Research

I do spend a great deal of time thinking, talking, reading and occasionally practicing sex. One of my favorite writers is Jack Rinella. I don't always agree with him, which is great! Life would be dull if everyone always agreed. Anyway, I wanted to share his most recent column since it is one that I do mostly agree with. - Jack

for Issue number 50
Sunday, November 25, 2007

What Do You Believe About Sex?
By Jack Rinella

As I begin my research into the level, kind, and quality of education
given at our BDSM events, I wonder how often we teach about sex. There
are one a few topics about sex in my own repertoire, such as “Better
Blow Jobs” and “Bedroom Sex,” but they are really only a few among
a long list. My recollection is that sex as a topic per se isn’t a
very popular among us.

My guess is that we don’t teach about it because we make the
assumption that adults know enough about sex that we don’t have to teach it.
Personally I disagree with that estimation. I think that there are very
few sexually-adept players among us, though I have no idea if that
statement is correct. After all, no one has ever invited me to “rate
their performance.” Of course, that ignores the fact that there are
those among us who strongly protest that BDSM has nothing to do with sex.

Does that mean we need a category in our contests called “Sexual
Performance?” If so, then when does a fuck rate a ten or how do you know
whether a blow job is a three or a nine?

A New York Times article (August 23, 2007) about sexual activity in
older Americans noted: “There’s a large perception out there that sex
somehow does not occur in the later years.” The story was based on
research that concluded “Most Americans remain sexually active into
their 60s, and nearly half continue to have sex regularly into their early
70s, researchers are reporting today as a result of the most
comprehensive national survey to date of sexual behavior among older adults.”

Here, then, is an example of the discrepancy between generally-held
beliefs and reality. I bet that there are a large number of such
discrepancies among us, especially when it comes to our beliefs about sexual
activity.

The problem, of course, is that we live in a culture where discussion
about something as intimate as sex is often considered inappropriate.
Our school systems reflect that belief every time the topic of sex
education in school is discussed. Even when sex education is attempted, it
is, as far as I can tell, a matter of either biology or morality. Has
anyone ever heard of high school classes where better technique is taught?
I certainly haven’t.

Now I will admit that I am reflecting my own experience. My parents
never taught me about human sexuality, though my mom did offer to answer
any questions I had. Dad was notoriously silent on the subject. I
remember one day in the eighth grade that Father Douglas took all the boys
into one classroom and Sister took all the girls into another for a
“talk.” It left me with more questions than answers. I suppose that is
to be expected when the sex educators are (or are thought to be)
celibate.

What we feel about sex is highly dependent upon a great number of
influences, many of them having to do with the moral implications of human
sexuality and the unconscious ideas that we hold about it. How many of
us were taught, for instance, that touching one’s genitals was
“dirty?” As a Catholic I was routinely bombarded with the notion that the
“Holy Family” (Jesus, Mary and Joseph) were holier because both mom
and dad were forever virgins. Face it, few married people were ever
called saints. The virgins among us seem to have cornered that market.

I have recently finished a rather academic book entitled “Sin,
Science, and the Sex Police,” by John Money, Ph.D. (Prometheus Books,
1998). Among the many topics he covers is the fundamental belief, held in
both Eastern and Western cultures about “semen conservation.” In the
east, there is the widespread belief that a man must conserve his semen
as it contains vital forces. Wasting semen depletes a man’s energy
and shortens his life span. (Yes that’s a gross over-simplification.)

In the west a similar belief is held about masturbation. I still
remember riding the bus to school one day (I was a freshman) when Brett (a
sophomore and therefore an authority on the matter) told me that men only
had so many orgasms in their bodies and when they had shot the
requisite number, they were forever spent. I would have to be careful, he
noted, to conserve my jism, lest I run out of it.

Today such an idea sounds absurd to me; then I doubted him but it was
still a memorable and I thought) possibly true statement. Looking back
at the number of times I confessed to the sin of masturbation certainly
indicates that I had some kind of guilt over “self-abuse.”

If I had only been raised in Sambia.

“The virtual antithesis of semen-conservation theory is found in the
reinvestment theory of semen recycling, extant until recently among the
stone-aged Sambia people of the Eastern Highlands of New Guinea. They
were studied by the anthropological sexologist, Gilbert Herdt.”

Sambian ”initiation into the rites of puberty begins as early as age
seven or eight. Boys are then removed from the softening influences of
females and infants by leaving the family dwelling to live in the
men’s clubhouse, a large structure in the center of the village from which
all females are excluded. The first stage of the boys’ initiation
into warrior hood is a week-long sequence of sometimes brutally abusive
hazing which, like military hazing in our own culture, requires total
subservience and obedience. One of the ceremonies is named ‘sucking the
flute,’ which is a metaphor for fellatio. On that same ceremonial
night, the initiates are fed men’s milk [semen] by sucking the penises
of the older adolescent boys who are still underage for marriage. The
initiates continue ingesting men’s milk until they have matured enough
to be able to ejaculate their own and recycle it to the next
generation of young initiates. After the tribal marriage age of nineteen, they
recycle
their semen to their wives, for a brief period orally, and then for the
rest of their lives vaginally.” (Money, pp
276-277).

Glimpses of sexual practices of cultures other than our own provide
interesting and sometimes provocative reflections. They give us the
opportunity to reconsider our own practices and the underlying assumptions
that sustain them.

Another book, “Harmful to Minors” by Judith Levine, dispels the
myth that providing children with knowledge about adult sexuality is
dangerous. Her radical theory, well-based in her research, is that we do
more harm than good by our refusal to properly educate our youth about
sexual activity.

I have long felt our children are robbed of healthy information by the
way we hide the “birds and the bees” from their sight. At least in
previous and more agricultural societies, young people knew that
copulation was a fact of life, seen not only in the barn-yard animals, but in
many societies by children who slept in the same room (tent, hut,
cave, etc.) as their parents.

The fact that we have so “sanitized” sex from the education of
children while simultaneously presenting them with a myriad of
sexually-themed media provides a glaring example of the paradoxes and
contradictions that plague our sex-negative culture.

To think that our subculture is immune from the sex-negativity in which
it is exists is to ignore our own prejudices, fears, and shame. That
said, it’s time for all of us to appraise our own needs and to move
toward a healthy view of sex and encourage others, especially event
producers, to provide venues for just such a move.

Have a great week. You can leave me email at mrjackr@leathermail.com or
visit my website at
http://leatherviews.c.topica.com/maaiPxsabCZd7a8jIv6b/ where you can
subscribe to this column and receive it weekly. Copyright 2007 by Jack
Rinella, all rights reserved.