Flailing, Emptied Bodies in a Culture of Isolation

let's get sexy

Sex is a lagging indicator. As the historians John D’Emilio and Estelle Freedman have written, sexual behaviors reflect everything that happens around them: “Political movements that attempt to change sexual ideas and practices seem to flourish when an older system is in disarray and a new one forming.” Radical changes in sexual practices tell you that significant social change is already well advanced, and sex is trying to catch up.

It appears that an older system is in disarray. Polyamory litters the media landscape, suddenly, like a memo went out.

See if you can spot a trend, because the last week has brought big features on polycules and their enthusiasts from New York magazine, the New York Times, and the New York Post. If you live in Brooklyn, have hand sanitizer and a reliable source of Valtrex.

As the Times notes, television and publishing are similarly rushing to join in:

Along with novels, TV shows and movies that depict throuples, polycules and other permutations of open relationships, there is a growing body of nonfiction literature that explores the ethics and logistical hurdles of polyamory. Recent titles include memoirs like the journalist Rachel Krantz’s 2022 book “Open: An Uncensored Memoir of Love, Liberation, and Non-Monogamy,” and self-help and inspirational books like “The Anxious Person’s Guide to Non-Monogamy,” “The Polyamory Paradox” and “A Polyamory Devotional,” which has 365 daily reflections for the polyamorous.

I’m begging you: read some of this stuff, because you’re not going to believe what I say about it. At least skim the thing in New York; here’s the link again. Here’s a link to the Amazon preview of A Polyamory Devotional, with daily thoughts about mindfulness and relationship structures. Now, armed with evidence, here’s my Big Conclusion:

Reading about this shit is like watching paint dry. It’s astoundingly sexless.

Polyamory turns out to be a front for therapeutic culture and a neurotic love of mirrors. The sexy thing with Alice and Anna and Nick and Sarah involves a lot of checking in and managing expectations and maintaining supportive dialogue. Actual quote from Nick: “Some people like to run marathons. We like to do polyamory, complex relationship stuff. Sarah’s favorite activity for the two of us to do is couples therapy.” You’re jealous of all that heat and pleasure, right? It’s so sexy that it’s like running a marathon. Of talking. With a therapist.

From the Times, here are portions of two proximate paragraphs about the polyamorous writer Molly Roden Winter, who has a new book on the way:

She had to cast off internalized sexism and her tendency to put others’ needs before her own, issues she worked through in therapy. What began as sexual thrill-seeking led unexpectedly to self-discovery.

….Winter recounts her experiments with butt plugs, fisting and anal intercourse, and catalogs her extramarital relationships — which range from brief encounters in seedy hotel rooms to romantic partnerships that last for years — in meticulous detail.

She discovered her issues in therapy; then, butt plugs at the Motel 6. It’s quite a journey. I feel inclined to leave the ass focus to a credentialed Freudian, but IIRC the anal stage is associated with toddlers and the nascent control of bodily functions. The journey of self-discovery leads to the bowels. I liked Erica Jong more in her first iteration, before mainstream culture downloaded the update.

Sexuality, Camille Paglia has written, sits at “the intricate intersection of nature and culture…Society is our frail barrier against nature. When the prestige of state and religion is low, men are free, but they find freedom intolerable and seek new ways to enslave themselves, through drugs or depression. My theory is that whenever sexual freedom is sought or achieved, sadomasochism will not be far behind. Romanticism always turns into decadence.”

All this freedom; all these people babbling like Oprah and shoving things up their asses.

As the cultural tsunami of sexually mechanical therapeutic polyamory builds to a climax — I apologize for this sentence — the display of performative sexuality becomes more insistent. A Senate aide videotaping his hearing room hook-up to post the video on the Internet, then threatening to sue when he got fired and people talked about him; a candidate for the Virginia legislature complaining that her subscriber-streamed sex videos were used against her politically; the chancellor of a state university fired over the OnlyFans page that allowed paying customers to watch him have sex with his wife. A reminder: How did American Psycho depict psychopathy?

The majority opinion in Lawrence v. Texas, which struck down state laws forbidding sexual acts between same-sex partners, was about intimate conduct: “Freedom extends beyond spatial bounds. Liberty presumes an autonomy of self that includes freedom of thought, belief, expression, and certain intimate conduct. The instant case involves liberty of the person both in its spatial and more transcendent dimensions.” How quaint.

Our emerging intimacy slouches ahead without intimacy, a performative and disconnected coupling with paid subscribers and a remarkable absence — I’m fixating on Molly Roden Winter’s fists and plugs — of sex. Go back up and read the description from the Times of the growing literature on polyamory: It deals with the “logistical hurdles,” like supplying an armored battalion.

The writer Stella Morabito recently described The Weaponization of Loneliness, and it seems pretty clear that the sudden cultural explosion in the depiction of performative and acquisitive sexual behavior follows a period of enforced isolation and social demonization. It’s lockdown sex for the where’s-your-mask set, hating unvaccinated bodies for their filth and danger, trying to find pleasure from the body by dragging in more bodies or broadcasting the body to more eyes.

“Winter recounts her experiments with butt plugs, fisting and anal intercourse….”

Never has a writer had a more appropriate name, or more perfect timing.