Love Hurts

But does it really?

Hello fellow travelers, from the Amtrak Empire, riding south along the Hudson River. If you get a chance to take this trip, I recommend getting a window seat and staring at the majestic river. In late summer, we took a Hudson River cruise that passed a boat graveyard and century-old lighthouses and on which the conductor pointed out 19th century mansions cut into the hillsides and told stories of macabre and glory that happened therein.

I opened my email this morning to find a new post on Persuasion. There are smart people writing here, and I usually find the essays to be considered and fair. Today’s piece, “Brutal in the Bedroom: Casual sex is increasingly violent. Wasn't #MeToo supposed to improve matters?” struck me as neither. Granted, I am not the demographic; I have sex with one person. Still, the article was ringing the bell that, for women, “pain and degradation—once fringe—have become part of mainstream sex.”

I haven’t heard about this new phenomenon, and I know a lot of women having sex with multiple partners. Also, while I am not in the casual sex market, I was for decades, and not once did I have a man try anything like that with me. Let me put a finer point on this: all sex acts were consensual, and if anything, men really, really wanted to know how to make me happy. Your mileage may vary, maybe even among partners, because you have agency, right? Right?

(NB: the above image is not from the Persuasion piece. It’s a GIF somewhat widely tweeted in 2017. Some of you may recognize it! In any case, more on this in an upcoming #MeToo story.)

The author of the essay, Zoe Strimpel, seemed to be saying that, as a species, heterosexuals are locked in a new and alarming devolutionary embrace, one women are powerless to escape and which assures their degradation and destruction. Which, if you think about it, is kind of self-defeating play for the dudes.

While factors included the usual culprits — online porn, Fifty Shades of Grey, plus, for currency, the song “WAP” — the hook for the piece was the pandemic. “Lockdown-induced boredom and stress are one explanation, but it is also clear that a new set of sexual norms is afoot,” Strimpel wrote. “In April, online retailers reported an 83% surge in searches for such items, particularly handcuffs and whips, compared with the year before.”

Was it really “afoot”? The essay omits that the stat, as cited in a Love the Sales piece, includes that searches for “lingerie” and “vibrators” were up the same amount or more during the same time period. But there’s not much political hay to be made from people buying more teddies and rabbits so.

People will freight facts to favor a theory, and Strimpel appears to have pre-determined hers, or perhaps more accurately, cites that others have: “Feminists have long observed how the market cannibalizes everything from politics to emotion to sex. Contemporary heterosexual casual sex, with its strange mix of political vigilance, emotional control and pornographic flourish, has become a combination of all three—and is sold back to us as such.”

I am so not buying this. What illumination can such an essay offer? How does it sow anything but fear and discontentment to insinuate that human nature is undergoing changes that endanger only women. Or is that the point? To nod along with the idea that women are so helpless they cannot help but be complicit in their own abuse? That, like flotsam on the ocean, we are incapable of not going along with whatever it is men want? Sorry, Persuasion, I’m calling bullshit on this one.

Bit o’ housekeeping: these Substacks have all been free, albeit a lovely handful of you have subscribed. In the new year, there will be more content if less of it free. Consider subscribing!

Love and hot pie xx Nancy