“Everything in the world is about sex except sex. Sex is about power.”
-Oscar Wilde
It’s anachronistic, but the quote is damning and evergreen like all clever observations. Whether Wilde said this or not, the truth of the matter is that human sexuality is shaped by our politics and our philosophies. To be autonomous. To have control. To exert influence. To make change. That is power. And sex remains, since the dawn of time, when the first cave dwellers lit some candles and moved on one another, an all-encompassing force in our lives.
Even if you’re not having sex, sex is still a prime mover in our societies’ unconscious behaviors. I’m not well versed in Freudian psychoanalysis, so it’s much easier to paraphrase the great Barbadian philosopher, Rihanna: we all got love on the brain.
But what does love have to do with sex?
Sex can be hateful.
Sex can also be holy.
Or it could destroy your sense of self.
Or restore your faith in society.
In January, I read The Right to Sex: Feminism in the Twenty-First Century by philosopher Amia Srinivasan. Inspired by Srinivasan’s provocative work, my column Demon Time is where I’ll sharpen my understanding of sex as political phenomenon, sex as something we have at birth and something we do, and how our cultural traditions have viewed and shaped sex historically — and what they hope for the future.
How does classism affect the way people in poverty make love?
How are senior citizens behaving after dark?
And what is “fuckability”?
What’s it like to sleep around during a pandemic?
What you doing on that demon time?
Can we as a society achieve sexual justice?
And what does it mean to be normal anyway?
These questions and more are what will further the larger conversations around bodies, desire, and power. I think promising solutions to these questions is a fool’s errand, and antithetical to learning. But there is so much I want and need to discover about myself in relation to sex and society. And I hope you want to join in this search. Every other Friday, you can find me in this space — ambivalent, curious, and ready to have more weird yet humane conversations about that thing my parents told me not to do until I get married.
-Jameka 😈