Meditation 83: Sexual Economy

The manipulation, dissemination and channeling of sexual energy have always been a major preoccupation of societies ancient and modern. The biology of sexual reproduction has remained the same over the millennia, but a variety of gender constructions and sexual interests have evolved in and through different cultures. They are the constructions of interests that often have little to do with sexual procreation itself, and much more to do with power, pleasure and vanity. In the West, mechanisms of sexual control and patterns of sexual behavior have evolved in the tradition of patriarchal power.

For the longest time, women were used as signs of social value, exchanged as tokens of alliance or taken as chattel. Their value was determined by their family, work abilities, sex appeal and breeding potential. Whatever the power of women at home, her life hinged on acquiring the protection of a powerful man. Some cultures were easier on women than others. In ancient Egypt, a woman had all the legal rights of men, though she was nominally subservient to her husband. With the Hittites and the Greeks, things were different. It all depended on the leeway men gave to their women.

In pagan times, there was, in general, little Puritanism about the satisfaction of physical appetites. Sexual pleasures were no more shameful than those of eating and drinking. There were, indeed, sexual deeds and pleasures that brought shame, but only because people disobeyed social codes, not because there was anything wrong with sexual pleasure. Males and females found work in the sex trade. The rich bought hand-made pornography. Craftspeople and go-betweens made money selling sexual products and services. In the Roman world, all this was out in the open, and their sexual mores scandalized the early Christians. The Romans accepted sexual pleasure for its own sake, as one of the good things about being alive and having a serviceable body.

Under the disapproving eye of religious authorities, the screws were applied to human sexual behavior and feeling. However, the repressed always returns, and the arrival of the industrial revolution brought the means to represent and propagate images of sex that fed into the beginnings of consumer society. A string of inventions made the marketing of sex possible and desirable. First, printing arrived, and then lithography, photography, magazines, film and TV followed. Now we have computers, the internet, I-pods, remote genital agitators, lubricating creams, flavored condoms, and who knows what else.

Sex sells every which way. Society channels sexual energies into approved and unapproved streams. Both are profit centers. Sex as procreation leads to marriage, children, shopping for houses and everything else a family needs. Marriage is safe and approved. Sex as recreation is also 'reluctantly' allowed, within the privacy of the home between consenting adults. However, we learn to be afraid of unprotected sex. Medical industries provide drugs to combat STDs, especially AIDS, and publish books about how to stay healthy. We have a whole drug industry providing erections to middle aged men. All this is good for the bottom line, but there is still something more to be made from the transgressive side of sexual energy. While officially existing in monogamous marriage, sexual energy finds and is found other outlets for its never satiated quest for novelty.

In this respect, selling sex is like selling drugs. It is not respectable, but the prohibition does not stop the trade. Sex is addictive. The market economy thrives on the addiction people have to fantasies that call for ever expanding and repeated gratification. Get them hooked, and they will keep coming back. This is a good example of how the market system, combined with a stark profit motive, insinuates its offerings into all corners of the consumers’ fantasy world, as well as helping to create that very world.

Pornography is emblematic of the sexual economy. Cheap to produce, deskilled, and exploitative, the porn industry has low overheads due to the digital technologies that have increased access to cheaply produced images. The desires that are aroused are designed to remain unsatisfied. It is meant to be a fantasy world where consumers fill in the images on the digital interface with their own narratives. The market for sexual fantasies expands with every bright idea that comes up. It is segmented into discrete areas of interest that reveal themselves because people are willing to pay for the interface. If you think that there might be a niche market for videos of snails copulating, put it out on the web and see if anyone buys a subscription. In many ways, this industry is like a true free market in miniature, the unhampered reign of supply and demand without regard to either aesthetics or ethics, but with a canny sense of where profits are to be made.