It is Time For a New Dispensation
Sex is life’s greatest pleasure. So why have people been so hung up about it for so long? Introducing our focus on Sex In Ireland 2012.
Niall Stokes, 31 Jul 2012
Here is the alternative view. There is nothing wrong with sex outside marriage. There is nothing wrong with sex with multiple partners. There is nothing wrong with one night stands. There is nothing wrong with threesomes, or foursomes or whatever other sexual permutations free and consenting people want to engage in together or separately.
There are other ways in which the conservative consensus needs to be demolished. The idea that a once-off sexual encounter is inevitably devoid of love and respect is nonsense. On the contrary, sexual trysts can be outstanding expressions of generous and untrammeled love entered into without any expectation of anything other than the mutual adventure that happens on the occasion in question.
The idea that sex can only be truly fulfilling in the context of a long term loving relationship is also completely wrong. Consenting adults who are driven by a combination of respect and desire can have the most wonderful, brilliant and fulfilling sex, without it having any implication whatsoever in relation to their past or future lives. And, of course, sex in a long term loving relationship can itself be mind-blowingly good, powerful, positive and life-affirming – all the moreso where people are open, experimental, mutually accommodating and bounteous in their approach.
I have never understood the philosophical basis for the narrowness, the closed-ness, of the conventional view of sex. Though it may help, you don’t have to be a fan of Walt Whitman, D.H. Lawrence, Jean Genet, Allen Ginsberg, Charles Bukowski, Anaïs Nin, James Brown, Lou Reed, Joni Mitchell, Prince, Catherine Millet, Millie Jackson, P.J. Harvey, Peaches or Azealia Banks to realise that the world is teeming with a wonderful cornucopia of sexual diversity. It just is. So what is the problem if people freely engage with it, enjoy it, celebrate it? What is the problem with having a sense of adventure? What is the problem giving and receiving pleasure?
Of course there are immutable touchstones. Adult is the first. Consent is the second. Safety is the third. Responsibility is the fourth. Generosity is the fifth. Decency is the sixth. Indecency is the seventh. Care is the eighth. Openness is the ninth. And love, of course, for your fellow human beings and especially for the person you are with, is the tenth. But all of these things can be shared between any two people anywhere in the world at any time if they hit it off.
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