By Alyssa Royce
YNOT – I’ve been thinking about sex a lot lately. Not the act or acts that each of us do — or wish we did — in our own sex lives, but the role that sex plays in the life of our society as a whole.
First, let’s be very clear about something: We have to have sex. If we don’t have sex, the species will cease to exist. We are hard-wired to have sex. To want it. To do it. To do it a lot. We also are hardwired to enjoy it, presumably so that we will keep doing it. Sex is as elemental to our beings and survival as shelter and sustenance. We need shelter to protect ourselves from the elements and predators. We need sustenance to keep our bodies alive. We need sex to perpetuate the species. If you remove any one of those things, our survival quickly is called into question.
But sex, elemental and necessary though it may be, is treated fundamentally differently than shelter and sustenance.
- Magazines about homes and about food are sold by the hundreds of thousands at grocery stores. Magazines about sex are relegated to specialized shops, and their covers are hidden from view.
- Architects and chefs can achieve celebrity status in the mainstream, their new ideas are discussed on television and copied in homes across the country. Porn stars can rise only to the top of their subculture, and the adult industry mostly socializes and celebrates their achievements amongst their own kind because they are looked down upon by the rest of society.
- It is considered polite, even “intellectual,” conversation to discuss openly a new dish you prepared, or your latest remodel. But if you were to discuss a new sexual position at your average cocktail party, the room would get quiet and you might not get invited back.
- In cities around the world, emergency services are established for people who don’t have enough food or shelter. When’s the last time you saw “emergency sex” being offered to people who aren’t getting enough? (Obviously, there is a black-market for these services, but it’s illegal everywhere except a few counties in Nevada.)
Okay, I know there’s a difference. One night on the streets in a blizzard can kill you, and I have survived at least one night without sex and been fine. Likewise, not eating for a long period of time can kill you, and we’ve all gone long stretches without getting laid and are here to tell the story. But that doesn’t change the fact that sex is as elemental as eating and seeking shelter, yet we approach it with shame, guilt, fear and a secrecy that strikes me as, at best, unnecessary and, at worst, corrosive.
So why do we do it? Why do we single out this one thing as something that should be treated with shame and secrecy?
I wondered if it had to do with the wide variety of ways that people have sex. But then, we don’t discuss people’s food habits with secrecy and shame, do we? “Oh my god, Sheri is a vegan! I hope the neighbor kids don’t find out. Who knows what it would do to them!” Nor do we discuss people’s various shelters with shame, “Did you hear? The Joneses installed shag carpeting. You know that means that they’re going turn you into one of them.” So why should it be scandalous to find out that the Smiths are into bondage? It has no more bearing on us than our neighbors’ diets or carpets.
Then I wondered if it had to do with the innate, personal and illogical nature of sexual impulses. But that doesn’t explain it either, because there are people with innate and illogical impulses to do things like extreme sports or bonsai gardening, and we don’t shame them for their personal proclivities in those arenas. It’s just what they’re “into,” and we accept their hobbies without batting an eye — much less casting an aspersion.
Is it that we’ve all bought — hook, line and sinker — all the rhetoric we’ve been fed by organized religion or the social mythology of generations before us? If it’s that simple, surely we can shed the shame with the same logic that has helped us realize 76 virgins are not waiting for in heaven for everyone who blows up a building, or that the promise of food with a long shelf-life is more like a threat than a promise.
Nope, there has to be more to it than that. Maybe it has to do with the fact that sex, unlike food and shelter, can’t really be done alone. Sure, you can masturbate, but that’s not sex, really. That’s an orgasm. Sex, at it’s biological core — and it’s entertaining ideal — is something we do with other people. That may mean someone wants to do it with us. That our bodies, of which we are very protective, may be a desirable tool for someone else’s use. And because we all do it differently, that someone may want to use our body in a way we don’t want it used. Or, conversely, that someone we may want to do it with may not want to do it with us. Or do it how we want to do it. So we could be rejected as undesirable, and/or our innate drives could be rejected as wrong. When I start to look at it that way, I can see how people could take someone else’s sex life personally.
But here’s the conundrum I see: All of the foregoing can be addressed, and maybe ameliorated, by talking about it. If we can get to a point where we understand sex is elemental to our beings, then we can talk about it openly and without shame, and find new and healthy ways to approach our own sexuality. We can add to our criteria for “partners,” and lessen the chance of being sexually unfulfilled. If we can talk about the wide variety of ways in which people have sex, then those ways will seem less threatening. If we can stop taking other people’s hobbies and habits personally, then we won’t feel rejected or threatened by their hobbies and habits. The boogeyman in the closet is scary only until you turn the light on and realize it’s just an old coat thrown over the broom handle.
Everyone I know either has, or wishes they were having, sex. Most of them wish they were having more of it, and a wider variety of it. Will it kill them if they don’t have it? Probably not. Will it sadden them? Yes. Will it make them a little insecure? Yes. Will it distract them? Yes, just like when you’re hungry and can’t think straight. Will it make them feel guilty, bad, shameful that they want something of which they think their partner won’t approve? Yes. Will that lead to relationship problems that will have repercussions outside the bedroom? Probably. Hell, there’s even research to show that not having enough sex leads to increased risks of some cancers, and that having good sex can reduce the effects of stress in other areas of your life.
So what am I missing? We have to eat. We have to have shelter. We have to fuck. What are we ashamed of? What are we afraid of?
And why am I writing this in an adult-industry publication? Simple: because I am getting ready to launch a company to try to eliminate fear and shame from women’s sexuality. I have spent the past year thinking about nothing but sex, watching tons of porn, playing with toys, talking to every woman I know — and conducting amazing focus groups with women I don’t know — in an effort to figure out how to get the women of this world to loosen up and embrace their own powerful sexuality. They’ve told me what they want, and I’m giving it to them. Which is funny, because I’m not the type. I’m not an expert. I’m not a sex worker or toy designer or doctor or activist. And, ironically, in this day of expert-everything and the medicalization of orgasms and erections, every focus group we hosted told us women don’t want to hear from experts. They want to hear from other women. Apparently, we trust other women more than we trust experts in anything.
That’s why I’m writing at YNOT and showing up at conferences. If I do my job right, I’ll get all those “mainstream” women out there to watch your movies and buy your toys. In turn, your movies and toys will help me reach my goal of a happy and well-sexed population fearlessly cumming in ways they’ve never cum before. I know toys and movies did that for me, and I’m thrilled to talk about it! But we have some work to do.
Look, I don’t want to hear the nitty-gritty details of people’s sex lives at every cocktail party I attend. Then again, I don’t want to hear how gluten gives people diarrhea, and I feel like I hear that all the time. What I do want is a world in which we understand that sex is natural, that there are as many varieties of it as there are types of breakfast cereal in the supermarket, and that having a healthy sex life that nourishes your soul is every bit as important as having a safe place to live and a diet that nourishes your body.
And yes, I’d like not to have to go long stretches without it, because that’s sad and distracting. And I’m not afraid to admit that much, publicly.
Alyssa Royse is working with a great team to build a site with information, entertainment and sexy products that will appeal to mainstream women in a very Good Housekeeping way. Because she believes that a happy sex life is important for a happy life. You can find her contact information on her blog if you want to work together.
