last night, when we should have been having sex, we talked about monogamy. the best way to not have sex is to talk about sex. yet we need to talk because he's a monogamist. and we've been spending a lot of nights in each others' beds.
there's much that i like about him. in our musical and intellectual tastes we are alike. politically we are aligned. and so there's a lot of groundwork that doesn't have to be done here, as we consistently find each other on the same page. but then there's this.
i feel reluctant to write about him as i'm aware that some readers might know him (or might come to know him). i've made an effort not to talk about him here. but this blog is my therapeutic space and i feel the need to process/write this. and i feel that this issue reflects many conversations i've shared with many friends. so here i will continue that thread.
he believes that monogamy is radical on the basis that in queer culture it's not the norm. he doesn't like cruising culture that prioritises sexual gratification at the expense of broader and less personal goals. nor do i (despite partaking from time to time). but i don't think that non-monogamy is all about sex, or cruising, or sexual gratification at the expense of all else. for me it has been a useful method to explore bodies, intimacies, desire, and self. it's about being open, experimental, and yes, it's about being sexual. it's about reducing limits placed on the body and thereby falling into situations where you otherwise might not. situations where you learn valuable lessons about the culture you inhabit. (for me, anyway)
he seems to think that non-monogamy privileges sex as immensely important. i disagree. i prefer to think of sex as potentially mundane, something that we just do from time to time, like eating, bathing, drinking coffee, or masturbating. sometimes we want it and sometimes we don't. sometimes we do it because we want pleasure. there are different ways to do it, and different people with whom to do it with. alone, in the presence of another, in groups, online... anyway, surely to cordon this pleasure practice from all others, and to relegate it to the space of the couple 'at the exclusion of all others' is to suggest that sex is immensely important (and immensely private). surely the best way to de-privilege sex would be to avoid monogamy. it might also be the best way to de-stress the couple relationship (so that two people are not made exclusively responsible for each others' sexual happiness). i'd argue that a culture of monogamy (or attempted monogamy, as is often the case) is itself an example of the prioritisation of sex as a pleasure practice above all others.
i don't think this is comprehensible to him. he is staunch in his beliefs, much like me. he argues that non-monogamy is an individualist pursuit to control your own pleasures whereby sex is only ever about you and your body. but this argument does not stick. monogamy is also all about you in its subjective aligning of self with another. it is about constructing a new cellular identity in which you move between self (me) and the couple (us). that movement is ongoing because the self is never fully swallowed by the couple, yet i would argue that there's less room for other intimacies when involved in that particular dance. of course many intimacies belong to friendships, but monogamy can put a strain on these too, particularly when monogamy funnels itself into co-dependence.
and i guess that's a deeper (and personal) concern that i have - that i might find myself in that space once again.
as someone interested in collective politics, and the political possibilities of bodies and intimacy, i don't like the suggestion (or accusation) that my belief in non-monogamy is due to me being a self-focused individualist. rather, i believe that shared intimacies, made more possible by non-monogamy (whether sexual or otherwise) are powerfully disruptive to particular systems/regimes that feed into global misery. if you believe that traditional formulas of coupling, families, and property ownership are destructive (which i do), then avoiding (and dismantling) traditional regimes of love, patriarchy, and propriety seems key. and what better way to start than by saying yes to non-monogamy.
perhaps i'm less focused on pleasure than intimacy, and as we spoke about it more this morning, i found myself spiking a vein of my phd argument. my final chapter has the working title of 'pleasure', but in a sense, my goal is to rescue pleasure from sex. in sexual health discourse pleasure is constituted as risk because it's seen as an always potential corruption of health; a powerful force that one falls prey to. here, pleasure leads us blindly into unhealthy actions (eg. sex without a condom). but i'm arguing that pleasure stretches well beyond sex acts, into spaces of friendship. when we have sex and talk about it with friends, comparing notes etc, this too is a practice of pleasure. then there's the pleasure in health practices as well; that is, one's ongoing pursuit to control one's body. there's also pleasure in relinquishing control. i suggest there (and here) that pleasure is not purely sexual, nor is it always about momentary gratification (ie. do it now, think about it later). it's about setting boundaries as much as its about crossing them. it's about the ongoing negotiation of sharing time, intimacy, experiences and stories. it's amorphous. and to think that it lies at the core of the sex act (beyond all other action) is to support the idea that sex is the most important thing we have.
sex is mundane. my thesis is boring. but i guess i do think it's a conversation that needs to be had. but it's a difficult line to walk, because i'm not saying i think there's a freedom in talking about sex (the sexual confession does little but reinforce that sex is core to human existence). but i guess i'm saying that it would be nice to conceptualise sex differently (as mundane), and perhaps one of the nice side effects of this would be to make negotiations of 'sexual health' (or healthy and ethical sex) a little bit easier. perhaps.
and while things remain unresolved between 'us', i guess i can thank him for pushing me back into the headspace of my thesis. and also for the swift realisation that my thesis arguments are entwined with my bodily practices. once again, my sexual politics exceed 'me', and i find myself in an unexpected situation.
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