The Muddy Concupiscence of the Flesh

A friend of mine doesn't want to watch sexualized violence anymore.
It's a stance shared by many.

Not the Japanese.

Or the Germans.

But many.
The sexual impulse, and the sexual act, is a biological one. It's also psychologically evocative. Sexual behavior is a product both of instinct and of culture, of drive and of pleasure. In that way, sex is like eating. It contains the potential to express all the positive and negative tendencies of humanity. Ascetics of all civilizations have sought to constrain their desires for both sex and food, in order to 'mortify the flesh'.

And sex (or can be, or often does) contain a violent component. Heterosexual sex either involves the penetration of on body by another (male superior position) or the consumption of one body by another (female superior position). People strive to maintain their bodily integrity in all other aspects of life. In sex, however, they do not only sacrifice bodily integrity, they rush to discard it. Normally scrupulous about hygiene and bodily fluids, in sex, an individual marinates in the juices (saliva, mucus, semen, sweat) of another. There's heavy breathing. There's grunting and lack of inhibition. It's a weird position for an adult to put themself in. It would not occur, if not for powerful biological urges. It's simply too dissonant to exist within a society of thinking individuals. Sex persists, however, because humans are primarily biological organisms with psychological capability, not the other way around.

So the potentiality for dehumanization of sex must be reconciled with humanity. And every so often, over the course of a civilization, the mechanism of reconciliation changes. Sexual/Fertility taboos are a traditional mechanism. A ritualistic framework that defines sexual behavior in a spiritual/animistic/cultural context serves to delineate sex(human) and mating(animal), and begins to form a context in which that which is good and constructive about sex (affection, getting of offspring) is separated from aspects of the sexual impulse that can be destructive (violence, injury, possessiveness). Another framework that sanitizes sex is marriage. It defines, very clearly, what is good sex (that which exists within the confines of marriage), and what is deviant sex (that which exists outside- fornication and adultery). I talk more about that here. Now we've begun to move out of that system. There is a new measure that divides good sex from bad sex.

That measure is mutual consent.

Sex+Consent=Sex. Sex-Consent=Rape.

Simple. It's not even algebraic. This is the simplest system yet devised to create a nurturing, humane context for a chaotic biological act. Consent allows love. It allows personal relationships to flourish. It allows sex to become a private act. Ritualistic taboos and legal frameworks require community enforcement. They encourage community involvement in sexual behavior. Consent brings sex into the bedroom and closes the curtains. While community and legal involvement are still necessitated when sex without consent has been perpetrated, no public certification of consent is required.

The problem is, while this does successfully differentiate between good and bad sex, it doesn't actually serve to remove any remaining violent sexual impulses or associations from the psyche. It may be atavistic, but there is an inherent awareness with the violence of sex within all of us. It comes out in different ways. Some women fantasize about rape. Some men do, too. Every woman with an e-mail adress or cosmo subscription is familiar with rape-prevention hysterics.

Somewhere between approach and avoidence lies rape literature; art that utilizes motifs of rape and subjugation. Don't think solely of anime monsters with dildo-tipped tenticles, folks. It can be part of the legitimate media. It can be marketed toward women. Think of Lifetime, Television for Women. Think of Law and Order: SVU.

Of course, my friend's objection is not towards such lauded films as "Someone to Love Me: A Moment of Truth Movie"* it's towards films that utilize sex, directly as a means of violence. Or violence as a means of sex, bringing the acts towards a cheap, titilating, equivalency.

* Inspired by actual events. A high-school student is brutally raped but is reluctant to come forward. She is afraid that her promiscuous past will be used against her. Starring Lynda Carter, Jessica Bowman and Scott Foley.