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November 19-26, 2005
Sexual practices have a way of
changing their classification
over time. Different things go
in-and-out of style; people's (Heh.)
attitudes toward practices
shift; and the acts symbolise
other things than they used to.
There's a peculiar amnesia that
kicks in after-the-fact: people Even in extremely obvious
seem to like to believe that changes, like the change
what's normal now has always in attitudes toward
been normal. pre-marital sex and
divorce that came in with
the "Sexual Revolution"
Possibly this is a side of the sixties, you can
effect of the need to find a certain convenient
believe that sexual forgetfulness.
behavior is animalistic.
The conservative take is that
We like the idea that it's everything about the sixities
biologically determined. was a disaster.
If your position is that
ANIMAL social experiments are
always misguided, you don't
like to be reminded that
the status quo is a social
experiment of yesteryear.
Particularly
For example, around the time when folks
that I was a teenager (the like Reagan
1970s) I think "oral sex" was In Delany's "1984", he and Limbaugh
doing a transition from a describes something he have been
nasty perversion to a "normal noticed in his divorced.
sexual practice". (extensive) experience
of hanging around in And most of
Which doesn't mean porn movie theaters -- your core
that there was in the early 80s, constituency
necessarily a huge cunnilingus went from is busy
change in actual being something that collecting
behavior, though produced embarrassed trophy wives.
there *might* have laughter to the
been. standard warm-up.
In the dance of
attitude and action Delany credits porn
it can be hard to movies themselves with
say who made the creating this change
first move. in the definition of
the normal.
And it could be that
increasingly easy
access to pornography
is producing further
Another interesting changes.
thing, though, is
the perversions Much to the
that don't click consternation
over to "normal", of some...
despite an upswing
in popularity. PORNFRIED
Bondage practices became
very widespread by the
close of the 80s; something
that everyone did or at
least tried, or at least
was thinking about trying.
A trendy perversion.
It's entirely possible to
have a practice practiced
by nearly everyone and for
it to still be classified
as a "perversion" that no And isn't it interesting
one admits to in public. that there's now a standard
set of fetishes that
go under the heading
I wonder about the of "Fetish"?
future of anal sex.
Fetish fashion.
The anus has gone Fashion?
from untouchable to
negotiable in the This year's fetish.
space of a few The latest fetish.
decades, with one
of the later There's another
developments being It's obligatory way of looking at
the discovery of to reference the "fetish fashion"
heterosexual male "Bend Over though: maybe it
penetration... Boyfriend" isn't *really*
series of videos fashion. The
put out by Good parameters of it
Vibrations. Or stay fixed for
nearly far longer than
A sketch of three futures: fixed. they do with the
straight fashion
(1) anal sex becomes an "of course" world.
item. Refusal to engage in it (at
least in some form) becomes grounds The latex jumpsuit
for counseling -- much as an bought years
aversion to cunnilingus would now ago doesn't
be regarded as fairly weird. suddenly develop
the wrong lapels.
(2) anal sex becomes a standard
perversion. Something nearly Adding something new
everyone does, but not before to the world of
the third date. fetish fashion is a
strange business of
(3) anal sex retreats casting about for a
slightly and resists new feature that
incorporation into the hits the embedded
mainstream, and becomes complexes in just
an acknowledged symbol Much as, say, a the right way...
of strangeness. black leather
jacket remains a
fixed symbol of
the outsider...
CHASING_THE_MIRAGE
HOLY_COATS_OF_BLACK
A decade hence, will
strap-ons adorn the post
of every marriage bed?
Will anal sex
still matter?
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