Not Everything Is Mt. Everest (Selling Sexual Dysfunction)
Perhaps you remember the headline from a few weeks back. A recent pharmaceutical firm funded research study claiming that nearly half of all women suffer from sexual dysfunction. When “polite” society talks about sex, it’s always got to be in medical or educational context, but always with the most garish (and often misleading) headline possible.
A legacy of Anthony Comstock is that even today “sex education” is the rubric by which explicit sexuality is sneaked into polite society. Calling a film “educational” is a way of classing it with gynecology and urology textbooks; and “medicalized sexuality” has a cache of respectability that presenting sexuality as mere entertain lacks. Educating people about sex, or helping them with sex problems is okay. Entertaining viewers, or worse, arousing them, is not.
We have resisted marketing our work as “educational.” It’s not that I don’t recognize there’s an educational value in hearing real people’s love stories and seeing how people have sex in real life, but employing the figleaf of “sex education” undercuts what is for me, what is the broader meaning of these films: that seeing how people live, and seeing how they love, in all it’s passion, tenderness and glory, is as worthwhile a subject for a filmmaker as any other aspect of the human experience.
But there’s another reason.
I don’t relate to the way that so much “sex education” speaks to sex. For me there’s just too much proscriptive, comparative language. “Better sex!” “Bigger orgasms!” These days even conservative Christians are getting in on the act – all you have to is follow “God’s plan!” and you’ll experience “deeper intimacy!”
It’s not that I’m opposed to bigger orgasms or deeper intimacy, but the choice of language often makes me feel like sex is just another consumeristic pursuit, or a competition (same thing?) Implicit in this sort of language is the idea that you’re doing it wrong.
To my ears it all sounds a little like telling someone they’re taking a walk in the woods the wrong way. Or that if they like a walk in the woods, they’ll like a hike in the mountains even better. Or that people who climb Mt. Everest have a more meaningful experience of their time outdoors than people who enjoy lying on the beach in the sun.
I’m not much of a hiker, but I do like to surf. And one of the things that’s always struck me about surfing movies is that whether I’m watching footage of waves that are well within my level of expertise, or watching Laird Hamilton getting towed into a Teahupoo death-wave, seeing people who are stoked about surfing makes me feel stoked about surfing! I don’t feel educated, and I don’t feel like I’m doing it wrong. I just feel stoked!
Surfing isn’t just about Teahupoo. Sex isn’t just about peak experiences. And films about sex don’t have to be “educational” to have a value in polite society.
December 19th, 2008 at 4:14 pm
Yes, yes, and yes! I have said it before and will say again: There is no right, or best, or healthiest way to be (or not to be!) sexual. All the competitive language about sex makes me a bit crazy. For example: the work Whipple, et al, did in scientifically validating that some women ejaculated was revolutionary–it freed many women from the shame of feeling they were freaks with weak bladders. Not too many years later, being able to “squirt” is a sign of sexual superiority! Ack!
So thank you for saying all this. And for doing the totally awesome work you do!!!!
December 20th, 2008 at 12:34 am
Hello Amy and thank for stopping by.
And lest anyone get the wrong impression, I don’t mean to bag on sex education; either birds and bees sex ed, or nifty new trick style.
But when that’s the only way sex can be discussed in “polite company” (meaning MSM) it has a warping effect on what does get discus. Everything is about problems and/or improvements. Almost no (to borrow from my beloved surf films) pure stoke.