I think he’s classic Ex-gay, and that while I think that supporting the rights and identities of asexual people and people who legitimately place a low priority on sex and sexuality, the same arguments, though fine in themselves, are often used by homophobes against sex-crazed decadent gays.

As it turns out we disagreed about that. And some other stuff.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/06/25/EDNR11F0AU.DTL

I have some sympathy for the point of the post, but it is worth pointing out that “sex/sexulity is overrated” is also an argument used to closet and shame queer people and identities. As it seems to be in Biano/Bianco’s case.

I hope his wife agrees with him that sex is a waste of time, otherwise hes going to find he has some duties under orthodox law that he is likely to find unpleasantly frequent.

No one goes into a relationship initially desiring it to be a sexual one and then just not wanting sex anymore. It may seem that way and that’s what we’re taught to focus on, but there’s always an underlying cause. That cause may be physical, it may be that the attraction is gone (again, it’s the lack of attraction that’s the trigger TO the lack of sex, not the other way around), there may a history of abuse, whatever. But if there once was sex and now there’s not, it’s due to something else.

There are a lot of things in that category. Sex is just one of them. I’d marry a vegan, and I’d avoid eating stuff in front of her, but all thing being equal I’d rather marry someone else that give up eating nonvegan stuff entirely, for the rest of my life.

The mental difference between “rare” and “never” is pretty huge, even if they’re functionally similar.

I don’t think that’s accurate, either. Lack of sex within a marriage is usually a symptom of one or several other factors. If anything, this supports Amp’s point: the sexual behaviour (or absence of it) is really the end result yet so many people assume it’s the cause because sex is held up as the end-all-and-be-all.

This, also, I think can be construed as misandrous if we lower the bar to the level needed to provoke the use of the word “misogyny” here; consider what the response would be if I were to claim that orgasms are bad for women.

Considering that the majority of heterosexual women do not orgasm during penis-in-vagina sex, women’s orgasm is irrelevant. Or only slightly relevant, as it points to the deeper misogyny of normative heterosexual practices.

That’s not because sex is the be all and end all. It’s because, as nobody.really notes, we are not generally “permitted” to fulfill that need anywhere else than marriage.

It’s the restrictions that make it seem important. If it was socially unacceptable and in some cases illegal to eat food cooked by someone other than your spouse, then whether or not your spouse could cook would suddenly become pretty important.

I agree with curiousgyrl: sex is only so many hours in the day. I’d rather have a partner I agreed with about things like how to spend money and how to have a good time, who was also a good-but-not-great sex match, than a partner who was the bestest ever in the sack and who I couldn’t get through an evening without a shouting fight with.

Now: people can and should demand both, if they want to.

I think people just have pretty varying ideas of how much they want sex to be primary in their lives. I have a writer friend who is a couple generations older than I, and she and I were having a conversation about polyamory last summer, and she said, “I used to be polyamorous, but it just felt like too much work for too little reward.”

And this is more or less how I feel about it, too. I’m a happy, lazy monogamist. I feel no particular stirring toward accumulating more sex partners, although I have no philosophical objection to such. The work of maintaining multiple relationships just isn’t worth the reward of more, and more varied, sex — for me.

So, since sex is something I like, but that I don’t like more than going on a hike on the cliffs in Monterey, or going to an aquarium to point out neat-looking fish, or reading a fucking great novel — well, sometimes I like sex a lot more, if it’s the right time and place, but you get what I mean — sex isn’t going to be the central part of a relationship search for me. It’s going to be a factor, but not the main one.

So, maybe Dan Savage is right when he suggests that sex should be the main factor — for some set of people who aren’t me. There seems to be a sort of tone to his letters (which I’ve only read when they’re repeated in feminist blogs, to be honest) wihch seems to suggest that he thinks sex should be central to everyone, and I’d like to respectfully submit that it should only be central to people who want it to be central.

Which leads me back to asexuality (I think Amp has described himself as asexual elsewhere?), because it’s about the pathologization of the other. I should have been clearer in my initial post that I don’t mean to pathologize people who do look at sex as being of primary importance; it’s cool for them, I just don’t like the one-size-fits-all-ness. So, some people who think sex is central pathologize all of us who think its not. Some people of moderate apetite pathologize people with extreme apetites (”nymphomania”) and no appetites (asexuality)… and, well, I don’t think asexuals are in much of a position to get to pathologize anyone, culturally, although ugk sure made a swing at it with his chi bullshit. (And, I suppose, some religious constructions where a celibate priest class condemns all sexual behavior as sinful.)

That’s what I like about the title of this post, though. Amp’s actual text doesn’t seem to support the extremity of all “sex is a waste of time,” though he’s wary of it as a central preoccupation. But the suggestion in the title, sans the qualifications and actual explanation of it in the text, gives those of us who reflexively pathologize asexuality a bit of a slap on the nose because it pathologizes our behavior. We’re the ones wasting our time on the noisy exchange of a few, squishy bodily fluids.

The idea that a man has to conserve his energy, by contrast, was about the build-up of sperm being awesome and manly. Sperm = manly, right? So more sperm must = more manly! It’s a definite case of PHMT.

Re: google hits, incubus does pull up more hits than succubus, but for the top ten, most of the incubus hits are about things like films and bands, whereas most of the succubus hits are about succubi. Plus the succubus search provides one with some non-requested images as a bonus, one showing a woman about to sexily remove the life-force from a prone man.

Image of succubus from one of the top ten google sites - http://www.occultopedia.com/s/succubus.htm

Image of incubus from google image search, after scrolling past a couple pages of band member photos - http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/exhibitions/gothicnightmares/images/works/incubus_large.jpg

Note the sexified women in both pictures.

All of which is beside the point, because the belief in question is that ejaculation, whether a woman is involved or not, drains energy. This, also, I think can be construed as misandrous if we lower the bar to the level needed to provoke the use of the word “misogyny” here; consider what the response would be if I were to claim that orgasms are bad for women.

As for conversationalist and all the rest, I may be able to talk to whomever I want, but I kind of have to talk to my partner. If that didnt work, we’d be sunk. Also, just speaking for myself, here, not getting exactly what I want in bed everytime would grate much less than running into constant streams of dirty socks/dishes/carpets or constantly finding my bank account overdrawn would.

Sex can only take up so much of your time, while dishes happen 3-4 times a day!:)

Any time we name any one attribute as “the number one priority,” it suggests that we’re willing to sacrifice all other attributes to get it. I have a few Catholic and ex-Catholic friends who regularly bemoan the fact that priests are picked on the basis of gender and abstinence – and not, say, on leadership skills, counseling skills, speaking skills or even personal hygiene. Apparently, it shows.

That said…..

It certainly seems crazy to pick a life partner solely on the basis of sex EXCEPT if you believe in monogamy. After all, cultural and legal norms permit a broad range of behaviors in marriage. She ain’t my soulmate? There’s no prohibition on spending time with other people. Not a great dancer? No prohibition on dancing with other people. Not a great conversationalist? No prohibition on talking with other people. Doesn’t like bowling? No prohibition on bowling with other people. Infertile? No prohibition on adoption, and declining prohibitions on surrogate parenting.

Hates sex? Uh oh.

At least four marriages of my acquaintances have broken up/are breaking up because the guy stopped having sex with his wife and/or start having sex with other guys. Now, who knows whether these marriages would have stayed together anyway, but the stories I hear are about a lack of sexual compatibility. It’s not a small matter to them.

If you don’t need your marriage to be your sole source of companionship or finances or food or children, but you DO expect it to be your sole source of interpersonal sex, then I can’t fault you for focusing on that aspect of the relationship when picking a mate.

I don’t think it’s very hard to come up with reasons why the sexphobia of the Victorians was patriarchal in nature, and I’m sure that more talented feminists have done so than I.

*

I really appreciate this post, though I don’t feel like I have anything too coherent to say about it. I agree with curiousgyrl about being dubious when matchmakers or advice columnists discuss sexual compatibility as the number one priority in a realtionship.

In fact, some Googling suggests that many people do seem to have the same concerns about masturbation.

If you try hard enough, you can explain just about anything in terms of misogyny, or misandry, or anti-black racism, or anti-white racism, or anti-semitism, or pro-semitism (anti-semites do this all the time), or whatever your favorite form of bigotry is. That doesn’t mean that you should, or that it’s going to lead you to reasonable conclusions.