Sex in America: Changing the Conversation

A few weeks back I attended the Open Center‘s dialogue on Sex in America. The panel, hosted by couples therapist and author of Mating in Captivity Esther Perel, brought authors Ian Kerner (She Comes First, Love in the Time of Cholic) and Amy Sohn (Run, Catch, Kiss and My Old Man) together with sexuality educator and all around knower of everything sex information Cory Silverberg (he also happens to have written a book on sex and disability, is coowner of the sex shop Come As You Are and the about.com guide to sexuality) as well as sex therapist, activist, author and researcher Leonore Tiefer.

To be honest, my first thoughts were in wishing this panel was more diverse. Yes, there were two men and three women, but where was the trans representation, the sex workers, the people who’s culture is either more expansive, or more limiting, when it comes to talking about sex? I mean down low culture is a real thing, it’s just not necessarily a white, middle class thing, which was who the whole panel happened to consist of.

I got over that rather quickly. Not because there shouldn’t have been fairer representation, but because the conversation was really interesting. From changing the way we talk about sex, to the words we use to discuss it all, a whole host of thoughts danced through my brain as I listened to one speaker after another wax on, wax off. Questions like, if quick-fix relationship advice really worked, would we continue to  publish the same five tips every month in the most popular glossies? When do you start talking about sex and what is really wrong with sex education in this country? And, how many bonobos does it take to screw a lightbulb? (I made that last one up, actually.)

Tiefer was the one who really kept the crowd on the edge of their lecture hall seats. It had to do with what she said, and how strongly she stated it.

Sex is not a natural act.

Apparently this is one of Tiefer’s big points, that and the whole messedupness around the medicalization of female sexuality. Tiefer believes that Masters and Johnson used the term “natural” in place of “good” when they were trying to help couples with their sex lives. She said this has led to years of confusion about the ease in which two people should have sex.  It should not be easy, because it is not easy, not always.

We split into groups and discussed things that we thought needed to be brought up with regard sex in america. I had just had a conversation the week before about all this, about how Americans are taught how to find the best jobs, and we’re armed with the skills needed to be whatever we want to be professionally, but we’re not given the skills, both personally and emotionally, to deal with how to be the best partner. Nowhere in our higher education, or lower education, do we receive the proper tools to have better communication and relationships with lovers. And why not? Aren’t personal relationships just as important as professional ones?

The conversation lasted for almost two hours. It would have gone longer but we were literally kicked out of the auditorium after the allotted timeframe. Still there was much more to say, and many ways to say it. And after one night, after only two hours of talking about sex, I felt the conversation was changing. It was on that Friday night, that a group of sex positive people in NYC fanned the flame and felt the flicker.