Perversion Is Us?: Eight Notes

"In a way, notes make an end run around anxiety. And anxiety shows up a lot around sex. You may not agree with Bronski’s (in press a) assertion that “everyone likes . . . slasher films where sex and anxiety are bound together and released in the spattering of red fluid,” buthundreds of millions of box-office dollars can’t be all wrong. As Sallie Tisdale, a Buddhist whose Talk Dirty to Me (1994) made Newsweekheadlines several years ago, wrote, “the merging of two into one in orgasm, this blending of identity, combines bliss and anxiety in astrange stew” (p. 281). Anxiety, Harry Stack Sullivan is said to have said, is like a blow on the head—it stops you from thinking." Pp.826"In Chasseguet-Smirgel’s (1985) view, perversion degrades psycheand culture alike. Out of de Sade’s texts, she distilled a definition:The pervert wishes to obliterate the distinctions on which psychic structures and social orders depend. The pervert makes a double erosion, of the difference between the sexes and of that between the generations. Chasseguet-Smirgel pointed out that sex, in the Sadean texts, takes place not within the heterosexual adult couple but all over the place—between males and females, between males, between females, between adults and children. Disorder is created, and, as borders are violated, pollution prevails." Pp.830"Perversion and that inadequately specific term normality construct each other. Perversion is necessary in more ways than Stoller (1975) imagined. How do you know what’s normal unless you know what’s not, unless you have a boundary? How do you know what’s not normal unless you know what is? In the discourse of psychosexuality, perversion and heteronormality constitute each other’s limits. Perversion marks the boundary across which you become an outlaw. Normality marks off the territory that, if stayed inside, keeps you safe from shame, disgust, and anxiety." Pp.838