Occasionally I will run across an article that almost perfectly encapsulates our modern ethic on sex/sexuality which can be neatly summarized thus:
Sexual desire is self-validating.
When Woody Allen cheated on wife Mia Farrow with her daughter (not his, from another relationship) his mea culpa was "the heart wants what the heart wants." In other words, Allen is no more responsible for his desires than he is for the fact that he chose to act on them. Intelligent people in our culture take that statement at face value as inherently justifying, even if the result is a bit icky to consider.
So Jason Webb, writing for Salon, does his duty to promote the interests of the spanking fetishists in this world, that long oppressed sexual minority. Here is an excerpt to paint the general picture of what is going on here:
"At times, spanking was an obsession, and one made all the more torturous for the shame I felt harboring it. For more than 20 years I thought there was something wrong with me. I thought that if, by chance, someone else felt the same way, then they’d be a dirty old man with a grubby overcoat and bulging eyes. But I couldn’t help it. I didn’t choose to be kinky in this way, any more than a man or woman chooses to be straight or gay. The way I saw it, homosexuals had their closet and I had mine. Only mine was a lot smaller, and I was the only one in it."
Webb no doubt believes that by conflating his "preference" in with the darling civil rights issue of our day, he will immediately have a sympathetic audience. "Even the homosexuals have it better than me," he seems to imply. Webb is liberated by a partner who will let him pursue his sexual desires as well as a dinner party of other freaks "spankos" who show him how normal and healthy his fetish is. The article ends with a charming anecdote about Webb spanking the "naughty server" at a spanko-friendly dinner he attended with the help of his "darling wife" who raised the skirt of the girl for him. I feel dirty even writing that sentence.
While reading this I couldn't help but get the impression that most of Webb's praise of the liberation of his desire is ostentation meant to cover up that last sliver of shame which he is doing his damnedest to expunge. I imagine he believes that writing this article will exorcise those vicious Judeo-Christian demons once and for all. Hopefully it was therapeutic for him. Perhaps he will launch a new video series about how it gets better for spankos once they leave behind all of their benighted moral structure.
The odd thing about our culture is not that there are sexual deviants. Those have always been amongst us, bless their hearts. The odd thing about our culture is that the deviants must now be validated by everyone else. You can't just let the freak flag fly (much less simply be quiet about the proceedings) and let the squares gasp in horror. Now, the squares have to make fetishists feel comfortable in their fetishes because we all know it is cruel to judge someone for fulfilling the desires of their heart, whatever those desires happen to be.
Again, in a very real sense this is nothing new. I mean, Caligula existed. And I am not kept awake at night in horror that there might be some spanking going on somewhere in my neighborhood. But it is a new thing to be asked to take something that looks suspiciously like beating a woman with a cane for pleasure and give it the cultural stamp of approval because, you know, inborn desire and all. So many moderns are as fatalistic about sexual desire as the most ardent Calvinist ever was about salvation.
I don't have a great concluding thought, just thought this captured the zeitgeist nicely. Expect more previously unacknowledged sexual practices to become very important expressions of core sexual identity in the future. Rather than a sense of public decorum requiring people to not publish the details of their desire, expect more far too detailed accounts of subversion that we are required to accept and praise as further signs of liberation.
On second thought, allow me to close with Milton:
That bawl for freedom in their senseless mood,
And still revolt when Truth would set them free.
License they mean when they cry Liberty.
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