Jeff wrote:
> Well, I, for one, am not always violent when I am engaged in sex, and I
> take it most people are not (but then, I have always been niave about these
> sorts of things). I do not become sexually aroused everytime I see a
> violent scence in a movie. I do know of studeios which "show" that men
> exposed to violent matieral are more likely to be violent when engaged in
> sex later, but I am not aware of any which discuss the relationship between
> violence and excitement. Perhaps I need more facts. In any case, I have
> no qualms with asserting on a normative basis that sex ought not be about
> violence- nothing should be about violence.
This seems to me an overly breezy treatment. I would argue that there _is_
in sex always a certain element of violence -- although there is the obvious
problem of what it is useful to call "violence". Let me make my argument
in terms of "power" to avoid this problem. In sex I want something from
another person, and/or another person wants something from me. We attempt
to seduce and arouse each other. We can each deny to the other what the other
person wants, postpone it, prolong it, try to change its terms, try to resist
the other persons postponements/prolongations/changes. We get aroused by
seeing the other person aroused. We are dependent upon one another and
have to work with this dependence (except in rape, one of whose aspects seems to
be a violent negation of this dependence). Doesn't all this have to do
with power?
-m
> Well, I, for one, am not always violent when I am engaged in sex, and I
> take it most people are not (but then, I have always been niave about these
> sorts of things). I do not become sexually aroused everytime I see a
> violent scence in a movie. I do know of studeios which "show" that men
> exposed to violent matieral are more likely to be violent when engaged in
> sex later, but I am not aware of any which discuss the relationship between
> violence and excitement. Perhaps I need more facts. In any case, I have
> no qualms with asserting on a normative basis that sex ought not be about
> violence- nothing should be about violence.
This seems to me an overly breezy treatment. I would argue that there _is_
in sex always a certain element of violence -- although there is the obvious
problem of what it is useful to call "violence". Let me make my argument
in terms of "power" to avoid this problem. In sex I want something from
another person, and/or another person wants something from me. We attempt
to seduce and arouse each other. We can each deny to the other what the other
person wants, postpone it, prolong it, try to change its terms, try to resist
the other persons postponements/prolongations/changes. We get aroused by
seeing the other person aroused. We are dependent upon one another and
have to work with this dependence (except in rape, one of whose aspects seems to
be a violent negation of this dependence). Doesn't all this have to do
with power?
-m