance doesn’t go down well in civilized circles.(...) Nevertheless, it is hard to deny that our physical envelopes play an alarmingly important part in our destinies and desires." [mijn nadruk] (44)
"What is it that we are drawn to in them? What is the attractive person attracting us to, precisely?
Here again, evolutionary biology offers powerful and seductive answers. By its logic, we are attracted to beauty for a simple and definitive reason: it is a promise of health." [mijn nadruk] (45)
[Ook al onzinnig. ]
"Symmetry and balance matter so much to us because their opposites – facial asymmetry and imbalance – are markers of diseases contracted either in the womb or in the early years of life, at a time when the greater part of the self is still being shaped.(...) Our looks are indicators of our genetic destiny."(48)
"To be turned on by someone is to be fascinated by something important about them, sexual desire and the appreciation of beauty are linked to one of life’s great projects: the production of children."(49)
[De auteur is totaal kritiekloos. Eerst dit soort zaken stellen en dan ineens terugtrekkende bewegingen maken en zeggen dat meer nodig is. Nee, echt?]
"we will need to look for virtues beyond the reproductive fitness of her DNA.(...) If we appreciate Madame Devaucay’s beauty, it is surely not just because we assess her as being healthy, but also because we are moved by her entire character as it skilfully expresses itself to us via the features of her face."(52-53)
"Evolutionary biology confidently predicts that we will be drawn to people on the basis of their evident health, but it has not put forward any truly convincing theories about why we should prefer one specific healthy person over another."(58)
[En dat is nog maar het minste probleem. ]
"In short, we can explain our relative attractions to Natalie or Scarlett by taking stock of what we are missing in ourselves, just as we can account for our preferences for the paintings of Agnes Martin or of Caravaggio by considering the different and particular ways in which we are deficient adults. We need both art and sex to make us whole, so it is not surprising if the mechanisms of compensation should be similar in each case. The specifics of what we find ‘beautiful’ and what we find ‘sexy’ are indications of what we most deeply crave in order to rebalance ourselves."(67)
[Ook weer allemaal stellingen waar we in mee kunnen gaan of juist niet. Leuke speculaties.]
"To stand any chance of success, both parties have to lie about their desires. Jen has to take care not to let on that her interest in Tomas is purely sexual and Tomas cannot give voice to his own ambition for love, for fear that Jen might just as speedily make for the exit. Both hope that they may somehow manage to get what they want without ever having explicitly to specify what it is. Such ambiguity typically occasions only betrayals and shattered expectations. The person who wants love but gets just sex feels used. The person who is really after sex but who must pretend to want love in order to get it feels, if forced into a relationship, trapped or, if able to flee one, corrupt and dishonourable."(70)
"How might our society enable Tomas and Jen, and others like them, to advance towards a better outcome? First, by recognizing that neither need has the moral advantage: wanting love more than sex, or even instead of it, isn’t ‘better’ or ‘worse’ than the reverse."(71)
[Dat is een wel erg gemakkelijk waardeoordeel. ]
"So long as the only way to get sex is to feign being in love, some of us will lie and make a run for it."(71)
[Als je weet dat de ander iets anders verwacht dan alleen maar seks, moet je die ander gewoon met rust laten en niet alleen voor seks gebruiken.]
"It’s time for the need for sex and the need for love to be granted equal standing, without an added moral gloss. Both may be independently felt and are of comparable value and validity. Both shouldn’t require us to lie in order to claim them."(71)
[Nogmaals: dat is te simpel.]
"The one doing the rejecting isn’t being intentionally nasty; he or she has no choice. We can’t decide whom we are going to be turned on by any more than we can will a certain flavour of ice cream or style of painting to be our favourite."(72)
"We don’t choose whom we want to sleep with; science and psychoanalysis have by now made it clear that there are hidden forces that make the choice for us long before our conscious mind can have any say in the matter."(74)
[Ook al een oppervlakkige stelling.]
"Suffering sexual rejection by the person with whom we have pledged to share our life is a much odder and more humiliating experience."(76)
"Sex, with its contrary emphases on expansiveness, imagination, playfulness and a loss of control, must by its very nature interrupt this routine of regulation and self-restraint, threatening to leave us unfit or at the least uninclined to resume our administrative duties once our desire has run its course. We avoid sex not because it isn’t fun but because its pleasures erode our subsequent capacity to endure the strenuous demands that our domestic arrangements place on us."(79)
"While the desire to split people into discrete categories of those we love and those we can have sex with may seem a peculiarly male phenomenon, women are far from innocent on this score themselves."(81)
"he madonna/whore dichotomy has an exact analogy in the no-less-common nice-guy/bastard complex, wherein women recognize the theoretical appeal of warm, nurturing and communicative males but are at the same time unable to deny the superior sexual attraction of those cruel bandits who will take off for another continent the moment the lovemaking is finished."(81)
"The solution to long-term sexual stagnation is to learn to see our lover as if we had never laid eyes on him or her before."(86)
"Modern society will be apt to give full credence to our frustration: anything less than complete satisfaction smacks of compromise and capitulation. Frequent and fulfilling sex with a long-term partner is viewed as the norm, and any falling away from it as pathology. The sex-therapy industry, developed primarily in the United States during the second half of the twentieth century, has focussed most of its efforts on assuring us that marriage should be enlivened by constant desire." [mijn nadruk] (92)
"Might we not turn the issue on its head and suggest that far from being an indication that something is wrong, a gradual decline in the intensity and frequency of sex between a married couple is merely an inevitable fact of biological life and, as such, evidence of deep normality?"(94)
"It is generally easier to admit to having spent time in prison than to having suffered from impotence. There are few greater sources of shame for a man, or of feelings of rejection for his partner."(95)
[Geklets.]
"Accordingly, all but the least self-aware among us will sometimes be struck by how distasteful our desire for sex can seem to someone else, how contrary to reason it can appear, how peculiar and physically off-putting our flesh may be and how unwanted our caresses – and therefore how careful we ought to be in going about the business of seduction. The greater our power of imagination, the more acute and amplified will be our apprehension about giving offence – to the extent that even when sex is a legitimate possibility, our doubts may prove impossible to cast aside, with fatal consequences, if we are male, for our ability to maintain an erection." [mijn nadruk] (98)
[Wat heeft dat nu toch met 'giving offence' te maken? ]
"Impotence is at base, then, a symptom of respect, a fear of causing displeasure through the imposition of our own desires or the inability to satisfy our partner’s needs. The popularity of pharmaceuticals designed to combat erectile dysfunction signals the collective longing of modern men for a reliable mechanism by which to override our subtle, delicate, civilized worry that we will disappoint or upset others."(101)
[Wat een eenzijdig kletsverhaal. ]
[Wat een geklets.]
"The bourgeois ideal is not entirely an illusion. There are some few marriages that perfectly fuse together the three golden strands of fulfilment – romantic, erotic and familial – and which will never be troubled by adultery. We cannot say, as cynics are sometimes tempted to do, that happy marriage is a myth. It is infinitely more tantalizing than that: it is a possibility, yet a very, very rare one. There is no metaphysical reason why marriage should not honour all our hopes; the odds are just stacked overwhelmingly against us – a tragic truth we should calmly face head on, before life drives it home to us in its own brutal way, and at a time of its choosing.
But let’s flip the coin once more: if seeing marriage as the perfect answer to all our hopes for love, sex and family is naive and misguided, so too is believing that adultery can be an effective antidote to the disappointments of marriage."(144)
[Ook weer nietszeggend.]