I feel sorry for the sex
This interview first appeared on 02.08.2024
in the online magazine MyGiulia.
- Pamela Russmann
The myGiulia theme for August is "What a feeling". What feeling do you associate with sex?
- Beate Absalon
In English I would say "anticipation", which unfortunately is usually translated as "Vorfreude" in German. However, in the English meaning of this spellbound expectation, both can be there at the same time: Joy and fear. And what I like about the word anticipation is that it refers to a state that has not yet occurred. I also associate this with sex, this eternal circling of something that somehow cannot be definitively grasped.
- Pamela Russmann
Your book is called "Not giving a fuck", but you are not a sex therapist, you are a cultural scientist. Why did you write a book about sexual reluctance, sexless desire and listless sex? It's not a guidebook.
- Beate Absalon
Guidebooks tend to promise a cure and provide the most efficient prescription possible. The desired end goal is usually already clear. And it usually boils down to the promise of getting the wind back in your sails after a lull in bed. I often have the impression of being forced into a ready-made "this-is-how-it-should-be" template. The cultural studies approach provides a different kind of relief. Suffering is placed in a wider historical and social context. You understand that it is not you yourself who is "wrong", but that there is something wrong with the circumstances. This is extremely relieving. And it challenges you to find your own way of dealing with your own love life that really has something to do with you instead of just conforming to an external norm.
- Pamela Russmann
Who actually came up with the idea of saying "so and so often - that's normal"?
-Beate Absalon
The question of "how often" is a question of measurement, i.e. a scientific-experimental approach. Sexologists such as Alfred Kinsey, William Masters and Virginia Johnson popularized this in the 1950s and 1960s. Statistics still shape our understanding of sex today. However, many things fall by the wayside. If we know how often people have sex on average, this says nothing about the quality. I recently came across a study in which researchers found a correlation between satisfaction and regular sex and assumed that the happiness of the study participants should double if they slept together twice as often. However, their happiness decreased. It is not sex that is important for happiness. It's the question of what we feel like doing and what enables us to enjoy life.
- Pamela Russmann
You are part of the so-called sex-positive movement. Please explain: what is it about and why are you no longer so happy with the status quo of this lifestyle?
-Beate Absalon
Sex-positive movements are directed against sexophobia, i.e. against taboos, abstinence education or moralizing prohibitions. Sex-positive feminism is based on tolerance towards sexual diversity and the principle of consensuality: everything can, nothing must (as long as everyone involved agrees). I have nothing against that, on the contrary. I just have the impression that sex positivity alone is not enough. Not only because sex positivity can create pressure to have a lot of sex or to have extravagant sex. But because patriarchal oppression has many faces. It's not just sexual expression that is suppressed, but also the right not to have sex. We are considered frigid, boring and broken if we do it too rarely. Paradoxical rules prevail. Under the male gaze, some women are considered special "trophies" as long as they don't sleep with too many men, but remain seductive and willing despite their chaste restraint. This is why I suggest that sex negativity is needed alongside sex positivity, understood as a critical analysis of the sex that is forced upon us and makes us unhappy.
- Pamela Russmann
Are our bodies, our senses, our pleasure receptors on strike because they are "smarter" than our minds and no longer want to perform for the sake of performing?
-Beate Absalon
Symptoms such as vaginismus, erectile dysfunction, listlessness or even panic attacks can have many causes. But yes, it is the thesis of my book that the matter of our body is stubborn and perhaps also intelligent in a convoluted way. I would like to suggest that we do not immediately go on a war footing with unpleasant disorders that stand in the way of the hoped-for "this-is-how-it-should-be" sex, but instead approach them with curiosity and without judgment. What if we take a look at their unruliness without glossing over it, but with care? Perhaps they are on our side? Maybe they want to tell us something? Maybe they are rebelling against something for us? Maybe they are leading us off the beaten track and into interesting territory?
- Pamela Russmann
Social and societal movements run in waves and are reactions to previous practices. After many years of the crisp, widely recognized motto "sex sells", are people who feel no increased interest in sexual action trendy in 2024?
-Beate Absalon
You could draw that conclusion when It girls like Julia Fox roll their eyes and describe sex as the most boring thing in the world. Women in particular, but also Generation Z, are increasingly describing themselves as voluntarily celibate. However, we must not forget that they are not against sex per se. Because there is no such thing as "the" sex. They are fed up with a certain form of sex. I suppose it is the sex that I describe in my book in terms of four characteristics: 1) when it is assumed that sex is inevitable, 2) when it is overloaded with meaning, 3) when it is used as a strategic tool and 4) when its ubiquity voraciously displaces other forms of intimacy.
- Pamela Russmann
In your book, you describe how the quality of a couple's relationship is determined by how regularly sex takes place. Relationships are questioned or ended when the desire for the partner is no longer there. Is a relationship only valuable if sexuality and intimacy are lived together?
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