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Talking about Sex is Taboo, Unless…

I write about sex periodically and almost to a tee my mother chimes in, ‘you shouldn’t be writing about such topics, you’re too smart’ as if having a brain disqualifies one from writing or even thinking about sex. Apparently though, it does. This is perhaps even truer for women, where the topic of sex is veiled in cultural and political taboos so opaque that navigating them can be perilous to one’s career, if not one’s sanity and one’s health. That is, unless of course, the topic is framed in some feminist conception of power structures, patriarchy, or other implements of victimhood. Then discussing sex is alright because it is so far afield from the actual act and so cloaked in theory, and often violence, that it bears little resemblance to sex and no one but others of similar leanings pay much heed. This is not to say that discussions of sexual violence, sexual victims and the like are not important, they are, but what about the rest of it? Certainly, not all sex is framed within a power struggle of cultural, political and violent tendencies. Certainly, there is a space beyond theory, beyond advertising, beyond politics or religion, where a man is just a man, a woman is just a woman and sex is just sex.

If there is such a space, no one seems to write about it. Our entire conversation about sex involves intruding contexts delineating what we should and should not think about sex. Advertisers use sexiness to sell products. Politicians and religious leaders use sex to coalesce and manage followers, while theorists and power mongers of every ilk, use sex to realign power structures. Sex in these contexts is always a tool to be wielded and in many cases manipulated and controlled. Sex is never just sex. It is always about something else or for something else. What happened to sex as a pleasurable activity, in and of itself, absent all other contexts? Was sex ever just for pleasure? It is a legitimate question to which I have no answer.

Sex as a Zero Sum Game

What I do know is that sex today is portrayed as zero sum game of sorts and that framework has done more to erase any notion of pleasure from sex than perhaps any other in history. In a zero sum game there are always victors and losers, oppressors and the oppressed. It is a model built on old industrial economies of scarcity and fear where heat, read passion, means friction, an inefficiency to be controlled at all cost. It is a model where when the debts are tallied, the more I have, the more I win and dominate, the less you have, the better. In a zero sum game, there is an assumption of equal proportionality between the winners and losers, wins and losses, dominators and dominated. To the degree I become more powerful, you lose power and vice versa. There is no room for abundance, synergies, shared responsibilities or even just winners and losers. And there little room for pleasure or passion except perhaps as tokens of victory to demonstrate success, but more frequently as vices, impurities and inefficiencies to be controlled.

What a totally sad state of affairs.

One has to wonder if, at least in the space where sex and sexuality lie, there isn’t a better way to conceptualize, talk about, and perhaps even, experience sex. Aren’t there overlapping interests here? What would happen if we re-framed the conversation away from this zero sum illusion towards a more equanimous perspective where passion and pleasure for all parties took center stage? What would those conversations look like?

Are we even capable of talking about sexual pleasure openly and frankly, not as a means to an end, not as something to be controlled or protected from, not within the context of a power structure, but simply as it is?

If we talked about pleasure, if we aspired towards giving and receiving pleasure and understanding pleasure, if we didn’t shy away from it as we do now, wouldn’t we also totally change the conversations we have about sexual violence, sexual inequality, heck, even economic inequalities? Wishful thinking perhaps, but when one considers the pendulum of history and the power of discourse, how the conversation is framed is as important as what is said. In the case of sex, we need to talk more about pleasure and a lot less about everything else.

Alas, that is easier to think about than said or done.

Breaking Sexual Taboos

by Chandler Marrs, PhD

Published on April 18, 2013

3042 views

When discussing my writing and research amongst a group of peers recently, I was struck by how quickly the conversation devolved into the more apparently, though not really, salacious articles I have written as of late. Yes, they were about sex and often cursorily about penis size. Mostly though, the articles used the phrase penis size as a vehicle to introduce bad research or media on medically-related topics. Of course, the added benefit of using one of the most popular search phrases on the internet was not lost on me and I used it to my advantage.

In these articles, I pondered our notions about sex and language; sometimes in jest, sometimes in all seriousness, but in each case, it was not the topic of the article that was most intriguing to those in this conversation, it was the blatant use of the taboo words penis size that merited the school-aged giggles from otherwise hyper-educated adults. And so it is, that I have begun to be introduced to folks, not by the serious research and commentary that I do, but by the posts on penises and sex. Yes, mom, I got a PhD to talk about penis size.

The interesting thing is, I know relatively nothing about penis size and frankly, I am learning that few of us do. The subject is taboo and like much of sexual health, riddled more with myth and misunderstanding than actual data. Do women (or men) prefer larger penises or is that merely one component of a complicated sexual dance? Are there racial or geographic differences is size, as myth proclaims or do the larger or smaller among us average out when large data sets are analyzed? Are there data sets about the size to pleasure ratio or is that just too taboo to even consider? Is this something a legitimate researcher should even consider considering (how’s that for a bit of deconstructive thought – thinking about thinking) or does the mere fact I am discussing this topic publicly, obliterate any hope of being taken seriously for my other research? Social mores what they are, it’s probably the latter. That is unfortunate and this is why.

The taboos that define what we can say, see or even know about sex or sexual health seep into every aspect of medical research and certainly political thought. In men’s health, think about circumcision for a moment. How might we approach that differently, if parents were given accurate information about male anatomy – that yes, in fact there are nerve endings that reach all the way to the tip of the penis and that yes, infants do feel pain. Might we not be so ready to lop things off for some biblical, pre-sanitation view of reality? Perhaps, but because we can’t talk about these things openly, we are left with myth to make medical decisions. Grown men know more about the anatomy and physiology of the heart muscle than they do of their own penis. Talk about driving blind.

In women’s health, it’s even worse. The powers of the magical vagina are so strong that even saying the V word can get men or women fired from jobs. Just recently, a high school health teacher was fired for teaching female anatomy and daring to ascribe the proper terminology to the female reproductive organs. In the overly litigious and ridiculously tabooed work environment, I suspect even using the word vagina in polite company might yield claims of sexual harassment (oh, our sensitive ears). And don’t even think about showing pictures of the female pelvic anatomy – that would be porn.

Even common medical imagery of the female sexual anatomy is often neutered with Barbie parts. Really, it is.

This is something that I recently and quite accidentally discovered; medical and scientific renderings of the female pelvic anatomy are not always complete (I suspect similarly incomplete imagery for male anatomy but have yet to investigate). Nerves, blood vessels, and the like, end well before reaching the magical, mystery areas of the female labia and clitoris. Indeed, in many illustrations those regions do not exist but are replaced by neutered Barbie parts. Keep the magic and mystery alive. Who knows what would happen if we were to show those sacred anatomical features. Oh no, women might realize there are nerves down there. Worse yet, physicians might recognize that there are nerves and begin understanding that the ‘psychogenic’ sex pain could be nerve compression. Gads, we’d lose the multi-billion dollar antidepressant industry.

If we can’t have adult conversations about sex or sexual anatomy or accurately portray visual images of human sexual organs without risk of repercussion, how in the world are we to treat diseases that affect said organs? A more fundamental question – would we have more fun if the tools of the trade were more thoroughly understood and appreciated? Perhaps.

Some interesting sites with complete pelvic anatomy and information about male and female nerve damage:

Health Organization for Pudendal Education – bet you never heard of the pudendal nerve. The pudendal nerve is responsible for sensation to the penis and the clitoris. Damage that nerve and you have problems.
Interactive Atlas of the Female Pelvis. This shows how incredibly complex the female pelvic region is. It makes me wonder how much damage we’re causing with cesareans and hysterectomies.

Learn pelvic anatomy. Break the taboos.