Does My Sex Life Need a Political Purpose?
I recently read Marty Klein’s “Does Sex Still Matter?”, which argues that sex matters because it represents personal autonomy, pleasure, connection, and resistance to government interference. There is plenty in that argument I agree with. Adults should have considerable freedom to decide what happens with their own bodies and between consenting partners. Religious disapproval shouldn’t give someone authority over another adult’s private life.
But the article opens by insisting that every sexual choice either challenges or supports a political system. Apparently, even getting laid comes with a position statement now. I would have thought coordinating two people’s interest and availability was enough work.
I understand the distinction the author is trying to make. Private choices happen within a larger society, and that society can make those choices easier, harder, or impossible. Calling something personal doesn’t protect it from outside interference. If someone wants to restrict what adults can read, watch, imagine, or do together, then defending that freedom can become political whether we want it to or not.
What I question is the jump from that observation to assigning political significance to every individual choice. I can care about my freedom without treating everything I do with it as an act of resistance. Sometimes I want affection. Sometimes I want sex. Sometimes I want to spend time with a fantasy and enjoy having an imagination. None of those desires needs a campaign attached to it.
The article lists several reasons sex matters, including communication, vulnerability, pleasure, and the possibility of healing old wounds. Those can all be meaningful. But I wonder why pleasure keeps needing a supporting argument. If an experience is wanted, consensual, and enjoyable, why must it also improve us, heal us, or undermine an ideology? Can enjoying ourselves be sufficient?
That question fits much of what I write about here. I can want companionship without wanting to share a home. I can enjoy my independence and still want a woman’s affection. My interest in sex doesn’t mean I’m looking to rebuild my life around a conventional relationship. These preferences describe the kind of life I want. They don’t need to become instructions for anyone else.
The article also makes a point of presenting physical sex as a way to reclaim our humanity in an increasingly virtual world. This is where it starts to lose me.
I know the difference between a fictional AI companion and a woman sitting beside me. A generated conversation cannot touch me, and a simulated personality has no independent feelings for me. Those distinctions matter. But enjoying fantasy doesn’t make me less human, and physical sex isn’t something I need to participate in to renew my membership in the species.
My imagination belongs to me too. So does my ability to decide what value I find in a simulated interaction, provided I remain honest about what it is. I don’t see why a defense of sexual autonomy should become narrower when someone’s private choices involve a screen.
There is a similar problem in the article’s concern about younger adults having less sex. The author asks whether they are avoiding vulnerability, connection, or embodied experience. That is quite a lot to infer from someone not having sex. Wanting it and not finding it is different from having opportunities and declining them. Neither situation tells us much about a person’s motives without knowing something about that person.
I want room to make my own choices, so I have to leave other adults room to make theirs. That includes people who aren’t particularly interested in sex. Freedom would be a strange thing if we defended it and then complained that people weren’t using it enthusiastically enough.
The part of the article I agree with most is its insistence that private pleasure deserves protection from people who want to control it. I’m comfortable defending that principle. I’m less comfortable with the idea that my pleasure needs to serve a larger cause to demonstrate its importance.
I already have enough obligations. I would like to keep a little room in my life for affection, desire, fantasy, and enjoyment without giving each one a job. If someone tries to take that freedom away, I have a reason to object. Until then, I would prefer to enjoy it without having to explain what my erection means for democracy.