The Great Sexual Taboo

IT’S THE GREAT taboo of our time. It’s eating away at half the population. It’s a political issue waiting for some brave political entrepreneur to grasp. You know what it is.

"I want to spend more time with him, and do stuff like go shopping or see a movie. That would make it a friendship for me. But he says no, because if we do those things, then in his opinion we'd have a relationship--and that's more than he wants. And I'm confused, because it seems like I don't get the 'friend' part, but he still gets the 'benefits.'" It finally dawns on her: "I'm really unhappy about that. It's hard to be with him and then go home and be alone."

Those are the words of “Heather” in Unprotected by Anonymous, MD reviewed by Danielle Crittenden. The patients of Anomymous, MD, are hurting, but what can she do? She can advise them on eating disorders and substance abuse. She can opine about the evils of tanning beds. But there is one subject that she cannot be judgmental about.

You see, young college women all over the nation are hurting themselves because of their “sexual choices.” Unfortunately, when it comes to sexual choices, “few modern doctors dare express a word of judgment.” Boys, of course, are instinctively avoiding the modern university, as the male/female ratio keep dipping towards 40/60. In the rebellious way of the male, they naturally rebel against the advice of their betters. But girls are different.

They are following the best advice that modern psychology can offer. They are enjoying their sexual freedom, experimenting, discovering themselves. They can't understand what might be wrong. And yet something is wrong.

The fact is that, whatever they may think they want, most girls do not do well with sexual freedom, sexual experimentation, sexual self-discovery. That is because the sexual life of a woman is not a journey of practice and creative experimentation. The sexual life of a woman is for real.

This is the great question of our age. We have decided that we need to transcend the simple world of rules and traditional roles. People cannot attain their full potential as human beings unless they transcend the rules in original, creative work. In The Second Sex Simone de Beauvoir asserted that the same applies to women. But what about sex in the life of this “independent woman?”

A woman.. needs... not only to satisfy her sexual desires, but also to enjoy the relaxation and diversion provided by agreeable sexual adventures.

That’s easy to write, but the Beaver understands that this is more easily said than done. She writes for pages about the difficulties of the sexual life of the independent woman.

But we have proceeded in the past half-century on the assumption that there is no problem here, that women can indulge in “agreeable sexual adventures” like any man. And more than that, we have erected a taboo around the question. You are not allowed to discuss it.

This question of women’s sexuality and the agony of the young woman trying to experiment just like she is supposed to is, I suspect, the key political question of the age. If conservatives can understand the question and speak to women about it so that we show that we understand and they feel that we understand, then it’s Katy bar the door.

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Christopher Chantrill blogs at www.roadtothemiddleclass.com. His Road to the Middle Class is forthcoming.