A year ago, during the awful lead-up to and then even more awful execution of Troy Davis, I started thinking about the death penalty. And now, as Texas sets itself to execute (another) cognitively deficient man, I'm thinking about it again.
What is a "death penalty?" Killing someone for a crime committed. Lots of people find such punishment appropriate: "An eye for an eye," goes the refrain of the religious who support it; "Some people just can't be trusted," say the less Biblically minded. In essence, a death penalty is a judgment of irredeemability. Killing someone for a crime necessarily means that society has judged that person incapable of rehabilition; they will never be a functioning member of society, and therefore must be removed from it so as to prevent further harm.
You might be able to guess that I am not a supporter of the death penalty. I find the idea of judging someone beyond redemption a horrific display of hubris and privilege that leaves me sick to my stomach. Of course, as soon as I start to talk with anyone about my moral objections to the death penalty, they'll inevitably come up with one scenario or another for which I have no good rejoinder. The expense of keeping people behind bars (if we quit locking people up for years for non-violent offenses, the cost of locking up violent offenders would be much more tolerable), the danger to other members of the prison population posed by certain offenders (sociopaths are a thing I really have no solution for), the inherent inhumanity of a lifetime of isolated confinement in an 8 by 8 space (a point made eloquently to me by a man that vowed to get himself shot before being locked up again; I think he meant it, too).
I don't have practical solutions to these issues. All I have is the absolute conviction that killing people is wrong. And it is just as wrong to kill someone that has killed someone else as it is for that person to kill someone else in the first place. The practical issues of human beings being awful to each other are messy, but the morality of it is crystal-clear to me: killing people is wrong. Full stop.
So what does it say about us, as a society, that we have authorized the state to validate our own worst impulses and kill people? What does it say about us that we suffer a governing principle that does not demand of us to better ourselves, but rather allows us to close our eyes and stop up our ears like children frightened of something in the dark? Because desire to hurt another being always stems from fear.
It says nothing flattering about us, to be sure. It says we will suffer stagnation. It says that we, as a culture, refuse to move beyond fear and reactionary retribution.
And I can't help but draw corollaries between state-sponsored execution and vigilantism and mass murders. We continue to grant the state this power of life and death over its citizens because we will not let go of the idea that we ought to have the power of life and death over each other. The different, scary Other deserves to die, and we will be the instrument of death if no one else steps up, it is our RIGHT to extract pounds of flesh and harvest souls.
Yes, I know that generally sane, well-adjusted people don't tend to be the ones that take up arms and kill people. But that's the point, isn't? Generally sane, well-adjusted people don't do that sort of thing. Generally sane, well-adjusted people don't kill other people. So why are we, collectively, killing people left and right? We must not be generally sane, or well-adjusted. Perhaps we should do something about that.
A culture that continues to hold that there are people that deserve to be killed will continue to breed Loughner's and Holmes' and Page's.
Showing posts with label idealism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label idealism. Show all posts
Tuesday, August 7, 2012
Wednesday, June 13, 2012
Practice Radical Compassion
I've been listening to people ask the question, "What now?" a lot.
"What now?"
"What next?"
"Where do we go?"
"Where do we start?"
Everyone I know has been inspired by big things -- myself included! make no mistake! -- and all those big things have been happening fast and piled on top of each other. Protests, recalls, elections, occupy, marches, even one brave girl standing against her culture: it's all one giant source of motivation and strength for anyone with an eye on changing the future.
And those moments, those big moments, are important. It's important to know that you're not utterly alone in wanting a different world, and it's important to know what it feels like to stand with 100 or 10,000 or 100,000 of your fellow human beings, voices raised together. It's important to know what that feels like, for an individual, and it's important for the world at large to know that there are so very many individuals working in concert.
But the big moments are demonstration, not change.
Politics will never change the world. I'll say it again: Politics will never change the world. Part of this is the nature of politics as compromise. Perhaps we've all lost sight of this, so here's a reminder. Politics is the art of compromise through persuasion. But that means you are never going to get everything you want, and your opposition is never going to get everything they want. Even a majority must compromise with the minority in a representative, nominally democratic system.
(Side note to everyone involved in politics: Could you maybe start compromising? Just a little? It's your job, so do your job, please.)
But politics imposes a consensus compromise on people from the outside. To change the world, you have to change the people. The only way the world will get better is if we make humanity as a whole better. The only way to stop people from doing awful things to each other, either actively by waging war and murdering and raping, or passively by ignoring the hardships they suffer, is to make every person in the world acknowledge the humanity of every other person.
Overwhelming. It's an overwhelming thought. Are you overwhelmed?
Don't be.
No one, no one in the world, can alone effect change of that scale. No one. It's not possible.
Here's what you can do: you can change one person. You can reach out to one person and show them that you're human, and they're human, and that you respect their humanity. You can show one person the effects of the decisions they make. You can show one person that you respect them, that you love them, despite any and all differences, and you can hope that such a demonstration inspires them to change even a little.
Here's another thing you can do: live humanely. Live your life to the best of your ability such that you respect and care for other people. Think about how you define "people." Then think about how you define "people who deserve respect." Are these two definitions the same? Probably not. What can you do to make them the same?
Who are your neighbors? Do you know their names? Do you know what they value? Do you know what they dream of? Can you help them? Who are their neighbors? What do they dream of? Can you help them? Build a community based on personal relationships; the larger community will build itself, so long as you maintain the long view of respect for all people simply because they are people. Those people don't have to have the same values you do; they don't even have to agree with you on anything. Your job is to respect them anyway. Your job is to care about them anyway. Your job is to love them anyway. Lead by example. It's the only leadership that works.
Politics in America, and everywhere, has long been the art of defining "The Other" for one group or another. Most of human history, in fact, can be viewed through the lens of power pitting groups against each other to maintain power. Reject that history. Reject it forcefully. Refuse to think of anyone as The Other, as unlike yourself. Refuse to accept that you have to denigrate and degrade another person, no matter how far away and no matter how strange their life seems, just to make yourself feel better.
After all, you are the scary, frightening Other to someone else. What would you prefer they do, when you meet: kill you or listen to you? Don't conjecture about what is LIKELY to happen. Don't rationalize shooting first, or cutting someone off, because of what you think they will do, or even are likely to do, or what they've done in the past. Stick to this alone: which would you rather happen? Then you have to choose to do the thing that you would like to happen despite whatever fear, rational or irrational, you feel.
You want to be a radical? You want to be a revolutionary? Here's the ultimate radical act: Love the Other. Love them like you'd love your own child. Endure deprivation for them, live with the knowledge they might take advantage of you, forgive them when they do, and go right on loving. Love them until they cannot but recognize your humanity, and love you back. It takes courage, and forgiveness, and a deep sense of self, and a firm commitment to the worth of the future being built. But you can do it. And if you mess up, if you can't do it, if you're too scared or too dazzled by the world, forgive yourself, too: you're human.
And then, try again. Pick yourself up and try again. And again. As many times as it takes.
Love will change the world, and the world will change one human being at a time.
"What now?"
"What next?"
"Where do we go?"
"Where do we start?"
Everyone I know has been inspired by big things -- myself included! make no mistake! -- and all those big things have been happening fast and piled on top of each other. Protests, recalls, elections, occupy, marches, even one brave girl standing against her culture: it's all one giant source of motivation and strength for anyone with an eye on changing the future.
And those moments, those big moments, are important. It's important to know that you're not utterly alone in wanting a different world, and it's important to know what it feels like to stand with 100 or 10,000 or 100,000 of your fellow human beings, voices raised together. It's important to know what that feels like, for an individual, and it's important for the world at large to know that there are so very many individuals working in concert.
But the big moments are demonstration, not change.
Politics will never change the world. I'll say it again: Politics will never change the world. Part of this is the nature of politics as compromise. Perhaps we've all lost sight of this, so here's a reminder. Politics is the art of compromise through persuasion. But that means you are never going to get everything you want, and your opposition is never going to get everything they want. Even a majority must compromise with the minority in a representative, nominally democratic system.
(Side note to everyone involved in politics: Could you maybe start compromising? Just a little? It's your job, so do your job, please.)
But politics imposes a consensus compromise on people from the outside. To change the world, you have to change the people. The only way the world will get better is if we make humanity as a whole better. The only way to stop people from doing awful things to each other, either actively by waging war and murdering and raping, or passively by ignoring the hardships they suffer, is to make every person in the world acknowledge the humanity of every other person.
Overwhelming. It's an overwhelming thought. Are you overwhelmed?
Don't be.
No one, no one in the world, can alone effect change of that scale. No one. It's not possible.
Here's what you can do: you can change one person. You can reach out to one person and show them that you're human, and they're human, and that you respect their humanity. You can show one person the effects of the decisions they make. You can show one person that you respect them, that you love them, despite any and all differences, and you can hope that such a demonstration inspires them to change even a little.
Here's another thing you can do: live humanely. Live your life to the best of your ability such that you respect and care for other people. Think about how you define "people." Then think about how you define "people who deserve respect." Are these two definitions the same? Probably not. What can you do to make them the same?
Who are your neighbors? Do you know their names? Do you know what they value? Do you know what they dream of? Can you help them? Who are their neighbors? What do they dream of? Can you help them? Build a community based on personal relationships; the larger community will build itself, so long as you maintain the long view of respect for all people simply because they are people. Those people don't have to have the same values you do; they don't even have to agree with you on anything. Your job is to respect them anyway. Your job is to care about them anyway. Your job is to love them anyway. Lead by example. It's the only leadership that works.
Politics in America, and everywhere, has long been the art of defining "The Other" for one group or another. Most of human history, in fact, can be viewed through the lens of power pitting groups against each other to maintain power. Reject that history. Reject it forcefully. Refuse to think of anyone as The Other, as unlike yourself. Refuse to accept that you have to denigrate and degrade another person, no matter how far away and no matter how strange their life seems, just to make yourself feel better.
After all, you are the scary, frightening Other to someone else. What would you prefer they do, when you meet: kill you or listen to you? Don't conjecture about what is LIKELY to happen. Don't rationalize shooting first, or cutting someone off, because of what you think they will do, or even are likely to do, or what they've done in the past. Stick to this alone: which would you rather happen? Then you have to choose to do the thing that you would like to happen despite whatever fear, rational or irrational, you feel.
You want to be a radical? You want to be a revolutionary? Here's the ultimate radical act: Love the Other. Love them like you'd love your own child. Endure deprivation for them, live with the knowledge they might take advantage of you, forgive them when they do, and go right on loving. Love them until they cannot but recognize your humanity, and love you back. It takes courage, and forgiveness, and a deep sense of self, and a firm commitment to the worth of the future being built. But you can do it. And if you mess up, if you can't do it, if you're too scared or too dazzled by the world, forgive yourself, too: you're human.
And then, try again. Pick yourself up and try again. And again. As many times as it takes.
Love will change the world, and the world will change one human being at a time.
Friday, June 8, 2012
The Palm, the Willow, the Way Forward
When I was nine, I spent part of a summer with my paternal grandparents in South Carolina. My family's relationship with my father's family has always been complicated, so this trip was something of an anamoly in the firmament of my childhood. The experiment was a nearly unmitigated disaster; my grandmother and I fought like the pig-headed autocrats we both are inside. However, the pine forests of the Carolinas are beautiful, majestic, regal, and to this day I sometimes dream about how they smell and the quality of silence that's created by the muffling effect of years upon years of pine needles decomposing beneath your feet.
About halfway through the trip, my grandfather took me for a drive along the Carolina coast. This was 1993, as I recall, after Hurricane Andrew. There were palm trees along that drive that were growing crooked: gnarled and bent over and sticking out from the earth at a uniform impossible angle.
"Do you know why those trees are bent?" my grandfather asked me.
I shook my head.
"They bent in the hurricane's wind. They bent so that they would remain standing. The trees that didn't bend are gone now."
We spent the rest of the drive in silence. Even at nine, I knew what he was trying to tell me. And I was a little ashamed that he felt he had to impart this lesson to me, and I was little resentful that he wasn't trying to impart it to his wife instead, and I was about as thoughtful as a nine-year-old gets.
My grandfather died a few years ago; my grandmother is still alive in the Carolinas, and the last few times I've seen her, it's certainly seemed as if she's learned to bend in the wind.
The palm trees in the wind are the beginning of mystery. I am grateful to my grandfather, and the hurricane, and those trees, for giving me such a concrete lesson, but it's time to move on from the palm trees. The palms, you see, they bent in the wind so that they would survive. That's all. That's it. Acceptance so that survival.
I've been having trouble bending to the winds lately. I've been having trouble accepting merely to survive. My horizon is broadened, and mere survival seems small. I feel buffeted at every turn, everything and everyone seems hell-bent on knocking me over and leaving me small and broken on the ground. Events, yes, but also people. From elections to relationships, I cannot bend the way I ought. I have no acceptance because acceptance feels like defeat. I don't want to succumb; I want to thrive. I don't want to be a solitary palm tree, isolated and broken and just hanging on. I want so much more than that.
A few days ago, I randomly stumbled on a parable that I can no longer place, but it showed me where to go, how to continue to bend to the winds.
The willow shoot bends in the wind until it is a forest that can break the wind.
Time to grow into a forest.
About halfway through the trip, my grandfather took me for a drive along the Carolina coast. This was 1993, as I recall, after Hurricane Andrew. There were palm trees along that drive that were growing crooked: gnarled and bent over and sticking out from the earth at a uniform impossible angle.
"Do you know why those trees are bent?" my grandfather asked me.
I shook my head.
"They bent in the hurricane's wind. They bent so that they would remain standing. The trees that didn't bend are gone now."
We spent the rest of the drive in silence. Even at nine, I knew what he was trying to tell me. And I was a little ashamed that he felt he had to impart this lesson to me, and I was little resentful that he wasn't trying to impart it to his wife instead, and I was about as thoughtful as a nine-year-old gets.
My grandfather died a few years ago; my grandmother is still alive in the Carolinas, and the last few times I've seen her, it's certainly seemed as if she's learned to bend in the wind.
The palm trees in the wind are the beginning of mystery. I am grateful to my grandfather, and the hurricane, and those trees, for giving me such a concrete lesson, but it's time to move on from the palm trees. The palms, you see, they bent in the wind so that they would survive. That's all. That's it. Acceptance so that survival.
I've been having trouble bending to the winds lately. I've been having trouble accepting merely to survive. My horizon is broadened, and mere survival seems small. I feel buffeted at every turn, everything and everyone seems hell-bent on knocking me over and leaving me small and broken on the ground. Events, yes, but also people. From elections to relationships, I cannot bend the way I ought. I have no acceptance because acceptance feels like defeat. I don't want to succumb; I want to thrive. I don't want to be a solitary palm tree, isolated and broken and just hanging on. I want so much more than that.
A few days ago, I randomly stumbled on a parable that I can no longer place, but it showed me where to go, how to continue to bend to the winds.
The willow shoot bends in the wind until it is a forest that can break the wind.
Time to grow into a forest.
Friday, May 18, 2012
Going With The Flow
I have come to the conclusion that (as I am apt to do) I have crossed the line into buying too deeply into my own bullshit. Not that love and compassion and the need for human connections and serving each other is bullshit. It's all very real and true and I believe in all of it absolutely and without reservation. But I am prone to Taking Myself Too Seriously Syndrome and it's about time I called myself on it.
The crux of it is that I've been feeling for a while now that most of my relationships are unbalanced in some way: the two-way street doesn't flow with equal force in both directions. Problematic, for a dyed-in-the-wool idealist like me. But I talked myself down from it! I really did! I was all,
"Self. Nothing is perfect, Self. You have to look at flow over time, Self, and I'm sure that over time everything shakes out even, so don't get so upset. Relax. Go with it."
The first remarkable thing is that this ridiculous pep-talk actually worked. It's possible that the actual language I used when talking to myself in my head was somewhat different from the words above, but the gist was the same, and no one really wants to know how pretentious and pedantic I am to myself in my own head. It's positively precious, how hoity-toity my tone can get. I probably don't need to tell you that, dear Reader, since you're reading this and you know perfectly well how pretentious I am.
But over days and weeks of meditating on the concept of flow and time, I came to what I thought was a very determined peace with the fact of lopsidedness in relationships. I was OK. I was on an even keel.
It didn't last, clearly, or I would have nothing to write about. Everything is fodder for more words, dripping from my fingers like lovely and useless petunias. (Gilded lilies? I can't decide whether I prefer the continued alliteration, or the hilariously arcane allusion.)
But I've been snippy and mean and generally uncomfortable for a few days (sorry, Mom/Dad/Baby) and last night (yesterday? last week? It's hard to know whether the moment of epiphany occurs at the moment of verbalization or some time before that) I realized that I'm still struggling with the idea of all my lopsided relationships.
You see, I am unbelievably, unutterably, indescribably lucky. I am privileged beyond your wildest imaginings to have really amazing, awesome, awe-inspiring people in my life. These people are also ridiculously generous with me. I have been plagued by the sense that I am getting so much more from them than I am giving them, and that makes me so uncomfortable I can't deal with it. In fact, it makes me so uncomfortable I become a raging anger ball and kind of (a little bit) a bitch.
This is selfishness. I'm only ok with lopsided relationships if I get to play the martyr, be the selfless giving monolith? Not cool. Not cool at all. I believe absolutely in the power and the value of love and compassion and serving others. But it goes too far when you won't let other people have compassion for you, or love you, or serve you. Because if the purpose of a life is to do these things for other people, you're denying other people purpose by refusing their generosity.
Not ok, Self. Not. At. All. Knock it off, raging megalomania.
Why am I so uncomfortable? Because I don't credit the idea that me, myself, is enough for my friends the way that they, themselves, are enough for me. This kind of thinking denies these amazing, wonderful people that I love so dearly any agency. They don't get to make determinations for themselves; my determination of "not good enough" or "not enough" or even "lopsided" supercedes whatever they feel. Everyone is an adult capable of managing their own lives; I do believe this. So if they feel cheated by me, they'll tell me or they'll drop me, and until such a thing happens, I have got to stop worrying. I have got to let go of the idea that I'm getting more than my share, because my "share" is whatever is willingly given. The more we all share, the more there is to go around.
Flow is a multi-directional thing. And my perspective is not the only perspective. And if I'm going to love the whole world, I have to let the whole world love me, too. I have to let go, and just go with the flow.
The crux of it is that I've been feeling for a while now that most of my relationships are unbalanced in some way: the two-way street doesn't flow with equal force in both directions. Problematic, for a dyed-in-the-wool idealist like me. But I talked myself down from it! I really did! I was all,
"Self. Nothing is perfect, Self. You have to look at flow over time, Self, and I'm sure that over time everything shakes out even, so don't get so upset. Relax. Go with it."
The first remarkable thing is that this ridiculous pep-talk actually worked. It's possible that the actual language I used when talking to myself in my head was somewhat different from the words above, but the gist was the same, and no one really wants to know how pretentious and pedantic I am to myself in my own head. It's positively precious, how hoity-toity my tone can get. I probably don't need to tell you that, dear Reader, since you're reading this and you know perfectly well how pretentious I am.
But over days and weeks of meditating on the concept of flow and time, I came to what I thought was a very determined peace with the fact of lopsidedness in relationships. I was OK. I was on an even keel.
It didn't last, clearly, or I would have nothing to write about. Everything is fodder for more words, dripping from my fingers like lovely and useless petunias. (Gilded lilies? I can't decide whether I prefer the continued alliteration, or the hilariously arcane allusion.)
But I've been snippy and mean and generally uncomfortable for a few days (sorry, Mom/Dad/Baby) and last night (yesterday? last week? It's hard to know whether the moment of epiphany occurs at the moment of verbalization or some time before that) I realized that I'm still struggling with the idea of all my lopsided relationships.
You see, I am unbelievably, unutterably, indescribably lucky. I am privileged beyond your wildest imaginings to have really amazing, awesome, awe-inspiring people in my life. These people are also ridiculously generous with me. I have been plagued by the sense that I am getting so much more from them than I am giving them, and that makes me so uncomfortable I can't deal with it. In fact, it makes me so uncomfortable I become a raging anger ball and kind of (a little bit) a bitch.
This is selfishness. I'm only ok with lopsided relationships if I get to play the martyr, be the selfless giving monolith? Not cool. Not cool at all. I believe absolutely in the power and the value of love and compassion and serving others. But it goes too far when you won't let other people have compassion for you, or love you, or serve you. Because if the purpose of a life is to do these things for other people, you're denying other people purpose by refusing their generosity.
Not ok, Self. Not. At. All. Knock it off, raging megalomania.
Why am I so uncomfortable? Because I don't credit the idea that me, myself, is enough for my friends the way that they, themselves, are enough for me. This kind of thinking denies these amazing, wonderful people that I love so dearly any agency. They don't get to make determinations for themselves; my determination of "not good enough" or "not enough" or even "lopsided" supercedes whatever they feel. Everyone is an adult capable of managing their own lives; I do believe this. So if they feel cheated by me, they'll tell me or they'll drop me, and until such a thing happens, I have got to stop worrying. I have got to let go of the idea that I'm getting more than my share, because my "share" is whatever is willingly given. The more we all share, the more there is to go around.
Flow is a multi-directional thing. And my perspective is not the only perspective. And if I'm going to love the whole world, I have to let the whole world love me, too. I have to let go, and just go with the flow.
Wednesday, March 7, 2012
There Is Nothing Wrong With Sex
Social networks make political commentary ubiquitous, so when I see things my friends say, sometimes I laugh and sometimes I cringe and sometimes I do both. A comment like, "This from a climate-change denier who thinks the world is 6,000 years old and that making contraception available encourages sex" will elicit both a giggle and a cringe. I mean, it's funny because it's so ridiculous, but that last line makes my head hurt. The lover in me immediately read that last bit, "making contraception available encourages sex" and went "WHOA, there, buddy! It doesn't matter if making contraception available does or does not encourage sex, because there's nothing wrong with sex."
And when I put that out there into the public sphere of the internet, I got this reply: "Might want to include 'consensual' and 'between adults.' " And my first reaction was something like, "Well, duh. Obviously." And I was just about to make some polite reply about a 140 character limit and all that noise, when I stopped. Because you know what?
Duh. Obviously.
"Non-consensual sex" is not a thing that exists, world. Non-consensual sex is RAPE. And rape is not sex. When did sex, as a word or an idea or an act, become so tainted that it has to be minutely distinguished from rape in public discourse? Is sex so dirty, so awful, and so much of a violation that it is inherently indistinguishable from rape? No. And it is both disturbing and deeply saddening to come to the realization that a lot of people might feel it so.
Sex is not bad. Sex is beautiful. There is nothing wrong with sex.
While I do think that at least some fear of sex stems from a deep-seated misogyny (you should read some of the things that Bukowski and Warhol had to say about sex and women, golly geez) I don't think it's a universal explanation. The woman that told me I ought to add "consensual and between adults" to my exhortation that there is nothing wrong with sex, for example: I don't think she hates women.
Rather, I think there's a strange modern conflation of love and sex, and also love and marriage, that ends up creating a bizarre triangle in which the points are love, sex, and marriage and everything becomes a tangled mess.
To wit, physical intimacy and emotional intimacy do go hand-in-hand. And it's not a purely female thing, as so many want to claim. Yes, women form attachments when they sleep with someone. So do men. Men are, in fact, capable of rich emotional lives. Sex is better, for both parties, when there's love involved, and trust, and respect. Anais Nin said, "Only the united beat of sex and heart together can create ecstasy." And she was right.
Sex is often seen as proof of love, which is where things begin to become murky. "Nobody dies from lack of sex. It's lack of love we die from." (Margaret Atwood) Feeling unloved really does feel an awful lot like dying, and because the connection between love and sex is so deeply instilled, the urge to go out and have a lot of sex to stave off that death, that desperation, that utter loneliness can be strong. Nothing in modern culture has captured the absolute soullessness of using sex as a bandaid like Steve McQueen's Shame. I was horrified to read reviews of that film talking about "normal human sexuality" and "unsexiness." The thing that makes Shame such a powerful film is that it is not about normal human sexuality, or sexiness, and yet its protaganist is still a sympathetic and poignant character. McQueen and Michael Fassbender together have created a space in which behavior that be would be considered depravity and degeneration in less capable hands is instead merely tragic. The moral judgment against sex itself is removed, and the obvious distress of the character is the moral grounding of the narrative.
Like everything else in the emotional landscape of a human being, there are greys and gradations in sex. If sex within love is ecstasy, and sex by self-destructive compulsion is tragedy, there are a million things in between those two extremes. All sex that occurs without the merging of hearts and bodies is not the desperate self-destructive behavior of Shame.
Which brings us to the other point of this triad, the other intersection tangled up in all this mess: the conflation of love and marriage. Let me be clear: I believe in love. I absolutely believe in love. And I believe in marriage. But they are not the same thing.
Love is a personal, emotional good. It is the thing that creates empathy in us, it is the thing that causes us to act against survival instincts and for a better world, it is the thing that allows us to see beyond the borders of our bodies and create meaningful connections in the external world. Marriage, on the other hand, is a purely social good. The benefit of marriage is the social stability it represents. But love is not marriage and marriage is not love. You do not have to get married if you love someone. And if you do get married, you do not necessarily love the person you marry.
I think that a significant portion of the "sex in marriage" movement could really be more aptly defined as "sex in love" if we could all just recognize that love and marriage are not the same thing. Way back when marriages were arranged, it was clear to everyone involved that a marriage was a social contract and that love had nothing to do with it. I don't advocate returning to such a system, mostly because of the way it treated women as chattel. But that doesn't mean that we need to dismiss the idea of marriage as a social good. Rather, in a world like today when marriage is not the only basis of social stability, it is even more important that we remember that marriage is merely a social good. One singular one. It is not a magic bullet that will solve any and all problems, either personal or political. Getting married will not make your life suddenly better; if you weren't happy before, you won't be happy long-term after the novelty wears off. And falling marriage rates are not to blame for the plethora of social problems we face (ahem, Grothman/Santorum/et al.). There are other causes, because while marriage is a social good, it is not the social good.
There is nothing inherently wrong with sex, whether meaningful or meaningless. Sexual identity and appetite, in all their varied forms, are not evidence of some other problem. We all need love, yes. And sex is not love. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't have sex. And we all want love. But that doesn't mean we should all get married right now.
And when I put that out there into the public sphere of the internet, I got this reply: "Might want to include 'consensual' and 'between adults.' " And my first reaction was something like, "Well, duh. Obviously." And I was just about to make some polite reply about a 140 character limit and all that noise, when I stopped. Because you know what?
Duh. Obviously.
"Non-consensual sex" is not a thing that exists, world. Non-consensual sex is RAPE. And rape is not sex. When did sex, as a word or an idea or an act, become so tainted that it has to be minutely distinguished from rape in public discourse? Is sex so dirty, so awful, and so much of a violation that it is inherently indistinguishable from rape? No. And it is both disturbing and deeply saddening to come to the realization that a lot of people might feel it so.
Sex is not bad. Sex is beautiful. There is nothing wrong with sex.
While I do think that at least some fear of sex stems from a deep-seated misogyny (you should read some of the things that Bukowski and Warhol had to say about sex and women, golly geez) I don't think it's a universal explanation. The woman that told me I ought to add "consensual and between adults" to my exhortation that there is nothing wrong with sex, for example: I don't think she hates women.
Rather, I think there's a strange modern conflation of love and sex, and also love and marriage, that ends up creating a bizarre triangle in which the points are love, sex, and marriage and everything becomes a tangled mess.
To wit, physical intimacy and emotional intimacy do go hand-in-hand. And it's not a purely female thing, as so many want to claim. Yes, women form attachments when they sleep with someone. So do men. Men are, in fact, capable of rich emotional lives. Sex is better, for both parties, when there's love involved, and trust, and respect. Anais Nin said, "Only the united beat of sex and heart together can create ecstasy." And she was right.
Sex is often seen as proof of love, which is where things begin to become murky. "Nobody dies from lack of sex. It's lack of love we die from." (Margaret Atwood) Feeling unloved really does feel an awful lot like dying, and because the connection between love and sex is so deeply instilled, the urge to go out and have a lot of sex to stave off that death, that desperation, that utter loneliness can be strong. Nothing in modern culture has captured the absolute soullessness of using sex as a bandaid like Steve McQueen's Shame. I was horrified to read reviews of that film talking about "normal human sexuality" and "unsexiness." The thing that makes Shame such a powerful film is that it is not about normal human sexuality, or sexiness, and yet its protaganist is still a sympathetic and poignant character. McQueen and Michael Fassbender together have created a space in which behavior that be would be considered depravity and degeneration in less capable hands is instead merely tragic. The moral judgment against sex itself is removed, and the obvious distress of the character is the moral grounding of the narrative.
Like everything else in the emotional landscape of a human being, there are greys and gradations in sex. If sex within love is ecstasy, and sex by self-destructive compulsion is tragedy, there are a million things in between those two extremes. All sex that occurs without the merging of hearts and bodies is not the desperate self-destructive behavior of Shame.
"Sex without love is a meaningless experience, but as far as meaningless experiences go its pretty damn good." - Woody AllenThat grey world is where most of us live. We neither find "true love" nor do we descend into addiction. And in that grey world, there is nothing wrong with sex. Sex without love might be meaningless, as Mr. Allen says, but not everything in life must be pregnant with meaning. Not every conversation must be weighted, not every book must be serious, not every film must be exposing social thought constructs, not every sexual experience must be Capital-E-Ecstasy. There is nothing so inherently wrong about sex that it cannot be lighthearted and fun.
“It would be perfect if everyone who makes love, is in love, but this is simply an unrealistic expectation. I'd say 75 percent of the population of people who make love, are not in love, this is simply the reality of the human race, and to be idealistic about this is to wait for the stars to aline and Jupiter to change color; for the Heavens to etch your names together in the sky before you make love to someone. But idealism is immaturity, and as a matter of fact, the stars may never aline, Jupiter may never change color, and the Heavens may never ever etch your names together in the sky for you to have the never-ending permission to make endless love to one another. And so the bottom line is, there really is no difference between doing something today, and doing something tomorrow, because today is what you have, and tomorrow may not turn out the way you expect it to. At the end of the day, sex is an animalistic, humanistic, passionate desire.”
― C. JoyBell C.
Which brings us to the other point of this triad, the other intersection tangled up in all this mess: the conflation of love and marriage. Let me be clear: I believe in love. I absolutely believe in love. And I believe in marriage. But they are not the same thing.
Love is a personal, emotional good. It is the thing that creates empathy in us, it is the thing that causes us to act against survival instincts and for a better world, it is the thing that allows us to see beyond the borders of our bodies and create meaningful connections in the external world. Marriage, on the other hand, is a purely social good. The benefit of marriage is the social stability it represents. But love is not marriage and marriage is not love. You do not have to get married if you love someone. And if you do get married, you do not necessarily love the person you marry.
I think that a significant portion of the "sex in marriage" movement could really be more aptly defined as "sex in love" if we could all just recognize that love and marriage are not the same thing. Way back when marriages were arranged, it was clear to everyone involved that a marriage was a social contract and that love had nothing to do with it. I don't advocate returning to such a system, mostly because of the way it treated women as chattel. But that doesn't mean that we need to dismiss the idea of marriage as a social good. Rather, in a world like today when marriage is not the only basis of social stability, it is even more important that we remember that marriage is merely a social good. One singular one. It is not a magic bullet that will solve any and all problems, either personal or political. Getting married will not make your life suddenly better; if you weren't happy before, you won't be happy long-term after the novelty wears off. And falling marriage rates are not to blame for the plethora of social problems we face (ahem, Grothman/Santorum/et al.). There are other causes, because while marriage is a social good, it is not the social good.
There is nothing inherently wrong with sex, whether meaningful or meaningless. Sexual identity and appetite, in all their varied forms, are not evidence of some other problem. We all need love, yes. And sex is not love. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't have sex. And we all want love. But that doesn't mean we should all get married right now.
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