I stumbled upon a link over at Hot Air to a New York Times piece by Erica Jong, the author of Fear of Flying.
People always ask me what happened to sex since “Fear of Flying.” While editing an anthology of women’s sexual writing called “Sugar in My Bowl: Real Women Write About Real Sex”
last year, I was fascinated to see, among younger women, a nostalgia for ’50s-era attitudes toward sexuality. The older writers in my anthology are raunchier than the younger writers. The younger writers are obsessed with motherhood and monogamy.
Just as the watchword of my generation was freedom, that of my daughter’s generation seems to be control. Is this just the predictable swing of the pendulum or a new passion for order in an ever more chaotic world? A little of both. We idealized open marriage; our daughters are back to idealizing monogamy. We were unable to extinguish the lust for propriety.
Funny, the mothers of Jong’s generation hated all that the middle class stood for, now their daughters are nostalgic for it. It’s sort of ironic.
My husband and I have been married 25 years now.
He lured me into the shower with him to have hot, passionate sex with him. I put a shower-cap on (because I have really long hair and getting it wet would have been nightmarish).
I also give him the best bj’s of his life. It took me a while to build up the confidence to do ‘oral’.
We have had some really rocky back and forths but I thank GOD for the man GOD gave me and I relish him now more than I EVER did when I was young and stupid and selfish.
We both adore each other with great compassion and understanding, but, that only comes with growth and being able to ride out the hard times.
I think most folks use the “BAIL!” option rather than trying to work out their differences which makes me sad for our future as a nation and as a people.
FYI: The hot, passionate shower sex was last night. TMI? LOL
I’m still laughing at the mental picture of the shower cap during the shower sex…LOL…that’s super hot.
Saw this coming a long time ago. I think it was mostly due to the shabby behavior of the Boomer and X-geners. Rejection had to set in at some point
Or are the female members of the younger generation turning into that dreaded “C” word, conservatives? Maybe, just maybe, all of the “free love” and “if it feels good, do it” from Ms. Jong’s generation has run its course and now people don’t see any of the “fun” in it anymore. They possibly see promiscuity as dangerous and, with AIDS still out there, possibly fatal. Or maybe the 1960s and the 1970 just were not all that they were cracked up to be? Possibly. But I think it would be silly for the Republicans not to take advantage of this growing wave of conservatism in this country. Who knows, maybe the conservatives were right all along? Naaa, I doubt any liberal would ever admit to that.
Sex is never out of style.
I think Jong had some good ideas about liberating women to express their sexuality. The feminist movement in some ways took what was happening from a liberation to politically correct repression.
People have sex. Words have gender. No amount of sophistry can overcome what we are.
She makes a false dichotomy. Sex is not a choice between freedom vs control. It is just part of what we are and the reason we are all here. Her battle is over and won. Why should she be amazed that most people want committed relationship as the way to live their lives including physical sex? She should not be at this point. Maybe she wanted to change people more than understand them.
“Is Sex Passé?”
Well, if I think real hard, I can kinda sorta remember what it’s like.
I guess now that the pendulum has swung back in to the male court, women are looking for ways to regain control, I guess its all a little too late.
I would like to think the pendulum is swinging back but have you seen any music videos lately? Beyonce? She looks like (a really gorgeous) streetwalker/pole dancer. Rihanna who, in her new song, wails that she likes whips and chains. Lady Gaga. Did you see her on American Idol? I had to turn away before her lady parts were shown. Scarlet Johannsen explaining she gets an HIV test every 6 months. If she was monogamous, she wouldn’t need to, right? That 25 years old blonde actress talking about waking up next to a guy she didn’t recognize after a night of drunken sex. This doesn’t seem very retro to me but okay, talk yourselves into it if you can.
What Erica Jong and her fellow socialists set it motion won’t be so easily reversed. Not that there aren’t always people who don’t fall for the trashy and immoral behavior the left always pushes.
Is Sex Passe?
No, we’re just older and have less energy than when we were in our 20s & 30s, and kids today are smart enough to realize that “open marriage” isn’t and wasn’t all it was cracked up to be by amoral liberals. Yes, it’s that simple.
I remember in the ’70′s my college newspaper had an inquiring photographer running around asking the collegiate crowd some dopey question about the Sexual Revolution and some guy gave the funniest answer that just made me Guffaw. I still don’t know whether he was serious or not, or if my reaction made any sense, but the single answer he gave, which was then published with some seriousness, was simply: “Sex is here to stay.”
My answer to myself was “When did it ever go away?”
Anyway, that’s what I come away from this: That goofy guy’s great line which says it all:
“SEX IS HERE TO STAY.”
Speaking as a happily married woman of the “baby boom” generation, sex is not passé.
Sex without love and commitment is passé. A lot of people tried it. It left a huge amount of physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, and financial wreckage. It was a lot less fun for women than many of them thought it would be, and it was a lot less satisfying for men than many of them thought it would be.
Consider the sexual dynamic in the future tension. >:)
1) All Disease, including STDs, _gone_.
2) A woman conceives only through an act of will.
3) Girls are vaccinated against pregnancy until they reach adulthood.
4) Children receive sex education in school; Not just the physical and
the psychological, but the pharmacological – That sex is more like
taking an addictive drug than enjoying a really, really tasty meal,
and that the hurricane of hormones which hit a woman during pregnancy
change her mind (and her brain) in ways that affect her sex drive.
5) Marriage between adults is a contract, with specified terms and penalties.
6) Society is so rich that conservation of capital is no longer a reason
to marry, leaving only the raising of children to adulthood as motive.
Yes, I know it is distressing to realize one is living at the end of the
primitive era, but here we all are, looking with longing toward the future.
“mothers of Jong’s generation hated all that the middle class stood for, now their daughters are nostalgic for it. It’s sort of ironic.”
These are not good times. People are aspiring to make it to into the middle-class and stay there. Inflation, grasping government, and a depressed job-market are all tearing at our wealth and security.
No wonder women want a calm, secure relationship. A shelter from the storm going on out there.
Erica Jong’s daughter might be more conservative than her mother (maybe because the daughter, understandably, regards her own mother as a slut), but the plural of anecdote is not data. If the young women today are trending conservative, please explain the “hooking up” culture in universities and the explosion among young women of self-made pornography on the Internet.
So, are all these girls hooking up and all these self-producing porn starlets anecdotes, or are they data?
Sex will never be passe with the majority but there are an increasing amount of younger people being more skeptical about just having it willy nilly. Also, lack of sex is a major cause of separation and divorces these days. The definition of sex is expanding with more alternative forms to it. for example, with an increasing amount of men turning to porn and away from their significant others, that in itself is contributing to changing what “sex” means today. eventually many people will prefer customized “virutal” sex over obligatory intercourse.