Flippant Remarks about “Why women have sex”
The Guardian put out another conversation piece called “Why women have sex” by Tanya Gold with the numerically-defined adult smirk of “much knowing” on her face. My compliments to Wendy Okoi-Obuli for highlighting this work… This piece is worthy of conversation here in the rasx() context—not for what it says but what (according to my reading comprehension) it does not say. What it does say is that human females can be just as materialistic as males—so this by definition is a triumph of women’s “equality” with patriarchal, barbarian men:
Ever had sex out of pity and wondered why? “Women,” say Meston and Buss, “for the most part, are the ones who give soup to the sick, cookies to the elderly and… sex to the forlorn.” “Tired, but he wanted it,” says one female. Pause for more amazing detail: fat people are more likely to stay in a relationship because no one else wants them. Women also mate to get the things they think they want—drugs, handbags, jobs, drugs. “The degree to which economics plays out in sexual motivations,” Buss says, “surprised me. Not just prostitution. Sex economics plays out even in regular relationships. Women have sex so that the guy would mow the lawn or take out the garbage. You exchange sex for dinner.” He quotes some students from the University of Michigan. It is an affluent university, but 9% of students said they had “initiated an attempt to trade sex for some tangible benefit”…
The running theme here is what I will call “tactical sexuality” which is a less offensive way of saying “imperial sexuality.” There is a little cottage industry of “self-help” materials based on sales to under-informed and slightly cowardly people who are looking for the “secret” to women. For me, the greatest “secret” about contemporary womanhood is that it is not that different from contemporary “manhood.” This “great” discovery of mine came almost simultaneously with the revelation that the search for “Negro equality” is an illusion: most of these folks yearning for equality are already white people—they may look like they are “pure” descendants from The Motherland—but the foundations of their consciousness is exquisitely Calvinist and Nietzschean. It is ironically racist to “wish” or “hope” that I really find some “white friends”—when I already have “white friends”—they just “look Black” according to the racist lens. Much of the work, then, in “first-world” “race relations” is trying to get the white men in charge to remove this lens.
So, anyway, women (today) are not that different from men (today): both are driven by materialism. What can confuse a kid is how this materialism is expressed. The men say “tits and ass”—the women say yes to sex for many, many, complex, sophisticated but ultimately tangible benefits (mostly drugs—and other narcotic, medicating “benefits”).
What is missing from this entire why-women-have-sex conversation is the womanist complaint I remember from my pre-puberty in the 1970s, “Why can’t he love me for my mind?” I have trouble remembering one woman from my squalid, little adult life who passionately and consistently complained (directly or, typically, indirectly) about having her sexuality stunted because her system of elevated thought found no home in someone else’s arms. I have (sadly) heard many keeping-it-real-women of many skin tones laugh outright about the idea of having sex because of the “beauty” of one’s way of thinking. They think the concept of this conceptualization as consummation and realization is ridiculous.
The “high” technology of the Internet makes this even clearer (to me). Of hundreds of megabytes of data, I fail to recall any newsgroup, email-list thread, social-networking conversation where a female was engaging in or overturing toward sharing her personal, non-religious system of thought with others. I have no knowledge of any discussion thread that led to intimate friendship because the two involved intertwined in thought, before they met “in person.” Sure, tons of people meet each other through the Internet but I would argue (definitely unsuccessfully) that too many of these unions are based on articulate emotions instead of frame-working theoretical ideals transformed into emotions and communal practice. In “Stephen Batchelor’s Relationship Design: Marry a Buddhist Nun,” you can see where I’m trying to go with this…
And we have to be careful here: remember that we are talking about a woman and her thoughts—we are not talking about a female incarnation of Republican thoughts—or Vatican thoughts—or Steve-Jobs thoughts. Today’s woman is certainly not subservient to “a man” but she is too often subservient to foundational thoughts of men—patriarchal flesh men—the Nietzschean “over-man” (who might have a vagina—maybe even a vagina monologue).
I don’t want to argue about the certainty of my last statement because I fear winning this argument. Please let me be a loser in this game of fascist ultimatums. Anyway (again)… There is a line from the poetry of Laurie Anderson that says it best:
These are not the stories my people tell. This is something that I know for myself…
For myself… Maybe too many of the generation coming of age after Laurie Anderson finds little value in what they think for themselves—this true self-esteem was stolen from them. And, remember (because this is “always” about me and my “selfishness”), this theft in the lives of such women makes my life miserable. And we cannot have me miserable!
When I wrote “Great Online Couples of the Arts” last year I knew then as I know now that it is a celebration of unions based largely on conscious thought—instead of autopilots in the playboy-game-ready subconscious. This article is more evidence that my looking is beyond just me—these ladies don’t have to share their thoughts with me exclusively in some kind of misdiagnosis of psychopathic fantasy. Certainly this has to be happening somewhere else—but the current data show me that there are no woman-led, co-ed metaphysical parties (that are not rent parties) going on anywhere in my Black, English-speaking (heterosexual) world…
Over 40 years later: ain’t nothing going on but the rent… no time for embracing because of thinking… thinking is “supposed to be” asexual and non-sensual… the psychedelics of the abstract juxtaposed with the concrete was apparently just another “tangible” occidental drug trip… do you feel what I mean? …Nauseous?
Wait a minute. I am wrong: there is one poet I remember (she is a little older than me though) but she calls herself Meloneé Reneé Houston Blue. She wrote a poem called “have you seen her mind?” Sadly, because of personal “issues” between us from over a decade ago, I am unable to re-publish her work here in the kinté space. You know how it is, right? …must be my fault.