Online Sex and the Single Girl
In an essay for today's New York Times, feminist Susan Jacoby tries to fathom “why hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of women apparently derive gratification from exchanging sexual talk and pictures with strangers.” She does not come up with much of an answer, but she does offer her view of what's wrong with virtual sex:
Sex with strangers online amounts to a diminution, close to an absolute negation, of the context that gives human interaction genuine content. Erotic play without context becomes just a form of one-on-one pornography.... Twentieth-century feminism always linked the social progress of women with an expanding sense of self-worth — in the sexual as well as intellectual and professional spheres. A willingness to engage in Internet sex with strangers, however, expresses not sexual empowerment but its opposite — a loneliness and low opinion of oneself that leads to the conclusion that any sexual contact is better than no contact at all.
I assume Jacoby did her homework for her Times piece and read some of the transcripts of the text messages between Anthony Weiner and Sydney Leathers. Having read the transcripts myself (okay, I skimmed them), what I found most striking was not the “diminution” or “loneliness” or “low opinion” Leathers might have of herself but of the numbing banality of the exchanges with Weiner.
I am sure there are millions of couples who have fulfilling sex lives in which verbal communication does not play a big part. They have, after all, other, physical ways to express themselves. But in an online relationship – beyond supposedly erotic photos – the word is all there is. So the word ought to be damned good. But the writings of Weiner and Leathers are just boilerplate pathetic: Weiner: “would you let me cum on those perfect tits? Leathers: “I would let you cum anywhere you want.”
I would guess that this kind of drivel is commonplace in online sexting. Right now, another couple is probably tweeting exactly what Weiner & Leathers wrote. Twitter is a perfect medium, because people who have little to say don't need more than 140 characters. Jacoby is troubled by the anonymous nature of sexting, which ignores the “specialness of individuals.” But it seems to me the real misfortune for women and men in online "relationships" is not so much the relative anonymity of the partners as it is the aridity of the exchanges. Weiner's and Leathers' fantasies are boring.
We all have sexual fantasies about people we don't know or aren't likely to actually hook up with, and those dreams are beyond anonymous. There's no there there except our own ability to conjure up a perfect partner (or partners, I guess). But if the fantasies are vapid, like those of Weiner and Leathers, then sex itself – the inspiration, the source, the lifeblood of our being – is a meaningless animal instinct. Thoreau wrote that “Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them.” Weiner and Leathers don't seem to have the song in them. They can't even hum a few bars.
Perhaps their failing is a reflection of modern society in which sex is relatively easy to come by – at least for people like Weiner and Leathers – and letter-writing has been reduced to thumb-callused texting and tweeting. I'm not sure which comes first – the chicken/insipid writing or the egg/shallow writers – but the result is wretched. No wonder people are miserable. In a world rich in stimuli, their imaginations are stunted.
Somewhere I have a file of love letters, and perhaps some of my old lovers do, too. The letters are long, and intricate and exciting. They are about who we were. We were thoughtful and hungry and real. The letters and the writers had substance. I thought they were probably not so much different in quality from what other couples wrote to each another. Okay, maybe they weren't Joycean, but they revealed in them the unique characters and longings of the writers. That millions of people live out their lives without knowing such intimacy, or experiencing such self-expression, may be the real tragedy of our times.
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Reader Comments (7)
I can't resist -
Only connect! That was the whole of her sermon.
Only connect the prose and the passion, and both will be exalted,
And human love will be seen at its height.
Live in fragments no longer.
Only connect...
--E.M. Forster, Howards End
Skimming such vapid mewlings, I'm tempted to extend Marie's description of these dreary exchanges to the Banality of Weevils. Heloise and Abelard this ain't. I'm trying to picture Abelard texting Heloise to ask "I'm gonna take a shower. Wanna join me?" All that's missing is a "Was it good for you?"
Speaking of banality of weevils, I was reading an article in the latest American Scholar about the tribulations foisted upon Hannah Arendt after the publication of "Eichmann in Jerusalem". One contemporary accused her of not loving the Jewish people enough to which Arendt responded that she didn't love any groups. Not Jews, not Germans, not the French, not Americans. She loved people. Individuals. I haven't read any of her letters to paramour Martin Heidegger but I can't imagine any comparison to the Weiner/Leathers "correspondence". (Hmmm... Weiner Leathers sounds intriguingly perverse. The reality is neither.)
As for Hannah Arendt, I only hope the letters she got back from Heidegger (he must have been picturing her in Nazi regalia) were not as convoluted as his other stuff. Sheesh. But in any event, the densest passage in "Being and Time" can't be nearly as enervating as "What are you wearing?"
Zzzzzzzzzzzzzz......
Patrick
You picked a good one. As I recall, connecting, for the characters in Howards End, was pretty costly. But, in the end, a much more authentic expression of their humanity.
Oh yeah, except for the dead guy.
I just realized I may have been unkind to weevils.
They may have intense sex lives! At the very least they probably have a boll.
@CW you've got perfect pitch! Bravo!
"Thoreau wrote that “Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them.” Weiner and Leathers don't seem to have the song in them. They can't even hum a few bars."
“Perhaps their failing is a reflection of modern society in which sex is relatively easy to come by….” Umm. No. Not a reflection of society, modern or otherwise, except that it is. Sex has always been relatively easy to come by. The methods and rituals may have changed somewhat over time due to place and circumstance (we’re no longer Breugel hayers, for example) but the relative ease has not. Contra-Brooks it’s not a generational thing; there have always been Hippies, and likely always will be. That Weiner & Leathers are pathetic examples of the social libido is another matter.
I think Marie and Jacoby are both on the right track if track is the right word to describe this world of online sexual texting. I would add another component to all this––SAFETY. One can get their thrills and chills without ever actually reaching out and touching, in effect a purely masturbatory exercise. Would the leather stocking girl really succumb to the "cum" fantasies of the Danger dick? Are these females jerking these guys chains and having a grand old time doing it? Jacoby says it's demeaning; Marie finds this drivel boring. In the case of Weiner (I did read them all) I was stunned at his cheap dime store sex novel type texting. I kept thinking he must have thought of himself as a star rising but the only thing he could rise was his poor penis while writing trash to women on line. I still think he was deprived in his youth and shunned by the pretty girls he coveted. There is something terribly sad about all this.
I love Marie's last paragraph. She is writing of love, of intimacy, of real feelings put down on paper. They are called love letters. Just the opposite of the subject at hand.