Christopher Shay

CHRISTOPHER SHAY

The Spectator sex column is ruining my sex life, and chances are, it 's ruining yours too. It's not really Miriam Datskowsky's fault. It's no one's fault, or, more accurately, it's everyone's fault. We've all been warped by the same sources. We're being told and probably telling others that we should demand great sex. Today, sex is no longer a secret, nor even a right. Great sex is a duty, and we're all obligated to take part. In the countless sexual litanies of modern America, sex has been stripped of its spiritual and emotional value, and a superficial physicality of sex remains at the center of discourse.

Whether it is measured in minutes, inches, or cup sizes, sex has become a competitive sport. On some level, everyone worries if they are technically and physically talented in bed, but people now also worry if they're having as much fun as everybody else. There is nothing inherently wrong with enjoying sex merely for its physical and mechanical aspects. However, the constant dialogue about sex, present both in the media and in private conversation, yields not better sex, but an atmosphere of competition and preconceived expectations of what the perfect sexual experience should entail.

Sex advice columns , as found in the Spectator, Cosmo, The Village Voice, and Men's Health to name a few, offer advice on how a person should traverse today's sexual landscape. All too often, the columns come off as modern manners books that parrots the prevailing view. Instead of being sexually liberated, these articles contribute to a sexual discourse that leaves both men and women feeling inadequate. Her superficial expectation of what great sex means strips away the importance of the emotional and spiritual aspects of sexuality. Love is something to navigate around, to the point that there is even a “sex/love conflict.” The focus is unapologetically on the physical and how to deal with the potentially awkward emotions that interfere with sex as merely a physical act. Art, sex, emotion, and the spirit are not bound together, but rather are in constant conflict with each other. Emotions surround the sexual act, but they are never unified with it. These articles do not explicitly preclude such a unification so much as they are written in a language that has no terms for it. Sex is limited to the physical, and with this limited framework, the columns all contribute to the view of sex as a competitive sport.

As sex advice columns attempt to redefine the rules of sexual engagement and offer clear-cut solutions to the problems plaguing the post-modern community, they really just reinforce heteronormative, traditional conceptions of what sex means. For instance, in one article, Datskowsky presents penetration as the defining moment of sexuality. Why do we feel the need to focus on the notion of virginity, and why do we need to be given simple answers? Datskowsky's undemanding answer falls into a history of classifying sex into binaries; everything is normal or abnormal. At times, Datskowsky tries to dismiss norms, but her need to explicitly display this overturning of convention only shows that norms act as guidelines for her writing. Clearly, such deep-seated deference to norms is not limited to the Spectator. The popular question and answer columns or the revealing letters in Cosmopolitan play similar roles. These sex columns become mired in definitions of what is normal and what is pathological. These classifications are not liberating, but cheapening and ultimately confining.

One of the major anxiety-inducing aspects of sex columns comes from the confessional nature of sexual discussion. Michel Foucault sees the desire to confess as one of the cornerstones of the production of truth about sex, and the sex columns bear this out. A sex columnist's judgments of his or her sex life hurl already established norms onto the black and white pages of the newspaper. The very nature of a sex column standardizes sex to one person's vision and fails to create a multi-faceted sexual outlook.

Once the reader has accepted a definition of normal, the reader will either fall within the spectrum or out of it. In either case, sex ends up devalued. On one hand, someone with sexual practices outside of the norm might feel anxious over his or her supposed abnormality. On the other hand, someone whose sex is completely normal' might worry that he or she is missing out. No one wants to have normal sex — normal means average, boring, quotidian. The pressure is to have normatively acceptable, yet spectacular sex. The idea that a majority of people are having sex the exact same way that you are rips away any feelings of personal discovery. Sex should be an area where you feel unique. Sex should be an arena of unlimited possibility, a time without any worries of what others are doing or how well they are doing it.

This anxiety has led to the decline of the concept of sex as a place for the mingling of passions. Today the media severs the artistic, emotional, and mystical aspects of sex. They talk dirty details: who put what where, how big, how fast, how long. While the confessions may be titillating, one wonders: is that really all there is to it? There is a difficult line to draw between what should be public and private knowledge. Public awareness of STDs is important, but with less public comparison, sex can become both personal and liberated. The Spectator should leave the technical sex education to Go Ask Alice! and eliminate the sex column. Instead of obsessing over norms and comparisons, we should simply figure out what we love about sex as individuals and then enjoy the ride.