The Ironies of Sex

In “The Problem with Being Cool About Sex,” the Atlantic’s Helen Lewis meditates on the many contradictions inherent in the sexual experience. Among others, Lewis contrasts the victories of women’s sexual liberation to the costs of being objectified and oversexualized, the ongoing friction between our societal condemnation of coercion in all its forms and some women’s desire for sexual domination, and the incompatibility of personal sexual preferences based on race, disability, and biological sex with the egalitarian goal to democratize sexual access for everyone. Lewis assumes that sexuality is largely shaped by societal and cultural forces, whether sexual double standards or pornography. But, in a welcome—if somewhat brief—aside, she questions the malleability of sexual desire in light of its “evolutionary purpose.” Ideological and intellectual commitments notwithstanding, Lewis’s article taps into the reality that sex rests on a bed of contradictions and that our experience of it is inescapably ambivalent. Read Full Article »