Anon left the link to an absolutely hilarious article on 50 Shades of Grey. Here is how it begins:
I think the real force behind this “Fifty Shades” phenomenon is that our society is clamoring for closeness. However, in the absence of genuine sexual intimacy (best defined as “in-to-me-see”), we settle for sexual intensity: erotica, pornography, an office romance, an extramarital affair or whatever strokes the ego and provides the sexual high we crave.
Sexually miserable prudes always see sex as a consolation prize for losers who can’t get the real prize, which is intimacy. Sadly, instead of visiting a sexopathologist, people who suffer from this problem choose to make the outpourings of their unhealthiness embarrassingly public. The really funny thing is that such folks have absolutely no idea what intimacy actually is. For them, it’s getting somebody to service the exaggerated emotional needs they generate as a result of their sexual dissatisfaction in return for rare and miserable sex acts.
The article’s author proceeds to demonstrate what growing up in an extremely prudish environment does to one:
I suggest that sexual intensity (such as that experienced between the lead characters of the “Fifty Shades” trilogy) is simply not the same as intimacy. If it were, then prostitutes and porn stars would be the most emotionally and relationally fulfilled people on the planet. That doesn’t seem to be the case.
The elephant in the room that this sexually ignorant author is missing is an orgasm. Prostitutes and porn stars offer their bodies to let others achieve sexual pleasure. What prevents them from being the most sexually fulfilled people on the planet is the incapacity to privilege their own sexual fulfillment in sex.
As for emotional and relational fulfillment, anybody who seeks it through sex is a profoundly unhealthy, miserable individual who needs to get urgent psychological help. Just like it’s unhealthy to eat to fulfill your emotional needs, it is unhealthy to have sex to achieve non-sexual purposes. There is absolutely no difference between the author of this piece who uses sex to pursue emotional and relational goals and a prostitute who uses it to reach financial goals. Both people are selling their sexual health in return for something that their disastrous upbringing has convinced them matters more than their sexual realization. Shannon Ethridge, the author of this embarrassing article, likes to see herself as superior to prostitutes. She is vastly inferior in terms of self-awareness to any sex worker, however, since she is not even aware of being a sex-peddler.
Well, what can you expect form a person who is so sexually repressed that she has to explain the sexual needs of humans as a search for God:
Regardless of gender, age, race, political views, economic status, etc., all humans have two things in common: We are both spiritual and sexual beings. And behind every sexual longing, I believe there’s an even deeper spiritual longing.
One would hope that we would all be, first and foremost, thinking beings who don’t write such ridiculous things but, apparently, this is not to be.
Shannon Ethridge vaguely perceives that something is deeply wrong with her vision of sexuality which is why she creates throughout the article lists of people whose sex lives just have to be inferior to hers:
But when we divorce physical pleasure from emotional connection, such as when we selfishly strive for orgasm through pornography, masturbation or illicit sexual encounters rather than cultivating sexual ecstasy with our marriage partner, sexual ecstasy is only “half-baked.” Love and relational intimacy are the “yeast” that allows our sexual ecstasy to rise to its highest level.
Of course, the only half-baked product I found in this piece is the author’s unconvincing justification of her weird approach to sex. After articles like this one, even 50 Shades of Grey becomes a huge breakthrough in terms of people’s sexual development.
Clarissa's Blog 
“After articles like this one, even 50 Shades of Grey becomes a huge breakthrough in terms of people’s sexual development.”
Well, maybe that is why the novel is so popular.
“”Love and relational intimacy are the ‘yeast’ that allows our sexual ecstasy to rise to its highest level.
No. Desire. Say it and spell it. The closest people will get nowadays is to say “lust” which is of course considered a bad thing. They need to go to a desire workshop where the word will be made less scary.
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“No. Desire. Say it and spell it. The closest people will get nowadays is to say “lust” which is of course considered a bad thing. They need to go to a desire workshop where the word will be made less scary.”
– The word “desire” is, indeed, never even mentioned any longer. People just want to moralize from the heights of their prissiness.
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“Of course, the only half-baked product I found in this piece is the author’s unconvincing justification of her weird approach to sex”
How about a fully baked product of a weird approach to sex?
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I’m not sure I can enjoy making fun of people’s sexuality just because it isn’t mainstream.
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I don’t usually read the rants of fundamentalists, but I can draw out some interesting connections with regard to Georges Bataille’s notions of eros and death. He was very interested in using sexuality as a means to combat philosophical idealism. I find this an interesting project, although it has its limits. Western dualisms divide the mind from the body in order to make the mind alone the means to ascend to heaven.
Actually, there’s a logical problem right there, because there is no extension of life beyond death. So, to subdue the body in order to try to extend one’s mind, known as “soul”, indefinitely into the future, is a silly project from an atheistic perspective.
Nonetheless we are all creatures historically imbued with silliness. Metaphysics forms a key part of our mental processes, because we have been brought up to relate to the world in a way that separates “mind/spirit/God” from “body/emotion/sexuality”. In Bataille’s paradigm, sexuality becomes a means to engage with that dualistic antagonism within oneself — to extend the terrain of human meanings, whilst reducing the terrain of mystifying, deity-beholden meanings.
Bataille, therefore, advocated “sinning”, in order to bring heaven to Earth and make what is sacred appear in the realm of immanence. We face the death of the idea of our eternal soul whenever we “sin”. But at the same time, we put to death something that was never real to begin with. Sexuality is thereby experienced a means to combat a ‘fear of God’ that would keep us in humble subservience to things we don’t understand. Instead of preserving the historically fabricated ideals within our beings, we would destroy these metaphysical constructs in our own minds, and could thus make room for our own personal values, ideals and purposes to flourish.
This is actually very advanced thinking, which employs ideas from Freud and Nietzsche, in order to advance a radical individualism.
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I have got to say, people now are so incredibly repressed. I was going through stuff today and looked at some things my aunts said a hundred years ago, and things from my childhood that reflected the tone of the period. On politics, on sex, on the economy, on everything, the common sense is now so very right wing.
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It’s just USA. Australia is really not repressed. Here is some Australian politically incorrect humor: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SZ1qRRAiVEI
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It is too bad that we cannot see this video in the USA.
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That’s a shame. It’s really very funny, since there is not respect shown to any of the sacred cows.
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I picked a random segment and put it on my blog. The episode was made several years ago. In this one, Habib’s father appears suddenly at his son’s wedding, having been just let out of Guantanamo detention. The group are looking at a video of the wedding, since many of its details had escaped them due to the fights and chaos at the wedding. Habib’s father gives his “wedding speech” in a foreign language.
“What is he saying?” Habib’s wife asks.
Habib translates. He is saying he doesn’t like George Bush or John Howard…death to the Statue of Liberty. But it’s only Americans he doesn’t like.” Actually, he also doesn’t like Habib’s bride, which is part of the joke.
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Yes, the US is really special in this regard.
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“One would hope that we would all be, first and foremost, thinking beings who don’t write such ridiculous things but, apparently, this is not to be.”
Hilarious! Thank you for writing this post!
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