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  • carlin [he/him,comrade/them]
    ·
    edit-2
    4 years ago

    Yeah I guess it's not exclusive, I think this is a good explanation of what I was getting at from Thinking Sex by Rubin:

    What I call the fallacy of misplaced scale is a corollary of sex negativity. Susan Sontag once commented that since Christianity focused ‘on sexual behaviour as the root of virtue, everything pertaining to sex has been a “special case” in our culture’ (Sontag, 1969, p. 46). Sex law has incorporated the religious attitude that heretical sex is an especially heinous sin that deserves the harshest punishments. Throughout much of European and American history, a single act of consensual anal penetration was grounds for execution. In some states, sodomy still carries twenty-year prison sentences. Outside the law, sex is also a marked category. Small differences in value or behaviour are often experienced as cosmic threats. Although people can be intolerant, silly, or pushy about what constitutes proper diet, differences in menu rarely provoke the kinds of rage, anxiety, and sheer terror that routinely accompany differences in erotic taste. Sexual acts are burdened with an excess of significance.

    and just bc I love this text, this is what sex negativity is:

    Of these five, the most important is sex negativity. Western cultures generally consider sex to be a dangerous, destructive, negative force (Weeks, 1981, p. 22). Most Christian tradition, following Paul, holds that sex is inherently sinful. It may be redeemed if performed within marriage for procreative purposes and if the pleasurable aspects are not enjoyed too much. In turn, this idea rests on the assumption that the genitalia are an intrinsically inferior part of the body, much lower and less holy than the mind, the ‘soul’, the ‘heart’, or even the upper part of the digestive system (the status of the excretory organs is close to that of the genitalia). Such notions have by now acquired a life of their own and no longer depend solely on religion for their perseverance.