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Where I hang out, there has recently been a high-profile public information campagn directed at young men. The basic prmise of the campaign is, "just because you buy a girl a drink, it doesn't mean she owes you sex." I don't usually concern myself too much with the sordid sexual morality of teliophiles (like the sex-lives of dogs, it's something to prefer not to know about), but - since I can't ignore it - I guess I feel ambivalent about this particular campaign. On the one hand, I don't really like the idea of people feeling pressured to have sex because some guy has bought them a bottle of scrumpy. On the other hand, all sex - all human intercourse of any sort - is transactional in some measure, and it seems naive to pretend that it's not. (Does anyone these days read the Odyssey? Does anyone read Mauss?) Were we disembodied souls in bliss (or in torment), we might be able to have sex free from the economics of exchange. But as embodied, material creatures (like dogs or teliophiles) we can only manifest our affection materially. And sex is part of that material economy of affection (or a substitute for it), no matter how much we might wish things to be otherwise. I admit that I would like sex only to occur within sacramental bounds (we could find a way to bring boys into this, I'm sure - the Church is conservative, but not unimaginative). This might seem to confine sex to a certain kind of economy - that of the family unit or household - even if we cannot de-economise it completely. But that is not the world most of us currently occupy, and it is certainly not the world most boylovers occupy. We live in a world of aggressive and destructive capitalism, where inequality - both within and between nations - is accepted as a law of nature (not least, it would appear, by the poor themsleves). Am I comfortable with sex tourism? No. Do I like the idea of boylovers going overseas and paying for sex with boys or teens? Eurgh. No. Frankly, the idea repulses me. I think we could hope for better (though maybe not at the moment). But I can't exactly condemn it either. Not wholeheartedly. Because all sex is ultimately the same. As somebody said, "everyone pays for it one way or another." And it's probably not a bad thing. And it doesn't mean that affection isn't real, or that love - insofar as we can believe in it - doesn't sometimes exist. Even when cash changes hands - the crudest kind of transaction - there might sometimes still be genuine feeling on both sides. Capitalism is brutish and murderous and inhuman, but love can still sometimes gild it. It's a mystery indeed. |