- 2005: The decline of sex - Viagra is just the start:
we'll soon have pills that make you feel deep love and video games that
give vibrations. Ziauddin Sardar on the masturbatory society.
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- Is your sex life normal? The question was raised recently
on the Oprah Winfrey Show. Tell us, the show asked its 20 million viewers,
what turns you on, what turns you off, and what makes good sex.
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- The problem with such questions is that there are no
"normal" answers. The normal is problematic because our ideas
about sex have changed fundamentally. What constitutes normal is constantly
refurbished. Its boundaries shift rapidly, and continue to shift. So what
was abnormal yesterday - say, pornography - becomes normal today. And what
is shunned today (say paedophilia) may just as easily become normal tomorrow.
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- One huge jump was provided by Viagra. In less than six
years since the impotence pill came on the market, Viagra and its competitors,
Levitra and Cialis, have transformed sexual norms and practices. As Meika
Loe argues in The Rise of Viagra (New York University Press), it has redefined
the concept of normal and changed the language of sex.
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- From the beginning, this was a treatment branded and
marketed as normal. Impotence was called "erectile dysfunction",
or simply ED - a common condition, as the football legend Pele assured
us in TV ads, but not normal. Moreover, it did not arise from psychological
causes or physical damage; rather, it was a simple medical condition rectified
by a pill. Suddenly, drug company surveys discovered that more than half
the US adult male population suffered from ED; figures for Europe were
not far behind.
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- So if you can't get it up because you're pissed, stressed
out, simply not in the mood or no longer find your partner attractive,
you are actually suffering from a disease. And like all diseases, it must
be cured. The cure is to swallow a pill and have sex no matter what, anywhere,
any time, whenever. This has now become the norm.
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- Viagra is another step in stripping sex of all its complexity.
Sex has been reduced to a simple question: for men, "how big?";
for women, "how long?". Combine these conundrums with other features
of a market economy, such as availability on demand, choice, flexibility
to mix'n'match, and we have new definitions not just of sex and love but
of what it means to be human.
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- Today, to be normal, humans have sex right up to their
last breath. It's the way to go. Sex is no longer the indulgence of the
young. Nowadays, it is people over 50 who are having the most sex. With
demographic shifts, high divorce rates and early retirement, the erstwhile
golden generation of Sixties swingers who let it all hang out are now the
"silver singles" (as they are called in America). The preoccupations
of their youth have been sustained through their later years by medical
enhancements. The wet dreams of 60-year-olds, who turned on to chemical
enhancement in the Sixties, are a manifest example of future normality
for us all.
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- What Viagra actually treats is loss of male power. In
a confusing, depersonalising world busy reassigning status, regendering
the social order, manipulating the ever-increasing demands of a commodified
existence, sexual potency is the last bastion. Men, who have lost status
and power almost everywhere, from workplace to home, must repair to the
bedroom. Only there can they find the redemption of their true nature.
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- However, in an age of sexual equality, men cannot be
left alone with their predicament. The other half of humanity, too, finds
it is not exempt from malfunction. Just a few months ago, the disease "female
sexual dysfunction" hit the headlines. But female sexuality being
what it is, women probably need something more than a pill. Simple enhanced
blood flow, as laboratory tests have shown, is not good enough. So a female
Viagra won't do the job as well as a vibrator or a dildo - soon to be widely
and cheaply available from a Boots near you. A vibrator outperforms even
a man on Viagra.
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- More serious aids to female performance are in the pipeline.
In the next few years, patches and drugs to enhance vaginal lubrication
and sensitivity will become available. A US surgeon has already patented
a pacemaker-sized device which, implanted under the skin, triggers an orgasm.
Last month, clinical trials for the device were approved by the US Food
and Drug Administration. Within a decade, it will be normal for every woman
to have a perpetual orgasm whenever she wants it, wherever she needs it.
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- Love, too, will be available on demand. Recent research
on love suggests that it consists of three basic biochemical elements.
First, testosterone - which produces lust. Second, a group of amphetamine-like
chemicals (dopamine, noradrenaline and phenylethylamine) produces feelings
of euphoria that lead to infatuation. Third, if a relationship survives
the first two rushes, a new biochemical response emerges, based on oxytocin,
vasopressin and endorphins. This produces feelings of intimacy, trust and
affection. Pharmaceutical companies are currently working on this third
phase. So a "love pill" that modulates your subtler emotions
and takes you straight to deep feelings of intimacy, trust and affection
is just over the horizon. Science will fulfil the fairy tale. It will come
up with a genuine love potion.
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- The sexual liberation of every woman and man approaches
its apotheosis: availability on demand with peak performance, assured gratification
and enduring emotion. But much more has been let out of the bottle. The
physical and psychological barriers to sex, identified as the ultimate
metaphor for all the ills of humanity, had to be overcome. The consequence
is that most sexual taboos have evaporated. No matter how dark your thoughts,
how unethical your desires, how absurd your fetish, everything is normal.
Your desire to dress up as a stuffed toy, your dreams of having sex with
obese or dead people, your obsession with plastic or rubber, your fixation
with asphyxiation - all that is sexually driven is OK.
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- Pornography's status as a taboo is rapidly disappearing.
It has become part of the mainstream of western culture. Ancient Egyptians,
Greeks and Romans had their erotica as esoterica on scrolls, pottery and
frescos. Hindus have their erotic sculptures on temples. But in western
culture pornography in unparalleled quantities and forms is communicated
in every mass medium. Never before in history has there been so much pornography
to be had by so many in such numerous ways.
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- Everyone is now just a click away from explicit, hard-core
material. It is impossible to miss pornography on the internet because
it seeks you out persistently, unannounced, at every opportunity. It is
there on Channels 4 and 5, Sky and innumerable digital channels every night.
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- On MTV's reality show The Real World, you can witness
bisexual group sex. Explicit sex, including shots of erect penises, can
be viewed on Sky's revisionist western drama Deadwood. Michael Winterbottom's
9 Songs, which will go on general release shortly, offers a stream of close-ups
of intercourse, fellatio, ejaculation and cunnilingus. The French art-house
director Catherine Breillat has pioneered the transfer of porn stars into
mainstream cinema. Her new film, Anatomy of Hell, is as graphic as it is
bizarre. And if that doesn't satisfy you, you can go to a new breed of
"pornaoke bars", just opened in Edinburgh, where you can groan
and grind karaoke-style to porno tapes.
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- When pornography becomes normal, where will we go next?
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- There are only two taboos left: sex with children, and
incest. Attempts to "normalise" paedophilia have begun. A thesis
by Richard Yuill, awarded a PhD by Glasgow University in December 2004,
suggests that sex between adults and minors is a good and positive thing.
Yuill's research, based on interviews with paedophiles and their victims,
"challenges the assumption" that paedophiles are inherently abusive.
It is only a matter of time before other academics start arguing that incest,
too, is decent and wholesome. Graphic art films and television documentaries
will follow. The organisations campaigning for the rights of paedophiles
will have their case for "normality" made for them.
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- They may then be able to take their place among the bewildering
array of sexual orientations already being normalised. Once upon a time,
there were heterosexuals and the love that dared not speak its name. Gay
men and lesbians have long since lost their reticence. Then bisexuals,
transsexuals and the "kinky" found their identity. Now we have
intersexuals and the polyamorous. A few months ago, New Scientist announced
the discovery, in breathless prose, of asexuals. These folk don't like
to have sex - horror of horrors - with anybody. There are even orientations
within orientations. So we have such self-definition as non-op transsexual,
TG butch, femme queen, gender-queer, cross-dresser, third gender, drag
king or queen and transboy. In one recent episode of Channel 5's CSI: crime
scene investigation, a murder victim was said to be part of a community
of "plushies", people who enjoy sex while dressed up as stuffed
animals.
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- It is now normal to have your breasts removed or added
to, have new genitals constructed, or sprinkle a dash of hormones for the
appropriate, desired effect. Things are about to become even more complex.
Within a decade or so, you will be able to modify your body almost totally,
as you wish. You will be able to turn off all physical signs of gender,
switch off the hormones and get rid of all secondary sexual characteristics.
Then you can add on the bits you wish and "sculpt" your body
in any shape you like. When gene therapy becomes common, things will be
even easier. Already, there are people who are experimenting with this;
and a "body-mod" subculture is thriving on the internet.
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- What you can't do in reality will soon be available in
simulation. The emerging technology of haptics, or the telecommunication
of sensation using a computer interface, will enable you to live your most
horrific dreams in virtual reality. Haptic technologies simulate physical
sensation of real objects and feed them to the user. The first generation
of haptic technology can be experienced in certain video games for the
Sony PlayStation where the joystick is used to simulate vibrations. The
next generation, on its way from Rutgers University, will simulate pressure,
texture and heat. Combine this with state-of-the-art graphics and some
innovative software and you have a complete pornographic universe. As Eric
Garland points out in the December 2004 issue of the American magazine
The Futurist, among its first uses could be "pornography involving
children and featuring violence". But what's the harm, as it is only
a digitised child?
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- Am I the only person to wonder if the constant shifting
of the boundaries of the normal, while increasing our obsession with sex,
has really improved our sex lives? On the contrary, I would argue, it has
led to a decline in real sex. Genuine intimacy cannot be generated through
a pill. Neither can sincere, unconditional love be simulated. When sex
is reduced to mechanics and endurance, there is little to differentiate
it from plumbing and maintenance. When gender becomes meaningless, sex
becomes empty. When sexual choice becomes an end in itself, then the end
is destined to be tragic.
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- Sex used to be intercourse because it was part of a context,
a loving relationship. When sex is just sex, without any context, what
good does it do you? That is the crux of the problem. It becomes the ultimate
narcissism, the sole gratification of self-love.
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- Welcome to the masturbatory society.
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- _____
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- Ziauddin Sardar is editor of Futures, the monthly journal
of policy, planning and futures studies.
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- http://www.newstatesman.com/200501010019
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