Editor’s Note: Periodically we have fun delving into our archives to bring you still relevant items. This one was written in 2011 by our co-founder Dan Massey that puts reproductive sex in its place. Comments welcome, as always.
Last Wednesday night (8/3) we hosted a meet-the-author event for the launch of Gloria Brame’s new book, The Truth About Sex: Volume 1. More than 30 fans of kink and more showed up, many from the Alternative Sexualities conference the same day in DC. There was a lot of Q&A and raunchy banter leading to some observations of how “non-reproductive sex” had come to be widely accepted in the last 50 years as an important part of the total sexual experience.
Adam and Eve
When confronted by an assumption that does not seem warranted, I try reversing my perspective, looking through the opposite end of the telescope so to speak, and often find my altered viewpoint enlightening. In this case, I felt the discussion was overburdened with the millennially long uphill climb of humanity from the pit of obligatory reproduction. No sooner did we figure out what caused children than all the usual scolds came out of the woodwork to try to force us to do it anyway, even when we didn’t want to.
So I spoke up to say that I thought, when you considered all the possible varieties of sex, orientation, affinity, gender identity, and gender orientation, the so-called “normal” (i.e., cisnormative heteronormative) reproductive sex act becomes a mere footnote to this multidimensional space in which we can all freely express our joy in life.
By now it should be clear that reproductive sex (without any form of intentional fertilization control) is something to be avoided unless one is fully prepared to deal with the consequences, namely the birth of a child, with sufficient preparation and capability to safely oversee eir formative life period. No child should ever be born into a situation where they are not desired and respected as the highest good to their parents. No potentially fertile couple should ever consider (or even be allowed to consider) reproduction without having attained some maturity that qualifies them to raise and educate a child.
In short, there is nothing more unusual, abnormal, and potentially self-destructive in the entire domain of sexuality and eroticism than the actual act of breeding. How could anyone possibly have thought masturbation was dangerous relative to actual reproduction? Was nobody paying attention to anything real at all? Even if masturbation really did grow hair on your palms, wouldn’t that be obviously preferable to creating an unwanted child, a child that would suffer endless personal abuse and humiliation until one day he might take vengeance on his tormentors?
Sex is about joy, pleasure, happiness, and personal sanity. Breeding is not about any of these. It is a unique and different aspect of life that, while extremely important to many people, is just one tiny and extremely dangerous corner of the universe of sex. Reproduction is an act in and of itself, which has nothing to do with erotic sex, except for the physical association in the wiring of human body. But the wires that give joy and delight actually don’t have much to do with operating the plumbing that makes babies. For the beast, the erotic senses drive behavior towards reproductive sex; however, for observant and rational humans, they actually have nothing to do with reproduction.
We are not animals. We are human, even transhuman beings, able to orient ourselves in the world, to observe the events and activities of our environment, to decide on the most appropriate next action to take ourselves, and to take such condign action in a timely way. And when we thus become fully, rationally conscious of what is really happening and our role from moment to moment in making things happen, it is easy to see the optimal choice—to finally dispose of the delusion of reproduction as the whole of sex and raise our eyes to the vast opening sky of possibilities.
Planetary society is entering a new and fabulous age of sex and gender freedom, when the range and domain of such experience and exploration is no longer defined by the mechanics of reproduction. At last the challenges of uncontrolled reproduction can be addressed, as all are educated to a life of sexual experience beyond simple interhuman bestiality. The making of babies is separate and secondary to the desires and actions of the lover to do good to the beloved. Fulfill your lovers in every way from the sensory to the transcendent, according to each individual’s sensitivities, and put reproductive sex in its place.
—Dan Massey
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