10.15.2014

Ponderings About Other's Reactions to Science, Sex and the Ladies



This should be a quick one, I think...and it will probably be a little stream of consciousness style because I don't have much time. I was talking with this man last night about the ideas presented in Science, Sex and the Ladies. He was very nice and interested,.  I enjoyed the talk, and actually I think we came to a nice agreement. However, he took from my initial explanation and initially came back at me in a way I find is not uncommon, and it's a big thing that the ideas presented in SSL have to work against. It goes something like this...
But what about love, emotion, and connection between two people? That's the most important part, and I worry that coming at if from a physical mechanical way doesn't tell the whole story. Also, women have other pleasurable plateaus that are in many ways just as good as orgasm. Also people know this stuff already. I remember when Masters and Johnson and the Hite Report came out and it was a big thing, and you know what? I think people found that just the physical stuff doesn't make it better. You can't take the emotion out. 

So, that's the basic gist. I get it. I get that love and connection is important. I get that there are other ways to enjoy sexual time with another person. In a perfect world sex would just be 2 people enjoying their time however they want and orgasming or not orgasming as they please. I agree about that. The problem is that women and men aren't on a level playing field because our culture makes it easy for men to orgasm in a very normal, accepted, commonly-depicted-in-media sexual situation, yet for women that same very normal, accepted, commonly-depicted-in-media sexual situation leaves it hard or impossible for her to orgasm, but insinuated that it should be easy. My focus in the movie is to attain that level playing field though basic physiological education, and leave all the ooey-gooey love and connection stuff up to the individual.

Secondly, I was not around in the early 70's and I don't hang around with a crowd or take college classes that talk about things like the Hite Report. So, I don't remember when Masters and Johnson and the Hite Report came out. I didn't know either of them existed until I started researching this stuff. Hite, I didn't find til I saw her on the Colbert Report. My generation and younger (and probably a lot of older too) don't know this basic physiological information that M&J reported to the world or the information Hite discovered about women's orgasms from women themselves. That information is not exactly lost. It's out there, but it has in no way become a structural part of our sexual knowledge and sexual culture. It just hasn't. I don't even think many of the older people I talk with really understood the research at the time. It was more about hearing what reporters and secondary sources had to say about it. In fact I think most people have it all wrong. The physiological knowledge that was brought to our culture in the late 60's early 70's didn't, as I get told often, put too much focus on the body and "take love and emotion out of the equation." It was just information - accurate, much needed information that could have been incorporated into our sexual culture. However, I think often it gets weirdly associated with the "free love" situation that was happening at the time, and taken as the cause of taking stable, loving relationships and human connection out of sex. It's strange really, but I see people make that connection all the time - and express a real discomfort and distrust of talking about orgasm in a way that M&J talked about it....you know logically, accurately and scientifically.


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