§48 Good sex is never ‘Spick and Span’: Sexuality’s Martial Face
In 1991, Camille Paglia claimed that feminist academics are incapable of understanding sex:
‘There are sexual differences that are based in biology. Academic feminism is lost in a fog of social constructionism. …Emboldened by dumb French language theory, academic feminists repeat the same hollow slogans over and over to each other. Their view of sex is naïve and prudish. Leaving sex to the feminists is like letting your dog vacation at the taxidermist’s. The sexes are at war.’ (Paglia 1992, 50; my emphasis)
As the essay’s original title reveals — “Rape: A Bigger Danger Than Feminists Know” (Paglia 1991) — Paglia aims to sophisticate intellectuals’ conception of the complexity between the sexes, by pointing to the problem of rape.
Compare this with Arthur Koestler’s claim: ‘Without an element of initial rape there is no delight’* (Scammell 2009).
Scammel — Koestler’s biographer — is quick to provide a qualification: ’”Rape” was an overstatement, but it shows Koestler’s awareness of the dangers of his behaviour, and there is no doubt that he subscribed to the belief that a little force added spice to sex.’ (ibid). What Koestler speaks of is the seduction of his future (second) wife, Mamaine — ultimately a consensual act but with looming danger of transgressing the boundary of volition. This ’element of …rape’ does not constitute a transgression, but retains a suggestion. Maybe it can be thought of as an act, a simulation, that offers the thought of the danger possible in the vulnerable situation of submission. As such, rape seems to offer a key in the war and peace of the sexes. For sex to be an authentic interface between them an element of battle must be included. Moreover, this inclusion takes the form –by means of simulation — as a sexual act, whereby the male and female actors act out the eternal battle that is never enacted: rape.
This Janus face of the danger/delight nexus seems to speak to a view of consensual relations that is often scorned. In Jerry Hall’s terms: lady in the parlour, saint in the kitchen, whore in the bedroom. Alternatively:
“Who has ever heard of good sex being described as ‘spick-and-span’?”**
* AK to Mamaine Paget, “Tuesday night,” May 1944; Mamaine Paget’s diary, January–May 1944
**I am grateful to my ‘C.H.’ for this elegant formulation, poignantly deflating the petit bourgeois take at the sad, managerial, grey and static reality, jousting at the real thing, which sadly and probably is a fixture in most bedrooms of our neighbours… And maybe even yours?
References
Paglia, Camille. 1991. “Rape: A Bigger Danger Than Feminists Know.” New York Newsday, January 27. https://www.newsday.com/.
Paglia, Camille. 1992. “Rape and Modern Sex War.” In Sex, Art, and American Culture: Essays, 49–54. New York: Vintage Books.
Scammell, Michael. 2009. “Commissar or Yogi?” In Koestler: The Literary and Political Odyssey of a Twentieth-Century Skeptic. Random House.
Originally published at anowmedia.com on July 27, 2018.
