Monday, April 9, 2007
Rock Hard, Explosive, and Profitable: “The sexual performance perfection industry”
filed under: State of Sex Ed, We Are The Sex Media by Melissa Gira
You know we can’t resist a good college paper’s de rigeur “sex issue,” especially one that claims to not be “a cliche sex issue” as “Baltimore’s top campus paper,” The Towerlight, does.
Taking sex culture to task is so the new how to have sex, and I can’t say that’s totally a bad thing, so long as — hey, this is academia — we’re all doing some research with our ranting. Which is why, as much as I’m fond of the phrase coined therein, of “The sexual performance perfection industry”…
The members of this industry include most large pharmaceutical companies, members of the medical/surgical establishment, as well as certain entrepreneurs, some of whom manufacture sexual “enhancement toys” and others of whom produce sexually explicit films. The SPPI, which evaluates all sexual encounters in terms of performance rather than satisfaction, tends to “medicalize” any type of sexual behavior that is not consistent with the industry’s definition of sexual perfection.
… is it really possible to collapse all sexual products and media into this one purpose, that is, to produce a sexual discourse centered on never being a good enough fuck? (Take that, Foucault.) Is there not room in the business of buying and selling sex stuff for disruptive business models, one’s that are based on making goods that make for better sex, and doing the necessary education around how to use those goods? Does this perpetuate bad sex, or bad sex education, or does it support a more sexually sophisticated consumer, one more likely to return for more than one made to feel ashamed, powerless, or lacking?
In short, sure, a lot of what’s sold as sex is nothing but, and it’s purveyed in the ethical vacuum of a capitalist market that sort of relies on our increased estrangement from eros. (And take that, Marcuse.) But can we not also resist the medicalization of sex and sexual disatisfaction with better sexual art, design, and culture? Just as the market already guarantees a demand for sex toys and smut by virtue of desire’s role in driving the wheels of commerce, so, too, can we put our desire where our wallets are and ask for sex consumables to promote smarter, hotter sex.
PS: Dude, you have a psychoanalytic practice around sex, and you’re not part of the sexual market? Oh, denial, how it cuts both ways.
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