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Peter LR
Peter LR
2 years ago

It’s interesting that in a whole article regarding sex there is not one mention of the word love. Not that I blame Mary whose writing I find searching without personal agendas. It shows how far off-field the ‘pleasure narrative’ takes us. It strikes me that people who talk derogatorily of ‘vanilla’ have no genuine experience of monogamous love and how lasting it can be. Perhaps the euphemism ‘making love’ should be changed to craving pleasure.

Brendan O'Leary
Brendan O'Leary
2 years ago
Reply to  Peter LR

People entering into sexual liaisons for pleasure are often ambushed or surprised by the tender feelings of attachment that follow.

Alan Thorpe
Alan Thorpe
2 years ago
Reply to  Peter LR

One of the people I admire more than any other, Thomas Sowell, has said exactly the same about love.

Judy Englander
Judy Englander
2 years ago
Reply to  Peter LR

I notice that ‘making love’ is hardly used now. It’s been replaced by ‘having sex’ which is a significant change. I’ve also noticed how the word ‘fun’ is used for one night stands especially by women, signifying the move to recreational sex decoupled from relationship. I suspect women don’t really want this but feel pressurised because it’s only ‘fun’, a trivial matter which they are supposed to forget the next morning. Except they often don’t.

Last edited 2 years ago by Judy Englander
Sue Ward
Sue Ward
2 years ago
Reply to  Peter LR

You put into words most eloquently exactly what I felt.

Chelcie Morris
Chelcie Morris
2 years ago
Reply to  Peter LR

Love never comes into the equation because these people don’t know how to love in the first place. They are so deprived of human connection that they equate sex with fun instead of the connection between two people.

Ludo Roessen
Ludo Roessen
2 years ago

First they come for you… and then they come for your children

George Glashan
George Glashan
2 years ago
Reply to  Ludo Roessen

As the manic street preachers sang: if you tolerate this then your children will be next.

Alan Thorpe
Alan Thorpe
2 years ago
Reply to  Ludo Roessen

I think it might be the other way round. It was certainly that way for the Nazis and Stalin, and children are being used to promote belief in a climate crisis.

Marco S
Marco S
2 years ago
Reply to  Ludo Roessen

In the 1980s i was in San Francisco at the time of a gay pride procession. There were several trailers promoting “man boy love” I was as shocked then as I would be now

Last edited 2 years ago by Marco S
mike otter
mike otter
2 years ago
Reply to  Marco S

Is AMBLA still a thing? Bit like Labour’s PIE thing in the Loony Left London Local Authorities (AKA LLLLAs) 70s-80s?

Jon Redman
Jon Redman
2 years ago

A few months ago an Unherd article linked to one in The Atlantic about the “sex recession”. This is the phenomenon that 20-somethings are less sexually active now than their parents were; 20% of 30-year-old are virgins, or something.
The link included a quote from someone in charge of pastoral care of freshmen at an American university, who found it necessary to tell 19-year-old men that the first time they sleep with a woman, they should not choke her, ejaculate on her face, or attempt @n@l sex.
My reaction to this was to marvel at the qualification “the first time”, as opposed to “ever unless expressly invited”, but more that this sort of behaviour is apparently becoming so normal that men have to be told it’s not. All of these are disrespectful, painful, or frightening ways to have sex with a woman; some are all three; the boys don’t realise because they’ve been looking at smartphone pr0n for 8 years, they think it’s normal and they use apps to hook up.
So there is something going on. Latter-day de Sades arguing that the real weirdoes are the normals are part of the problem. It’s a problem that affects young women (who are the objects of this stuff) worst but also indirectly young men, who either can’t get into, or have no idea how to conduct, a healthy boy / girl relationship.

Hardee Hodges
Hardee Hodges
2 years ago
Reply to  Jon Redman

Whether the inability to establish a relationship that bear truth, there is a tendency to imagine the degraded society envisioned by deSade. I suppose this has been a social worry forever. Caring for others, certainly a partner, must be enjoined at an early age. I’m not so sure that modern po7n removes that caring nature. I suspect the search for non-vanilla happens during the middle years, but have no way to know. I do think that a lot of people engage in fantasy but still enjoy the good old, same old.

Addie Schogger
Addie Schogger
2 years ago

Every great civilisation coming to the end of its power descends into licentiousness and the loss of all restraints. We are heading the same way.

Jeffrey Chongsathien
Jeffrey Chongsathien
2 years ago

Mary and Freddie are why I subscribe to Unherd.

Al M
Al M
2 years ago

I had the misfortune to share a flat with some ‘kinky’ people in my youth. Also held anarchist views. Complete pain in the backside they were.

But, more seriously, they were forever trying to convert you or proclaim that everyone is on a spectrum somewhere and nobody is straight/gay/male/female. Essentially, trying to invalidate the normal experience of the overwhelming majority. I still shudder when I recall those days.

Clara B
Clara B
2 years ago
Reply to  Al M

I remember somebody trying to do the same with me, but in respect of drug-taking. He argued that I was super-straight and fearful because I didn’t want to take whatever poisonous substance had addled his brain. He was into kink as well (thankfully, I was not his girlfriend).

Christopher Gelber
Christopher Gelber
2 years ago

I find troubling the bit in here that a poll in Scotland found that c.66% of men under 40 have slapped, spat at, gagged or choked a partner during sex. I assume the vast majority of these partners are women. Ok, it was Scotland, but still, I can hope that most of this behaviour was light slapping of the ass or similar (a hand under a chin, etc), but God knows. I have heard of things some young men regard as normal these days which are for sure in fetish territory. I have also heard stories of how young women can feel pressure to replicate certain behaviours, and hope they understand they have real agency in sexual encounters as they continue to grow up.

Last edited 2 years ago by Christopher Gelber
mike otter
mike otter
2 years ago

TBH i think the poll was made up. Think about how many ppl in your immediate social circle are into BDSM or chemsex or whatever – hardly any and certainly not 66%, probably 10-20% tops ( ie real friends you’d turn to if the cops were after you, not “friends” who you only know from being neighbours or business contacts or social media etc)

Christopher Gelber
Christopher Gelber
2 years ago
Reply to  mike otter

And the poll was conducted by the BBC. And was done in Scotland. I do, however, very much like your definition of a real friend.

Galeti Tavas
Galeti Tavas
2 years ago

Cops after you because of some sex game gone bad?

John Kozakiewicz
John Kozakiewicz
2 years ago

How on earth could any ‘poll’ determine such a thing? Far too much naive credulity on display here.

Chris Eaton
Chris Eaton
2 years ago

Vanilla gets a bad rap. Vanilla is sweet, Vanilla tastes good, Vanilla is satisfying. Sometimes I like a little bit of chocolate syrup on my Vanilla…sometimes my wife wants some caramel and peanuts on her Vanilla…or maybe we want some peaches, or strawberries, or whipped cream…I tell you what we don’t want: jalapeno peppers, mustard, hot chili peppers, or hot dogs. Yeah, that last one was kind of random. Been a Vanilla guy my whole live and been married to a Vanilla gal for over 30 years…and we still get our Vanilla on at least twice a week. Is that love or what?

Christopher Gelber
Christopher Gelber
2 years ago
Reply to  Chris Eaton

Nice one, Chris.

Joe Donovan
Joe Donovan
2 years ago

So much of the madness now washing over us goes back to one source — Michel Foucault. Does anyone on the Left hold him accountable for his own, personal depravity, or are we supposed to take him for a model in this as in things more conventionally “philosophical?”

John Kozakiewicz
John Kozakiewicz
2 years ago
Reply to  Joe Donovan

I know I must have been adversely influenced by Foucault from an early age, even before I could spell his name or identify him in a police lineup! In later years, I extricated myself from a Foucault cult, where our guiding principle was WWFD (What would Foucault do?) Now, blessed by the wisdom that all-too-rarely comes with age, I can attribute all my past transgressions to this man – Foucault made me do it!

Last edited 2 years ago by John Kozakiewicz
L Walker
L Walker
2 years ago

He definitely should have been in a police lineup.

John Riordan
John Riordan
2 years ago
Reply to  Joe Donovan

The sole contribution this man has made to the world is in the inadvertently-revealing expression “I know Foucalt” by his disciples.

Galeti Tavas
Galeti Tavas
2 years ago
Reply to  Joe Donovan

Derrida, Nietzsche, Foucault…. three of the great looseners of evil on society, sick memes which replicate and spread, worse than any Covid in harm

John Kozakiewicz
John Kozakiewicz
2 years ago
Reply to  Galeti Tavas

“…three of the great looseners…” I think perhaps they were ‘loosers,’ not ‘looseners’!

Al M
Al M
2 years ago
Reply to  Joe Donovan

Notably, Macron has spoken out against ‘US’ style woke/cancel/intersectionality as a threat to the French way of life. One can only assume that much as ‘bof’ has no direct equivalent in English, there must be nothing in the French language or consciousness for the concepts of irony and, more importantly, contrition.

Alastair Herd
Alastair Herd
2 years ago

A lot of this stuff makes more sense with the label “Expressive Individualism”. Sexuality has just become another vector for self-definition, and so it needs to be weirder and weirder to help you feel unique.
It might be a Christian book, but nothing I’ve read comes close to charting how we got where we are now like “The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self” by Carl Trueman.

andy young
andy young
2 years ago

Personally I’m into bestiality, flagellation & necrophilia.
Some might say I’m flogging a dead horse.

James Chater
James Chater
2 years ago

Yes, there has been a marked ‘inflationary devaluation’ of Taboo. Probably regrettable? (I note the author’s honest defence of the indefensible – ‘bourgeois hypocrisy’.)
So, what before was ‘kinky’ now becomes ‘normalised’. And? Is there really going to be a huge uptake of ‘perverse’ sexual behaviour, everywhere, anywhere, at every opportunity?
Trying to posit some sort of ‘oppression’ of the ‘hetero-normal’ majority is ridiculous.
Agreed, any glorification of coercive, nonconsensual behaviour, actual or simulated, is of real concern. ‘Kinky’ and ‘straight’, hetero, homo,[not my asterisks] should be able to agree on that.
Yes, we have to blame all media, with electronic & social media (obviously the ‘dark net’ is of major concern) pushing the bounds.
With an emphasis on the subjective, I wish there was less public display of any kind of sexual ‘pride’ or ‘merit’, ‘straight’ or ‘bent’. But, to misquote the author, ‘humans are simply too ‘sexy’ for that’.

Last edited 2 years ago by James Chater
Jon Redman
Jon Redman
2 years ago
Reply to  James Chater

Is there such a thing as straight pride then? If I announced – let’s say on Twitter – that I was proud to be straight, would I receive applause or abuse?

James Chater
James Chater
2 years ago
Reply to  Jon Redman

You might receive both? Let’s be honest though – can’t imagine there’d be as many LGBTQ+ sponsors of a Straight Pride as there are straight sponsors for the LGBTQ+ Prides.

Last edited 2 years ago by James Chater
Judy Englander
Judy Englander
2 years ago
Reply to  Jon Redman

The whole idea of pride in our s*xual preferences is absurd. Our s*xualities and preferences are not – or shouldn’t be – the most important things about us.

Jon Redman
Jon Redman
2 years ago
Reply to  Judy Englander

Agree Judy, as these are also involuntary. You might just as well be proud of having brown eyes.

Don Lightband
Don Lightband
2 years ago
Reply to  Judy Englander

Hold on one shining moment – imagine if your desire tended ever more strongly toward ‘paedo’ (which after all, let’s face it, everybody’s ultimately does, it’s just buried in lashings of acceptable gushings of ‘cute’), but you soon realized saying a word about this will be socially fatal – wouldn’t your agonizedly supressed feelings inevitably now become ‘the most important thing about you’ ?

Ed West says multiple taboos and.speech codes are swiftly returning us to the ‘normal’. In the very next piece, Mary Harrington says wicked “kinks” are oozing out upon the market all over the place.

I for one don’ t know what to believe – do you?

Fintan Power
Fintan Power
2 years ago
Reply to  Jon Redman

There is such a thing but they have been attacked for daring to say so.

John Riordan
John Riordan
2 years ago

“But Rowello argues that the fact gay people are now imposing the same ‘respectability’ on kinky people means they’ve sided with the oppressive, bourgeois forces of stodgy old heteronormativity.”

But so what? The alternative, surely, would be to say that there is no equivalent in the gay sexual world to conventional vanilla sex, which surely is equally oppressive?

What’s really going on here is that “normal” sex is being misrepresented anyway. There is a reason why it’s a “norm”, and it’s simply that in straight sex, about three positions and a general absence of accessories is enough on its own to please most people – if done right, of course, because there is considerable skill involved in getting it right even as far as that.

So, why should not gay people be entitled to operate on similar principles? I say this as one who has tried quite a few things in my time, by the way, and I would never judge the more adventurous for their preferences. But this argument here seems to rest upon throwing a mirror image of such judgement back at the less adventurous, who are, after all, only asserting that they know for themselves what form intimacy ideally takes in private between themselves.

Sorry if the gays don’t want to support your constant attacks on social norms, but it’s not their job, and you shouldn’t expect it.

Brendan O'Leary
Brendan O'Leary
2 years ago

Vanilla’s a fine and subtle flavour and gets a bad rap, due , I presume to it being the default flavouring of “plain” ice-cream.
This is not a recent misconception – over 40 years ago I suffered a friend making a yoghurt sauce for souvlaki dressing from vanilla yoghurt, because he thought it was the same as “plain”.

A Spetzari
A Spetzari
2 years ago

Bad rap? I think he went downhill after ‘Play that funky music’ personally….

Brendan O'Leary
Brendan O'Leary
2 years ago
Reply to  A Spetzari

Vanilla Ice – now there was a guy who couldn’t sing under pressure.

John Kozakiewicz
John Kozakiewicz
2 years ago

“A poll conducted last year by BBC Scotland reported that two-thirds of men under 40 have slapped, spat at, gagged or choked a partner during sex.”
Oh, the credulity! Ms. Harrington’s breathless and uncritical reference to a very questionable ‘poll’ serves to undermine her entire article. This supposed poll undoubtedly served as a vehicle for sex-deprived and testosterone-addled young men to wax grandly about their imagined bedroom activities. I would have expected a serious journalist to recognize male locker-room boasting and posturing when it is staring her in the face (so to speak). My hunch is that there is a great vanilla-hued middle ground on the continuum of human sexual practices, with the disinterested occupying one extreme and the overachievers the other. In any case, neither panic nor hand-wringing seems to in be order!

Last edited 2 years ago by John Kozakiewicz
Hugh Marcus
Hugh Marcus
2 years ago

Yes there may be a bit of exaggeration in the figures but simply dismissing it doesn’t deal with the issue. I suspect that the notions of slapping a partner etc etc probably first happened in the heads of those younger men when they saw it on a porn site somewhere. Statistically most of the partners would be women & I’d live to know if any of them felt cheap & used. What’s missing in the vocabulary of the ‘anything goes’ advocates is the notion of respect.

Alan Thorpe
Alan Thorpe
2 years ago

Also the poll didn’t ask women about their views.

Dan Nicholas Mr.
Dan Nicholas Mr.
2 years ago

Brilliant and bold. Great think piece. I’ve been kinky. Ive been vanilla. I’ve even been a Street Preacher. And I still believe in love….and making it. Mary is spot on, how the profane cannot even exist without the holy. I’ve gone from the traditional church to Fulsom Street Fare and back. We need both. Both are valid, I say. And this having lost a ten year love in part due to the madness of “Consensual Non Consent” in kink. Yes, without love as the key, we are doomed to ever find true pleasure. Just finished my memoir, Sex With Librarians and God yesterday. Mary’s work here is indeed heartfelt and helpful.

John Kozakiewicz
John Kozakiewicz
2 years ago

We need the true sexual pioneers, although I’m not exactly sure why. Mr. Dan Nicholas, do you really think there is anything new under the sun sexually, and that you have accomplished some bold and heretofore-unknown act of kink? If so, when asked by the breathless paparazzi why on earth you even attempted to ‘pull off’ such a dangerous and seemingly unattainable endeavour, you can modestly reply, “Because it was there.”

Last edited 2 years ago by John Kozakiewicz
Prashant Kotak
Prashant Kotak
2 years ago

The core of the problem was summed up, in a couple of throwaway sardonic sentences, once upon a time (well 1981 but it’s the same thing) by Clive James in a review, while taking the mickey out of Malcolm Muggeridge:

There is no point in being shocked that God gave healthy male human beings ten times more lust than they can use. He did the same to healthy male fiddler crabs. He’s a deity, not a dietitian.

Unlike fiddler crabs, we know pretty much exactly the mechanics of the trick being played on us by nature, so why are we still, both women and men, such willing victims of our biological nature?
And I contend, *now* is pretty much the last of it (as in the next few decades) before that all is voluntarily removed from us, by us, from our nature. Notwithstanding the utter meaninglessness that would superimpose thereafter on all past human sensibility, all art, all striving, all production to date. I mean, if you had the choice, would you remain chained to a barely controllable maniacal doppelganger for decades on end? Ok, it might be fun for a bit, but seriously?

Last edited 2 years ago by Prashant Kotak
Galeti Tavas
Galeti Tavas
2 years ago
Reply to  Prashant Kotak

Malcolm Muggeridge, if only his kind still was regularly on popular media…..

I really feel our Entertainment industry, MSM, Social Media, Education industry, have been taken over by Satan; what a degenerate world we live in, but historically every period of absolute degeneracy was fallowed by a period leaning towards decency. Although in this electronic age the pendulum swing may not correct.

David McDowell
David McDowell
2 years ago

A rather drawn out whinge from what is essentially the sex snowflake perspective.
I’m not averse to more centralised control of what people do in bed where there a benefits to doing so. But let’s start with the big things, the ones that would make a difference, and leave the minority kinks aside for the time being. Let’s make access to contraception and abortion harder, prohibit divorce and criminalise adultery.

Al M
Al M
2 years ago
Reply to  David McDowell

I notice that fornication is missing from your list. Interesting.

David McDowell
David McDowell
2 years ago
Reply to  Al M

Fornication on its own does not directly undermine the family unit. Divorce and adultery do.

Al M
Al M
2 years ago
Reply to  David McDowell

It will do without contraception.

David McDowell
David McDowell
2 years ago
Reply to  Al M

Fair point.