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What is the history of female desire? Four eras
1) Pleasurocene: archaic epoch of the feminine condition. Raptor man. Sex governed by strict social conventions. The wife finds pleasure in marriage only by luck. Side effects: multiple infidelities, more or less tolerated depending on the time and the cultural background, allowing the woman to obtain her pleasure and possible additional benefits. Sometimes the ways are legal: in the Middle Ages, the wife could drag her impotent husband before the religious courts.
2) Liberalization of the 60s: right to say yes to any proposal. Revolt against bourgeois morality. Pendulum movement a little excessive, like all revolutions. It was also the almost obligatory to say yes, except to pass for a show off girl. Men mostly benefited from it. They have not really given up power.
3) Militant feminism: right to say no. Consent is an imperative to be specified absolutely before any relationship. The procedural acme of this period is the sale of a kit containing everything necessary for a one-off relationship, including a written form for the consent of the parties.
4) Disorientation: say maybe to yourself. This is the content of Katherine Angel’s latest book, ‘Tomorrow Good Sex – Women, Desire and Consent‘. The British essayist criticizes the notion of consent as frequently producing ‘bad’ sex, either null or traumatic. If even enlightened consent to sex can ruin desire, what is left? Katherine Angel’s advice, saying “maybe”, shows how disoriented feminism is. This ‘interrogative form of consent’ puts women halfway between yes and no, between the eras (2) and (3) I have mentioned. By leaving its too precise place, the desire is lost in the fog.
The history of desire under the double look
In upward/ontology, desire is an assemblage of impulses. Implied. We must not “live with” (says the downward look a little contemptuous). They are in essence life. Dried fuel? Desire gives way to regret. An old man lives implicitly with the reduction of impulses, a young man with their fullness. This is a given of the problem, not a setting accessible to conscious correction.
In downward/teleology, desire causes more or less joyful events. Conscious self-observation integrates sexual pleasure and social codes. As the drunken boat of impulses soars on the restless ocean of encounters, consciousness arrives with its road map. Does it have to be so categorical? Four eras of female desire bear the weight of the downward look. Impulses are judged. It doesn’t matter what everyone feels, depending on the context and the companion. This view merges the totality of individuals and their experiences into a common interpretation. In the box of the accused are billions of different cases, but the judge sees only one.
Pleasure studied like a faded leaf, without being interested in the health of the tree. Sexual intercourse as masturbation through another body. Consequences of an excessive examination of the events of our lives and that of others. Too much purpose.
You have read in detail in the previous post the reason for this intrinsic defect in the downward look. What is invalidated is not the look itself, but its exclusive use. Katherine Angel sketches a reversal of the look. Is this the right method? Its readers no longer know which side to look at and the blur sets in. Should I listen to my impulses or my reason?
Go back to the origin of desire
The upward look completes the previous one. Before judging the crossing of my impulses with that of the companion according to great cultural standards, I must know the forces involved. Have I taken the full measure of my own desires? What is my expertise in opposite sex impulses? Are the shortcuts used mine, those of my relatives, my mistresses to think?
Let us briefly mention some male impulses: the inseminator (the most animal), the possessive (as affected as it is not very affective), the infantile (ejected from the maternal womb and dreaming only of returning to it), the paternalistic (moment to place some jeremiads 🙂 Should we place these impulses side by side, and hesitate in front of them as if you were self-service? That would be a mistake. The first two are rigorously individualistic, the last two strongly collectivist. The relationship you build on each one will have a very different face. Can we talk about building if we have not properly identified our own impulses?
The role of this article is not to further strengthen the grip of your downward look. It has already placed a tight straitjacket around desire by intellectual activists interposed. The role of consciousness is to free the upward look, simply let it mark the road. Blue arrows and forbidden directions on the path of impulses. Without a precise itinerary. But to move forward is also to progress in the certainty that the path is rotten or solid. Will I end up on limits not to be crossed? Or on the edge of a magnificent panorama, a relationship that I would like to spend a lifetime exploring.
Common sense in support of impulses
Upward direction = ‘common sense’? This is what seems to indicate the tribune in 2018 in Le Monde bringing together 100 women, including Catherine Millet, Ingrid Caven and Catherine Deneuve. The content of the message, “recognize the limit and understand the difference between flirting and going too far”, is that of the previous paragraph. Certainly this requires a more consistent reflection than “swinging your pig”, but let us remember that ‘thinking’ goes badly with ‘desiring’, except when the former puts as much energy into its nuances as the latter into its impulsiveness.
Should it be the women with the most traumatized desires telling others how to achieve theirs?
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