Right Here, Right Now | The Sex Issue

by A. E. O'Neill

[Originally published February 3, 2003 at ignorance.tv]

Lately I've been meeting all these women with jobs in the sex industry... not "sex workers," a sensitive term for Strip-O-Gram girls and crack hoes, mind you. The sex industry encompasses everything from educators to film producers to retail entrepreneurs; sex shop proprietors, porn producers and anyone calling herself a "Sexpert."

A few years ago, I ran into an old friend who told me enthusiastically about her latest project, to write and direct a semi-improvisational film that would address a range of sexual issues faced by people in their twenties and thirties. The idea was intriguing — and her treatment of it surprisingly original — so when she asked my boyfriend and I to participate in her survey, we agreed. It was great to see a woman so passionate about adding her vision of sexuality to the global forum.

A little over a year ago, another friend invited me to be one of seven women in a roundtable discussion on various sexual topics for a new web site. The site's intrepid creators were setting out to define — and then target — that elusive, invisible market; the female consumer of erotica.

QueenErotica would be a web site created specifically for — and mostly by — women and would feature erotic fiction, photo layouts using "real" couples in various male-female combinations (to appeal to a wide range of lifestyles and aesthetic tastes), female-oriented quizzes and forums, sex toy recommendations and erotic book and movie reviews.

So, two weeks later, there I was with six other women, most of whom I'd just met, talking about sex with a microphone and a video camera in my face. We all warmed up to the conversation quickly but, as we went around the room discussing things like infidelity and experimentation, the objective began to seem more and more unattainable. I had this growing suspicion that women are not only radically different from men when it comes to our sexual preferences — we're radically different from each other.

The site turned out to be a success, though, so much so that its creators were able to sell it after only a year online. During the course of that year, my friend worked on it full time, reviewing books and sex toys, writing erotic fiction and co-authoring a "He Said, She Said"-style advice column. For her, it was a chance to pole-vault over her few remaining inhibitions. For a while, they even contracted me to do adult video reviews and I loved it when people would ask, "What do you do?"

...because I got to say, "I get paid to watch porn." (...heheh... yeah... porn rules...)

For "research," a few of us attended a "sex toy party" together — this is a new phenomenon that's gaining popularity, where a representative from a local sex store comes to your house with a trunk full of goodies and does a little presentation for you all the friends you can squeeze into your living room.

Our lady "broke the ice" by having all twenty of us write down a sexual fantasy, then passing them around and having each of us read one out loud (mercifully, my reading assignment consisted of only five words and a little drawing). It was fun, though — and a little bizarre — watching twenty women try to seem adult and polite while passing items like a gyrating pink Manga-cat/bunny-looking vibrator around the room.

Last weekend, an old friend introduced me to this woman he's known for ages; she and I had spent so many years in parallel friendship to our common acquaintance that we felt like old friends too. We immediately fell into a deep, intimate conversation in which she told me that she frequently hosts parties just like the one I had attended. She's one of the owners of a local sex shop called La Luna Gifts, which is geared towards women and couples.

She says that she has never felt so sure of the social relevance of her work or received such sincere reassurances that she is providing a much-needed and appreciated service. Women write her letters expressing their gratitude after learning things in her store that they would never have learned from their mothers, sisters, teachers or friends.

Later, we talked about what a wonderfully open and rewarding relationship she has ("so far, fingers crossed") with her twelve-year old daughter, a relationship that is (not surprisingly) similar to mine with my mother. I ventured to speak for her daughter and assured her that her instincts are correct; honesty and open communication are absolutely essential to the kind of motherhood that produces healthy, happy adult women.

It felt important to impress it upon her — before the onset of her daughter's teenage years — that she's doing something right where so many others do well-intended damage out of fear and insecurity. Of course, I have to wonder how her daughter feels about her mother's profession right now. Most twelve year-olds are embarrassed enough by the very existence of their parents; the idea of them talking about sex is more than most would be able to bear.

I was fourteen when "9 ? Weeks" came out on video and after hearing about it for months, I was dying to see it. When my parents returned from the video store with it, however, my anticipation turned to horror. It quickly became clear that I was going to have to watch it with them. I sat on the floor and stared straight ahead through the entire movie, determined to avoid their glances in my direction. I still could see my mother out of the corner of my eye, though, staring at me incredulously every time Mickey Rourke's character did something misogynistic. I could practically hear her wondering, "Where did I go wrong? How could I have raised a daughter who would find this crap appealing?" I may still be scarred from that experience. Moving on?

It's fascinating to hear all these women talk about what they do and there can be little doubt about our progress when you think about it in the context of history. Looking back just one generation, we can see profound and pervasive changes in every aspect of our lives.

My grandmother's generation was the first to see women in the workforce, during World War II, and the first to grow up with the right to vote. My mother's generation protested for and pioneered equal pay and abortion rights and braved the early, imperfect incarnations of birth control pills and IUDs to declare their sexual autonomy.

Several decades after Freud and The Pill set the revolution in motion, modern pundits of gender politics and experts on psychosexual development still command the public's sex-obsessed attention with countless theories about the differences between men and women. After all this time, many of them are still trying to answer Freud's most confounding question, "what do women want?"

Men and women are a little closer to understanding each other these days but you don't have to venture farther than the nearest newsstand to conclude that there hasn't been a ceasefire in the War of the Sexes — it's just evolved into a Cold War-style stockpiling of arms. Cosmopolitan, Elle and Glamour face off across the aisles from Maxim, Stuff and Gear, all of them promising secrets and strategies for conquering the Other.

Surely, we're better off on this side of the sexual revolution but you could hardly fault the women who grew up on the front lines for wondering if they merely helped to secure women the right to be as irresponsible, promiscuous and commitment-phobic as men. Those men, in turn, have been granted the freedom to be as youth-obsessed, vain and neurotic as women. Have we abandoned our hopes of progress for the "mutual assured destruction" of a balanced playing field?

On one hand, it's hard to criticize women for the same behavior that men have always gotten away with. But, is it what women really want? Or is it simply easier to demand sexual equality than to fight for economic or political power? I guess that's just a question of our bargaining power.

I could believe the current climate is a win-win situation if I knew that it was making people happier. They look happy? but it's hard to tell through all the silicone, steroids, Zoloft, bulimia, Rogaine, anorexia, Nicotrol, erectile dysfunction, Paxil, collagen, Viagra, alcohol, Botox and synthetic pheromones.