Let’s Talk About Sex, Baby

Apparently, there’s a ruckus going on about sex bloggers here on WordPress, Tumblr, Facebook, and the like.  Equally apparent is the fact that people are using these various media sources to talk about the voodoo that they do… and playing to increasingly hostile audiences.

One thing I read a little while ago talked about BDSM practitioners getting their Facebook pages yanked because people are reporting what they see as violence against women… and perhaps without realizing that if it’s anything, it’s controlled sexual ‘violence’ done with the woman’s full participation and consent.

Here at WordPress, some bloggers have appeared to vanish, unable to be found using the tools provided; their blogs are being absented from the Reader and have been labeled mature; WordPress does acknowledge a blogger’s right to say whatever they want to say in their blogs… they just have the final word on what they think is appropriate for general consumption seeing as how they haven’t – or won’t – employ tools that would allow the most raunchiest of us to make someone confirm that they’re old enough to read what we’re writing.

In a lot of ways, this is disturbing… and then again, not really if one takes into consideration our societal mindset about doing the nasty.  We can do whatever it is that gets our rocks off… but you are not to talk about it or let other people know that you’re doing it… or how you’re doing it.

I feel as if I’ve been transported back to the dark ages of morality, where religious dogma mandated sexual behavior and where anything other than a man and a woman in the missionary position (and married) is considered deviant.  Keep in mind that these are the same people who once saw masturbation as a mental illness and their supposed cure was a lot more brutal than anything a BDSM practitioner could come up with.

Now, we know that there are some segments of our society who are, let us say, ill-equipped to deal with things sexual – it just gets them into all that trouble we’ve been warned about, right?  So the various places that are seeking to do away with talk about sex are, in a way, justified in wanting to shove those writers under the rug and out of the light.  It does kinda amaze me that they haven’t figured out how to use this to their advantage and increase the number of bloggers working under their banner, like, oh, I dunno, providing age controls and warnings so that their lawyers won’t all have strokes because if the controls are in place and readers have been warned about content, well, if someone of a more delicate nature gets freaked out and offended, they can’t say that they weren’t told.

Like I say in my little intro:  If you’re not grown up enough, stay out of my head – and I mean it, too.

Okay, so most of you know that WordPress slapped me on the hand about a graphic I found on their site that they said was pornographic; they shut me down for a couple of hours and, yep, I considered myself warned – no more WordPress-provided ‘porn’ and I’m guessing that because I haven’t done something like that again, my blog hasn’t been labeled “mature” and taken off the radar like some other bloggers have reported.

I have, for the longest time, felt that it is pretty silly for us to be so parochial about sex; like I said, it makes me wonder what century I woke up in this morning.  It kinda shames me to see bloggers based anywhere other than here making fun of us because it appears we have the freedom to say anything we want… as long as it doesn’t have anything to do with sex.  And I’m not just talking about blogging or whatever; we can be so prudish about this that some people refuse to discuss sex with their own damned partner; you know it’s pretty bad when you can’t talk about fucking to the person you’re fucking.

We’re not supposed to kiss and tell, are we?  Sex education in our schools is a joke and relying on parents to drop that ‘birds and bees’ shit and tell their kids about the real deal is just asking too much; it’s too embarrassing, it’s too taboo a subject despite the fact that there are kids out there (and quite a few adults) getting their lives ruined behind sex… and all because they’re left to find out about this on their own… because we’re too prudish to make understanding all this sex stuff a priority.

Because we aren’t supposed to tell them that which they might need to know.

Which brings me back to writing about sex.  I do it – I’ve made money doing it.  And while I’m not trying to garner an audience to target my scribblings about sex – this is really some great post-stroke therapy for me – I don’t have a problem with people reading about either my sex life or my thoughts on sex because as I’ve said on a couple of occasions now, if someone like me doesn’t do it, who will?  As I said in another blog on this subject, what’s gonna get your undivided attention more – a clinical dissertation about the gender binary… or someone sharing their personal insights into being bisexual and telling you why you might want to stay on the porch?

I see what the problem is… and I don’t.  We’re talking about a part of life itself; we are living, breathing examples of how the human animal goes about chasing that biochemical magic act we call the orgasm. And, nope, we’re not afraid or ashamed to just put it out there for all to see… except the powers that be would rather we didn’t do that.

The sexual revolution of the 70s was just getting started when I was growing up, rather shocking from the 1950’s mentality about sex; we kinda went from being chaste and prim to “If it feels good, do it!” and, boy, were we doing it.  And the revolution never really ended, did it?  What we find out when people write about sex is that we still have that “If it feels good, do it!” thing going on about getting laid and satisfying urges that would make the ‘pure at heart’ go into shock.  Not only are we still fucking like proverbial rabbits, now we’re talking to each other about it… big time.

It’s not about shock and awe because, duh, people are just writing about all the shit that has been happening after Adam laid the pipe to Eve for the first time.  It could be educational in a couple of ways, from “how-to” to “how not to;” it’s an outgrowth of the conversations that take place in chatrooms, on instant messaging, on smartphones and the like.  That our society still seeks to keep people from talking about sex in non-clinical ways just never, ever, fails to amaze me.

It’s okay to be into BDSM… just don’t tell anyone.  It’s fine to be bi, gay, transgendered, what-the-fuck-ever – just don’t tell anyone.  It’s okay to be non-monogamous, to be poly or a swinger… just don’t tell anyone.  Our society just consistently ignores the elephant in the room and it just doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.  They are content to wallow in both their denial and ignorance in this and since they remain in this rather stale state of mind, they want everyone to stick with this archaic behavior.

Shutting down sex bloggers isn’t the answer – there are just too many other ways for the word to get out there, thanks to the Internet and even shit like self-publishing.  Thinking that sites like WordPress are going to lose their corporate minds because offended sex bloggers are going to leave and go do the self-hosting thing isn’t the answer either; there are too many other bloggers who can’t or won’t write about sex in a way that even remotely resembles being ‘pornographic’.

It makes you think, “So much for the First Amendment, huh?  Freedom of speech my ass, huh?”  It’s no biggie, though; if WordPress made my blog disappear or decided to shut me down, okay, well, it was fun while it lasted and, thus, I’m not all that concerned about it.

Should I be concerned?  Well, no, because a society that allows a book like “Fifty Shades of Gray” to be written and held in high acclaim should also allow bloggers to write whatever they want to write about sex and things sexual… but, apparently, that’s not the case – this is somehow different.  I mean, I’m currently reading a book by a best-selling author that has sex scenes in it so raunchy they make me blush – that should tell you something.

This author gets praises for her writing – bloggers on the various sites get kicked to the curb.  Is it just me or is there a really bad disconnect going on here?

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