Righteous Sex

I just read JoAnn Wypijewski's article "The Way of All Flesh" in the current issue of Mother Jones. In it she describes the website The Marriage Bed. The site is a kind of "Leviticus meets Girls Gone Wild", dispensing sex advice (both from "experts" and through community fora to Christians who want to make sure they're doing the Right Thing.

Here's a great bit that Wypijewski quotes in her article:

[Women are] urged in an essay by the Reverend Paul titled "How to Strip for Your Husband" to "finish your performance by letting him watch you enjoy a self induced orgasm. To drive him over the top, put a chair in front of him, sit down, put your feet on his knees, spread wide and masturbate. Bonus point for self penetration."

It's like Savage Love for the evangelical set.

Of course, the website condemns extramarital sex (including sex with someone of the same gender), but it does allow for certain types of masturbation.

The list of "What's OK? What's Not?" reads a little bit like a Sexual Harrassment training explaining what constitutes appropriate and consensual sexual behavior, except the person consenting here is God, and the law is the Bible (mainly the old testament, I believe). Here's what they have to say about masturbating in front of your spouse (as you may have guessed from the quote above, the gist is that it's okay):

...[One] issue is a couple watching each other masturbate. Most men, and many women, find this very arousing, and it can also be informative. As a frequent alternative to more interactive sex it could be a problem, but we know of no Biblical or medical reasons why it would be wrong or unwise to do this from time to time.

Notice the cautious tone of the approval, though - it's a classic lawyerspeak approach: "With some limited exceptions, we know of no specific reason why not to perform this activity".

Another interesting bit for me was the discussion of permissible sexual fantasies and roleplay:

Since God cares about our thoughts, not just our actions, there must be a line in this that we should not cross, but where is that line? A safe way to approach this is to say it's wrong to fantasize or act out anything it would be wrong to actually do. This means you must always play yourselves, not a real movie star or someone you know. It also means you must be married in the fantasy.

There is an interesting parallel to this position in the anti-BDSM strain of feminist thought, which argues that (enactments of) fantasies of domination or non-consensual sex are wrong. In part the argument turns on the effect of such fantasies on your own thoughts, and not the problem of actual consent of a partner (that is, even if consenting to the enactment of such fantasies was unproblematic, the fantasies themselves were still problematic). There is no posited third entity (God) watching, but you are expected to be your own censor.

Much of the feminist analysis of BDSM focuses on heterosexual or lesbian BDSM. As far as I know there has been little significant feminist/queer criticism of BDSM in the gay male community (which is not to say that there is not a fair share of sex-negativity among gay men - it's just not as heavily theorized with regards to BDSM).

Which got me thinking - what are the sexual norms of the gay male community? Are there such norms? I know that there are micronorms for certain gay male spaces like saunas, bars, street parties.

Gay men don't seem to spend a lot of time searching for these norms (at least, not aloud) - we're more concerned about getting what we want. A message board about "what kind of gay sex is okay"* seems like it would be a non-starter. Even Savage Love columns seem mainly to consist of letters from troubled straights; or bisexuals in heterosexual relationships, though its audience includes a large number of gay men.

*I mean "okay" in a broadly ethical sense, not the instrumental sense of preventing STD transmission.

Personally, except for certain rare circumstances (criminal law classes on rape, reading feminist essays on BDSM) I don't spend a lot of time worrying about what kind of sex is moral. I'm more likely to be thinking about what kind of sex would feel good, when I'm going to get to have that sex, who is likely to join me, and how to go about finding such people. So in a way morality and sex seem to be totally different realms of thought and emotion for me. I never feel self-righteous during sex.

Unless the other guy comes first.