I’m tired of having sexual discourse.
Reading (or writing) about sex is about as titillating and fresh as microwaved lasagna. Which is to say, not. Getting yourself amped-up about the umpteenth sexblog or Ivy League erotica journal takes more work than getting yourself amped-up to go on a date with your Chem partner who asks you to his Sigma Nu formal. Which is to say, a lot.
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A few years ago, a Yale alumna wrote Chloe Does Yale, about her undergraduate stint as a sex columnist. Harvard let H-Bomb blow in 2004. The spring of 2005 saw the emergence of Penn’s very own Quake. Now the new rage is the web diary of Elle, the sexually active Harvard sophomore. For some reason, people seem to think that coupling an Ivy League setting with sex is the most riveting and raunchy combination ever. I think it’s getting pretty stale.
On top of it, every chick who’s tasted a Cosmopolitan thinks that she’s Carrie Bradshaw. Baby, just because you sit at home in front of your laptop in your underwear and can slur out some hackneyed puns don’t make you no Carrie Bradshaw. Drop a few pounds, take a journalism course, and try me again.
Superficial concerns aside, the salaciousness of one’s subject matter cannot trump one’s inability to tell a story coherently. It doesn’t take too much work to bait some bone, so the effort needs to be in the writing. Most of these writers have the subtlety and wit of a lab report. Not all sex writing has to be this bad, especially when written by such highly educated people. Foucault is more provocative than porn any day of the week. And Lacan’s description of power structures? Makes me go crazy.
Some of the women writing sex blogs seem to think that they’re risking everything for the sake of ladies everywhere by making it okay for me to be sexual, for me to talk about sex. They are dying to be controversial. They pray for someone to call them a slut.
That era has passed. I don’t really care. I don’t think you are breaking down any doors for me. I don’t think you are a slut. I think you’re a bore who knows HTML. And you’re not getting me off.
Side note: While typing up this post, I had to use HTML for the first time, and I now have much respect for all the bores who use it.
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October 4th, 2006 at 10:50 am
A comment to Chloe’s article was posted here. However, it was surrounded by some spam messages from a spam bot. When removing the spam messages earlier, someone accidentally removed the legitimate comment. I apologize for this error. The commenter is welcome to post again. I just wanted to make sure no one thought it was censorship.
October 9th, 2006 at 10:23 pm
I really like this article & came across it through the harvard blogger–but who is Chloe Hurley? Does she have a bio anywhere? Thanks.
October 13th, 2006 at 9:48 pm
Email her and find out.
November 14th, 2006 at 8:28 pm
Oooh you had to use HTML. What a tough life you have.
November 21st, 2006 at 10:55 am
Perhaps the point of all these books and blogs is to simply TALK about sex. Welcome it. In this age of abstinence-only “education” (for people OUR age too), we need to talk more about sex, whether the writing is well-done or not. By the by, Carrie Bradshaw IS everywoman. That was the point.