Letter #42: “Sexual Expression”
Express Yourself Instead
Spunch.
I’ve been thinking about the conclusion of your essay on transgender ideology: “If we want to keep existing, we have to accept that there is such a thing as us—embodied, but not only bodies; irrevocably male and female, but indisputably more than flesh and blood.”
As always, when I address such matters, unless I name names, I’m not discussing any individual. I’m not God’s policeman. His creation is more eccentric and hilarious than our minds can bear, and carping at other people’s peccadilloes increases us in righteousness not even a little.
What I am discussing are ideological approaches to life. Some approaches work, some don’t, some elevate your soul toward fruition and joy, some plunge you into an inner vortex of regret and self-destruction.
And by golly, I’m for the good ones and against the bad ones.
On my podcast this week, I mocked an article in the New York Times, a former newspaper: “A Brooklyn Sex Club Promised Freedom. Some Called it Rape.” In a tone of puzzlement, the article tells the completely unpuzzling story of how an organization dedicated to consensual polyamorous kink became a venue for repeated assaults and rape. Whoever could have seen that coming?
What tickled my admittedly mordant sense of humor was the writer’s tone of moral neutrality when describing consensual sex acts. Apparently, at the New York Times, sex is the one and only willed action humans can perform that exists beyond any ethical consideration but consent. The sex club in question agrees. It was dedicated to “sex positivity, a movement to destigmatize different types of sexual expression.”
That phrase sexual expression stuck with me. When you gather to chain people in a dungeon and strike them with various implements, what exactly are you expressing? Are you even expressing yourself?
William Shakespeare, a former playwright, wrote an interesting poem called the Rape of Lucrece. It tells how Sextus Tarquinius, a prince of ancient Rome, raped the virtuous wife of one of his lieutenants. As a result, the Tarquin kings were expelled, and the Roman Republic was established.
A lengthy section of the poem describes how Lucrece begs Tarquin to control his desires. “Hast thou command?” she asks the prince. “Command thy rebel will.”
Indeed, Tarquin fully understands that, once his lust is sated, he’ll despise himself for having done evil: “I have debated even in my soul/what wrong, what shame, what sorrow I shall breed;/But nothing can affection’s course control…”
Fulfilling your physical desires is not an act of self-expression. To the contrary. You often have to master desire to make your body express the person you were made to be.
We all have a general sense of that created person. I doubt he is ever truly expressed by, say, alcoholism or obesity, drug abuse or rampant fetishism with strangers. This isn’t moralism. It’s just the nature of being human.
Perhaps someone ought to alert the New York Times.
Love, Dad
This is why I found unhelpful the advice I often received as a child: "just be yourself." What "self" was I supposed to be? Which properties of my own soul were supposed to form a guide for my behavior? My values? I was a child and can hardly be said to have had values. My impulses and natural inclinations? Surely THAT can't be a reliable guide for behavior!
The rape of Tamar is a tragic tale in the Bible. It is perhaps meant as a lesson that you, too, Mr. Klavan, are giving. Tamar, Princess of Judah, was beautiful, stunning even. She was sister of Absalom and they were half-siblings of Amnon, eldest son of David and heir to the throne.
Amnon was smitten with Tamar and, while he was half-brother of Absalom, they were also best of friends. Amnon used that friendship to trick his brother into sending Tamar to nurse him, when he, Amnon, feigned illness. While she tended to him, he tried to woo her and, when that failed, he forced himself upon her.
After he’d raped her, instead of hating himself for his sin, he hated Tamar and sent her out of his sight. Tamar fled the palace permanently and went to live with Absalom. When he found out, Absalom threw a feast and has his servants kill Amnon while he was drunk.
As a lesson, it is clear. Not only is it the sin of violating another human being, or the law, but it won’t bring you the pleasure you think it will bring you. It what destroy you, your family, and the family of the person you hurt. And then there is all the unknown, such as the revenge of Absalom. Sating your physical desires can have any number of undesirable effects, in the end.