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Sexual Materialism

The modern attitude toward sexuality has flattened and subjectified it as controllable private sensation, a tool kit of techniques designed to maximize pleasure. What narrowly distinguishes the consumer attitude toward sex from prostitution is reciprocity: one contracts to be the means for the other’s pleasure in return, bartering services in kind rather than cash. Each manipulates the other’s body to create a parallel, but implicitly private, entertainment. Perhaps the male, especially, is tempted to delight in the woman’s pleasure as a sign of his own skillfulness, playing her like an instrument. Her body is then the medium of his virtuosity, her orgasms a trophy. He remains in control, his mission to transport her beyond self-control. The sexual materialist is either an artist-technician or a connoisseur, or both. He or she focuses on playing out sexual roles and images rather than communion or a raw journey into the unknown. The sexual materialist encourages and rewards a similar attitude in his or her lover. But true intimacy is inhibited when sexuality is used collusively as a hiding place.

RELATED TAGS: [modern sexuality, subjectified/consumer sex, sexual manipulation/virtuosity/adept/self-control/materialism(ist)/connoisseur/roles/games, trophy sex, true intimacy, sexual collusion, female selectivity, kama sutra, tantra(ic)]


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