{"id":833,"date":"2010-06-27T08:46:41","date_gmt":"2010-06-27T08:46:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/roddreher\/2010\/06\/o-sex-where-is-thy-sting.html"},"modified":"2010-06-27T08:46:41","modified_gmt":"2010-06-27T08:46:41","slug":"o-sex-where-is-thy-sting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/roddreher\/2010\/06\/o-sex-where-is-thy-sting.html","title":{"rendered":"O sex, where is thy sting?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Camille Paglia thinks it’s ridiculous that middle-class white people have to rely on pills to rev up their sex lives — and that that fact indicates a deeper cultural malaise:<\/a><\/p>\n

In the discreet white-collar realm, men and women are interchangeable, doing the same, mind-based work. Physicality is suppressed; voices are lowered and gestures curtailed in sanitized office space. Men must neuter themselves, while ambitious women postpone procreation. Androgyny is bewitching in art, but in real life it can lead to stagnation and boredom, which no pill can cure.
\nMeanwhile, family life has put middle-class men in a bind; they are simply cogs in a domestic machine commanded by women. Contemporary moms have become virtuoso super-managers of a complex operation focused on the care and transport of children. But it’s not so easy to snap over from Apollonian control to Dionysian delirium.
\nNor are husbands offering much stimulation in the male display department: visually, American men remain perpetual boys, as shown by the bulky T-shirts, loose shorts and sneakers they wear from preschool through midlife. The sexes, which used to occupy intriguingly separate worlds, are suffering from over-familiarity, a curse of the mundane.There’s no mystery left.
\nThe elemental power of sexuality has also waned in American popular culture. Under the much-maligned studio production code, Hollywood made movies sizzling with flirtation and romance. But from the early ’70s on, nudity was in, and steamy build-up was out. A generation of filmmakers lost the skill of sophisticated innuendo. The situation worsened in the ’90s, when Hollywood pirated video games to turn women into cartoonishly pneumatic superheroines and sci-fi androids, fantasy figures without psychological complexity or the erotic needs of real women.
\nFurthermore, thanks to a bourgeois white culture that values efficient bodies over voluptuous ones, American actresses have desexualized themselves, confusing sterile athleticism with female power. Their current Pilates-honed look is taut and tense — a boy’s thin limbs and narrow hips combined with amplified breasts. Contrast that with Latino and African-American taste, which runs toward the healthy silhouette of the bootylicious Beyonc\u00e9.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Camille Paglia thinks it’s ridiculous that middle-class white people have to rely on pills to rev up their sex lives — and that that fact indicates a deeper cultural malaise: In the discreet white-collar realm, men and women are interchangeable, doing the same, mind-based work. Physicality is suppressed; voices are lowered and gestures curtailed in…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-833","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-morals"],"yoast_head":"\nO sex, where is thy sting? - Rod Dreher<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"noindex, nofollow\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"O sex, where is thy sting? - Rod Dreher\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Camille Paglia thinks it’s ridiculous that middle-class white people have to rely on pills to rev up their sex lives — and that that fact indicates a deeper cultural malaise: In the discreet white-collar realm, men and women are interchangeable, doing the same, mind-based work. 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